So to sum up, the current state of the music industry seems to be:
Various streaming and download services are available which allows all artists, from indie bands to major labels, to distribute their music to a massive number of consumers. These services are cheap and easily accessible and consumers love them, and they offer enough financial compensation to artists that a huge number of new songs are put on the services every year. Some artists choose not to use the streaming services for business reasons, and while they see a little backlash from consumers who prefer the convenience of the streaming services, it's widely regarded as not that big a deal. Most artists do use the streaming services though, and combined with other revenue streams this gives them compensation to keep awesome new music being made every year. Users are happy because they have a great selection of music, and artists who make enough to succeed are happy, while artists who don't build enough of a fanbase to survive are not.
This state of affairs seems acceptable to me. If someone in this thread has suggestions on how to improve it, I'm all ears, but I'm not seeing a massive problem here that needs to be solved.
So to sum up, the current state of the music industry seems to be:
Various streaming and download services are available which allows all artists, from indie bands to major labels, to distribute their music to a massive number of consumers. These services are cheap and easily accessible and consumers love them, and they offer enough financial compensation to artists that a huge number of new songs are put on the services every year. Some artists choose not to use the streaming services for business reasons, and while they see a little backlash from consumers who prefer the convenience of the streaming services, it's widely regarded as not that big a deal. Most artists do use the streaming services though, and combined with other revenue streams this gives them compensation to keep awesome new music being made every year. Users are happy because they have a great selection of music, and artists who make enough to succeed are happy, while artists who don't build enough of a fanbase to survive are not.
This state of affairs seems acceptable to me. If someone in this thread has suggestions on how to improve it, I'm all ears, but I'm not seeing a massive problem here that needs to be solved.
Of course you don't, because you've chosen to exclude all the problematic bits. But of course those don't matter to you, because they don't impact you.
So, after doing some number crunching, Keating had the following (extrapolated) figures for 2012 from Sound Exchange (she never included her granular ASCAP data she says she received):
June: 631k listens.
September: 900k listens.
December: 846k listens (extrapolated from previous years 6% decline from Sept to Dec.)
March: 981k (again, extrapolated by previous years growth).
From what I can tell of her discography, the only substantial work Keating did in 2012 was produce music for Elementary, which was almost assuredly not what she was being payed royalties on, since she wouldn't have received the Master royalties on a shows soundtrack. This means the content achieved almost a 50% growth from streaming services in about a year, despite her having put out no new content in that time period. Could she even hope to dream to get that kind of growth under the old system on a two year old album? I very highly doubt it.
Streaming services provide a longevity to under exposed content that didn't exist before using only terrestrial radio.
Which all sounds great! Until it's time to actually put a value to those listens.
So, after doing some number crunching, Keating had the following (extrapolated) figures for 2012 from Sound Exchange (she never included her granular ASCAP data she says she received):
June: 631k listens.
September: 900k listens.
December: 846k listens (extrapolated from previous years 6% decline from Sept to Dec.)
March: 981k (again, extrapolated by previous years growth).
From what I can tell of her discography, the only substantial work Keating did in 2012 was produce music for Elementary, which was almost assuredly not what she was being payed royalties on, since she wouldn't have received the Master royalties on a shows soundtrack. This means the content achieved almost a 50% growth from streaming services in about a year, despite her having put out no new content in that time period. Could she even hope to dream to get that kind of growth under the old system on a two year old album? I very highly doubt it.
Streaming services provide a longevity to under exposed content that didn't exist before using only terrestrial radio.
Your assessment assumes that Keating did no promotion herself during this time, and growth came solely from promotion by streaming services (doubtful), and that under the "Old System" people who discovered an artist partway through their career didn't go and purchase earlier albums following the purchase of the latest one (also doubtful).
As an example of the second, Smashing Pumpkins released Gish in 1991 where it sold a mere 100,000 in its first year. After the success of their second album Siamese Dream in 1993, Gish was certified gold (500k sales) in 1994 and eventually platinum (1mil) in 1999. You explicitly mentioned "no new content in that time period", so I'll also give the example of Jewel's Who Will Save Your Soul? from the album Pieces of You which was released to low sales in 1995, but following the success of Sheryl Crow, Sara McLachlan, and Alanis Morissette in 1996 gained additional attention to eventually peak at #4 on the Billboard charts in 1997 and go on to sell 12 million copies. Both examples of achieving more than 50% growth on a two year old album under the "old system".
+4
Options
Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Ok, affirmative argument time:
I agree with poshniallo and Squidget0 - this is fundamentally a business negotiation that has been turned into a tribal dispute. This sort of dispute - which may well, as Hedgie, shryke, TaySwiffy et al contend, born of a fundamental unsustainability of streaming sites in general and of which Spotify may be a particularly egregious example - is inevitable as long as the basic drives of capitalism are in place, as long as labels as a business in and of themselves and distribution channels are run as corporations as well. The only way to solve the cost minimising/profit maximising behaviour of sites like spotify is to run them as artist co-ops that distribute profits proportionately after the costs have been extracted - balancing two competing forces (consumer value vs artist revenue) is much less complex than three (consumer value vs artist revenue vs content delivery corporation revenue). From there the question of what consumers are willing to bear vs how artists are compensated is a much easier equation to solve. From there, it may be that artists are unhappy with the compensation they receive and would wish to remove themselves from these services, charge more or something else, but I think that it's going to be difficult to put the genie back in that bottle for a host of reasons, still artists are perfectly entitled to make bad decisions (and as entitled as anyone else to make immoral ones). For reasons of tribalism, most will flock to the putative sides of tech vs artist as per their preferences, as fact cynically exploited by all players within the dispute.
The fact that there is also a moral judgement in play about who deserves what also means there's a clash of values at play. However, I contend that the values that are being used to argue against spotify are largely incoherent, inconsistent, irrelevant or reduce back to simple economics (and are thus not moral imperatives, merely statements of affairs). Primarily - the idea that because millions of people want an artists' work they deserve to be paid X - a proposition, that under the current economic climate makes no sense, and either becomes a simple appeal to historical market forces or flatly wrong (as we do not in any way, shape or form remunerate people in a fashion strictly correlated to their contribution to society or some moral worth of their outputs).
+2
Options
Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
@Apothe0sis I think the root of the issue here, oddly enough, is that "pittance" is a word with two meanings:
1. small
2. inadequate
If Swift's music is worth $10 million but she is paid $2 million for them, that is a pittance (2) but not a pittance (1) because it is a large-but-not-large-enough-under-the-circumstances pile of money. It would be charitable to assume that the original statement intended the second meaning, not the first.
