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Jazz Artists and the Business of Music: Digital Collaborations and Live Streaming

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For decades, jazz enthusiasts and musicians have discussed the concern that it may be a “dying genre.” Changes in the recording industry, the decline of jazz journalism, and an aging audience have all been cited as reasons for the characterization. The pandemic added another layer of uncertainty to the field, forcing jazz venues to cancel performances and artists to transition from stages and clubs to home studios. These obstacles proved to be opportunities, the jazz field is more diverse and expansive than ever. It’s crossed over into rap, hip-hop, rock, funk, blues, Latin, and folk. The recently announced Newport Jazz Festival lineup demonstrates this diversity with artists like Anderson .Paak, Jon Batiste, Julian Lage, Soulive, Thundercat, and Pedrito Martinez.

Newport Jazz Festival’s 2023 Lineup, via https://newportjazz.org/

Similarly, the 2023 GroundUp Music Festival featured an assortment of artists, including Snarky Puppy, Edmar Castañeda & Grégoire Maret, Nai Palm, Jeff Tweedy, and Madison Cunningham. Emerging artists in the jazz field have been gaining momentum. Jazz vocalist Samara Joy won the 2023 GRAMMY for Best New Artist.

Technology has been adopted by artistic disciplines slower than it has been advancing. Arts organizations began hastily experimenting with producing and presenting digital content in 2020 due to the lock down. Artists faced a much different challenge. Relegated to their homes, they had to find ways of engaging fans. But, for many, it was an expansion of work they had already begun. In the past five or so years, it’s become almost mandatory for artists to create a following online. The pandemic just accelerated and expanded that need.

live streaming & social media presences

Digital streaming services have bolstered artists such as Makaya McCraven, Esperanza Spalding, Kamasi Washington, and Robert Glasper, all of whom have received millions of plays. After the start of the pandemic, YouTube became a haven for musicians. New York City-based artists especially had to find ways to maintain their professional playing from their homes as the city went into lockdown. Emmet Cohen began making use of this digital environment after the onset of the pandemic. He began hosting weekly live-streamed shows from his apartment, diffusely paying homage to the Harlem rent parties that began in the 1920s. These at-home shows amassed a significant online following. In November 2020, Cohen’s performance of La Vie en Rose featuring singer Cyrille Aimée had over 4 million views. He later added an educational component to his YouTube channel to further engage followers. In addition to creating an online presence, Cohen was quick to embrace other digital trends such as NFTs and direct-to-fan connection.

Digital performances and streaming have given established musicians a way to fill the performance gap caused by COVID and have allowed them to connect with their fans in a different way. Creating and developing an online presence is the ammo that launched some musicians’ careers. Bari saxophonist Leo Pellegrino (AKA Leo P) gained mainstream popularity when a video of his trio Too Many Zooz busking in a New York City subway went viral on YouTube in 2014. Since its posting, it has gained over 9.1 million views on YouTube alone. Leo P has kept active on social media, particularly on Instagram and TikTok. Since then, he has collaborated with Grace Kelly on several projects over the years. The duo also maintains an active presence on Instagram, with their page weare2saxy having over 192,000 followers.

Among many of the jazz artists today embracing an online presence is Pittsburgh-based Paul Thompson. He first began posting videos in 2020 while testing and experimenting with his tech setup, thinking of ways to pass the time. Having been a fan of YouTubers such as Rick Beato and Adam Neely, he decided to post some videos of himself playing bass every day and soon developed an online fanbase. Now, his YouTube channel pdbass has over 90,000 subscribers. He describes his channel as another creative outlet that allows people to learn about him. It’s a sort of “three-horse race” between performing, teaching, and running his channel. Now that his popularity has reached a point where he is monetizing his content, he has learned more about how to attract more viewers.

