Popularity, Deezer Deletions and New Weird America Preservation
I recently discovered that Deezer removed the following albums from their platform:
- Cherchez La Femme
- Used To Be Good Looking
- Rest Assured
- Bluebird Days II
- Lockdown Leftovers
That's almost half my catalogue. Entire albums of mine, without warning, for no apparent reason, gone.
You would think that as a French streaming company, they would've at least chosen to keep Cherchez La Femme! They said au revoir. I've heard it's really hard to find music on their service and that their software est nul.
They recently changed their logo to a purple heart. To me, this represents me being wounded by them, my music being killed by them, while serving the music community with my music, my battle for popularity lost, my heart broken. C'est la vie. When I went to Paris once, little French children pointed at me, laughed, and made pig snorting noises and "moo" cow noises, presumably due to my appearance. Oui, I was an overweight, loud American tourist, probably wearing cargo shorts and a baseball hat.
My immediate reaction is to never recommend Deezer to anyone, but I'm about to distribute another album to them. I guess they might choose to keep it around, like maybe for a year, and if it doesn't get streamed enough, they'll just delete it.
It got me thinking about how a part of my motivation to release my music is that I want it to be around after I'm not anymore. How to leave a legacy so future generations can discover and enjoy it? That's the next question. I'm sure great works of art have been destroyed permanently throughout history, many of them by the French. Get enough attention in your lifetime, and your painting winds up in the Louvre. Posthumous attention is rare, and I'll admit it: my music is not museum-quality.
Who is behind this? Greedy major record labels. They lost some power and control after independent online music distribution became possible, and they desperately want it back. A glass-half-full Scott Cooley would say "at least they still offer Bluebird Days, Missing the Boat, Sense of Belonging, Drive Time Companion, Lakeside Landing, and Moon Dreams." Maybe I should consider myself lucky that those albums met their threshold of 1000 streams per year, or however they make such decisions, and remain on their precious platform.
Consider this: You're at a funeral for someone you knew well, a friend or family member, and you hear their spouse say they wrote songs their whole life but never recorded them. The only person who ever heard them was the spouse. You liked the person and now wish you and everyone else could've heard those songs. You wish you could've heard the person perform the songs they'd written, but also, you wish you could continue to listen to them. Even the spouse who heard them wishes they could continue to hear them. You'd like to hear what their singing voice was like, what their instrument playing sounded like, what the melodies and lyrics of their songs sounded like.
It's the classic "when a tree falls in the forest, and there's no one there to hear it, did it make a sound?" scenario. Then you can get into physics and talk about measuring observers and observing measurers, and cats. Did it happen, did it exist? Time, space, light, lines, particles, etc.
You're happy to hear that they enjoyed the hobby, of course. You know that creative pursuits give the creators great joy while creating them. You would have the same interest if you learned they had some other hobby. If the now-deceased person painted paintings or took photographs or made pottery or clothes, you'd like to see them. If they wrote poems or novels, you'd like to read them. You wish you would've known about this personal, private, secret thing they did.
Then you have to consider that they kept it private because they did it solely for the enjoyment they got out of it, and never needed or wanted anyone else to enjoy it. Maybe they didn't think it was good enough for anyone else to enjoy.
It's easier than ever to make your creative content publicly available for the world to consume because of the world wide web. Upload your recorded music, your e-book, your art, your photos, your words, and let the world either buy them or enjoy them for free. Type up your life story, or record a video of yourself explaining your life story. It's all inexpensive if not free and easy to do, especially for intangible items that can exist as electronic files.
With physical objects like furniture or sculptures, maybe the surviving spouse or other descendants will enjoy/use them, sell them, or simply give them away.
It's wonderful to have in your possession a creative work of someone you were close to. A reminder of your memories of the person, it can be comforting and inspiring.
I think those two things are the essence of what I hope for with my music. That people will be able to get comfort from it and be inspired to be creative in their lives. If they knew me, it might also have the benefit of reminding them of things I did or said when they spent time with me.
The benefits of music include improving memory and improving mood. It can help reduce stress too. I want people to get these benefits from being able to enjoy my music.
If I want my music to be available for people to get these benefits from it, I have options, but unfortunately, they cost a little money. It seems like streaming is the way people are going to enjoy music well into the future, and that turns out to be the least expensive way to make it available.
Therefore, I distribute to the streaming services. I want people to be able to tell their Siri/Google/Alexa speaker to play some Scott Cooley and have it work. So I need to be on Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Amazon Music for that to be possible.
