Streaming—good for jazz or bad for jazz?
I confess I’ve been streaming music for the past year. I’ve bought fewer CDs, but I’m perhaps listening more than ever. As an avid music consumer for 45 years, moving from 45s (one dollar at the local “Tune Shop”) to vinyl LPs, CDs, and mp3s, I know streaming should feel like progress, but mostly I feel guilty. And in need of taking stock of what it means to connect my computer to my stereo and have the largest amount of music in my life.
As a jazz writer, it’s one thing to review free CDs, and another to pay for music myself before sitting down to review. I review differently if it’s free or I’ve paid. I don’t mind paying. My collection of CDs usually provokes comment. As a jazz writer, I don’t mind paying for quality music, and I encourage others to go out and spend their money likewise. I’ve probably spent more on recorded music than most people, don’t need a refund, butI still feel uncomfortable streaming music. It doesn’t feel, well, right. still feel uncomfortable streaming music. It doesn’t feel, well, right.[/perfectpullquote]
But on the other hand, I wonder whether owning LPs, CDs and all the accompanying listening equipment was never anything other than a passing capitalist illusion? Music’s intangible form, at least compared to other forms of artistic expression, music’s non-materiality, is inherent to its beauty and power. Maybe in some cosmic way, music has only ever been streamed from some larger collective human depth.
But of course, that’s a bit far-fetched. More practically, I find streaming sites ethically questionable, aesthetically deficient, organizationally sloppy, informationally inadequate, and yet still, I stream, I stream. An article in The Baffler argues that Spotify is not only unfair to musicians in terms of pay, but also turns great music into background music. I agree with many of the article’s points, but still I wonder if streaming is bad for jazz?
The Baffler’s article points out the problems with compensation, with which I completely concur. Artists are getting screwed. This is as it ever was. That doesn’t make it OK, it signifies that streaming just might be able to figure out fair compensation. They haven’t yet, but there’s hope they might. Compensation should be transparent to musicians, musician unions, lawyers and contract signees. Full stop. The hidden, no-doubt unfair pay is reason enough to avoid streaming. I could stop right there, but streaming is maybe more complicated than the bottom line.
One of the problems for jazz is that streaming services are information lite. The credits, liner notes, recording engineer, place, dates, are all missing. There are inaccurate release dates. For jazz, that’s a serious drawback. Not knowing who played on “Giant Steps” or “Kind of Blue,” and when, stymies the interconnectivity of the jazz world. It’s important to know where musicians played later and where they played before. Basic info contextualizes the music and expands its relevance and meaning.
Not everyone wants to become a scholar of music, fair enough, but this de-contextualization does what the Baffler article points out—it turns music into aural wallpaper. Until streaming, music was rarely denuded. Before recording techniques began, music was performed in a place and time, as live music still is. After recording, music was identified, even on radio, notated, commented on, spoken about, and available in physical form. With streaming, the physicality of music is lost, and that makes it slip away further from us.An LP might only have ever been a bookmark of sorts, but it took a listener to the right place in musical history. An LP might only have ever been a bookmark of sorts, but it took a listener to the right place in musical history
The importance of that loss for all music, and for jazz in particular, seems to be ignored by streaming companies. The ease of providing copious amounts of information is greater than ever. The potential of providing information, photos, critiques, background, connections is greater than with any other form of musical reproduction, and yet streaming sites overall look uninformed. Aesthetically speaking, that’s confusing, and dehumanizing.
Streaming companies employ algorithms tweaked by marketing specialists for much of their operations. It’s clearly not done by people who love music. The technologically produced recommendations are often laughable. (I stumbled on “Louis Armstrong—Latest Release!”) The playlists are obviously designed to promote large companies’ product. It’s subtle advertising/promotion, but it’s still advertising.
Streaming site playlists also come under attack in the Baffler, and rightly so. Most of the playlists are poorly labeled, laughably mis-connected and poorly conceived. That’s even more disappointing since they could be brilliant if put together by knowing hands and avid fans.
