Art of Listening #7 with Keith Jopling
In this seventh edition of The Art of Listening, the ever-incisive Keith Jopling explores why music’s ‘lean in’ utility—its power to deeply engage, inspire, and connect—must evolve and expand in a world of passive consumption.
In a blog post in early 2025, the MIDiA Research music analyst Olivia Jones wrote that: “As algorithmic playlists grow in popularity, listeners are becoming more comfortable with having music as background noise in their daily lives. As consumer behaviour evolves, the strategy of replacing licensed ‘easy-listening’ music with tracks commissioned in-house for a lower fee makes financial sense for companies like Spotify. This replacement would prove to be more profitable for the streaming platforms in the short-term but may end up driving away the dedicated music-listening culture that the platforms were originally built upon. If this happens, where does that ecosystem go?”
Great question I think. Every time I fire up Spotify now, it serves me random podcast videos (so much for personalised recommendations) about parenting or matching tattoos. It’s irritating, but no skin off my nose. I do most of my listening via my record player. But when will music fans choose to swap all this random content sludge in feeds with music they really want to listen to, consciously?
Meanwhile, TV has moved into the dominant position of occupying more and more ‘lean in’ time (ironically as Netflix has been prepared to tailor its own content to allow for distracted viewing and multi-tasking watchers). My wife and I have just finished season two of Severance, the tentpole hit on Apple TV. Severance was a surprise hit, a weird show with an original premise, intriguing script, fabulous acting and ultra high production values (series two was rumoured to cost $22 million per episode, a drop in the bucket for the $1 billion a year deficit Apple TV carries). We invested 20 hours each into Severance, an absorbing and entertaining watch for the first 13-14 hours or so, until Season two began to lose its way. Slow, wayward episodes featuring minor characters or sub-plots (essentially the TV equivalent of album filler) gave the distinct impression that Severance was literally being made as it went along. And then a frustrating ‘cliff hanger’ (i.e hastily re-written alternative) ending we both found to be contrived and unsatisfactory. This is how TV is made now, with writers extending shows and drawing out stories with side-plots and minor character backstories - anything to keep audiences ‘engaged’ (just as all social and tech platforms do with algorithmic content). Apple TV needed a big hit, and now it has one (loss making or not) it must commission a third season of Severance, whether the show’s original premise has the weight to carry another season or not. In short, Severance has now been severed. We just won’t invest any more time in it. I’ll find a good mini series instead - one with a clear story and a beginning, middle and proper ending.
This is what happens when content industries ‘boom’. Like music in the 90s, when bands who sounded like Oasis were signed on the spot and released albums we’ve all since long forgotten. When the CD market peaked, albums were crammed full of filler. No wonder music consumers turned to piracy having ‘been ripped off by the music industry for years’.
It’s a challenging time for music right now, culturally speaking. The past few years has seen hundreds of albums released of incredibly high quality - many of them have made it to vinyl. But we do not know who's really listening and how. We do not know if modern albums will stand the test of time to become memorable, or classics. Most of all, they are crushed out of our attention by the relentless social content feeds and the abundance of modern TV.
One thing that stuck with me from one of the first ever music investment conferences I attended (way back in 2001, Morgan Stanley I think) was how a music analyst positioned music favourably, vs. other ‘content’ because you can still do other things while listening. Simple enough, but I’m not sure any of us envisaged just how much music would grow commercially by falling further and further into the background culturally.
The music business has been very savvy about this, especially through the growth of streaming platforms but also in building solid commercial structures around music licensing to the providers of other forms of entertainment. And in more recent times, the providers of just about every other form of service. As those industries have grown, so has music use and so has music’s (rightsholders) money. We are running ways to keep music filling the pipes of everyday life. As another Record Store Day has come and gone (shoppers buying all that vinyl they may/may not listen to) it struck me that if music is to really hold its value in the world in the future, then we have to train ourselves once again to play it in the foreground, at least sometimes.
As streaming (and music licensing) has grown over the past 15 years, we the listeners have allowed it to drop further back, as the soundtrack to working out, cooking the dinner, scrolling socials or working from home. While the industry has benefited from licensing revenue, the growth of podcasts and ‘functional music’ (including Spotify’s notorious ‘perfect fit content’) has begun to eat into this value, both in terms of consumption time and eventually, the money trail that follows. As this continues, what does it mean for music as a cultural good, as entertainment and as art? Are we playing all those vinyl records in the background, or maybe not at all?
I have to say, I wish I would have spent my Severance time playing music instead. I could have spent 20 hours playing through some 60 sides of vinyl LPs and been much more nourished from the point of view of relaxation, stimulation, familiarisation - whatever benefits we get from consuming entertainment, feeling like we’ve been duped should not be one of them. I feel duped by modern TV shows, the same way I felt duped by those rushed albums that bloated the CD market in the 90s.
Perhaps we fans need to be more discerning and pay more attention to the music. After all, on pure creative merit, it feels to me like music is punching above its weight, should we take the time and attention to notice. It’s because these days, artists are making albums with craft, not making them up as they go along or to a formula that keeps people ‘engaged’. Band’s don’t get the data to know who is listening, only a sense of it when the audience turns up to see them at shows. It’s probably a good thing in keeping the music to a higher standard than something created to a formula. We just have to take more notice.
Learn more about Keith Jopling:
Keith is a music strategist, advisor, consultant, writer and mentor. In 2021 he started the music podcast The Art of Longevity, featured under Spotify’s “must listen” music podcasts and on all other platforms. The archive sits on his music curation site The Song Sommelier.
Keith has worked with the boardrooms of labels, streaming services, start-ups and investors. He has held previous roles with Sony Music, Spotify, EMI and the BPI. Most recently he was Consulting Director at boutique music agency MIDiA Research (2019-2024) and began his career in music as Research Director at global trade body IFPI (2000-2006).
As an educator, he has lectured in music business, strategy and innovation at Henley Business School, NYU, BIMM, ACM, Belmont, Syracuse, Westminster and the University of Krems, Austria.