[josuepeq]

This is neat, I have wondered if anything of this nature existed, in the past, as a child of the 80s/90s attempting to master the art of the perfect mixtape… 30 minutes a side down to the second the tape runs out, would be a win.

But for today’s music, shortening the 2010s/2020 already shorter lengths would mean a song might not be more than a minute in length. On average, full unedited tracks today end up being a bit shorter than they used to be, solely due to the economics of streaming. Rather than paying for the content second by second, it is done by paying per track play. The result is a lot of 2 minute tracks, which were produced with the “verse” parts getting jammed together into the “chorus” with no break in vocals, which also uses pitch adjustments, “the “bridge” is an afterthought that is terrible, or more recently, nonexistent……… Instrumental solo? Anyone? Bueller?

Music is no longer anticipated, budgeted for, and purchased on launch day with great fanfare. We have grown accustomed to the idea that we should have everything available at our fingertips, and as a consequence of this we get exactly what we pay for.

[robinsonb5]

You're not wrong about modern songs - but that's not really the use case for this tool:

A few days ago I was given the task of creating a corporate video - just a rolling slideshow for a shop-window display. Then suddenly it was going to go on YouTube as well - so needed some music! I found a suitable track but needed to edit it for length so its closing chord coincided with the credits card at the end of the video.

This tool might have saved me the bother of splicing the music in Audacity.

[TaylorAlexander]

I just did the same thing. I made a promo video for an art project which is a youtube short that is 60 seconds long. I wanted both the opening of the song, where things start slow and pick up, and the ending of the song where things build to a crescendo and then nicely close, so I had to find some place in the middle to blend the two cuts of the track together. I just tried this tool and it appears to work well. I have not A/B tested it against my manual cut yet, but I might swap out my cut for this one. Nice!

[jorvi]

I mean, I’ll easily concede there’s been a consistent trend for shorter songs, more singles and more solo artists since the… 60s (?), but it is also heavily dependent on your taste.

https://youtu.be/OvC-4BixxkY

and that’s just the first random 2021 song I can come up with within a second.

[epiccoleman]

Hell yeah, King Buffalo has been consistently great for the last few years.

[NikolaNovak]

I imagine it'd be a particular boon for dance choreographers and intructors too

[c22]

Couldn't you also just manipulate the slide duration?

[robinsonb5]

Yes, if the discrepancy is a few seconds - in this case I needed an extra minute or so of music, and the customer had already requested a specific slide duration so I had limited leeway there.

[asdff]

Music is a self eating beast these days. Any new artist is competing with not only all contemporary artists but all past artists too, since its so trivial to just go on spotify and find a playlist with the "best alternative albums of all time" and find all the usual suspects of the last 25 years or so. It's really unprecedented for old material to be at an even pedestal as new material. These older already monied acts tend to get the bigger venues in town and tour all the time too, so it extends beyond the digital realm. Not to mention how many small act sized venues have closed and no longer exist so there are even fewer potential opportunities for such bands compared to the arena filling acts.

[roywashere]

My local music venue has ‘indie’ size of couple hundred max. But they mostly program ‘tribute’ bands or ‘classic’ acts because apparently that is the most safe to sell.

Tonight I was at a Melvins show in Amsterdam. It is their 40th anniversary your, amazing! I’ve also seen Einstürzende Neubauten a few months back. Back in early 90s everybody was talking how the Stones were still playing for so long. But nowadays so many bands are still going.

[efdee]

I've rewritten this comment ten times already and I guess I don't really know what I _want_ to say, but this really irks me the wrong way. What you are describing is not Music (with a capital M) but rather the very similar product that is available in high abundance and nearly worthless. Real artists still have a considerable following that will absolutely anticipate and purchase physical media on launch day.

I'm sorry, that's the best I could do.

[andybak]

> Real artists still have a considerable following that will absolutely anticipate and purchase physical media on launch day.

I adore music, always have and follow what I hope are "real artists".

I haven't bought physical media for several decades and often buy albums weeks or months after release.

I think you've sliced this wrong.

[ar_lan]

She has a cult following, but Taylor Swift's Midnights broke over 1 million vinyl sales (from late October -> late January).

But I mostly agree with you - I get very excited for artists that I really enjoy releasing new work, and "line up" so to speak by listening to it the day it releases on Spotify.

[efdee]

I did not mean to say that "real" fans must buy physical media. Just that there are plenty of them out there who do.

[CWuestefeld]

I think you're describing the difference between art and entertainment. Both of these efforts use "music" as their medium, and of course there's a lot of gray area between. But it's not necessarily a bad thing that there are many different goals when producing music.