I know, I didn't spell out the two definitions in quite so explicit a fashion, this is the very basisof the dilemma I present.
To say that her music is worth 10 million dollars or that 2 million dollars is or is not adequate in any way but a business sense is to accept the lie that anything other than market forces are at work for the different degrees of remuneration we see throughout society. Whether Swift gets 2 million dollars or 10 million dollars via Spotify or other means is a function of what people want and are willing to pay, not some virtue of her or her work. To appeal to historical or hypothetical market conditions (i.e. if everyone were unwilling to use spotify or a time before the internet) as if they were normative is likewise a devil's bargin at the very best and/or a category error.
So to sum up, the current state of the music industry seems to be:
Various streaming and download services are available which allows all artists, from indie bands to major labels, to distribute their music to a massive number of consumers. These services are cheap and easily accessible and consumers love them, and they offer enough financial compensation to artists that a huge number of new songs are put on the services every year. Some artists choose not to use the streaming services for business reasons, and while they see a little backlash from consumers who prefer the convenience of the streaming services, it's widely regarded as not that big a deal. Most artists do use the streaming services though, and combined with other revenue streams this gives them compensation to keep awesome new music being made every year. Users are happy because they have a great selection of music, and artists who make enough to succeed are happy, while artists who don't build enough of a fanbase to survive are not.
This state of affairs seems acceptable to me. If someone in this thread has suggestions on how to improve it, I'm all ears, but I'm not seeing a massive problem here that needs to be solved.
Of course you don't, because you've chosen to exclude all the problematic bits. But of course those don't matter to you, because they don't impact you.
And meanwhile, the hollowing continues.
So, that's a "no" on the suggestions part, then?
0
Options
AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
I agree with poshniallo and Squidget0 - this is fundamentally a business negotiation that has been turned into a tribal dispute. This sort of dispute - which may well, as Hedgie, shryke, TaySwiffy et al contend, born of a fundamental unsustainability of streaming sites in general and of which Spotify may be a particularly egregious example - is inevitable as long as the basic drives of capitalism are in place, as long as labels as a business in and of themselves and distribution channels are run as corporations as well. The only way to solve the cost minimising/profit maximising behaviour of sites like spotify is to run them as artist co-ops that distribute profits proportionately after the costs have been extracted - balancing two competing forces (consumer value vs artist revenue) is much less complex than three (consumer value vs artist revenue vs content delivery corporation revenue). From there the question of what consumers are willing to bear vs how artists are compensated is a much easier equation to solve. From there, it may be that artists are unhappy with the compensation they receive and would wish to remove themselves from these services, charge more or something else, but I think that it's going to be difficult to put the genie back in that bottle for a host of reasons, still artists are perfectly entitled to make bad decisions (and as entitled as anyone else to make immoral ones). For reasons of tribalism, most will flock to the putative sides of tech vs artist as per their preferences, as fact cynically exploited by all players within the dispute.
The fact that there is also a moral judgement in play about who deserves what also means there's a clash of values at play. However, I contend that the values that are being used to argue against spotify are largely incoherent, inconsistent, irrelevant or reduce back to simple economics (and are thus not moral imperatives, merely statements of affairs). Primarily - the idea that because millions of people want an artists' work they deserve to be paid X - a proposition, that under the current economic climate makes no sense, and either becomes a simple appeal to historical market forces or flatly wrong (as we do not in any way, shape or form remunerate people in a fashion strictly correlated to their contribution to society or some moral worth of their outputs).
And if it turns out, even with a co-op revenue sharing scheme, that it's impossible for 95% of musicians to make a living wage on their work in the current economic/piratical climate? What do we (or musicians) do about this, if anything?
I agree with poshniallo and Squidget0 - this is fundamentally a business negotiation that has been turned into a tribal dispute. This sort of dispute - which may well, as Hedgie, shryke, TaySwiffy et al contend, born of a fundamental unsustainability of streaming sites in general and of which Spotify may be a particularly egregious example - is inevitable as long as the basic drives of capitalism are in place, as long as labels as a business in and of themselves and distribution channels are run as corporations as well. The only way to solve the cost minimising/profit maximising behaviour of sites like spotify is to run them as artist co-ops that distribute profits proportionately after the costs have been extracted - balancing two competing forces (consumer value vs artist revenue) is much less complex than three (consumer value vs artist revenue vs content delivery corporation revenue). From there the question of what consumers are willing to bear vs how artists are compensated is a much easier equation to solve. From there, it may be that artists are unhappy with the compensation they receive and would wish to remove themselves from these services, charge more or something else, but I think that it's going to be difficult to put the genie back in that bottle for a host of reasons, still artists are perfectly entitled to make bad decisions (and as entitled as anyone else to make immoral ones). For reasons of tribalism, most will flock to the putative sides of tech vs artist as per their preferences, as fact cynically exploited by all players within the dispute.
The fact that there is also a moral judgement in play about who deserves what also means there's a clash of values at play. However, I contend that the values that are being used to argue against spotify are largely incoherent, inconsistent, irrelevant or reduce back to simple economics (and are thus not moral imperatives, merely statements of affairs). Primarily - the idea that because millions of people want an artists' work they deserve to be paid X - a proposition, that under the current economic climate makes no sense, and either becomes a simple appeal to historical market forces or flatly wrong (as we do not in any way, shape or form remunerate people in a fashion strictly correlated to their contribution to society or some moral worth of their outputs).
And if it turns out, even with a co-op revenue sharing scheme, that it's impossible for 95% of musicians to make a living wage on their work in the current economic/piratical climate? What do we (or musicians) do about this, if anything?
Has there ever been a time in history when everyone who wanted to be a professional musician has been able to make a living wage doing it?
Do we have a higher percentage of successful musicians today than we did in, say, 1980, or a lower one?
+6
Options
Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
I agree with poshniallo and Squidget0 - this is fundamentally a business negotiation that has been turned into a tribal dispute. This sort of dispute - which may well, as Hedgie, shryke, TaySwiffy et al contend, born of a fundamental unsustainability of streaming sites in general and of which Spotify may be a particularly egregious example - is inevitable as long as the basic drives of capitalism are in place, as long as labels as a business in and of themselves and distribution channels are run as corporations as well. The only way to solve the cost minimising/profit maximising behaviour of sites like spotify is to run them as artist co-ops that distribute profits proportionately after the costs have been extracted - balancing two competing forces (consumer value vs artist revenue) is much less complex than three (consumer value vs artist revenue vs content delivery corporation revenue). From there the question of what consumers are willing to bear vs how artists are compensated is a much easier equation to solve. From there, it may be that artists are unhappy with the compensation they receive and would wish to remove themselves from these services, charge more or something else, but I think that it's going to be difficult to put the genie back in that bottle for a host of reasons, still artists are perfectly entitled to make bad decisions (and as entitled as anyone else to make immoral ones). For reasons of tribalism, most will flock to the putative sides of tech vs artist as per their preferences, as fact cynically exploited by all players within the dispute.
