[ad_1]
Glenn McDonald is one of the masterminds behind Spotify.
photo: Samuel Robinson
You may not have heard of music maestro Glenn McDonald, but you’re certainly familiar with the work of this “data alchemist.”
Every year at the end of November, music streaming giant Spotify evaluates a ton of listening data and sends users a snapshot of their habits called “Spotify Wrapped.” It pulls together our favorite artists, tracks, and genres, counting the time we listened, and the new music we learned in the process. Increasingly personalized playlists and micro-genres excite users They present their Wrapped results online.
McDonald, Spotify’s former “data alchemist,” is one of the people behind it all.
“I’m involved in record banning almost every year,” he told RNZ over a Zoom call on Thursday while en route to the Global Music Summit at Roundhead Studios in Auckland.
“Most years, I do these kinds of stories myself. Last year, I did a story called ‘Your Dark Side,’ and you get a tarot card. The year before, there was a story called ‘Your Listening Personality,’ and I did that, too. I do something like this almost every year, playlists, stories, analysis… just not the horoscope part.”
Hired by the streaming giant 12 years ago and given the keys to crunching a mountain of listening data, MacDonald ran experiments, built prototypes, developed algorithms and worked with engineers to see what he could do with it.
In 2018, he created Every Noise at Once, an encyclopedia covering all music genres on the platform. Although it is not an official Spotify feature, users use it to discover new music.
Spotify’s former data alchemist Glenn McDonald is one of the masterminds behind Spotify Wrapped.
photo: Spotify
Every genre of music on Spotify has a name—from discofox and deeptropic house, to aarhus indie, weirdcore, and Balkan folk metal. As of December 2023, when McDonald was laid off from 1,500 Spotify employees, there were more than 6,200 genres to explore—and none of them were made-up unless absolutely necessary. Billboards, There are 56 reggae, 202 folk and 230 hip-hop tracks on Spotify.
“These genres are things in the world, and most of them have names. One of the interesting things about Spotify, which has 600 million users listing these genres, is that you can sometimes find emerging communities almost before people are fully aware that these genres are emerging, and sometimes before they’ve chosen a name for themselves.
“Usually things have funny names because no one has given them a name, and if I make them up, maybe people will find them.”
Some of the songs MacDonald has written include “laboratorio,” or “music that sounds like it was made in a lab,” and “escape room,” “a trap-pop dance crossover,” the latter of which caught the attention of music lovers after appearing on the 2020 Wrapped playlist.
MacDonald has made a career out of extracting insights from reams of music data — it all came naturally to him. He has always loved music and has spent many years of his life designing data software. He also wrote a music review column for 10 years.
Today, he is a technology strategist and recently wrote a book, You haven’t heard your favorite song yet: How streaming is changing music.
Since its launch in 2008, Spotify has changed the way we listen to, collect, share and catalogue music. However, it has also been criticized over the years, mainly in terms of artist compensation.
Unlike physical sales or downloads of CDs or records, Spotify pays royalties based on an artist’s “market share,” which is the number of streams of an artist’s songs as a percentage of the total number of songs on the service, whereas physical sales or downloads of CDs or records pays royalties based on an artist’s “market share,” which is the number of streams of an artist’s songs as a percentage of the total number of songs on the service. Taylor Swift and Thom Yorke There were criticisms of the policy, and at one point their music was even pulled from Spotify.
MacDonald said streaming revenue has been difficult for artists, but he believes the technology has saved the music industry.
“The good news is that there are no technical barriers for aspiring, unknown artists to create DrakeBut the fact is that society and Attention Economy Compared to 1980, the barriers have not changed much.
“If you’re not on a major label, your songs might not be in movies, they might not be on playlists, they might not be known to a lot of people, it’s just a numbers game.
“Also, in many ways, the economics of streaming are better; you don’t have to convince people to buy very expensive CDs (which are very expensive in terms of the amount of money people might spend on music in a year), and you can capture people’s attention through playlists.”
Glenn McDonald speaks at the Global Music Summit at Roundhead Studios in Auckland on Thursday 29 August.
[ad_2]
Source link
