I happen to know someone in the music industry. Not huge, but you might have seen them on MTV and you've probably heard their hits.
They say modern songs get written by a huge group of songwriters in hotels. Individual words and phrases will earn credits. They go through the list of everything floating in the songwriters' heads and whittle it down on a huge whiteboard and anything put up there and put into the song gets credited. I think the phrase they used to describe it was "Shit Smoothie Song Writing."
The person I know hates this and doesn't work with these people but they know the industry, etc.
It’s called a writers room. Get a few songwriters you like in a room and jam together for a few hours. Typically everyone in the room splits the credit even if you were just breathing the air and lending a vibe.
Writers rooms and all the writers credits don’t begin to scratch the surface of ghostwriting, though.
Many popular songs are picked up from ghostwriters who are paid a flat fee and don’t even get a songwriter credit. Many songs
This seems to be a corporate version of what I’ve witnessed: large groups of people getting together in vacation rentals or studios at writing camps and breaking off into small groups, each writing around a theme and passing ideas around fairly democratically, in a messy, creative, communal way. Then sharing and layering later. That leads to lots of contributors to one work of art, as they all reach for the best way to tell a story and fit it to a musical vibe that enhances it (or the other direction, it takes all kinds of approaches).
Never a whiteboard, so if that’s literally true I guess that environment would make me sad and disillusioned too, and I’m sorry your friend was dealing with it. But it’s certainly not the only model!
That's not fair. Those AIs are stealing the credit by stealing TikTok posts and ancestry.com listings of the real nephews of record company executives. Those nephews deserve recognition for their IP and ID.
nepobaby dynamics notwithstanding, yes I think you can simulate them for that particular role. Even if they’re given another position, because now the system has been improved / more optimized. You can never be rid of the nephew, but that was never really the goal to begin with. The goal isn’t to get rid of the nephew per se, but to replace human labor with something more efficient and effective so that we can … have leisure time?” Whether that role was previously occupied by the nephew or someone unknown. The incentives of capitalism drive optimization (at some level, not globally necessarily).
I mean, I just threw "write me a song that britney spears would sing." into chatGPT and the result could have fooled me. I won't bore you with the result. Even included some rhymes without prompting that.
So there’s an interesting prehistory to all this. The us music industry began in the late 19th century… and this is before the record! music publishing and songwriting was literally publishing… of the sheet music. The standard form of this was as a piano score, and that’s the form that songwriters generally had copywrite on. Now if you were to perform this you would obviously need an orchestration, and this was subject to copywrite as well, but orchestrations were generally not published.
An important thing to consider is that orchestration is a technical skill, and many great songwriters had limited formal training in music. So orchestration was almost always separate from songwriting. It still is on broadway; almost all great broadway composers outsourced orchestration (including composers like Richard Rogers, Gershwin, or Sondheim who were perfectly capable of writing it).
Many Hollywood composers outsource orchestration as well, often due to time constraints. John Williams is perfectly capable of orchestrating his work, but often doesn't. I understand he leaves very detailed notes for those who do, however.
Orchestration also means something different these days for most film, TV and game composers compared to the traditional definition. Traditionally, orchestration would be taking a piano or short score and expanding it to be played by an orchestra. Nowadays, almost all media composers create full digital mock-ups of the music first with the entire orchestra and then some. Orchestration then is mostly a process of transcription, typesetting and adjustments for live ensemble so the recording and performance accurately conveys the intent. John Williams and Howard Shore are two of the old guard who write short scores with notes for the orchestrator about what to do. Nearly everyone else is writing for the full ensemble and orchestrating as they go. Then the orchestrators translate that to traditional music notation so it can be played.
The actual act of orchestration (translating to the different instruments) is an exercise in "backwards compatibility" and musical knowledge. (Because every instrument has a range, a clef, and they play in a range but read on another range, etc, etc because of some weird thing that happened in the 17th century)
If you look carefully in the endless credits scroll you can see the credits for the orchestrator(s), if the composer doesn't do the orchestration themselves. Herbert Spencer, for instance, is credited for orchestration of Star Wars Ep. 4, A New Hope. He worked as orchestrator on a lot of other John Williams movies and was a film composer in his own right as well.
