Music Resources
Since this publication is largely to do with music, here’s a collection of music links I find interesting. There’s a lot here, so here’s the index:
Listening (Big Streaming Services)
Listening (Music Sharing)
Music Discovery
Music Buying (as a DJ or patron)
Listening (Big Streaming Services)
These days, streaming is king. But most streaming services have caved to the music industry, which means artists get almost nothing and the most popular music is generally promoted. This creates an “echo chamber” of popularity, which drowns out everyone but the top artist (which are generally artificially promoted to begin with).
Of the big five streaming services (Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music, Amazon Music and Tidal), I’m biased towards two other them: Tidal and Apple Music. Here’s why:
Tidal has an interesting history. Founded by rapper Jay-Z, who brought in other artist as founder/advisors. Jack Dorsey (of Twitter fame) bought a majority share in 2020. They’re trying different business models, including investing in artists. They’ve also focused on DJs, providing high quality audio and DJ tools integration.
Apple Music has been quietly building a service far superior to Spotify in almost every regard (catalog size/selection, music quality, discovery, development API). Apple pays artists more that double Spotify’s paltry $0.003/stream. Apple has also double-downed on spatial audio, which I’m bullish on — I believe it’s an exciting evolution of music making and listening.
Listening (Music Sharing)
You can think of the “big streamers” as a service for the big music labels (Universal, Sony, Warner, etc.) to sell their catalogs. On the other side is the direct to consumer side, where artists can sell/stream directly to you. Here we have a wide range of offerings, but will cover the one’s I use on a regular basis.
YouTube is the largest repository of music in the world. While YouTube Music is a formidable streaming service with more than 100 million licensed songs, the majority of music (estimated at more than 1 billion songs) has been unofficially uploaded by users. As a tool for finding unusual music, music videos, live music recording, etc., there’s no better tool. That said, you need to know exactly what you’re looking for, and you’ll deal with ads.
Soundcloud is the most popular user generated music service with more than 40 million artist and approaching 500 million songs (5x Spotify or Apple Music). You can find everything from kids sharing a crappy cover to the top artists. It has also become the most popular place for DJs to share mixes (I support Mixcloud for this use case — see below). The challenge with Soundcloud is discovery. Social sharing offers some discoverability, but creates deep filter bubbles.
Mixcloud was created to address the challenge of sharing DJ mixes that contain unlicensed music. They’ve developed a licensing model that identifies and pays for music use. I also feel it’s a wonderful community of DJs. You can find my Mixcloud account here.
Music Discovery
A favorite topic of mine. It’s also a space that tends to be deeply personal. For me, “discovery” is more about mind expansion than expectation alignment. So music recommendations are generally underwhelming for my interests. I’ll likely expand on this list, but will start with a few of my favorites.
Bandcamp was an independent, Oakland (my home city) music marketplace (akin to a neighborhood record store. They were bought, and subsequently sold, in the past couple years, and now there’s some uncertainty in their future (unfortunately). Bandcamp also sits in three different lists (music streaming, music discovery, and music buying). Their editorial team was top notch (before they were gutted), led by Andrew Jarvis, one of the Bay Area’s top taste-makers, and an influence on my early DJ years.
While Bandcamp’s editorial programming has introduced me to some fantastic new music, the real power of Bandcamp is in their social purchase sharing. Most buyers on Bandcamp are either professional DJs or patrons, and when they purchase a song, their purchase record is public. This public record becomes a gold mine of music discovery. Voting with real money is by far the strongest signal of value. You are welcome to peruse my purchase history.
SNDOUT is my own personal project that uses the vast knowledge embedded into AI language models to highlight the history of music, understand music genres, understand cultural context, and generally explore the world of music. I created a “random” button, which chooses a random spot on the planet, a random year (in the past 75 years), and a random characteristic (e.g., most popular, traditional, etc.). Nearly every time I click the random button, I learn something new and expand my horizons musically.
Everynoise has been a favorite discovery tool for many years now. It looks at the world of music through nearly 7000 genres, organizing them by how electronic vs organic on one axis, and soft (ambient) vs hard (dense) on the other axis. You can drill into genres to explore the artists (using the same plotting methodology), and listen to sample of music. You can also find a dozen other ways to slice, dice and explore music by genre, region, time, etc.
Shazam was the first iPhone app to truly blow my mind, and continues to be an almost daily use tool for me. Listening to NPR, I have my Shazam button close at hand for ID’ing the interstitial tracks that play. Shazam has their own discovery tools, which are powered by curious music listeners like myself. Exploring trending Shazams from a place like Morocco quickly opens a world of new music.
Radio Garden is a fascinating app that somehow compiled, and allows you to stream, over 8000 radio stations from around the world. The ads can be very annoying, and the majority of stations are not very good, but occasionally you hit the jackpot.
Radioooo is a simple, yet surprisingly deep discovery app for exploring the worlds music through time. It’s fairly curated, but what it does have is done well. I haven’t used the paid version, so my experience is limited, but there’s some crossover with my SNDOUT project.
Music Buying (as a DJ or patron)
While this is a dying art, purchasing songs and albums, whether digital or physical, is the most direct way to support the artists making the music. As a longtime vinyl collector, I grew up in record stores, where the store buyers of your favorite genres were your ticket to snagging the best new music.
Bandcamp is my go-to these days. Mostly for digital purchases, but occasionally vinyl records as well. For the reasons explained in “discovery” (above), this is where I find my best music. I also only collect “lossless” music, or digital music that hasn’t been compressed (e.g., turned into an MP3). When playing music on a large or high end sound system, compressed music (even at the highest bitrates) looses clarity, especially in the lower frequencies.
Discogs is the most comprehensive database of physical music in the world. As a crowd-sourced resource (like Wikipedia), it has a passionate following and reflects the vinyl offerings in near realtime. What’s cool about Discogs is that has evolved into a community and a marketplace, so it’s like the best record store on the planet. It’s also a thorn in the side of record store owners, who now can’t over-charge for a record, and thorn for diggers who likely won’t find $100 records in the dollar bin. But it’s an amazing resource for learning about rare and obscure music. Here’s a little example where I’m looking specifically for African disco albums from 1981 (a particularly good vintage for boogie/disco crossover). In this example, there are clearly many missing, but it a great starting point.
Local record stores are the heart and soul of the music industry. When I was in my 20s, I spent an embarrassing amount of time in record stores. Open Mind (when it was on Divisadero) was my favorite for years. Over time, I became friends with the staff and the buyers of my favorite genres, which opened the doors to rare finds and learning about new, related music. This was true discovery — the path to expanding my awareness of music. If you can, support your local record stores. The Record Store Day website has a great resource for finding local stores.
more soon..