This piece of news from last week escaped me. While other people might not like to think that it is one, it looks like the people who work at YouTube clearly recognize that they have created a music streaming service.
Surprised it took them eight years to realize that.
It didn't. It took them 8 years to diversify their revenue stream from streaming music to include something besides ads.
Whether that's actually true or not remains to be seen, but the cynic in me would not be at all surprised though.
I could totally see it. I can't help but feel the tugs of the record company pulling the strings behind this story. And it bums me out that such a smart girl is so willingly playing the innocent face of what by all angles looks like a pissing match with spotify, which is also why I don't put a lot of stock in her moral arguments. You know what music streaming service she didn't pull her music from? Terrestrial radio, even though on a per play basis, Spotify (likely) already pays higher royalties anyway.
If she's coming out of this with several million dollars extra I'd say she's pretty smart overall. Most people aren't going to care if it was an act.
I mean, on some level I care, because she's re-started this conversation among all the indie blogs that are enamored with her, and yet there's a good chance her arguments aren't even genuine.
...you do know who owns her label, right?
Big Machine Records? No I don't.
The Swift family. Including Taylor herself.
While I know very little about Taylor Swift or her career, this kind of thing makes me think that extrapolating the needs of struggling artists based off the words of Taylor Swift is like extrapolating the needs of the french peasantry based off of Marie Antoinette.
That's what I've said from the beginning. She came up on the establishment industry side, and she's one of the very very few who have profited from it, while also managing to keep an autonomy as a big artist that few ever pull off. So of course she's going to sing that industry's praises, because near as I can tell, she's never been on the bad side of it. Which is fine. I disagree with her stance on digital music but I understand why she feels the way she does. (Even though I still think this spotify thing, along with her subsequent comments are just cover for trying to inflate the new album's 1st week sales numbers.) Anyway, Just call it what it is, a business decision. I can respect that. Muddying the waters with this digital piracy tripe is old. Especially since the rest of the industry moved on years ago.
And near as I can tell Hedgie, Scott Borchetta started and owns Big Machine. And has no family relation with the Swifts. I mean, her family may have financial interests in the label as well, but I can't find any info saying so. He also has deep industry roots. That said, and with admittedly little research on my part, his label certainly seems to treat their artists better than the bigs. Although his quote about the reasons for the spotify removal is particularly lame.
“We never wanted to embarrass a fan,” Borchetta said during the Nov. 7 interview on Sixx Sense With Nikki Sixx. “If this fan went and purchased the record, CD, iTunes, wherever, and then their friends go, 'Why did you pay for it? It's free on Spotify.' We're being completely disrespectful to that superfan who wants to invest.”
Ah yeah. I remember that story. A girl told everyone that she buys iTunes instead of listening to Spotify, which leads to her becoming a social pariah and then having pigs blood dumped on her at prom. And then she kills everyone with psychic powers. Typical digital age stuff.
That's the type of convoluted shit only someone who is a millionaire from selling records would say.
No, it's pointing out that the free rider problem does actually exist.
Not that you can prove this alleged problem is resulting in worse music for less people.
The problem is the same as it always has been. Established markets have entrenched metrics that haven't changed since their inception.
In the music industry, it's record sales. If you aren't topping a sales chart, you aren't going to get radio play. Radio play and sales are how you get contracts and gigs for tours.
If some other distribution method threatens your records, then it threatens your career.
In the TV industry it's the Neilson rating. If someone isn't watching your show as it originally airs, then it doesn't matter how much someone views the ads, you cannot charge enough for them to keep the show.
For movies it's box office sales. Sale of the movie is chump change compared to topping ticket sales. Netflix, Redbox, and streaming sites don't hurt this model though.
There's some examples that break the mold, but they are not the norm.
Agents of SHIELD isn't making huge Neilson ratings, but it's part of Marvel's flagship, so it won't be cancelled anytime soon.
Certain artists are no longer chart toppers, but their name brings in revenue, so labels aren't going to let them go anytime soon.
Ect..
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
The problem is the same as it always has been. Established markets have entrenched metrics that haven't changed since their inception.
In the music industry, it's record sales. If you aren't topping a sales chart, you aren't going to get radio play. Radio play and sales are how you get contracts and gigs for tours.
If some other distribution method threatens your records, then it threatens your career.
In the TV industry it's the Neilson rating. If someone isn't watching your show as it originally airs, then it doesn't matter how much someone views the ads, you cannot charge enough for them to keep the show.
For movies it's box office sales. Sale of the movie is chump change compared to topping ticket sales. Netflix, Redbox, and streaming sites don't hurt this model though.
There's some examples that break the mold, but they are not the norm.
Agents of SHIELD isn't making huge Neilson ratings, but it's part of Marvel's flagship, so it won't be cancelled anytime soon.
Certain artists are no longer chart toppers, but their name brings in revenue, so labels aren't going to let them go anytime soon.
Ect..
If Agents of SHIELD didn't have good enough ratings to pay for itself, it'd get canceled. Marvel can't afford to have a loss leader like that (and neither can ABC), particularly when the whole point of having a show like that to build out the MCU is for people to, you know, watch it.
Netflix/Redbox/etc don't hurt the box office model because movies are embargoed for 1-3 months before hitting those secondary distribution outlets. Day and date VOD is still rare. This is not remotely the case in music, but if it was (and assuming no piracy) the industry would probably be better off financially. (Of course, the industry was so behind that idea that they embargoed their music forever, hence piracy, hence day and date digital availability.)
This piece of news from last week escaped me. While other people might not like to think that it is one, it looks like the people who work at YouTube clearly recognize that they have created a music streaming service.
Surprised it took them eight years to realize that.
It didn't. It took them 8 years to diversify their revenue stream from streaming music to include something besides ads.
Whether that's actually true or not remains to be seen, but the cynic in me would not be at all surprised though.
I could totally see it. I can't help but feel the tugs of the record company pulling the strings behind this story. And it bums me out that such a smart girl is so willingly playing the innocent face of what by all angles looks like a pissing match with spotify, which is also why I don't put a lot of stock in her moral arguments. You know what music streaming service she didn't pull her music from? Terrestrial radio, even though on a per play basis, Spotify (likely) already pays higher royalties anyway.
If she's coming out of this with several million dollars extra I'd say she's pretty smart overall. Most people aren't going to care if it was an act.
I mean, on some level I care, because she's re-started this conversation among all the indie blogs that are enamored with her, and yet there's a good chance her arguments aren't even genuine.
