BROOKE GLADSTONE:  The streaming music service Spotify doesn’t get much love from recording artists. Last year, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke removed some of his solo music because, he said, Spotify hardly pays new artists. Spotify replied that although the average song generates about 7/10ths of a cent per stream in royalties, it is possible for big artists to rack up a decent sum. But what if you’re a little artist?

 

OTM producer PJ Vogt, the co-host and producer of our new podcast and blog, TLDR, found a very little artist who’s found a way to actually make a living from Spotify.

PJ VOGT:  Twenty percent of the songs on Spotify have never been played. That’s four million songs that have been so thoroughly orphaned that even their creators couldn’t be bothered to play through them just once. There’s a good chance that at least some of those were written by a guy named Matt Farley. Matt records in his basement in Danvers, Massachusetts. For work, he does two long shifts at a group home every week, and that lets him spend the other four days just writing songs. When his wife Elizabeth comes home from work, she’ll sometimes just stand upstairs and eavesdrop.

MATT FARLEY:   She likes to not tell me when she's coming home so that she can come home and hear, you know, “Honk, honk, honk goes the horn, beep, beep, beep, honk your horn” and then like I hear footsteps and I’m like, “Are you home,” and she’s like, “I like your new song” and I'm totally embarrassed.

PJ VOGT:  Matt’s clean cut and tall. He looks like he could model an airline neck pillow in a catalog. And his house is like any suburban house you’ve ever seen, until you go down into that basement, which really is like his secret laboratory, where he’s inventing a million weird bands that are really just him [LAUGHS] churning out song after song after song. Since he started in 2008, he’s recorded more than 14,000 songs. He can do 100 on a good day, and he’s recorded 4,250 Happy Birthday songs alone.

  [RECORDING/MATT FARLEY SINGING]:

Hey Alex, hey there Alex - Alex, Alex, Alex,

CHORUS:  It’s your birthday.

 

You probably knew that, Anne,

You probably knew that, Anne,

‘Cause after all, Anne...

CHORUS:  It’s your birthday.

Happy birthday, Guadalupe.

Guadalupe.

CHORUS:  It’s your birthday-yay!

 

Happy birthday. Guadalupe.

 

  [END RECORDING]

PJ VOGT:  Matt’s latest album is about transportation. That’s where that “Honk, honk, honk goes the horn, beep, beep, beep” lyric comes from. This is not an album about problems with transportation or about something that happened while someone was transporting from one place to the other. It’s an album about transportation, the noun. He lets me peek at his notes.

 

Right so this is just - it's a, it’s a notepad with every car, truck, motorcycle, tractor trailer, camper van, minivan, van, bicycle, tricycle, train, [LAUGHS] subway, taxi cab – [LAUGHS]

Matt has pages and pages filled with columns of song ideas. And by ideas, I mean words.

MATT FARLEY:   Coming up a little preview. Oh, the Clothing album is gonna be so good.

  [PJ LAUGHS]

Boots, shoes, sneakers, high heels. The Body Parts album, foot, toes, ankle, big toe, pinky toe, middle toe, Achilles tendon.

PJ VOGT:  All right, so this is something you need to understand about Matt. All his life, Matt has made slightly arbitrary choices and then committed to them - hard. Like in 5th grade, when his friends started swearing, he thought it’d be funnier to not swear. So he didn’t, and he still won’t. Or, he really likes walking, so last year he walked from his house in Danvers to the Boston Marathon, which means he basically walked the length of a marathon to just go watch a marathon. He also publishes a monthly newsletter about long walks, which is handwritten. When he does something, he does it big, including the music.

MATT FARLEY:   So I have a band called the Toilet Bowl Cleaners, and there’s eight albums of, of poop songs. You'd think it would run out, but the most recent one is my “pet sounds” of, of poop songs. It's intense, it's beautiful.

PJ VOGT:  What is it called?

MATT FARLEY:   It's called "You Thought We Ran Out of Poop Song Ideas. You Were Wrong."

  [PJ LAUGHS]

Like at first it's just “The Poop Song,” you know, where I just sing the word “poop.”

[RECORDING]:

Poop – poop, poop, poop, poop, poop, poop, poop, poop, poop, poop –

  [SOUND UP & UNDER]

And that's a little frustrating because “The Poop Song,”” where I sing the word “poop,” is the number one song. All I do is sing poop, poop, de poop, you know?

