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The Swedish DJ Who Invented Industrially-Manufactured Pop Music (bbc.com)
"BBC Culture reports on DJ Denniz Pop (born Dagge Volle), who couldn't sing, play an instrument, or write a song but could mathematically craft a song from stitching together electronically programmed sounds and beats," writes Slashdot reader dryriver. "Pop was the musical brains behind acts ranging from the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, Ace Of Base to Britney Spears, and trained Max Martin who wrote 22 Billbooard #1 hits for the likes of Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, Katy Perry, P!nk, Justin Timberlake, Ariana Grande and Maroon 5 using a technique called 'Melodic Math.'" From the report: In a basement in Stockholm's suburbs, Pop brought together an elite team of eight songwriters and producers for a new venture -- Cheiron Studios -- in 1992. Over the next eight years they would go on to sell hundreds of millions of records through the likes of Ace of Base, 5ive, Robyn, Boyzone, Backstreet Boys, Westlife, *NSYNC and Britney Spears. The secret of their songwriting success was to marry the melody to the beat, not work against it, and to have a big chorus. The team at Cheiron followed Pop's example, experimenting in clubs across the capital with up to a hundred different versions of each new track -- meticulously documenting the combinations of beats and melodies that made the club crowds go wild. Through these experiments, an entirely new genre of music blossomed, one that seemed tailor-made for the age of manufactured boybands and girl groups. Having grown up in socialist Sweden, Pop's approach to writing music was almost utilitarian. Like so many Swedish success stories -- IKEA, H&M, Volvo and Spotify -- the Cheiron team wanted their product to appeal to the maximum amount of people, which in a country with a population of only nine million meant focusing outside the nation's borders. Pop designed his music to reflect the lives of the people who bought more music than anyone else -- American teenagers -- at least as far as he understood them from his basement in faraway Stockholm.
Sweden doesn't understand blues, soul, and rock. Swedish journalists caught between a rock and a hard place. Call it pop today.
Having grown up in socialist Sweden, Pop's approach to writing music was almost utilitarian.
I didn't know our neighboring country did Cuba and Soviet Union right next to us. Might have made us rethink that Northern dimension, or NATO membership. Thanks Slashdot for these educational moments of clarity.
They invented golf, right? Oh it doesn't matter. It's already been invented. Who cares who invented it if it requires any thought at all
Nothing new.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
. . . for time-traveling assassins, a la Predestination. Talk about improving the world for the better!
Aural diarrhea. THAT is what he created.
The list of acts this guy made reads like a rogues' gallery of criminals against musical creativity and taste.
From Hell's heart, I stab at thee, DJ Denniz Pop!!!
He is the quintessential hacker, albeit in the aureal sense rather than computer sense.
Debating socialism, the new pastime of morons while their traitor president heads to prison.
Yeah, there's math in Bach and Beethoven too, but 's not quite the same thing. AC
They invented BORK BORK BORK too
ok, two problems. First, 75-80% of Venezuela business is private, so they're not socialist either. And Socialism isn't the Government owning the means of production, it's the people. And that takes North Korea and Cuba out of the running.
We can argue that it's not possible to have true socialism since the people will never be able to claim ownership of the means of production from a ruling elite, but we're not arguing if socialism is _possible_, we're arguing over the definition.
As for possible, sure it is, as Democratic Socialism. Simply put, I don't give a rat's fuck who owns what as long as I've got what I need and as long as everybody else does. So to keep power balanced keep private ownership and then regulate the shit out of it.
Or to put it more succinctly: Legal, Taxed and Regulated.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Company B's Fascination
Obviously they do. Citation: ABBA
So systematically crafting music to appeal to the broadest, most profitable target audience in order to maximize record sales counts as âoesocialismâ these days? Iâ(TM)m starting to wonder if anything counts as capitalism anymore.
Two links to manufactured music from NPR:
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/07/10/421874671/episode-288-manufacturing-the-song-of-the-summer
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/07/05/137530847/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-hit-song
1. Start with a beat track
2. Hum, mumble sounds to the beat track
4. Start filling in words to the mumbles
5. Tweak the words, fill in gaps to make a half intelligible song
6. Add a chorus
7. Re-sample, sprinkle with samples to fill out the music
8. Polish, give to some artist with popularity
9. Artist records the vocals
10. Mix, remix, add in more samples
11. Release
Fails my guitarist's test: Can I pick out the sounds of individual instruments and follow their musical notes?
Fails my own test: Can I hear the singer actually singing and not just a repetition array of computer based vocal modifications especially the stupid harmonizing with yourself via computer delay of the vocals and some frequency shifting?
Listen to older versions where the singer cat calls at the end of every other lyric from the 1980s and then where Shania Twain chihuahua dog yips dozens of times in Man I feel like a woman song (don't ask, ex girlfrend's favorite).
Right, churning out like clockwork to whatever is financially determined to be the optimal formulaic recipe is socialist pablum.
