Why the new Spotify and Apple Music Awards *actually* exist
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View this email in your browser (|ARCHIVE|) http://hotpodnews.com/presents.... A Newsletter about Big Ideas in Music and Technology, by Cherie Hu This is issue #70, published on December 6, 2019 Happy Friday, and Happy December!
Just one note before moving on: If you’ve been a subscriber for a few weeks or longer, I would greatly appreciate if you took the time to fill out the Water & Music feedback survey (https://forms.gle/adb1R8xHfBGH5vo78) , if you haven’t already. I’ll be including the survey link in each issue up to the end of 2020 as a reminder, just in case. Again, your responses will be kept 100% anonymous. The input I’ve received so far has already been super helpful — and has led to the creation of a tiny new section below the title of this week’s essay. :)
Thanks so much again for reading, listening and supporting. <3 Why the new Spotify and Apple Music Awards actually exist First, get up to speed with the relevant news: * Apple announces first ever Apple Music Awards (https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/12/apple-announces-first-ever-apple-music-awards/) * Save the Date for the First Ever Spotify Awards in Mexico City (https://newsroom.spotify.com/2019-11-21/save-the-date-for-the-first-ever-spotify-awards-in-mexico-city/) * Midem Sets Sights Globally With Upcoming Data-Driven Awards Show (https://www.billboard.com/amp/articles/business/8461768/midem-sets-sights-globally-upcoming-data-driven-awards-show) * The Hottest Trend in Music Award Shows Is … Nostalgia? (https://www.vulture.com/2019/11/music-award-shows-nostalgia-performances.html)
Awards shows are back, baby. Or so streaming services think.
Within two weeks of each other, Spotify and Apple Music — the top two global market leaders in music-streaming subscribers — each announced their own awards shows. The Spotify Awards (https://newsroom.spotify.com/2019-11-21/save-the-date-for-the-first-ever-spotify-awards-in-mexico-city/) will take place in Mexico City on March 5, 2020; the Apple Music Awards (https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/12/apple-announces-first-ever-apple-music-awards/) just took place this week, culminating in an acoustic set from Billie Eilish and her brother FINNEAS on December 4, 2019 at the tech company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California.
At least on the surface, the two awards have slightly different methodologies. The Spotify Awards plan to be “based entirely on user-generated data,” while the Apple Music Awards purport to be a mix of “what Apple Music customers have been listening to (on repeat) this year” (namely for their Album of the Year and Song of the Year) and a more curated roster “hand-selected by Apple Music’s global editorial team of experts and tastemakers” (for Global Artist of the Year, Songwriter of the Year and Breakthrough Artist of the Year).
As a music consumer, my reaction to both of these awards is skeptical and dismissive.
Firstly, my take (https://twitter.com/cheriehu42/status/1201279453814566919) with awards in general is that giving data a more prominent role actually makes them matter less, not more, in the sense of being culturally influential and driving taste. Because at that point, your awards program becomes just another chart, and therefore just another entry in the deluge of music rankings that already exist. This makes the landscape for measuring one artist’s success and popularity relative to another even cloudier — if that task is even worth doing, beyond just serving as a filtering mechanism for A&Rs (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/why-charts-matter-and-what-it-means-when-drake-dominates-them-697429/) , in which case you shouldn’t be putting on a flashy event in the first place.
With Apple Music in particular, their awards are clearly a marketing ploy. After all, out of the meager five awards that Apple Music gave out this year, Billie Eilish won three of them — and on the same day of her awards performance, it was reported that Apple paid $25 million (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/billie-eilish-lands-massive-payday-apple-tv-documentary-1259738) for the rights to a forthcoming documentary about the artist (more on that later).
But then I realized: That’s exactly the point. It’s not about the award; it’s about the show.
For Spotify and Apple Music, it’s not about which artists win their awards, or how the awards are decided. It’s about what their shows accomplish on a much larger scale — and not so much for artists, but for the streaming platforms themselves. But first: Let’s get the data debate over with
Spotify’s awards certainly aren’t the first ones in the music industry to be data-driven.
