Spotify - anyone heard of it?

MAUs?

Take That bail

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-30223844

xp Monthly Active Users

xpost Google appear to have paid an undisclosed sum for a 1-month exclusive, which is not the same as Take That "bailing" on Spotify - it's like when iTunes paid for a 1-week exclusive of the Daft Punk record

i liked this piece, more nuanced than most http://oneofthosefaces.com/2014/12/02/the-incalculable-value-of-music/

apparently something like 90% of spotify listening is driven by the same 40,000 albums

as it becomes a more mainstream, mature service, i imagine that number dropping to 30 or even 20K

meaning it will become harder, not easier, for non-elite musicians to make any money from it

that's a lot of albums

it's really not

well it doesn't really matter if it is or not since the figure is meaningless without any reference

that's about 1,000 albums per year, assuming most spotify listening is oriented toward popular music of the past half-century or so (and i think it's safe to assume most spotify listening is more narrow than that if anything). so um, yeah, that's a lot of albums.

You cannot convert casual consumers into fans that are prepared to make a financial (and indeed, emotional) investment just by taking away your product. But you can convert casual consumers into fans by making a financial (and emotional) investment in your product look like the more desirable, value for money option.

this logic's pretty odd - taylor didn't "take away" her product from casual consumers, she just didn't allow it on spotify. casual consumers could still watch the videos on youtube, etc, and there are still plenty of avenues to get the album. in general i think that piece blurs cynicism about casual consumers (A free streaming service – whether that be Spotify, Beats, Pandora – serves the niche of people who like music but don’t value it) and the self-interest of a superconsumer (In 2015, I should be able to consume media like a buffet, not a set meal). it's the cheap superconsumer, who likes to hear a ton of music and pay as little as possible for it (i include myself in this lot) who suffers from swift not putting full albums on spotify.

xp there are 30 million songs on Spotify, I was commenting that 40,000 albums doesn't seem like a large percentage of that. sure, I wouldn't be able to listen to all of them before I died (of boredom, no doubt)

TH, not sure I understand the argument. If the number of albums that *drive* Spotify decreases as it becomes more mainstream, then non-elite musicians will make less money because Spotify will pay them less? Or because they will somehow end up with fewer streams?

apparently something like 90% of spotify listening is driven by the same 40,000 albums

as it becomes a more mainstream, mature service, i imagine that number dropping to 30 or even 20K

meaning it will become harder, not easier, for non-elite musicians to make any money from it

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, December 2, 2014 5:00 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We'd have to know how this distribution compares to the distribution of purchases back in the good old days (as well as a bunch of other things) - my guess would be that Spotify listening has a longer tail but idk really.

Ex-Easter Island Head only lose out from more people listening to Taylor Swift if the per-stream payments change, otherwise it won't affect them surely?

TH, not sure I understand the argument. If the number of albums that *drive* Spotify decreases as it becomes more mainstream, then non-elite musicians will make less money because Spotify will pay them less? Or because they will somehow end up with fewer streams?

if 90% of Spotify listening is to this very small slice of the catalog, then as Spotify becomes a mainstream service that slice will get smaller because mainstream listeners are less eclectic and adventurous in their listening. i.e. it will become more difficult for non-megastars to make any money at all on Spotify, not less difficult. and then those non-mega musicians and labels have to make a choice, either accept Spotify as a marketing tool or pull their music altogether. the majors don't give a shit because they own pretty much all of that little slice that makes up 90% of listening. plus they own a stake in spotify.

not really spotify's fault that people all listen to the same stuff

FWIW heard Kelefa Sanneh on a podcast make a very good case (and have others make similar cases) that it's really the labels screwing artists again here, not Spotify, although it might be a hair-splitting distinction given that the labels own big chunks of Spotify. Basically the labels earn revenue three different ways -- from lump sum payments, from royalty payments, and from their equity in Spotify. But they only share the royalty stream of income with artists, and they make sure to maximize the other two and minimize that one.

Personally, I appreciate Spotify because if there is bad news to be had regarding Spotify and music consumers' depressing habits, I'd rather have it right in front of me.