Go sit in the corner and apply that sentence up there to every other industry. The headline here is that they were able to do it with music. I suppose we've always reckoned people have shit taste and factory pablum sells, but here's "music is just manufactured image now" from the mouth of the BBC itself.
Pop music is pretty close to dead due to lack of variety
love is just extroverted narcissism
Sonic Wallpaper
Listen to my music.
Pop has always been throwaaway, that's the reason the songs are only a couple of minutes long. To start with it was to fit on vinyl, now it's simply to ensure people will listen, not tune out and immediately go on iTunes/Amazon and buy the download. To learn that some of the most popular pop music was 100% manufactured is no great surprise to most of us,we've suspect it for the last 25 years. I think it's kind of sad that rather than trying to agonise over getting your emotions into music, really find a way to express your inner feelings, you simply flip a few toggles on some software and out come multi-million dollar hits but hey, if people like it good for them. Most of us go through the pop listening stage until we discover the music we truly like and pursue that. I loved pop music from 8-11, then I discovered Queen, then Iron Maiden and by the time I was 14 I was a full on metal fan getting into Thrash/Speed/Death as it emerged from the US to Europe in the mid-eighties. I'm almost 50 now and I see my kids going through the same phase, they're hitting their mid-teens and doscovering music like the Cure, Smiths, Joy Division, Queen and Pink Floyd. They still like pop music but they're starting grow out of it as they discover intellectual pursuits and need their music to deliver something with some substance or give them something to think about, not just mindless pap about boy-meets-girl.
1. Find musicians who actually took the time to understand and learn music. Good use of English. Make them take out a huge loan to cover the costs of their music.
2. Test all musicians to ensure they can perform, are photogenic. Can give an interview on music, their music and the meaning of their lyrics.
3. Select the best skilled and most talented who can work well under interview conditions.
4. When putting groups together to "play", "create", "compose", "write" music and lyrics make sure they have such skills.
5. Have them write lyrics and compose new music.
6. Create the needed music video, interviews, translations, cover art.
7. Look into vinyl sales and other emerging physical release media. Create amazing art for that. Digital release and images.
8. Sell creativity to the world.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I don't know about golf, but I like them little meatballs.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Computer jukebox
Computer jukebox
Computer jukebox
Hello, Dr Alban
Hello, Hello Africa
Hello, Denniz Pop
Enter choice, enter choice
Enter choice
Bang bang, no code
Enter choice
[tones]
Positive selection
Positive selection
Yes, yes, yes
It's my life
It's my life
4
3
2
1
I'm a fan of the BBC, but this is hardly "news" when there's whole book on it circa 2015... https://www.amazon.com/Song-Ma...
Just what we needed, a clear, scientific explanation of why pop sucks so much.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
So capitalism is great at fostering individual musical expressions, but socialism helps foster lowest-common-denominator musical pablum. Got it.
(Of course the tiny problem with this theory is that Sweden isn't really socialist. "Sweden is not socialist -- because the government doesn't own the means of production. To see that, you have to go to Venezuela or Cuba or North Korea.")
The other tiny problem is that manufactured music is very popular in capitalist countries.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
There is no, nor has there been a, subway station in Stockholm called 'Örebro'. Örebro is the name of a city in Sweden. So I wonder what else the journalist has gotten wrong in the piece.
In the 80's there was a club called Ritz under a hotel ('Hotell Malmen') at the subway station 'Medborgarplatsen'. The entrance to that club would be accessible from the entrance to the subway station.
Their songs where also much better.
I read TFA, and what they did *completely* (and deliberately) missed the point of music.
What they did, had as much to do with music, as NLP-induced attraction does with love. Or Zynga's deliberately addictive gameoids with art. (Or "modern art" with art, actually.)
They just found the formula to pushing the buttons in people. No actual communication of any meaning required. No wise teaching, no resonating experience of hardship or love or whatever. Just creepy empty button pushing, like a psychopath trying to get a girl.
It is a nice teaching though, why the goal of art (actual art, that touches you, not "modern art") and the goal of business are mutually exclusive opposites.
Business wants to maximise the target group. But art wants to maximize how intense it resonates with people. And since we are not all the same, there is nothing that is broad and strong at the same time.
(Love may be the closest. But you already can tell how many contradicting facets it has.)
In find those entire "art industries" disgusting. All they do, is leech on art until it is ruined, to make a quick buck.
Having worked in most of them, I could testify in court, how most of it is solely to get more cocaine .
Not hard to understand. See?
Like NLP.
NLP is considered a crime in the circles of psychologically clueful people.
Because it's basicall rape. Rape of the brain through words.
(Rape is not about sex, but about power. Like the degradation and uae against one's will.)
(Fuck SJWs grabbing this and running with it until it is ruined!)
Which is why, if I had a state, ALL of marketing, PR, NLP, politics, talking heads, lobbIsm etc would be a major crime, resulting in 20 years of exctradiction and embargo for any first offense, and 2 years for the mere attempt.
With the duration of following offenses/attempts rising exponentially.