In John Williams' case it's particularly funny, since he got his start as an orchestrator! The notable exceptions to this rule on broadway are Kurt Weil and Leonard Bernstein.
bernstein "touched up" the orchestrations, and of course orchestrated the overture, but you're right. Hershey Kay and Maurice Peress did the orchestrations. West Side Story was also not orchestrated by bernstein (except for the orchestral suite)
The answer to the question the article poses, FTA: Because the definition of "songwriting" has changed since the 1960s, and not just due to "sampling."
It's still a decent read, but if you want to argue the nuance, this is what the article says.
I assume you're talking about crediting beat makers, arrangers and producers rather than just the "traditional" way of crediting the people who come up with the melody and lyrics?
If so, I agree with an addendum: I think it's more about the "culture" around songwriting credits rather than the definition itself, as this was kind of always possible to do, and some people today still do the "old way". For example, back in the 60s/70s some bands like The Doors and Deep Purple would credit the whole band. And sometimes producers would also get credit, like Brian Eno with Talking Heads from the top of my head.
Can't pull the tricks from The KLF's The Manual: How to Have a Number 1 the Easy Way to get free and uncredited songwriting work out of people anymore, then?
Songwriters get paid mechanical royalties, performance royalties, and synch fees anytime the song is used. Bands, for example, only get paid when their specific recording gets played.
Therefore, if something gets remixed, covered, etc. you want to be the songwriter, not the band.
Reminds me of a story about Gene Roddenberry. (of Star Trek fame) Apparently he wrote lyrics to the original series theme song so that he'd get half the royalties every time it was played even though the lyrics weren't used. (Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, 1997, pp 178, 185)
Simon Cowell is known to have played (and written the part for) instruments like the triangle on many of his associated bands' tracks so that he got an undeserved cut of the songwriting royalties.
Another factor here is that you never know which one of your or your teams songs will be a hit…and so many have a agreement to include eachother in their work
I suspect the mechanism of that will be that Disney lawyers and/or lobbyists will start throwing their weight around once AI trained on Disney media is making money for someone other than Disney.
Sure we do, AI changes nothing. I could have made the same content manually and it still wouldn't be legal because of the IP ownership on the characters.
the point is the opposite, the AI cannot receive royalties because it is not entitled to copyright its work; unless it's changed, there will be no royalties for anybody including SkyNet
There's a cynical saying among traditional songwriters:
Change a word, get a third.
In other words, they give a song to some established star, who makes trivial changes and then claims partial songwriting credit.
Is that fair? I don't know. Publishing royalties are so massive that you have to expect people to try to get in on them. Robbie Robertson is notorious for claiming all the songwriting credits for The Band's songs. Was that fair? I don't know that, either.
Modern pop music is a more refined commercial industry than it was in the past. It's been sliding further and further away from art and toward the commercial. It is what it is.
"Art that doesn't sell is just a storage problem."
Had an artist tell me this once and it stuck with me ever since. He was referring to paintings, but has generally held for every other artistic endeavor.
Looking through history art has always been commercial - it's just the audience that changes.
For music, musicians who got paid used to be focused on the tastes of just the wealthiest folks who liked to go and be seen at symphonies. Nowadays, it's the artists who can fill stadiums (and get fans to buy lots of merch) that make the most bank. As such, it is often those musicians who provide a sellable brand that do best. To many, this can feel fake and plastic. But like any product designed for mass consumption, it's essential.
Looking at the symbiotic dance between artist and viewer/reader/listener is really something special, and helps to provide context for changes in trends.
You could be the best guitar player in the world, writing the best guitar solos of all time, but if you can't get people to pay for it, it's just a storage problem for your guitar.
>Looking through history art has always been commercial - it's just the audience that changes.
Well, not exactly in the same way. Commercial is not about "catering to an audience", it's about catering to mass audiences, and the compromises that entails.