The fact that there is also a moral judgement in play about who deserves what also means there's a clash of values at play. However, I contend that the values that are being used to argue against spotify are largely incoherent, inconsistent, irrelevant or reduce back to simple economics (and are thus not moral imperatives, merely statements of affairs). Primarily - the idea that because millions of people want an artists' work they deserve to be paid X - a proposition, that under the current economic climate makes no sense, and either becomes a simple appeal to historical market forces or flatly wrong (as we do not in any way, shape or form remunerate people in a fashion strictly correlated to their contribution to society or some moral worth of their outputs).
And if it turns out, even with a co-op revenue sharing scheme, that it's impossible for 95% of musicians to make a living wage on their work in the current economic/piratical climate? What do we (or musicians) do about this, if anything?
That's a question that rather changes what we're talking about (and interesting diversion though!).
I don't really know - once again, this is a question of the virtues we want to encourage within a society/a question of economics and innovation. What do you propose?
EDIT: And how do you think this would affect my position?
How did you to come to the conclusion that it's worth 10 million dollars if you've only been offered two?
Based on current performance of creative output. Taylor isn't pulling stuff from her ass when she thinks she's getting a raw deal, here.
So you consider two million dollars for X amount of work to be a raw deal.
You're certainly free to think so but I definitely disagree.
Considering the amount of money that amount of work produced? Care to explain why you think it wasn't a raw deal?
I find it amazing that people talk about how artists get ripped off by record companies...then turn around and defend them getting ripped off by tech companies.
I'm sorry.
First the amount of money it produced was a raw deal. Now it's a lot? And she deserves more money because it's a lot of money?
And I don't see it as artists getting ripped off. I see it as there being far more artists creating content then there are people willing to consume everything produced.
Quid on
+1
Options
Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
How did you to come to the conclusion that it's worth 10 million dollars if you've only been offered two?
Based on current performance of creative output. Taylor isn't pulling stuff from her ass when she thinks she's getting a raw deal, here.
So you consider two million dollars for X amount of work to be a raw deal.
You're certainly free to think so but I definitely disagree.
Considering the amount of money that amount of work produced? Care to explain why you think it wasn't a raw deal?
I find it amazing that people talk about how artists get ripped off by record companies...then turn around and defend them getting ripped off by tech companies.
I'm sorry.
First the amount of money it produced was a raw deal. Now it's a lot? Please choose one or the other.
And I don't see it as artists getting ripped off. I see it as there being far more artists creating content then there are people willing to consume everything produced.
I don't disagree with your point in general, but I think that Hedgie's reference to the amount of money produced can be unpacked as follows (and isn't as problematic as it appears under your reading):
Considering the amount of money that amount of work produced via sources other than Spotify ? Care to explain how it wasn't a raw deal?
Or perhaps
Considering the amount of money that amount of work produced for Spotify? Care to explain why it wasn't a raw deal?
Both of which I obviously think are radically flawed, but I don't think Hedgie is trying to have it both ways in this particular way.
Honestly the only change I'd want to this is the same change I want for the majority of people working:
Reverse income tax, high minimum wage, and a strong welfare net. It would make part time jobs or even not working (on anything other than their art) entirely feasible choices for most artists and provide a livable income for all the ones who aren't going to make millions off of their product.
Though that's a solution I want for humanity in general. Not just specifically artists.
How did you to come to the conclusion that it's worth 10 million dollars if you've only been offered two?
Based on current performance of creative output. Taylor isn't pulling stuff from her ass when she thinks she's getting a raw deal, here.
So you consider two million dollars for X amount of work to be a raw deal.
You're certainly free to think so but I definitely disagree.
Considering the amount of money that amount of work produced? Care to explain why you think it wasn't a raw deal?
I find it amazing that people talk about how artists get ripped off by record companies...then turn around and defend them getting ripped off by tech companies.
I'm sorry.
First the amount of money it produced was a raw deal. Now it's a lot? Please choose one or the other.
And I don't see it as artists getting ripped off. I see it as there being far more artists creating content then there are people willing to consume everything produced.
I don't disagree with your point in general, but I think that Hedgie's reference to the amount of money produced can be unpacked as follows (and isn't as problematic as it appears under your reading):
Considering the amount of money that amount of work produced via sources other than Spotify ? Care to explain how it wasn't a raw deal?
Or perhaps
Considering the amount of money that amount of work produced for Spotify? Care to explain why it wasn't a raw deal?
Both of which I obviously think are radically flawed, but I don't think Hedgie is trying to have it both ways in this particular way.
I agree with poshniallo and Squidget0 - this is fundamentally a business negotiation that has been turned into a tribal dispute. This sort of dispute - which may well, as Hedgie, shryke, TaySwiffy et al contend, born of a fundamental unsustainability of streaming sites in general and of which Spotify may be a particularly egregious example - is inevitable as long as the basic drives of capitalism are in place, as long as labels as a business in and of themselves and distribution channels are run as corporations as well. The only way to solve the cost minimising/profit maximising behaviour of sites like spotify is to run them as artist co-ops that distribute profits proportionately after the costs have been extracted - balancing two competing forces (consumer value vs artist revenue) is much less complex than three (consumer value vs artist revenue vs content delivery corporation revenue). From there the question of what consumers are willing to bear vs how artists are compensated is a much easier equation to solve. From there, it may be that artists are unhappy with the compensation they receive and would wish to remove themselves from these services, charge more or something else, but I think that it's going to be difficult to put the genie back in that bottle for a host of reasons, still artists are perfectly entitled to make bad decisions (and as entitled as anyone else to make immoral ones). For reasons of tribalism, most will flock to the putative sides of tech vs artist as per their preferences, as fact cynically exploited by all players within the dispute.
The fact that there is also a moral judgement in play about who deserves what also means there's a clash of values at play. However, I contend that the values that are being used to argue against spotify are largely incoherent, inconsistent, irrelevant or reduce back to simple economics (and are thus not moral imperatives, merely statements of affairs). Primarily - the idea that because millions of people want an artists' work they deserve to be paid X - a proposition, that under the current economic climate makes no sense, and either becomes a simple appeal to historical market forces or flatly wrong (as we do not in any way, shape or form remunerate people in a fashion strictly correlated to their contribution to society or some moral worth of their outputs).
