- Spotify's former data guru charts how music's digital revolution affects fans and musicians- Explains how songs get onto the tech platforms and the rewards for artists- Reveals which songs and artists are popular in different parts of the world- Readers can scan QR codes to get 10 free playlists to expand their listening
Glenn McDonald is a software engineer, algorithm designer, music evangelist and former long-time Data Alchemist at Spotify, the world's biggest music streaming service. From the 1990s, he was one of the earliest and most prolific explorers of how to use data to understand and amplify our collective and individual experiences of music.His work at the US music-intelligence startup The Echo Nest helped bring about its 2014 acquisition by Spotify, which put him at the algorithmic heart of streaming music and the listening habits of 500 million people.His website Every Noise at Once (everynoise.com) has an unprecedented computational map of the world's music genres, and a large and growing variety of other tools for exploring music and joy. His personal blog (furia.com) offers occasional commentary on this, and various other digressions. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Introduction 1
PART 1: THE DISCONNECTED AGE
1. Precious Jukeboxes. Music Consumption as a Shopping Experience 9
2. The Panic and the Crash. The Internet, Napster, iTunes, iPods and the Downloading Interregnum 13
PART 2: HOW STREAMING WORKS
3. Better Than Free. How Streaming Got People to Spend Money on Music Again 19
4. All the World's Music (sort of). How Music Gets Online 25
5. A Zillion Ambiguous Clicks. What Streaming Services Know About You 29
6. The Robots Have No Plan. What Algorithms Do and Don't Do 35
PART 3: NEW FEARS
7. The New Gatekeepers. Major Labels, Playlists, More Playlists, Algorithmic Playlists and the Playlists Your Friends Make 43
8. "Ed Sheeran Is Taking My Money". How Streaming Pays Artists 51
9. Mercenaries and Fan Armies. Cheating and Devotion vs Math, and the Casual War Against Hilariously Implausible Fraud 67
10. Our Inertia Exposed. "Organic" Listening and Social Equity 79
11. Chill Is the New Muzak. The Borders Between Background and Foreground Sounds 87
12. Constant Engagement. The Death and Survival of The Album 95
13. Undemanded Music in an On-Demand World. The Uncertain Fate of Jazz, Classical, Experimental and Other Quiet, Noble Arts 107
14. Renting the Things You Love Most. Fluctuating Availability and the Impermanent Record of the Streaming Catalog 117
15. The Best Bad Answers. How Algorithms Fail 127
PART 4: NEW JOYS
16. All the World's Listening (sort of). Streaming as a Global Collective-Wisdom Collector 145
17. No Walls Without Doors. What Music Tells Us About Each Other and the World 159
18. Cities In and Out of Hyperspace. Genres as Distributed Communities of Interest 175
19. Borrowed Nostalgia. Other People's No-Longer-Secret Music 191
20. Text as Texture. Hip Hop Literally Everywhere, and How to Listen to Rap You Can't Understand 199
21. New Punks. Weird and/or Scary Music that Sounds Normal to the Kids, or Vice Versa 209
22. Every Noise at Once. Music as an Infinite Resource 223
PART 5: NEW QUESTIONS
23. What Is Art Worth? How Should the New Economy Work? 243
24. What Is Your Love Worth? How Do You Listen Morally? 251
25. Algorithmic Responsibility. How Do You Encode Conscience? 259
26. What Now? We Have All the World's Music. What Do We Do Next? 269
AFTERWORDS
Acknowledgements 275
10 Playlists of Somebody's Favourite Songs 277
