Spotify Is An Enemy of Sustainable Arts

Artists have ALWAYS been screwed no matter what the distribution model was. Record labels and music publishers acted like greedy idiots and brought this whole thing on themselves. I suspect that they will all end up in irrelevancy.

 

I would pay per instance streamed, provided after x streams I no longer paid. In other words they could make the model more similar to buying (the rights) on layaway provided I own it after x plays.

Other rules still apply like if I skip/stop it after x seconds I don’t pay anything.

So my monthly bill would vary depending on use.

 

I wonder how much the cost of Spotify would need to increase in order to provide a significantly larger number of recording artists with a reasonable income.

I also persist in advocating for the principle that people who find themselves particularly impressed by the work of a struggling musician or artist should have an easily accessible means of voluntarily chipping in extra money that goes directly to the artist. I prefer that as a market ethos, versus the falsity of "stiff the artists to provide guaranteed free lunch for the consumer." So a given artist that has a paltry 100,000 downloads on Spotify, Youtube, Vimeo, etc. might actually reap some tangible reward, if 25,000 of the downloaders like what they hear enough to support their talent with voluntary contributions to the tune of $1.00 apiece (i.e., candy bar money.)

One obstacle is that a mature micropayment system has yet to emerge, and probably won't unless/until blockchain digital money gets sufficient backing to be treated as a default currency standard. Although things have improved substantially- Paypal now has a "5% plus $.05" rate charge (to the recipient) for payments of less than $12.00 on "digital goods." That's a 10% premium to receive a dollar. But it's also only a dime. (When Paypal started, their minimum service fee was $.35, plus 1.5%, or whatever it used to be before the current 2.9% surcharge for most sales.) The biggest problem is that a few like that entails taking a steadily bigger percentage when sending very small amounts, like $.10-$.06, to the point when sending $.05 or less entails the recipient losing money. But I don't see why a large company like Spotify couldn't find a way to include such a feature as an option in their transactions, for a much lower cost to the artist-recipient.

I'm also thinking beyond downloading music, of course. There are many webpages- including blogs- that I visit, where I'd easily pay a penny for every page view, or a small yearly subscription fee for unlimited views annually. I'd also become more selective in terms of my browsing, but that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

 

I think many of us do that. Buy the stuff we really love and use streaming as more of a discovery tool. If it disappears from streaming, I just rip my CD and upload it and it's there forever. I still prefer physical media, but Apple Music has given me the opportunity to explore a lot of back catalog that I passed on previously. I've probably bought $150 worth of CDs within the last month or so that I never would have bought if not for discovering them on Apple Music.

 

One thing I’ll say as a streamer is that once I stop paying, I’ve got nuttin’. If they do want more money from me they’re going to have to change the model so I’m actually buying something, including digital rights I can leave to my kids.

 

Well, we'll derail the thread. Thanks for the belly laugh. We live in very different universes. Yes, I've worked with banks. No, none are paperless. None of them, as of 2019. Perhaps they had you working in the basement?

I'm bailing on this topic now, since it's OT, and feels... well, a little heated.

 

I wonder why you want radio and a disc jockey. The only one that ever clicked with me was John Peel, which tells you how long it's been since I listened to radio.

 

Bingo. You're 100% correct.

Unless you're an artist that gets billions of streams, there's no money to be made on this model for 99% of artists.

Your basic singer/songwriter essentially makes nothing by having their music on streaming sites. At least when physical product still ruled, they could see some profit. That's almost essentially gone at this point.

I know Lefsetz tends to fall in the 'feast or famine' model...most artists aren't going to write a song that appeals to the masses. At least if a fan buys a CD or LP there's some profit margin to be had by the artist.

I think I just read that Crosby was recording a new album even though there was no profit to be found in continuing to record new music -- outside of the fact that he simply enjoys the process.

Streaming is certainly convenient, but it offers little to no value/profit for most of the artists that I'm interested in...

 

Isn't this rather dangerous? We all know where the money is - make a popular song. But if it's the only way you can by, aren't we going to discourage creativity, and encourage the same old sounds? I mean, who's going to take the risks?

 

Illegal downloading killed (and is still killing) royalties, not streaming services.

 

Someone very knowledgeable about music and history - talking about stuff in the context of the music - and introducing new songs and artists and conversation etc- could be very cool. What's not to like.

I loved KSAN in SF Bay Area - but that station died in the late 70's. We had a great modern rock station in the 80s - lasted till about 88 or so - now I'd love to hear a great Jazz station - so far they have all been blah.

 

Because a 44% increase in Royalties will crush the still not profitable Spotify, who only have one revenue stream, while Apple can take years of losses to be last man standing.

 

That would be KFOG.

 

“When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone in the air. You can never capture it again.” - Eric Dolphy

 

I never really cared for KFOG but - beggars can't be choosers.

