Bill Roberson/Digital Trends
At Digital Trends’ headquarters in Portland, Oregon, Spotify is something of a religion. Everyone seems to be using the ultra-popular music streaming platform, as evidenced by our Slack channel dedicated to sharing new music, which is full of Spotify links and nothing else.
I’m not here to hate on Spotify. By all accounts (including mine), the Swedish service offers the best user interface, along with a huge music library and some nifty tools to help you find new songs — but it’s not for everyone. After spending six months with Spotify Premium, I immediately gave up and switched to YouTube Red. Why? Mixes and remixes, baby.
compilations
Today, hip-hop music dominates the (American) streaming charts. Drake’s latest hit single, God’s plan, shattered records on Spotify and Apple Music, and according to Statista, hip-hop and R&B music accounted for nearly 30 percent of music streaming in 2017 — nearly double that of rock (the next most streamed genre). When I say, “I don’t use Spotify because I like rap,” I can understand why you might be confused.
Most mixtapes don’t live on popular music streaming platforms.
But I grew up on mixtape rap. Thanks in part to 50 Cent and his G Unit crew, rappers increasingly chose to record and release free “mixtapes” over paid albums during their early and middle years for several reasons. The average hip-hop listener is both younger and less affluent than listeners of other genres, and offering free music encourages fans to support rappers in other ways, such as buying merchandise or concert tickets. (Sure, Fiddy squandered his fortune in stupid ways, but that’s neither here nor there.) Furthermore, making mixtapes meant that rappers could “rework” each other’s tracks, rapping over rivals’ beats in a spirit of competition, without paying royalties.
Lil Wayne – Da Suša 3 “Disc 1” (full compilation)
Since they are not paid projects, most mixtapes do not live on popular music streaming platforms. Lil Wayne Drought 3 — a two-disc, 29-song odyssey that some consider the greatest mixtape ever, featuring Wayne at the height of his powers and Nicki Minaj in her first mainstream appearance — is nowhere to be found. The same goes for celebrated mixtapes like A$AP Rocky LiveLoveA$APChance The Rapper’s Acid Rapand Earl Sweatshirt’s Count, not to mention the rest of Wayne’s mixtapes (seriously, the guy is an animal). Heck, Curren$y has 14 different albums available on Spotify and more than 50 mixtapes in his catalog, per Wikipedia. You do the math.
Image used with permission of the copyright holder
The mixtape model has fallen out of favor in recent years as artists can simply upload their own work to Spotify and watch the royalties pile up. Still, there’s a sizable collection of mixtapes that will never be available on streaming services, and I’m not ready to just say it that is life.
Remixes
I “discovered” electronic dance music or “EDM” in the last months of my college career. (I put “revealed” in quotes because I already knew it existed. I’d just previously associated the genre with hazy, hedonistic frat parties and thus ignored any potential value it might have had.) If you’re unfamiliar with EDM, one can imagine a dark room full of people jumping to Daft Punk-style house beats Homework.
That’s true, but it’s also quite reductive. Every music genre has subgenres, but EDM in particular is difficult to categorize, thanks to the great variation of sound elements generated by computer programs. Modern country music is almost always characterized by acoustic guitar and harmonic “scooping”, and rap music is quite easy to recognize by the fact that the singer speaks rhythmically rather than sings openly. With EDM, however, a song can sound like anything, as long as the part is synthetic and not recorded live. This song and this song both fall under the EDM umbrella, and furthermore, they were actually produced by the same guy under two different names.
A big part of the EDM scene is the remix culture that exists among producers.
Back to the point: a big part of the EDM scene (if you can call it that) is the remix culture that exists among producers. As soon as a new song comes out, rival artists — who, for the record, are usually on friendly terms with each other — rip it up, load it into their production software of choice, and start tinkering with it. Many iconic electronic songs have been created this way, and artists will even link up with others to commission official remixes for release on accompanying EPs. Sometimes these songs get uploaded to Spotify, but more often than not, they’re originally released via Soundcloud before floating around the internet waiting to be heard.
In the more than three years I’ve been listening to electronic music, I’ve compiled a curated list of about 250 songs. According to my rough calculation, less than 75 of those songs they are not “remix”, “flip”, “edit” or “mashup” one or more original songs. Due to laws surrounding royalty payments and intellectual property, many (no, most) of these remixes will never be available on Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music, or Tidal.
Why YouTube Red?
I’ll be honest: I didn’t write this to praise YouTube Red. It’s a nice service, but I’m less concerned about the tangible benefits of a subscription — removing ads, being able to lock your phone and play videos, download for offline viewing, and access Red Originals — than I am about the lack of a better option out there.
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends
If you want to download every mixtape from Datpiff or every EDM remix from Soundcloud, here you go. If you use a dedicated music player, you might have room for everything. However, most of us listen mostly on our phones, and extra storage space is an uncommon luxury. Plus, Soundcloud is on the verge of disbanding, and if it bites the dust, a lot of music – electronic and otherwise – will be temporarily gone until artists can find a new home for their work.
YouTube is the only place where all this music peacefully coexists. Of course, streaming video instead of audio can eat up your data, but that’s where YouTube Red comes in. As mentioned, you can download videos and playlists for offline viewing (although this will eat up your storage space quickly).
I would still consider Spotify to be the best streaming service for most people.
More importantly, a subscription to Red ($10 per month or $13 for iOS users) includes a subscription to Google Play Music — essentially the same thing as Spotify or Apple Music — at no extra cost. Google Play Music doesn’t offer Spotify’s fast user interface or Apple Music’s cool Beats 1 Radio, but its song library is just as large, and you can push the audio bitrate up to 320 kbps (equal to Spotify’s maximum and higher than Apple Music’s).
I would still consider Spotify to be the best streaming service for most people. And YouTube isn’t perfect: videos keep getting deleted, which is why I keep a Word document with all my EDM stuff. But if you’re a remix-hunting weirdo like me, you might want to consider your options.
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Categories: GAMING
Source: newstars.edu.vn