...you do know who owns her label, right?
Big Machine Records? No I don't.
The Swift family. Including Taylor herself.
While I know very little about Taylor Swift or her career, this kind of thing makes me think that extrapolating the needs of struggling artists based off the words of Taylor Swift is like extrapolating the needs of the french peasantry based off of Marie Antoinette.
How so? She did exactly what everyone tells other artists to do, it's just that she's on a large enough scale that creating a formal structure makes sense.
This makes no sense as a response to the post you quoted. What she's doing is a sensible business decision to gate content from some channels to maximize profit from heavy demand, while still allowing for free access where they've determined it would beneficial for them to do so. The whole thing is based around the fact that Taylor has created the most popular album in a decade. A struggling has no need for this advice, because there is no demand for them to gate content for. You would be giving them advice to solve a problem they only wish they had.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
This piece of news from last week escaped me. While other people might not like to think that it is one, it looks like the people who work at YouTube clearly recognize that they have created a music streaming service.
Surprised it took them eight years to realize that.
It didn't. It took them 8 years to diversify their revenue stream from streaming music to include something besides ads.
Whether that's actually true or not remains to be seen, but the cynic in me would not be at all surprised though.
I could totally see it. I can't help but feel the tugs of the record company pulling the strings behind this story. And it bums me out that such a smart girl is so willingly playing the innocent face of what by all angles looks like a pissing match with spotify, which is also why I don't put a lot of stock in her moral arguments. You know what music streaming service she didn't pull her music from? Terrestrial radio, even though on a per play basis, Spotify (likely) already pays higher royalties anyway.
If she's coming out of this with several million dollars extra I'd say she's pretty smart overall. Most people aren't going to care if it was an act.
I mean, on some level I care, because she's re-started this conversation among all the indie blogs that are enamored with her, and yet there's a good chance her arguments aren't even genuine.
...you do know who owns her label, right?
Big Machine Records? No I don't.
The Swift family. Including Taylor herself.
While I know very little about Taylor Swift or her career, this kind of thing makes me think that extrapolating the needs of struggling artists based off the words of Taylor Swift is like extrapolating the needs of the french peasantry based off of Marie Antoinette.
That's what I've said from the beginning. She came up on the establishment industry side, and she's one of the very very few who have profited from it, while also managing to keep an autonomy as a big artist that few ever pull off. So of course she's going to sing that industry's praises, because near as I can tell, she's never been on the bad side of it. Which is fine. I disagree with her stance on digital music but I understand why she feels the way she does. (Even though I still think this spotify thing, along with her subsequent comments are just cover for trying to inflate the new album's 1st week sales numbers.) Anyway, Just call it what it is, a business decision. I can respect that. Muddying the waters with this digital piracy tripe is old. Especially since the rest of the industry moved on years ago.
And near as I can tell Hedgie, Scott Borchetta started and owns Big Machine. And has no family relation with the Swifts. I mean, her family may have financial interests in the label as well, but I can't find any info saying so. He also has deep industry roots. That said, and with admittedly little research on my part, his label certainly seems to treat their artists better than the bigs. Although his quote about the reasons for the spotify removal is particularly lame.
“We never wanted to embarrass a fan,” Borchetta said during the Nov. 7 interview on Sixx Sense With Nikki Sixx. “If this fan went and purchased the record, CD, iTunes, wherever, and then their friends go, 'Why did you pay for it? It's free on Spotify.' We're being completely disrespectful to that superfan who wants to invest.”
Ah yeah. I remember that story. A girl told everyone that she buys iTunes instead of listening to Spotify, which leads to her becoming a social pariah and then having pigs blood dumped on her at prom. And then she kills everyone with psychic powers. Typical digital age stuff.
That's the type of convoluted shit only someone who is a millionaire from selling records would say.
No, it's pointing out that the free rider problem does actually exist.
It's got nothing to do with the free rider problem, in intent or actuality.
It's couched in respect to fans, without reference to sustainability, quality or access. So it clearly isn't intended to address the free rider problem.
Secondly, Spotify remunerated artists via ad revenues for free plays, even if it's a sub-optimal deal for artists and it was intended to refer to a free riders, if it did, it would be mistaken. Plus, there's the fact that music is not a scarce resource, so the free rider problem doesn't map directly to the issue in any case (not to say the lack of scarcity of digital music doesn't create problems for the music industry, under the current system, with the traditional infrastructure. Only that it isn't a traditional free rider problem).
The few, the proud, the signed, do have more time... to do what, I'm not sure, since professional songwriting is typically done by staff writers. Although they are normally salaried from what I understand so royalties don't help them either.
It seems the discussion has moved past this line of thought, but I think what Shryke, AngelHedgie, et al. are trying to say RE "copyright lets artists work on art full-time" is in reference to the "middle tier" of professional musicians/bands that have been brought up before. In other words the ones who aren't raking in the mega-bucks, and don't have a staff of songwriters on hand to create their material, but have an established fan base and discography that allows them to work on their music full time and not have to hold down a day job. A fair number of bands that I regularly listen to/enjoy fall into this middle tier (the "upper middle class" of musicians as it were) and it really would be a shame to see this level of professional musicianship go the wayside. It wasn't clearly defined necessarily earlier in this thread, but there exists a level of professional musicianship that is not "U2/Madonna" and it is rather puzzling that people have ignored this middle tier, for lack of a better term, in the discussion.
I wanted to chime in on this, because it is rather ridiculous to frame the spectrum of musicians as "amateurs who have to sling coffee during the day to gig at night" and "glitterati who make middle class wages in the time it takes to use the toilet" with nothing in between. There ARE professional musicians of classical, jazz, popular music stripes that are working on their music on a regular basis, and make enough money to do so.
To the larger topic at hand, as someone who is a Spotify subscriber, and who believes that they have some rather shitty practices that need to see the light of day (more frequently), and get rectified, this puts me in an ambiguous position on a personal level, yet at the same time it's pretty clear on-demand streaming is here to stay - and I can't say that I miss playlists curated by gatekeepers and accumulating libraries of albums whether physical or digital. I don't really have a horse in the Swift v. Spotify brouhaha but there definitely needs to be social pressure applied in making sure payments from services like Spotify aren't an actual pittance for those many artists who aren't Taylor Swift.
I'm all for putting pressure on companies to treat people reasonably.
What I'm not for is putting up artificial pay walls because more successful artists don't want to have to compete or because some artists feel they're entitled to any amount of money they want because they worked oh so hard.
