Time to Spike Spotify

Fresh Produce Records in Macon, GA | Photo by Jason Earle

By Jason Earle

Spotify is a shit product. Yes, it is the global dominator of the music industry. Yes, almost all of your favorite artists can be found there. Yes, most of your favorite artists promote their work on on that platform even though they hate it. And yes, you have your playlists and stations you love and don’t want to give up. I am here for some tough love and to tell you it is time to move on.

What makes it a shit product? First of all, Spotify pays artists peanuts. They put their work on the platform for basically free. Spotify pays ~$0.003 per stream. The other services aren’t great, but read that number again. For comparison, Tidal pays about a penny a stream. It may not seem like much, yet over time those fractions add up.

On top of the paltry payout, Spotify’s algorithm is not as good as Pandora’s, Tidal’s, or Apple’s. Its interface must be the worst of the bunch. And, in a world of abhorrent giant corporations whose actions read like those of cartoon villains, Spotify is the spawn of Cruella de Vil and Bizarro Superman. 

Spotify’s founder and owner Daniel Ek recently invested a fuck ton of money in an AI military software startup company. Your $9.99 a month may not support artists, but it will go to murdering people. Increasingly, your daily playlist will have AI generated “music” with no such label on it. One second, you are listening to a classic from George Strait, next up is the latest offering by Country Cate. 

There may be no ethical consumption under capitalism, but I refuse to give up the fight. That said, I am no saint. My podcasts (The Marinade and Life’s Greatest Hits) are released on Spotify and I collaborate on a Spotify playlist in hopes of drawing more attention to my art and that of my friends. The idea that it may all amount to enough exposure to make a living forces some moral gymnastics in the current marketplace. Or, we can all jump ship.

Tidal is my preferred Spotify substitute. It has been my streaming service of choice for a few years. Kanye West is involved, so that unfortunately has to be factored into one’s decision. Apple is another option. No one is pretending that they are a bunch of sweethearts, but it’s a whole hell of a lot better than the status quo. Or, we could do something radical and take a step back that is really two steps forward.

As a public school teacher for the last fifteen years, I have had a hand in raising a couple of generations. Trust me when I say the group of folks who are in their mid to late twenties right now are the coolest folks on the planet.

They were the last generation raised without ever-present smart phones. During their formative years, Barack Obama (who I have a ton of qualms with) was president. Say what you will - and I will - he was dignified, intelligent, open-minded, and thoughtful. That group of people projects a similar profile.

Gen Z had the internet as kids but it was not a place of pure hate at the time. Back then you had plenty of negativity, but the internet’s main function was one of connection and creativity. The group we are talking about still had blog culture and they still read books. They have a great sense of fashion and diverse taste in music.

As adults they have embraced physical media like CDs and vinyl, and can just as likely be found holding an early 2000s-era point and shoot camera as they are a brand new iPhone.

It is not fair to put all of society's burdens on them, and we should save a discussion about the greater implications of their lack of involvement in the political class for another day. It is fair to be optimistic about their potential for influence on the way we consume art, and that influence does not need to be limited to any one generation. 

Physical media is the path forward. Contrary to popular belief, I think its coming dominance is almost inevitable. In nearly every way, vinyl and CDs are better options for consuming music than streaming. Buying records at shows and directly from artists is a much more fulfilling way to connect and consume. Doing so supports the artist financially in ways streaming has never. 

Plus, you have a tangible document of the art you love. Think about your favorite albums. Regardless of your age, you probably have a deeper connection to the records you listened to on physical media.

We have a crisis of attention in America. Glued to our phones and computers, riddled by the expectation that everything should be available at a moment’s notice. Physical media forces us to be deliberate in our listening. It slows us down and demands careful consideration of the creation.

Lest one get the impression these are the ramblings of an old man, I am all for streaming if done right. So many of my favorite artists rely on streaming to get the word out about their music. Keep streaming, just not on Spotify. When you hear something you like, buy a copy directly from the artist or at your local record store.

We are not powerless against nefarious corporations. Now is the time to assert ourselves and keep art alive.

Thoughts on The Teenage Years of the 21st Century, an album by Micah Schnabel.

Sometimes, hell often, the constant barrage of information we consume can feel overwhelming. So many of us feel helpless watching from what seems like the sidelines, screaming our muffled voices and wishing for a sea change to wipe out the blatant corruption that assaults basic freedoms we once took for granted.

More than likely, if you read the above paragraph, you are a person who considers it uncontroversial. Maybe even tired. A bromide at this point. Thankfully, you don’t need to rely on me to express such sentiment in the way it deserves to be heard. Micah Schnabel continues to case the American condition in brutally honest and gorgeous prose with his latest record The Teenage Years of the 21st Century.