When I was growing up, there was no way of understanding music consumer behavior, short of taking notes when you visit houses or dorm rooms. Thanks to sites like last.fm or services like Spotify, we can get an idea.

actually, there were these things called magazines and "industry trades"...

i'll admit last.fm and spotify make it easier to cull information about the listening habits of individuals though. i just wouldn't qualify "jesus bob sure likes that ariana grande song" as "understanding music consumer behavior"

We get reports from Next Big Sound that shows us aggregate data on Spotify for our music. It's free, too. Not that our numbers are high enough to gain any big insight, but it's still interesting.

There's definitely something new about the ability to tell what people are actually listening to and how much, and not just what they buy.

I was given sting's lute album as a gift, and I never even opened it ;_;

i liked this piece, more nuanced than most http://oneofthosefaces.com/2014/12/02/the-incalculable-value-of-music/

― lex pretend,

Its better than most, but there's still an inference or implication that we our entitled in some way to media

I should be able to consume media like a buffet, not a set meal

Overall I think this is true, but i also dont think we're entitled to any one persons music or song, if they want to pull it, surely thats up to them. Theyre not obligated to put it on spotify, or even release it at all, and if they want to charge £400 for it, thats up to them.

I havent followed this taylor swift spotify thing particularly closely, but surely she can do whatever she wants with her music, why is anyone entitled to it - and also why should she have to justify herself to anyone

she was not strictly required to justify it. but people will just guess or fabricate your reasons for the public act of not releasing your music on spotify when you are as big as she is. so she decided that it was best to make a statement so that people can clearly know the thoughts behind her actions.

people would have guessed 'money' and her reason was 'money'

but what would the raccoons have guessed?

people would have guessed 'money' and her reason was 'money'

― iatee, Wednesday

and thats as valid a reason as any other, no?

raccoons aside, people aren't really attacking TS for her decision here.

people who make art for a living should do whatever they want to maximize their earnings

it's slightly disingenuous for her to pretend like her situation is comparable to anybody else's though

she is like a painter. a painter named Thomas Kinkade.

Seems like there are separate problems of whether Spotify hurts your sales vs whether you can fight the tide.

you can break that down even more when you consider the option of not putting everything on spotify. there's not "fighting the tide" and there's putting your kids in the backseat and driving into the ocean.

you still don't actually have much leverage when you do that unless you are taylor swift and can hold back the single most in demand album of the year. when consumers have a sea of hundreds of thousands of things to choose from, everything is devalued. how many individual books could disappear from the NYPL without anyone noticing?

I kind of dont agree with that, the strength of the library is the library itself not any one book, and priviledging any one book or song or artist is ossifying for me, taking the tree out of the forest and saying look at this one tree. It doesnt devalue a tree that there are other trees.

Anyway for me its not so much about what taylor swift does or doesnt do, thats her own business, its the entitlement of those that feel they are somehow owed the music they want in the format they want

This thing is up now: https://www.spotify-yearinmusic.com/index.html

Top artists: 1) Steely Dan 2) Future Islands 3) Paramore 4) Owen Pallett 5) Beck. Lots of ILX thread influence there...

more like whitify amiwite?

curious what the metric was for the personal top 5 albums - was it number of tracks from an album? times you played the whole thing? the five albums i got suggested there might not have been five albums i played all the way through this year

hey glenn can you tell me how off my numbers are? i.e. 40K albums = 90% of streams?

I think you're overestimating the dominance of the hits. Paul Lamere looked at then-current numbers in some detail last year:

http://musicmachinery.com/2013/11/23/revisiting-the-long-tail/

The top ~200k-ish songs at the time accounted for only 80% of plays, and longitudinal data suggested that listening was getting less concentrated over time, not more.

33K minutes of listening time this year for me. Thought it would be more but I'll trust their numbers.

53.784k for me. I apparently average 5 hrs every Wednesday.

ha, glenn did you create all of the genre playlists?

Yes, in the sense that I wrote the code that produces them.

awesome. does your code generate the "play it forward" list as well? is this the first year for "your year in music"? maybe I just missed it previously. anyway, it's great and better than last.fm in many ways. It'd be cool if even more stats became available in the future.

No, I didn't do the Play It Forward thing, and I don't know how it works. Mine was odd.

They did a less-elaborate thing last year, before we got acquired. And yes, more stats would be cool. Stay tuned.

Haha - according to Spotify my favorite genres are Warm Drone, Drone, Ambient, Glitch... and Freak Folk.

My top two songs of the year are Angel Olsen's "Unfucktheworld"... and "Monster Mash". Thanks to my son on that last one.

where does this info live?