Billboard’s Music Awards and Touring Awards base their nominations and winners on recorded-music sales and streams, radio airplay, touring numbers, social engagement and other data sources. The iHeartRadio Music Awards and American Music Awards both involve aspects of crowdsourced online and social voting. The Midem Awards — which were first announced by the eponymous music-industry conference in 2018 and have yet to take place — plan (https://www.billboard.com/amp/articles/business/8461768/midem-sets-sights-globally-upcoming-data-driven-awards-show) to “pull in data from streaming services, social media and ticketing platforms” in partnership with Soundcharts (https://soundcharts.com/) .
Those in favor of data-driven awards shows will argue that traditional categories such as “Breakout Artist of the Year,” “Album of the Year” and “New Artist of the Year (https://www.vibe.com/2018/10/problems-music-award-shows) ” are highly subjective. This has historically proven to be an issue for shows like the GRAMMYs, which has been criticized in the past for the lack of diversity in their voter board.
Giving data a more prominent role in determining the winners could not only offer more objectivity and credibility to this otherwise arbitrary or closed process, but could also introduce new categories that are difficult to handle on a pure voting basis. As Soundcharts CEO David Weiszfeld pointed out (https://www.billboard.com/amp/articles/business/8461768/midem-sets-sights-globally-upcoming-data-driven-awards-show) to me in 2018: “If you want to create a category like ‘top Anglophone-African music export,’ that will be hard if you’re working with a human voter base skewed toward the U.S. and Europe.”
But on the other hand, maybe it’s good that some of these awards are more subjective. The likes of the GRAMMYs, the BRIT Awards and the more sparingly-awarded Mercury Prize garner their appeal because of the highly-curated roster of expert judges who have deep insight into the creative process and recording industry behind the scenes — encompassing performing, songwriting, producing, arranging and so on — independent of commercial popularity.
Perhaps the most notorious example of data backfiring for an award is with the proposed introduction of the “Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Outstanding_Achievement_in_Popular_Film) ” category for the Oscars, which would have catered specifically to blockbuster films (such as those under the Marvel or DC Comics franchises). The award was shelved less than a month after its initial proposal, as it drew wide industry criticism for its lack of clarity around nomination criteria and the overall voting process — not to mention essentially undercutting how the Oscars, which traditionally never considers a film’s commercial performance, work in the first place.
In fact, in a near-direct stab at data-driven shows, Newsday’s T.V. critic Verne Gay wrote (https://www.post-gazette.com/ae/tv-radio/2019/01/06/It-s-awards-season-again-Do-the-Golden-Globes-Oscars-etc-still-matter-in-2019/stories/201901060030) later in January 2019 that awards like the GRAMMYs and the Oscars “remain the arbiters of artistic accomplishment, where otherwise commercial accomplishment (box office, ratings) would be the only benchmark.”
But anyways, as I said earlier, this debate doesn’t actually matter. Because… repeat after me…
It’s not about the award, it’s about the show
Understanding where Spotify and Apple Music are coming from in launching their respective awards requires separating the work of deciding who wins, from the work of putting on the actual show.
In fact, I would argue that the motivation for a streaming service to establish its own awards has little to do with the awards itself.
The debate around whether these awards shows are “better” or “worse” than others, or whether they’re at all “necessary,” glosses over the fact that these awards shows act first and foremost as marketing vehicles for their parent companies — with incentives including, but certainly not limited to, just being the arbiters of time-sensitive taste.
Let’s dive into each of these motivations below: 1. Take advantage of climbing ad rates and #content
This motivation is more relevant to Spotify, as Apple opted not to use a broadcast partner for its own awards (or, rather, it was its own broadcast partner via Apple Music).
Despite an aggregate decline (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/five-years-network-ratings-declines-explained-1241524) in TV ratings over the past five years, all the ad rates for major awards shows are actually trending upward. According to Kantar Media (https://www.kantarmedia.com/us/-/media/images/articles/km-blog/2018/feb%202018/22nd%20-%20oscars%20infographic/oscars_2018_infographic.ashx?la=en-us) , the average price of a 30-second ad spot in the GRAMMYs has increased by 34% since 2013, from $861,000 to $1.15 million (see chart below). The Oscars and Golden Globes have also seen similar growth in ad rates over the same time period.