 

It will most likely be even more in the near future...

 

Both are killing royalties. When artists reveal that they have earned $114 in royalties from 4 million streams, streaming does not have clean hands.

 

A) the internet has driven down the value of content and the world of traditional content creators -- musicians, filmmakers, writers, photographers, people who make media. There's just so much media available at a cost of nothing or next to nothing for one thing, so the supply is almost infinite; and the Internet is a medium of the masses, not a mass media -- is multiway, it's participatory, it's for self-selectors, so people want to participate and engage interactively, not passively consume content. It doesn't matter if you're a musician, a journalist, a photographer, a filmmaker, you're never going to make the same kind of living the same way you did before the internet. If you want to make money from producing recorded music, you're not going to be able to do it the way people did in the 20th century.

B) That genie is not going back into the bottle. Some people who can't engage with entertainment media the network-centric way they're used to will say, "Oh, OK then, I'll buy a CD or a DVD," most will not. They will just choose some different kind of media to engage with. Will that be better for the artists? Perhaps financially in the short term, but in the end, if the music is not where the people are available the way the people want to access it, the artists will become increasingly marginal in terms of their public profiles.

C) People are never going to stop making music even if there's no money in it, just like people don't stop sculpting because they're unlike to have their sculptures placed on sale at Gagosian for $100K, or because their novel is not going to spawn the next Harry Potter franchise.

D) It's reasonable and to be expected for all the stakeholders in the recorded music business -- writers, musicians, frontline performers, etc -- to try to maximize their share of the money being generated from their work and I would expect each of them to do no less. But that's not ever going to be much of an issue for most consumers, just like buyers of a newspaper don't usually think -- hey, I wonder how much of my dollar the reporters and photographers are getting. But if artists and writers can get more than they get now from streaming, good for them.

 

Hm. The ones I always ended up hearing were BIG PERSONALITIES with plenty of BANTER and JOKES. I don't think they knew how to tie their show laces to be honest. They were too busy being famous.

 

You still here? Have you checked out Bandcamp yet? It is entirely possible for artists to record and distribute their music without involving middle men who take the lion's share of revenues - it's not necessarily easy, but it's never been less difficult. Artists should band together to realize economies of scale. They have done so in the past and they can do so again - even organizing some kind of artists' union is technically (and legally) easier than ever.

 

Nope - can't stand those.

Check out this oldie: I listen to this a few times a year - a time machine.

"archive.org/details/gd67-04-xx.prefm.vernon.9261.sbeok.shnf"

 

It's about both. Streaming from my phone -- a device that's always with me -- whether it's in my kitchen, in my car, or in my office, is enormously more convenient that schlepping around the duffel bag of CDs I also keep in my car. Also, I find downloads painfully inconvenient -- I have to move them from device to device if I want to listen to them in more than one place. I have to deal with various pieces of software, and tagging, and libraries. I only do it when it's the only viable option for hearing the music I want to hear The only thing worse is ripping CDs. With streaming, all of that is taken care of by the streaming service provider. I just search and play, and I can do it wherever I am, and don't need to move files around -- I can just log in here or there or with this device or that device. Plus I can listen to almost anything instantly. If someone mentions something here that I've never heard, I can be listening to the whole album the next second It's vastly more convenient than any other form of self-selected music listening I know or have ever experienced. It's cheap too. But it's not that cheap. $120 a year or considerably more for decent sound, and you don't own anything. But where the expense savings come in is that there's no incremental cost for listening to something else or something new or something more. As a result, thanks to streaming, I'm listening to more new and new to me music than I've listened to in 20 years.

 

Spotify and like are a WONDERFUL solution for people to acces a vast database of music. However, such a bewildering choice of sounds to listen to makes it extreeeeemly difficult for a new artist ot get heard.
I dunno. Was it easier, back in THE day to get noticed on the pub/college circuit than it is today within the mush of YouTube, Spotify and the like?
Maybe it was more difficult for US artists back then (60s/70s/80s/90s) to get exposure, than it was for the UK artists when you compare to the size of the countries, the distances involved. It must be so tough for new artists today. A sort of lottery that you will get scene on social medai (yawn).
Finally are the current arts worth sustaining? For the past 30 to 40 years, the music has been as dull as ****.
Drunken rant on a Friday night.

 

...but if I have the CD, I can play it again years later without a subscription.

 

For me, it's MUCH easier to discover new artists through Apple Music than I was ever able to before. I get playlists every day of new music that it thinks I might like. Spotify offers this as well (I would assume Amazon and Google Play do also). It takes me all of about 10-15 minutes to go through and sample. Much of it doesn't appeal to me, but I've found good stuff here and there. Just today, I discovered a great song ("Tourist In This Town" by Maddie & Tae) from an artist that I've never of before.

I would strongly disagree with that.