Spotify - anyone heard of it?

happily enjoying my $5 a month ad-free account, been listening to Otis Redding all afternoon.

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/music/2011/08/10/kicking-and-streaming-why-indies-tolerate-spotifys-minuscule-royalties/#more-52994

Ian Mackaye and others express their views re Spotify royalty payments

But guess what royalties Dischord Records gets from streaming services like Spotify? “They’re negligible,” says Ian MacKaye, the D.C. label’s co-owner and public face. Although specific deals are confidential, Spotify tallies its royalty payments in fractions of a cent per stream—meaning a label might only make a few dollars, even if tens of thousands users play “Waiting Room.”

i wonder what counts as a "play" for royalty purposes.

rifftrafft NICK SYLVESTER
interesting fact: for 2617 streams on spotify last month, @mrdreamnyc made $15.83. if they had been itunes downloads? $1837.90.

interesting *strokes chin*

That's not a relevant comparison, though.

An equivalent of an album selling 100,000 copies would mean over one million streams if everyone only listened to the album one time.

sure, but do the rest of the math and it still doesn't look good. a million streams at a half cent each is only $5000. Whereas a 50 cent royalty on 100,000 album sales is $50,000. And clearly a lot of smaller artists aren't getting anywhere near a half cent. $15 for 2600 streams is like if the artist sold a single copy of an album and that person listened to it over 150 times which is pretty unlikely.

Let's say it's only a quarter of a cent - $2500 for a million streams. Again, that's the equivalent of 100,000 listeners hearing the album one time. If, over the course of time, those listeners average ten listens, that's 25K from only 100,000 listeners.

vs. 100,000 albums sales which would have made double or even quadruple that amount of money for the artist. Calculated based on your example of a 10 song album listened to 10 times, that works out to a 2.5 cent royalty per album sold.

oops, I mean 25 cents

25 cents for artist and label, seemingly. It will be interesting to see how labels deal with the percentage of that paid to artists.

yeah, labels get a chunk of that plus then the majors all own a piece of spotify itself so they win either way.

Whoever uploaded Young Gunz "Can't Stop Won't Stop" fucked up.

"fancy a beer?"

"wha? Fan Ci Dabeer?"

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/music/2011/08/11/indies-drop-spotify-and-spotify-responds/#more-53078

Maybe I should hold off before ponying up for a subscription, I don't want to pay in time for a bunch of labels to start jumping ship. I was afraid this was too good to be true.

Nice to see a Del Cielo reference though, loved those girls.

Hardly an avalanche of withdrawals though, is it? In the UK, indie representation is very high, and this goes right through to self-releases.

(One of the more notable non-participating labels here is Ministry Of Sound, so I am denied the opportunity to savour Example and Wretch 32... but I can live with that...)

I guess Century Media just feels more like a big deal to me because I listen to a lot of metal, which was already an underrepresented genre on Spotify.

If any of you guys in the US needs an invite, I apparently have a couple.

No Royal Trux or Hagerty, just sayin

Noticed the Royal Trux, Hagerty, and RTX problem yesterday. Hopefully they'll get on that.

it's a big, serious problem, yes. Someone tell them

Is that a Drag City issue? The label has its own distribution method for digital, right?

So I like Spotify, but I still like to own records. I feel like listening to stuff on Spotify feels like I am not invested in an artist in any personal way, and I guess that matters more to me than I thought. But if we're talking about just listening to happy hardcore at 9 in the morning, fine

xp-maybe

lord i hope they get drag city

Also lists seem cool, but I am having trouble finding more obscure lists and all the live versions and soundalikes annoy me (as the live versions on Last FM annoy me). WTF is with all the re-recorded Specials stuff? It's horrrible! Not a Spotify issue, but still

Are there any like cool folks with good taste who publish regular playlists?

Seems highly unlikely that Drag City will ever sign on for this. They're not on Rhapsody either. Would be a major coup if they did I guess?

no more holger czukay. fuckers.

Biggest fail is this 10 minute song thing.

I like the idea of Spotify but I just can't get into it. Maybe I'm just too short on time to waste (and I don't want to give up my other time-wasting habits), or maybe I just don't find it to be terribly user-friendly, or maybe the social aspect of it isn't very fun since none of my friends have joined or been invited to join.

My only complaint is that I've noticed when I import my iTunes library, it replaces restricted catalogs like Apple with awful covers of the same songs. I just sat through bar band versions of Badfinger's
"Baby Blue" and song track off Double Fantasy.

some of the bugs are pretty funny -- they were just trying to cut into baroness with a michelle branch ad, but it said it "couldn't play the track" or something, where "track" meant their ad

so i had to click on the next track in the album, and baroness just started playing again

I don't use this to play mp3s I have, just stuff I don't have.

Lately spotify hasn't had any of the stuff I look for on it, but there's enough stuff saved in my to-listen playlist that I can chill until I forget to care about those other things I can't find.

The social aspect has yet to be useful to me.

no Crass, no Angry Samoans... but they do have Michael Hurley's Bellemeade Sessions, which I had been looking for for years and had never heard.

there's quite a lot of hurley on there for some reason! hate how i can never tell what stuff is just on my drive and what i can link to though.

Biggest fail is this 10 minute song thing.

so, what is this?

currently listening to miles davis' "he loved him madly" and that's 32:12. is it a region thing? I'm in the US.

it's a metadata issue affecting stuff from universal music group iirc; it may be fixed at some point.

ah, thanks.

Where did ZE Records go?

10 minute limit means White Light/White Heat with no "Sister Ray"

Hmm...even though I have Sister Ray in my iTunes I still can't play it in Spotify.

Yeah, thats super annoying. Quite a few of those 10 minute plus tracks I actually have in my library can't be played.

I haven't had a single problem with 10+ minute classical music

anyone else seeing some kill rock stars shit on here now!!!