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When the Doors’ producer, Paul A. Rothchild, suggested adding orchestral strings and horns to guitarist Robby Krieger’s song “Touch Me,” Krieger was not happy. It was two years after Sgt. Pepper, and he says he was wary of the band being seen as copycats. “I said, ‘Oh, God. Now we’re copying the Beatles,’ and the Stones had just done their version of the orchestra thing,” he recalls. “So it was like we were keeping up with the Joneses or something.” Also, he worried the move might alienate the band’s fan base. “We were a four-piece band,” he says.

“Touch Me” was one of several songs Rothchild wanted to orchestrate, and it wasn’t until Krieger heard what arranger Paul Harris, who had worked with B.B. King, had come up with that he was on board. These days Krieger thinks “Touch Me” is “one of [his] better songs.”

But now, half a century later since he made peace with the orchestrations, the Doors are releasing a version of the song without the strings that will appear on a new box-set reissue of the band’s 1969 LP, The Soft Parade. A couple of months back, Krieger recorded a new guitar solo for the track that he based on Curtis Amy’s saxophone solo and added some of his own ideas to it. “It sounded empty without it,” he says. Krieger now hears the song a little differently: John Densmore’s drumming and Ray Manzarek’s keyboard playing stand out more to his ears since they were previously covered with strings and horns.

“It was cool to strip that stuff down,” Krieger says. “You can’t say, ‘Oh, this is what it would have been like if we didn’t do the horns and strings, because I think we would have approached it differently, but you have an idea of what it sounded like. I think it’s kind of cool.”

Although he’s proud of the song, he remembers the time surrounding the recording of The Soft Parade as unpleasant. The group had more resources than ever before, and it meant they spent much more time in the studio working, especially with the orchestrations. Meanwhile, the musicians were growing apart from their singer. Once upon a time, he and Jim Morrison, who was similar in age to him, were very close and would take acid and smoke pot. But now Morrison was more interested in drinking.

“Jim was starting to drink too much,” Krieger says. “John and I were pretty close, I think we were living together, but Ray and [his wife] Dorothy were always off by themselves. The only time we came together was to work on the record. So we would spend all day on the drums in the studio, and Jim would get bored and go get drunk. If you needed him for a vocal, he was useless. But considering all that, I think it came out great.”

Even though Morrison was erratic and undependable, he embraced Krieger’s “Touch Me” — at least, once they agreed on the title. “Originally it was called, ‘Hit Me,’ about the idea of playing blackjack,” Krieger says. “Jim said, ‘I’m not saying that. People might take me literally.’ I said, ‘How about, “Touch Me”?’ ‘All right, “Touch Me.”‘ so then I wrote the words to fit ‘Touch Me.’” Krieger says it was one of the few times Morrison — “the expert at poetic writing,” as Krieger calls him — objected to one of the guitarist’s lyrics.

Krieger simply felt out the rest of the song’s words. He especially laughs at the line, “Can’t you see that I am not afraid?” “Afraid of what?” he says. “I don’t even know what that means.” He says he took the line “Now I’m going to love you ’til the heavens stop the rain” from a Joan Baez tune whose title he can’t remembers. (Internet searches don’t turn up a Baez song with similar lyrics.) Krieger says he once asked Baez if she was mad about him stealing a lyric but that she “didn’t seem to care one way or the other,” since she recorded mostly traditional songs.

Did Joan Baez like “Touch Me”? “To tell you the truth, I don’t know if she even ever heard it,” he says. “She probably hated the Doors.” He laughs and takes it back, adding that hers was the only autograph he ever asked for. “I had her sign my hand,” he says. Did he take a picture of it? “I wish,” he says. “That was stupid.”

Despite the tensions around making the album, Krieger still has a few happy memories surrounding The Soft Parade. Once, while Morrison was out drinking, the band jammed on Morrison’s “Roadhouse Blues,” and Manzarek sang on it. A recording of that jam, with a new bass line by Stone Temple Pilots’ Robert DeLeo, appears on the box set with vocals credited to Screamin’ Ray Daniels. “Ray was definitely a singer,” Krieger says. “Even before Rick and the Ravens, which was the precursor to the Doors, he was billed as Screamin’ Ray Daniels from Chicago. He was trying to be like Muddy Waters. He’s pretty good.”

And on another occasion, they all jammed together with Morrison for an hour on a tune they called “Rock Is Dead” that they never officially released. “After a big dinner with a lot of drinking, we all came back in and were just messing around,” Krieger recalls. “I think it’s been out on the internet but this is a better mix. Jim was pretty prophetic saying, ‘Rock is dead.’ I think he was right. In the next couple of years, disco came in and punk and all that stuff, so rock as we knew it was going to be dead.”

By the time they made their next album, Morrison Hotel, the band was having fun in the studio again. Although touring became a slog, due to Morrison’s drinking and the general pallor that fell upon them after he was charged with public indecency for allegedly exposing himself at a 1969 Miami concert, the studio was the place they could connect. “It’s kind of weird,” Krieger says. “But when we eventually did L.A. Woman, it was really good for all of us to be able to produce it ourselves and just have fun. That was probably the most fun we had, except for the first one.

