“I don’t understand music. It’s still a mystery to me…” Up close with Nightwish’s Tuomas Holopainen

Having already informed their label that Nightwish wouldn’t be doing any touring to promote it, Tuomas Holopainen had even more great, business-sense news.  At a meeting to discuss the plan of attack for the band’s upcoming 10th album, he informed them that the first single was to be the track Perfume Of The Timeless, a near nine-minute epic. Apparently, there’s data drawn from crunching millions of hours of listener data that says Spotify listeners tend to skip in less than 30 seconds if there’s no vocals by then. With this in mind, he had even better news: the vocals are way off that goal line. The chorus doesn’t come in until the song’s been going three-and-a-half minutes, when most tracks are all done and out of there.  “I told them all this,” he...

unsplash-logoLilith Redmoon