During a 2010 tech conference, Google CEO Eric Schmidt was quoted as saying, “There was five exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every 2 days, and the pace is increasing.”
While the accuracy of the quote has been disputed, the fact that civilisation is now generating more content than it ever has before is undeniable. Not only is the amount of content we generate increasing, the variety of that content and the speed at which we generate it is also rising.
While this is great news for Google and their ilk, like Facebook, it can prove something of an insurmountable obstacle for artists, who make their living generating content. It poses a worrying question for artists, musicians in particular: how do you get your content noticed in a time when there’s more content than ever?
What makes the question even more worrying is the fact that, in addition to the ubiquity of digital audio workstations like GarageBand putting a studio in everyone’s lap, unlike other art forms such as literature and painting, today’s consumer has grown accustomed to getting music content for free.
Worse still is the fact that not only has the value of music decreased, but the means of promoting music content, like its production, has become as simple as clicking a few buttons. Just a few clicks and your track is on Spotify, available to a potential audience, all things being equal, of over 2 billion.
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The problem is that not all content is created equal. As Hypebot‘s Noel Troy notes, music is much harder to create than a Tweet or Facebook post. But even if not all content is created equal, it’s effectively treated that way. As music entrepreneur Troy Carter said, “Music can sell everything but itself.”
While this doesn’t pose a problem for superstars like Taylor Swift, who can rest safely in the knowledge that their music will not only be heard but bought en masse, it poses a dire conundrum for smaller artists who are struggling just to get their content noticed, regardless of quality.
For example, imagine if Taylor Swift wasn’t a superstar signed to a major label and her latest album was a self-produced effort she uploaded to SoundCloud. What are the odds that it would be found among the site’s 40 million registered users? We all know Lorde uploaded her first album to SoundCloud, but she’d already nabbed herself a development deal with Universal three years earlier.
While it’s open to debate, Noel Troy believes that soon artists will be applying pay-to-play tactics to their recorded output, effectively paying people to listen to their music as a means to ameliorate the music gridlock and tyranny of choice that is currently affecting the web.
“All artists being equal, the odds of discovery today are one in …insert your eight-digit number here,” writes Troy. “Of course all artists are not equal. Music discovery platforms are dominated by the stars. That 5 percent gets 80 percent of the pie. Therefore, the obscure artist’s odds of discovery are one in…insert your nine-digit number here.”
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The situation is worsened further by the fact that platforms like YouTube, Spotify, and SoundCloud have little interest in reducing the gridlock. In fact, the number of songs that each platform is able to host is used as a yard post for its level of success.
Naturally, the solution would be to clear the gridlock, but taking a fascistic approach towards the music uploaded to platforms like SoundCloud and YouTube would essentially nullify what makes these platforms such a special, democratising force in the first place.
Instead, Troy suggests a new platform that allows for impartial gut reactions to music. After a user plays a track and approves of it, it would then be passed to the next user, creating a filtering system where the cream rises to the top, and there would of course be some means of monetisation.
But can we really expect consumers to sift through hundreds of tracks on the possibility that they’ll find one they like? And who’s to say they’ll then spend money on a song if they like it? These are unfortunately the questions facing musicians in the new millennium. Of course, even these stem from the question at the heart of the issue: have we simply created too much free music?
