Stop Thinking of Yourself as a Good Person: The Ethics and Economics of Music Streaming

top royalty rate is like 1 cent right? So roughly 100 plays per dollar. and then that gets split up between the artist and label etc I think

So per album, I guess around 10 plays? just rough estimate

whatever, head math while typing on a phone

If that’s true, and everything above 10 plays is gravy, that’s not so bad(?) Based on how many times a fan plays their favorite albums.

If you can’t be bothered to buy an album you probably shouldn’t call yourself a fan

Tell that to the kids who stream nonstop.

I have a more pithy version for them

Some of you seem to have a bizarre fetish around the idea of “buying the album,” almost as if it’s not actually about earning royalties for the artist at all.

I mean I know this is the labels’ fault more than anyone’s, they got so terrified of being demolished by piracy that they let tech firms dictate the playing field and they left out artists in the bargain. But to my dying day I’ll reserve the right to be angry at every asshole who decided music was something they deserve for free unless they decide to put some spare change in the donation cup, and turned everyone into a busker, because that just doesn’t seem right. Even if it is what the market supports.

Right, you’re mad at Limewire (and with good reason). I work with a guy in his 30s who’s never bought an album in his life. But people who embrace streaming today aren’t the assholes.

music is free now go chase your dreams

top royalty rate is like 1 cent right? So roughly 100 plays per dollar. and then that gets split up between the artist and label etc I think

― brimstead, Tuesday, 30 July 2019 01:23 (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

So per album, I guess around 10 plays? just rough estimate

― brimstead, Tuesday, 30 July 2019 01:24 (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

whatever, head math while typing on a phone

― brimstead, Tuesday, 30 July 2019 01:25 (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

If that’s true, and everything above 10 plays is gravy, that’s not so bad(?) Based on how many times a fan plays their favorite albums.

― the last Berry La Croix in the work fridge (morrisp), Tuesday, 30 July 2019 01:29 (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

one cent per play is an overestimate, but even allowing for that it would take 100 album plays, not 10 (assuming 10 tracks per album), to approach the average album retail cost.

but how much of the retail cost of a cd do the artists see?

> the kids who stream nonstop.

the kids who stream nonstop probably don't have the disposable income to spend on cds and are just using spotify the way i used to listen to the radio. </old>

but how much of the retail cost of a cd do the artists see?

the store will take a cut that is probably roughly the same % as spotify takes from this mythical cent per play, the label still gets their fat chunk regardless of the source.

From that Damon Krukowski article in pfork last year: Spotify had sent songwriting royalties of $1.05 for the 5,960 times our single “Tugboat” was played that quarter—split between the group’s three members, each of us had made 35 cents.

Breaks down to $0.00017 per stream. Obviously every deal is different, but still.

this site (which I found in a Google search, have no clue about its legitimacy) says “One Spotify stream is worth about $0.006 to $0.0084 to an artist”

the store will take a cut that is probably roughly the same % as spotify takes from this mythical cent per play, the label still gets their fat chunk regardless of the source.

Lol, at "paying" for an album by streaming it 100 times. Where are you getting this shit? Try like 10,000 times or more.

This also ignores that the largest investors in Spotify are the major labels who basically gave away streaming royalty rates as cheaply as possible in exchange for ownership interests in Spotify and/or non-royalty payments, which solely benefit the labels and not the artists. Therefore, the artists' cut of the streaming equivalent of a "sale" of an album will be far less than their cut of a physical sale (which was jack shit to begin with).

Basically, the way streams are paid is the Albini article on bad faith label accounting on steroids.

xxp It also says Spotify has “36% of the global streaming market” — surprisingly low to me. Do other services pay more? Wasn’t that Tidal’s deal

Tidal's deal was jacking people's accounts to generate fake streams for Beyonce & Kanye iirc

I read about that, lol

Here’s a detailed breakdown of royalty rates from different sources, by someone who seems to know their stuff. Apparently that “$0.006 to $0.0084” range (cited above) comes from an old Spotify FAQ that has since been taken down.

