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Posted: |
Oct 26, 2021 - 10:00 PM
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By: |
nuts_score
(Member)
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And do you know the rules of debate?
"Thou shalt not lay the burden of proof onto him that is questioning the claim."
I appreciate the candor, but unfortunately each and every thoughtful and well-articulated response to your desire is met with you stating it is not good enough to be considered by you. The debate is you spinning it into your one-sided subjectivity.
Yet the truths remain. Composer and musician Hans Zimmer is 64 years old. He has worked in the film, TV, video game, and other media industries for four decades. His music has attracted an audience worldwide and he was recently able to sell out the same stages that pop musicians also gather their legions of fans. His name has garnered soundtrack albums that have sold, consistently, since his most successful works; both on physical and digital platforms. He has worked with a wide variety of acclaimed filmmakers, on award-winning and classic films. He himself has garnered praise and awards through the decades as well. His musical themes and motifs are known by fans of cinema and music. His collaborators have studied under him, worked tirelessly alongside him, and many have gone on to become successful and acclaimed in their own right.
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Posted: |
Oct 26, 2021 - 10:08 PM
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By: |
Mephariel
(Member)
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I have been very very patient with you.
Much appreciated AND hilarious. Thank you.
I even explain why Spotify will give you actually the data that you wanted far more then album sales because you can see clearly what listeners are listening to and that will take the songs out of the equation. Isn’t that your whole point?
No. I never asked for what people are listening to. I asked for what people actually bought.
You claimed that people buy albums not because of the score right?
No. I didn't.
I said some people probably buy the album because they liked the movie and the music.
Wouldn’t having individual data of each cue paint a clearer picture? You ignored that.
No, it wouldn't and no, I didn't.
And I already explained why.
Also the fact that this isn't 1960s. It is like asking for DVD sales, when the movies are streaming. Most metrics are streaming. But nevertheless, you want album sales? Fine. I'll dig up some that I can find. You want come compilations of critical acclaim? Sure I can give you that too.
First I’ll give you the album sales:
The Lion King - 15+ million copies
Gladiator - 3+ million copies
The Prince of Egypt - 600,000+ copies (US and Canada only)
Pirates Franchise – 178,000 copies (confirmed numbers, only includes first film and third film sales, and only UK sales for the first film)
Interstellar – 60,000 copies (UK sales only)
The Dark Knight – 57,000 copies (3 weeks of sales)
Man of Steel – 32,000 (Opening week. Not sure what the total sales are).
Hans Zimmer Live – Over 1 million tickets sold
Billboard 200 Peak Position
Man of Steel – #9
Blade Runner 2049 - #18
No Time to Die - #19
Interstellar - #20
Gladiator - #66
Dunkirk - #70
For comparison, Williams made the chart 3 times, Djawadi twice, Giacchino once, Horner once, Elfman once, James Newton Howard once (the hanging tree song).
For the reviews, I’ll post that separately.
I do not know what source you are quoting for the album sales.
Can you link to it, please?
And you don't need to cut and paste reviews--just linking to them is good.
I have no idea how Billboard collates their charts, so that part is interesting, though not essential.
Ditto the comparisons with other artists--interesting in context of this thread, but not essential to the aspects I'm discussing.
But I appreciate that you included those parts.
In fact, I hope you take it at face value that I appreciate the work you put in.
Now we're getting somewhere--no joke.
Depending on how the facts and figures can be interpreted, I may even be dangerously close to agreeing to your original premise.
A personal request:
There is no need to quote all of a conversation in your replies--just the relevant bits are good.
(The only reason I did it on this one was to address each of your statements--but normally I would not.)
LOL. I don't know if you are always this dense, but I'll post the way I want to post. Thanks for the perspective though. Links to the numbers...you can find them all over the web.
You can easily just search Wiki to know how Billboard works. Billboards has been around forever.
The Billboard Hot 100 is the music industry standard record chart in the United States for songs, published weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on sales (physical and digital), radio play, and online streaming in the United States. The weekly tracking period for sales was initially Monday to Sunday when Nielsen started tracking sales in 1991, but was changed to Friday to Thursday in July 2015. This tracking period also applies to compiling online streaming data. Radio airplay, which, unlike sales figures and streaming, is readily available on a real-time basis, is also tracked on a Friday to Thursday cycle...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Hot_100
As for links to the numbers:
Gladiator and The Lion King: https://www.cineconcerts.com/composers/2017/10/10/alaptewf9snjssyov5yxzo12tyhy3g
The Prince of Egypt:
https://books.google.com/books?id=kw4EAAAAMBAJ&q=like+swimming+morphine+soundscan&pg=PA81#v=snippet&q=like%20swimming%20morphine%20soundscan&f=false.