This is perhaps because in today’s media landscape, advertisers are looking to create “water-cooler moments” that are not as easily skippable and that will get people talking the next minute, the next hour and the next day. Live T.V. is still one of the best bets they have at nailing these kinds of slots — and that fuels the as yet hefty licensing fees that networks are willing to pay a producer to package an awards show.
And even if most people in the world won’t be watching any given music award, they’ll likely see many posts about it on social media. This is where the #content argument comes into play: As some have argued in the past, “awards shows are really just concerts (https://www.vibe.com/2018/10/problems-music-award-shows) .” And in a digital-media context, concerts are really just opportunities for fans and journalists alike to publish content online about flashy outfits, surprise appearances, controversial speeches, nostalgic comebacks (https://www.vulture.com/2019/11/music-award-shows-nostalgia-performances.html) and other kinds of viral moments that generate clicks.
Importantly, this doesn’t mean having plans for an awards show is a foolproof plan for making money: You also have to be actually good at production. The YouTube Music Awards ceremony infamously lasted only one year (in 2013) in part because of a string of awkward moments (https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/03/youtube-music-awards/) that unfolded in real time during the inaugural show; the only other year the awards were given out, in 2015, there was no live ceremony in tow. 2. Increase sales and engagement in its core business
Unlike the Recording Academy or the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Spotify and Apple Music are not professional organizations supporting entertainment-industry executives and creative professionals. They are first and foremost tech and media companies, and come with different incentives accordingly.
For Spotify — which has struggled (https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/spotify-content-strategy-pivot-video-1202668341/) with its video strategy in the past — putting on an awards show with as mass-market of a broadcaster as TNT is a surefire path to creating more opportunities for visual, derivative and shareable content, aside from just lean-back audio listening on its own platform. It’ll also hopefully be a way for the streaming service to secure more users and subscribers in Latin America, as we’ll discuss in the next section.
For Apple, which doesn’t have a free tier, it’s much more about a paid-subscriber play — and its awards show makes that connection almost too obvious. The archived livestream of Eilish’s concert at Apple Park will be available on-demand only for Apple Music subscribers. Apple’s documentary about the artist — with a reported $25 million (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/billie-eilish-lands-massive-payday-apple-tv-documentary-1259738) price tag, as previously mentioned — will be released exclusively on Apple TV+ in 2020.
Apple and Eilish even “rewarded” attendees of the concert with a special post-performance screening of a short film of Eilish and Finneas writing and recording “i love you”; I would not be surprised if that footage ended up in the documentary as well.
- Own the narrative over artist development and market development
While Spotify and Apple Music are market leaders in global music streaming today, competitors like Amazon Music and Tencent Music are also catching up (https://musicindustryblog.wordpress.com/2019/12/05/music-subscriber-market-shares-h1-2019/) . This has fueled an ongoing scramble for subscribers in music markets with relatively nascent paid-streaming economies — particularly in regions including Asia, Africa and Latin America.
What stands out the most to me about the Spotify Awards is that it’s tailored heavily towards Latin American markets. The only public advertisement for the awards to date is entirely in Spanish (and available only on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6-2YbOQKEc&feature=emb_title) ). The show’s main broadcast partner, TNT, is broadcasting only “for all of Spanish speaking Latin America”; a Spotify rep says they have no additional info to share about additional broadcast options at this time. (In fact, when I reached out to Spotify for comment on this piece, I was redirected to a rep specifically from their Latin America & U.S. Latin comms team, instead of one from their general comms team in New York.)
Spotify has been available across Latin America since 2013 (https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/11/5199738/spotify-launches-20-new-markets-south-central-america-europe) , and the service’s largest listener base is in Mexico City. Yet only 22% of Spotify’s monthly active users come from Latin America, per the company’s latest earnings report (https://s22.q4cdn.com/540910603/files/doc_financials/2019/q3/Shareholder-Letter-Q3-2019-[Final].pdf) , versus 62% in North America and Europe combined. This suggests that the Spotify Awards is still more of a forward-looking attempt to capture future audiences, rather than a means of solidifying existing ones.
Another kind of narrative that Spotify and Apple Music are trying to dominate through their own awards is that of developing and supporting emerging artists.
