What Music Discovery Means in the Age of Streaming & COVID-19
This is the first conversation in an ongoing series in partnership with NYC Nightlife United highlighting the status of the music industry in light of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter. We’re inviting artists and professionals from our local NYC music community to pick a collaborator to speak on an issue they're most passionate about. First up is Arpan Somani, previously at SoundCloud and The FADER, with Matthew Schonfeld, founder of the music discovery podcast Not 97. The two friends discuss how streaming is turning the page on music discovery and what we can do to support artists affected by COVID-19. They also share a playlist inspired by their own music discovery journey which you can listen to below.
NYC Nightlife United is an emergency relief fund whose main initiative is to save NYC nightlife cultural spaces with a focus on supporting BIPOC-owned and led businesses who create safe spaces for the BIPOC and LGBTQIA communities. To learn how you can contribute to NYC Nightlife United click here.
Art by Steph Lau
Arpan: What's up, everyone? We're here today on behalf of POND Magazine and the NYC Nightlife United, saving our venues, saving live music in New York City. We're going to have a conversation today about music discovery. But I'm going to let Matt introduce himself real quick.
Matthew: Hello, my name is Matthew Schonfeld. I am honored to be here in Prospect Park. I run a music discovery platform called Not 97, and I manage a music duo. I'm very passionate about new music discovery and creating resources and opportunities for young artists. And I am honored to be here with Arpan to talk about it.
Arpan: Cool. And like Matt said, my name is Arpan Somani. I previously worked at SoundCloud for the last three years and before that, The FADER. Now, I am no longer professionally working in the music industry. I work at an eLearning tech platform, but I do also manage an indie band based in Brooklyn, Jachary. Shout out Jachary! Music discovery is kind of core to who I've been professionally and personally. And I'm excited, to kind of dig into, especially today in 2020, what music discovery means in all aspects. So that's where we're going to start. We're going to start with a conversation trying to define some terms.
Matthew: Yeah, let's do it.
Arpan: So, Matt, what does music discovery mean?
Matthew: I think that music discovery means... I think it can mean a lot of things because I think it can mean on a base level, just finding new music or finding music in general. And so I think that music discovery doesn't have to mean finding unsigned artists. Music discovery can just be turning on the radio and listening to Top 40 hits. And if you're finding new music that way, then that's discovery. I think that it's important to understand where we are in the context of the music industry. Music discovery means something that's based in A&R and based in discovering the next best artist or, you know, a diamond in the rough. But I think music discovery, it's also important to think about, just from an every day standpoint of someone that may not be passionate about the music industry, discovery is just turning on the radio or—
Arpan: It's finding something you have never heard before.
Matthew: Yeah, right.
Arpan: And I like that definition for it because I think about my eighth grade self, when I feel like I came into my own, when it came to discovering music. And my parents, you know, coming from India didn't know a lot about music in general, outside of Indian and Bollywood music. My brother really only cared about Top 40 growing up. And that never appealed to me. In eighth grade, music discovery for me was discovering Pink Floyd, discovering Led Zeppelin, discovering classic rock and classic hip hop. And it's old stuff. But it was stuff I had never heard before. So it might as well have been new.
Matthew: Right. And I think for me, going back to when I started discovering my own music, my family house was sort of the opposite, where my dad works in radio, so there was always music around in terms of shit that he was playing. And then my older brother is a journalist now, but has been writing about music since high school. So he was always putting me on to shit, which meant that there was always music around. When I started finding stuff that they weren't listening to... like when I start listening to hip hop, which is shit that my dad, or my brother, or my mom; nobody in my house was listening to. That's when I felt like, "oh, here's a whole world of music for me to discover that I haven't been introduced to before." And I think that was a big step into feeling that energy from it.
“In eighth grade, music discovery for me was discovering Pink Floyd, discovering Led Zeppelin, discovering classic rock and classic hip hop. And it’s old stuff. But it was stuff I had never heard before. So it might as well have been new.”
Arpan: Yeah. And that's a good transition into where and how do people discover new music. And, maybe in this case we just talk about our own experiences. But I'm curious for you... Hip hop, how did you find that if your only channel of discovery or your main channel of discovery prior to that was through family, through friends?
Matthew: I don't even know how I necessarily discovered hip hop, and I think it was probably—
Arpan: Tony Hawk Pro Skater.
Matthew: Haha yeah, Tony Hawk Pro Skater, probably through my older brother, too, like listening to OutKast or a Tribe Called Quest and just going from there. It was just stories and a world that I wasn't familiar with and that really intrigued me and I wanted to learn more.
