Hoosh, MaMan Kabasa (2020)
The risk of burnout has increased in recent years for those working at major music labels. Previously, “product managers” usually handled about three to five artists, but now they manage twice as many or even more as labels continue signing more artists. Of course this is about profit, but what has led to this increased pressure in the streaming era?
It's the Matthew effect. Coined in 1968 by sociologists Robert K. Merton and Harriet Zuckerman, the term derives its name from the Parable of the Talents in the biblical Gospel of Matthew. The parable states: “For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.”
Here, the effect stems from how streaming services compensate rights holders, which depends on their share of total streams. With the rise of production tools and accessible distribution channels, there are now 120,000 new tracks released every day. Hence, major labels must continually release a large volume of music to prevent their portion of streaming revenue from decreasing.
However, it's not solely about releasing as many songs as possible; it's also about cultivating omnipresent superstars. Because recommendation algorithms are trained on existing data, they are inherently biased towards assuming that the more data available on something or someone, the more popular it is. This can result in recommending popular content even to users who may not be interested in it. I mean, why is Spotify recommending Imagine Dragons to me? Anyhow…
Given the above, it is reasonable to propose that if today's song were by Drake and Burna Boy, it would probably have accumulated at least 100 million streams by now. In terms of quality assessment—covering songwriting, production, performance and trendiness—“Kabasa” by Hoosh and MaMan can easily keep up with the hits of superstars. And I mean, easily. But in a winner-takes-it-all market, the song lingers in obscurity, waiting to be discovered. Voila, your turn.
Start the conversation
Become a paid member of The Rest to gain access to the comments section.