2024 Album of the Year

[sammynb 3503]

Thoughts?

https://music.mxdwn.com/2024/12/16/features/top-40-best-albums-of-2024-album-of-the-year/

[Blastronaut 1344]

Wild to see Devin Townsend in the top half of albums of the year contenders for 2024. I wouldn't even put it in the top half of albums of his career.

[sammynb 3503]

mxdwn obviously have some decent suppliers because half the shite in their list is fucking wack.

I got there because A Place to Bury Strangers made the list, which is a decent release but like DT's album, not in their own top half of releases.

[RobinRobin 11501]

Was it not this?

[sammynb 3503]

On 17/12/2024 at 14:23, RobinRobin said:

Was it not this?

 

Of course it was but only their nude album!

 

No one besides the man from Hobbiton or our Scottish guitar nerd/pedal creator have an opinion? A list? A single release that floats their boat?

 

Or maybe everyone feels like Polinski from 65Days, I know I hate Spotify as much as they do?

Quote

I had known for a while that Spotify was slowly filling its playlists with music that was composed 'in-house', or commissioned in such a way that they could pay less royalties or even none at all. It looks like somebody finally brought the receipts about how all that works. And presumably it's only a matter of time before the desperate musicians who had a hand in working with Spotify on this kind of thing will get dumped in favour of AI-generated sonic nothingness, if indeed that hasn't happened already.

Seeing that article this morning reminded me of another internet outrage I saw the other week about the fact that, apparently, this year's 'Spotify Wrapped' wasn't very good. I can't find a link now, but it first came to my attention via a screenshot of a tweet from a data analyst who used to work at Spotify putting these things together, but had been let go in a round of redunancies shortly after putting together last year's 'Wrapped'.

Putting aside for a moment the quiet violence against culture of 'Spotify Wrapped' as a concept, how it turns people's love of music and the communities that music can build into some kind of forced competition between musicians and a gamification of what used to just be called 'enjoying music', what Spotify had managed to stumble on was a way of getting hundreds of millions of people to freely undertake a massive advertising campaign on behalf of a giant corporation intent on killing music. And instead of just letting this keep happening, in yet another example of the desperate, endless pursuit of the year-on-year growth that is increasingly being called 'enshittification' or 'the rot economy' but/and is in fact simply 'capitalism working as intended', mass layoffs and a heavy reliance of AI meant that Spotify even managed to make its very own one-weird-trick-for-free-global-advertising worse for everybody involved.

This is because Spotify not only hates musicians, it hates its listeners too. It wants you to pay it to listen to content that costs them as little as possible to serve you. Its pivot to podcasts was part of that, because you don't have to pay royalties on podcasts. Its algorithms will undoubtedly be gently pushing you toward listening experiences that are in one way or another cheaper for them to give you. Every few weeks, 65daysofstatic will get an email from Spotify excitedly telling us that we are lucky enough to qualify for something called 'Discovery Mode'. This is kind of a bribe in which they offer to give our tracks some kind of priority in the algorithm and perhaps be recommended to more people, but only in exchange for reducing our royalty rate. And perhaps the worst thing is, the Spotify royalty rate is so laughably small in the first place that taking a punt on 'getting discovered' would probably be worth it if we could be bothered to set it up, since Spotify appears poised to become the de facto single platform for whatever 'listening to music' means in the future.

Or will it? Maybe it will eat itself before then? We all know how hungry capitalism can get...

And just to be clear: this is not a judgement on anybody reading this who uses Spotify, which statistically is most of you. This is a structural problem that cannot be solved by individual actions. Even if an organised boycott bankrupted Spotify tomorrow, this problem is not going to go away.

Nevertheless, I do not use Spotify. I used to use Tim Apple Music, but this year I finally managed to wean myself off it. I now don't subscribe to any music streaming services^[1]. I set up a Plex server (it's aimed at being a film and TV show library really, but works for music too), filled it with mp3s of my ancient ripped cd collection that I’ve been copying from hard drive to hard drive for about 20 years, added in all my Bandcamp purchases, downloaded a bunch of obscure jazz from archive.org, reacquainted myself with Soulseek, and haven’t looked back.

WHY BOTHER?

I wonder if I think about music more than I actually listen to it? It's definitely possible, though this is no way to live. Music is at its best when aimed at the body, not the head.

But think about it I do. About the ways in which it can be made and presented. About the constellation of social relations that surround every song or artist that are just as much the ingredients of 'music' as the sounds made by speakers vibrating the air. And I think about how I used to listen to and relate to music as a kid, a teen, an adult and now as a (slightly) older adult.

And about how these days, I feel like my relationship with music is more complicated and in some cases conflicting than ever. And sure, I am very guilty of overthinking this much like I overthink everything else, but also, I trust in music. I believe that if I put the effort into interrogating it, it will show me hidden treasures. And I think maybe my drawing a line in the sand when it comes to streaming services and the endless flattening of music culture they represent is something to do with this.

