Because Fedez’s new single can’t be found in streaming
There is a new single from Fedez, but it cannot be found on streaming platforms. It’s called “Temet nosce”, a Latin expression meaning “know thyself”, but fans of the Milanese rapper – who has just laid himself bare in a much talked about autobiography these days, “The water is deeper than it seems from above” – can only listen to it in two ways: either on Fedez’s official Instagram account or on YouTube. On Spotify and surrounding areas the song was not uploaded. Fedez shared the official video clip last Monday, October 20th. It was reasonable to expect the single to appear on streaming platforms on the occasion of today’s New Music Friday, Friday 24 October, together with the singles officially released on Friday. Instead, nothing. Does Fedez’s move have anything to do with the recent statements he recently made against the streaming platforms?
Last spring in his “Pulp Podcast” the voice of “Battito” shared a long rant about streaming platforms with fans and said:
The beauty of music in the end is that if you have a good song… music is a dirty context for many reasons, sneaky and ugly for many reasons. But, in the end, if you have a good song, that’s what counts. I was born, like Salmo and Gemitaiz, in a particular period, that of the end of the ‘first republic’ of discography. I was born on YouTube in a short period that was truly democratic, before streaming platforms. Now there is a worse scenario than what was the first republic of discography. Today it is undeniable, and I know this for sure: streaming platforms can change the performance of a song based on the promotion and visibility they give it. The percentage they can influence is enormous, they can influence the progress of a song by up to 40-50%. This thing is very serious.
Fedez then added, still on the topic:
In Italy we have translated a method that is used in America, where the power to do this is distributed in the hands of multiple people, the famous editors who can put you in playlists giving you visibility. Well, in America there are many editors and therefore you are not concentrating all the power in the hands of one person. In Italy, since we are a province of the record empire, this power has been given into the hands of a few people. Giving such enormous power into the hands of a few people, and I’m not saying this for the people themselves because whoever you give that power into the hands of becomes very dangerous and it’s inevitable that bad things will happen. I hope that this is a transition phase, because today it is actually more difficult to emerge.
Statements that closely resemble those made by Kanye West a year ago, who said: “Streaming has devalued our music. I will sell the next albums on the Yeezy website. I have 20 million followers, if 5% of them buy my album, we are talking about a million copies, or 300 thousand more than the best-selling album last year. We sold a million pieces on Yeezy after the Super Bowl, I know it’s possible. If we succeeded, we would no longer have streaming companies controlling artists.”
It must be said, however, that after the statements made last spring, Fedez continued to share music on Spotify and surrounding areas. The single released in May together with Clara, “Scelte stupide”, for example, was uploaded to streaming platforms (and is still there, together with all of Fedez’s discography).
The video clip for “Temet nosce” opens with a scene that references the ending of “Truman Show”, Peter Weir’s 1998 film starring Jim Carrey as a man who does not know he is the involuntary protagonist of a television show. In the film, after discovering that he had lived in a fictitious world, the protagonist decided to leave that same world: “In case I never see you again, good afternoon, good evening and good night”, said the character played by Carrey. It is curious to note how on the eve of the release of “Temet nosce” he communicated to fans via Telegram: “As you can see I have decided to speak only through music and my creative productions (podcasts). This will be my only way of communicating from now on. Simply because this is how I am able to express myself better”.
