How technology is changing music with Switched on Pop’s Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan

Switched on Pop hosts Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan join Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel to unpack how technology is changing the distribution, making, and sound of popular music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:11Nilay Patel?

  Hey everybody, it's Sana from the Vergecast. On this week's interview show, we're doing a little Vox Media crossover. We have Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan from Switched on Pop, which is a new Vox podcast that's all about music and what it means, specifically music of the top 40. Charlie and Nate unpack it every week and they tell us about how trends in technology, distribution are affecting what we listen to. This was a really interesting conversation. I'm going to say we got pretty deep into whether the new Taylor Swift song is good or not. It's just a fact. And the answer is that it's not good, but it is structured really weirdly in a way that reflects how music is distributed now. We also talked a lot about how songs are getting shorter because of streaming services and playlists. This is basically a really interesting conversation about how changing music distribution has

• 1:55Nilay Patel?

  changed the nature of songs. So check it out. It's Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan from Switched on Pop.

• 2:04Nilay Patel?

  All right, we have Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan from Switched on Pop. Hello, gentlemen.

• 2:09Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 2:09Nilay Patel?

  All right, just for the audience, Charlie, you say hello, and then Nate, you say hello.

• 2:14Speaker 04

  Hey, how's it going? This is Charlie.

• 2:15Speaker 03

  Hey, this is Nate.

• 2:16Nilay Patel?

  Awesome. Well, thank you, guys, for joining me. I'm a big fan of Switched on Pop, which I have to say is in the Vox Media Podcast Network, so technically, I don't know if you know this, we're in a beef.

• 2:26Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 2:28Nilay Patel?

  I insist that the Vergecast is the flagship podcast of the company.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 2:32Nilay Patel?

  That beef, I will say, it's pointed, it's definitely pointed at like Ezra, although he refuses to acknowledge that the beef exists, so I just, I'm just going with it until someone tells me to stop. But I think your podcast is great. You guys have been, basically, you pull apart music and try to analyze it from a bunch of different trends. So just give everybody that sort of quick pitch of how you do what you do.

• 2:52Speaker 03

  Sure. So our show is all about taking the songs that are on the top 40 and trying to understand how they work and why they're so successful, and learn something about the world we live in in the process.

• 3:06Nilay Patel?

  And you attack it from the songwriting perspective and the musicology perspective, right?

• 3:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, we're really interested in how the music says something within the way it's composed, and maybe that reflects something larger in trends about culture or technology, but we always start from the music first.

• 3:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and so you guys just did an episode, actually, kind of prompted me to bring you all on. Obviously, streaming services are everywhere.

• 3:33Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 3:33Nilay Patel?

  Algorithmic playlists are everywhere, and the album is falling apart, and the forces of the universe are taking hold. And you guys just did a great episode, that songs are getting dramatically shorter over time. And I'm just, I want to start there, because it's such a, like, what did technology do to music? Like, it's such a concrete thing to be like, well, songs got, like, more than 30 seconds shorter over the past 18 years. How do you, like, begin to see those kinds of effects?

• 4:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, so one of the main trends that we're seeing in music and the streaming economy is that songs are getting shorter. From the 90s to now, the average song has decreased in time, and there's way more songs which are extremely short that we're seeing. If you look at something like Spotify, Spotify came out in 2006, but streaming revenue only took over other music revenue in 2017. There's about a 10-year lag time. And in that lag time, when finally streaming has become the dominant force of distributing music, we have seen finally changes in how people are writing songs. And one of the main things

• 4:41Speaker 04

  that has changed is, well, really, actually, how people are getting paid is affecting how songs are being written. And in the past, you used to get paid if you sold an album or a single. And we can actually see trends like that have occurred, have changed over time in previous decades. When the long-playing record came out, songs started to get longer. And the long-playing record being the LP, we were able to put more songs onto a physical device long ago. But with over a period, about 10 years, songs started to get longer, and they actually got longer all the way even further into the 1990s. Yeah, 1995, we had songs were coming in at 4 minutes and 30 seconds. These are sort of number-one

• 5:24Speaker 04

  songs on the billboard, and today, songs are down to 3 minutes and 42 seconds. And this is because of the difference in how artists are getting paid. Now, instead of getting paid by the physical sales, you're getting paid in a stream. And a stream only counts if someone listens to 30 seconds of a song. But since you're getting paid by stream now, it actually makes sense if you can have more songs streamed at a time, which means that you want to pack your album full of much shorter songs. Because if you have an album, like, I don't know, say Drake's Scorpion, which is a really long double album coming in at almost 90 minutes, he's got a ton of really short songs on there because he gets paid every single song you listen to, not whether or not you listen to the whole album.

