[HN Gopher] Why do modern pop songs have so many writers?
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Why do modern pop songs have so many writers?
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 48 points
Date : 2023-02-20 19:31 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tedium.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (tedium.co)
| bodhiandphysics wrote:
| 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).
| ergonaught wrote:
| Because everything great and worthwhile has always been designed
| by committees.
| genewitch wrote:
| 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.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| 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?
| whstl wrote:
| 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.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| So my brother, my cousin, my uncle, his friend, and his son can
| all get paid. EZ money EZ life.
| Tycho wrote:
| It's funny how many contributions to classic records are
| uncredited, eg. the opening riff of _My Girl_.
| droptablemain wrote:
| 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.
| manachar wrote:
| "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.
| lordfrito wrote:
| Same reason movie credits are now 20 minutes long
| bazoom42 wrote:
| No, because you dont get royalties from a movie just because
| you are in the credits.
| zwieback wrote:
| 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.
| canadianfella wrote:
| [dead]
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| One can make this argument based on the fact Tom McDonald's _"
| Ghost"_ went to number 1 and he was the sole writer, producer
| and musician on the song.
|
| Love him or hate him, he's still an anomaly as a 100% top to
| bottom independent artist. He often makes light of this in many
| of his video shorts.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The "Motown Machine" was a thing since the 60s where the
| artists didn't matter as much as the writers, producers,
| choreographers, marketers etc
| zwieback wrote:
| For sure, but the trend for some teenager on TikTok
| skyrocketing to fame with a 100% homemade song is also a trend.
| A welcome one, in my opinion.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| 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.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| When was pop music not commercial? Isn't this basically the
| definition of pop music?
| msla wrote:
| 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.
| bsder wrote:
| It's a simple answer: remuneration.
|
| 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_.
| echelon wrote:
| Maybe this is how AI will work. Every contributor to the data
| set gets micropennies per inference century (a reasonable
| measure).
|
| Of course future industrial foundational models will be bought
| and paid for (and royalty free) for the companies that assemble
| them.
| bombolo wrote:
| The entire point of AI currently is to NOT remunerate.
| solarmist wrote:
| Sure, but once it becomes commercially useful in creative
| works that will likely change.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Sure, but once it becomes commercially useful in
| creative works
|
| It probably already is; the controversies make it likely
| people aren't going to be overly forthcoming about their
| use of it, though.
| delecti wrote:
| 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.
| clouddrover wrote:
| Getty Images is suing Stability AI for copyright
| infringement:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/6/23587393/ai-art-
| copyright-...
|
| It's a bit hard to argue against. Stable Diffusion was
| trained on Getty images and it does reproduce them,
| watermark included.
|
| Getty Images will win.
| [deleted]
| rock_hard wrote:
| You are spot on
|
| 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
|
| Little bit how VC funds work
| consumer451 wrote:
| 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.
| Buildstarted wrote:
| 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)
| plastic3169 wrote:
| Also Danny Elfman has joked that it turned out financially
| very important that he sang the words The Simpsons in the
| theme song.
| leovander wrote:
| Bryan Cranston on Malcolm in the Middle[0].
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/yuGjVKOQc98?t=22
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