Second single / a quick rant on the streaming release process
I’m already preparing my second single from Kid Lightbulbs LP4, “the grass is quicksand”. It’ll be out in early September on Bandcamp, but I’m still debating as to whether it should have an accompanying streaming release.
“the grass is quicksand” cover art, taken by me in a dense meadow near where I live
It’s not that I have some anger toward Spotify or the streaming-industrial complex – it’s more that I don’t want to deal with it. I want streaming to be a mechanism for people to more easily hear my music and nothing more. It’s about access.
But streaming has now become this looming presence in all of music (all audio entertainment, for that matter) which has created these odd new gates and poor incentives for musicians, entire cottage industries of industry “pros” and scammers, and entirely fake & meaningless metrics that are somehow the most relevant metrics to some in the music industry. (I’m talking about Spotify’s Monthly Listeners, which are not at all an accurate reflection one’s popularity or the size of one’s fan base, and could be entirely made up of AI bots.)
Even if I just want to put my music in more places I inevitably have to sit right in the muck with all of that. And because of all the weird incentives and issues inherent in streaming, I have to do a ton of work just to release the music, even though I have virtually no financial incentive in the streaming market. Landr’s submission form for a single release is a 5-page slog that requires roughly a dozen check-boxes to confirm I agree to various terms, a manual upload of a receipt for my 2013 Logic Pro purchase to prove that I own the software, outright blocking of access to Facebook, Instagram and TikTok despite me not even caring to monetize there, and then after all that I need their approval to even release. Every single time.
I understand the quality control, but again, when there’s virtually no world in which my music is actively promoted to folks outside of who I’m already connected with, what’s the point of all this trouble?
Okay I’m done ranting for now. I’ll probably just put the song on streaming and leave it at that, as I’ve done.
