Is Dolby Atmos Bringing Gatekeeping Back to Music?
Is Dolby Atmos Bringing Gatekeeping Back to Music?
Guest columnist Dean Reid (Lana Del Rey, James Blake, Stevie Nicks) ponders if spatial audio can go mainstream.
This week’s edition of The Cadence features a guest opt-ed by Los Angeles-based music producer, mixer, and instrumentalist Dean Reid, known for working with artists such as Lana Del Rey, James Blake, and Stevie Nicks. Enjoy!
Spend much time in the online audio engineering community and you’ll quickly see there’s a new boogie man in town, and its name is Dolby Atmos. The gripe is not so much with the technology per se, but rather its implementation. The latest rumor making its way through the music blogosphere is that Apple Music will no longer be including non-Dolby Atmos songs in their coveted official playlists. It’s unclear if this is an official policy, but a casual glance through Apple Music’s homepage shows a wealth of official playlists available when the app preferences are set to Dolby Atmos on or ‘automatic,’ and far fewer playlist options when Atmos is set to ‘off.’
First, some context. Before the internet, recording artists were heavily dependent on powerful record labels that could pay for expensive recording studios and could get them played on radio and MTV. That was until the internet and digital recording came along and largely democratized the recording and marketing process, bringing costs way down and opening the door to untold thousands (if not millions) of bedroom music artists and producers.
Now, with the rise of Dolby Atmos, the paradigm may have shifted yet again. Artists must may now have their songs mixed in stereo and Atmos, and producers and mixing engineers must decide whether or not to make the investment in multi-speaker Atmos setups – which are not cheap. A barebones setup can cost $10,000, with higher-end setups costing upwards of $40-50,000 or more. It is in these additional costs, allegedly, that big labels and their deep pockets have once again found a way to gain an edge over the independent artist. For the moment, large labels seem perfectly content to pay for a stereo mix and a separate Atmos mix.
Is this extra expense really enough to enable large labels to reclaim the role of gatekeeper, deciding which acts succeed and which acts fail? With the long-term future of Dolby Atmos still unclear, it’s too early to tell. Apple Music has touted that in the last year, over 80% of their streams have been customers “enjoyed” Atmos streams — although with Atmos being the default setting on the app, that’s hardly surprising. And one has to wonder, how many of those listeners actually realized they were listening in Atmos? How many actually preferred listening in Atmos?
The elephant in the room, of course, is Spotify, the world’s biggest streaming app. Spotify has already announced plans to unveil its version of Dolby Atmos streaming. And music distribution companies have preemptively begun to require artists and labels to submit Atmos versions of songs in addition to stereo. How Spotify chooses to implement Atmos could be the difference in whether or not it truly becomes the industry standard across all platforms. Will it be free for all subscribers or will there be a more expensive lossless / Atmos tier? The choice could largely affect how listeners come to view Atmos – the new standard for consuming music or yet another passing fad for audiophiles.
Sound engineers have come to understand that they are largely unwilling pawns in this format war. After all, they are who will bear the brunt of the investment needed in creating the product. Rates for Atmos mixes have already started to come down – perhaps good for the artist but bad for the engineer hoping to recoup their costs. This has naturally led to engineers asking themselves if they really need an expensive rig to mix in Atmos? Many are turning to software that simulates the experience of mixing in a multi-speaker Atmos mix setup – but on headphones.
I spoke with mix engineer Evan Sutton (Julieta Venegas, Parquet Courts, Shawn Mendes), who reminded me, “We get caught up in the technology, but emotion is the most important thing in the end. The song has to feel right more than just sound technically impressive.” When I ask if he mixes on headphones, he answers that he uses a combination of tools, with the brunt of the work happening on headphones and mix checks occurring on Atmos rigs and Airpods. “Could you eventually mix on just headphones?” I ask. “I don’t know. If I had to, probably. That’s where the audience is,” he said. “It’s easy to lose the vibe of the original stereo mix in Atmos. As [fellow recording engineer] Steve Genewick said, ‘mixing in stereo is like trying to fit 10 lb of stuff inside a 5 lb bag. Atmos is like fitting 10 lb of stuff in a 20 lb bag.’ With a larger soundstage comes more freedom to explore the space, but you lose some of the glue holding all the parts together.”
It seems to make sense to me that if the majority of listeners will be consuming Atmos content via headphones, couldn’t it be created on headphones? If this method caught on, the costs associated with creating Atmos mixes would drop dramatically and any competitive edge large artists and labels had would disappear. I reached out to several mix engineers who own full Atmos setups and all declined to comment.
Apple themselves surely are not preoccupied with gatekeeping which type of artists can succeed. For them, it’s all about driving customers into the Apple ecosystem and getting them to buy iPhones, AirPods, Vision headsets, and subscriptions. The more smaller studios and artists have access to working in Atmos, the better — more content for their ecosystem.
Lost in all of this discussion is, of course, the listener. Will the everyday consumer ever come to see Atmos as an exciting new way to experience music? The next big thing? Have you ever had a friend excitedly tell you, “You have to hear this song in Atmos!”? Chances are, you haven’t.
I asked my dad, born in 1946 and a lifelong musician and music fan, about the public reception to the mono-to-stereo transition. His reply: “Short answer: they raved. Finally, records sound like music.” Listeners in the 60s were eager to experience their favorite music in this exciting new format. New hi-fi products flew off the store shelves.
The adoption of Atmos listening will likely follow a path more akin to the adoption of HD TV: that’s just how it comes now. The desire for the average consumer to invest in more gadgets so they can experience the new format seems barely existent. But if the gadgets they already use (phone, headphones) allow them to try it out? Sure, why not?
I, for one, question how concerted the effort is to use Atmos as a means of gatekeeping. The fact is, there is no way major labels will be able to prevent indie/bedroom artists from having viral hits. That cat is out of the bag. Therefore, if a bedroom artist has a huge viral hit (the next “Old Town Road” or TikTok smash), and the song only exists in traditional stereo, Apple will face a dilemma. Exclude the hit from its playlists and they’ll be missing out on all of those streams and potential new customers. Do they make an exception?
With the rollout of Spotify Atmos coming speculatively coming, many of these questions could be answered soon.
Update: We received some free fact-checking from friend-of-the-newsletter Daddy Kev, hence the occasional crossed-out and corrected words.
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TAKEAWAYS
Salient statements from this week’s music news.
1. The Touring Business Is Booming — But Problems Linger for Smaller Acts
Middle-class musicians are still struggling on the road in the age of the super-tour.
Takeaway: Many bands are reluctant to raise prices due to fans’ own financial hardships as a result of inflation, but the artists still have to pay the increasing prices for hotels, buses and crews.
2. 15% of the General Population in the US Are ‘Superfans.’
D2C sales of physical media are the best way to currently capitalize, but new streaming payout models could be on their way as well
Takeaway: In Goldman’s latest Music In The Air report, it claimed that if 20% of paid streaming subscribers today could be categorized as ‘superfans’ and, furthermore, if these ‘superfans’ were willing to spend double what a non-superfan spends on digital music each year, it implies a $4.2 billion (currently untapped) annual revenue opportunity for the record industry.
3. TikTok Music Moves Much Closer to Launching in US
More international launches and new major label deals make the the first major DSP launch in a decade seem inevitable.
Takeaway: While Apple Music and Amazon Music are part of larger ecosystems that disincentive users from switching services and can help them survive new competitors. Spotify is a standalone service and company. That leaves EK and Co. vulnerable.