Monetization on YouTube comes from advertisements run during videos. The owner of a video is then compensated each time a viewer sees the complete advertisement. Analytics play a large part in drawing in revenue. Advertisers bid on certain videos based on the demographic profiles of a channel’s audience. Although his channel serves as an additional revenue stream, he believes the focus can’t be on the money but rather on the cultural need for jazz to adapt to a changing world. We are “entering a stage where people who are popular on social media have passed the people we grew up knowing - Coltrane, Monk, Parker, and many others.” Record companies are approaching “YouTube stars,” such as the aforementioned Leo P. Thompson wants to use his channel to present valid information that ultimately brings value to people’s lives. His attitude is to take his role as a content creator seriously so others will as well.

Thompson sees his channel as his “third act” after learning to play and teach. While he has embraced this new venture, the key, according to him, is in finding the balance between playing music and having social media. Technology is constantly evolving, and “we need to chase it.” As an adjunct professor at Duquesne University, Thompson sees his YouTube channel as a way to recruit students by giving them a sort of “demo” lesson. For a musician, it’s the perfect “business card.” But he doesn’t allow the technology to shift his attention too far away from playing the music.

education technologies in schools of music

The advent of technology in universities presents both opportunities and challenges for students and educators alike. Jared Sims, saxophonist and Director of Jazz Studies at West Virginia University, sees the objective as finding the balance between adopting the technology in order to advance the creative process while retaining the musicality of the art form. In some ways, technology has made teaching and performing much easier. Rather than carrying around stacks of sheet music or worn-out Real Books, iPads allow for hundreds of charts to be stored in one place. Smartphones can record sessions to allow for listening back to what was immediately played. YouTube serves as an invaluable resource for quick lessons on a technique or recordings of tunes a student may be working on at any given time.

Additionally, communication among musicians, teachers, and students has improved. Dropbox, Google Drive, or other file-sharing and storage programs allow for sheet music and audio files to be shared with ease and efficiency. Teachers can quickly give students feedback on compositions or recordings, and artists are able to collaborate with one another while in different parts of the world. A popular example is Jacob Collier, who created “All I Need” using new technology that let him record remotely with Mahalia and Ty Dolla $ign.

Certain flaws Sims has seen with implementing technology into teaching, however, can be exasperating. Arranging, for example, presents a unique dilemma. Sibelius is the standard composing/arranging software used in many music schools. It’s able to analyze the format of a composition being written and signal to the writer where portions may be incomplete, and the final output looks clean and professional. Sims believes that it is overall helping students write better music. Sibelius can also transpose a piece of music into any key. While this can certainly be helpful and save much time and effort, it then discourages users from using their listening or music theory skills to transpose. This skill is critical for jazz musicians in particular, as it is expected to be able to play almost any standard jazz tune in all keys.

Sims also feels that teaching music is easier when it is done with paper and pencil. The manual process of writing can be more intimate than sitting at a computer and typing in notes. What’s more, such technology may not always be available. It can be equated to knowing how to type on a keyboard but not being able to write with pen and paper. Both skills are valuable in their own right.

Access and affordability to technology are major barriers for many young musicians and students. Mac computers and recording software (most commonly, Logic and Garageband) are the industry standard. But the cost of a Mac setup, complete with a mic, headphones, software, mixer, and any other necessary components, is quite expensive. Schools can’t expect every student to endure these costs. But the increasing presence of technology in teaching, performing, and recording settings is requiring students to develop fluency with the tools that will allow them to both improve as artists and promote themselves on social media as professional musicians.

Opposite of these issues is the “artificial studio environment” in which many jazz recordings are done. As a genre fundamentally concerned with live correspondences amongst bandmates, digital possibilities for recording disrupt the traditional ethos. Because so much audio editing and mixing can be done, the “live” sound of a recording is lost to some extent. So musicians record in different rooms or at separate times altogether. This isn’t to say that jazz shouldn’t be produced this way or that it is negative. It’s an adaptation taken during COVID in particular. But the idea of balance presents itself again in this case - the balance between playing live and producing a quality recording. Some of that live quality may have gotten lost since the pandemic that Sims has been working to recover in his own work and his students.

Like Paul Thompson, Sims equates self-promotion on social media as the new business card. Social media gives people awareness of what is happening. Sims is using it as a tool for promoting the jazz program at WVU.

“Promoting the program on social media allows us to define what we do, what our interests are, let people know that we’re here, we’re active. The end game is to have people know we play music, and social media is a good avenue. We have control of the messaging”
— Jared Sims

Not many of their students have actively pursued a digital avenue in their performance careers. But many are using social media to engage in existing jazz communities. The @jazzmemes_ page offers a nice counter to the idea that jazz is a dying genre. And the high levels of engagement between jazz artists and their fans is promising. But more important is the fact that it can generate more business. Sims has secured performing and recording gigs many times from promoting his travel and work through Facebook and Instagram.

As for the jazz industry as a whole, Sims believes it needs to think about new ways of bringing music to people. Right now, there aren’t really any answers, just questions. But what is being done currently isn’t very effective. Now is the time to experiment, be unconventional, and try new things, not just with the music but with how the industry is run.

continued challenges in presenting at live venues

Arts institutions face a number of challenges regarding the adoption of new technology. Streaming became widely adopted, albeit compulsorily in many cases, as a mechanism for audience engagement while venues were shut down in 2020. Even before the pandemic, however, many institutions were utilizing technology for growth. Marty Ashby, Executive Producer of MCG Jazz, sees the last five to ten years as a dramatic shift for well-known artists to bring their personas into people’s homes on a direct basis, whether that be in partnership with an organization or on their own. This period has allowed for “larger than life” artists such as Ann Hampton Callaway or Kurt Elling to humanize themselves. As venues began opening back up, some have kept up a digital practice, while others abandoned it to solely focus on in-person events. Ashby and Renée Govanucci, Director of MCG Jazz, have seen how this kept fans engaged at the expense of little to no monetization. As audiences steadily become more comfortable with going out again, the pre-pandemic challenges for jazz presenters, which are not unlike those other nonprofit arts organizations face, continue to be at play - lack of funding and lack of resources.

Collaboration and knowledge sharing are necessities in the arts, irrespective of the discipline. Ashby believes a centralized database of artist and audience data would fill that need in the jazz presenting field. The task of executing such a database was undertaken in 2012. But for a variety of reasons, it never made any headway. The project was called Jazz Commons. The intention of it was that data on artists and venues, their booking history, ticket sales, and more could be shared across jazz presenters in the country to then guide decision-making in future programming. Much in the same way that jazz musicians collaborate and network, learning and growing from one another, Ashby posits that organizations can do the same. The foundational idea behind Jazz Commons is the social network mapping and analysis of Valdis Krebs, which relies upon the use of networks for success. Today, the closest tool that exists to that is All About Jazz, founded by Michael Ricci.

Ashby and Govanucci believe that quality performances that engage audiences will sustain the genre, and technology must be a driving force behind it. The technology that circulates information and data more easily needs to come to the forefront of that effort. It’s through the lack of such advancement that jazz gets its reputation for atrophy. Alongside that need for sustainability is an element of legacy and remembrance. Jazz revolves around a respect for and a knowledge base of the past, a byproduct of which is authenticity in the music. While technology must be adapted to allow the industry to evolve, the music must retain its authenticity and connection to what came before it.

Conclusion

Throughout history, jazz has been on the cutting edge of social and cultural change. It has always represented a means of freedom and self-expression in both the brightest and darkest of times. Jazz artists have historically pushed the boundaries of their own genre, as well as others. As jazz trumpeter and past president of the Jazz Education Network, Sean Jones, recently stated, the embracing of technology is the most exciting thing about the genre right now. Yet on the business side, the “way things have always been done” is not fully serving the art form. There’s a disconnect in the field between the past and the future. While its audience is relatively small, many are embracing this music and changing the definition of “jazz.”

The admiration for jazz is prevailing in a more diverse audience than ever before. Rather than thinking about it being a “dying” genre, it’s simply in a time of transformation. As one Yale music professor mentioned, “Jazz is dead if one thinks about a certain set of narrow conventions to define it. If it has to look like the jazz of the past, jazz is dead.”

Jazz is progressing, growing, and melding with other genres and artistic mediums. In a cooperative partnership with technology, it can expand in ways we never imagined while honoring its extraordinary past.