Is Spotify killing songwriting?
As the streaming service aims for world domination, it’s having a ruinous effect on what we listen to, discovers Al Horner
In an LA studio, a well-known songwriter is desecrating Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean. With a few clicks, out goes the 1982 hit’s famous opening. Instead, the song starts with its chorus. Another few clicks, and its bridge – where the track climaxes in a hail of adrenalinpumping guitar licks and iconic Jacko “woos!” – is gone. High-pitched, glitchy noises known as “vocal chops” – manipulated vocals that have been chopped up – are dotted throughout: you might not know the term, but they are an absolute mainstay of mainstream commercial pop now because of the way their deliberately jagged sound grabs the ear of listeners.
What remains is pretty horrible: the song’s story of a shady seductress jumbled beyond comprehension, the way it bubbles and boils towards its anthemic chorus ruined. To today’s pop moneymakers, though, it’s nirvana. “If Billie Jean was written today, that’s probably what it would have to sound like,” explains the songwriter, who massacred the track to prove a point. “Otherwise a label might never release it.”
For that, we have Spotify to thank. In the 12 years since the music streaming service was founded by Swedish entrepreneur Daniel Ek, it’s reshaped the way we listen to music. Last year, streaming overtook downloads, vinyl and CD sales as the industry’s main money-spinner for the first time. At the end of 2017, Spotify boasted 71million paying subscribers across 65 countries and this week made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange, valued at £18.5billion.
It’s the digital age’s answer to a record shop, radio station and music magazine all in one: today Spotify playlists – collections of songs curated by staff and algorithms based on what else you listen to – are the number one way to discover new music.
There’s no doubt that Spotify has transformed a music industry seemingly in terminal decline thanks to falling revenues. Yet if it has changed the way we access pop music, there’s growing concern that it’s also changing the music itself. Writers for some of the planet’s biggest artists claim the tech giant’s make-or-break power over what singles reach listeners has led to writers having to tailor their music for Spotify’s algorithms, transforming how music is written.
“If someone skips a track in the first 15 seconds, Spotify interprets that as a sign the song sucks, and punishes the song. The more skips, the less likely it is to turn up in playlists,” says the songwriter, who’s written charttoppers for
Grammy award-winning artists but who wishes to remain anonymous for fear that speaking out may damage his future releases’ chances of success on Spotify (several others declined to talk at all).
The only way around it, he says, is to start each song with its catchiest bit, or “hook.” It’s the reason why Ariana Grande’s latest single No Tears Left to Cry leaps straight into its infectious chorus and why Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You begins with the marimba melody that carries the rest of the song.
“When everyone is having to tick the same boxes, everything ends up sounding the same,” says the songwriter. “It’s extremely damaging to what pop is supposed to be: eclectic, spontaneous and fun.”
One pop song at the heart of this debate is British breakout artist Dua Lipa’s hit single New Rules. That song, which recently surpassed 750million streams, helped make the 22-year-old the most-streamed female artist among UK listeners on Spotify in 2017, beating Taylor Swift and Beyoncé.
The track couldn’t be more perfectly named: from its straight-to-business intro to its bass-heavy mix, optimised to sound good on tinny laptop and phone speakers, it seems torn from a new pop songwriting rule book, tweaked for streaming success.
“I’ve been in writing sessions where someone will say: ‘We need to make this more Spotify-friendly’,” says one of the song’s writers, Emily Warren, who has also co-written hits for Fifth Harmony and Little Mix. “It’s not a good way to be creative, but it’s not smart to ignore it either.”
Of course, factory line approaches to pop music are nothing new. Record labels like Motown, Brill Building and Stock Aitken and Waterman are famous for near-surgically shaping releases to the target audiences. Pop artists have operated within the confines of what major radio stations deem desirable since the Fifties. But at least there was always a huge variety of radio stations available, meaning a lack of success on one didn’t necessarily spell doom. Spotify’s competitor-crushing dominance means songwriters are forced to play by their rules, leading to a more homogenised pop landscape. Imagine if all books were forced to open with an explosive set-piece, if all films begin with a big reveal.
Most songwriters don’t have any choice, however, but to tick “boxes”. If an artist releases a song that doesn’t get on New Music Friday, the flagship playlist with 2.5million subscribers, “it may as well not exist,” says Warren. This is because, in 2018, festival programmers, radio executives, gig promoters and everyone in between use Spotify streaming numbers as a metric to gauge artists’ popularity and thus to decide which artists to program or songs to play.
There are other platforms such as Deezer and Apple Music who likely have similar algorithms, which have also contributed to the rise of an era of pop built around dreams of streaming success. But Spotify was the first, is the biggest and holds the most power.
“We’re completely at the mercy of them as artists,” says Warren. “It’s also a reflection of the world we live in. People are obsessed with their phones and technology and expect everything instantaneously. So it makes sense they would be like: ‘I want the chorus now! I want the song to be done so I can listen to the next one!’” (According to data, 35 per cent of songs are skipped within the first 30 seconds.)
Yet songwriter Dan Wilson, who has written for Adele and Taylor Swift, is philosophical. “The [pop writing] format has always fit around the platform,” he says, having been writing chart-topping tracks for more than 20 years. “David Byrne’s How Music Works points out that the length of time a song lasts was mainly decided by the amount of seconds you could squeeze onto a 45 [RPM record]. Not much has changed – we still listen to three and half minute songs today.”
He also thinks that pop’s restless love for innovation and reinvention will prove its saviour. “If songwriters feel held back by the rule book, they should rip out that page,” he says. “A lot of great art comes from artists rebelling against constraints.”
Listeners, he says, will thank them (and he may be right: the boom in popularity for grime occurred despite, or perhaps because of, artists like Stormzy and Skepta’s defiance of new pop writing norms). “Music fans’ imaginations are always enticed by what isn’t being fed to them every day. Soon, someone will do something opposite, and that will spark new trends.” Rules are meant for breaking, in other words. Even Dua Lipa’s.