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratormod
I'm all for putting pressure on companies to treat people reasonably.
What I'm not for is putting up artificial pay walls because more successful artists don't want to have to compete or because some artists feel they're entitled to any amount of money they want because they worked oh so hard.
what, specifically, is the "artificial pay wall" you're talking about in this context?
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Great ScottKing of Wishful ThinkingParagon City, RIRegistered Userregular
I wanted to chime in on this, because it is rather ridiculous to frame the spectrum of musicians as "amateurs who have to sling coffee during the day to gig at night" and "glitterati who make middle class wages in the time it takes to use the toilet" with nothing in between. There ARE professional musicians of classical, jazz, popular music stripes that are working on their music on a regular basis, and make enough money to do so.
That was one of my earlier points; there is no middle tier. There will be musicians that are very successful (by some standard), and there will be starving artists.
The "middle tier" will diminish over time, and the elephant in the room stomping on them is that disposable income for the purchase of music is at an all-time low. The reasons for that aren't relevant to this topic, but the pie is going to keep getting smaller.
Edit: One of the things you see "middle tier" artists doing today is creating art for other people's projects, ex: Computer Games and TV Shows. This diversification is helpful, but will only slow the trend.
Great Scott on
I'm unique. Just like everyone else.
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Great ScottKing of Wishful ThinkingParagon City, RIRegistered Userregular
I'm all for putting pressure on companies to treat people reasonably.
What I'm not for is putting up artificial pay walls because more successful artists don't want to have to compete or because some artists feel they're entitled to any amount of money they want because they worked oh so hard.
what, specifically, is the "artificial pay wall" you're talking about in this context?
Well, in this particular case of Taylor Swift, I imagine it's the non-discounted cost of a new retail music CD.
I don't really mind what she's doing; it's her music and she can do what she wants with it. If she's seeing sufficient sales to not care about alternative distribution, that's great.
She's losing potential income in the long run, and possibly future relevance, but since she's already made her money that might not matter either.
I'm all for putting pressure on companies to treat people reasonably.
What I'm not for is putting up artificial pay walls because more successful artists don't want to have to compete or because some artists feel they're entitled to any amount of money they want because they worked oh so hard.
what, specifically, is the "artificial pay wall" you're talking about in this context?
Mandating that all content be sold at a minimum price regardless of the creator's desire. If creators want to sell their stuff at high prices, it's fine. If they want to band together and mutually agree on prices it's also fine. That's how business works!
What I'm not okay with is a single person or entity insisting everyone must pay X amount for content because reasons. The model that lets Swift make millions is not the model that lets the person making chiptunes cover rent.
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratormod
I'm all for putting pressure on companies to treat people reasonably.
What I'm not for is putting up artificial pay walls because more successful artists don't want to have to compete or because some artists feel they're entitled to any amount of money they want because they worked oh so hard.
what, specifically, is the "artificial pay wall" you're talking about in this context?
Mandating that all content be sold at a minimum price regardless of the creator's desire. If creators want to sell their stuff at high prices, it's fine. If they want to band together and mutually agree on prices it's also fine. That's how business works!
What I'm not okay with is a single person or entity insisting everyone must pay X amount for content because reasons. The model that lets Swift make millions is not the model that lets the person making chiptunes cover rent.
yeah that seems unobjectionable. the best world is one in which taylor swift's megapop albums sell for $15 and your favorite niche genre band sells for $10 and your local indie pub band slings their cds for $5 and someone looking for recognition on the internet gives their music away for free (or whatever).
Edit: One of the things you see "middle tier" artists doing today is creating art for other people's projects, ex: Computer Games and TV Shows. This diversification is helpful, but will only slow the trend.
Not sure what you mean by this. Film scoring is one of the last areas of the music industry left where you can earn big bucks. Very hard to break into though. This has been going on for decades.
Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Seems reasonable to me, except that I would say their own premise eats a later one.
Part of the basis of their complaint is that major artists are awarded an exponentially larger proportion than smaller or niche artists.
The solution would mean that smaller/less mainstream artists would be awarded more.
This is a zero sum game, if someone is getting more, then someone else is getting less. I doubt that TaySwif or the labels are going to line up for that regardless of whether it's fair or not.
If anything it would probably feed into the rhetoric of the current situation as a mainstream artist is likely to be awarded less per play than a nombre nice artist under a few scenarios. Even if "user share" was the metric that Spotify started to use and talk about, I'm not seeing the establishment giving up the "per play" language or metric any time soon.
Ugh, if that's true Spotify's payment model is so stupid.
So if I paid a subscription, it's in the best interest of the bands I like to play them as much as possible non-stop to try to do my part to get them more of a share in the pool, lest more of that money I put in goes to artists I would never actually listen to. And if the metric is actually # of plays and not seconds playing a particular track, then even more reason to just write a 2 minute pop song.
Ugh, if that's true Spotify's payment model is so stupid.
So if I paid a subscription, it's in the best interest of the bands I like to play them as much as possible non-stop to try to do my part to get them more of a share in the pool, lest more of that money I put in goes to artists I would never actually listen to. And if the metric is actually # of plays and not seconds playing a particular track, then even more reason to just write a 2 minute pop song.
So you didn't hear about the band that put a track on their "album" that was 5 seconds of silence? Then quietly encouraged fans to play it overnight on repeat?
That said I'm not sure that the proposed change would actually do anything. I get the supposition that somehow there are enough fans out there of the indies but the assumption that they somehow listen to less plays of "their" band is rather far fetched. Intuition would lead me to believe just the opposite.
This isn't touching the somewhat unconventional concept that in buffet style services your money should only go to your choices. It doesn't work like that pretty much anywhere else.
So you didn't hear about the band that put a track on their "album" that was 5 seconds of silence? Then quietly encouraged fans to play it overnight on repeat?
Neat trick, haha. I'd say I hadn't been paying attention to Spotify since it wasn't available in my country, but now (since September) it is. Still won't use it.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
I also look with a jaundiced eye on people who propose economic interventions to support, e.g., the maintenance of the album as a relevant art form. Why is supporting albums, per se, something we should care about? Because middle aged critics grew up on them, and now want us all to chip in to support their aesthetic preferences? No thanks, I'll pass.
I don't think albums are strictly necessary, but I find it hard to support the idea that they're not relevant. That strikes me as a bit like saying that the existence of YouTube clips makes feature length movies irrelevant.
