> when did we get to a point where an artist should have no control about how their work should be presented?
Since forever? When did artists have rights to control how their work is presented? There are restrictions on making derivative works (but that goes beyond simply presenting the work in a different way), and there are explicit permissions to present works in ways where artists are likely to disagree - e.g. parody and satire; and at least in USA the courts have repeatedly rejected the notion of "moral rights" i.e. being able to restrict the context the work is used if the economic rights have been properly licensed.
The composer does not have the right to restrict me from playing their song on an out-of-tune instrument while trying to fart in unison; the poet does not have the right to restrict me from reading their poem with a horrible pronunciation and with commentary that completely misses their point; the painter does not have the right to restrict me from using their masterpiece as a literal doormat for wiping dirty boots. Copyright grants them exclusive rights on making copies and a few other things, but not control about how these copies of their work should be presented or used.
I’m glad I’m not the only person who thought this. Do we think Da Vinci intended the Mona Lisa be presented in a museum, behind glass and a rope? If I were to commission and buy art and hang it in my bathroom, the artist can voice their preference for me not to, but at that point it isn’t their call. Albums can be played arbitrarily, it’s just a lot easier to do that digitally than changing out vinyl.
It depends on what you consider the unit of work. Sometimes a song is a unit, but often it's the album. Shuffling an album for this type of work is more similar to reading chapters of a novel out of order.
The question is why the creator would care. It does not harm the creator or anyone else to read a book out of order, or the sentences backward.
I only play songs for the music and rhythm. I cannot easily make out the words, nor do I care to. If I did write songs, I would not care if someone listened to them in order or not, to each their own.
Some creators may care because they think the presentation is an essential component of the work they put in -- and that they are not able to communicate what they wanted. Others may take your attitude, that once they've put the creation out into the world they have given up control over it; it is wild. And others my find joy in people interacting with their work in ways they didn't plan or anticipate, wondering what they will find.
I agree with your point about the unit of work mattering, but songs aren’t chapters, so I’m struggling with the comparison. My (limited) understanding of the music mastering process is that tracks are deliberately added after a full, final mix is made, but regardless of the how, if Adele’s preference was for the entirety of the album to be listened to in one sitting, then it should be one track. If I wished to read a book out of order, sure it wouldn’t make sense, but it’s my prerogative to do so as the consumer of the content.
Yes, it is indeed very similar to that. And obviously the author should not have any rights to restrict someone from reading chapters of a novel out of order if they want.
There's a big difference between the artist having the right to force someone to interact with their work in a certain way, and having an opinion -- even a strong one -- about how best to do it.
This is relatively new; the main unit of music was "the song" up until a few years after the debut of the LP.
There are forms that do tend to have a creative unit larger than one 3-10min "song": opera, symphonies, musicals, song cycles. But in pop music, there sure is a lot of work out there designed to stand alone as a single.
It's certainly not newer than spotify. If you want to compare experiences, think about how hard it would be to shuffle-play vinyl.
Moreover, they're not removing the ability to shuffle and album; they're just making it play in order by default, which is a very sensible default and all but certainly the expected behavior.
> Spotify users could still choose to shuffle an album, but the system would default to playing tracks in the order chosen by the artist.
Shuffle-playing vinyl is easy: you put a bunch of singles in a jukebox!
The ~20-min/side LP record was introduced in 1948, according to Wikipedia, while jukeboxes date back to the 1890s.
Also apparently the term "record album" comes from the books people would put their collection of singles in, before the advent of the LP. Sort of like the folders we stuffed our CDs in to haul around in our bags in the 90s, except bulkier. Publishers would put a collection of songs by a single artist or group out in an album designed to hold them, with cover art and presumably liner notes; once the LP format was introduced, this got collapsed into a single disc in a package that was still called an "album". Now I know why it shares a name with things like a "photo album". I have never questioned that word use in the entire fifty years of my life, and now I wonder why I never did.
Wikipedia also notes that it is arguable that the first "concept album" - a record album designed around a theme, with the intent of being listened to as a single unit rather than a collection of songs - is a 1940 Woody Guthrie album full of songs on a single theme (semi-autobiographical stories about being a migrant laborer in the US during the 1930s), but they didn't really get started until after the LP made it a hell of a lot easier to make a package where breaking the order up was a lot harder.
(It would be interesting to see if there is any data on whether there was more sheet music of single songs or long-form works published in the days when that was the primary method of music distribution.)
Personally I generally listen to my music collection in shuffle-by-album mode and never even use Spotify, I am perfectly fine with the existence of music designed to be listened to more in hour-long chunks rather than 3-5 minute chunks and I generally find listening to my entire collection on shuffle-by-song to be a source of incredibly jarring genre whiplash, but the history of recorded music has a lot of work whose natural unit is measured in single digits of minutes.
(And mostly this comment is just recording my notes from the brief wikipedia hole I fell in about the history of recorded music.)
anyway now I think I need to make a playlist where I take a couple of self-important albums that really want to be listened to as a Single Unit and stick them next to TMBG's album "Apollo 18", which contains 38 tracks, 21 of which are 6-61 seconds long. :)
> at least in USA the courts have repeatedly rejected the notion of "moral rights"
Well, the problem is that the US is the farthest from the international norms of copyright, so while in the US you can do that, in other countries (maybe except Canada if I remember correctly) there's a concept of absolute moral rights.
So assuming that Spotify can fought it back in court in the US, other countries like Japan might give it to Adelle, and so the shuffle button might only appear in the US while other countries might think if they want to adjust moral rights.
Some moral rights are recognized by US courts. For example you’re not allowed to misrepresent yourself as the author of someone else’s work. You also can’t distort or mutilate someone’s work in order to defame them. Parody is allowed, yes, but you need to present a parody as your own work.
Since forever? When did artists have rights to control how their work is presented? There are restrictions on making derivative works (but that goes beyond simply presenting the work in a different way), and there are explicit permissions to present works in ways where artists are likely to disagree - e.g. parody and satire; and at least in USA the courts have repeatedly rejected the notion of "moral rights" i.e. being able to restrict the context the work is used if the economic rights have been properly licensed.
The composer does not have the right to restrict me from playing their song on an out-of-tune instrument while trying to fart in unison; the poet does not have the right to restrict me from reading their poem with a horrible pronunciation and with commentary that completely misses their point; the painter does not have the right to restrict me from using their masterpiece as a literal doormat for wiping dirty boots. Copyright grants them exclusive rights on making copies and a few other things, but not control about how these copies of their work should be presented or used.