And if it turns out, even with a co-op revenue sharing scheme, that it's impossible for 95% of musicians to make a living wage on their work in the current economic/piratical climate? What do we (or musicians) do about this, if anything?
Has there ever been a time in history when everyone who wanted to be a professional musician has been able to make a living wage doing it?
Do we have a higher percentage of successful musicians today than we did in, say, 1980, or a lower one?
Lower, obviously. The point is not "I want to be a professional musician so please pay me", the point is "if you want to listen to my music please pay for it". If my music is good enough for you to want to listen to, it's good enough for you to pay a fair price for.
I agree with poshniallo and Squidget0 - this is fundamentally a business negotiation that has been turned into a tribal dispute. This sort of dispute - which may well, as Hedgie, shryke, TaySwiffy et al contend, born of a fundamental unsustainability of streaming sites in general and of which Spotify may be a particularly egregious example - is inevitable as long as the basic drives of capitalism are in place, as long as labels as a business in and of themselves and distribution channels are run as corporations as well. The only way to solve the cost minimising/profit maximising behaviour of sites like spotify is to run them as artist co-ops that distribute profits proportionately after the costs have been extracted - balancing two competing forces (consumer value vs artist revenue) is much less complex than three (consumer value vs artist revenue vs content delivery corporation revenue). From there the question of what consumers are willing to bear vs how artists are compensated is a much easier equation to solve. From there, it may be that artists are unhappy with the compensation they receive and would wish to remove themselves from these services, charge more or something else, but I think that it's going to be difficult to put the genie back in that bottle for a host of reasons, still artists are perfectly entitled to make bad decisions (and as entitled as anyone else to make immoral ones). For reasons of tribalism, most will flock to the putative sides of tech vs artist as per their preferences, as fact cynically exploited by all players within the dispute.
The fact that there is also a moral judgement in play about who deserves what also means there's a clash of values at play. However, I contend that the values that are being used to argue against spotify are largely incoherent, inconsistent, irrelevant or reduce back to simple economics (and are thus not moral imperatives, merely statements of affairs). Primarily - the idea that because millions of people want an artists' work they deserve to be paid X - a proposition, that under the current economic climate makes no sense, and either becomes a simple appeal to historical market forces or flatly wrong (as we do not in any way, shape or form remunerate people in a fashion strictly correlated to their contribution to society or some moral worth of their outputs).
And if it turns out, even with a co-op revenue sharing scheme, that it's impossible for 95% of musicians to make a living wage on their work in the current economic/piratical climate? What do we (or musicians) do about this, if anything?
Has there ever been a time in history when everyone who wanted to be a professional musician has been able to make a living wage doing it?
Do we have a higher percentage of successful musicians today than we did in, say, 1980, or a lower one?
Lower, obviously. The point is not "I want to be a professional musician so please pay me", the point is "if you want to listen to my music please pay for it". If my music is good enough for you to want to listen to, it's good enough for you to pay a fair price for.
I don't see anything obvious about it.
And I have no problem with paying a fair price for music. I wager you and I have a very different definition of what fair is though.
The problem with the info-graphic is that it's disingenuous and discounts quite a bit of nuance.
-Not everyone that buys a Tyler Swift album or song is going to listen to her on Spotify. Actually, I would think that would be a good thing if they do listen to her stuff on something like spotify, pandora or what have you, if they own a copy of the song because then she is getting revenue from them listening to something again, that they could listen to in a manner that would generate no additional income for her.
-Not everyone that listens to her songs there is or were ever going to by any of her songs because they have a finite amount of disposable income for entertainment purposes and determine that they would rather use it to support other creators.
-Some that do listen to her stuff on spotify decide that they do want to support her with their limited disposable income, but that wouldn't have happened if they didn't hear her songs first (there might be a very limited number, where if she wasn't on spotify, they would have never bought her music).
-She still gets some revenue; however small it may be, from each song heard on spotify, which is better than no revenue if the alternative for listeners was to either pirate it, borrow it from someone they knew or get a used copy.
So I'm in agreement with Jeffe. Comparing album sales and streams, just doesn't work the way they are doing it.
But none of what you mention is relevant to the point the infographic is making. It's a complete non-sequitor. Like, I literally cannot understand wtf you think you are talking about.
The infographic is not about Taylor Swift, it's about the difference in the number of units you need to move under different models in order to achieve the same standard of living.
Like, most of your examples are talking about different models interacting and the whole point of the infographic is to give a comparison of those models as replacements for one another. (in part or in total)
So close but so far. You get that there are different models. You're missing the fact that I and other dislike the graph because it makes the incorrect assumption that the people buying albums are interchangeable with the ones streaming. There is some overlap because there are some people that are too cheap and will opt to stream music when they can do so for free and thus not spend anything on their favorite musicians. There are also people who have a finite amount of money, who will not spend it on an unknown, but will happily spend that money if they find a free sampling to be adequate. There are other people where they have no problem supporting musicians they like; however, they have a finite amount of money, so they prioritize certain musicians over others, thus you get a situation where there are musicians they listen to repeatedly without spending any money on them because it's essentially free to them (be that free free service or they get it with a service they pay for to get access to something else).
One of my pet peeves with many content holders, is they have this fucking idiotic notion that "if only X wasn't around, profits would be so much better because the whole of X eats into sales." There are lots of consumers that will not buy albums, be they physical or digital. Even in the case of piracy, some people are just assholes and would still do it even if they could get paid to consume the media legitimately. Where streaming services, that pay for the rights to distribute that content are useful, in that they provide a means to make money off of consumers that otherwise wouldn't buy albums or songs. Content holders are within their rights to only sell the rights to those they feel are giving them a fair deal, but distributors are also free to not buy those rights, if they feel the asking price is too high. The consumer will ultimately decide if the content is worth buying and for the price that is ultimately attached to the distributed product. As Mvrck pointed out, society has no obligation to make someone into a millionaire. I do think we have an obligation to pay people a fair price and to give them a living wage at the very least (IMO I feel such wages involve more than just covering basic nutrition, basic clothes, basic healthcare and a warm bed).
Thanks Angie the link on Keating. Data on distribution of content is something I feel content holders should be provided with by law because that helps them better negotiate deals with distributors. They can't tell what kind of deal they are getting if they have no idea how well the distributor is moving their content.
There are areas that need work because let's be honest, US corporate culture is really fucking vile and predatory. It seems unproductive to push for there stuff, while using disingenuous arguments.