• 6:08Nilay Patel?

  So like if you if you just like on Scorpion, I listened to the first three seconds of every track and I was like, okay, I got it. Like, does that count? Or is there a cutoff? Is it varied by service?

• 6:18Speaker 04

  Yeah. So not only are songs getting shorter, but the way that artists are introducing their songs is changing because you only get a streaming royalty if someone listens to 30 seconds of your song. So out is the era of long intros that sort of slowly gets you into the song. Today, we actually are seeing not only songs getting shorter, but there is a sort of a new song structure that we've observed that we've called the pop overture, where basically a song at the very beginning will play almost a hint of the chorus in the first five to 10 seconds so that the hook is in your ear, hoping that you'll stick around till about 30 seconds in when the full chorus eventually comes in. But yeah, only well, you have to listen to 30 seconds of the song to get paid.

• 7:02Nilay Patel?

  Wild. You know, that tracks to is movie trailers now have mini trailers before the trailer.

• 7:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. This is the sort of audio analog of that.

• 7:12Nilay Patel?

  And it's like, we're gonna give you the the quick hit of excitement and then you're gonna you're gonna wait to see it again. I just listened to your episode on Taylor Shows Me, which is, I'm just gonna say it is horrible. I noticed you were saying that she plays the chorus, like she plays the hook of the chorus and then the song starts and you very quickly get to the chorus again.

• 7:29Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly. The beginning of the song starts with a sort of pseudo chorus. It just happens for a moment, but its goal is to hook you in.

• 7:37Nilay Patel?

  And that's to keep you there for 30 seconds. So you're saying songs are getting shorter because on streaming services, the artist gets paid when you hit 30 seconds and then everything after 30 seconds is kind of like not worth it and they just want to get you into the next.

• 7:50Speaker 03

  No, there's more. There's still an incentive to listen to the whole track and that's maybe part of the shortening too, is that you don't want to risk losing someone's attention because the payoff may not be monetary, but at least on Spotify, if a listener listens to the whole track, that increases the chances of that track appearing on a larger playlist. So they do factor in on Spotify, how if someone listens to the entire track, you won't get paid more, but having a song placed onto a playlist can lead to even more clicks.

• 8:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:23Speaker 03

  So you do want someone to listen through the entirety.

• 8:25Speaker 04

  And I think it's important to note that it's not that the average is actually that much shorter today. So if the average song is three minutes and 42 seconds in 2018, songs before that, you know, four minutes, whatever, the thing that's really changing is the rapid increase in of songs under three minutes. And so there's a growth, especially in hip hop, we're seeing songs like Lil Pump's Gucci Gang comes in at two minutes and four seconds. And we're seeing many more songs. If you look at Solange's record, 14 of the 19 songs in there are under three minutes long. 10 of them are under two minutes long. And so while they are getting a lot shorter, but Nate's point is absolutely right. You want someone to get all the way through. You don't want someone skipping your song at all. So you, there's kind of

• 9:09Speaker 04

  like this healthy balance. And I don't think we're entering into an era of where songs are going to be exactly 35 seconds, because there's all sorts of forms and conventions that we like to hear. The thing is, you need to grab someone in and you need to make sure they listen to the entire thing and then get out and into the next song in the most successful way that you possibly can.

• 9:27Nilay Patel?

  You know, it's funny because Bohemian Rhapsody movie just came out, it hit streaming.

• 9:30Speaker 04

  Right.

• 9:30Nilay Patel?

  Bohemian Rhapsody, the single reappears on the charts, right? Like, and you see the Elton John movie is going to come out. I bet a bunch of Elton John songs are going to hit the charts again. Do you see new music that has a sort of operatic scope still appearing and still finding success in niches? Or is it, is this a consistent trend across genre?

• 9:48Speaker 03

  It's a great question. You know, I think the answer is that we're going to see more of everything, frankly. When, in terms of the, the top 40, maybe we'll see this, this, you know, the great shortening, call it or something. But in terms of, you know, other genres of music and other artists, the fact is there's more limitless possibility than there ever has been before. As Charlie pointed out earlier, there's less technological limitations than we've ever had. You're not bound by the 40 minute limit of a vinyl record. If you want, you could create a longer opera than anything, you know, The Who or The Queen ever recorded. You could have a 24 hour opera if you have enough, you know, megabytes to,

• 10:30Speaker 03

  to do it. So in a way, more generally, I think we have no idea what's coming down the pike in terms of musical creativity. On the top 40 pop charts due to streaming. We can identify very specific trends.

