Going After Spotify
Jess Weatherbed writes for The Verge about members of the European Parliament targeting Spotify with regulations to make sure European music is well represented and that artists are compensated more fairly.
The proposition was made to ensure European musical works are accessible and avoid being overshadowed by the “overwhelming amount” of content being continually added to streaming platforms like Spotify. MEPs also called for outdated “pre-digital” royalty rates to be revised, noting that some schemes force performers to accept little to no revenue in exchange for greater exposure. Imposing quotas for European musical works is being considered to help promote artists in the EU.
Meanwhile, Professor Alan Jacobs is fond of ranting to his college students about Spotify.
I’ve made it a classroom practice in the last year or so to indulge in theatrical rants against Spotify, which is fun for me and for my students. They argue with me and I denounce them, all in good humor. But for all the smiles, I am quite serious. Spotify is creating in millions and millions of its users a new kind of Attention Deficit Disorder, not one that has them jumping from one thing to another, but rather has them in a kind of vague trance state. Spotify is like soma from Brave New World in audio form. And to be in such a state is to experience a deficit of attention, an inability genuine to attend to what one is hearing.
I've noticed I have a lot less desire to skip around when listening to music on CD than I do when listening to a streaming service. Roon helps with this somewhat, but even it's not quite the same as having a physical object that has to be switched out if you want to play something new. I've listened to albums end to end so much more since getting a CD player.
Spotify: A gram is better than a damn.