Look under "In the Hunts for Hits."
Most of the other soundtracks are just Billboard articles that you can find. Search them on Wiki if you want.
Hans Zimmer Live ticket sales:
https://deadline.com/2021/05/caa-signs-oscar-winning-composer-hans-zimmer-1234762853/
Zimmer has the most monthly listeners on Spotify, the most top 200 scores on Billboards, and is one of the best selling album composers ever (certainly the best selling working actively today). If you follow film music careers, I shouldn't need to go through these hula hoops. I honestly think 90% of the posters here know what I am saying is the truth before I post any of the links.
Are we done here?
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Oh my gosh this is a long one…
I’m not sure what was being asked here, but I was making the case that Spotify doesn’t provide a lot of conclusive data, nor do album sales, when it comes to answering the question of whether Zimmer is a “versatile” composer. They certainly don’t tell you how composers rank between each other either. What they DO tell you though is how general the audiences CONSUME film music at a given point in time, but even then the changing markets and technologies make this a very difficult set of data to draw conclusions.
First off, over half the users of Spotify listen on mobile devices, which usually means casual listening. This behavior also matches the list of the top-selling soundtracks of all time: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/567464/best-selling-movie-soundtracks-of-all-time for which the soundtracks on their follow the distinct pattern of having pop/rock/disco songs, which matches my observation that most soundtrack “fans” are casual fans and that general audiences aren’t consuming “nerdy” orchestral scores but things that kind of sound like Top 10 radio songs. Which begs the question for LION KING - did people buy it for Hans Zimmer’s music or Elton John and Tim Rice’s pop music or Lebo M’s world music? (Anecdotally, most of the Disney soundtrack “fans” I know do NOT listen to the score but the singing songs themselves).
But if you do want to look at album sales, the purely orchestral STAR WARS sold over 4 million copies which beat out GLADIATOR, for which Lisa Gerrard’s vocals were the biggest draw. A lot of people I knew who liked the GLADIATOR score specifically listed to her vocals and not the Zimmer “orchestra” stuff.
But this raises another issue with album sales - music was much more expensive to buy in the 1970s than the 1990s/2000s, and was available to a much smaller market, and with a smaller world population. So adjusted for “inflation”, it’s possible that STAR WARS succeeded way more than GLADIATOR and even other Zimmer scores, especially since STAR WARS had no additional music types to draw interest from people who had interest in other genres (New Age fans could also like GLADIATOR, Broadway Musical, Pop / Elton John, and World / Lebo M fans could like LION KING).
That’s A LOT of variables to have to account for and “adjust for inflation” / accuracy. Also the weird comment that Zimmer has concerts is meaningless, when a lot of composers have concerts. It’s also pretty widely acknowledged that Williams is largely responsible for the booming interest in live film-to-score performances as well as Film Score concerts in general, almost by accident in fact when ET was performed live for its 20-year anniversary.
Also, one other caveat with Spotify - the majority of users listen for free. So vast quantities of tracks listened can’t really be compared to album sales.
But as I described, I wouldn’t find these definitive anyway for the multitude of variables I described above. They can indicate a general sense of the POPULARITY of music, but that doesn’t help us at all - THE BODYGUARD is apparently the highest selling soundtrack of all time and I’m pretty sure that doesn’t mean Alan Silvestri is suddenly the most versatile composer (but for other reasons he could be…)
AFI’s 100 Years of Film Scores also lists Williams the most in its top 25 and no Zimmer. Does that count for anything?
Again, I think this conversation is best addressed with critical breakdowns of the actual music composition itself. Interestingly enough that podcast recently shared suggests the general “mood” approach of Zimmer, is repeated across multiple genres, even though the music sounds the same. So in that sense, Zimmer is quite adaptable if you consider that some of the same-sounding music was used in multiple genres.
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Posted: |
Oct 27, 2021 - 12:04 AM
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By: |
Octoberman
(Member)
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LOL. I don't know if you are always this dense, but I'll post the way I want to post. Thanks for the perspective though. Links to the numbers...you can find them all over the web.
You can easily just search Wiki to know how Billboard works. Billboards has been around forever.