For example, an "artistic" indie group catering to just a tiny minority is not just "as commercial" as a pop production, unless we stretch the term beyond recognition).
There's a huge difference in attitude and approach. The artistic group would rather lose money than incorporat some elements that aren't in their vision. A pop artist on the other hand would more often than not just do whatever the producer or writing team wants to get on the fads of the day and sell more.
It's not just the audience that changes, but the methodology, the marketing involved, the perception of their work by the artist, and most importantly the lack of the kind of defiance that characterized artists who'd rather lose lots of money and stay poor than compromise on their vision (or who even made a point of not selling out on purpose).
> For example, an "artistic" indie group catering to just a tiny minority is not just "as commercial" as a pop production, unless we stretch the term beyond recognition).
But that indie band is not necessarily more artistic.
I know the phrase "mass-marketed commercial pop by committee" produces a visceral reaction, but nothing about it is inherently inauthentic.
"Mass-marketed" just means that something is widely promoted. Many of the most creative, influential, and authentic musical groups are "mass-marketed".
"Commercial" doesn't really mean anything in this context, as presumably everything that you listen to on the radio/streaming services is commercial.
"Pop" is descriptive of the style of the music, not how it's produced (there are indie pop groups).
"by committee" means that multiple people contributed to it. Do you think the only valid creative process is one where somebody works in isolation? If so, that disqualifies pretty much every band / non-solo act from meeting your standards for authenticity.
> "Commercial" doesn't really mean anything in this context, as presumably everything that you listen to on the radio/streaming services is commercial.
It means dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. It means being told that instead of deeply personal, complex, and potentially offensive lyrics you're just going to repeat a word or small phrase over and over and over because that sells better doesn't alienate anyone with difficult words or things that might offended them, or might discourage the use (and sale) of that song in commercials, grocery stores, overseas markets, or film soundtracks.
Commercial interests (the desire for as much money as possible at the expense of all else) overrides what would have been deliberate artistic choices in order to maximize profits leading to a landscape of homogenized bland overproduced and unchallenging art.
We've seen many changes in music as a direct result of commercial interests overriding the preferences of artists (and listeners) including the loudness wars, the end of the album as a cohesive work to favor itunes downloads of single tracks, and the lengths of songs getting shorter and shorter to the point where bridges and entire verses are removed.
Not everything you hear on the radio has been fully compromised by commercial interests, but it's a good bet compromises were made and commercial interests have had more influence over what gets heard on the radio than any other factor (talent, skill, popularity, artistry, etc.)
> It means dumbed down to the lowest common denominator.
It literally doesn't though. Like, that's not the meaning of the word "commercial" in any sense.
Your favorite indie band is commercial. Your friends who charge $5 for their shows are commercial.
Your issues aren't with "commercial" musicians, they're with musicians who prioritize commercial success over artistic expression.
I don't think is a new phenomenon, and actually think it's a lot less prevalent now than it was in the past. With free streaming services, most people have easy exposure to a much wider range of music, and aren't relying on the radio to dictate their tastes.
There have been dozens of albums from the last few years that have had huge commercial success, and also taken big artistic risks. Happy to provide a list of recommendations if you're having trouble finding good new music.
"Artistic" in the sense "more concerned about art" not "having more art in their results" (which can't be measured anyway).
So, like "arthouse movies". An arthouse movie could be much worse done than a mainstream good movie (like, say, the Godfather). The art in the term is not about the level of artistry, but about the approach.
Far be it from me to try to define art, but at some point I imagine an artist must stop and ask him/herself "Is my work an original thought? Am I telling a story here, sending a message, engaging with an idea, being provocative, being honest, making my audience feel something, or is my work... mass-produced background mall muzak? A soulless sculpture for some corporate headquarters?" Pop music has always been right in the middle, toeing close to that line between "mostly art" and "mostly commercial product". Where the difference between what the artist wants to say and what the audience wants to see/hear is blurry. I'm sure when you enter that world, surrounded by producers, business people, investors, execs, marketing, focus groups, event organizers, you feel the pressure to go along with the flow and just build a formulaic consumer product.
