How Many Streams...

 Famed record producer Jim Dickinson who played with the Rolling Stones, his sons formed the band The North Mississippi All-stars had a metaphor for the music business. He said it's a long tube of money traveling overhead through the sky. With much difficulty you claw your way up into it where it's a dirty, crowded, hot and degrading effort to stay there and get the money. Folk singer Otis Gibbs, I have tickets to see Otis next month, added to this by saying that this tube of money has leaks. A DIY guy like Otis sets buckets under these leaks and makes a living by going around checking his buckets and therefore avoids the nasty business of getting in the tube and staying there. 

There was recently an article in the New Yorker Magazine about a famous record executive Lucian Grainge and the future of AI in the music industry. All that was interesting in it's own right but the article included this statistic from the research company Luminate. In 2023 there were 184 million tracks available on various streaming platforms. 86.2 % received fewer than a thousands plays. 24.8% or about 45 million songs received zero plays. There are 120,000 new tracks uploaded each day and many of these are not music at all but are "functional music" for a task such as meditating or exercising and are titled "Baby White Noise" and "Rain on Windshield." It's estimated they get 15 billion streams a month. A vacuum sound recently hit #7 on the Swiss Music Charts. The article pointed out that AI was likely to increase all this and there are agreements being signed so that artists cam make AI "functional" versions of their songs. 

I haven't listened to any of this. What I have done is analyze my own streaming. My YouTube "Reggae on Tuba Man" has had 12 plays. That puts me somewhere under the 86% but well above the 24% that got a big fat zero. 

My best upload of all time has 18,000 plays. "I am the Bread of Life" a classic Catholic favorite of which  this video was a rehearsal for Karl Dutt's funeral. Of course the comments are a bit mixed ranging from "the best version I have heard" to "you turned a classic hymn into a cheap dancehall number" so you mileage various with publication. Actually I was trying to make the tuba thing into a reggae dancehall number but but at least they are talking about me. 

My facebook uploads generally get 25 to 400 views and I didn't bother to count my plays on soundcloud or bandcamp but I am getting what I wanted. People, some my friends and some strangers listen to my music and I am not getting dirty, hot or degraded. Those buckets are not catching any drips from the big tube but my cigar box guitar building bucket caught a pretty steady stream a few years ago. 

If you are going to make something, make it. Stats show it will be better than 24% of what is out there but might not get as many plays as "A Dog, Snoring." That's a cultural thing it's not about you. .