Something like MCR's The Black Parade, in fairly recent memory, was a fantastic rock opera that definitely was greater than the sum of its (very good) parts. Meanwhile, I just popped in Michael Jackson's Bad and found it to be incredibly enjoyable listening to it in a prescribed order rather than just listening to the songs in random order as one-offs.
There's no reason why albums can't still exist when they demonstrably provide something that discreet five minute songs fundamentally cannot.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
I don't think albums are strictly necessary, but I find it hard to support the idea that they're not relevant. That strikes me as a bit like saying that the existence of YouTube clips makes feature length movies irrelevant.
Something like MCR's The Black Parade, in fairly recent memory, was a fantastic rock opera that definitely was greater than the sum of its (very good) parts. Meanwhile, I just popped in Michael Jackson's Bad and found it to be incredibly enjoyable listening to it in a prescribed order rather than just listening to the songs in random order as one-offs.
There's no reason why albums can't still exist when they demonstrably provide something that discreet five minute songs fundamentally cannot.
Albums may be lovely. If so, then people should support them by buying them. I am less than enthusiastic, though, about arguments that start from premises that are essentially matters of taste (aka, albums are great) and end in conclusions that are supposed to hold across the board (aka, everyone--even people who don't care about albums--should get on board with X).
There are lots of forms of art out there. There are albums. There are also Operas. Opera fans are always on about supporting it, and mostly they've managed to. I would not look very fondly on Opera fans who tried to tilt the playing field in favor of Opera, even to the detriment of people who don't give a shit about it. I feel the same way about albums. If you love this form of art--sure, support it. Produce it, buy it, celebrate it. But that's between you and your taste. You make an egoistic mistake if you confuse your aesthetic taste with an objective reason.
Similar remarks apply to paeans to the mid-level musician. If that's a culture you love, then support it! But I still haven't been given a reason I should care.
You asked why supporting albums is something "we" should care about. I guess in the abstract, you - as someone who does not find albums relevant at all - should not support them. Similarly, someone who doesn't enjoy playing video games should not care if video games are systematically razed from the earth, I suppose.
That said, as someone who enjoys video games (and albums!), I would not really sit by contently while someone tried to usher in a marketplace that made it more likely that video games (or albums) would die out as an artform. And their claims that nobody should give a damn because the artform was irrelevant would not really persuade me too much.
It seems a lot of people - and maybe you're not one of them, I haven't been following this thread closely enough to keep tabs on the specific opinions of each poster - are in favor of a system that is pretty much nothing but streaming on demand and Pandora-style mix stations. And regardless of whether or not this is monetarily lucrative to some breed of artist, it sucks for the continuance of albums as an artform. I would like to live in an environment that does not consist strictly of singles and mixtapes. Sure, I can take a bunch of Taylor Swift's singles and arrange them into an "album" on my iPod, much as I can buy a bunch of paint and make my own "Rembrandt". It's not quite the same, though.
So yes, some people might not see the relevance of albums, or classical music, or paintings, or <insert artform here>. And some people might prefer a delivery system that ushers in the demise of such artforms, because it more specifically caters to their particular taste. But their preference isn't objectively better than mine, and so I'm going to have a hard time cheering on the gradual extinction of stuff that I like under the pretense of woo, digital 21st century art-gotta-be-free techno-revolution.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
I would not really sit by contently while someone tried to usher in a marketplace that made it more likely that video games (or albums) would die out as an artform.
the new yorker has an article about spotify in its current issue; I don't think it's a great article in terms of details but it brings up a few points I thought were important:
1) 'creators' interests are not ubiquitous; what's good for taylor swift isn't necessarily good for 'mid-tier' artists (whatever those are) or new/indie acts. And what pays performers (i.e. spotify pay-per-play) may not pay professional songwriters, who make their money on mechanical royalties (i.e. radio play) under the current royalty structure.
2) Because spotify (and other streaming services) generally make deals with labels/rightsholders and not with the artists directly, the potential for rent-seeking still substantially exists and artists don't always get the best deal they could be getting.
How the labels decide to parcel these payments out to their artists isn’t transparent, because, while Spotify gives detailed data to the labels, the labels ultimately decide how to share that information with their artists. The arrangement is similar on the publishing side. Artists and songwriters basically have to trust that labels and publishers will deal with them honestly, which history suggests is a sucker’s bet. As one music-industry leader put it, “It’s like you go to your bank, and the bank says, ‘Here’s your salary,’ and you say, ‘But what is my employer paying me? I work for them, not you!’ And the bank says, ‘We are not going to tell you, but this is what we think you should get paid.’ ”
[...]
Two artists who are part of that transition are Marc Ribot, an esteemed jazz guitarist, and Rosanne Cash, whose work has won a Grammy and received twelve nominations. Both are mid-level, mid-career musicians who are a vital part of the New York City music scene. Both have worked with major labels. (Ribot is currently releasing his music on indies.)
I met them in New York one October afternoon. Ribot and Cash brought along their Spotify numbers. In the past eighteen months, Ribot reported, his band made a hundred and eighty-seven dollars from sixty-eight thousand streams of his latest album, available on Spotify in Europe and the U.S. Cash had made a hundred and four dollars from six hundred thousand streams. The math doesn’t fit Spotify’s benchmarks, but that is how their labels and publishers did the accounting.
The argument about the royalty divide is fine and I'm sure spotify's formula can be tweaked around, but for the most part spotify isn't making a direct payment to artists. Spotify license the rights to play the music from the artists' labels, then give the label their cut based on share of plays. The label divides what it gets among the artists whose rights it manages however it wants.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
video games are not a good analogy; 'music' is not dying out, a particular method of packaging/formatting is.
I mean, some people are still really attached to vinyl and there are record stores that still do a good business in it. The decline of vinyl LPs as a popular distribution method might sadden you if for whatever reason you have an attachment to the format, but it hardly meant music was being 'razed from the earth' or whatever.
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
video games are not a good analogy; 'music' is not dying out, a particular method of packaging/formatting is.
I mean, some people are still really attached to vinyl and there are record stores that still do a good business in it. The decline of vinyl LPs as a popular distribution method might sadden you if for whatever reason you have an attachment to the format, but it hardly meant music was being 'razed from the earth' or whatever.
The album is not just a packaging/distribution method, it's a form in and of itself.
The closest analogy is short story collections. Each individual story can be experienced on its own, but anybody who's read a good collection knows that often short stories benefit by appearing in the same volume and in a certain author-chosen order. Not only would it be annoying to have to buy an author's stories one at a time and assemble them yourself, but we would lose out on "concept" collections like Stephen King's Hearts in Atlantis, or Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted, or original anthologies. That form is worth defending, even while it loses little in changing from one distribution method (paper, vinyl) to another (digital).
video games are not a good analogy; 'music' is not dying out, a particular method of packaging/formatting is.
