Streaming service programmers replace radio DJs as music taste-makers

A new breed of taste-makers with streaming services such as Spotify and Apple is deciding the music we tune into.

Chance The Rapper, whose new album Coloring Book featured exclusively on Apple, Picture: Getty Images

In the streaming era, a new gatekeeper stands between record ­labels and listeners: the playlist professional. These music geeks, some of whom are former journalists and radio programmers, are em­ployed by the biggest streaming-music services to ­decide which pop, hip-hop and rock songs ­appear on their playlists — the digital age’s version of the mixtape. With streaming driving more than 60 per cent of record industry revenue in the US, they — not radio DJs — now have the power to control music’s hit-­making machine.

During the past four decades, music executives have grappled with one middleman after ­another — radio broadcasters, MTV, big retailers, Apple’s iTunes Store. But the clout ­wielded by this new group of taste-makers from Spotify and Apple Music, along with Amazon Music, Google Play Music and Tidal, represents a sea change.

After years of decline, the US recorded music business is rising again, thanks to streaming’s rapid growth. And in Australia, four million people pay subscriptions to streaming services, with even more subscribing for free. Accord­ing to figures from APRA AMCOS, royalties from streaming services in Australia and New Zealand were up 127 per cent in 2016-17 from the previous year.

In the US, streaming playlists, excluding fan-created ones, are used by nearly 60 per cent of music streamers, according to ­Nielsen Music. And top 40 commercial radio programmers often play what’s popping on Spotify and Apple Music instead of breaking new songs themselves, experts say.

“It’s a brave new world,” says David Jacobs, a music industry lawyer whose clients include rapper Amine, DJ Martin Garrix and Colombian-American singer Kali Uchis. “We’re consolidating 60 years of regional taste-makers, spread around dozens of markets around the country and the world, into one system. Basically, three or four people.”

The most influential is Tuma Basa, according to several music-industry experts. The global head of hip-hop at Spotify curates RapCaviar. With about 8.3 million followers, the playlist sets the agenda for hip-hop the way New York radio station HOT 97 once did, says Larry Miller, who heads the music business program at New York University’s Steinhardt school. “He’s the most important gatekeeper in the music business right now,” says Miller.

Working for MTV in Atlanta in the early 2010s, Basa watched many of today’s rap stars — ­Future, 2 Chainz, producer Mike Will Made-It — hit stardom. As hip-hop became the driving force behind global pop culture, his RapCaviar and other streaming playlists have helped the genre rule the music charts.

“Kids used to have to go through (music industry) filters to get rap. Now they’re getting it directly,” says Basa, who earned his MBA from NYU’s Stern school of business. “Things don’t have to ‘cross over’.” Critics note that unlike, say, MC Hammer’s ubiquitous 1990 hit U Can’t Touch This, No 1 songs this year, such as Bad and Boujee by Atlanta trio Migos and Bodak Yellow (Money Moves) by Cardi B, haven’t been watered down to accommodate mainstream pop tastes.

Other prominent Spotify playlist curators include Mike Big­gane (pop) and Allison Hagen­dorf (rock), industry watchers say. Spotify, which is by far the most popular streaming service, with roughly double the number of users as No 2 Apple Music, ­employs 150 playlist curators and has 4500 company-owned playlists.

Apple Music’s biggest influencer, observers say, is Carl Chery, a former journalist at hip-hop magazine XXL, who helped Apple get exclusive rights to the premiere of Chance the Rapper’s recent album, Coloring Book. Among other things, he oversees The A-List: Hip-Hop, one of Apple Music’s most prominent playlists.

Playlist editors use a combination of instinct and data to create their tracklists. They want to highlight new talent and surprise fans, but also provide listeners with a guide to what’s hot. Curators closely track a playlist’s performance metrics: the number of times a song is played, skipped, completed, saved by users.

“If I love it, I want to give it a shot. But I don’t want to force-feed the listener,” says Chery. “I curate objectively.”

Deciding which music to ­include in a playlist, however, is getting more difficult. Major streaming services receive a deluge of new music every week and lack official channels for artists’ managers and record labels to lobby, prompting industry insiders — and outsiders — to find new ways to get their music favourable placement, observers say.

The biggest labels update streaming services regularly about coming albums by email. The top three — Universal, Sony and Warner — are investors in Spotify. Superstar artists, meanwhile, often tour companies’ off­ices and take one-on-one meet­ings with playlist curators.

“It’s kind of the wild west,” says Jacobs, the music industry lawyer.

Critics say this has led to playlists being overwhelmed by the promotional machinery of major labels. On Spotify, for example, labels can buy a “home page takeover”, which blankets the service’s free, ad-supported version with promotional materials.

And some fear the system also creates a way for playlists to be bought or gamed through complex deals between artists and streaming services — a new version of “payola”, the illegal ­exchange of payments for airplay.

Under US regulations, radio broadcasters must disclose payments or valuable quid-pro-quos for airtime. But those rules don’t apply to streaming services.

Spotify and Apple Music say that nothing resembling payola is occurring on their services. “There is absolutely no payola happening on Apple Music or iTunes at all,” an Apple spokesman says.

If playlists were industry-dominated, they’d be dull and easy to duplicate, Spotify’s Basa says. Payola is unethical, he adds. “Neutrality is in our business interests.”

The Wall Street Journal