Legibility

Tomorrow, I'm going to hear Gordon Grdina's Nomad Trio with Matt Mitchell and Jim Black late at night, at Ironworks.

The new album by this group, Boiling Point, hit the Earshot charts this week – which led me down a rabbit hole.

On the streaming platforms, do you know how many different artist profiles Gord has?

Take a wild guess...

The answer is 10.

Ten different artist profiles

1. Gordon Grdina
2. Gordon Grdina's Haram
3. Gordon Grdina Septet
4. Gordon Grdina's Nomad Trio
5. Gordon Grdina Quartet
6. Gordon Grdina's The Marrow
7. Gordon Grdina's Square Peg
8. Gordon Grdina Mark Helias Matthew Shipp
9. Gordon Grdina's East Van Strings
10. Gordon Grdina, Gary Peacock, & Paul Motian

A quick rundown of why this is bad

• Hard for fans to discover all the music. Following only one of these profiles? You won't find the music of the other nine.
• Nightmare for the artist/team. Whoever is releasing and promoting the music has ten profiles to monitor, can't cross-reference all the listeners when pitching a new release to editorial, and probably pays $100 to $500 more for distribution than is necessary.
• Missing out on thousands of new listeners. Taking number 10 as an example, Gary Peacock and Paul Motian each have 10,000+ Followers on Spotify today; and if the album was properly released under Gordon Grdina (profile #1) featuring Gary & Paul, the many Followers of Gary & Paul would find the music.

It looks like Gord's team doesn't know or care about this situation. Three of the ten profiles – the Septet, the Square Peg, and the one for the album below – are unverified, meaning not claimed on Spotify for Artists yet.

Pathways by Gordon Grdina, Mark Helias & Matthew Shipp

Bandcamp | Spotify | Label: AttaBoyGirl Records is Gord's vanity label

This is not just Spotify: there will be ten profiles on Apple Music, ten YouTube Music channels, et al.

Disclaimers

I respect Gord a lot as a leading jazz artist and innovator, I've published a review of his music before which led to my "Very cool" testimonial from Coastal Jazz...

And for those artists who might say they don't have time to care about this stuff because:

• "Nobody listens to me on Spotify anyway"
• "I don't make any money on streaming anyway / streaming is bad"
• "My focus is only on making/selling CDs and performing"
• "The label should do it: not my problem"

I get all these arguments, to varying extents. And I'm not claiming that Gord would say these things.

But...

To have ten profiles' worth of unorganized albums on streaming is not good, and there are listeners out there who will enjoy less of Gord's work because of it.

Also, it's not just streaming. Even on Bandcamp the Boiling Point album has duplicate listings:

Boiling Point by Gordon Grdina Nomad Trio

Boiling Point, by Gordon Grdina’s Nomad Trio

6 track album

Gordon Grdinatomunderground

Nomad Trio feat. Matt Mitchell & Jim Black - Boiling Point, by Gordon Grdina

6 track album

Gordon GrdinaJimmy Wunts

yes those are different | no Spotify | Label: Astral Spirits

Somebody needs to work on the artist's legibility.

If the artist can't or won't do it, for whatever reason, then somebody (even if funded by a grant) needs to be contracted to work on this area.

But hey, I'm looking forward to Friday night's concert!

PS. two other albums that entered the Earshot jazz charts

Mediumistic Methodology by Devin Brahja Waldman & Hamid Drake

Bandcamp | no Spotify | Label: Astral Spirits

The Path by The Cookers Quintet

(upcoming release date August 5, 2022) | Label: Do Right Music, from Toronto, happened to put out Dawn Pemberton's album Say Something among other crossover stuff.