And I have no problem with paying a fair price for music. I wager you and I have a very different definition of what fair is though.
And if I feel that your labor is worth, say, $1 an hour, who are you to disagree with me? Why is your opinion any more valid than mine? What if other employers agree with me? Should you be compelled to work for that amount, or at least, expect no more than that?
In this thread, I'm seeing a hell of a lot of "once you're a millionaire, you no longer deserve... well, anything, whether it's more money or respect or consideration" and "since artists are going to produce art anyways - they can't help it - we should take advantage of them". And, uh, no. Stop that. Please.
Commander Zoom on
+2
Options
Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
edited November 2014
EDIT: This was not the chat thread
That said, I don't follow the analogy above. Labour is not the same as content.
And I have no problem with paying a fair price for music. I wager you and I have a very different definition of what fair is though.
And if I feel that your labor is worth, say, $1 an hour, who are you to disagree with me? Why is your opinion any more valid than mine? What if other employers agree with me? Should you be compelled to work for that amount, or at least, expect no more than that?
In this thread, I'm seeing a hell of a lot of "once you're a millionaire, you no longer deserve... well, anything, whether it's more money or respect or consideration" and "since artists are going to produce art anyways - they can't help it - we should take advantage of them". And, uh, no. Stop that. Please.
Who is compelling anyone? Is Taylor Swift being forced to create music? We have an entirely different set of problems then.
Is a book worth no more than the cost of photocopying or reprinting it, or printing out a PDF? Did the original manuscript just materialize out of the ether one morning and drop onto the publisher's desk?
We are talking about work product. Would you go to a book signing, or Etsy, or something like that and say to the creator, "Well, you know, I like your work, but I think you're charging too much for it. It's really not worth that. I think, oh, ten cents on the dollar would be more reasonable, more fair. Yes. Give me that thing you made for what I want to pay for it."?
Is a book worth no more than the cost of photocopying or reprinting it, or printing out a PDF?
We are talking about work product. I'd love to see you go to a book signing, or Etsy, or something like that and say to the creator, "Well, you know, I like your work, but I think you're charging too much for it. It's really not worth that. I think, oh, ten cents on the dollar would be more reasonable, more fair. Yes. Give me that thing you made for what I want to pay for it."
We literally do this all the time by deciding to or not to buy things.
And I have no problem with paying a fair price for music. I wager you and I have a very different definition of what fair is though.
And if I feel that your labor is worth, say, $1 an hour, who are you to disagree with me? Why is your opinion any more valid than mine? What if other employers agree with me? Should you be compelled to work for that amount, or at least, expect no more than that?
In this thread, I'm seeing a hell of a lot of "once you're a millionaire, you no longer deserve... well, anything, whether it's more money or respect or consideration" and "since artists are going to produce art anyways - they can't help it - we should take advantage of them". And, uh, no. Stop that. Please.
Let's run with this:
Many fields currently are understaffed because they aren't offering wages the people with experience and skills desire for said positions. So these fields languish and eventually either offer more or drop their requirements and get less desirable workers.
This actually happens fairly often in industries.
To make this match with the topic on hand, which your analogy definitely doesn't so in the future at least try harder, if I only wanted to spend a dollar but swift wanted five for her song I could either hold out and somehow suffer (?) from not having heard her song or... I dunno, go grab one of the other several thousand available in the same genre. Who will probably gladly take my dollar! Basically a job willing to hire at five times your offer for generally similar work.
Which is actually how the skilled labor market generally works. (Unless it can be outsourced but that's a whole other thing.)
Free market is a bitch sometimes. Especially in a super saturated market where artists literally give music away all the time simply because they like making music.
Is a book worth no more than the cost of photocopying or reprinting it, or printing out a PDF? Did the original manuscript just materialize out of the ether one morning and drop onto the publisher's desk?
We are talking about work product. Would you go to a book signing, or Etsy, or something like that and say to the creator, "Well, you know, I like your work, but I think you're charging too much for it. It's really not worth that. I think, oh, ten cents on the dollar would be more reasonable, more fair. Yes. Give me that thing you made for what I want to pay for it."?
Usually when talking about goods, products, or services, something is worth what someone is willing to pay for it
Whether the same does (or should) apply to labour is one of the great political debates of the last few hundred years
Artists are not selling their labour in the sense that (again, generally) nobody is employing them to produce art, they are instead speculatively making a product that is then offered for sale
+2
Options
Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
edited November 2014
Commander Zoom
I really don't follow your argument here - or, more specifically, against whom you are arguing and thus which points your reductios are supposed to be rebutting.
Free market is a bitch sometimes. Especially in a super saturated market where artists literally give music away all the time simply because they like making music.
Well, I could take the time to explain further, in a (probably vain) hope of convincing you, but no one's paying me anything to argue, so you don't get any more of my time or brain-work.
I have other things that I enjoy doing more, so I'm going to go do them.
Free market is a bitch sometimes. Especially in a super saturated market where artists literally give music away all the time simply because they like making music.
"since artists are going to produce art anyways - they can't help it - we should take advantage of them"
Thank you.
I'm not following
You're asserting that if a person decides an artist's work isn't worth what the artist is asking for it, that person is intrinsically taking advantage of the artist?
So, after doing some number crunching, Keating had the following (extrapolated) figures for 2012 from Sound Exchange (she never included her granular ASCAP data she says she received):
June: 631k listens.
September: 900k listens.
December: 846k listens (extrapolated from previous years 6% decline from Sept to Dec.)
March: 981k (again, extrapolated by previous years growth).
From what I can tell of her discography, the only substantial work Keating did in 2012 was produce music for Elementary, which was almost assuredly not what she was being payed royalties on, since she wouldn't have received the Master royalties on a shows soundtrack. This means the content achieved almost a 50% growth from streaming services in about a year, despite her having put out no new content in that time period. Could she even hope to dream to get that kind of growth under the old system on a two year old album? I very highly doubt it.
Streaming services provide a longevity to under exposed content that didn't exist before using only terrestrial radio.
Which all sounds great! Until it's time to actually put a value to those listens.
Moreover, a lot of the articles on streaming are talking out of both sides of their mouthes: http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/10/02/detailed-explanation-streaming-failed
TLDR: "Streaming doesn't pay artists enough, and isn't financially viable because it pays out all its revenue to the music industry." - Wait, what? If Spotify is paying out almost their entire revenue in licensing, and not pocketing it and smoking cigars while they cackle at the plight of artists, well, it isn't their fault artists aren't making money, it is the record companies and whomever else is taking a cut of that pie. As one of the earliest articles indicate, the difference between a bad record deal and a great one is over 3x greater royalty rates.
