WAIM #108 - Music Technologist and Writer Emily White

Emily White describes herself as a Music Technologist. Fresh out of college and in the early years of the rise of digital streaming, Emily landed a job at Billboard magazine where she saw first hand the ways that these new technologies were quickly and drastically changing the music industry. She describes her time at Billboard as something like getting a degree in the music business.During her Billboard stint, Emily became ever more deeply fascinated by the ways that technology changes the ways that we interact with and relate to music. Even in those nascent years of digital streaming, Emily could see that the world was changing its relationship to music in seismic ways.Fascinated by the user experience, the potential of digital streaming and the art of product development, Emily then went to work at Spotify as a founding member of the team that would go on to create the Spotify For Artists app, a resource for musicians to better harness the power of digital streaming for the benefit of their career. Emily uses her extensive experience at Spotify to offer a fascinating perspective on the biggest player in the digital streaming space. We discuss the challenges for artists in a world where music has become ubiquitous and extremely affordable.Emily does her very best to explain the complicated math behind the royalties being paid out to artists via streaming. It is a byzantine system that is based on play counts, streaming shares, user account details, and other nebulous and often confusing factors. Emily points out that it’s almost impossible to know a definitive per song streaming rate from any of the digital service providers, and she reckons there is probably not much difference between what one provider is paying over another.As Emily points out, Spotify is a really good product for the end user. It works with any smart phone, requires no storage or downloads, and provides the overwhelming majority of recorded music on the go for just a few bucks a month. For all of the complications that streaming is causing within the musical ecosystem, it’s going to take more than goodwill and a morally upright message for musicians to begin to get paid appropriately for their recorded work.This is another strand in the story of art versus economics. Consumers right now are winning, while artists lose out on proper compensation. As artists have struggled to make ends meet with those diminishing streaming royalties, we have seen a significant bump in the cost of concert tickets, which leads to Emily and I discussing the recent comments by Michael Rapino, the CEO of LiveNation, wherein he claimed that concert tickets were too reasonably priced compared to other live events like sports and theater. It is just another sign that the corporate jackals circling the music industry have zero interest in art and are instead laser focused on the cash grab.In her work as a music and technology writer, Emily has recently been focused on the resurgence of college radio. Emily has watched as student engagement has soared at stations across the country, with some seeing their participation rate doubling within the last few years. Students across the country are using these stations as third spaces on campus, creating community and connection as well as playing music and doing local reporting. In many ways, it is also a generational refutation from a growing number of students that have grown disaffected by the temporal nature of the digital world in which they have been raised.This is a captivating conversation with a brilliant writer and thinker who has seen how the digital sausage is made. Come join me and Emily White as we dive into the world of technology, music, and art vs. economics. Let’s get into it.Cheers,Matty C Get full access to What Am I Making at whatamimaking.substack.com/subscribe