Spotify - anyone heard of it?

The “blip” I’m talking about is a hundred-year blip— recorded music itself is culturally valuable, but increasingly becoming monetarily valueless.

Bandcamp sales are a portion of my own income. But, as is always the case with any “new thing”, I have to consider what the future will hold from the perspective of the consumer, not what I believe I am entitled to as an artist.

When Napster came out, many musicians were horrified. I was not— I was delighted, and totally fine with the idea of my work being pirated. When MP3s replaced CDs, I was on board. Spotify* is very consumer-friendly, and trying to say “stop” to something that I personally (as a consumer) prefer, is denying the fact that this is just another step forward toward the inevitable— the complete monetary devaluation of recorded music.

I’m saying: “let’s get Spotify to pay musicians fairly” or “use TIDAL, it’s better in this regard”, or “support me on my Bandcamp” but my common sense is also thinking “this just won’t work, we’re screwed”.

I predict that Bandcamp will stay popular but will wane as a reliable source of income for musicians. I predict TIDAL will go down in five years unless there is a cultural shift to pivot platforms (by artists and labels) but I don’t think that will happen. I predict Spotify will never change their pay structure unless there’s some government intervention but that won’t happen— already it’s Spotify pressuring Sweden for changes in their favour, not the other way around.

I am pragmatic both as a creator and a consumer, I encourage people to use TIDAL for streaming, Bandcamp for buying. I think about the future and I see an untenable economy for recording artists unless governments start (or continue to) subsidizing.

Of all the possible solutions to this problem, asking a government to set aside less than .1% of the annual budget to pay for musicians to make records is, I think, a very attainable one. Shaming consumers into making more ethical decisions? you’re telling us to buy Priuses. It won’t make a significant difference economically and the initiative to do so will fade over time.

When I say “streaming rules” I am speaking from the position of a consumer, as well as a creator who prioritizes distribution and access to my recorded work over profitability.

xp And also/especially when artists themselves are constantly posting li.sten.to links, encouraging fans to find their music on various streaming services (I made this same point in the other thread) (I do buy albums, btw/ftr)

Soundslike 100% otm itt

Priuses is otm

I guess it seems like "we're doomed" applies to... most anything in the world, and yeah, technically that could mean nothing matters and it never has, and all individual/collective agency is illusion. But I can't personally live like that; and in any case, in this one sphere, data suggests there actually is a way to individually/collectively do something tangible about it, without hoping tech-bros grow a conscience/a government that exists to protect corporations flips its approach entirely (both even more certain to not happen than general doom is).

A small minority always bought the bulk of non-Top 40 records, and yet some musicians were able to actually make a living, or at least not have to treat it as a mere hobby, for 100+ years (more than I'm willing to dismiss as a "blip".) As participants (or former participants) in that minority that kept things going, I don't see any compelling reason to say "Pandora's (or Spotify's) Box has been opened, I have no choice now". We could've all been people who were happy with 99% radio and the occasional Eagles greatest hits record, as most people were, for most of the history of recorded music. We didn't then, and we had a real effect; why must we, now?

From an email I got today, from one of my favorite artists:

So excited to announce #TodaysHits Presents... Victoria Monét with @AppleMusic.

I'm reaching out to my most loyal fans to join me to celebrate Thursday night by playing my new project #JAGUAR for a select group of you before I share it with the world.

At my label’s request I commissioned visual accompaniment to every track on my recently released record for Spotify-specific usage. Concessions were made with the specific intention of creating longevity for the release, so that tracks would continue to be placed on playlists for a longer period of time. The industry is already centred-toward-pleasing-Spotify— I just don’t know what to tell you. I would hope that streaming services like Spotify begin to take a more benevolent, symbiotic approach to their relationship with their content creators (as Netflix has done with theirs)— lets hope that Sweden brings back the guillotine or does something to adjust Spotify’s current approach, I guess.

Again: I’m interested in that once-overheard explanation for why labels are to blame, here— I heard it once but I can’t remember, something to do with “the recorded works of inactive musicians” being a huge goldmine here

Priuses is otm

I'm a person who has been vegan for 23 years, and hasn't driven/owned a car in 15, so I know something about feeling Sisyphean with regards to systemic change vs. individual action. (Though, I actually have seen a lot of change on those fronts on scales far wider than I could've imagined, and not because everybody suddenly became an ethics freak.)

But music doesn't really seem comparable to those sorts of things related to environmental/societal collapse. In that, you buying an album--or lots of albums--isn't negated by other people choosing to only stream (unlike your Prius vs. 10,000 SUVs). Both can coexist, and in slightly other forms (i.e. radio, Mtv) have for the duration of recorded music history. The possibility of personal efficacy--and helping others realize they can make a difference--is much more immediately viable, and doesn't require a lifetime of counting steps forward vs. others' steps backwards.

Well if it's true that the vast majority of Spotify users just play songs they already know, rather than searching for or listening to new music - and I think that is true - then it stands to reason that a very sizeable bulk of listening is going to be i.e. Julio Iglesias, The Temptations, Nirvana etc. Presumably the songwriting royalties go to the artists' estates though in any case?

xpost

I think it's more like, the Prius has been around a while. People who care and have the means, they have one or suchlike. There aren't enough of them to turn the whole system around.

if you think artists don't get properly compensated by spotify, songwriters get pennies on even that dollar

I didn’t try and persuade people that it was more ethical to buy CDs than to buy MP3s, so beyond telling people “tidal, Bandcamp” (as I do), what more can I tell people? My analogy with Priuses about consumer guilt was one thing but comparing streaming to SUVs is not otm imo— as previously stated my desire as an artist is wider accessibility and availability of my recorded work (not profitability).