I have a website, but it costs a little money to keep it up and running. Free places to stream music like Bandcamp or Soundcloud are limited, might not remain free, and might not stay around due to lack of profitability.
There are trends of change with the streaming service providers having way too much music available. There are cost-cutting efforts being made to reduce how much music is available, and the only thing they have to go on is popularity. Deezer is one such streaming service, and they recently removed several of my albums, without warning, and presumably because they weren't popular enough.
The question I have is what if the music on those albums suddenly saw a surge of popularity elsewhere, would Deezer reinstate or re-enable them?
My guess is the files are gone forever already. They removed my albums because they had not been listened to enough within the span of a year or something like that.
Just as with Tain Bo Cuailnge, which in Irish mythology was a story about the "driving-off of the cows of Cooley," the streaming services are putting me out to pasture.
The bottom line is if your song doesn't get streamed enough - up to some predefined threshold such as 1000 streams per year - then no royalty payments will be issued. This was a recent Spotify decision, and the other services will likely follow suit.
Now, as is the case with Deezer, if your song doesn't get streamed enough, they remove it. If items don't sell in a store, they go on sale at least in an attempt to liquidate the inventory. They call this "decluttering" to be a part of their "artist-centric" model, which means increase the market share for artists whose songs are already popular enough.
The writing is on the wall for independent artists like me who don't do anything to promote, publicize, market, or advertise their music. Unless we spend more time on those things, our music will be removed. Gone forever. Preservation is reserved for the popular. Maybe this is how things have always been in the grand scheme. I could warn you that if you want to hear my music well into the future, download it now. I could make it all free and downloadable from scottcooley.com, but after I'm dead, no one will want to pay the domain fee.
I don't necessarily want my music to be popular, I mainly just want it to be available and discoverable. I know it's not the type of music that is likely to ever get really popular anyway. However, if you think of all the musicians and songwriters in the 60s who were inspired by the Harry Smith Anthology of Folk Music, or whatever that was called, and the great music they created as a result, you're glad someone went to the trouble to preserve those songs. Even though those songs were varied and strange and not likely to ever be popular.
I'm a part of the New Weird America, if you want to call it that. I guess we have the Internet Archive as a potentially viable option, but Soundcloud is already doing whatever they can to monetize, and I'm sure Bandcamp will too. In other words, even the once-free places for independent artists to share their music won't remain free. Purging and decluttering is inevitable for all the streaming platforms.
The cream shall rise to the top, I guess. I lived during a time when my music could exist publicly and commercially and be findable and playable. These times, they are a-changin'.
But when the cream doesn't rise, is it time to kill the cow? Got milk? There’s this idiom most of us have heard before – at least I think it’s an idiom – that the cream rises to the top. Unless you’re in the dairy business, you probably don’t fully understand it, but nonetheless you get the gist that the best at something eventually get recognized. There’s another saying we’ve all heard some version of before that some who are not the cream “don’t know when to quit.” There’s a lot to be said for not giving up. We sometimes admire these people, while at the same time feel sorry for them. Finally, we’ve heard the phrase “quitters never win,” which also has great merit.
Throughout history, there have been great stories of successful people who failed miserably numerous times on their way to success. Maybe as a songwriter, I’m one of them, but probably not. More likely, I’m one of the lower forms of dairy in the world of music. There are people who pronounce the word “milk” as “melk,” and as my sister likes to point out, those who take it a step lower and pronounce a variation of “melk” as “mewk,” both rhyming with the word “elk”. My music is more like mewk, if you’re comparing it to categories of word mispronunciation.
People generally tend to be pretty good at things they enjoy, and inversely enjoy things they’re pretty good at, but that’s not always the case. Someone has to lose, someone has to be bad or mediocre, otherwise we couldn’t have the winners and those among the best. Not everyone can be great. Some try hard and improve, find a niche, become supporting role players vital to teams. The world needs the people who are not very good at something, but are passionate about it and do it anyway.
When it comes to songwriting, playing instruments, singing, and making music, I’m one of them, but I’m not in a band, I’m a self-contained solo artist. I know I’m probably a little better at the songwriting part, but have never had the guts to move to Nashville and pitch my songs to great artists to record. There’s a ton of competition out there, as most are somewhat aware of, just like there are lots of people writing movie scripts who have not dared to move to Hollywood.