The Billboard Hot 100 is the music industry standard record chart in the United States for songs, published weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on sales (physical and digital), radio play, and online streaming in the United States. The weekly tracking period for sales was initially Monday to Sunday when Nielsen started tracking sales in 1991, but was changed to Friday to Thursday in July 2015. This tracking period also applies to compiling online streaming data. Radio airplay, which, unlike sales figures and streaming, is readily available on a real-time basis, is also tracked on a Friday to Thursday cycle...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Hot_100
As for links to the numbers:
Gladiator and The Lion King: https://www.cineconcerts.com/composers/2017/10/10/alaptewf9snjssyov5yxzo12tyhy3g
The Prince of Egypt:
https://books.google.com/books?id=kw4EAAAAMBAJ&q=like+swimming+morphine+soundscan&pg=PA81#v=snippet&q=like%20swimming%20morphine%20soundscan&f=false.
Look under "In the Hunts for Hits."
Most of the other soundtracks are just Billboard articles that you can find. Search them on Wiki if you want.
Hans Zimmer Live ticket sales:
https://deadline.com/2021/05/caa-signs-oscar-winning-composer-hans-zimmer-1234762853/
Zimmer has the most monthly listeners on Spotify, the most top 200 scores on Billboards, and is one of the best selling album composers ever (certainly the best selling working actively today). If you follow film music careers, I shouldn't need to go through these hula hoops. I honestly think 90% of the posters here know what I am saying is the truth before I post any of the links.
Are we done here?
Well, I did not think so, but it sounds like you are.
In all honesty and sincerity, I give you credit for your efforts thus far--you've done a man's job, sir.
But...
You didn't provide the source for the album sales.
You didn't provide links to any articles illustrating critical acclaim--in fact, the CineConcerts article you linked to was basically a summary of his career, his awards and nominations which, while impressive, wasn't what I was asking. There was no author listed on that article.
(I was thinking more along the lines of reviews of albums and the like, by professional music critics who would give any kind of learned opinions of Zimmer's work.
I honestly thought that things like that would be easy to find if they existed. Maybe I was wrong.)
What you are saying now is, basically, "look for stuff yourself" (and at this point I can't say I blame you), but as I explained to NutsScore above, that's not how burden of proof works--as "dense" as that may seem to you.
I acknowledge that what I was asking for may have been a fundamental part of the problem.
It is likely that I placed too much emphasis on the phrases, "critical acclaim" and "commercial success".
But, as they were what was offered at the time, that is what I went with, thinking that those parameters would be sufficient to somehow measure Zimmer's supposed versatility.
As it stands, I do not consider the exercise a success or a failure--only incomplete.
It will no doubt come as no surprise then that my opinion is unchanged (much to the eyerolls of my detractors here).
Zimmer has made some great music, but he seems to have walked away from furthering any expansion of his talents--preferring instead to take a route that many (judging just from FSM members who have weighed in about this over the years) would consider somewhat stagnant.
I remain optimistic that he will come out with the occasional score that delivers on the promise of his earlier work.
His work is enjoyable in varying degrees, he is successful and maybe even influential in a way, but I do not consider him particularly versatile.
Regardless, you earned my respect for taking the issue seriously, despite the moments where the discourse got a little salty.
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What’s interesting is more the idea of who who I personally choose as a composer for a film? That gives me a better sense of gauging versatility.
I do really love and respect John Williams so he’d be a top pick. But knowing that his music has a very distinctive voice, I’d need to ask myself if that voice would be the right pick for my film. It might be.
I would not pick Zimmer because I really do not like his current “sound design” approach of music nor the large, heavy sound he employs. I also find his melodic material to be quite cheesy. Finally, his working style seems like a huge pain in the butt - I would not want to deal with a composer who seems as frantic as he does and who plops hundreds of hours of music in my lap for me to choose from.
If I DID want ambient music I’d probably pick a videogame composer or someone like Sherri Chung (or even Angelo Badalmenti, he seems like a total dream to work with!)
But with the flexibility of melodic or orchestral, I might pick someone like James Newton Howard, Alan Silvestri, Howard Shore, or Shirley Walker who can do both but have slightly less distinctive voices than a Williams.
And I love Jerry Goldsmith, but if I worked with him I’d be worried that his stuff might sound a little bit too much like other stuff and that I wouldn’t have the skills necessary to wrangle what I wanted from him.
If I wanted really interesting/experimental music, I might try Mica Levi, but only if she was interested in and felt connected to the project.
Oh my gosh - I also think I could work with Hugo Friedhofer. I think in modern times he could be pushed to have some interesting takes and he seemed to be a REALLY sensitive composer when collaborating with filmmakers. My sense is he’d have good ideas and be a good listener.