Spotify has claimed at least partial responsibility for the rise of several well-known artists today, including Danny Ocean (https://www.ft.com/content/2b1b317a-f87b-11e8-8b7c-6fa24bd5409c) , J Balvin (https://newsroom.spotify.com/2018-06-25/j-balvin-skyrockets-to-the-most-popular-artist-on-spotify/) and Lorde (https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2013/11/26/how-spotify-made-lorde-a-pop-superstar/#395f4c5c76b4) . Apple Music, which has been much more aggressive than Spotify at pursuing exclusive content deals, has cozied up in a similar way to Frank Ocean (https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/24/12627578/frank-ocean-blonde-apple-music-exclusive-universal) , DJ Khaled (https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/8523748/dj-khaled-apple-music-artist-in-residence) and practically any artist with a show on Beats 1. And Billie Eilish, who nailed exclusive campaigns with both Spotify (https://newsroom.spotify.com/2019-03-29/billie-eilishs-dark-debut-album-comes-to-life-inside-spotifys-new-interactive-experience/) and Apple Music (http://www.umusic.ca/press-releases/billie-eilish-collaborates-with-takashi-murakami-on-official-video-for-you-should-see-me-in-a-crown/) for her debut album WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?, is seemingly every streaming service’s darling.
Awards are artists’ darlings too — in the sense that the former make for a solid talking point in a press release, as well as industry validation in the case of an award like the GRAMMYs that involves a closed voting process. And nominees and winners have a more long-term incentive to get on streaming platforms’ good sides, in part because of the power that said platforms have over distribution today.
Speaking of which…
- Maintain (paradoxical) control over curation and distribution
A visual asset advertising Spotify Wrapped which, of course, features Billie Eilish. (source (https://newsroom.spotify.com/2019-12-05/spotify-wrapped-2019-reveals-your-streaming-trends-from-2010-to-now/) )
I thought it was delightfully oxymoronic that Spotify would launch both its inaugural awards show and its annual Spotify Wrapped campaign within the same two weeks. (Apple Music launched its analogous recap, Apple Music Replay (https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/11/15/apple-music-takes-spotifys-wrapped-new-replay-feature/4200289002/) , in mid-November.)
One could make the argument that mass-market awards shows don’t matter in the age of algorithms. In fact, Spotify Wrapped and Apple Music Replay are almost like algorithmic awards show that users enable and celebrate through their own consumption, [mostly] independent of any third-party editorializing.
Spotify’s brand in particular is all about discovery and personalization — whereas awards shows are quite the opposite, in that they typically celebrate artists that “everyone” loves, and are selected based on analyzing vast swaths either of consumption data or of industry votes behind closed doors.
Perhaps awards shows are part of an ongoing pendulum swing between hyper-granular, algorithmic personalization and quasi-monoculture (https://www.forbes.com/sites/cheriehu/2015/12/23/what-spotifys-2015-year-in-music-says-about-shifting-priorities-in-streaming-culture/#33b0f5d04860) in the streaming era. In fact, the other, less palatable side of the coin of “owning the narrative over artist development” is the fact that Spotify and Apple Music both have so much control over distribution and curation on their respective platforms. Such a positioning could make these kinds of awards show a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy — in that streaming services can easily influence who streams the most on their platforms, in part by deciding who gets placed on their playlists (Scorpion, anyone? (https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/12/03/drake-was-spotifys-most-streamed-artist-decade-what-does-that-actually-mean/) ).
In response to these concerns, a Spotify rep tells me that “maintaining the trust of creators, music fans and industry partners is a top priority” for the company, and that “the Spotify Awards will celebrate artists and their music the way it is consumed, leveraging data from users’ own streaming choices to determine the award categories as well as the finalists and winners” (emphasis added).
But herein lies the conflict: In environments like Spotify and Apple Music, “users’ own streaming choices” hardly happen by accident. And in the current music landscape — in which more niche, “middle-tier” artists are commanding (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/what-is-happening-to-streamings-superstars-845395/) a greater share of the industry’s economy — is the audience from which they’re pulling the data to determine their awards really going to care in the end?