The bolts of this record are not new to fans of Schnabel’s work. The unmistakable sound of his voice. The tissue deep way in which he bares his feelings and thoughts. Those things are all consistently present in Micah Schnabel’s catalog and they ring true on this record.

What stands out is that he has taken another huge leap forward as a writer. One whose voice continually confronts its fears and anxieties. A voice punctuating conviction with poetry. 

It’s not easy hearing Schnabel sing about mobility justice, or the potential early unceremonious demise of those we love the most because they lack access to health care. Micah has always been gracious with his emotions for the sake of art. Perhaps never more so than on this record. 

Micah Schnabel’s work has aided a shift in my world paradigm. I was a libertarian-leaning registered Republican until the end of 2015, two years into my work with kids from underserved communities. Black kids in a racially segregated Southern town named after a genocidal former president. At that point, the Republican party had committed to an overtly racist platform, one that forced me to pay attention to not just race but class in this country.

I was reading Ta-nehisi Coates and Jeff Duncan-Andrade at the time. Both of whom heavily contributed to a reevaluation of how I viewed our political and social structures. In the summer of 2017, Youth Detention (Nail My Feet Down to the Southside of Town) by Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires and Your New Norman Rockwell by Micah Schnabel entered the canon of my personal midlife political revolution. Those records became the soundtrack for an unlikely transformation.

The characters in each of those albums were people I knew as a kid and folks I’d met as a thirty-something. People I viewed differently through the lens of time. In some ways, it took Schnabel’s Henry from his song and novel Hello, My Name is Henry and Bains’s young black girl who is just “too damn loud” for her teacher, to bridge that gap. 

The truth is, I’m a stubborn man. One who keeps an open mind but is nonetheless slow to change it. If nothing else, I am a thoughtful person. When I commit to an idea, it takes a person or movement for which I have a great deal of respect to shift that thinking. Ten years after I first started listening to Micah Schnabel, that shift has become tectonic.  

Schnabel has created an influential artistic world that deftly straddles fiction and real life. The protagonist in his excellent novel Hello, My Name is Henry reads a comic book called Memory Currency, which is also the title of my favorite song on The Teenage Years of the 21st Century. Micah has been playing it, and other songs from the album, live for a while now. The tune lays me out each time I hear it because I am confronted with Henry’s lessons on a regular basis. 

When we first recorded an Episode of The Marinade with Jason Earle, Micah said a number of things that made me reevaluate my worldview. I made a joke about people from Florida and Ohio being proud of the place from which they come. Micah’s whole demeanor changed. He said that being proud of the place from which you come is ridiculous. 

I was in my thirties. Well educated, well-read, and well-traveled by most of society’s standards. The simplicity of the statement and the way in which it was matter-of-factly delivered shook me. The fact that I had not fully considered such an obvious reality left me second-guessing a lot about how I viewed the world. Micah had not expressed a new idea to me, but I was not ready to holistically commit to an examination of my attitude about place until he challenged me. 

Micah Schnabel has a lot to say about place, class, policy, politics, humanity, and so much more on this record. He chooses words carefully but bares his heart with abandon. 

Maybe we are headed for “nuclear war.” Maybe the currency of our memories is all we will ever have left. None of it is easy to hear and Schnabel does not spare the listener many details of the peculiar times in which we live. 

Still, I find solace in the fact that, in spite of overwhelming messages to the contrary, there are a lot of powerfully convicted people like Micah Schnabel- courageously making art and treating it as their lifeblood. 

The Teenage Years of the 21st Century is triumphant, even if its namesake has not always gone that way.

2018 in Review | The Books

In 2018, I finally sought therapy for the anxiety that has plagued most of my life. 
Doing so was one of the best decisions I have made and I am grateful to have access to a really good therapist, as well as the support of my inner circle.

Getting mental health help can be daunting. Looking back, I felt like if I was committed to getting help then I would no longer have anxiety as an excuse or explanation for some of my more anti-social and self-destructive tendencies. 
I was wrong, of course. Well, I was right about not having an excuse or explanation, but that was true before I sought help.

I was wrong about therapy being daunting. It is a lot of work, which is good. BJ Barham and I talked on Episode 1 of The Marinade about the value of hard work. The phrase 'hard work' evokes images of the grindstone and a swinging hammer. 
The work I have done on myself this year has been equally exhausting but also liberating.

I am far from done. This work is a never ending cycle of discovery, struggle, and revelation. 
One such revelation has been that I know I am at my best when I write, read, and exercise regularly. That's it. If I do those things, the other stuff takes care of itself.

So, I set out to read more. I have always devoured books but my heroes are voracious consumers of words and ideas. I knew I could do more.

I did not keep count of the books I read. I am too prone to competition to do something like that. It would interfere with my enjoyment. 
Safe to say, I read as much as needed. This list reflects the books that really stuck with me.

Cheers and love in 2019, y'all.

-Jason Earle