We’re in the Library of Congress, but we’re not on iTunes. | | | | 125th Street and Rising: De La Soul outside the Apollo Theater, New York, Sept. 1, 1993.
(David Corio/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | | | “We’re in the Library of Congress, but we’re not on iTunes.”
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| | rantnrave:// Eventually, when all streaming services are also streaming distributors and all streaming distributors are also streaming services, we'll find ourselves at a sort of streaming singularity in which there's no discernible difference between SPOTIFY, SOUNDCLOUD, APPLE MUSIC, TENCENT MUSIC and your refrigerator. Every track, every mixtape, every DJ set and every album ever—except for probably ONE IN A MILLION, the DE LA SOUL catalog and whatever's the new TAYLOR SWIFT album at any given time—will exist everywhere. Everything will be available in both QOBUZ quality and early MYSPACE quality. Subscription prices will be similar and artist payments will be uniform and instantaneous (which I believe means "in nine months' time or later" in the music business but let's not worry about that right now. Let's dream of a better future). Artists will be able to make content for SoundCloud knowing it will show up in my refrigerator moments later, or make content for my refrigerator knowing it will show up on SoundCloud before I've had time to grab the cream cheese. And there will be three and a half quadrillion tracks on every service (and in every appliance), and if you're looking for anything beyond the current pop top 10 or the exact album you played the last time you visited, you're going to need help. A park ranger. A record-store clerk. An amazing algorithm. Something. Every so often, we remember how much these things matter. Because they do. In TIDAL right now, the "Suggested New Albums" widget on my homepage is showing me exactly 126 albums and singles, all released last Friday, in somewhat random order. THEON CROSS and YANN TIERSEN, both of which I've played recently (and not on Tidal, I swear, though maybe I'm mistaken), are near the top but after that things get really random really fast. Why is ROBBIE WILLIAMS in the third row, CHAKA KHAN in the fourth row and BABYGIRL in the ninth row, and why on earth is there a 27th row at all? Are these recommendations or a storewide inventory? Where am I supposed to start? Come the streaming singularity, who'll make it easiest to organize my old music while surfacing the most interesting new music? Whose playlists will go a step beyond "hip-hop," "pop" and "jazz," or "happy," "sad" and "party," and allow me to hear music not as genre or mood but as actual music? Who'll understand that maybe a sad jazz song and a happy rock song make sense back-to-back? And that maybe only five of those 126 albums and singles really, truly matter to me? Who will help me declutter? Who will make me stay on the dancefloor, trusting that the 10th song I hear will be as good as the ninth? (And/or, when my artist hat is on, who'll have the best, and best organized data? Who will anticipate, and respond to, my inquiries? Whose tools will be easiest to use? Etc.) Oh yeah, news item: "SoundCloud is now a distributor." (And yes, this particular distributor is in a bit of a rocky streak)... I'm not easily impressed with pop chart records and breakthroughs in an era where the rules seem to keep changing and records are seemingly broken on a daily basis. But ARIANA GRANDE becoming the first artist since the BEATLES in 1964 to hold the top three spots on the BILLBOARD HOT 100? Full-on respect. Fifty-five years from now, guaranteed, we'll remember "7 RINGS," "BREAK UP WITH YOUR GIRLFRIEND, I'M BORED" and "THANK U, NEXT," and not just because of their chart ascendancy. We'll remember a confident pop master at work. They may or not be the three best pop songs in the world right now and they may or may not be Ariana Grande's best work. And you could say exactly the same for the Beatles' historic run of singles in spring 1964 (for a week, they owned the Billboard top five) while still appreciating their mastery... AUTO-TUNE CAT... RIP BIBI FERREIRA and GERALD BLUM. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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