 I was never intentionally really thinking about that I want to break the system. Like I just for me it was just like I wanted I was feeling very creative and wanted to release my music rapidly and when I wanted without streaming it would be so difficult to be able to do that. We all know streaming is changing the way we listen to music but it's also changing how artists release music. Charli XCX is a singer and songwriter known for hits like Boom Clap, Boys, and 1999 with Troye Sivan. She is known to release music however and whenever she wants, often with little warning, which would have been unthinkable before streaming. Now artists can instantly put their music online but this also means they have to find ways to stand out among the millions of songs at our fingertips. As a result, the idea of what an album is has completely changed. I want to release music when I feel like it and how I want to and I find that particularly major labels who have a very strict structure of how they want artists to release music that just doesn't really work for me and I don't think especially now it doesn't really work for my fans. What do you mean by that? Well I think fans are hungry for content and for music from their favourite artists and there's so much out there at the moment, you know, they can get whatever they want all the time so everything's very rapidly digested and people want more so yeah everything moves so much quicker now. But first, let's take a step back. Technology has always dictated how artists release music. The flat record was commercialized in the 1890s and for decades singles were popular because early kinds of records could only hold about three minutes of audio. Around the 1950s the LP was introduced which could hold up to 52 minutes of audio and the album as we know it was born. The traditional album lasted for decades, continuing with the cassette and then the CD all the way until the 2000s when digital services like iTunes popped up. This let people pick and choose what songs they wanted to buy from albums, ushering the singles market back. Now with the rise of streaming services, how artists release music, whether it's singles, mix tapes or albums has dramatically changed once again. Traditional album cycle is you put out a single, maybe a second single, maybe if you're crazy you'll put a third single out before an album comes out as a way of sort of teasing the larger product that is to arrive. What are you seeing now that's different from that? I think the best way of putting it would be the sort of waterfall method where artists are putting out single, single, more singles and maybe a single every month that maybe will lead into an EP or an album and sometimes it will take years. And this waterfall strategy is used by tons of big artists like The Chainsmokers, Bebe Rexha and Billie Eilish. I've heard that term for like three or four years now and like it's like whenever I go to like a meeting with my label and they'd be like yeah you know we've been thinking about this new strategy it's called the waterfall strategy. You drop one song and then three months later you drop another one and then three months later you drop another one and that's the waterfall and like wow okay like let's everybody got paid today great like it's just it's like yeah that's just dropping songs. What is the difference to you between a mix tape and an album? Literally nothing. The ones recently that I did like Number One Angel and Pop 2 I called them mix tapes because then like my label felt more relaxed about them because I think for a major label like we're making an album and we're putting it out there's expectation like we want it to like hit this this this like blah blah blah whatever and so like for me the mix tape thing like I just wanted to like bang bang like two albums like in one year like let's go. Artists are putting out more individual songs because you can. You don't have to wait around anymore get into a queue wait for a record label or some company to tell you it's your turn up to bat. I think you're seeing younger artists coming up who were raised in the free space using things like SoundCloud to a degree watching iTunes democratize the release of songs and now looking at streaming services and go well you know I can fill this with as much or as little music as I want and I just want to be creative all the time. I don't necessarily want to wait. Charlie has a new album and in the five months leading up to it released the four standalone singles Flash Pose, Ecstasy, Spicy and Dream Glow as well as six songs from the album including the hit Blame It On Your Love which roughly breaks down to a single every 12 days. I think streaming really lends itself to artists being artists. Streaming is determined by the user right the person who's using the platform so they can click on Billie Eilish and like stream her as much as possible and they can also like go to her Instagram account and like work out pretty quickly that she's like a very unique and cool person and it's driven by like the kids and the people who are listening to her music which I think is really good for pop music and for culture because it's not like a bunch of like white males at radio stations and record labels deciding like what the general public should listen to. The boundary between can people get my work could not be lower right it's at the lowest point in history. We could make a track right now and we could go put it on the internet we could get it on Spotify almost immediately. That's not the problem. The problem is how do you get people's attention once it's out there. How am I going to be noticed in that crowd of music that's being released every single Friday. There's this like tension between the business of music and the artistry of music. There's I think also a lot of people crying wolf of what music is over because of this new streaming economy. Songs are only going to be one minute and 25 seconds long. They're not going to be meaningful. But the thing about attention is that people get bored of fads. They get bored of things that are just pure tricks. You ultimately have to grab someone's attention and sustain it. How do you think streaming has changed the way people write music. Oh extensively. I've heard from multiple songwriters that they are actually thinking about the song structure differently because of how they're going to get paid by a song streaming. Which means streaming isn't just changing the album. It's changing songs. Like if it's not for me and I'm writing a song that is for another big pop artist. That's where I get really into my commercial zone. So I want to play all the games and I want the song to be huge. Be the perfect little package that will make it as most maximally appealing to everybody. So what are some of those tricks that you use to make sure that the skip rate is as low as possible. Like chorus within the first 30 seconds. No weird self indulgent intro. Which is basically all my songs I put on my album. Hook at the top in the intro. Maybe even start with the chorus. I think radio songs should be like 2 minutes 20. Get in get out. Everybody just get on with your life. So you just try to front load as many of the catchy bits as possible. I think so. The formulaic tricks I think are used and paid attention to so much in the streaming climate. Because it's all about making sure the person doesn't change the song. Now it's all about did you grab them in that first 5 seconds. Do you think that what you're doing represents more what people will be doing in the future? Kind of think it's the norm now. I mean Ariana Grande is one of the most huge artists in the world and to me at least it felt like she is doing what she wants. She just put out an album and then straight away drops Thank You Next. And I think that's happening a lot more now. I think the new landscape really lends itself to artists who are unique and have a different language and a very specific vision. In that sense I think streaming is good because it just opens everything up and everything becomes much more cross pollinated. And there's room for so many genres and it's not about radio which is great. And I think that's a good thing. I think that's great. It was just my MSN screen name when I was younger and then I would just make mp3s and put them on Myspace. And I didn't have a stage name so I just panicked and used my MSN screen name. The rest is history. You're such a child of the internet. An MSN screen name and putting it up on Myspace.