• 10:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, I would point out, when you think about operatic things, I think the most operatic piece we've had, maybe more in form than in style, would be Travis Scott's Sicko Mode, which was the biggest song of last summer. And like Bohemian Rhapsody, has sort of three, I think that song has three distinct, entirely sort of different parts that all sort of blend together and become this larger opus of a piece. And Sicko Mode comes in at over five minutes. It was performed at the Super Bowl. It was one of the most successful songs. And so you would say, well, this is countering that trend. However, when it's played on the radio, they make a radio edit and it's in around three minutes and 30 seconds-ish, right? You still have to conform to a lot of these standards in order to get on the right playlist,

• 11:27Speaker 04

  be heard on radio and so on.

• 11:29Nilay Patel?

  So what I'm trying to, I think we just keep seeing is that TikTok is driving hits. And I think there's an article in Bloomberg a couple of days ago that the music labels want to renegotiate their deals with TikTok because they see it. Is that driving some of these changes? That you just want to make a loop that's going to work in one of these extremely short TikTok videos?

• 11:50Speaker 03

  It's so hard to say if TikTok is responding to changes in the music industry or the music industry is responding to changes in TikTok. I don't know if I can answer that, but certainly what this, the fact that songs, you know, take again, Lil Nas X's Old Town Road. That is a song that became viral on TikTok and then leaped onto the Billboard charts. I mean, it's currently number one. That is, that reality is so new. And I think we will see artists and labels trying to negotiate that. And yeah, maybe one of the ways in which you do is to shorten your songs. But I don't know, I can't, I don't know if we can say that definitively. It's almost too new to make a judgment.

• 12:34Speaker 04

  But what I think we can definitely say is that while the curatorial power of the streaming platforms is strong, there are more access points to be heard. And as new platforms emerge as popular in culture, as Nate has said, this music is so much more interactive and multimedia than ever before that when a TikTok song is doing well, that actually does, a lot of social media platforms now actually do affect the charts. And so there is a relationship between social media and what songs are being heard.

• 13:09Nilay Patel?

  As you guys are out there, you know, you're songwriters, you talk to other songwriters. I'm always curious how much the algorithm and the sort of constraints of distribution affect the creative process. So by way of example, you know, we make a lot of YouTube videos. We know a lot of YouTubers. Every YouTuber will, will talk about the algorithm as though it is an oracle that must be like prayed to, right? And like, if you want to get a YouTuber going, you know, just ask her about like what a thumbnail should look like. And like, that's, that's a full day of conversation. Do you think that's happening in sort of the world of commercial music where there are these pressures to make the song shorter for streaming? Or adopt the format that's going to work on, on pop radio?

• 13:52Nilay Patel?

  Or is it a more, I don't know, like diffuse sort of force on the entire market for songs?

• 13:57Speaker 04

  No, we don't want to speak for all of music, right? I think to Nate's point, there are plenty of artists that are thinking about new structures, new forms. So when we're talking about top 40 songwriting and the sort of industry behind it, I've been hearing from our sources, this is absolutely a conversation which is happening in the room. So typically, right, a song, yeah, songwriting sessions often in, you know, again, this, we're talking top 40 pop music. You're going to have potentially five, 10 songwriters and producers all together in a room. Sometimes fewer, but frequently people are asking now, how do we make our song shorter? What do we cut? And we were observing this as well, like just as a great example,

• 14:37Speaker 04

  Benny Blanco is an incredibly successful songwriter who has launched into his own career now as, as a front person. His song that he with Khalid and Halsey. And Halsey. Eastside. Yes, thank you, Nate. You got it. They actually just kind of drop the final chorus. And usually a song's going to have verse, chorus, verse, chorus, maybe a bridge, and then two choruses at the end. At the end of the song, they kind of just sort of fade the chorus out into an outro. And it, it seems as though one of the reasons why you might want to do that is to chop off 30 seconds at the end of a song. So not only are we hearing this happening from our sources, happening in song rooms, but we're actually Seeing it happening on the charts as well.

• 15:17Nilay Patel?

  Well, you know, I love a good bridge, but somebody should have told Taylor Swift to cut that bridge from me.

• 15:21Speaker 04

  Oh, my gosh, yeah, we agree that the bridge of me is perhaps one of the worst, most saccharine bridges ever written.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  You're gonna have the Swifties coming after you, Neil.

• 15:32Nilay Patel?

  I know.

• 15:32Speaker 04

  Watch out.

• 15:33Nilay Patel?