My guess is, probably not — and that’s arguably not what these streaming services are even trying to achieve in the first place. They’re playing a much longer, more self-serving game. 🌊 ✨ If you’d like to support even more thoughts and conversations on music and tech, I encourage you to become a paying member of the Water & Music ecosystem on Patreon (http://patreon.com/cheriehu?utm_campaign=Water%20%26%20Music&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter) . For as little as $3/month or as much as $200+/month, you can access a wide range of perks including: * A closed, members-only Discord server * Exclusive essays * Exclusive updates on book research * Monthly group video hangouts * Monthly one-on-one strategy or marketing consultations
You’ll also be supporting the expansion of the Water & Music team as it continues to grow in the coming year. Thanks so much for reading! ✨ Patreon updates
I have new posts on my Patreon page: * The Dichotomous Creator: New revelations on how tech platforms define the “creator economy.” (https://www.patreon.com/posts/31737642) My analysis on two dichotomies I’ve seen emerge in how people in the tech, media and entertainment industries define the word “creator” — namely, a difference in emphasis on invention vs. innovation, and on process vs. outcome. * Book Research: Key takeaways from Ari Herstand’s How To Make It in the New Music Business. (https://www.patreon.com/posts/31741815) My key takeaways and reflections from the second edition of Herstand’s popular book, aimed at independent artists.
What I’m listening to * “Texas Sun (https://open.spotify.com/track/3k5oLgungD1dSOGLqQdIQw?si=1y4yNDK2QWm9pxKjDG6LsQ) ” by Khruangbin and Leon Bridges. This new single from their forthcoming collaborative EP sounds just like its lyrics — an easygoing drive down a highway in the heat of the summer, with the windows rolled down. * A Charlie Brown Christmas (https://open.spotify.com/album/7DuJYWu66RPdcekF5TuZ7w?si=ww-Ois6WS5aer_H2ncuz0Q) by the Vince Guaraldi Trio. My all-time favorite Christmas album. * Revisiting some throwbacks from my most-played tracks on Spotify in 2016, including but not limited to: + “Following the Sun (https://open.spotify.com/track/0l6X7PafPZB83LkWaB4HkN?si=sgzaQUbIR7yiQMdZg9tGYg) ” by M.I.L.K. + “All The Joy (https://open.spotify.com/track/6Z6apKp8CAta4BwlrrwlxO?si=R560pFd8StaqMBFKssA_qQ) ” by Moonchild + “Anatomy (https://open.spotify.com/track/5STTmFcKoPQN9NSYgnpWRI?si=X-VXHKlFR2iGJ4wSicObDA) ” by Jennah Bell
Epilogue
I know a lot of you are probably facing newsletter overload in your inboxes… but a lot of the most interesting writing, reporting, blogging and criticism on the music industry that I’ve seen recently have all come from newly-launched email newsletters.
Four of them are listed below:
Applied Science (https://appliedscience.substack.com/) by Jon Tanners, which aims to tackle key issues in the music industry through the lens of other fields. His latest issue (https://appliedscience.substack.com/p/applied-science-2) dives into an important but often overlooked question — what does a music distributor actually do? — with some interesting lessons from the gaming industry.
MUSIC x TECH x FUTURE (https://www.musicxtechxfuture.com/) by Bas Grasmayer, which isn’t new per se, but to my delight is back in action after around a 1.5-year hiatus. His latest issue (https://www.musicxtechxfuture.com/2019/12/02/what-playing-around-with-ai-lyrics-generation-taught-me-about-the-future-of-music/) dives into the importance of listener-mediated meaning when it comes to A.I.-generated music and lyrics.
Stan (https://astan.substack.com/) by Denisha Kuhlor, which dives deep into the bidirectional relationship between artists and fans. Her latest issue (https://astan.substack.com/p/the-emotional-labor-of-commercial) discusses the emotional labor that artists take on when their fan base ends up being different from their intended audience.
Music Journalism Insider (https://musicjournalism.substack.com/) by Todd Burns, which is the most comprehensive resource I’ve seen on all things music journalism — namely, the latest articles and business-facing decisions from top music publications and academic journals, interviews with veteran writers and editors, job opportunities and new hires, funny tweets and much more. His latest issue (https://musicjournalism.substack.com/p/pop-star-leftovers) features interviews with Shirley Halperin, Davy Reed and Robin James, plus all of the above kinds of updates.
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