Ultimately I think versatility is: ability to write for different genres, ability to write for solo or full orchestra, deep understanding of each instrument, ability to balance synths or other unique elements, ability to work on very large or very small productions, strong musical background in distinct genres (jazz, orchestral, electronic), strong melodic writing, long cue writing, short cue writing, motivic writing, non-motivic writing, simple writing, complex writing, and unique combination of various compositional techniques. A good test is can you write for an orchestra and make it sound like it’s not an orchestra. Mica Levi I have to say is really good at that last point.
Oh, and Ennio Morricone is quite good at a lot of that stuff, but I’d have a similar concern as I would for Goldsmith - so I’d really have to see if he could be wrangled to not just give a “Morricone” score.
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Trust me, Ennio wouldve sacked you long before it got to "Buongiorno Maestro..." lol
?
Not sure what you mean, but both Goldsmith and Morricone are very distinctive composers and have very specific perspectives on the films they do. It seems their most successful scores are the ones where their styles/approaches were the perfect match for the film, or where they had previous collaborations with the filmmakers and thus a shorthand for working together. Consequently, in this imagined scenario, I’d need to make sure the film matched a Morricone score although I have a deep appreciation for music and how it progresses across a film over time, so it could be possible to fall into sync with Morricone or even Goldsmith quite quickly.
And I must say, both of them have scored an extremely high variety of genres. I’d say they’re definitely up there as some of the most versatile composers ever.
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Oh, and Ennio Morricone is quite good at a lot of that stuff, but I’d have a similar concern as I would for Goldsmith - so I’d really have to see if he could be wrangled to not just give a “Morricone” score.
I have to admit I don't understand even understand that comment. Every Morricone score is a Morricone score, sure, every Goldsmith score a Goldsmith score, every Williams score a Williams score, every Zimmer score a Zimmer score. Every Beethoven score is a Beethoven score too, every Stravinsky score a Stravinsky score. Every Brahms score is a Brahms score. Every composer of any note has a style, it's like a handwriting, and the better you know a composer, the more easily you recognize the composer. I can't think of a single important composer whose music doesn't belong to him/her in the sense that there is a uniqueness to a particular composer's voice that tends to shine through no matter what. It would be hard to find a more versatile film composer than Ennio Morricone though.
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I have to admit I don't understand even understand that comment. Every Morricone score is a Morricone score, sure, every Goldsmith score a Goldsmith score, every Williams score a Williams score, every Zimmer score a Zimmer score. Every Beethoven score is a Beethoven score too, every Stravinsky score a Stravinsky score. Every Brahms score is a Brahms score. Every composer of any note has a style, it's like a handwriting…
I don’t know if you’re purposely ignoring the comments that quote came from or perhaps you missed them, but I explained this twice already, and this is a third, so I really hope you just missed the context.
Goldsmith and Morricone were specifically mentioned together because their music is some of the most identifiable to their specific style than a lot of other composers, and both of them seem to be highly opinionated about their music which in certain cases has led to arguments and disagreements on films they’ve worked on. So in terms of looking at them as “versatile” under the metric of “can they depart from their signature sound and conform to the needs of a film, if different from their ‘sound’”, that’s where I suggested both might be a possible challenge. However, I also described both as having already worked in TONS of different genres and having immensely high-quality music, so in that sense they are quite versatile.
From my perspective, not every composer has a very distinct voice. It is certainly possible that film score fans who listen in detail can discern the particular mannerisms and style of even the most anonymous composer, but I think to a larger audience this really does vary on a spectrum. If Goldsmith and Morricone are the pinnacle of distinctive and identifiable, I’d say the Howard Shores, James Newton Howards and Shirley Walkers are less so. And possibly on the not-identifiable-at-all could be someone like Steven Price or Sherri Chung.
And for the example of Beethoven, well, he’s Beethoven… but for every “Beethoven” there are hundreds of Christian Neefes and Anton Reichas who are not just lesser-known but who also perhaps have a less distinctive style than Beethoven.
Again, that’s not saying they don’t make quality music, it just means that their style may not be as distinctive as others. Which was why I posited that Hugo Friedhofer might actually be a really good candidate because I think he is tremendously skilled but his style can be easily masked to the average listener. But also, that’s only one criteria I’ve floated - as mentioned, a lot of the composers I listed, Goldsmith and Morricone included, have demonstrated a huge amount of versatility across genres.
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From my perspective, not every composer has a very distinct voice.
Fair enough.