Arpan: That's great. Speaking of Tony Hawk, I think I can attest to video games singlehandedly introducing me to rap music and punk music at the same time in a way that... I don't know if I would have found those artists so easily, pre-YouTube being what it is today, pre-Internet being what it is today.
Matthew: I think that we also were fortunate enough to grow up in a time where the ability to download music was completely new. You know, like LimeWire and datpiff.com, having those kind of resources at our disposal is something that generations before us didn't have. We didn't have to just discover music through radio or through media or whatever. You could see what iTunes free downloads were that week. Or you could go to LimeWire or go to datpiff and just download whatever you wanted to.
Arpan: After having worked at a platform like SoundCloud and I think even in general in the streaming era, I think downloading isn't what it used to be. And you don't need it like you used to. But it's how I lived. I had a big hard drive where I would torrent the entire discography of ZZ Top.
Matthew: Why not?!
Arpan: But going back to the video games, that was one of the entry points for me. And Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2 was one of my favorite games and introduced me to Gang Starr, "Moment of Truth", and I know every word to that song because of the amount of times I played that song on repeat.
Matthew: That's so true.
Arpan: But it also was just the starting point. And something I just remembered recently is, I used to discover a lot of music through Wikipedia by going down Wikipedia black holes. So it's like, okay, I'm going to look up Gang Starr. Okay, Gang Starr is going to take me to DJ Premier. I'm going to click on DJ Premier's link. Then I'm going to hear all these other names I've never heard of and I'm going to look them up and download their stuff or look it up online and try to stream it. And I used to really go down these two hour long Wikipedia, I don't call them black holes, they’re blue holes because you're clicking on the blue links, and that's how I found things that I think a lot of my more American friends grew up with from their parents. Like even Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. Stuff that I think we take for granted. For me, I was like, holy shit, I've never heard any of this. And that's why I donate to Wikipedia every year.
Matthew: Ayy.
Arpan: I encourage everyone to donate to the Wikimedia Foundation.
Matthew: Wow, wow.
Arpan: You know you got through all your high school papers because of Wikipedia.
Matthew: I didn't know we were plugging Wikimedia.
Arpan: Ok, so let's fast forward to 2020. How have those means of discovery changed and how have some of them stayed the same?
Matthew: I think it has gone in waves. And I think it's fairly easy to see those waves, especially in the last 20 years, because it goes from the early 2000s of the blog days, where blogs were a huge resource for discovering music and just for artists to be put on… to then discovering music primarily through streaming services or platforms. I'm trying to think what else that has taken over the actual landscape of how people discover music as greatly as blogs took over the whole market and now [how] streaming and playlisting is just taking over the whole market.
Arpan: Yeah, for sure. I think for me personally, though, there's something that is still stronger about the friend recommendation or the self discovery. I think it's great and amazing that we have blogs that sort of feed us, what's "cool", what's "next." We have streaming platforms telling us that too. But also having worked at both a large music media publication and a streaming platform, they have their own priorities, too, right? And so there's something to be said about the presence of bias in music discovery.
Matthew: And that's why I think Not 97 exists, because there's an energy to having a recommendation from someone you trust. And then there's discovering it yourself, and I think we try to balance that line between just playing shit that we think is cool and doing it from a casual way of like, "hey, I want to tell you about this artist and then play you this song." And there's always going to be an inherent bias because I fuck with the song and I think that it's good and I think you'll like it, but if you can do it in a way that there's no pressure in it yet. It's genuine, it's like fully genuine, there's no power...
Arpan: You're not tracking the data of the artists that you're playing and being like, "Oh, if we play this artist, we know we're going to get x more amount of listens or something."
“There’s an energy to having a recommendation from someone you trust.”
Matthew: Right, and nobody can influence me, nobody can make me play something, you know? We all know there's so much that goes into... How do you get that FADER feature or how do you get on that Spotify playlist? When you strip it all away and just want to find something that's good music. And then people are receptive to it. And I think people appreciate that. So many people that listen to Not 97 talk about how they just like to listen to a passionate conversation about music and they can hear the—
Arpan: The fandom—
Matthew: In our voices. And that's what always has powered Not 97. Without that it doesn't work.
Arpan: Sure. And that brings up an interesting question that I think in 2020 we're in a unique position to have to ask ourselves is, where's the line for a platform or a company? Where do they draw the line between balancing serving the artist, and serving the audience?
