Spotify controversy continues, Joe B weighs in

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Wombat Reynolds, Aug 19, 2019.

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  1. Wombat Reynolds

    Wombat Reynolds Jimmy Page stole all my best riffs. Thread Starter

    Location:
    Atlanta, GA, USA
    Like him or hate him....

    this guy is basically saying the same thing I've been saying since day one... especially the first 15 seconds.


     
  2. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product

    It is business taking music back off the musicians.... and soon the listeners.
    Business via the streaming set up stands to make plenty of money for very little outlay.
    Consumers so blinded by $ value are lapping up these, essentially introductory offer, prices of $9-$10 per month "to stream all the music ever made".
    As the physical industry succumbs, and falters, hopefully not too soon, streaming becomes the only way to access music. Then the prices go through the roof steadily, and the business end of the industry has what they have always wanted, absolute control.
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2019
  3. Wombat Reynolds

    Wombat Reynolds Jimmy Page stole all my best riffs. Thread Starter

    Location:
    Atlanta, GA, USA
    I was recently told "wow, one of your recordings just hit 10thousand plays on spotify!"

    and I didnt get one red cent. I mean, big deal. I get better traction on facebook posting videos, getting people to come out to a gig and pay the door fee.
     
  4. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    LOL I remember when the biggest threat to music industry was the blank cassette!
     
  5. Fastnbulbous

    Fastnbulbous Doubleplus Ungood

    Location:
    Washington DC USA
    This topic is like Sharknado
     
  6. blastfurniss

    blastfurniss Forum Resident

    Location:
    Marion, OH, USA
    I hate that artists are getting screwed by streaming. My fear is once the genie is out of the bottle how do you get it back in? Consumers are now used to the Spotify/Apple Music all you can eat buffet. How do you change the model?
     
  7. Wombat Reynolds

    Wombat Reynolds Jimmy Page stole all my best riffs. Thread Starter

    Location:
    Atlanta, GA, USA
    I remember that as well. However, I read several times... in one way, a home recorded cassette you got from a friend, was often inferior enough to make a person want the real thing, and I also read that blank cassettes coincided with a distinct rise in album sales. Perhaps irrelevant or never even happened.

    The issue here is that for the average listener, spotify sounds fantastic and is even easier to access than your friends cassette.
     
  8. Howard Bleach

    Howard Bleach Imperial Aerosol Kid

    Location:
    green bay, wi
    Never listened to Joe Bonamassa but now I think I'll buy one of his records.

    Find an artist at Joe's level who gives an opposing argument. You won't find any. Ever wonder why?
     
  9. Wombat Reynolds

    Wombat Reynolds Jimmy Page stole all my best riffs. Thread Starter

    Location:
    Atlanta, GA, USA

    you cannot.

    Once it's in ones and zeros, it's gone.
     
    goodiesguy, Vic_1957, APH and 5 others like this.
  10. Wombat Reynolds

    Wombat Reynolds Jimmy Page stole all my best riffs. Thread Starter

    Location:
    Atlanta, GA, USA
    You will always hear the argument (from non-musicians who have nothing on spotify) that "musicians were always getting screwed and it is up to them to find a new business model, xzy band did THIS and made it big" etc

    ...l and I see that and think, OK, so we had it bad before, and now its ten times WORSE, and somehow its still all our own fault?
     
    Queezma, James5001, tages and 17 others like this.
  11. blastfurniss

    blastfurniss Forum Resident

    Location:
    Marion, OH, USA
    And that sucks. If you want to make a buck in the music industry you better be able to design a nice t shirt. You'll make more $ off of it than you will off your real art.
     
  12. enfield

    enfield Forum Resident

    Location:
    Essex UK
    Everyone just passes it on.

    Ed Sheeran gets screwed by the streaming companies.Off the back of the streaming exposure his latest concert tour has made him over £60 million profit so far.Everyone is earning along the line to some degree.And the only people paying out money rather than making it, is the good old consumer.
     
  13. walrus

    walrus Staring into nothing

    Location:
    Nashville
    The genie has been out of the bottle for some time now.

    What do you want to change the model to? What would be a better product for consumers?

    This model happened because technology evolved, and because it’s a far better consumer product than CD’s and downloads. And you can argue all you want about that, but the public has spoken (and also no one has CD players anymore).

    So if you want to change the model, come up with a better product. I’d love to hear ideas there.

    Personally, I think streaming is an insane value at twice the price. But also remember when CD’s cost $20? Even in the waning days of Tower Records, a not-popular (i.e. non sale priced) album was probably $16.99+, for an overly loudly mastered batch of 10-14 songs. I distinctly remember buying Weston/Downs’ Icon for that, one of my few non-used purchases ever, because I couldn’t find it anywhere else. $16.99 a month for everything Wetton and Downes ever did, plus several thousand other albums I’m into? Raise the price, I’ll pay it without complaint.

    But I don’t worry about that, honestly...I imagine they’ll incrementally increase the price, just like everything else, and consumers will vote with their wallets on that. It’s still the best value for money of any entertainment industry product ever.



    I’m not saying this model doesn’t suck for artists. But so did the CD era, with bands having to sell 250K units just to get out of the red with their label. It’s never been a good model for artists, whenever labels were involved.
     