I mean, some people are still really attached to vinyl and there are record stores that still do a good business in it. The decline of vinyl LPs as a popular distribution method might sadden you if for whatever reason you have an attachment to the format, but it hardly meant music was being 'razed from the earth' or whatever.
The album is not just a packaging/distribution method, it's a form in and of itself.
The closest analogy is short story collections. Each individual story can be experienced on its own, but anybody who's read a good collection knows that often short stories benefit by appearing in the same volume and in a certain author-chosen order. Not only would it be annoying to have to buy an author's stories one at a time and assemble them yourself, but we would lose out on "concept" collections like Stephen King's Hearts in Atlantis, or Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted, or original anthologies. That form is worth defending, even while it loses little in changing from one distribution method (paper, vinyl) to another (digital).
It is worth defending. Fortunately it, like albums, isn't going away.
video games are not a good analogy; 'music' is not dying out, a particular method of packaging/formatting is.
I mean, some people are still really attached to vinyl and there are record stores that still do a good business in it. The decline of vinyl LPs as a popular distribution method might sadden you if for whatever reason you have an attachment to the format, but it hardly meant music was being 'razed from the earth' or whatever.
The album is not just a packaging/distribution method, it's a form in and of itself.
The closest analogy is short story collections. Each individual story can be experienced on its own, but anybody who's read a good collection knows that often short stories benefit by appearing in the same volume and in a certain author-chosen order. Not only would it be annoying to have to buy an author's stories one at a time and assemble them yourself, but we would lose out on "concept" collections like Stephen King's Hearts in Atlantis, or Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted, or original anthologies. That form is worth defending, even while it loses little in changing from one distribution method (paper, vinyl) to another (digital).
It is worth defending. Fortunately it, like albums, isn't going away.
This is the current line of discussion:
"Hey, here's this article proposing a different method of payment for Spotify!"
"One of the many benefits the author of that article lists is that this payment method might encourage musicians to publish albums over individual tracks. There's no reason anyone should support albums, so fuck that article and its proposal."
"Albums are important."
"No they're not."
"Yes they are."
"Okay, they are, but they're not going away."
I'm sure there have been dumber arguments on this forum but right now none of them are coming to mind.
"One of the many benefits the author of that article lists is that this payment method might encourage musicians to publish albums over individual tracks. There's no reason anyone should support albums, so fuck that article and its proposal."
No one said this at all. At any point.
The closest anyone came is why support albums if they aren't popular. That's not a call for its destruction.
I swear some of you are looking for the sky to fall.
Quid on
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
"One of the many benefits the author of that article lists is that this payment method might encourage musicians to publish albums over individual tracks. There's no reason anyone should support albums, so fuck that article and its proposal."
No one said this at all. At any point.
The closest anyone came is why support albums if they aren't popular. That's not a call for its destruction.
I swear some of you are looking for the sky to fall.
I also look with a jaundiced eye on people who propose economic interventions to support, e.g., the maintenance of the album as a relevant art form. Why is supporting albums, per se, something we should care about? Because middle aged critics grew up on them, and now want us all to chip in to support their aesthetic preferences? No thanks, I'll pass.
Edit: Nobody was calling for the destruction of the album. MrMister took a minor point in the article ("oh, hey, this might also help encourage albums") and used that to dismiss the entire proposed "economic intervention" and then we all went down the rabbit hole of whether or not albums are worthwhile.
Right no one is worried about the disappearance of albums.
They're just very concerned about people not caring enough about albums and so continue to talk about how great albums are for some reason.
Edit: Honestly taking someone's statement out of context is extremely annoying. No one wants to destroy albums. Albums aren't going away. Unless you think they are maybe stop talking about them as if they were.
Quid on
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
So yes, some people might not see the relevance of albums, or classical music, or paintings, or <insert artform here>. And some people might prefer a delivery system that ushers in the demise of such artforms, because it more specifically caters to their particular taste. But their preference isn't objectively better than mine, and so I'm going to have a hard time cheering on the gradual extinction of stuff that I like under the pretense of woo, digital 21st century art-gotta-be-free techno-revolution.
I certainly wouldn't require you to do so. As before, I am more than happy for people who like albums to support artists putting out albums, who like mid-level musical bands to support mid-level musical bands, and so on and so forth.
I also, and I think Irond was misreading me on this point, in no way think 'art gotta be free;' I, like most, think that there is some appropriate IP regime.
Perhaps a way to clarify what I did mean is this: when you're talking to a group of people who all love albums, or who listen to a regular roster of such-and-such bands, then the fact that the music business is changing to marginalize them may galvanize those people to action. It may be enough to make them quit spotify, or whatever. Music people, in my experience, tend to be pretty willing to change their behavior to support the things they like, and do a lot of buying 'free' albums and so on.
But there are also a bunch of people who don't give a shit. Those people will be totally unmoved by such appeals, and they aren't making a mistake in having different tastes. Ominous warnings about the 'hollowing out' of the music industry, or bitter complaints about how such-and-such can't make it anymore, will to them come across as so much more 'nowadays women wear ugly pants!' or 'no one dresses up to fly!'
I AM SORRY I SAID ALBUMS ARE NICE AND I WOULD BE SAD IF THEY WENT AWAY
HOW MANY HAIL MARYS DO I HAVE TO SAY TO MAKE THIS TANGENT DIE
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Seems reasonable to me, except that I would say their own premise eats a later one.
Part of the basis of their complaint is that major artists are awarded an exponentially larger proportion than smaller or niche artists.
The solution would mean that smaller/less mainstream artists would be awarded more.
This is a zero sum game, if someone is getting more, then someone else is getting less. I doubt that TaySwif or the labels are going to line up for that regardless of whether it's fair or not.
If anything it would probably feed into the rhetoric of the current situation as a mainstream artist is likely to be awarded less per play than a nombre nice artist under a few scenarios. Even if "user share" was the metric that Spotify started to use and talk about, I'm not seeing the establishment giving up the "per play" language or metric any time soon.
Not only this, but I'm really not necessarily seeing any real problem with the Spotify model to begin with. The hypothetical in the linked piece, where you listen to Butchers of Whateverthehell and they only get some portion of your $10, is largely irrelevant.
If you only listen to one or two obscure death metal bands...buy their albums, that's a better use of your $10 per month.