  Well, for the audience, before we started recording, I said, when I briefly worked at Vox.com as a managing editor, I wrote a piece, and this kind of gets into the next thing I want to talk about, which is just sort of how artists are approaching these services and how they're thinking about distribution. But I wrote a piece for Vox.com in like 2014, I think, with the title, Taylor Swift Doesn't Understand Supply and Demand, which I felt was the most Vox.com thing I could possibly produce. But that was at the time when she was on a crusade against Spotify. She wanted people to pay her for albums. She wrote this entire thing, and basically, her argument was, like, art is scarce, so it should be valuable, which is the foundation of all economic theory. But it turns out it isn't, right?

• 16:16Nilay Patel?

  I mean, now she's on Spotify, like, she's making vertical videos on Spotify that have clues to what her next album's gonna be like. She's fully participating in the streaming economy. And that seems like, beyond just song length, beyond just who gets paid how, it's had a much more dramatic impact on the culture of songwriting and who gets access to it than anything else. I'm curious how you guys are seeing that play out as well.

• 16:42Speaker 04

  Well, you're absolutely right. As I pointed out at the beginning, this is not so much about new technology, right? Digital streaming services have been around for over a decade. It's about market power. And right now, from my latest data, I think it's still in 2018, so I'm sure things are moving plenty, but Spotify and Apple control over 50% of the market. When you throw in Amazon, you have 2/3 of the streaming market share. And that means a very small number of distributors who have limited screen real estate are acting as curators about what is and what isn't heard. And that does, I think, maybe counter to some early predictions about what is gonna happen to mainstream music. We're seeing oftentimes a consolidation of

• 17:27Speaker 04

  sounds because there are just a very small handful of people who are making the most popular playlists. That doesn't mean there aren't more access points into music, but when you finally get to the listening device, you're no longer walking through aisles and aisles and aisles of music to discover, hey, what, what, what's the thing I want to buy? You're looking at a screen that might fit six albums on your, on your mobile phone or six playlists, right? And those are the things that people are more, more likely to click. And so that market power, I think, is actually affecting what is heard, what becomes popular and what people try to reproduce and copy.

• 17:58Nilay Patel?

  We're going to take a quick break for an ad. We'll be right back.

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• 19:20Nilay Patel?

  All right, we're back with Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan from Switched on Pop.

• 19:26Nilay Patel?

  You know, it's interesting because, you know, Apple for a minute was all about exclusives. Right? I mean, that's, that's, that seemed to be their, their first shot out of the gate. Here's how we're going to get people to come to our platform. Title is all about exclusives.

• 19:39Speaker 03

  Right.

• 19:39Nilay Patel?

  It's the labels, from what I understand, that said, no, actually, we hate this. Right? We, we're not interested in putting an album here and an album there and having our listeners churn from service to service. Like, we're, we're done with this. I think every platform would love to still have exclusives, but it seems like that is largely gone. Right? And now it comes down to, we, we have the top performing playlists. We have, you know, Rap Caviar is going to make or break you.

• 20:03Speaker 03

  Right.

• 20:03Nilay Patel?

  Do you see that people who run those playlists as being as influential as some of the people that, I was just at a music conference and, you know, the, the person who runs Apple's various playlists, like, mobbed everywhere he went.

• 20:16Nilay Patel?

  That strikes me as being a very old model, right? Like, here's a famous DJ from LA and we're, we're just going to go after them. Do you see that happening as much in how music is marketed and created?

• 20:25Speaker 03

  I do, and I, I think you, you know, hats off as a historian, I think you, you nailed it. Um, there's, there's nothing new about this. The, the form is new, but the, the gatekeeping remains, whether in, back in the day, it was a DJ, uh, or later, uh, you know, a, a certain airplay format. Today, it's a Spotify playlist, but as an artist, you're still sort of beholden to, uh, to get on that playlist. And as we were saying earlier, maybe to even construct and market your music specifically in order to, to make it on to one of these playlists.

• 21:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, when, when, when I talk to industry contacts, marketers are constantly curious at labels about how they can get in contact with those couple of people that are, that are controlling what is and what isn't being heard. Having those relationships can be one of the most important things in, in, in having a song go number one today, uh, or have a new artist be discovered. It's, uh, definitely an essential part of any label strategy is having a very strong playlisting strategy and, uh, strong industry contacts.

• 21:30Nilay Patel?

  Wait, on, on, what's a playlisting strategy?

• 21:33Speaker 04

  So this is also fascinating.

• 21:35Nilay Patel?

  I feel like I asked a dumb question with a really hard answer.

• 21:37Speaker 04

  Playlisting, I think, is actually an even bigger force than some folks are recognizing. To answer your question first, playlisting strategy is basically how do we make sure the song that we are putting out will fit within a set of popular playlists today, right? So if there's a playlist that is all about soca music, you know, Diplo's gonna make sure that his new song sort of is gonna, and I don't mean to speak for Diplo, this is very hypothetical, but you know, him and his label are gonna think about how do we make sure to get on that playlist because millions of people are listening to it every day. But this is also to the larger point, when you ask like, what is a playlisting strategy?