Somewhere between 20 and 50 plays of a recent album, I'm breaking down and buying the thing on vinyl... and continuing to use Spotify out of the house for it (downloaded, mind, not wasting bandwidth constantly). I get exposed to more music with streaming so... I feel fine. The title of this thread, from the original article linked, seems to be making people extra heated.

One thing I never hear of in this equation... When we discover something we like, say, over a few years old, and not easily available directly from the artist online, isn't it better off streaming a bunch than buying the one new copy at the store, that they aren't going to re-order?

All the math I ever see seems to take as a given that we're talking about recent releases.

Buying digital from Bandcamp is pretty easy and doesn't involve having a CD. Most artists seems to suggest Bandcamp is pretty fair.

Love bandcamp for buying digital. Would get physicals there more often if I weren't usually in a different country from where it's gonna ship from.

isn't it better off streaming a bunch than buying the one new copy at the store

how do you feel about Bandcamp morris?

whoops, thread title not from an article. OP's summary of previous conversations? sorry

It's tough to recall a time when listening to music — and making it — wasn't completely synonymous with streaming.

This is a bizarre first sentence.

Even overlooking live music, I don't see why that would be tough for anyone whose memory extends back 10 years.

xxxp I like Bandcamp! And what I’ve asked above is why more artists don’t use it exclusively, if it gives them the best deal. It’s a “niche” service right now — but couldn’t a critical mass of artists, inviting fans to find them on Bandcamp, change the equation?

maybe the writer was super into RealAudio

(I'm going to actually read the article, just got O_O there.) xps

Drag City resisted streaming for the longest time; then finally went to Bandcamp-exclusive; then threw in the towel and went full streaming not long afterward.

A year after this guy gave this interview, he made his music available on Spotify: http://exclaim.ca/amparticle/bonnie_prince_billy_decries_disrespectful_irresponsible_music_streaming_calls_spotify_really_horrible

What are the pressures that are forcing even the most stalwart, independent artists to wave the white flag?

What are the pressures that are forcing even the most stalwart, independent artists to wave the white flag?

I expect it's sales drooping to the degree that they just figure "might as well get the nickels we can before there's just absolutely no money at all." Two jazz labels that held out for a long time, Posi-Tone and HighNote/Savant, recently showed up on streaming services, and I'm happy because I like the music they put out, but I also know it means they're just desperately searching for any possible source of revenue, HighNote/Savant in particular since they do almost no PR or marketing.

My guess - the people who are fans of their work have mostly switched to streaming for convenience, and to reach them the artist is faced with either being present on those services, or forgotten about.

I only use the free, ad-happy version of Spotify, and I do buy music, but I'm more likely to pay for something if I can hear it first via streaming (or at a gig). When e.g. ECM stuff was not available on any streaming service, I was a lot more hesitant to buy.

A few of my favorite releases from last year (Last Day of Summer, by Summer Walker; and the two Amerie EPs) aren’t even available on CD — if they were, I would have bought them right away. I guess I should buy the “digital albums” on Amazon so they get that money, even though I have no use for the MP3s.

It's got to take a lot of willpower to stay off streaming distro, to trust that people are going to seek out the music rather than giving up and assuming it doesn't exist if it's not on Spotify etc.

One of the gutsiest moves I remember seeing recently was the last Jason Moran album. It was Bandcamp-only, priced at $20 (!), and you could only preview-stream one track. Judging from all the little profile squares, it worked out extremely well for him (but obviously you can only pull this off with an existing audience who can afford it and is willing to do so). But given that, I'm sure a lot of those same people would have just listened on Spotify if they had the option.

critiquing individual consumer choice but not the larger economic system here is wild. this isn't a fans vs bands problem...

Agree. But I understand that people passionate enough to have accounts here are trying to be among the "good ones" as this whole mess hopefully gets something like sorted out

One of the gutsiest moves I remember seeing recently was the last Jason Moran album. It was Bandcamp-only, priced at $20 (!), and you could only preview-stream one track. Judging from all the little profile squares, it worked out extremely well for him (but obviously you can only pull this off with an existing audience who can afford it and is willing to do so). But given that, I'm sure a lot of those same people would have just listened on Spotify if they had the option.