A lot of the articles entitled stuff like "the data doesn't add up," is right, because what it looks like upon my somewhat cursory analysis is the record companies are fleecing artists on streaming revenue, and then blaming streaming companies, particularly for having the temerity to make music available to poor people, who do, after all, not have as much value on a per listener basis.
You see their "solution" is a customer hating dystopian market with premium tier only service, with additional premiums added onto the premium tier, time based lockouts, cable company esque bundles "Add the Blues station for $9.99/month! (Disclaimer: some artists are only available on the Blues Premium channel for $14.99!)" and while not mentioned, likely regional pricing or lockouts.
Which, when you compare that to piracy, which gives you instant access to everything with a single (or no) logon, is available in a wide variety of formats that cover any device you might like, is available worldwide, has no meaningful time restrictions, etc. it's not the fact that piracy is free, it's the fact that pirates don't have contempt for their "customers." The thing that a lot of people conveniently leave out when railing against piracy is that piracy is, even price aside, one of the best services out there. There's all sorts of ethical stuff wrapped up in it that I'll leave aside, but if your customer experience is not as good as Pirate Bay, that's an issue.
Honestly the only change I'd want to this is the same change I want for the majority of people working:
Reverse income tax, high minimum wage, and a strong welfare net. It would make part time jobs or even not working (on anything other than their art) entirely feasible choices for most artists and provide a livable income for all the ones who aren't going to make millions off of their product.
Though that's a solution I want for humanity in general. Not just specifically artists.
Yeah. It's also worth noting that if less money was being stolen by the 1%, people could rain gold on their favorite artists, instead of relying on ad driven services. It's not like this is a time of untold riches that artists are being cut out of, the last time real wages were increasing was the Beetles.
+1
Options
Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Well, I could take the time to explain further, in a (probably vain) hope of convincing you, but no one's paying me anything to argue, so you don't get any more of my time or brain-work.
I have other things that I enjoy doing more, so I'm going to go do them.
Why has your tone been so dramatic and passive aggressive about this?
Even if it's your hot button issue, there are dramatically more extreme possible positions.
Would you dox me or something if I said that I think the discourse around copyright from content creators is radically entitled and destructive to society?
I honestly don't see why this is even news, you see this all the time in other markets, with Showtime and Starz pulling content from Netflix that is due for DVD or Bluray rerelease and studios putting time delays on Redbox and rental outlets, or to go back farther, publishers refusing to include new books or in demand books into library lending programs for free. There's a certain amount of pushback because it is music and not film, tv, or books and people 'expect' to pay more and have more restrictions on content in those fields, but if anything thats just proving Swift's point.
Is a book worth no more than the cost of photocopying or reprinting it, or printing out a PDF? Did the original manuscript just materialize out of the ether one morning and drop onto the publisher's desk?
We are talking about work product. Would you go to a book signing, or Etsy, or something like that and say to the creator, "Well, you know, I like your work, but I think you're charging too much for it. It's really not worth that. I think, oh, ten cents on the dollar would be more reasonable, more fair. Yes. Give me that thing you made for what I want to pay for it."?
That is the exact decision I make about every single thing that I choose to buy.
I mean I ain't got enough fucking money. I make sure that when I do decide to buy a thing it supports people I enjoy as often as possible, but I look at say games and frequently think "$30 is a perfectly fair price for this interesting thing, but $30 is too much for my budget. I'll wait for the Christmas Steam sale or a bundle, then I can pitch them a bit but not bite too far into my budget."
I've been viewing this digression as the eternal "If I art but nobody likes my art am I still an artist?" line of discussion that somehow end up with the conclusion that they should be entitled to be self supporting via art.
Well, I could take the time to explain further, in a (probably vain) hope of convincing you, but no one's paying me anything to argue, so you don't get any more of my time or brain-work.
I have other things that I enjoy doing more, so I'm going to go do them.
So, after doing some number crunching, Keating had the following (extrapolated) figures for 2012 from Sound Exchange (she never included her granular ASCAP data she says she received):
June: 631k listens.
September: 900k listens.
December: 846k listens (extrapolated from previous years 6% decline from Sept to Dec.)
March: 981k (again, extrapolated by previous years growth).
From what I can tell of her discography, the only substantial work Keating did in 2012 was produce music for Elementary, which was almost assuredly not what she was being payed royalties on, since she wouldn't have received the Master royalties on a shows soundtrack. This means the content achieved almost a 50% growth from streaming services in about a year, despite her having put out no new content in that time period. Could she even hope to dream to get that kind of growth under the old system on a two year old album? I very highly doubt it.
Streaming services provide a longevity to under exposed content that didn't exist before using only terrestrial radio.
Your assessment assumes that Keating did no promotion herself during this time, and growth came solely from promotion by streaming services (doubtful), and that under the "Old System" people who discovered an artist partway through their career didn't go and purchase earlier albums following the purchase of the latest one (also doubtful).
As an example of the second, Smashing Pumpkins released Gish in 1991 where it sold a mere 100,000 in its first year. After the success of their second album Siamese Dream in 1993, Gish was certified gold (500k sales) in 1994 and eventually platinum (1mil) in 1999. You explicitly mentioned "no new content in that time period", so I'll also give the example of Jewel's Who Will Save Your Soul? from the album Pieces of You which was released to low sales in 1995, but following the success of Sheryl Crow, Sara McLachlan, and Alanis Morissette in 1996 gained additional attention to eventually peak at #4 on the Billboard charts in 1997 and go on to sell 12 million copies. Both examples of achieving more than 50% growth on a two year old album under the "old system".
For your Jewel example, you are leaving off a very important detail:
Who Will Save Your Soul was not released as a commercial single until 1996. Which means her album languished in relative obscurity until a record label decided to push her product following the success of other acts.
Jewel only achieved her stratospheric growth after she had the weight of the old system behind her, not before.
Posts
Various streaming and download services are available which allows all artists, from indie bands to major labels, to distribute their music to a massive number of consumers. These services are cheap and easily accessible and consumers love them, and they offer enough financial compensation to artists that a huge number of new songs are put on the services every year. Some artists choose not to use the streaming services for business reasons, and while they see a little backlash from consumers who prefer the convenience of the streaming services, it's widely regarded as not that big a deal. Most artists do use the streaming services though, and combined with other revenue streams this gives them compensation to keep awesome new music being made every year. Users are happy because they have a great selection of music, and artists who make enough to succeed are happy, while artists who don't build enough of a fanbase to survive are not.
