![]() “Sometimes the music can sit comfortably between two, three, four genres so it would be a completely new sound,” she said. In fact, it’s often crossing several genres. “I think we’ve got meme-rap in the works, hyper-pop in the works, things like that just to reflect what’s going on in genres,” she said, before pointing out that while Lorem, Pollen and Oyster may be genreless, the music on them is not. Szabo said that Spotify is tackling this by adding more genre options. One challenge is that this submission tool involves tagging tracks with one or more genres, which can feel awkward for some of the music that might be well-suited to these genreless playlists. How do artists get onto these genreless playlists? Szabo said that the submission tool in the Spotify for Artists dashboard is critical, promising that “we religiously go through our submissions”. In a way, that’s a riposte to one of the criticisms of playlists in general, which is that they can lead listeners away from knowing who the artists are, let alone caring about their stories. Meanwhile, the company is also creating video content around featured artists on these playlists, which gets distributed on YouTube and social networks. Pollen and Oyster now have attached ‘studio’ programs, where artists record original tracks, covers and collabs for Spotify. “At its very core that’s what it is, and we hoped that with design and the right mix of artists, and just being able to speak to these avenues of fans that it would become something more. Playlists are “just a name slapped on a list of songs” she pointed out. And then Oyster is the equivalent in Spotify’s Nordic territories. Szabo talked about Pollen as Spotify’s first experiment with a genreless playlist, with Lorem sharing an ethos with it, but targeting a different audience. That’s where we question the status quo in terms of programming,” he said. ![]() If culture is moving at that rate, we need to move with it. “The more spices to create with by the artists and the creators, the more spices to try out and it becomes a feedback loop. Hazheer opted for a cooking metaphor in his description of this trend, with music represented as different spices that can be added to the overall meal of a playlist. It’s driven by culture, and it’s driven by these communities.” I think they share a lot in common with the artists that we are putting in these playlists. These are listening communities that we’ve seen on Spotify, off Spotify, on social media. “It’s historically how we categorised music, but we realised today that the way people listen is more community based,” she added. Szabo stressed that “genre is still totally important” for Spotify and its rivals. ![]() She noted that in the days when people were buying music and had a limited amount of money to spend: “Boxing yourself into a genre had a purpose… but with having access to everything through the digital transition, suddenly it’s no risk to experiment and explore.” “We realised there was a gap where we needed to curate for culture rather than genres… Genres were expanding, and artists are experimenting with them,” said Olofsson, of Spotify’s initial moves into genreless playlists. Spotify’s Lizzy Szabo (editor, North America), Sophia Olofsson (studio project manager, Nordics) and Iman Hazheer (senior editor, Nordics) were the explainers, in a session moderated by CD Baby’s market development coordinator for Europe and the UK, Henriette Heimdal. Today at Music Ally’s Sandbox Summit Global online conference, we heard more about how (and why) those playlists work. Some of Spotify’s most interesting emerging playlists – Lorem, Pollen and Oyster for example – are designed to be ‘genreless’. Playlists have become a hugely important part of the music streaming world, and many of them have a tightly-curated theme, be it a musical genre or a specific mood or activity.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |