About eight months ago, I deleted TikTok because I thought I might’ve been too addicted to it. But I recently redownloaded it, and honestly, I’m not endlessly scrolling on it like I used to. Mainly, I wanted to use the app for research purposes, like writing these articles, not just for my own entertainment. But the other day, I decided to scroll for a little bit on my For You page, just to see what it would recommend, and honestly, there wasn’t anything that caught my attention … well, except for one thing. An artist named Laufey, pronounced lay-vay, had shown up about three times in the span of my scroll, and I was instantly drawn to her music. I decided to listen to her work, and I was obsessed with her before I knew it.
What sets Laufey apart from other artists now is that she’s a jazz singer, and being a jazz musician is a struggle in the current world of music. In 2022, jazz was the least popular genre of music on streaming platforms, with classical following closely behind.
In recent years, Spotify, the major music streaming platform, has even come under fire for reportedly, creating fake artists to put onto its playlists, specifically jazz playlists, as noticed by TikTok user @dritbitz. Spotify would do this by, allegedly, hiring producers to create tracks to put onto playlists under fictional artists made by Spotify. They then make a deal with the producers to pay a one-time fee to make the tracks and then not have to pay royalties, unlike their policy with other artists.
While this scenario may seem a little excessive, Spotify has a clear rationale, considering how many authentic artists exist on the platform. Since the company’s inception, it has surprisingly never made a profit. This is due to having to pay for publishing and royalty fees. In 2021 alone, “Spotify said it paid out over $1 billion to publishing rights holders and $4 billion to major record labels,” and “for the first time, over 1,000 artists made more than $1 million through royalties on its platform.”
Managing the platform through music artists hinders Spotify from making a profit, which causes it to constantly be on the lookout for ways to increase revenue. This is why you may have seen a push recently on audiobooks. Audiobooks have the potential to make more revenue compared to music because users purchase books individually rather than through a subscription.
Now, circling back to Laufey, with her growth in popularity on TikTok and the recent release of her sophomore album Bewitched, she’s exploded in popularity within the music world. In the past year alone, she’s gained over 10 million monthly listeners on Spotify. With the release of her new album on Sept. 8, she even broke Spotify’s record of the biggest debut for a jazz album with 5.7 million streams. She surpassed the previous record holder by over 4 million streams, blowing her competition out of the water and showing the current state of jazz in the streaming era.
Since Laufey is still a newer artist, it’s hard to tell what her long-term impact will be on the jazz genre as a whole. When asked about introducing jazz to a younger audience, Laufey said, “even though I’m writing songs that sometimes sound like old jazz standards, the lyrics are very modern; they’re my personal experiences from this day and age. I think that relatability is what connects young listeners.”
Jazz was once the most popular genre of music in the United States, and it has slowly fallen. As Ryan Gosling’s character, Sebastian, said in La La Land, “jazz is conflict and it’s compromise, and it’s new every time. It’s brand new every night. It’s very, very exciting. And it’s dying. It’s dying on the vine.” And while this may be true, with artists like Laufey, there’s still hope for the genre.