  14. Wombat Reynolds

    Wombat Reynolds Jimmy Page stole all my best riffs. Thread Starter

    Location:
    Atlanta, GA, USA

    yeah, but I am not surprised by any of this, I watched it happen.

    When I started, good rock bands were not all over the place and really skilled players were few and far between. But rock music got more and more and more popular and the lure of the glamour of it... fast forward and suddenly EVERYBODY is a guitar player, theres a good one on every street in America, and every town is full of good rock bands.

    Its simple supply and demand. There is now so much supply, that its become devalued to be close to worthless.... unless the Hand of God strikes you and you are lucky enough to be catapulted into the stratosphere of it all. Good luck with that.
     
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  15. Wombat Reynolds

    Wombat Reynolds Jimmy Page stole all my best riffs. Thread Starter

    Location:
    Atlanta, GA, USA

    Like I said. Here comes the "xzy band did THIS and made a mint" argument.

    and oh the poor consumer.

    it never changes here.
     
  16. Howard Bleach

    Howard Bleach Imperial Aerosol Kid

    Location:
    green bay, wi
    Quite a premise. Wanna do a SHF poll to see just how wrong you are about this?
     
  17. malco49

    malco49 Forum Resident

    Not sure about other folks but the bulk of my royalties come from streaming services. I know on spotify the band i was in averages about 8000 of so monthly listeners. I know there are other streaming services as well , and the record label also offers streaming and our albums (some of them are available on vinyl) CD sales are minimal at best. I can’t complain about the royalties i make yearly (not paying the bills per say , but at least folks are still checking in with the music i was a part of ).
     
  18. Efus

    Efus Senior Member

    Location:
    USA
    Here I'll toss another log on the fire of this conversation....

    Spotify just recently announced that they were raising the price of their monthly service in the Scandanavian countries to see if it could be a pre-cursor to raising them elsewhere around the globe. I think the rise was just under 15%.
     
  19. Harry Flashman

    Harry Flashman Forum Resident

    I’m a big fan of streaming, but where I think they should be held to constant account is maximising exposure for up and coming artists. I’ve found a number of really promising artists through Apple suggestions (based on my listening trends) that I had no idea existed. I’ve gone on to watch a number of these bands live. Live music is probably where the big bucks will be made going forward, and it still holds bands to some kind of standard when recording albums. The initial contact for the listener being a streaming platform.
     
  20. Bassist

    Bassist Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    Meanwhile Gramophone Magazine (UK paper of record for classical music and associated audiophile concerns) are running features on cd players that retail for £5k. Definitely all over then!
     
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  21. jblock

    jblock Senior Member

    Location:
    Connecticut
    Someone complaining about streaming, how novel. It's a cliche at this point. For a certain tier of musicians I'm sure it matters. A lot of my music is on all the streaming sites and at least I get a royalty check every now and then, no matter how pitiful. I'm still waiting for royalties from a couple of labels that released CDs of mine and have never paid me a cent. It's all relative.
     
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  22. SoporJoe

    SoporJoe Forum Resident

    Location:
    British Columbia
  23. walrus

    walrus Staring into nothing

    Location:
    Nashville
    Not really. SHF is the tiniest microcosm of the music consumer universe. It does not matter one bit to the bigger industry picture. I mean, I should've said "no one under a certain age" or whatever, but really I was just thinking about computers, cars, smart speakers/Sonos stuff, etc. Most listening is done outside the home, or at least outside the living room...in cars, at work, while exercising, in the kitchen...hell, I have a bluetooth speaker in both our bathrooms. And complaining about it is like complaining about not being able to play your wax cylinders or Betamax tapes. Technology evolves and formats come and go, as they have since the dawn of film and recorded music.

    Honestly, people being able to have music on the go is what drove the last 50 years of format evolution: the 8-track, the cassette, the CD, the iPod and now the smartphone with a streaming service. Nothing new or revolutionary is happening here, from a consumer standpoint.
     
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  24. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product

    My main issue with streaming is, that it is like communism for music. Nobody will own any music (long term obviously) and music will only be accessible via licensed agencies, for a listen.
    My real reference to the price, was about the same methodology used for decades, sucker them in at a low price and then raise it. There are still many folks being suckered in by all the one month free trial things, that seem innocent enough until you try to cut it off before billing starts.... i digress.
    The problem here again, isn't the price, it is the fallout of the initial price. Super low "stream everything that exists" pricing, has stopped folks from buying, and therefor, owning their own music. This in turn has moved on to the industry (the same industry that implemented streaming) cutting back on physical releases, something that you can actually own, and play at your leisure.
    I'm not being chicken little here, stuff will work out how it works out, but when a corporate body owns all the music, and the only way to be able to listen to it, is by paying them a fee, that is some dodgyass sh!t right there.
    I understand convenience, I understand price, but I will pay a price for something that is mine, but I am not going to pay you to look at your photos, and I am not going to pay someone to listen to their albums ... If they aren't my albums to peruse and play at my leisure, then they don't exist in my world.
    Perhaps I am a screaming fruit bat, but that's just how I feel about the situation.
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2019
  25. Freedom Rider

    Freedom Rider Senior Member

    Location:
    Russia
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