This state of affairs seems acceptable to me. If someone in this thread has suggestions on how to improve it, I'm all ears, but I'm not seeing a massive problem here that needs to be solved.
Of course you don't, because you've chosen to exclude all the problematic bits. But of course those don't matter to you, because they don't impact you.
And meanwhile, the hollowing continues.
Which all sounds great! Until it's time to actually put a value to those listens.
Which Keating did for 2013.
Edit: Lowery has a detailed breakdown of why the streaming math doesn't add up.
As an example of the second, Smashing Pumpkins released Gish in 1991 where it sold a mere 100,000 in its first year. After the success of their second album Siamese Dream in 1993, Gish was certified gold (500k sales) in 1994 and eventually platinum (1mil) in 1999. You explicitly mentioned "no new content in that time period", so I'll also give the example of Jewel's Who Will Save Your Soul? from the album Pieces of You which was released to low sales in 1995, but following the success of Sheryl Crow, Sara McLachlan, and Alanis Morissette in 1996 gained additional attention to eventually peak at #4 on the Billboard charts in 1997 and go on to sell 12 million copies. Both examples of achieving more than 50% growth on a two year old album under the "old system".
I agree with poshniallo and Squidget0 - this is fundamentally a business negotiation that has been turned into a tribal dispute. This sort of dispute - which may well, as Hedgie, shryke, TaySwiffy et al contend, born of a fundamental unsustainability of streaming sites in general and of which Spotify may be a particularly egregious example - is inevitable as long as the basic drives of capitalism are in place, as long as labels as a business in and of themselves and distribution channels are run as corporations as well. The only way to solve the cost minimising/profit maximising behaviour of sites like spotify is to run them as artist co-ops that distribute profits proportionately after the costs have been extracted - balancing two competing forces (consumer value vs artist revenue) is much less complex than three (consumer value vs artist revenue vs content delivery corporation revenue). From there the question of what consumers are willing to bear vs how artists are compensated is a much easier equation to solve. From there, it may be that artists are unhappy with the compensation they receive and would wish to remove themselves from these services, charge more or something else, but I think that it's going to be difficult to put the genie back in that bottle for a host of reasons, still artists are perfectly entitled to make bad decisions (and as entitled as anyone else to make immoral ones). For reasons of tribalism, most will flock to the putative sides of tech vs artist as per their preferences, as fact cynically exploited by all players within the dispute.
The fact that there is also a moral judgement in play about who deserves what also means there's a clash of values at play. However, I contend that the values that are being used to argue against spotify are largely incoherent, inconsistent, irrelevant or reduce back to simple economics (and are thus not moral imperatives, merely statements of affairs). Primarily - the idea that because millions of people want an artists' work they deserve to be paid X - a proposition, that under the current economic climate makes no sense, and either becomes a simple appeal to historical market forces or flatly wrong (as we do not in any way, shape or form remunerate people in a fashion strictly correlated to their contribution to society or some moral worth of their outputs).
I know, I didn't spell out the two definitions in quite so explicit a fashion, this is the very basisof the dilemma I present.
To say that her music is worth 10 million dollars or that 2 million dollars is or is not adequate in any way but a business sense is to accept the lie that anything other than market forces are at work for the different degrees of remuneration we see throughout society. Whether Swift gets 2 million dollars or 10 million dollars via Spotify or other means is a function of what people want and are willing to pay, not some virtue of her or her work. To appeal to historical or hypothetical market conditions (i.e. if everyone were unwilling to use spotify or a time before the internet) as if they were normative is likewise a devil's bargin at the very best and/or a category error.
So, that's a "no" on the suggestions part, then?
And if it turns out, even with a co-op revenue sharing scheme, that it's impossible for 95% of musicians to make a living wage on their work in the current economic/piratical climate? What do we (or musicians) do about this, if anything?
Has there ever been a time in history when everyone who wanted to be a professional musician has been able to make a living wage doing it?
Do we have a higher percentage of successful musicians today than we did in, say, 1980, or a lower one?
I don't really know - once again, this is a question of the virtues we want to encourage within a society/a question of economics and innovation. What do you propose?
EDIT: And how do you think this would affect my position?
I'm sorry.
First the amount of money it produced was a raw deal. Now it's a lot? And she deserves more money because it's a lot of money?
And I don't see it as artists getting ripped off. I see it as there being far more artists creating content then there are people willing to consume everything produced.
I don't disagree with your point in general, but I think that Hedgie's reference to the amount of money produced can be unpacked as follows (and isn't as problematic as it appears under your reading):
Considering the amount of money that amount of work produced via sources other than Spotify ? Care to explain how it wasn't a raw deal?
Or perhaps
Considering the amount of money that amount of work produced for Spotify? Care to explain why it wasn't a raw deal?
Both of which I obviously think are radically flawed, but I don't think Hedgie is trying to have it both ways in this particular way.
Reverse income tax, high minimum wage, and a strong welfare net. It would make part time jobs or even not working (on anything other than their art) entirely feasible choices for most artists and provide a livable income for all the ones who aren't going to make millions off of their product.
Though that's a solution I want for humanity in general. Not just specifically artists.
Okay, yeah, I can see that.
Definitely agree it's still very flawed.
Lower, obviously. The point is not "I want to be a professional musician so please pay me", the point is "if you want to listen to my music please pay for it". If my music is good enough for you to want to listen to, it's good enough for you to pay a fair price for.
I don't see anything obvious about it.
And I have no problem with paying a fair price for music. I wager you and I have a very different definition of what fair is though.
So close but so far. You get that there are different models. You're missing the fact that I and other dislike the graph because it makes the incorrect assumption that the people buying albums are interchangeable with the ones streaming. There is some overlap because there are some people that are too cheap and will opt to stream music when they can do so for free and thus not spend anything on their favorite musicians. There are also people who have a finite amount of money, who will not spend it on an unknown, but will happily spend that money if they find a free sampling to be adequate. There are other people where they have no problem supporting musicians they like; however, they have a finite amount of money, so they prioritize certain musicians over others, thus you get a situation where there are musicians they listen to repeatedly without spending any money on them because it's essentially free to them (be that free free service or they get it with a service they pay for to get access to something else).