• 22:16Speaker 04

  Playlists are having, I think, a untold power upon our listening and actually changing our behavior around how we think about consuming music. We just reported a piece where we've seen that there's this rise of a new form of playlisting, which we call contextual based playlists, rather than your typical genre based playlist. So rather than listening to an R and B playlist now, instead, we might be listening, we might be listening to a playlist, which is Pump Up in the Morning. And a Pump Up in the Morning playlist might include music across genres, across history, and have all sorts of aesthetic tastes that are more about its relationship to us getting excited in the morning than to any other sort of qualities in music.

• 23:01Speaker 04

  And we've seen that this is actually potentially affecting how people are thinking about genre and their albums, feeling much more freewheeling to put together an album composed of many, many, many different genres that perhaps are gonna fit well in a context playlist ecosystem, rather than a genre based playlist ecosystem. It's complicated, man.

• 23:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it seems really, it does seem really complicated, but I don't know, like Lizzo's new record is all over the place, right? Like, it's genre optional, right? You can put it anywhere you want. And you're saying it's more likely to be extremely reductive. You're saying it's a more likely. That you would construct an album knowing that consumers are gonna consume it on playlists, as opposed to listening to a whole album start to finish.

• 23:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, and we don't mean to speak for Lizzo, but certainly, whether intentional or not, it seems representative of this trend away from, yeah, I'm gonna make, this is an R&B album, or this is a rock album, or this is a hip-hop album. And, and we are such fans of her-

• 24:02Speaker 04

  Huge.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  -her latest release, 'Cause I Love You, but it's fascinating to listen to. Yeah, it does hop all around, from bongra to neo-soul to hip-hop to R&B. I mean, it's fascinating, and that may be strategic, or at least a fortunate coincidence that will allow her to be placed on all these different themed playlists, rather than just landing herself in one, you know, perhaps narrow genre.

• 24:28Speaker 04

  Well, and also, Nate, when you, when you talk about that, I think part of what drives Lizzo, the success of Lizzo's album, is Lizzo, right? The most important factor is the message that she's selling, and she is such a consistent person in her story of self-love, feminist message, sex positivity. That comes across in her social media, it comes across in her music videos, and it comes across in every one of her songs. She's the consistent force, and in many ways, I sort of see this as a confluence with media behavior trends in social media, as much, are sort of being reflected back in how music is being constructed. In many ways, the message and the person is more important than the aesthetic qualities

• 25:13Speaker 04

  that are happening behind it. Those can shift and change, as long as the brand identity is consistent. And I don't, I don't say that crassly, because I think, especially in Lizzo's example, there is a, there's a real consistency and strong artistic statement and thought behind it, but it is reflecting larger trends culturally, not just within music, and not just within streaming.

• 25:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, that's the the artist themselves is the scarce resource, right? And so

• 25:37Speaker 03

  That's exactly right. Yeah.

• 25:39Nilay Patel?

  So you trust them to take you wherever they're gonna go. Instead of saying, oh, I'm a I'm a rock music fan or a hip hop fan. And I'm just gonna blindly listen to whatever's categorized as this thing. That, to me, is empowering, right? It empowers a certain class of artists to take risks. It also seems like the barrier to get that big is is huge, is enormous. And you have to you have to get there somehow. So what are some ways you're seeing musicians kind of use their new tools to to to make it there? Because that seems harder than ever, especially with so much competition.

• 26:12Speaker 03

  It is, it is. And we're seeing, you know, there was this big piece in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago showing that there's more inequality within the music industry than there's ever been, which is, I think, definitely a manifestation of what you're talking about. As Charlie was just saying, it's like the the reality as a musician, for better or worse, is that your music is just one part of your identity as an artist. And and that's and that's another big change that we're seeing, which is very much related to the streaming economy. You know, it used to be like, this is my record and that is everything. That's what I'm selling and that's that's my whole raison d'etre. And now the record is just one part of this larger, right, artist brand, which may, you know, take our our friend Taylor Swift.

• 26:55Speaker 03

  You know, she is is brilliant at this. She's releasing music, but she's also releasing a video, which in turn sort of indexes to her private life, which might be in turn sort of part of a partnership she's doing with a corporation, which in turn maybe it's all this this web of cross promotion. And but it's all centered in that, her identity and her artist brand. And that is, as you said, the the scarce resource there.