I'm not necessarily saying every composer has a distinct voice, I wouldn't know. Too many composers. What I am saying is that every composer of note, every composer who has composed a larger body of works with lasting value, every composer whose music by and large means something, has a distinct voice. (Lots of nondescript composers no one give a hoot in hell about, obviously.)
I have no opinion about Steven Price or Sherri Chung, as I'm not familiar enough with a larger part of their work, but James Newton Howard or Howard Shore have very identifiable personal styles, just as Goldsmith or Williams or Bernstein.
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(I cleared this joke with my lawyer first. He said it's allowed under current satire laws.)
Good move. We tolerate no funny stuff around these waters. Unless it's cleared by a lawyer.
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Posted: |
Oct 27, 2021 - 8:41 PM
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By: |
Mephariel
(Member)
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Oh my gosh this is a long one…
I’m not sure what was being asked here, but I was making the case that Spotify doesn’t provide a lot of conclusive data, nor do album sales, when it comes to answering the question of whether Zimmer is a “versatile” composer. They certainly don’t tell you how composers rank between each other either. What they DO tell you though is how general the audiences CONSUME film music at a given point in time, but even then the changing markets and technologies make this a very difficult set of data to draw conclusions.
First off, over half the users of Spotify listen on mobile devices, which usually means casual listening. This behavior also matches the list of the top-selling soundtracks of all time: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/567464/best-selling-movie-soundtracks-of-all-time for which the soundtracks on their follow the distinct pattern of having pop/rock/disco songs, which matches my observation that most soundtrack “fans” are casual fans and that general audiences aren’t consuming “nerdy” orchestral scores but things that kind of sound like Top 10 radio songs. Which begs the question for LION KING - did people buy it for Hans Zimmer’s music or Elton John and Tim Rice’s pop music or Lebo M’s world music? (Anecdotally, most of the Disney soundtrack “fans” I know do NOT listen to the score but the singing songs themselves).
But if you do want to look at album sales, the purely orchestral STAR WARS sold over 4 million copies which beat out GLADIATOR, for which Lisa Gerrard’s vocals were the biggest draw. A lot of people I knew who liked the GLADIATOR score specifically listed to her vocals and not the Zimmer “orchestra” stuff.
But this raises another issue with album sales - music was much more expensive to buy in the 1970s than the 1990s/2000s, and was available to a much smaller market, and with a smaller world population. So adjusted for “inflation”, it’s possible that STAR WARS succeeded way more than GLADIATOR and even other Zimmer scores, especially since STAR WARS had no additional music types to draw interest from people who had interest in other genres (New Age fans could also like GLADIATOR, Broadway Musical, Pop / Elton John, and World / Lebo M fans could like LION KING).
That’s A LOT of variables to have to account for and “adjust for inflation” / accuracy. Also the weird comment that Zimmer has concerts is meaningless, when a lot of composers have concerts. It’s also pretty widely acknowledged that Williams is largely responsible for the booming interest in live film-to-score performances as well as Film Score concerts in general, almost by accident in fact when ET was performed live for its 20-year anniversary.
Also, one other caveat with Spotify - the majority of users listen for free. So vast quantities of tracks listened can’t really be compared to album sales.
But as I described, I wouldn’t find these definitive anyway for the multitude of variables I described above. They can indicate a general sense of the POPULARITY of music, but that doesn’t help us at all - THE BODYGUARD is apparently the highest selling soundtrack of all time and I’m pretty sure that doesn’t mean Alan Silvestri is suddenly the most versatile composer (but for other reasons he could be…)
AFI’s 100 Years of Film Scores also lists Williams the most in its top 25 and no Zimmer. Does that count for anything?
Again, I think this conversation is best addressed with critical breakdowns of the actual music composition itself. Interestingly enough that podcast recently shared suggests the general “mood” approach of Zimmer, is repeated across multiple genres, even though the music sounds the same. So in that sense, Zimmer is quite adaptable if you consider that some of the same-sounding music was used in multiple genres.
I wasn't using Spotify to justify that Zimmer is a versatile composer, but rather to answer Octoberdog's claim that a lot of people buys album sales because of the movie not because of the score. That is actually a very valid opinion. Because when you look at James Horner's Titanic, that album sold 30 million. But how much of that was the score? I think most people brought that album because of the song (although streaming data shows that score IS pretty popular). That is why streaming metrics matter. Streaming breaks down the album and you can see individual cues. Zimmer's cues routinely gathered some of the highest plays among composers, not just the songs on the album. The fact that you brough up The Lion King is another great example. There is no question that most people brought that album because of the songs (like Titanic), but streaming data shows that the cues in the score has enduring quality. You can see this in compilations where the songs don’t exist, like Hans Zimmer The Classics.