PJ VOGT:  Yeah.

MATT FARLEY:   And then there's others where I write what I consider to be good music and clever lyrics, and they do well enough but it's like, jeez. [LAUGHS] But the - it's getting a little more abstract. You know, “Poop into a Wormhole” is one of my favorite new tracks, and it’s, it’s fantastic.

PJ VOGT:  When you play a song on Spotify or on iTunes, the musician gets a tiny royalty. And a lot of them are angry about how bad the pay is. Matt’s not. Matt’s secret is that even if none of his songs are ever hits, he can make still half a living because there’s just so many of ‘em. And a lot of them are about things that people tend to search for online, so he’s got kind of a song for everybody.

  [RECORDING/MATT SINGING]: 

Liberals love criminals, everybody knows.

They l–l-l-love to help them get out on parole.

 

  [MUSIC UP & UNDER]

That’s a song by Matt’s band, The Ultra Right Wing Conservatives.

  [RECORDING/MATT SINGING]:

Big government is good.

We need more programs.

We need to hire more people to work for these programs.

 

PJ VOGT:  That, of course, is the Extreme Left Wing Liberals.

SINGING:  Big government is good.

  [RECORDING]:

MATT SINGING:  Who’s gonna be pitching last? The man with the great, great stash. The man they call the Ax, John Axford.

  [SONG UP & UNDER]

PJ VOGT:  And that, of course, is from The Green Bay and Milwaukee Sports Band.

MAX SINGING:  - facial hair, and so they’re unaware of strikes whizzin’ by them.

  [SONG UP & UNDER]

MATT FARLEY:   My standard is if a song earns me $2 in a year, then I'm doin’ well. There’s plenty of songs that make 3 cents a year but, you know, it all averages out. And I'm up to 14,000.

PJ VOGT:  So if it’s – if, on average – if your 14,000 songs -  are you making like $28,000 a year on s – on royalties?

MATT FARLEY:   This year was 23,000  You know, I'm hopin’ for 25, 26 next year, which would be nice.

PJ VOGT:  That’s great.

MATT FARLEY:   Yeah.

PJ VOGT:  One of the things about staring at the Internet all day is you can have this feeling of being overwhelmed by just how much like - content there is, how much crap, how many tiny things made by people to grab your attention for one second, that no one’s ever loved or cared about. And Matt’s music should be like that. He writes songs about everything that people search for, to make a tiny bit of money to make a living.  But, for some reason, when you find one of his songs it feels specific and tailored and made for you, even though his process really is completely impersonal. 

MATT FARLEY:   My newest thing that I just released is an album called, “Songs about Things in My House.” And like there's the Door Song, the Window Song, the Stove, the Refrigerator, and so on and so forth. And - I was crackin’ up.

PJ VOGT:  Wait, but that, that feels like one that wouldn't do super well.

MATT FARLEY:   Yeah, but it just got out - put out a week ago and, and the song about my hot water heater sold. [LAUGHS]

  [PJ LAUGHS]

Hot Water Heaterrrr!

  [PJ LAUGHS]

Someone actually spent 99 cents on that.

PJ VOGT:  A lot of the reason that Matt makes art is to connect with people. Artists say that line all the time, but with Matt it’s literal. He puts his phone number in his songs. And strangers call.

MATT FARLEY:   At least once a day. I got to turn the phone off overnight - my wife insists - because I would be so excited at 3 in the morning to get a call, “Hey, are you the guy from the song?” Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'll talk their ear off. What's funny is also they end up ending the phone – you know, usually it's like the person is the one who’s like, look, I, I don't have time for you, I got to go. And, in fact, it usually goes the other way. We’re like, well, I guess that’s all I want to know, I got to go now. And I’m like, okay, thanks, bye.

PJ VOGT:  So this is the question that everybody asked me when I told them about Matt. I felt really uncomfortable asking it, which I think you can hear in the tape.

PJ VOGT:  Well, it’s just - I guess like, so when I was talking to friends about this, they’d be like - the question everybody asked, well, would immediately be like either, are the songs good.

MATT FARLEY:   Yeah.

PJ VOGT:  I mean it’s weird. [LAUGHS]

  [FARLEY LAUGHS]

What would you say to that?

