Winston Watusi Music Plus

There is, as is often noted, a lot of music out there. Exactly how much is open to speculation...

For a while now people have been touting figures from Spotify which suggest that 60,000 new tracks are uploaded daily to the 'service”. It obviously doesn't take an expert of my experience to point out to y'all that them there's a lot of songs. Yep, about half of them are American.

Consequently, people lament that it is virtually impossible to 'break through” on Spotify, simply because of the sheer number of releases.

But, wait! Controversy has raised its argumentative head. Bill Werde, the Director of the Bandier music business program at Syracuse University, and former editorial director of 'Billboard”, has put a rhinoplasty clinics-worth of noses out of joint by analysing the numbers and declaring them false.

I won't go into details – which are long and complicated – but the number he eventually arrived at was 23,000.

Which is still a very large number. But it does suggest that it is actually a smidgen easier for a serious artist to break thorough than had been previously thought. By 'serious” artists, I'm talking about the likes of L.A.B. and other chart-oriented acts. But even that number is iffy...

One reason for that is the figure also includes classical music, podcasts, reissues, remixes, and a bunch of things that are not chart competition. And you need to factor in one more thing: 80% of artists on Spotify today have a monthly audience of fewer than 50 people.

So if you assume those 23,000 downloads are split evenly between 23 thousand artists, you can thus ignore about eighty per cent of them, which means probably only 5000 come from 'serious” chart-chasing artists. If each artist actually uploads 5 songs in a day that means 'serious” uploads represent fewer than 1000 acts which, in the worldwide scheme of things, isn't nearly as bad as one might expect, especially when broken down even further into musical genres.

Not unsurprisingly, for financial and other reasons Spotify want the upload number to be as big as possible, so we'll probably never really know. And, of course, there's still no money in it...

SINGLES

Amongst those many thousands of songs, three local singles caught my ear this week.

First up the latest instrumental from local guitar wiz Sean Bodley. 'The Dark Infinity” opens with heavy percussive industrial sounds before the arrival of Sean's trademark harmony guitars. There is, as usual, much to make guitarists' jaws drop.

Secondly, Wellington-based Deva Mahal, soul-singing daughter of Taj, has released 'Run Me Through”, complete with a very striking 'western” video. This is the first offering from her upcoming uncompromisingly-titled EP 'Future Classic: Volume 1 – Classic”. She's also touring at the beginning of November, though not visiting Tauranga.

And, a little closer to home, 20 year-old Hamilton singer/songwriter Erin Myers has just released a new single, 'Bad Reception”, a follow up to 'Loser” from earlier this year and her self-produced 2019 EP 'Slow Motion”. She sings well and it's a catchy piece of meditative pop led by retro '80s keyboards.

SALMON

Finally, a gig. This'll be a good one, something special.

On Thursday (October 27) Kim Salmon, THE Kim Salmon, from legendary Australian bands the Scientists, the Beasts of Bourbon, the Surrealists and more, is coming to the Jam Factory. This will mean little to ninety nine per cent of Tauranga but for the other per cent it is as big a coup as Eric Bogle playing in Katikati two days later (more on that next week...).

I saw him with band back in 1996 when the Surrealists played with the Cramps at Auckland's Powerstation and can I suggest this: if you like punk and its surrounding scene and don't know him, have a look on-line since even half a dozen articles from me would barely scratch the surface.

Here's a self-description: 'Some singers are thought of as entertainers and some are thought of as artists. Kim veers towards artist but the entertainment is there. His songwriting is sometimes expressionistic, sometimes humorous, sometimes narrative driven, sometimes plain bizarre and Surreal." Expect the unexpected.