In terms of your claim that Spotify listeners are casual, I think MOST music listeners are casual. The number of people who are hard core song/score listeners are probably not that high. However, statistics do not always back up that claim. For example, John Williams has 4+ million listeners a month. Would you say Williams' listeners are casual? But it is not just Williams, John Barry has over 1 million listeners a month, just below that of Ludwig Göransson. Delving deeper, the John Dunbar theme has over 18 million listeners, that is more than a lot of popular Zimmer cues. So are there a lot of casual listeners on Spotify? Sure. But there are probably a lot of different types of listeners. Again, Spotify has over 365 million customers. You also mentioned that albums were more expensive back then. Which is also a reason why using album sales as the sole metrics makes no sense.
It is also worth noting that you constantly mentioned Star Wars. Stars Wars is a culturally important score and has been selected as the greatest by AFI. John Williams is arguably the greatest composer of his generation (imo all time). If your argument is that Williams is up there with Zimmer or even surpassed Zimmer in popularity and ability to touch the mass, you are right. But outside of Williams who is barely active, Zimmer is king. Among active composers, he is certainly king. That is my point.
Lastly, you sort of mentioned something that I wanted to get across for a while. You asked: “AFI’s 100 Years of Film Scores also lists Williams the most in its top 25 and no Zimmer. Does that count for anything?” YES! Of course, it does! Not just that. But the fact that Williams has 50+ Oscars, and buttload of Grammys AND praises from numerous peers. I can come up with numerous quotes of composers, critics, musicians, including Zimmer himself, praising Williams. He also worked with one of the greatest directors in Spielberg. That was my point all along. I don’t need to read composition essays to know Williams is critically acclaim. Of course, his. He is an all-around titan. The same point applies to Zimmer. The part that I disagreed with you in the past is that Zimmer has very little Oscars. I disagree. I think Zimmer overall is one of the most nominated composers. But just that by itself isn’t why Zimmer is overall an acclaimed composer. It is everything else included.
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Thanks for your reply Mephariel. At this point I’m in way too many threads where I’m posting long responses that I’m having a hard time keeping track of it all.
First off I’m shocked to hear Zimmer has the most nominations! I would need to check the list but I would have thought that was Williams. I think I remember Williams has the most wins. Although you might be right because I seem to recall Zimmer has done possibly twice the number of films as Williams?
My point with STAR WARS was that it was the only score that I personally knew its sales numbers and knowing the variables, I would assume its “adjusted for inflation” numbers would be higher.
I don’t really know what to make of the Spotify plays relative to album purchases - I’m intrigued to look at the numbers and see how they correlate, but I’d have to spend time wrapping my head around that. For example, TITANIC, which you’re totally right about people buying the album for the song, I’m wondering if the people who purchased the album when it was released are the same people listening on Spotify or a different batch. I’d also be really curious to see if Spotify maps the PATH that people take from one song to the next and if the song was recommended or actively searched for. Similarly, I’m curious which music is actively listened to vs. being “on-in-the-background” during a listening session. For example, a TITANIC score cue might be in the mix of multiple playlists that are simply played on a loop.
That’s why I’m saying I’d need to wrap my head around it because streaming is SO complex.
Bringing it back to the point though, I don’t really know what I think the sales numbers communicate. I think they clearly represent the popularity of a composer to an audience at a given time, but that doesn’t necessarily match the critical consensus nor the craftsmanship of the work itself. Like even with Williams, I appreciate that he gets a lot of positive feedback and I think he deserves it, but it doesn’t really tell me much about his craftsmanship. I’m pretty uninterested in the surface-level reviews of his music (especially all the ones that came out recently for the new Star Wars movies). What I’m really hungry for, and let’s perhaps call it a selfish pet-project of mine, is the detailed stuff about the craftsmanship. Like the best thing I read recently was a forum post about Williams’ “Asteroid Chase” from THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, and talking about all the polytonality of it, the octatonicism, the dyadic and triadic writing, and debating what key or keys the song is in. Like I KNOW that song is popular, but when I see how it was constructed I know WHY it’s popular and why it deserves its place as one of Williams’ popular cues. It also allows me to see how the techniques could be used to create something different (hence the versatility).
I don’t really remember my point nor if I had a point but again, I appreciate your response. And two paragraphs in I was so optimistic that this would be a short post of mine. But lo…
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