I interviewed Moran about his approach to Bandcamp a couple of years ago. Here's the money quote (literally):

Most artists and labels charge between $7 and $10 for an album, but you charge $20. How did you arrive at that price point, and how is it working out for you?

You know, I think about music as, ‘What do you value it at?’ And that’s basically it. I’ve often been asked this very question, and my immediate response is, look at the back of a slave that’s been whipped, and ask yourself, ‘How do you value your work?’ That’s the end for me. I could charge $50 for this, and if a person wants it, they want it. If they don’t, they don’t. It’s totally fine. But I set it there more as a place to hold it. The way music has been sold, this thing where I should be able to stream the entire thing before I buy it, is unfair, and I think it’s unfair that musicians should fall into the mode where they would do that automatically. I don’t believe in that. So the way we’re running it, my wife and I, for her record as well, is there are one or two songs we want people to hear, but maybe not. And they can change. I can change it—it’s not set in stone. But right now, I’m sitting it there, and seeing how long I feel like I can keep it there.

The thing is, Moran — primarily because he was signed to Blue Note for close to 20 years — is in a position where he's institutional. Literally; he's the artistic director of the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. His wife, Alicia Hall Moran, is in a similarly elite position; she gets grants from high art institutions for new work. So they're not dependent on record sales for a living, and can say, "This is my art, and this is how much I think it's worth. Buy it, or don't."

It's got to take a lot of willpower to stay off streaming distro, to trust that people are going to seek out the music rather than giving up and assuming it doesn't exist if it's not on Spotify etc.

right. ppl itt taking it for granted that it occurs to most people to actually sit and think “hmm perhaps i ought to go to the record store and buy a physical copy of this.” i don’t think it even occurs to most people that there is even a problem here, let alone the nature / stakes / scope of problem

critiquing individual consumer choice but not the larger economic system here is wild. this isn't a fans vs bands problem...

yup

the kids who stream nonstop probably don't have the disposable income to spend on cds and are just using spotify the way i used to listen to the radio.

this is my experience. like, kids and ppl generally aren’t “stealing” the latest X record (and getting away with it, the smug jerks !), they’re just typing in a song they like and letting that autoplay roll

part of the problem with this conversation is that it's taking as given that streaming is a like-for-like replacement for record buying. it's not. setting aside whether you "own the music" or not, which is fucking irrelevant for anyone under 25, stemming is a like-for-like replacement for record buying AND radio listening. it's eating the lunch of the record industry and the radio industry at the same time. its payment scheme tilts towards the latter which.. kinda makes sense? (given that very few people care about "owning" music?)

Ah yes, that's a whole other thing. I was talking to a friend's middle school-aged kid the other day about the music that he likes, and he didn't know any artists, just the Youtube keywords/auto-play algorithms he's into. And this is a kid who gets dragged by his cool dad to see indie bands and electronic music all the time.

xp

Downloading was a replacement for recording-buying. Streaming is most interesting, I think, because it replaces shopping experiences with listening experiences, which ought to be transformational for human culture, for all participants. And it makes the radio dial effectively infinitely wide, which is a quantitative difference that can be qualitative. We're barely at the beginning of figuring out how to make all this potential really happen for the majority of listeners and artists. I work at Spotify, and this is what I think about. A lot of people work at Spotify, and some of them think about other things. I won't claim any blanket corporate moral immunity. But I'm pretty comfortable saying that streaming is not a priori bad. Empirically, it's now the main source of music-industry revenue, and the factor that has returned the music industry to overall growth after many years of decline. There will hopefully be better services to come, but the current ones are plausible beginnings. There will hopefully be better payment models to come, but the current ones aren't crazy or evil by their nature.

Overall growth of the music industry /= artists making more money

xp not by their nature, just… accidentally?

Found this today: https://resonate.is/
Could be interesting. Streaming website claiming to offer a different model/better pay. Looks like they have some good stuff on there.

It's true that overall growth of the music industry doesn't necessarily mean artists are making more money, but whether that's true or not is an internal issue between the parts of the "industry" that receive the money (labels and other licensors) and artists. Streaming services don't have any control over that.