As it is, overall spins is a fairly reasonable metric by which to judge who gets paid. Sure, maybe you listen to one obscure band and they only get .01% of your dollars. But there are also a million Taylor Swift fans who never listened to your awful death metal band, and that band got .01% of their dollars too. For the most part, it works out. Not to mention that for Spotify they're building a service, not providing a specific menu to a specific customer...so having tracks available from both your niche act and the corporate megastar is important, and both acts will expect to be paid to some extent for having their work available, even if it's not necessarily played by every user. And frankly, Swift's music is worth more in its availability that Butchers of Whatthefuck.
It ain't perfect, but neither is the proposed alternative. If you want your dollars earmarked for specific artists you like, then maybe a buffet streaming service isn't for you. Buy an album.
Or a number of tracks equivalent to one, because I'm not touching that argument.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Seems reasonable to me, except that I would say their own premise eats a later one.
Part of the basis of their complaint is that major artists are awarded an exponentially larger proportion than smaller or niche artists.
The solution would mean that smaller/less mainstream artists would be awarded more.
This is a zero sum game, if someone is getting more, then someone else is getting less. I doubt that TaySwif or the labels are going to line up for that regardless of whether it's fair or not.
If anything it would probably feed into the rhetoric of the current situation as a mainstream artist is likely to be awarded less per play than a nombre nice artist under a few scenarios. Even if "user share" was the metric that Spotify started to use and talk about, I'm not seeing the establishment giving up the "per play" language or metric any time soon.
Not only this, but I'm really not necessarily seeing any real problem with the Spotify model to begin with. The hypothetical in the linked piece, where you listen to Butchers of Whateverthehell and they only get some portion of your $10, is largely irrelevant.
If you only listen to one or two obscure death metal bands...buy their albums, that's a better use of your $10 per month.
As it is, overall spins is a fairly reasonable metric by which to judge who gets paid. Sure, maybe you listen to one obscure band and they only get .01% of your dollars. But there are also a million Taylor Swift fans who never listened to your awful death metal band, and that band got .01% of their dollars too. For the most part, it works out. Not to mention that for Spotify they're building a service, not providing a specific menu to a specific customer...so having tracks available from both your niche act and the corporate megastar is important, and both acts will expect to be paid to some extent for having their work available, even if it's not necessarily played by every user. And frankly, Swift's music is worth more in its availability that Butchers of Whatthefuck.
It ain't perfect, but neither is the proposed alternative. If you want your dollars earmarked for specific artists you like, then maybe a buffet streaming service isn't for you. Buy an album.
Or a number of tracks equivalent to one, because I'm not touching that argument.
Spotify values niche bands for joining the service because they add depth to the catalog. It values large acts like Swift joining the service because they lure a broad range of people in. It's self-evident that there's a problem with the Spotify model, since neither the niche bands nor the large acts feel like they're getting paid enough for the trouble.
In theory, my tiny death metal band* SHOULD like the revenue model where they only have 12 fans but Spotify lets them under the Swift-generated revenue model so that Spotify can say "We have 35,000 bands and even niche metal fans will find value here"... but it's clear that the actual money isn't high enough to do the metal band any good. Meanwhile, acts like Swift resent being lumped in with the tiny bands on the free side of things. If the revenue model didn't have some kind of problem, this thread wouldn't exist.
*I don't have a tiny death metal band, but if I did the frontman would be Mr. Tusks. He's a LITTLE good at guitar!
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Not that you can prove this alleged problem is resulting in worse music for less people.
In the music industry, it's record sales. If you aren't topping a sales chart, you aren't going to get radio play. Radio play and sales are how you get contracts and gigs for tours.
If some other distribution method threatens your records, then it threatens your career.
In the TV industry it's the Neilson rating. If someone isn't watching your show as it originally airs, then it doesn't matter how much someone views the ads, you cannot charge enough for them to keep the show.
For movies it's box office sales. Sale of the movie is chump change compared to topping ticket sales. Netflix, Redbox, and streaming sites don't hurt this model though.
There's some examples that break the mold, but they are not the norm.
Agents of SHIELD isn't making huge Neilson ratings, but it's part of Marvel's flagship, so it won't be cancelled anytime soon.
Certain artists are no longer chart toppers, but their name brings in revenue, so labels aren't going to let them go anytime soon.
Ect..
If Agents of SHIELD didn't have good enough ratings to pay for itself, it'd get canceled. Marvel can't afford to have a loss leader like that (and neither can ABC), particularly when the whole point of having a show like that to build out the MCU is for people to, you know, watch it.
Netflix/Redbox/etc don't hurt the box office model because movies are embargoed for 1-3 months before hitting those secondary distribution outlets. Day and date VOD is still rare. This is not remotely the case in music, but if it was (and assuming no piracy) the industry would probably be better off financially. (Of course, the industry was so behind that idea that they embargoed their music forever, hence piracy, hence day and date digital availability.)
This makes no sense as a response to the post you quoted. What she's doing is a sensible business decision to gate content from some channels to maximize profit from heavy demand, while still allowing for free access where they've determined it would beneficial for them to do so. The whole thing is based around the fact that Taylor has created the most popular album in a decade. A struggling has no need for this advice, because there is no demand for them to gate content for. You would be giving them advice to solve a problem they only wish they had.
It's got nothing to do with the free rider problem, in intent or actuality.
It's couched in respect to fans, without reference to sustainability, quality or access. So it clearly isn't intended to address the free rider problem.
Secondly, Spotify remunerated artists via ad revenues for free plays, even if it's a sub-optimal deal for artists and it was intended to refer to a free riders, if it did, it would be mistaken. Plus, there's the fact that music is not a scarce resource, so the free rider problem doesn't map directly to the issue in any case (not to say the lack of scarcity of digital music doesn't create problems for the music industry, under the current system, with the traditional infrastructure. Only that it isn't a traditional free rider problem).
It seems the discussion has moved past this line of thought, but I think what Shryke, AngelHedgie, et al. are trying to say RE "copyright lets artists work on art full-time" is in reference to the "middle tier" of professional musicians/bands that have been brought up before. In other words the ones who aren't raking in the mega-bucks, and don't have a staff of songwriters on hand to create their material, but have an established fan base and discography that allows them to work on their music full time and not have to hold down a day job. A fair number of bands that I regularly listen to/enjoy fall into this middle tier (the "upper middle class" of musicians as it were) and it really would be a shame to see this level of professional musicianship go the wayside. It wasn't clearly defined necessarily earlier in this thread, but there exists a level of professional musicianship that is not "U2/Madonna" and it is rather puzzling that people have ignored this middle tier, for lack of a better term, in the discussion.
