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4 hours ago
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In the six decades since the release of The Times They Are a-Changin’, Bob Dylan’s success has turned out to be one thing that doesn’t change much. Each generation has rediscovered and loved his work, much to the gratification (or sometimes dismay) of their baby-boomer parents and grandparents.
The cycle will be perpetuated by A Complete Unknown, James Mangold’s acclaimed cinematic retelling of the early chapters in the singer’s career – the transition from penniless minstrel to counter-cultural icon by way of the New York folk scene of the early 1960s. As is normal for biopics, the movie takes liberties with the historical record, but the thrust of the narrative is not disputed. And while the music itself might be timeless, the analogue mechanism that conveyed Dylan to stardom looks very dated.
The 21st-century troubadour has to carve out a profile in the digital realm, where they must compete with today’s megastars and the back catalogues of yesterday. The next Dylan has to win audiences over from the original Dylan. Anyone hoping to top British charts in December has to compete with Last Christmas by Wham!, first released in 1984.
That should be possible. Young audiences are always looking for a scene that is exclusive to them and is distasteful to their elders. But streaming services are not neutral players in that quest. They steer the process with opaque algorithms. That keeps a majority of listeners paddling in the shallow pool of already successful artists, rarely venturing deeper.
The top 1% of acts account for up to 90% of music streams. The platforms pay only a fraction of a penny per play, making it practically impossible for an up-and-coming musician to make a living, even with an emerging fanbase that would once have made the foundation of a career. Meanwhile, a financial crisis among small venues, hammered by the Covid pandemic and still struggling to make ends meet, has deprived artists of ways to turn a modest following into a big one.
Adding to that pressure is the prospect of streaming services being flooded with music that has little or no new human input at all. Already there are commercial incentives for platforms to promote work that is out of copyright. But there are growing concerns in the sector about the rise of tracks by “ghost artists” – confections put together by anonymous producers who surrender their rights or, increasingly, AI compositions. A recent book, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, alleges that the leading streaming service has seeded “low-budget stock muzak” into its curated feeds. The company denies that this is its policy.
Technology has always disrupted the arts. Photography changed the nature of portraiture, but didn’t kill painting. Recorded music changed the way people listened to music, but live performance survived. Human creativity is endlessly resilient, and the desire for authentic connection between artist and audience is one of the most powerful drivers of civilisation. It will not be extinguished by computers churning out synthetic audio filler.
But the systems that cultivate that connection still need nurturing. Grassroots venues need protection. Artists need proper remuneration. And audiences need to resist the algorithmic passivity that traps us in musical comfort zones where we are unlikely to encounter complete unknowns and where tastes, if not times, stop a-changin’.
