Here Today & Gone Tomorrow: Longevity in The Streaming Era
I’m drowning in music.
It feels like over the last few years, I’ve struggled to keep up with what’s new and current before the next big project drops. I’ve even made it a point to continue to document new music on Fridays and create a playlist every Friday but I haven’t updated it in months because I just haven’t had the time to listen to absolutely everything, and I’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to listening to music. And even with all this music releasing on such a rapid basis, almost none of it seems to last in my rotation at the end of the year.
Think about it, how many times have you gone back to a not-so-old playlist that you might’ve made last year and been reminded of a bunch of songs you haven’t heard/listened to in awhile. In this streaming era, the only thing briefer than a new song’s lifespan, is it’s actual length. Songs are tailored to be played and replayed so the artist can earn .000001 of a dollar that much faster. Shorter songs mean more money, shorter projects incite more replay value. At least, in the shorter term.
In recent months, we’ve seen both DONDA and CLB releases within the same week, two 20+ track albums that, to be honest, I still haven’t finished. With how brief projects are now, I think I’ve been conditioned to expect them to be of a certain length (13 - 15 tracks, 45-50 minutes) and to be of a certain caliber. Both DONDA and CLB were what I expected from their respective artists. If you love Drake, you got another Drake album. If you love Kanye post 2016, you got another one of those albums. I personally don’t fall into either of those categories, but to each his/her own.
(For the record, I remember more songs from CLB than I do on DONDA. So do what you will with that).
“Only the real music lasts. All that other bullsh*t is here today, and gone tomorrow”
That quote from Drake’s Pound Cake sample has stuck with me longer than the majority of his music post WATTBA (yes, I know y’all aren’t gonna like that). It’s a real thing. Even if I like a song and replay it to death within the first month of its release, once another song that may or may not give me that same feeling comes along, it’s over for it.
For example, I really like Biology 101 on Pierre Bourne’s TLOP5, and for some reason it completely fell out of my rotation. It’s not because I like the song any less, I actually just queued it up so I could make sure I was talking about the right song. When I think about it, not long after this project dropped I got into Tony Shhnow thanks to a blend playlist I have with my dawg Miles, and heard “On Me” for the first time. On Me became the song I started running when I wanted to feel a certain way, and in the long run, there isn’t anything that memorable about Biology 101 that’d make me want to hear it specifically. Biology 101 is only 30 seconds longer, but spends that time transitioning into YNS.
So what’s the point, E? What’re you trying to prove?
I think that the streaming era is killing the longevity of music. The emphasis on shorter tracks to increase replay value is killing the memorability of the melodies. Then when you factor in that many artists drop multiple projects in a year of them doing the same thing...you get my meaning.
Even my favorite rapper, Curren$y, can fall into this trap sometimes. He’ll drop a bunch of projects in a year, and while none of them are bad quality, not all of them elicit revisits from me later in the year. He will, however, drop that project every year that makes waves for sure. Last year, we were lucky enough to get two with Harry Fraud (The Outrunners and The Director’s Cut). Though, to be fair, he’s been dropping this frequently since I was in high school. I think that he just recently dropped that project for this year, Still Stoned on Ocean.
I’m still going to do the LowPreaux Awards at the end of this year, but here are a few projects that dropped in 2021 that haven’t fallen off my radar (in no particular order):
The Alpha Jerk x Key! & Tony Seltzer
Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Momma x Topaz Jones
The House is Burning x Isaiah Rashad
Call Me If You Get Lost x Tyler the Creator
Guilty Gear Strive Soundtrack x Arc System Works
Might Delete Later x Chris Crack
Untourable Album x Men I Trust
Bo Jackson x Boldy James & The Alchemist
Gold-Diggers Sound x Leon Bridges
The Asymptotical World EP x Yves Tumor
Gold Mouf x Lute (Cheating cause I’m just hearing this for the first time and it triggered this article)
I’m not saying these are the only projects that I like this year, that’d be wholly untrue. But if I’m talking about my current rotation of albums I listen to from top to bottom, these are the first ones that come to mind. I think that all of the albums and EPs mentioned above break the mold in ways that truly make them all memorable. If you see anything you’re unfamiliar with, give ‘em a listen. If you disagree with any, feel free to let me know. I’d definitely be down to talk about it.
In this streaming era it’s easy to feel like I’m drowning in music, and I can’t even remember what I’m drowning in sometimes.
-E.
Shout out to that Groovy Gertrude dude on twitter for inspiring this article and giving feedback after I finished.