Old People Don't Stream

I was riding the lift today with a mother who told me her 12 and 14 year olds would never be seen on Facebook, a hundred times no. They wouldn't even use public Instagram.

Meanwhile, the media is in an uproar over the influence of Facebook on politics. Could it be that the target has shifted?

Last week, a rapper I'll posit most boomers have never heard the music of, never mind his name, was #1 on the "Billboard" album chart. Kodak Black only sold 5,000 copies of his album "Dying To Live," but he had 114 million streams for the equivalent of 89,000 album sales. Not that that means what it used to. You can buy an album and never listen to it, we've got no idea how many times you play it. But a stream means you actually listened, even if it's in the background. But you didn't necessarily stream the album, you probably only streamed the "hit." Actually, on "Dying To Live," there's one cut with triple digit million streams, and four with double digit millions. The rest are in single digits, it appears that people are cherry-picking their favorites. And then there's the canard that rappers put out long albums to reap rewards when fans play them endlessly, but why do a number of cuts on "Dying To Live" only have one or two million streams?

We're still trying to figure out this streaming/on demand paradigm. It's been here for nearly a decade, but we're still arguing about what the album means, frequency of releases, the impact of hype, the genre of music...

And speaking of hype, "Dying To Live" got a tiny fraction of that of "Springsteen on Broadway," seemingly every boomer was aware of the play, and now the Netflix production. "Springsteen on Broadway" is #11 on the chart, with 38,000 sales...

But only 1.8 million streams.

That's right, there's only one track on "Dying To Live" with fewer streams than the total streams of all the cuts on "Springsteen on Broadway," and that cut is #15, the second to last.

In other words, boomers don't stream.

How could this BE? Especially with Spotify's free tier, never mind YouTube.

As for buying albums, where and how do you play them? If you get a CD... My two computers don't have a CD drive, and neither do new cars. As for files, you probably are still inured to iTunes, an overstuffed cornucopia of offerings that works poorly on the desktop, and only marginally better on the hand-held.

And 38,000 sales is anemic to boot!

Now if you read Jon Pareles's Sunday "Times" article "Pop in the Era of Distraction": https://nyti.ms/2VcEBFu you'll get a good picture of what's going on in today's music business, at least on the recording side. Traditional pop is almost dead, and there's a plethora of genres and formats triumphing, some of which you might not know. But the article only got 11 comments. In other words, the "New York Times" has almost no impact on the music scene, nada. Not a single person e-mailed me about the article. It appears Pareles is speaking to oldsters, who just don't care. Because believe me, the music world is an active one, fans weigh in on everything.

But that's modern America, where the cheese keeps moving but everyone wants to neglect it. If you're playing to the "Times," you've lost it, unless you're trying to influence gatekeepers, who mean less than ever before.

So why aren't boomers streaming?

They could be afraid of coughing up their credit cards. I kid you not, boomers are paranoid.

Or maybe they just cannot adjust to an on demand economy where you don't need to own almost anything other than clothing. You call up Uber/Lyft, you rent your apartment, you spend on digital goods and evanescent experiences. The boomer mantra was "He or she who dies with the most toys wins." Millennials don't cotton to that, although you might substitute the word "followers" for "toys."

But it gets worse, without big streaming numbers, acts get no traction.

Old acts selling new music, marginal acts selling new music, should be getting their fans to stream. Instead, they're against Spotify, et al, and keep on going on about how an album used to cost $10+ and streaming pays poorly. But the truth is streaming is about fandom, if anybody is streaming your music prodigiously, they're a fan, and they'll pay to see you live and buy merch and...

Boomer and marginal acts are nonstarters, because they're adhering to an old paradigm. They're appealing to people who still use iPods, who base their phone purchases on storage.

That's another thing you no longer need, a lot of memory. Remember when you used to wait for the release of a bigger iPod? Now, with everything on demand, you don't need that much.

So the chart is not reflective of reality.

And the only chart that really matters is one of consumption. But if you go to that, all the old acts would never break the Top Ten. But do they deserve to? Is selling an album with tickets and/or merch really reflective of the new music's impact and staying power? Almost never.

It's kind of like winning a Grammy. Just check the streams and sales of so much nominated work in minor categories. The creators are playing to the Grammy nominating committee, no one else cares, truly!

But the Grammys were always a circle jerk anyway.

But the people who keep saying they know most, who rail against inequities, are the ones most disconnected from modern paradigms. Like that Congressman who asked the head of Google about his iPhone. Or that woman trying to fill up her Tesla at the gas station: https://bit.ly/2AfCAji

Maybe Congress should be run by youngsters. Maybe tech policy should not be made by old farts.

But one thing's for sure, music is now an on demand item. Hell, that's one reason Alexa is so successful, you just call out what you want.

But if you read the "Billboard" chart, you'd have no idea of this. The standard of an industry that had to be led kicking and screaming into the twenty first century. But the industry loves the ancient chart, because of the bragging rights of #1s.

Who cares?

Only them.


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