In a recent post for Rethink Music, Nick Susi explains his point of view about streaming, and his questions is very interesting: how streaming has changed the music perception? How is its long-term impact? Well, nobody knows the future, but something is certain: the era of streaming is still nascent.
With Spotify et similia, music is now more available than ever, but there’s a problem: the interaction between users and artists is now passive.
Susi writes:
“The user has chosen to engage with a playlist’s purpose and contest to engage with a playlist’s purpose and context, like New Music Friday or Release Radar for discovery, or Cardio for the gym, more so than the direct intent to engage with a particular artist. such as venturing outside that playlist to see who the artist is and listening to the rest of their catalogue, was incredibly low. This is all to say that when the user’s primary interaction with a given artist is only within a playlist, even if that user has chosen to save or add that artist to their own playlist, there is no identity building for that artist”.
For Susi, the “discover-fever” is constantly increasing, but not the interest for a particular artist: the most important factor is now the context of listening and how the collection of songs were a reflection of listener’s own life story.
In this way, playlists have a fundamental role to play in the nowadays music world.
For us, even if we’re mainly audio providers and we don’t have the same visibility and user base as a “single” artist can have, Susi’s thoughts are pretty aligned with our personal vision.
Even if we’re audio providers, what we care the most is to create a bond between our produced sounds and the final listener/user; making him/her feel (even without a playlist!) part of the overall multimedia experience: that’s the most important thing for 93 Steps.