One of my pet peeves with many content holders, is they have this fucking idiotic notion that "if only X wasn't around, profits would be so much better because the whole of X eats into sales." There are lots of consumers that will not buy albums, be they physical or digital. Even in the case of piracy, some people are just assholes and would still do it even if they could get paid to consume the media legitimately. Where streaming services, that pay for the rights to distribute that content are useful, in that they provide a means to make money off of consumers that otherwise wouldn't buy albums or songs. Content holders are within their rights to only sell the rights to those they feel are giving them a fair deal, but distributors are also free to not buy those rights, if they feel the asking price is too high. The consumer will ultimately decide if the content is worth buying and for the price that is ultimately attached to the distributed product. As Mvrck pointed out, society has no obligation to make someone into a millionaire. I do think we have an obligation to pay people a fair price and to give them a living wage at the very least (IMO I feel such wages involve more than just covering basic nutrition, basic clothes, basic healthcare and a warm bed).
Thanks Angie the link on Keating. Data on distribution of content is something I feel content holders should be provided with by law because that helps them better negotiate deals with distributors. They can't tell what kind of deal they are getting if they have no idea how well the distributor is moving their content.
There are areas that need work because let's be honest, US corporate culture is really fucking vile and predatory. It seems unproductive to push for there stuff, while using disingenuous arguments.
And if I feel that your labor is worth, say, $1 an hour, who are you to disagree with me? Why is your opinion any more valid than mine? What if other employers agree with me? Should you be compelled to work for that amount, or at least, expect no more than that?
In this thread, I'm seeing a hell of a lot of "once you're a millionaire, you no longer deserve... well, anything, whether it's more money or respect or consideration" and "since artists are going to produce art anyways - they can't help it - we should take advantage of them". And, uh, no. Stop that. Please.
That said, I don't follow the analogy above. Labour is not the same as content.
The art is reproducible for at best, a marginal cost.
It's the distinction between being paid for producing something and selling the product
Artists are (generally) paid for their products, not for their labour in producing the same
Who is compelling anyone? Is Taylor Swift being forced to create music? We have an entirely different set of problems then.
We are talking about work product. Would you go to a book signing, or Etsy, or something like that and say to the creator, "Well, you know, I like your work, but I think you're charging too much for it. It's really not worth that. I think, oh, ten cents on the dollar would be more reasonable, more fair. Yes. Give me that thing you made for what I want to pay for it."?
We literally do this all the time by deciding to or not to buy things.
Let's run with this:
Many fields currently are understaffed because they aren't offering wages the people with experience and skills desire for said positions. So these fields languish and eventually either offer more or drop their requirements and get less desirable workers.
This actually happens fairly often in industries.
To make this match with the topic on hand, which your analogy definitely doesn't so in the future at least try harder, if I only wanted to spend a dollar but swift wanted five for her song I could either hold out and somehow suffer (?) from not having heard her song or... I dunno, go grab one of the other several thousand available in the same genre. Who will probably gladly take my dollar! Basically a job willing to hire at five times your offer for generally similar work.
Which is actually how the skilled labor market generally works. (Unless it can be outsourced but that's a whole other thing.)
Free market is a bitch sometimes. Especially in a super saturated market where artists literally give music away all the time simply because they like making music.
Usually when talking about goods, products, or services, something is worth what someone is willing to pay for it
Whether the same does (or should) apply to labour is one of the great political debates of the last few hundred years
Artists are not selling their labour in the sense that (again, generally) nobody is employing them to produce art, they are instead speculatively making a product that is then offered for sale
I really don't follow your argument here - or, more specifically, against whom you are arguing and thus which points your reductios are supposed to be rebutting.
Thank you.
I have other things that I enjoy doing more, so I'm going to go do them.
Damn it's like everyone is happy making their own choices.
I'm not following
You're asserting that if a person decides an artist's work isn't worth what the artist is asking for it, that person is intrinsically taking advantage of the artist?
Streaming is just a single portion of a whole life approach to selling music.
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/09/08/fans-arent-going-pay-music-anymore-thats-ok
Moreover, a lot of the articles on streaming are talking out of both sides of their mouthes:
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/10/02/detailed-explanation-streaming-failed
TLDR: "Streaming doesn't pay artists enough, and isn't financially viable because it pays out all its revenue to the music industry." - Wait, what? If Spotify is paying out almost their entire revenue in licensing, and not pocketing it and smoking cigars while they cackle at the plight of artists, well, it isn't their fault artists aren't making money, it is the record companies and whomever else is taking a cut of that pie. As one of the earliest articles indicate, the difference between a bad record deal and a great one is over 3x greater royalty rates.
A lot of the articles entitled stuff like "the data doesn't add up," is right, because what it looks like upon my somewhat cursory analysis is the record companies are fleecing artists on streaming revenue, and then blaming streaming companies, particularly for having the temerity to make music available to poor people, who do, after all, not have as much value on a per listener basis.
Also, if you look at:
http://thetrichordist.com/2014/10/14/streaming-is-the-future-spotify-is-not-lets-talk-solutions/
You see their "solution" is a customer hating dystopian market with premium tier only service, with additional premiums added onto the premium tier, time based lockouts, cable company esque bundles "Add the Blues station for $9.99/month! (Disclaimer: some artists are only available on the Blues Premium channel for $14.99!)" and while not mentioned, likely regional pricing or lockouts.
Which, when you compare that to piracy, which gives you instant access to everything with a single (or no) logon, is available in a wide variety of formats that cover any device you might like, is available worldwide, has no meaningful time restrictions, etc. it's not the fact that piracy is free, it's the fact that pirates don't have contempt for their "customers." The thing that a lot of people conveniently leave out when railing against piracy is that piracy is, even price aside, one of the best services out there. There's all sorts of ethical stuff wrapped up in it that I'll leave aside, but if your customer experience is not as good as Pirate Bay, that's an issue.
Yeah. It's also worth noting that if less money was being stolen by the 1%, people could rain gold on their favorite artists, instead of relying on ad driven services. It's not like this is a time of untold riches that artists are being cut out of, the last time real wages were increasing was the Beetles.
Why has your tone been so dramatic and passive aggressive about this?
Even if it's your hot button issue, there are dramatically more extreme possible positions.
Would you dox me or something if I said that I think the discourse around copyright from content creators is radically entitled and destructive to society?
That is the exact decision I make about every single thing that I choose to buy.
I mean I ain't got enough fucking money. I make sure that when I do decide to buy a thing it supports people I enjoy as often as possible, but I look at say games and frequently think "$30 is a perfectly fair price for this interesting thing, but $30 is too much for my budget. I'll wait for the Christmas Steam sale or a bundle, then I can pitch them a bit but not bite too far into my budget."
So I found this ending pretty amusing:
For your Jewel example, you are leaving off a very important detail:
Who Will Save Your Soul was not released as a commercial single until 1996. Which means her album languished in relative obscurity until a record label decided to push her product following the success of other acts.
Jewel only achieved her stratospheric growth after she had the weight of the old system behind her, not before.