• 27:21Speaker 04

  One of the factors that is making it even more competitive is that not only are the costs of distributing music declining, but the costs of production and the access to producing high quality, radio-ready music are also radically declining. Which is to say, you can make a hit radio, you can make a hit song in your bedroom. Today, and we have proof of this. Billie Eilish's record, one of the, I think it's still number one. If it's not, it was last week. Billie Eilish is a 17 year old singer, dancer, songwriter from Los Angeles. And she and her brother Phineas produce all of their music in their home bedrooms where they grew up.

• 28:04Speaker 04

  They're using consume, maybe you could say maybe prosumer grade, uh, equipment. I've seen it myself. They're using, uh, equipment from tech companies and music software companies. That over the last few years have been raising millions of dollars in venture capital to build out an ecosystem. Where people can produce amazing quality music in their bedroom. And she's not the only one. We can look at like Lil Nas X's, uh, Old Town Road. That was distributed by, uh, he bought that beat from someone else who made that beat on a, uh, on, on a service called, uh, Beat Stars for $29. And someone made that beat probably in their home studio.

• 28:43Speaker 04

  Which is to say, there's this entire ecosystem of people with great access to amazing music making tools. And there's just greater amount of competition for good music making. Again, to the good side of this though, is that, uh, it's more competitive, which means I think more and more, for me anyways, artistry matters more than, can you just do the craft? What do you have to say is, is privileged when anybody can make anything and distribute it anywhere. And of course, when I say anybody, you know, it does cost a couple of thousand dollars to get that equipment. So there, there still are barriers to entry, but you don't know, you no longer need a multimillion dollar studio.

• 29:19Nilay Patel?

  So you can make really high quality music, you know, the cost of production is falling. I mean, yes, a few thousand dollars is a lot, but you know, when I wanted to start a band in high school, that was the cost to like buy, you know, two guitars, some amps, a drum kit, a microphone, and then beg someone to show up. Like, right? Like, that, that, that cost is still high, but it's not. It's not so high that it's insurmountable for an enormous number of people.

• 29:42Speaker 04

  Well, it also, it also just briefly, it's like, it basically you need a laptop. So if you already have a laptop, you're like, you're halfway there.

• 29:49Nilay Patel?

  But is it changing how things are sounding? Like, that, to me is, you know, the endless recording industry complaint. You know, there's always some grizzled engineer who's like, records used to be really quiet, man. They used to have dynamics and now everything is super loud. Is anything beyond that changing? Or, you know, we were talking about LPs before. Obviously to master to an LP, you had physical constraints of how big the groove in a record could be. Those are seemingly gone. Is technology changing the sound as you guys are tracking the charts? Is the sound of music changing? That's, I just said the sound of music. Let me say some, anything else.

• 30:23Speaker 03

  The hills are alive.

• 30:26Nilay Patel?

  But as you guys are tracking the charts, like, are, is the actual sound changing?

• 30:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. As a historian, I'll, I'll just say like, that's always been the case. So let's be clear when we're talking about sound. I think for Charlie and I, the biggest change we can see in terms of the, the sound of music as it's been affected by streaming is in the realm of structure and form. And the way that songs lay themselves out in terms of this verse, chorus, et cetera. Certainly the, the, the timbers, that is like the, the tones that you hear in a sound are changing and the lyrical content of a song is, are changing. But those are things that always change through history as we invent new instruments and new, you know, new ways of thinking about the world.

• 31:14Speaker 03

  So in some ways that's changing, but it's business as usual. What's really, I mean, from our sort of music theoretical perspective, and, and this is more subtle too. But what's, but the fact that the verse chorus form, which has like been the dominant force in popular music for half a century now, it's finally starting to show signs of change. That's like super interesting. And that's maybe for us, one of the biggest, but again, maybe harder to hear influences of this new streaming economy.

• 31:43Speaker 04

  You're saying where timbers and tones like guitars become popular, whatever, 808 kick drums become popular, these things kind of move quickly, whereas song structure, those trends are much longer lasting and last decades. And we're seeing a destabilizing of that trend, which is different than just an instrumental trend.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 32:04Nilay Patel?

  I guess what I'm getting at is, A, you just have more headroom on a digital track than something that you're mastering to a cassette. You know, if you're targeting title, you're technically streaming in like higher quality than a low res, sort of like OGG on the Spotify basic tier. Are those things having the kind of impact that previous format shifts had? Right? Like the format shift from LP to CD had an impact on what kinds of sounds you could ship?