[josuepeq]

Totally. I should have posted what I had written earlier, had a section on this in my comment, and even spent a half hour trying to explain how this doesn’t apply to all artists and genres. I wrote it about 10 times and I do agree…

Identifying the good from the rest in such a place as Apple Music is a miserable experience. To Apple, they also make more revenue from their prioritization of marketing similar sounding two minute tracks in this “nouveau pop” format, backed up by a small amount of older superstar artist anniversary editions. Good original new music never makes it to the featured content sections.

And Genres and algorithms are a mess. It applies across the board to all music and is really a problem for the flavors of House, Techno, and other genres that are simply labeled “Electronic” or “Dance.” I’m getting Avalon Emerson one minute, Bicep the next, to be ruined by corporate mass marketed deadmau5, follow by a Bad Bunny remix….worse is the algorithm which thought I might like corporate edc-esque superstars and poorly autotuned remixes- though I have not added a single song to my collection in 20 years of digital music consumption…

Can we do better than “Dance” and “Electronic?” Of course they could, they haven’t. One must go elsewhere.

For House and Techno, this dearth of music discovery and search-ability methods by streaming companies makes room for independent music station alternatives, like Fault radio, or gives a reason for one to seek out artists via other means, like going to independent music festivals like Sunset Campout, Honcho campout, and other events highlighted on Resident Advisor, a poster in a nightclub, a text message listing the warehouse location.

(Apple Music did at least bring back Beats in Space.)

I think about the proliferation of streaming, and how it actually makes finding new content difficult for people who are not familiar with those other means of distribution.

- We have deprioritized the concept of the local radio station, now what was alternative rock is a rebroadcast of an AM Sports broadcast (i.e KFOG)

- the death of the sale of “singles,” made it a cheap entry point for people to experience a new artist. Releasing a track on Spotify doesn’t feel as substantial.

- and exclusively agreements contract provisions with corporate entities that engage in predatory practices that force up and coming artists to choose between performing for their fans at local venues, or extending their potential reach by putting their name on the bill for Coachella, sacrificing potential shows for a few hundred of miles away and several months on either side of the festival.

- Additionally entertainment conglomerates like AEM and LiveNation are increasingly becoming the owners, or managers of, the entertainment venues in cities around the world. Similar exclusivity agreements can have a significant negative impact on unaffiliated independent venues ability to compete.

I can’t speak for anyone in particular from the Gen Z or Alpha generation. I think for them, it’s all Apple or Spotify, music festivals if they can afford them, sharp discerning music choices on TikTok if they feel the need to branch out… and the question is - do they?

The norm is now a fully mass market formula that is almost impossible to break through… and the effect of this puts the chill on the ability to link good music with committed audiences.

I think I mostly explained how I feel there…

[jakkos]

> I can’t speak for anyone in particular from the Gen Z or Alpha generation.

I'm just barely young enough to be a zoomer, so maybe my view will be interesting. From my perspective my ability to find "good" music is better than it ever would have been in the past.

I find music suggestions from forums, review sites, subreddits, friends, online people I follow, etc. Then I can immediately listen to it with no effort or expense. I found my favorite album of all time from a random comment someone left on an internet thread.

To me the idea of having to wait until a local radio station played a song, and then make a leap of faith on purchasing the album seems like such a worse experience.

Similarly, in terms of creating music, it has never been easier to learn, create and distribute your own music. The rise of the internet has made it so much easier to find a niche communities of people making incredibly diverse and experimental music together.

In my mind, streaming sites have two roles and do a very good job at both:

- make all music as accessible as possible

- suggest music for people who want to "passively" listen to music, which is how the average person has always listened to music (and that's a completely legitimate thing to want and enjoy)

I see a lot of "the death of cinema", "the death of music", "the death of video games" takes around, and I can't help but feel like these views come from people who have lost track of where the "niche" communities has moved on to and then feel despair when to them it looks like the "mainstream" is all that exists.

[Gordonjcp]

> as a child of the 80s/90s attempting to master the art of the perfect mixtape

I hit upon the plan of taping stuff off the radio onto 1/4", and then I could splice a not-talked-over beginning onto a not-talked-over ending.

Later, I worked out that I could extend or shorten tracks, particularly if I could get a tape of the instrumental version, using the same trick.

No-one uses tape and razors these days, but it was good fun.

[josuepeq]

1/4” is a much better “master” of capturing higher fidelity than my method, a compact cassette using two different cassette tape decks. I remember when I swapped it out and got a dual Pioneer compact cassette deck, which could also be controlled by a remote control. It was fantastic, until the home Compact Disc recorder drive came on to the scene. Alas, compact cassettes are not as effective to splice, and I miss the 90’s.

[Gordonjcp]

You can do the same thing with cassettes but they're so fiddly to splice.

[seanthemon]

I agree, I think another part of it is accessibility to tools and content. Same thing happens with gaming to an extent, when tools became more accessible, so did the content, but the quality dropped significantly, even among AAA games.