What I don't want is for music-listening to become an entirely passive activity, just something to have on in the background. And I'm not interested in music becoming a comfort blanket either. There are so many bands that meant the world to me through my teens and into my 30s that I simply have no interest in listening to any more. And good for anybody for whom that's not the case, but I'd rather embrace that change than yearn for a return to nostalgia (even as I am aware that my livelihood somewhat depends on fans of 65days not thinking like that and consigning us to the past!)

I haven't really figured it out, and writing this all down now I suppose is the first time I've tried to articulate the thought at all, but perhaps I am trying to reclaim some agency in terms of my relationship to music in the context of being a listener, to find new ways to access it and new ways to be interested and surprised by it.

OK THAT'S FINE, BUT WHAT MUSIC DID I ACTUALLY LISTEN TO?

Ok, so Plex doesn't really do stats, which is fine by me, because why is music framed in terms of competition! Fucking Spotify, with its fucking metrics. Urgh... ANYWAY. The only stat I really have is my top ten listened-to artists in 2024. So here's what's what:

• Lana Del Rey was by far my most-listened to artist this year. Though it won't have been her most recent stuff, it will have been my LANA BASICS playlist on shuffle. Suitable for all occasions! Apart from maybe having a good, fun time.
• After that comes Ryuchi Sakamoto. This will be due to his timeless, perfect score to The Revenant soundtracking pretty much everything I do. Although his album async gets a look-in too.
• In third place comes Lennie Tristano, a jazz pianist. I love jazz because I don't understand it and couldn't even if I want to, which feels relaxing and freeing.
• Fourth is Daft Punk, which makes me wonder if these stats are actually correct at all because I don't have any memory of listening to them regularly this year. Although their Tron soundtrack is a go-to when I'm trying to code so I guess it's that. Fifth is Rocket From The Crypt, probably because I got briefly obsessed with their back catalogue around the time I was writing about them here. BLACKPINK, who remain number one in my heart if not in my stats, are a lowly sixth. I'll try harder next year.
• Rounding it off: seventh is Manaka Kataoka (this will be the fantastic Tears of the Kingdom soundtrack, listened to a lot while I was doing the BAFTA jury thing), eighth is Taylor Swift, who I reckon has made it in solely through her latest bit-boring record having about 500 tracks on it, thus gaming the stats. Ninth is Godspeed You! Black Emperor, perhaps the only band who have survived my changing relationship with music and who remain peerless. Tenth is Kim Petras thanks to her Slut Pop Miami EP which, if you're into kick drums and basic bangers but hate subtlety and subtext, might be just the sound you're looking for. (But also, it really might not be.)

So there you go. Some music, most of which didn't come out this year. I might do a books recap next. The question is, should that be the good books, or the bad?

 

https://knru.polin.ski/musics-of-2024-2/

 

[Meenzer 15711]

2 minutes ago, sammynb said:

No one besides the man from Hobbiton or our Scottish guitar nerd/pedal creator have an opinion? A list? A single release that floats their boat?

 

As I phrased it over on that there Bluesky, my listening stats will be completely skewed by the 110-hour playlist of post-rock/instrumental stuff I put on whenever I need to concentrate, so there's no point in looking at the bare numbers to figure out what I was into. But here are some songs I liked this year, at least:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and, obviously,

 

 

Where parent albums/EPs exist, they were usually pretty decent too.

 

As for the article, I do think the Spotification of music consumption has damaged my approach to new music discovery somewhat, it's inevitable that it would. On the other hand, it does make me more likely to listen to things from a wider range of times and places than I might do otherwise, and that's not necessarily a bad thing - I've discovered and rediscovered all kinds of goodies that way. Swings and roundabouts, I suppose.

[sammynb 3503]

I forgot you have a thing for country young Martin.

Bambie Thug is definitely the result of Marilyn Manson grooming some young oirish lass.

 

The spotify releasing music so it can pay even less royalties to the artist does my head in.

[Ayatollah Hermione 14015]

The Father John Misty album has been on in here quite a bit recently and I feel it might be his most complete album. Vampire Weekend performed their new album fantastically when I went to see them last week. Lemon Twigs dropped another pitch perfect 60s pastiche that contains genuinely strong songwriting to stand out on its own. Can’t really think more atm but feels like it’s been a very consistent year across the board. Sure I have a general list somewhere hidden in my Google Drive.

 

oh, was that Four Tet album this year? I had that on quite a bit during some sleepless weekend this year

Edited 8 hours ago by Ayatollah Hermione

[spongebob toonpants 4111]

 2 new most played of the year for me were Melt Banana

 

 

And Cowboy Carter

 

 

 

Topped up with 3 oldies

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It appears I was favouring a female singer

 

 

[RobinRobin 11501]

3 hours ago, spongebob toonpants said:

 2 new most played of the year for me were Melt Banana

 

 

And Cowboy Carter

 

 

 

Topped up with 3 oldies

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It appears I was favouring a female singer