• 32:32Speaker 04

  I think the thing that's changing how music is being mixed today has less to do with the device that it's being recorded to and more to do with the device that it's being listened from. So the majority of people today are going to be listening over earbuds or over a laptop or even just on their iPhone on speaker. And when you do that, of course, you're losing, without a large subwoofer, you don't have those bass sounds. And so the way that records are getting mixed today tries to emphasize the highest range tones in the bass end so that it translates decently over a laptop. A lot of music I've made where I'm like, I want to get something really thick and bassy and awesome. And I play it

• 33:16Speaker 04

  back on my computer. I actually can't hear the bass whatsoever because I haven't mixed it properly. So I think that is probably driving the sound of music more than anything. Whereas, you know, honestly, the loudness wars is something that is, I find kind of meh, kind of boring. Like, I like music which is dynamic, but whether it's being mixed to negative 1 dB or negative 12 dB doesn't really matter to me. And each of these platforms do have different requirements at what decibel level the song should be mixed to. But people are, you know, turning up and down their stereo dial anyway.

• 33:48Speaker 03

  It's also interesting now that you're absolutely right. There's kind of a higher threshold for than there's ever been in terms of what you can record. And yet, at the same time, there's seems to be almost less of a concern than ever for audio quality and fidelity. And that's on both ends. You know, we were talking about Billie Eilish, like so much of her new record is composed of sounds recorded on an iPhone, an iPhone microphone, and then those are just go right on to the record. So that's

• 34:17Speaker 04

  processed and

• 34:18Speaker 03

  sure, but like, that's like a very low quality recording. We were talking about Lil Nas X, you know, when, when DJs first played that song, they had to scrub it from YouTube because there was no existing MP3 of it. So it's like, we live in, we have the possibility for like perfect sound forever. But we tend to live in a reality of a, of a really wide spectrum of fidelity.

• 34:43Speaker 04

  And speed of distribution is obviously driving that trend. Like we've got, we got to get something out. We got to consume something. It's got to work over a 4G network and be able to be downloaded quickly. And so that there's no lag time on Spotify when you listen to it. But still, when people are recording with prosumer level gear in their homes with, you know, even a kind of setup like we have here, you can get very high fidelity sounds. It's just all a matter of then how does it get mixed and then put out into the world? I don't have many gripes about whether we're listening to decent quality MP3s or high end flack files. Again, here, I think the majority of us aren't going to be hearing the difference. The main difference is in the way that records are being mixed probably has to do with what they're being listened,

• 35:24Speaker 04

  how they're being listened to. But Nate's point is absolutely correct. There is such a large variety of kinds of sounds that are ending up on records because they're interesting. It's really fascinating that you can, I know that there was a, a, a high hat sound that was put on Billie Eilish's record that was produced on an iPhone that was, I think originally the clicking of a stoplight in Australia. And they thought that was cool. Let's, uh, let's mix that into the thing.

• 35:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm always jealous of people who have that brain. Because, you know, everybody does it, right? Everyone's like, "That's a cool sound." Like, "I can hear a little beat." And then, you know, one in a million people records it, remembers that they recorded it, and has the talent to put it into a song. And I'm always the most jealous of those folks who can recontextualize something cool they heard a long way away.

• 36:11Speaker 04

  Part of it is driven by the need to sound different. When the access to tools and the same synthesizers is so ubiquitous, you don't want to use the same presets that everybody else is using. And so, there's actually, in songwriting, especially in electronic music, there's an entire trend of people using found sound and Foley sound as a way of trying to distinguish their art. Maggie Rogers, who has been very successful and had some great hits, she's known for putting in really strange, natural sounds. For example, will use like the sound of a tree falling, and then layer that into a kick drum. And then all of a sudden, when you hear her music, there's just this very subtle audio difference, so that it doesn't sound like everybody else's, who are all using the same samples.

• 36:53Nilay Patel?

  All right, well, I've held you guys for way over what I promised. So, thank you for bearing with me. But, you know, if people are gonna switch off podcasts, and they're gonna go listen to music right now, give a song that they can listen to, and like a thing to pull out from that song. And then, obviously, they should listen to Switch on Pop for more, but give people like a song in the top 100 right now that's like useful to listen to, that kind of illustrates these themes.

• 37:14Speaker 03

  So, I think a great example is the song that, as of this recording, is currently number four on the pop charts. That's "Sucker" by the Jonas Brothers. And yes, we have an episode about that, that you can listen to.

• 37:27Nilay Patel?

  Great, perfect plug.

• 37:59Speaker 03

  Something you'll notice the second that song starts that really dovetails with our conversation, it goes right into the song. Like, there is no introduction, there is no preamble. It is just like, it grabs you by the collar from the first second and kind of says, "Hey, listen." And ideally, like, listen for at least 30 seconds and ideally, like, listen to the whole thing. But it's like, you can feel that kind of urgency, like, "Hey, over here, listen to me." So, right, so the second you hit play, you are into that song. And I, I don't know, I don't know about you, Charlie, but I think it's pretty effective. I think it's a really hooky, catchy song.

