“Most artists’ best songs are still sat on a hard drive right now”: James Blake on modern streaming algorithms and their influence on final records
“If you want to actually sustain yourself, then you’re going to have to fit into these narrow categories.”
Credit: Stephen J. Cohen/Getty Images
If you want to make it as a musician in 2024, you’re largely at the mercy of large-scale algorithms. While Spotify, for example, has an algorithm that’s highly competent at recommending new music to consumers, on the other end, artists are increasingly having to write to cater to it, rather than for their own creativity alone.
And according to James Blake – a notable critic of the current state of the music industry – streaming algorithms are meaning many artists’ best music is not being heard at all.
In a new Apple Music interview with Zane Lowe alongside Lil Yachty – with whom he’s set to imminently release a new album, Bad Cameo – Blake discusses at length the way streaming platforms influence an artist’s end product.
“If you have a success- and wealth-obsessed culture, then you de-incentivise risk, and you de-incentivise creativity,” he says. “And I think we are in a late-stage capitalist version of the music industry, and right now, the only reason me and Yachty can make this kind of album is because we’re both already successful. If we weren’t, this would be a huge risk. And probably both of us would be like, ‘Let’s postpone this until we put our pop record out.’
“So in order to get people to listen to you, you’ve kind of got to join the ranks, essentially… That conversation has been going on way before me, but I started my Tweets and Instagram messages about that, all from the perspective of just being paid fairly, right?
“And I think that got some people’s backs up, in some ways, because it’s like people are already paying their subscriptions. People are paying money for music. The issue is that, firstly, your subscription is not proportionally distributed to the people you listen to. So that’s a big part of it.
“Secondly, this wasn’t ever to blame the consumer. This was to just point out that the industry’s fucked. One of my biggest issues with it is that this format limits creativity. And streaming services now [are where] the artist puts out the music they think they should put out. How I envision a platform in the future is the place people put out the music they wanted to put out.
He continues: “You don’t make music in a vacuum. You’ve got to constantly factor in what’s trending, what’s the new genre. if you want to be actually successful, you want to really play the game. You want to make some money – like you want to actually sustain yourself, then you’re going to have to fit into these narrow categories.
“Ultimately, I think the listener is suffering just as much as the artist, because they’re not getting the artist’s best music.
“When I’m in studios, day in, day out, artists play me their favourite shit from their record… And then it doesn’t end up on the album, it doesn’t end up being the single because it didn’t have the right length intro, it didn’t fit within the genre description, their own catalogue, but this is the best shit. Like, what?
“I don’t blame them – I blame the system itself – but that’s what’s going on. I mean, most artists’ best songs are sat on a hard drive right now.”
Earlier this year, James Blake launched his own streaming platform, Vault, which allows artists to upload unreleased music which fans pay a monthly subscription for.