I do like some of the playlists. I can tell when they’re made by people with a deeper knowledge of, or a deeper feel for, a genre, theme or style. And at times it is nice to have great music behind—yes behind—what else is going on. When I listen to CDs for review, I put it on several times—behind my tasks—while doing something else. That unconscious listening implants the whole recording before I circle back and listen consciously.
Playlists also allow one to edit out what is, it must be admitted, questionable material included to round out the recording. On even stellar recordings, great work is often mixed with passable work. A guest vocal is tacked on to a set even when it doesn’t quite fit. Playlists make individual choice easy. Why should I listen according to anyone else’s idea of coherence—on a CD or a playlist either one? Making one’s own playlists offers tremendous freedom—to edit, focus, reconnect, contrast, assemble anew.
Students of jazz can make their own study list. I like the way a search for a single song title will uncover multiple versions. Search for “How High the Moon” and you find versions from: Chet Baker, Les Paul, Lester Young, Ella Fitzgerald, Hank Jones, Teddy Wilson, June Christy, Modern Jazz Quartet, Joe Pass. I mean, “Wow!” And who knew Marvin Gaye did a cover of it? Check out THAT playlist if you want to expand your chops, or expand your understanding of chord changes, phrasing, voicing, comping and style.
Much as I love jazz, I also love genre jumping. It’s nice to break up a full day of jazz piano listening with some soul music or jump into reggae and then over to Afro-pop and then back around again to some jazz fusion album I remembered I used to have on vinyl. The breadth of available music, as well as the depth, is startling. I’m in awe of the vast reach of streaming, of the sheer plenitude of possibilities. It’s energizing and joyful to play and dig around.
At first, I resisted streaming because of the sound quality. I ran an expensive cable from my computer to a digital amp and high-end speaker cable into high-end speakers, but it sounded weak and bland. Now, though, sound quality has improved markedly. That’s important because jazz deserves to be heard clearly, since it’s created with careful attention to detail. I like to hear more than distant thumps and vague melodic fluctuations. Mixing, engineering and production values form a central part of the soundscape of jazz. Recently, streaming services have started to offer sound quality that delivers jazz as it should be heard. It’s that which really made me weaken and sign up. Mixing, engineering and production values form a central part of the soundscape of jazz.
A few more cons remain. The power of companies to recommend music through algorithms is maddening, like a pesky concierge, “Oh no, you don’t want that, you want to listen to this.” But a lot of people need recommendations, and want them and learn from them. Another gatekeeper between me and music is aggravating, but good recommendations (I’ve had some on streaming services) are highly welcome.
The potential for meandering and browsing and finding something cool and new, perhaps on a genre playlist, or when a chosen album finishes and the “next” track is hoisted up by the service, is impressive. Usually, I get up to change the suggested track, but every so often, the “next” track is interesting enough to check out further. Are streaming service suggestions any worse than the employees at CD and vinyl stores I used to frequent for new recommendations?
It’s possible to make up for the lack of info on the service by googling around. Copying and pasting is easy enough, but the services need to find some better way to make valuable information as easy to find as the music itself. What I want is an intense and informed aesthetic experience, but what I get with streaming is mainly disembodied mediation. Most streaming services are the musical equivalent of a warehouse, practical, spread-out, and alienating. It’s still set up for quantity rather than quality, but amid the quantity, you can find all the quality you want.
But as a music addict, as a music writer, as a musician, I feel compelled to keep listening. I want musicians to be paid, just as I do for writers or any other content creator, but until the system becomes fairer, not listening does no one any good, either. I’m of an age that I still miss putting the needle down into a groove and turning up a round dial, the satisfying sensuality of the old system. I miss that a lot, but I love music so much, need it so constantly, I have to have it however I can get it. So, I’m in the stream.
Michael Pronko
April 2018