• 38:39Speaker 04

  Absolutely. I mean, I also just think, like, I just, I hadn't looked at the billboard in a little while. I just pulled it up. And like, of the top 10 songs, I think we've covered probably seven of them recently. And they're bizarre. Like, number one is "Old Town Road," a country trap song. And then "Me" by Taylor Swift, which is like a bubblegum pop song. And then we've got a bunch of Post Malone, where it's, again, like, some country folk music happening with hip-hop, Jonas Brothers rock music. There seems to be like this disintegration of what's happening generically. Genre is just, it's so kind of strange and things blurring right now. And so I think, as you're listening to the charts, you might start to hear those intersections that are going on. And if you have questions or curiosities, or feel like you're completely lost in the world of music,

• 39:21Speaker 04

  we're trying to hold your hand so that you are caught up and feel like you really know what's going on.

• 39:27Nilay Patel?

  So you're not gonna pick a track, is what I'm getting from you, Charlie?

• 39:30Speaker 04

  One song, my favorite song right now, is "Bad Guy" by Billie Eilish.

• 39:52Speaker 06

  Duh.

• 40:04Speaker 04

  It's so much fun. She whisper sings in this way that kind of like pulls you in. So you're listening really closely and then all of a sudden there's this wild, intense, heavy drop, like this monstrous sound that happens and kind of it almost feels like a jump scare from a horror film. It's really fun. So Bad Guy by Billie Eilish is my favorite song in the top 10 right now.

• 40:23Nilay Patel?

  So you guys are studying the charts. Each of you give me some bold prediction about what's coming next from what you're seeing happening now.

• 40:31Speaker 03

  Ooh. I think we're gonna hear a sub two-minute song on the top 10 in the next, yeah, in the next couple of years.

• 40:39Speaker 04

  Have we not already?

• 40:40Speaker 03

  I mean, there was one in the past, but it was essentially like a viral YouTube video that made it onto the Billboard charts. So I don't know if that totally counts. I'm talking like a fully-fledged like banger.

• 40:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:51Speaker 03

  That is a minute and 30 seconds.

• 40:54Speaker 04

  I've been reporting this story about BeatStars, which is the platform that Lil Nas X track came out of. And since there are more points of access into music, BeatStars being one of them, I'm able to sort of observe maybe some genre trends which are becoming popular, but maybe haven't quite made it on the Billboard. And one of the things that I'm hearing a ton of is lo-fi, old-school hip-hop. I think we're gonna hear a return to that sort of a sound. It's gonna be updated, but it's a lot of people intentionally degrading the sound quality of their recording to sound wobbly, on tape, a little drunk. It's a really fun sound, and I think we're gonna hear more of that coming up in the next year.

• 41:34Nilay Patel?

  Anybody wants to listen to more? Charlie, Nate, you guys host Switched on Pop, which I'm assuming is available on all the streaming services. You should listen to it. You should listen to it for longer than 30 seconds. That's actually not how podcasting works, but it's still really funny. Anything else anybody should know before we take off?

• 41:51Speaker 03

  We come out every week on Tuesday and we're always looking for ideas. So, you know, reach out to us. Anything we're missing, we will cover.

• 42:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, at Switched on Pop everywhere. You can find it, anybody on social media.

• 42:03Nilay Patel?

  I love it. So check out Switched on Pop. Thank you, Charlie and Nate. That's it for the Verchass. We'll see you next week. All right. Thanks to Charlie and Nate. Check out their show, Vox Switched on Pop. It is, it is really good. It's just a fun listen. Also, you can check out Why'd You Push That Button? It's back. It's on a roll. They're coming out with their third episode of the season this week. It's about anonymous accounts. Ashley and Caitlin talk to an anonymous woman who has an anonymous account on Instagram dedicated to smushing bread on her face. That's just what the copy says. I think that's true. I think they actually did do that. That's, that's crazy. They also talk to a guy who had an anonymous account made specifically to troll him, which is basically my lived experience. Anyway, Why'd You Push That Button is incredible this season. Check it out. Subscribe to it anywhere that you listen to podcasts. You can also subscribe to the Vergecast free on your favorite podcast

• 42:48Nilay Patel?

  app. Just hit the link in the show notes. And please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Anyway, I'm at Reckless on Twitter. Let me know who you want me to interview next. We're having a good time with these. We'll be back on Friday with Dieter and Paul to discuss the week in tech. Back on Tuesday with the interview show and on and on it goes. See you later.

• 43:12Speaker 01

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