See Moir Music: Online into April
Livestreaming our way through a pandemic
Where I’ll Be
Donating my money to the staff at the following places
Conflicts and considerations
Currently considering the effects of a global pandemic on a worldwide music industry, or industries—music production, concerts and live events, songwriting—there are shades within the monolithic “music industry” and different parts will be differently affected.
Artists, producers, promoters, songwriters, sound engineers, music techs, lighting engineers, and other crucial people supporting the different components of the music industry are experiencing a vast amount of uncertainty, massive changes to their daily life, and for many, loss of their livelihoods for an unclear amount of time.
So what do music industry onlookers have to say about the crisis as it stands?
Hypebot featured Mark Mulligan from the Midia organization on What’s Next? How COVID-19 Will Affect Music & Media
A key point is that adversity can inspire creative output, but at the same time, economic uncertainty isn’t exactly a good thing.
Billboard published an article by Dave Brooks about How Coronavirus Will Reshape The Concert Business
A key point is that large event promoters might take advantage of the crisis to change the way that artists and venues get paid, and that indie promoters and smaller venues might lack enough cash to pay out refunds while event organizers are holding onto the money.
David Turner published a Penny Fractions newsletter about it as well: Penny Fractions: The Coronavirus Destroyed the Music Industry
Read it for his thoughts but also for many of the links he includes throughout. Not as depressing as the subject line makes it seem.
Just Announced
This crisis might justify me creating a Twitch account. It’s way harder to find out about these events now, so if you see a set (recorded or livestream announcement) you think I might enjoy, send it my way!
Music Most of the Time
Virtually Nowadays NYC local club with Thursday-Sunday evening streams
United We Stream: Berlin hosting weekend stream events.
Club Quarantäne by Resident Advisor featuring your very own virtual bathroom experience.
Diplo and friends and labelmates on Mad Decent Live on Twitch. Today is Lazer Sunday and it’s great.
Bandsintown has been hosting livestream shows on Twitch. Next sets are on Thursday and Friday.
Special Events
Mon Mar 30 @ 2PM Pacific — The National is hosting a live stream on YouTube.
Tue Mar 31 @ 6AM Pacific — Tomorrowland: United We Stream featuring Afrojack and others. DJ Mag has more information in their article.
Tue Mar 31 @ 7AM – 4PM Pacific — Fader is bringing us a digital Fader Fort festival. Lineup TBA today, Mar 30.
Fri Apr 3 - Sun Apr 5 — Digital Mirage is hosting an online music festival featuring A-Trak, Adventure Club, Chet Porter, Flosstradamus, Gryffin, Kaskade, Louis the Child, Manila Killa b2b Hotel Garuda, Mat Zo, Pluko, Sofi Tukker, Tokimonsta, and a Secret Guest and More.
Sat Apr 11 @ 11AM Pacific — Tinlicker is hosting another live stream on their Twitch channel.
Artist Streams
Other artists are consistently streaming live on their own channels on YouTube/Twitch/Instagram:
Disclosure at 1PM on Fridays (so far)
Calvin Harris as Love Regenerator
Livestream highlights
Pete Tong always puts on a good set, and his Beatport ReConnect set holds true to that.
A-Trak’s dj set was adorable when he played Beatport ReConnect
Bonobo consistently plays good sets too, and just like Pete his Beatport ReConnect set was fun.
Nora En Pure played a bunch of tasty tracks during her Beatport ReConnect set.
Calvin Harris as Love Regenerator Livestream 1 and Livestream 2
Sébastian Léger’s set for Beatport ReConnect was a delight.
Looking forward to checking out
This is my list of artist livestream sets I want to check out that I couldn’t watch live. What sets have you enjoyed so far?
Some videos might sporadically disappear 🙃
Other notes
Recent great releases
Disclosure’s Ecstasy EP is really nice and tracks have been cropping up in several of the live stream sets this past week too.
Bicep dropped a new single, Atlas
Amtrac has been dripping out singles for a bit, Accountable and Stratego are both great.
warner case just put out a new track, impeccable
Kölsch also dropped a new single that is a vibe, called Time.
The Weeknd also released a new album, to keep up with my occasional pop references here. Hardest to Love and Blinding Lights are my favorite tracks.
Shazamming while Dancing
I made a quarandjed playlist to keep track of my shazams from livestreams.
I also put together a short playlist of the tracks I’ve been going back to during this time. Honestly tho, there’s a ton of music out there right now because of all these livestreams, and I also just bought a lot of music when Bandcamp waived their cut to support artists.
Read Moir Music
I finally published something I’d been thinking about for awhile, about the importance of validating the audio analysis metadata that underpins our favorite streaming services. If you like, read it here: Why the quality of audio analysis metadatasets matters for music.
I tracked down some academic articles that cover adjacent and overlapping topics, so I’ll be digging into those soon.
Cherie Hu also published a roundup of virtual music events, and included a foreword about how this will change the music industry. Interesting to read in the context of my recent musings about what a concert is for and why we go to them, as well as what David Turner discusses in his newsletter essay (based on some essays written by Cherie Hu) about artist data from sites such as Spotify:
“various streaming platforms and distribution services are trying to better inform musicians about how to navigate this digital landscape. The explicit assumption is that artists should think of themselves as entrepreneurs and thus should try to understand the best ways of optimizing and potentially monetizing their careers. A concern with this line of thinking is that instead of empowering artists with new skills and resources, it instead further burdens artists with the requirement to understand numerous platforms and ways of parsing data, which isn’t at all a skillset aligned with being a musician.”
At least in the short term, I think this will lead to a lot more engagement with artist’s online instagram, facebook, youtube, and twitch accounts. Artists that you like enough to see live but not enough to follow on social media might graduate to that level as you hope to follow them closely enough to catch a livestream that they put out. At least that’s how I feel now that I’m following Disclosure on Instagram, subscribed to several artists and labels on YouTube, and contemplating a Twitch account so I can do the same.