I don't think art that doesn't sell is lesser than art that does sell. I know, tell that to an artist who wants to make a living... but I really think you have to measure a work along more than one axis. How good something sells is a different dimension than how good something is. If that wasn't true, Thriller would be the best music ever and the Toyota Corolla would be the best car in the world.
> "Is my work an original thought? Am I telling a story here, sending a message, engaging with an idea, being provocative, being honest, making my audience feel something, or is my work... mass-produced background mall muzak?"
One of your questions aligns with my personal definition of art. Art is 100% subjective i.e. personal. For me music needs to touch me emotionally, and since i love to dance it is a huge plus if it makes me move too. Visual art needs to astonish me, in one word: Wow!
Music is entertainment, if we leave music for spiritual rituals. Some of the highly revered classical music of Bach or Händel was background or dance music for parties hosted the nobles who employed them.
You'd like to think that the music (that became popular) didn't start out that way though. You'd like to think that the Beatles were emulating their Black American heroes, writing songs that got the kids along the Reeperbahn to kick up their heels and belt a few more lagers. That it found a larger audience and caught on is what made it "pop"ular.
It's art when it moves the needle of what we think "commercial" means.
Wasn't there a Beatles anecdote where Lennon says to McCartney "let's write a swimming pool!" People get good at music because they love it, but just because they love it and we love them, don't assume they aren't in it for the money.
Exactly. That's what differentiates it from folk: Both are music of the people, but pop music was explicitly written for a commercial purpose, and it's existed in that form since before audio recording existed, as another poster mentioned.
As someone who has played in several original but not monetarily motivated pop bands, I have to somewhat disagree. If I showed up to a folk festival I'd probably be booed off the stage.
I think the more salient difference is that folk music is accessible to produce (simple, common instrumentation). Pop music is accessible to consume (catchy melodies, danceable beats). One could say these traits co-evolved with the contexts the genres serve (cultural tradition vs. commercialization).
"Folk" I think also carries the connotation of traditional instrumentation and musical style, whereas pop is allowed to evolve. I'm not sure whether there's an umbrella term for music in modern musical style with accessible modern instrumentation.
> "Folk" I think also carries the connotation of traditional instrumentation and musical style, whereas pop is allowed to evolve. I'm not sure whether there's an umbrella term for music in modern musical style with accessible modern instrumentation.
This is a very good point. I think it would be like folktronica or indie folk or neo-folk or something else that's considered a folk subgenre.
Yes, you are right. Though, I think the idea is that pop music has become more of an industry now than it was before, in the sense that every aspect of it is optimized and all those optimizations are pushed to the extreme over any artistic merit, far more than 30 years ago.
Frank Sinatra was probably close to the original "Boy Band(tm)". Singers were originally an appendage to the orchestra who was the big name. With TV, being young and attractive became much more important than the music and that equation flipped.
Sinatra, Elvis, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, etc. All of them relied on being "boy bands" to spread their music initially. Sure, many of them became more sophisticated with time, but much of their initial catalog was ... extremely derivative. There were a bunch of contemporary groups who sounded just like Elvis, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, etc.
Without being Boy Bands who could move records, they never would have lasted long enough to get better and become the legends we now know them to be.
If there's been an indie/garage wave of music since grunge swept hair-metal out of the top 10 I guess I missed it. I had come to enjoy the reactionary waves of music like folk, punk, college-rock, grunge: the music that often started in small venues or at parties, that somehow broke through to find an large audience that were sick of the commercial dreck that studios and labels were pushing.
It's definitely happened. The biggest example that comes to mind has to be Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road". I guess he was 20 when it blew up, so not a teenager, but close enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Town_Road
Except on re-run channels where they speed up the credits 100x to get them over with. Kind of like the drug interactions or terms and conditions at the end of ads.