I wanted to chime in on this, because it is rather ridiculous to frame the spectrum of musicians as "amateurs who have to sling coffee during the day to gig at night" and "glitterati who make middle class wages in the time it takes to use the toilet" with nothing in between. There ARE professional musicians of classical, jazz, popular music stripes that are working on their music on a regular basis, and make enough money to do so.
To the larger topic at hand, as someone who is a Spotify subscriber, and who believes that they have some rather shitty practices that need to see the light of day (more frequently), and get rectified, this puts me in an ambiguous position on a personal level, yet at the same time it's pretty clear on-demand streaming is here to stay - and I can't say that I miss playlists curated by gatekeepers and accumulating libraries of albums whether physical or digital. I don't really have a horse in the Swift v. Spotify brouhaha but there definitely needs to be social pressure applied in making sure payments from services like Spotify aren't an actual pittance for those many artists who aren't Taylor Swift.
What I'm not for is putting up artificial pay walls because more successful artists don't want to have to compete or because some artists feel they're entitled to any amount of money they want because they worked oh so hard.
what, specifically, is the "artificial pay wall" you're talking about in this context?
That was one of my earlier points; there is no middle tier. There will be musicians that are very successful (by some standard), and there will be starving artists.
The "middle tier" will diminish over time, and the elephant in the room stomping on them is that disposable income for the purchase of music is at an all-time low. The reasons for that aren't relevant to this topic, but the pie is going to keep getting smaller.
Edit: One of the things you see "middle tier" artists doing today is creating art for other people's projects, ex: Computer Games and TV Shows. This diversification is helpful, but will only slow the trend.
Well, in this particular case of Taylor Swift, I imagine it's the non-discounted cost of a new retail music CD.
I don't really mind what she's doing; it's her music and she can do what she wants with it. If she's seeing sufficient sales to not care about alternative distribution, that's great.
She's losing potential income in the long run, and possibly future relevance, but since she's already made her money that might not matter either.
Mandating that all content be sold at a minimum price regardless of the creator's desire. If creators want to sell their stuff at high prices, it's fine. If they want to band together and mutually agree on prices it's also fine. That's how business works!
What I'm not okay with is a single person or entity insisting everyone must pay X amount for content because reasons. The model that lets Swift make millions is not the model that lets the person making chiptunes cover rent.
yeah that seems unobjectionable. the best world is one in which taylor swift's megapop albums sell for $15 and your favorite niche genre band sells for $10 and your local indie pub band slings their cds for $5 and someone looking for recognition on the internet gives their music away for free (or whatever).
Not sure what you mean by this. Film scoring is one of the last areas of the music industry left where you can earn big bucks. Very hard to break into though. This has been going on for decades.
Part of the basis of their complaint is that major artists are awarded an exponentially larger proportion than smaller or niche artists.
The solution would mean that smaller/less mainstream artists would be awarded more.
This is a zero sum game, if someone is getting more, then someone else is getting less. I doubt that TaySwif or the labels are going to line up for that regardless of whether it's fair or not.
If anything it would probably feed into the rhetoric of the current situation as a mainstream artist is likely to be awarded less per play than a nombre nice artist under a few scenarios. Even if "user share" was the metric that Spotify started to use and talk about, I'm not seeing the establishment giving up the "per play" language or metric any time soon.
So if I paid a subscription, it's in the best interest of the bands I like to play them as much as possible non-stop to try to do my part to get them more of a share in the pool, lest more of that money I put in goes to artists I would never actually listen to. And if the metric is actually # of plays and not seconds playing a particular track, then even more reason to just write a 2 minute pop song.
So you didn't hear about the band that put a track on their "album" that was 5 seconds of silence? Then quietly encouraged fans to play it overnight on repeat?
That said I'm not sure that the proposed change would actually do anything. I get the supposition that somehow there are enough fans out there of the indies but the assumption that they somehow listen to less plays of "their" band is rather far fetched. Intuition would lead me to believe just the opposite.
This isn't touching the somewhat unconventional concept that in buffet style services your money should only go to your choices. It doesn't work like that pretty much anywhere else.
Neat trick, haha. I'd say I hadn't been paying attention to Spotify since it wasn't available in my country, but now (since September) it is. Still won't use it.
Something like MCR's The Black Parade, in fairly recent memory, was a fantastic rock opera that definitely was greater than the sum of its (very good) parts. Meanwhile, I just popped in Michael Jackson's Bad and found it to be incredibly enjoyable listening to it in a prescribed order rather than just listening to the songs in random order as one-offs.
There's no reason why albums can't still exist when they demonstrably provide something that discreet five minute songs fundamentally cannot.
Albums may be lovely. If so, then people should support them by buying them. I am less than enthusiastic, though, about arguments that start from premises that are essentially matters of taste (aka, albums are great) and end in conclusions that are supposed to hold across the board (aka, everyone--even people who don't care about albums--should get on board with X).
There are lots of forms of art out there. There are albums. There are also Operas. Opera fans are always on about supporting it, and mostly they've managed to. I would not look very fondly on Opera fans who tried to tilt the playing field in favor of Opera, even to the detriment of people who don't give a shit about it. I feel the same way about albums. If you love this form of art--sure, support it. Produce it, buy it, celebrate it. But that's between you and your taste. You make an egoistic mistake if you confuse your aesthetic taste with an objective reason.
Similar remarks apply to paeans to the mid-level musician. If that's a culture you love, then support it! But I still haven't been given a reason I should care.
That said, as someone who enjoys video games (and albums!), I would not really sit by contently while someone tried to usher in a marketplace that made it more likely that video games (or albums) would die out as an artform. And their claims that nobody should give a damn because the artform was irrelevant would not really persuade me too much.
It seems a lot of people - and maybe you're not one of them, I haven't been following this thread closely enough to keep tabs on the specific opinions of each poster - are in favor of a system that is pretty much nothing but streaming on demand and Pandora-style mix stations. And regardless of whether or not this is monetarily lucrative to some breed of artist, it sucks for the continuance of albums as an artform. I would like to live in an environment that does not consist strictly of singles and mixtapes. Sure, I can take a bunch of Taylor Swift's singles and arrange them into an "album" on my iPod, much as I can buy a bunch of paint and make my own "Rembrandt". It's not quite the same, though.