MATT FARLEY:   I would say some of them are good because they're good. They're definitely catchy. Plenty of ‘em are, are terrible, but the fact that they exist is wonderful I would like it if someone else was doing what I was doing. So, therefore, I’m doing it for anyone el - else out there like me.

PJ VOGT:  When I talked to Matt, it was two days before Christmas, and I still hadn’t bought a present for either of my stepparents. It’s really hard [LAUGHS] to buy presents for your stepparents. So I asked Matt if he wouldn’t mind writing songs for them. Here’s what I get for Nan.

MATT FARLEY:  Short for Nancy?

PJ VOGT:  For Diana.

MATT FARLEY:   Okay.

PJ VOGT:  My dad’s wife. You could do Diana too, or you could that either way.

MATT FARLEY:  I’ll go with Nan. I like Nan.

PJ VOGT:  She likes going to New York City, and she has a bunch of stray cats called Lolos that she feeds and the neighbors are really mad about. And she drinks white wine.

  [WRITING SOUNDS]

And she is really thoughtful at buying people presents, which is why I've been freaking out about getting her a Christmas present.

MATT FARLEY:   What does she call you? Should I mention you in the song?

PJ VOGT:  Yeah! She calls me PJ.

MATT FARLEY:   Okay. White wine, thoughtful gift giver.

PJ VOGT:  Yeah, and she really loves her kids. Is that too much stuff?

MATT FARLEY:   No. All right, yeah, let me just think of some chords here.

PJ VOGT:  Yeah.

MATT FARLEY:   [PLAYS PIANO] All right.

PJ VOGT:  All right.

MATT PLAYING PIANO, SINGING:

Merry Christmas, Nan,

Nan who loves to go to NYC.

Nan, keep on feedin’ those Lolos,

Even though the neighbors say, “No, no.”

 

Merry Christmas, Nan.

Sittin back with a glass of white wine

Merry Christmas, Nan.

You always know just what kind of gift to get for PJ,

And PJ was thinkin’ that maybe it was time you deserved a songg!

 

Merry Christmas, Nan.

 

  [MUSIC OUT]

PJ VOGT:  I drive back to Pennsylvania for Christmas and spend two days just totally psyched to have the song. I play it for friends off my giant tape recorder, none of whom find it as charming as I do. It’s like playing a recording of a stranger doing Karaoke.

 

But then on Christmas Day, I play it for Nan, and she grins from ear to ear. She makes me play it again and again, and she asks me to email it to her - and reminds me not to forget - and then later writes me a really heartfelt email about how nice it made her feel.

 

I know that this song is just some chords and five facts that I gave to Matt, but here’s where I think its secret power comes from:  Matt’s songs mostly just inventory the world. Yeah there’s a door; yep, there’s a water heater; yep, you’re in the family. But when you have stepparents, saying, “Yeah, you’re in the family” is this thing that maybe never gets said. The song uncomplicated a complicated situation, by just stating facts.

As a reporter, you are not supposed to do stories because [LAUGHS] you want the person you’re covering to become famous, but I want Matt Farley to become famous. I want him to be able to write a songs for every single noun.

  [MUSIC UP & UNDER]

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  You can find all the episodes of the TLDR podcast on our website, at tldr.onthemedia.org.

MATT SINGING: 

Could I please get everybody’s attention

I’ve discovered a wormhole to another dimension

No man alive would dare go inside

So I’m gonna squat over it and send my poop for a ride

 

CHORUS:  Poop, poop,

I’m gonna poop into a wormhole, poop, poop….

 

  [MUSIC UP & UNDER]

BOB GARFIELD:  That’s it for this week's show. On the Media [LAUGHS] was produced by Alex Goldman, PJ Vogt, Sarah Abdurrahman, Chris Neary and Laura Mayer. We had more help from Alana Casanova-Burgess, Meera Sharma and Kimmie Regler. And our show was edited - by Brooke. Our technical director is Jennifer Munson. Our engineers this week were Andrew Dunne and Justin Gerrish.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  Katya Rogers is our executive producer. Jim Schachter is WNYC’s Vice President for News. Bassist composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. On the Media is produced by WNYC and distributed by NPR. I’m Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD:  And I’m Bob Garfield.