I think music suffers even more so because we're all so tuned into having the best at our fingertips that if a single moment in a song isn't to our liking we can skip and forget about it completely - i think this fuels the fast-short song market, easier to saturate with many short songs and get listens rather than to work/slave on a longer more intricate piece.

Back in the day, mixtapes with songs were slaved on and cherished, today slaving over something is seen as a negative quality.

[autoexec]

> if a single moment in a song isn't to our liking we can skip and forget about it completely

I do sometimes worry about this. Some of my favorite songs growing up were ones that I didn't care for initially but which grew on me only after listening to it repeatedly. Now it's easy to dismiss anything that doesn't hook me right away. Thankfully albums are still being released, and you can force yourself to listen though them, or keep more of the "meh" songs in your playlists for longer periods of time, even adding them back into rotation after a while.

I don't think I'd give up the variety we have now though and go back to only having what songs are pushed at us through top 40 radio or the limited selection found in local stores. I get my music now from countries all over the globe. Finding old stuff all the time I'd never heard and new things just released.

We can still invest in the music we listen to and be rewarded. We just aren't forced to, so it needs to be deliberate.

[hedora]

In this world of algorithmic content distribution, we have more genres of music than any one person can enumerate.

I don't see any of the effects you describe on my feeds (tidal; previously apple music). Perhaps you need to switch to a service with a better recommendation algorithm, or nuke your personalization profile and start over.

[_glass]

Meanwhile the ghost of the bridge lives on as a sample in contemporary songs. Future generations will watch these ruins in awe of what the masters in the past were able to construct. Will we ever be able to surpass the classics?

[asdff]

I think we peaked with music already, maybe in the early 2000s. Popular music was so simple before the 1970s. There were a few chord structures and you just had some generic verses and put it on a record. Take someone like leadbelly or bb king, they were just playing folk music that had been played for at least 100 years before either of them were born, reusing old verses or adding their own, adding a short guitar lick between verses if so inclined (bb admits this was even because he could not sing and play at the same time). A lot of their fame as a result was happenstance of being at the right place at the right time (leadbelly in particular) versus them being a head and shoulders better folk musician than the other musicians of their time. A lot of the Beatles and other such acts in the early 60s were like this too, just basic formulaic rock n roll songs with the artists marketed as heartthrobs more than musicians even. They all even had the same haircuts.

Fast forward to something like Radiohead's Kid A and you have orders of magnitude more complexity going on the track. So many different sounds layered in very complicated manners. Its almost like a classical composition how there are motifs, movements, different emotions being evoked, but with any sound imaginable compared to what few are possible from the orchestra ensemble. A song from Kid A is just a part of the greater album itself. Nothing was made to stand on its own between radio advertisements.

It seems these days we are reverting to how commercial music was always made. Very commercial studio focused with the artists removed from production. Generic lyrics written by low paid songwriting staff and same old tried and true chord progressions we've heard forever. The artist is a brand and a sexy person meant to sell products versus someone particularly talented with an instrument or with songwriting skills.

[dragandj]

And yet the Beatles stood the test of time much better than the alternative hits of the ‘90s (Radiohead included). (IMO of course, but I think its supported by alternative still being an alternative, while Beatles are still THE Beatles after all this year. BTW I’m not a great fan of either, but appreciate both)

It is easy to create a supercomlex composition, that’s what classical music have been doing way before 1970s. But to capture the minds and hearts of many people with simple things, now that’s the real mastery.

[asdff]

What does stand the test of time even mean in this case? People still listen to both Radiohead and the Beatles and lesser known "alternative" acts from the 1960s like the velvet underground today. All went on to influence others. I'd say they all stood the test of time. Stuff like record sales depends a lot more on how well your label commercialized you versus your musicianship. The mid century media era was also much smaller in terms of competing artists that were actually put in front of listeners. 3 stations on TV, a few radio stations playing music from the same record labels, a shop in town selling records from a few major labels, and that's all the discovery you have. popular acts were far more popular proportionally than popular acts in later years, just because you didn't have much option or choice otherwise back then.

[dragandj]

It means that the Beatles (who the parent mentioned explicitly as a basic formulaic rock in contrast to the "peak" from the '90s) is much more well known now than Radiohead, and could even have been more popular than Radiohead even during the peak of Radiohead's popularity (with the general audience, of course). I doubt that the problem of alternative bands was media exposure, because they had plenty in their heyday. The issue is that their music appeal only to a small(ish) subset of people, and that most people would like something else. I don't mean this as a bad thing. It is what it is, but I find amusing how cultish their following is :)

[josuepeq]

This is another sentiment I could not put into words. I agree 100%. Thank you.

[jollyllama]

The way this works out in practice is a DJ makes their mix by blending these songs together at the start/end via remixes with similar beats.