So yes, some people might not see the relevance of albums, or classical music, or paintings, or <insert artform here>. And some people might prefer a delivery system that ushers in the demise of such artforms, because it more specifically caters to their particular taste. But their preference isn't objectively better than mine, and so I'm going to have a hard time cheering on the gradual extinction of stuff that I like under the pretense of woo, digital 21st century art-gotta-be-free techno-revolution.
But this isn't happening. Like, not even close.
1) 'creators' interests are not ubiquitous; what's good for taylor swift isn't necessarily good for 'mid-tier' artists (whatever those are) or new/indie acts. And what pays performers (i.e. spotify pay-per-play) may not pay professional songwriters, who make their money on mechanical royalties (i.e. radio play) under the current royalty structure.
2) Because spotify (and other streaming services) generally make deals with labels/rightsholders and not with the artists directly, the potential for rent-seeking still substantially exists and artists don't always get the best deal they could be getting.
The argument about the royalty divide is fine and I'm sure spotify's formula can be tweaked around, but for the most part spotify isn't making a direct payment to artists. Spotify license the rights to play the music from the artists' labels, then give the label their cut based on share of plays. The label divides what it gets among the artists whose rights it manages however it wants.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I mean, some people are still really attached to vinyl and there are record stores that still do a good business in it. The decline of vinyl LPs as a popular distribution method might sadden you if for whatever reason you have an attachment to the format, but it hardly meant music was being 'razed from the earth' or whatever.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
The album is not just a packaging/distribution method, it's a form in and of itself.
The closest analogy is short story collections. Each individual story can be experienced on its own, but anybody who's read a good collection knows that often short stories benefit by appearing in the same volume and in a certain author-chosen order. Not only would it be annoying to have to buy an author's stories one at a time and assemble them yourself, but we would lose out on "concept" collections like Stephen King's Hearts in Atlantis, or Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted, or original anthologies. That form is worth defending, even while it loses little in changing from one distribution method (paper, vinyl) to another (digital).
It is worth defending. Fortunately it, like albums, isn't going away.
This is the current line of discussion:
"Hey, here's this article proposing a different method of payment for Spotify!"
"One of the many benefits the author of that article lists is that this payment method might encourage musicians to publish albums over individual tracks. There's no reason anyone should support albums, so fuck that article and its proposal."
"Albums are important."
"No they're not."
"Yes they are."
"Okay, they are, but they're not going away."
I'm sure there have been dumber arguments on this forum but right now none of them are coming to mind.
No one said this at all. At any point.
The closest anyone came is why support albums if they aren't popular. That's not a call for its destruction.
I swear some of you are looking for the sky to fall.
Edit: Nobody was calling for the destruction of the album. MrMister took a minor point in the article ("oh, hey, this might also help encourage albums") and used that to dismiss the entire proposed "economic intervention" and then we all went down the rabbit hole of whether or not albums are worthwhile.
I don't understand this intense desire to argue against something no one is arguing for.
I feel I've reached a low point in having to say this, but:
I never said that anybody said the thing that you say I said they said.
They're just very concerned about people not caring enough about albums and so continue to talk about how great albums are for some reason.
Edit: Honestly taking someone's statement out of context is extremely annoying. No one wants to destroy albums. Albums aren't going away. Unless you think they are maybe stop talking about them as if they were.
I certainly wouldn't require you to do so. As before, I am more than happy for people who like albums to support artists putting out albums, who like mid-level musical bands to support mid-level musical bands, and so on and so forth.
I also, and I think Irond was misreading me on this point, in no way think 'art gotta be free;' I, like most, think that there is some appropriate IP regime.
Perhaps a way to clarify what I did mean is this: when you're talking to a group of people who all love albums, or who listen to a regular roster of such-and-such bands, then the fact that the music business is changing to marginalize them may galvanize those people to action. It may be enough to make them quit spotify, or whatever. Music people, in my experience, tend to be pretty willing to change their behavior to support the things they like, and do a lot of buying 'free' albums and so on.
But there are also a bunch of people who don't give a shit. Those people will be totally unmoved by such appeals, and they aren't making a mistake in having different tastes. Ominous warnings about the 'hollowing out' of the music industry, or bitter complaints about how such-and-such can't make it anymore, will to them come across as so much more 'nowadays women wear ugly pants!' or 'no one dresses up to fly!'
I AM SORRY I SAID ALBUMS ARE NICE AND I WOULD BE SAD IF THEY WENT AWAY
HOW MANY HAIL MARYS DO I HAVE TO SAY TO MAKE THIS TANGENT DIE
brilliant post
+10 points
bravo
Not only this, but I'm really not necessarily seeing any real problem with the Spotify model to begin with. The hypothetical in the linked piece, where you listen to Butchers of Whateverthehell and they only get some portion of your $10, is largely irrelevant.
If you only listen to one or two obscure death metal bands...buy their albums, that's a better use of your $10 per month.
As it is, overall spins is a fairly reasonable metric by which to judge who gets paid. Sure, maybe you listen to one obscure band and they only get .01% of your dollars. But there are also a million Taylor Swift fans who never listened to your awful death metal band, and that band got .01% of their dollars too. For the most part, it works out. Not to mention that for Spotify they're building a service, not providing a specific menu to a specific customer...so having tracks available from both your niche act and the corporate megastar is important, and both acts will expect to be paid to some extent for having their work available, even if it's not necessarily played by every user. And frankly, Swift's music is worth more in its availability that Butchers of Whatthefuck.
It ain't perfect, but neither is the proposed alternative. If you want your dollars earmarked for specific artists you like, then maybe a buffet streaming service isn't for you. Buy an album.
Or a number of tracks equivalent to one, because I'm not touching that argument.
Spotify values niche bands for joining the service because they add depth to the catalog. It values large acts like Swift joining the service because they lure a broad range of people in. It's self-evident that there's a problem with the Spotify model, since neither the niche bands nor the large acts feel like they're getting paid enough for the trouble.
In theory, my tiny death metal band* SHOULD like the revenue model where they only have 12 fans but Spotify lets them under the Swift-generated revenue model so that Spotify can say "We have 35,000 bands and even niche metal fans will find value here"... but it's clear that the actual money isn't high enough to do the metal band any good. Meanwhile, acts like Swift resent being lumped in with the tiny bands on the free side of things. If the revenue model didn't have some kind of problem, this thread wouldn't exist.
*I don't have a tiny death metal band, but if I did the frontman would be Mr. Tusks. He's a LITTLE good at guitar!