As streaming services solidify their position as the dominant way that people listen to music, a common question swirling around — from investors and users both — has been whether subscription prices will go up. Over the past decade, Spotify has helped set a U.S. market standard of $9.99 per month for a premium music subscription; it hasn’t adjusted that figure once, even though its video-streaming counterpart Netflix has hiked its rates three times in the same time period. Discounts and multiple-user packages often take Spotity users’ payments even lower.

But the company remains adamant that its low price point is key to its success. Paul Vogel, Spotify’s head of financial planning and analysis, treasury, and investor relations, doubled down on the stance on Tuesday when he spoke at Goldman Sachs’ annual Communacopia Conference. In response to questions about whether Spotify would expand the pricing tests that it’s doing in Scandinavian countries — where it raised family-plan subscription fees by around 13% earlier this year — Vogel said that the Spotify is “not yet at a point where you have stickiness globally.”

The Swedish streaming service is more interested in “growing users and subscribers and bringing more and more value into the ecosystem, which is essentially lowering pricing,” Vogel said, adding that while the Scandinavian tests have yielded positive results, they are not to be taken as a signal of Spotify’s global plans because they reflect conditions in one particular market. “That’s not to say we wouldn’t test other markets, but our main focus is on growing the top of the funnel: users and subscribers,” he said.

Spotify is also well aware of users taking advantage of the ultra-cheapness of its family plan, which allows six users to share a $14.99-a-month subscription (“It’s shocking how many six-member families there are out there,” Vogel remarked at Tuesday’s conference) — but doesn’t believe that those loophole discounts will cause any long-term problems. “We know it gets people into using the product, and eventually they’re going to graduate away from the family plan,” Vogel said, echoing the sentiment of Spotify executives’ past remarks about the conversion rates of free users to premium users.

Since going public on the New York Stock Exchange in April 2018, Spotify has faced increasing pressure to turn a profit — or at least to supply a roadmap to a point in time when it might finally be profitable. Artists and record-industry executives are also pushing for more aggressive pricing, especially amid a new round of licensing negotiations. But CEO Daniel Ek defended the service’s low subscription fee in a Freakonomics podcast in April, noting that music-streaming subscriptions have to compete with radio’s accessibility and YouTube’s “entire archive of music that you can listen to entirely for free.”

Vogel’s question-and-answer session on Tuesday also hit upon Spotify’s commitment to growing its podcasting business, its desire to “own music discovery,” and its gradual progress toward enabling more artists to make a living off of its platform. Speaking about Amazon’s foray into high-resolution music streaming this week, Vogel said that “we haven’t talked much” about adding hi-fi options because “if you go back and look at it, it’s not really something that’s been a big differentiator among the different services — we think that in terms of what consumers are looking for, it’s not something that’s really resonated.” But, he added, “I wouldn’t say never.”

Amazon Music has become the first of the “big three” streaming services to offer music in CD-quality audio.

The service, which costs £5 more than a standard Amazon subscription, will also offer some albums in “Ultra HD”, which promises to be better-than-CD quality.

Until now, Amazon, like its main rivals Apple and Spotify, only streamed music in compressed formats like MP3 and AAC.

Some smaller services like Tidal, Deezer and Qobuz already offer lossless, high-fidelity streaming.

Amazon is calling its service “HD” because customers are familiar with the term from television, but it will actually use the same file format – FLAC – as its competitors.

All three of the major record labels have signed up, with music by Fleetwood Mac, Kendrick Lamar, Taylor Swift, Stormzy and Ed Sheeran now available in Ultra HD.

The big question, according to Chris Cooke of Complete Music Update, is whether “Amazon can take what has traditionally been a niche product and make it more mainstream”.

There have been several attempts to market HD audio in the past, from DVD-Audio and Super Audio CDs to high-quality download stores like Neil Young’s ill-fated Pono service. But their audiences have been “generally quite small”, said Cooke.

“Anecdotal research suggests that the younger demographic don’t really care; and sometimes, even on a decent sound system, it’s hard to tell the difference,” he added.

Indeed in 2015, US radio network NPR ran an online test to see whether its audience could distinguish between three forms of audio compression. On average, it discovered, people only did slightly better than guessing randomly.

Amazon’s advantage could be its dominance of the smart speaker market, with people listening at home more likely to appreciate a sonic upgrade than commuters streaming music over wireless earbuds.

Notably, the launch of Amazon Music’s HD service comes a week before the company unveils its latest range of hardware, which is expected to include a new model of its Echo speaker.

The service is priced more competitively than its rivals, with a monthly subscription costing £14.99, or £12.99 for Amazon Prime customers.

Tidal and Deezer, by comparison, charge £19.99 per month for their lossless tiers.

“It’s interesting they’ve been able to negotiate that, because I presume Tidal and Deezer will go back to the labels and say, ‘We want to bring down the costs of our high-quality audio too,'” said Cooke.

“But it may well be that there are such a small number of users on [those services] that the labels are hoping Amazon, being a more mainstream company, will make up for the loss.”