Bach is just mathematics. Not music. And its fans are merely snobs. The same kind who say they "like" "modern art" and the most bitter (aka disgusting) coffee, chocolate, beer, etc.
The kind that buys $400 wooden volume knobs to make the sound of their $20000-per-speaker tube-based pre-amps that play ancient recordings from their laser-based balanced vacuum chamber vinyl player sound "warmer". (Aka low-passed.)
I agree that anyone saying "$x type of music isn't music" or some such, is clearly full of it. There's a difference between "I don't like music type $x" and "that's not music".
One doesn't have to like a particular flavour of ice cream, but that flavour still is.
That said, I find that I essentially dislike music quite a bit. There are two reasons for this:
1) Most music is accompanied by lyrics. Bleck. Why the hell would I want to listen to someone's opinion *sung* to me. In screeching, yelling, hollering ways. I frankly find that most of humanity's opinion and life stories are not enjoyable to listen to, so why the hell would I want to listen to someone blather on about it.
2) When there is music I do enjoy, without some person crying on about crap, it serves little purpose but to repeat in my head after I've listened to it. I don't need that, I've got other things to do.
The world does not revolve around you, you know? (No, you most certainly don't.)
Look at the other commernters here.
It was news to all of them, including me.
You can go back to "Snobdot - No news for people who have already heard it all, stuff that we're too superior to care about." now.
Not music.
Money.
Sounds about right. :)
Do you enjoy poetry, per se?
As in: Little stories with emotional topics that you can't really put a finger on, but that give you a strong emotional insight if they happen to hit you in the right spot. (And that are usually told in a rhyming fashion, to highlight some structure/pattern.)
Because I separate songs with lyrics into two modes:
Music - where the voices are merely some instruments, and I don't listen to what they actually say.
and
Poetry - where the music is just merely an accompaniement/decoration.
And I enjoy both, but I don't think I am physically capable of doing them both at the same time.
I have to consciously switch between both exclusive tasks.
If you can like the latter, switch to poetry mode, and you might very much enjoy this one:
https://youtu.be/r8bCB7DHJts
(Ignore the second, hidden song in there, after the pause.)
than you do.
Go find the Sweden hidden in this comment section.
Good luck.
Short term gains. For one entity.
Mainly long-term losses. For eveyone, including them.
No, I'm not pro whatever you consider the opposite in your false dichotomy either, dear Mr. Foam-at Mouth.
Hehehehehe...good one!!
Yes, but I doubt it is because of its intrinsic music quality. Real musicians are expensive and they like paying. So if you are basically a guy or gal with a music idea, you can (1) form a band, practice your ass off, and shove the result in front of some clueless music exec., or (2) Buy a computer, some software, lay down some electonic tracks, and shove the result in front of some music exec.
If you are a clueless music exec., you get two submissions, one from an entire band who wants paying, or one from a guy and his synth. You cannot tell the difference because you are a clueless music exec. So you pick the electronic tracks.
Now you must promote. With a band that means expensive tours and venues. With Mr. Electro, you only need to pay DJs. You go with Mr. Electro.
If you are the public, you get fed a diet of Mr. Electro and fellow travelers. If you are young enough, you think it has always been this way. Bands...yeah you've heard of them...on oldie stations...to which none of your friends listen.
The evidence before the court is Incontrovertible!
There's no need for the jury to retire.
In all my years of judging,
I have never heard before
Of someone more deserving
Of the full penalty of law
Except 5 years later. I'm failing to stop what exactly is new about this guys approach - people have been knocking out stitched together low quality (in the sense of the music, not reproduction) music since at least the times of the great composers. I've lost count of the number of times I've heard a classic piece and thought "But that sounds similar too..."
Rap has none of the qualities of music. It's just a bunch of insecure mooks trying to puff themselves up by talking about how many drugs they sold, how many people they shot and how many bitches they fucked. There is no talent or musical artistry. It's all very low and base, intended for uneducated and uncultured listeners who don't know what music is.
You have poor taste in music. Your opinion is invalid.
Also, I like how you totally just ignore the OP which ragged on European music by calling it "Eurotrash", yet when someone points out American music is 99.99% shit, you get all butthurt and whiny.
Dagge could play anything on a keyboard. He just pressed the keys until his ears told him he was on the right track. Some call that perfect pitch. Go figure. In his former profession it made him outstanding. Best best the world has ever seen.
because if it doesn't appeal to as many as possible, it's bigoted 'discrimination.' Soviet russia had plenty of art related policies that pushed just such mentalities. The fact they produce similar results shouldn't be surprising: socialist governments are essentially monopolies.. monopolies kill the intellectual diversity required for innovation.
Now we know who to blame for the deluge of total crap.
I literally would rather listen to a jackhammer than anything from Justin Beiber.
Hell, the stupid little random "songs" I made in Mario Paint back in the day that were only a few notes long because I couldn't be arsed to write real music for my dumb little cartoons were far more bearable than most of the slop the teenyboppers and air heads listen to today.