Matthew: That's a big thing that I've thought about since starting Not 97 because those two things are my biggest priorities. And I think we've balanced that line incredibly well, just naturally without much thought. But I think that it is because I'm always thinking about those two things when trying to create a platform that is a positive space for artists and a space where artists can trust and know that we have their best interests at heart. And at the end of the day, I'm trying to create resources and opportunities for them to get their music heard. But the audience is eager music listeners that want to listen to you, that want to find new music.
Arpan: Totally. And I think that's super admirable, and it's a difficult balance to strike. And I think we see that with a lot of streaming platforms too where their messaging to the audience is, "we're here to show you new stuff." But when you really start looking at it, they're also there to make sure that you're getting what you want. And new stuff isn't always what you want. New stuff means inherently, there's a risk associated with a platform trying to introduce you to something new. And I think, again, it kind of takes you back... It really then comes down to the individual's personal desire to discover content. And to discover something new for themselves. And then I guess that translates also interestingly into, what does fandom mean in an age of streaming and discovery like this? If a platform, like Spotify, is showing you your next favorite artist, do you have the same level of fandom as you would have if you found that artist on your own?
Matthew: Thinking about that is really interesting because it's about, how did you become a fan? But then it's also about, what does being a fan of an artist mean these days?
Arpan: Especially, these days. Especially during COVID-19.
Matthew: Does it mean that I listen to their music on Spotify all the time? Or does it mean that I bought their record on Bandcamp and all the proceeds went to them? Am I just following them on Instagram and liking their content? Or am I reposting theirs? What level are you willing to engage with that artist? There's less opportunities these days, almost less like necessary opportunities to monetarily support that artist. So if you're a fan of that artist, what are you doing to support that artist?
Arpan: To make sure that when all this is said and done and the world will have forever changed... Will your favorite artist still be around?
Matthew: Yeah and what can you do right now to ensure that they will be?
Arpan: I think it's important when thinking about that to remember the distinction between the artists who need that right now. You know, like you can be discovering, say, somehow you've never heard Bad Bunny before... That's still discovery, right? But Bad Bunny doesn't need your fifteen dollar Bandcamp support.
Matthew: How are you supporting the artists that your fans of is a very different conversation when you're talking about Beyonce than when you're talking about artists that you discovered on Fresh Finds.
Arpan: Yeah, which I like to consider, in a lot of ways, they're like the middle class now of musicians and artistry. Because making music, I'm not saying it's easy, but it's easier than it's ever been before. Or maybe a better way to phrase it, it's more accessible to make music than it's ever been before. So you have way more artists who are sitting in that kind of middle bucket of they rely on every individual fan support, because that is a game changer. So it's interesting to think about, what does fandom mean in the age of streaming? What does fandom mean in the age of COVID-19? And when you're thinking about fandom, who is the artist that you're thinking about? Are you talking about the Beyonce's or are you talking about the Black Grapefruit’s and the Jachary’s of the world?
“To make sure that when all this is said and done and the world will have forever changed... Will your favorite artist still be around?”
Matthew: Because in our world, in the conversations that we have, it's almost always those middle class or working artists. And I think that's why people like us, those artists are the reason why we got into the industry. I think about the reason why I started working or creating ways in which I could work with up and coming artists is because I was writing about music and covering both internationally touring artists as well as up and comers. And I felt like half of those articles, if it was about an internationally touring artist, part of me would be like, did I just write that article to better my byline or did it do anything substantial for the artist? And are there ways in which I can create more effective change or more effective support for that artist? And I think it's seeing those working artists hustle and being like, OK, there's more than I can do than just write this article about them to help them.
Arpan: That's a good transition to another question. Something I've been thinking about a lot, even personally for me as somebody who I think cares more about music discovery and newly blossoming artists is, do you stay with those artists as they get bigger? You know, do you keep supporting them in the same way or at what point are you like, "Ok, cool, they've kind of graduated to the next level." And I think my role in this, as somebody who's challenged myself with music discovery for my entire life is like, "Ok, they've gone on. I'm going to celebrate and support them, but they're not going to keep seeing my fifteen dollar Bandcamp donations.
Matthew: I definitely get what you're saying, like, how far do you stay with them? And I think about that a lot with Not 97 artists that if an artist blows up, do we keep promoting them or do we keep talking about them or whatever? And I think that it's more about, how do we grow with them? And we are at a cool point right now where a lot of the artists that we maybe played on season one or season two are getting deals and starting to release debut records… You know, it's rewarding because if you have those relationships with these artists and they trust you because they know that you were there since day one, those relationships will naturally be there when they gain more acclaim because they know that when not many people were listening, you were listening.