Places like these are full of people with similar unfulfilled dreams. People who eventually gave up. People who maybe found a way to stay connected to the thing they were passionate about, perhaps finding work in the business side of the industry instead of the creative side. People with day jobs who enjoy being immersed in the scene. Places like Nashville have seen many come and fail and leave, returning to their less exciting home towns with their tails between their legs.
I come from a place where the people who are really in their element and fit in are people who love playing golf and fixing up old cars. Punk rockers, rappers, and people who like to run in road races too. The one guy I idolized most from these parts was Mark Farner, not the best songwriter, singer or guitar player in the world, but a guy who was confident and passionate and in the right place at the right time to live the dream of becoming a rock star in the band Grand Funk Railroad, and people around here like me lived vicariously.
The cream rises to the top naturally, separating from the rest of the milk to form a layer at the top. It’s considered to be higher quality. It happens in the music business. Most people agree that Bob Dylan is a good songwriter, that Elvis, Aretha and Robert Plant were good singers, that the Beatles and Led Zeppelin were good bands, that Jimi Hendrix was a good guitar player, etc.
Homogenization artificially applies intense heat and pressure to make the fat mix into the milk so that it doesn’t separate naturally. Artists signed to major corporate record companies concerned with profit are subjected to homogenization, which makes all of the music the same. It can’t be stopped or changed.
Skim milk doesn’t come from skimming it off the top, but rather, letting it drain out the bottom. You would think unsigned independent artists without being subjected to homogenization would be able to rise naturally, but with all the competition out there, most become skim. They play a vital role in the music business by making others look better by comparison.
You would think in today’s world in which music is streamed online that cream would occur naturally. There’s always been marketing, and payola, and now the record companies pay for the appearance of popularity via fake streams, likes, follows, etc. because they know it begets actual popularity.
Consumers of music need tastemakers and curators and marketing for discovery. If it already appears to be popular, they’re more likely to give it a test listen to see if they might like it or not. There’s just way too much music already in existence to ever try it all out in a lifetime. The web offers great recommendation engines and artificial intelligence.
AI is actually creating its own fake music now that sounds a lot like real music. Gone are the days when you went to see a bunch of bands and decided which you like best, but you can still get recommendations from friends and/or strangers who are like-minded music fans.
Talentless average Joes like me can add their music to the vast ocean of what’s available to find and enjoy, and never make back the amount it took for them to distribute it online. This is maybe more like powdered milk for people who are really hard up to pour something on their bowl of cereal but have run out of real milk. You have to make it yourself out of desperation, and you have no AI, no money for playlist marketing or fake streams. You hope for simple, organic, natural rising to the top.
When no rising occurs over a long period of time, maybe it’s time to kill the cow and cook the meat to get by. Stop producing milk no one discovers or likes. You enjoy the process of writing and recording, and that’s why you do it, but you know it’s not anywhere close to what you choose to listen to as a music consumer yourself. It’s not that you were completely unaware of your limitations like some of the terrible contestants on the TV talent shows, you’ve known all along you’re not great at any aspect, but you like doing it anyway.
Maybe it was better in the days of old when the gatekeepers at those big record companies would never allow the average joe’s music to be heard in the first place. Affordable home recording equipment, including computers, plus the world wide web changed all that.
There’s no shortage of music in the world now, nobody’s ever out of milk for their cereal. Very little barrier to entry now, but is that better for the consumers of music in the world? Probably not. It’s likely we’d be better off with more evaporated milk, condensing out the skim music like mine that waters everything down.
Humor is one way to separate yourself from the rest, and it’s a little easier to get recognition with anything that gets attention like controversy, swearing or humor. There isn’t much room for humorous music though. And if you’re like me, you never went all-in with it like Tenacious D or Steel Panther or Spinal Tap or Weird Al Yankovic who all turned it into a cash cow.
People remember my funny songs the most, so maybe that’s my form of natural cream, but it’s not what I want to be remembered for. I have too many serious songs I’m proud of in my catalog. The few people out there who’ve bothered to check out any of my music, however, only seem to remember Horseshit and Fudge (Mackinac Island), unfortunately.
Even though I’ve always been cautious to not appear to be someone who thinks they’re better than they really are, I’ve nonetheless had great audacity in releasing my music on the web alongside the greats.
What was I thinking? Did I really think anyone would find it and like and recommend it? Yeah, sort of, I guess a little part of me did, or I wouldn’t have done it.
Now, with a couple decades of trying and failing under my belt, and another album that I think is one of my best on the way, maybe I'll end on a high note before the inevitable slaughter. Some of my music is still out there, and more is on the way. Drink it in while you can.
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