Sorry for the snark in advance. Sounds like a justification/rationalization to me. Being able to persuade people to buy mass produced things they don't need makes you what exactly? Art needs to make me feel something, 100% subjective. A print of a can of of soup leaves me very unimpressed. Where is the Wow Factor?
Mechanical Royalties: Refers to the payment made to songwriters whenever one of their copyrighted musical compositions is distributed or reproduced in both physical and digital formats.
My wife's cousin produced Music in NYC for a long time, he explained that of all the ways you got paid for Music being played, distributed, or sold, the songwriters got the biggest cut.
It was songwriters who sued "remixers" for a cut of the royalties based on the mechanical royalties clause of music copyright. They get the most money, they had the most to lose from creating a "loophole" based on sampling, so they prosecuted anyone who didn't credit them as a songwriter on their song if they had resampled something recognizable.
The movie Yesterday has a relevant plot point. Late in the film, when Jack is putting out another album of Beatles music he really wants it to be called Abbey Road, but the modern music publishers decide that it will be titled "One Man Only". Because of this exact phenomenon!
call me old school, but it doesn't make sense to me that people get to live off the work done once, then repeated (recreated or reproduced by technology) while the 'creator'
in practice whomever owns the 'licenses' continues to collect payment for what the technology does (namely: machine-based repetition/reproduction)
I guess this is the way NFTs can make real sense: when whomever owns the NFT receives auto-blockchain royalty payments for the underlying asset (if/when the blockchain system gets political support)
Blockchain will literally never be used for this. There are such trivial fundamental issues. Imagine for example, the rights owner has their computer hacked or stolen and their NFTs are stolen. Legally, they are still the rights owner as they never agreed to transfer them. So now you are left to either ignore the blockchain record or to do the insane option of treating a thief as the rights owner.
There are seemingly no advantages to using NFTs for copyright.
I have absolutely no idea what you are trying to say here. The creator shouldn't be the owner of the work, the owner of the work should? That's EXACTLY how the world works and has worked for longer than you have lived.
You can buy a piece of art from someone and get all the royalities if you aren't creative but have money.
> it doesn't make sense to me that people get to live off the work done once, then repeated
> whomever owns the NFT receives auto-blockchain royalty payments for the underlying asset
It doesn't make sense for someone to do work once, then get money all the time that's why you want to automate the process of doing the work once and then getting the money all the time in perpetuity
I can’t think of a song chorus or a phrase that has endured in the last decade. If it was a gameshow question to complete the lines from these contemporary songs how many would struggle?
Do you think that maybe you are biased by being older than you were in previous decades, and thus spending less time and less emotional investment on pop music? Or do you honestly believe that the quality of a whole art form has dropped significantly during this period?
I don’t think you can spend much emotional investment on those songs. Modern music uses less words and notes than previous decades as well as avoiding melody, time signatures, triple eighths, codas
i realize it's slightly more than 10 years ago, but c'mon, "ma ma ma ma poker face, pa pa pa poker face" is not enduring?
seriously though, if you think a healthy music industry is a valuable thing for a culture, it's actually better if old stuff does not endure because it creates openings for new, young, living artists. There is great boredom in the world of classical music at the constant repetition of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. They've been decomposing for many multiples of the years they were composing.
(side note: I'm not saying there's no sexism in Hollywood, but a similar case can be made for one aspect of their sexist practices: pushing older actresses aside creates more roles for a greater number of new actresses, more women get employed overall (weighted by the number of male vs female roles overall). Up and coming male actors get stifled by the dominance of already existing stars.)
That pretty much means your old. :-) How about: "I came in as a wrecking ball"? Or "I'm in love with your body." from the absolutly horrible song "Shape of you"?
They say modern songs get written by a huge group of songwriters in hotels. Individual words and phrases will earn credits. They go through the list of everything floating in the songwriters' heads and whittle it down on a huge whiteboard and anything put up there and put into the song gets credited. I think the phrase they used to describe it was "Shit Smoothie Song Writing."
The person I know hates this and doesn't work with these people but they know the industry, etc.