Arpan: It was authentic.
Matthew: Right. And so, like Love Mansuy released his debut album at the end of last year. It did incredibly well. He got Lil Wayne on a remix to a track. And we had him on the first episode of this season. And he was introducing us to artists that he has his ear on. So it's like, okay, how can we use our relationship to Love to put other artists on and also support him. And so maybe it's like, okay, we don't need to play your song on the show anymore. But you can still come on the show and tell us who you're listening to.
Arpan: Before we wrap up here, kind of bring things back and sort of tie this together with New York City and nightlife and live music and what role that plays in discovery. And I want to start by shouting out, you know, one of my favorite websites from when I moved to New York almost 10 years ago, which is ohmyrockness.com. When I first came to New York, I used to scroll Oh My Rockness to try to hit these DIY shows at like 285 Kent, Death by Audio, Glasslands, Silent Barn--.
Matthew: R.I.P.
Arpan: Or Shea Stadium. All these amazing DIY venues that have since passed, but others have taken their spot.
Matthew: And now they're passing.
Arpan: And now they're passing, too but I think those places have also been in a weird way, serving the same role as these streaming platforms or blogs, right? I used to go to shows just based on hearing interesting names of bands and being like, okay, there's an 8 dollar show. I'm going to go, I'm going to check it out. If I like them then I will do what I do when I find somebody on SoundCloud or on Instagram or on Spotify. I'll dig deeper, I'll pull on that thread. What can we do right now? Especially without live music, to sort of replicate that feeling?
Matthew: Totally, I mean that was definitely an energy for me, for community too, a vehicle for community when I was trying to get more involved in music stuff. Just sitting at home and being like, what is under 15 dollars that's going on tonight that I can go see and meet people at? I don't know yet what that looks like physically. I think there are certain venues or certain places that are starting to either be in the conception phase or development phase where it's a socially distanced way of experiencing music. But I think it also is more in the digital space right now.
Arpan: Live streaming, playing stuff on Twitch, Instagram Live.
Matthew: And I think that's fine because that is a place for our community to get together. I've seen it on a micro level with Not 97 livestream episodes where we can have even 30 people watching and 20 people in the comments talking about the songs that we're playing and interacting with us. Every time I've left those feeling more connected with our community and more inspired to continue to create opportunities for people to come together online. And I think that's a good thing because it ultimately connects us outside of geography, outside of everything; we're connecting just with a wider audience. So I think it's figuring out ways in which we can use those resources to our advantage. And marry music discovery with being able to watch interesting, unique, intimate creative content online. And I think there are more ways in which those digital spaces can also be not just a way to watch something, but also a way to interact with the community.
Arpan: Totally. And I wonder what, you know, post COVID-19… I don't even know if we're ever going to be able to say "post COVID-19", but the next phase of music in a live format coming back. How it'll be changed because of these digital interactions, and these digital platforms that are allowing for that engagement. Are live shows going to be approached differently? Are artists going to be thinking about those communities differently and how they engage with the community and how the community engages back with them? And I can only hope that, you know, all of this is sort of to force us into the next evolution of what does fandom from a live performance and a live interaction mean?
“Every time I’ve left those feeling more connected with our community and more inspired to continue to create opportunities for people to come together online.”
Matthew: Yeah and I don't think that music nightlife community has necessarily had to contemplate public health in this way before. We want to be able to throw DIY basement shows or DIY warehouse shows without any rules. So, how can we figure out how to maintain that raw energy while being safe?
Arpan: Yeah, that's going to be an interesting challenge for sure. And I think a lot of us fans here in New York and in other cities where live music is such a big part of not just culture, but of their discovery process. It's going to be an interesting challenge for all of us to take on. It's not just going to be on the venues and the artists. It's going to be on the fans and the community to also work together to figure out, what is this look like moving forward?
Matthew: I think that's true. We all have to be a part of finding what we want it to be.
Arpan: Yeah, for sure. I think that's a good place to close on because I think it leaves me for sure and hopefully listeners and readers of this conversation with something to think about. Just like you have to be active when it comes to music discovery, we're going to have to all be active in figuring out what the next phase of all this looks like if we want to bring those experiences back.
Matthew: Right. And I think it is exciting. It's sad that we're seeing venues that we love not be able to survive through this. But there's also going to be a lot of opportunity for growth and rebuilding. And I think that we can do that in ways that support each other more, in ways that are more compassionate and more just rooted in community. It's just time to rebuild, in a new way. And I think that that can only be a good thing.
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