The technical bit

• Spotify: MP3, 320kbps
• Apple Music: AAC, 256kbps
• Amazon HD: FLAC, 16 bit, 44.1kHz
• Amazon Ultra HD: FLAC, 24 bit, 192kHz

In addition, Amazon Music HD subscribers can stream “millions more” songs in Ultra HD, with a bit depth of 24 bits and a sample rate up to 192 kHz.

One notable enthusiast is Neil Young, who said in a (somewhat hyperbolic) press release that: “Earth will be changed forever when Amazon introduces high quality streaming to the masses.

“This will be the biggest thing to happen in music since the introduction of digital audio 40 years ago,” he added.

Some of the additional money generated by the new service will go to artists and rights-holders, but Amazon could not discuss the terms of its new licensing deals. It confirmed, however, that there were no current plans to offer lossless music for sale on its download store.

Industry experts have hailed the return of political music in the run-up to this year’s Mercury prize, with British and Irish artists on the shortlist addressing the hostile environment policy, austerity and racism.

The awards, which takes place on Thursday, is seen as a barometer of the country’s musical pulse. This year’s nominees have been described as the most political ever, with acts such as Dave, slowthai, the 1975, Fontaines DC, SEED Ensemble, Little Simz andIdlescommenting on the political landscape through their art. From the explicit punk of Idles to the more personal politics of Dave and the 1975, representations of the everyday realities for those who live with decisions made in Westminster are scattered throughout.

“I think there are lots of different types of politics in the shortlist,” said Jeff Smith, the head of music for BBC Radio 2 and 6 Music, who has judged the awards for nine years. “There’s the politics of austerity, climate change, urban decay, the politics of the heart and the mind. It’s interesting to see how they reflect life for modern British people and the conditions they’ve found themselves in over this last year.”

Though the Mercury prize is not known for being particularly political, in 2016 Anohni’s Hopelessness critiqued Barack Obama’s legacy, US drone bombing and climate change. A decade earlier, Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief and Thom Yorke’s The Eraser articulated the nadir in public trust that Labour faced after the Iraq war protests and the death of Dr David Kelly. PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake, Dizzee Rascal’s Boy In Da Corner, Asian Dub Foundation’s Rafi’s Revenge and Plan B’s Ill Manors are shortlisted records that have made political statements, however they were outliers. In 2019 that has changed.

Daisy Jones, an associate editor of Vice UK, says the reason is twofold. “It could be a reflection of our times: Britain is particularly chaotic at the moment, but it could also be a reflection of the judging panel, which has people like Stormzy on it, choosing albums that are more relevant.

“It’s definitely the most overtly political list in recent years. Dave has been consistently outspoken about Grenfell, slowthai’s album is an angry critique of modern Britain. Even just looking at the names of the albums of the list you’d assume they are political.”

Slowthai, real name Tyron Kaymone Frampton, who received a nomination for his debut album Nothing Great About Britain, told the Guardian his record was about shedding light on marginalised groups. “I love this country but I feel like we’re losing sight of who actually holds the power and what makes us great. It’s the people, the communities, the small places that are forgotten, everyone that’s striving.”

Cassie Kinsohi, the leader of SEED Ensemble, said her band’s record was both a “celebration of what it means to be a young black British person” in 2019 and a critique of the UK inspired by the political jazz of Jackie McLean and Charles Mingus. “Jazz has always been an art form that’s discussed oppression and black history,” she said, “and a lot of musicians are using their medium to critique these things.”

Idles’ political messages and inferences are arguably the most explicit of any group shortlisted for the prize. “My blood brother is an immigrant,” Idles frontman Joe Talbot sings on the single Danny Nedelko, “a beautiful immigrant … He’s made of flesh, he’s made of love, he’s made of you, he’s made of me.” Elsewhere on the record he takes aim at toxic masculinity and small-town violence.

“I’m trying to turn politics from a game of risk into the stories of different individuals who are affected by the decisions made by politicians,” he said when asked about their approach before the release of their second Mercury Prize nominated album, Joy as an Act of Resistance, in 2018.

Carlos O’Connell, the guitarist of Irish band Fontaines DC, told the Guardian that Idles’ approach had worked for a reason. “Idles have connected with a big part of society because what they’re saying is something that people need to hear,” he said. “People want to feel like their anger is identified elsewhere, like in music.”

Other artists have focused on the personal to deliver their message. Dave, who won an Ivor Novello for his 2018 track Question Time which addressed Grenfell, NHS cuts and the war in Syria, is one of the favourites to win for his debut album Psychodrama – a record that pieces together tales from his life growing up in south London. Black, the album’s lead single focuses on the perception of black people in Britain. “Black is pain, black is joy, black is evident,” Dave raps. “It’s working twice as hard as the people you know you’re better than.”

Many have questioned the lack of protest music since the rise of Donald Trump and the societal ruptures caused by Brexit. For Smith, this year’s Mercury shortlist shows that the dial is starting to shift. “A year or so ago a lot of people were asking ‘where are all the protest songs?’ These aren’t necessarily protest songs, but they are reflecting how they feel about life and living in the UK.”