Over 100,000 songs are being uploaded to streaming services every day, according to Luminate, and many of these tracks are not being listened to at all. Plus, a fast-growing share of these songs have been flagged as fully AI-generated recordings, while another sizable portion are deemed “functional” content or “non music” — meaning white noise, bird sounds or other non-traditional audio content. It all amounts to growing difficulties for well-meaning artists trying to cut through the clutter and find a fanbase. It also places a strain on streaming services, especially the smaller players in the market. So, has the supply of audio content finally become too much?
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On this week’s episode of On the Record, Stem co-founder and CEO Milana Lewis joins to discuss how the long tail of music content grew, why she thinks music should be “taken down from the [streaming] shelf” if it’s not listened to and how this vast supply of music impacts emerging talent.
Watch or listen to the full episode of On the Record below on YouTube, or check it out on other podcast platforms here. Read a segment of the conversation below.
How do you think streaming services should treat songs or audio content that is not listened to at all?
Lewis: There is a cost to maintaining music on servers, and it wasn’t possible in a retail world to have this happen because space was limited. And there were consequences because of that. If you tried to put content out there and it didn’t sell, you had restocking fees, you had overage fees and you had warehouse fees that you had to pay as a business. So you were more intentional with what you’re choosing to invest to put out into physical product.
There’s still a cost to carrying songs in excess [on streaming services]. There’s rumors I’ve heard of various DSPs who are toying around with fees, where they’re gonna charge distributors for content that’s below the threshold and maintaining it there should [have] a shelf life. So if your music is out there and it’s not being consumed for a period of time, it should be taken down from the shelf and the space should be cleared for someone else. If you are still active and you want to pursue that, then you just have to re-upload, repackage and reposition.
What about just a fee to keep it up for another period of time?
I think you need to think about repositioning [the music that isn’t being listened to]. If it’s out there exactly as it was, and no one’s consuming it, you should have to think of a way to reach audiences differently. I think you should be forced to re-package it.
I’ve been told by a few of the smaller streaming services that they’re concerned about the cost to maintain all these songs and their storage space capabilities —
It’s a problem for one of the big ones [too]. And I’ve had conversations with people who work there — and it’s not so much about storing it, it’s also about the cost of merchandising and curating it as well.
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What do you mean? Like the cost of algorithms to sort through it all, and editorial staff to create playlists?
Yes, or resources devoted to detecting fraud.
Now, [the cost of storing music] could be nominal, sure, but at the high volumes we’re dealing with today, it’s costing them. I think the worst part of it is that it is making it harder for artists who are career artists… to turn their music into a business and to stand out, because there is a lot of stuff out there. I think part of the promise of digital streaming and the democratization of social media was that every niche would find its audience. I would argue that we’re actually being pushed to more of a monoculture than ever before.
We’ve also seen the decline of other gatekeepers — late-night shows, press, radio, all that stuff is nice to have, but you have to make the spark of your career yourself. But I think a lot of people are talking about clipping right now, which has been going on for a while, but interestingly, clipping up a late-night show is now more valuable than being on the actual broadcast to me.
I think clipping is powerful when a song needs to be heard in a bunch of different contexts before it fully resonates with someone. That used to be the case in real life — like radio used to do that for us. You used to be out shopping and listening to a song, or listening to the same song [on] the radio [when] you were at home getting ready, or passing by a store and you hear a song. You used to hear the same song in so many different contexts, and maybe the first five times you heard it, you weren’t conscious of it. But then maybe there was a context at a restaurant when you were on date, and you heard a song, and it gained a totally different emotional response for you… I don’t think we have that as a society anymore in the same way. And so I think what clipping is doing is it’s creating and testing a bunch of different contexts…to see if they can resonate with a certain audience.
One thing music industry pundits like to say is that it’s never been a better time to be an artist today. You have all these tools at your disposal. You can release your music by yourself. Everything is cheap, but what do you think? Is that statement actually true?
No, because you can’t just be an artist. You have to be a media creator, and you have to be a marketer, and you have to have a point of view on who you are and how you position yourself, and you have to think about that in the context of various ways that you appear.
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We have these conversations with our clients all the time. There are some clients we work with who are not actually on social media, and it’s a matter of like, ‘Do you have a rabid fan base that [can] be amplifying everything that you do without any effort on your end?’ If you don’t, then we have to rethink and get creative about how we get you out there. That’s where things like clipping agencies become helpful, or managing fan accounts.
Yes, it might be less to produce content to make music today, but it’s a lot more expensive to cut through into [the] market.
I recently had two of the co-founders of Chaotic Good on the podcast to talk about digital marketing…I do wonder where it all ends. We’re fighting volume with more volume on social media. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and the cost to participate in artist marketing mounts. Where does it end?
I don’t know. That’s one of the reasons I’m really frustrated right now. It gets really hard to set and be intentional and incredibly authentic in an environment like this.
Do you think AI will increasingly play a role in helping digital marketers scale their posts and create more volume?
Yeah, it’s making it worse, because you can clip 1,000 different videos now in a matter of minutes using AI.
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