One more point: Billboard just changed their chart-qualifying rules to discourage the practice of bundling merch with album/single purchases (including CD + digital copy), but this is a way that artists have actually been encouraging fans to buy copies of their music (and fans have been doing it).

The Prius owner and the Bandcamp customer are not a direct analogue to the 90/00s indie CD buyer. The more casual part of purchasing market has been gutted. Not every Teflon Tel Aviv fan was a diehard.

Of all the possible solutions to this problem, asking a government to set aside less than .1% of the annual budget to pay for musicians to make records is, I think, a very attainable one.

this seems eminently reasonable, which is why i highly highly highly doubt this will ever happen in the u.s.

I was saying streaming *isn't* like SUVs, in that its prevalence doesn't negate the efficacy--actual dollars in artists pockets--that buying music has.

And CDs/LPs vs digital downloads doesn't really enter into it--if anything, it's likely digital purchases put more money in artists' pockets (certainly in the case of a label-less total independent artist). So I'm not sure what "I didn't try and persuade people that it was more ethical to buy CDs than to buy MP3s" means...

Radio never paid shit-- it always got a pass because it was seen as "promotion for album sales".

AIUI radio play in the UK used to pay better than record sales fwiw

This thread has been difficult as a casual Owen Pallet fan. Also apologies to Telefon Tel Aviv who I have misspelled a couple of times now, and are still a going concern.

I am a Canadian taxpayer at least!

Owen Pallett*
Good day.

AIUI radio play in the UK used to pay better than record sales fwiw

― Steppin' RZA (sic), Monday, August 3, 2020 1:29 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

u.s. pays songwriters for radio play (through PROs like ASCAP and BMI), but has never paid recording artists or labels for radio play. the other countries that don't pay: north korea, iran, and china (source)

Apple Music and Tidal are basically the same as Spotify Premium, payment-wise, region-by-region. The ad-supported Spotify "free" tier pays less per stream, but a) still pays, b) still pays an order of magnitude more than YouTube, and c) is over time a very effective recruiting method for Premium subscribers. There's no moral difference between the individual paid streaming services at the payment level.

In addition, streaming as a whole is the overwhelming majority of recorded-music revenue at this point, and has returned the music industry to growth after years of decline. Spotify paid about $1.5 billion in royalties in Q2 2020, according to latest financial report. So I don't feel bad about supporting it as a thing. In a human cultural sense, I think people being able to listen to all the world's music is way better than gating what you can hear by what you can pay. Bandcamp is cool, but it's a glittering reprise of the old model. As a music fan, I don't want that.

In terms of payment "fairness", Spotify pays ~70% of its revenue in royalties, where iTunes downloads paid ~65% and CD stores paid ~45%. So it's not obviously "unfair" on these grounds, either. (And no, that money doesn't unfairly go to popular artists instead of "your" artists.)

I think we're still barely at the beginning of figuring out all the structural and cultural implications of streaming, and what its future can and should be, so I'm in no way saying the current state is ideal. But it doesn't have the seemingly-obvious flaws most commonly and self-righteously attributed to it.

This thread has been difficult as a casual Owen Pallet fan.

Never listened to their music, myself, but I think they're doing OK.

good good

@ glenn

Apple Music and Tidal are basically the same as Spotify Premium, payment-wise, region-by-region.

I don't understand this. Tidal literally pays 3x more per stream than Spotify.

In terms of payment "fairness", Spotify pays ~70% of its revenue in royalties, where iTunes downloads paid ~65% and CD stores paid ~45%.

Comparing % of revenue of a streaming service to previously existing "album sales" models is disingenuous. It's a different service. (And, if we're playing that game, Bandcamp pays 85%.) I don't know the specifics of how revenue is disseminated, either-- where is that $1.5 bn actually going?

Stream-rate comparisons between "Tidal" and "Spotify" as wholes are misleading, because Spotify's "average" includes people on free accounts, and in several large countries where subscriptions are cheaper. This is a decent introduction to some of the main complexities:

https://soundcharts.com/blog/music-streaming-rates-payouts

but there's another level below that. Maybe multiple.

If streaming revenue isn't fair for artists, why do they agree to sign contracts that include streaming? It seems to me if you're an artist, you can decide whether you choose to include streaming in the contract you sign. What am I missing here?

@ Glenn

They're not misleading at all: "In fact, all 6 top platforms in terms of per-stream payouts don’t have a free, ad-supported version." The entire article is basically trying-to-make-complicated-something-that-is-very-simple. Spotify's free-with-ads model doesn't pay artists enough-- so why not cancel it?

@ brotherlovesdub

There are artists who hold out. Joanna Newsom was the last unicorn afaik.

Because with every release it's the devil's bargain - do you want far fewer people to hear your record? Do you want to gamble that people will pay for physicals/downloads just to hear your record, even though everyone's used to the convenience of streaming now?

I've seen it work for some artists, mostly jazz and classical, who resolutely keep their music off streaming and have a fanbase (presumably including a lot of older listeners and musicians) who will go there. I think it's an admirable decision but not easy...most artists people to actually be able to hear the record they worked so hard on.

xp

They're misleading if you're a Spotify Premium customer in the US and think that you'll be helping out artists by switching to Tidal, right?

xp

driving a Prius sucks because people think they’re “slow” or something and get all cornholio driving behind you

^genuine lol

xp Will Oldham was another longtime holdout; think I posted an interview quote in that other thread. Coincidentally(?), given the two artists mentioned, Drag City as a whole held out for a long time – long enough to drive certain artists away (if you believe what they say, anyway)

well, these streaming services are providing a mechanism for people to hear your music to potentially buy or go see you in concert. if you don't want to agree to that bargain, don't do it. complaining after the fact, after you've signed a contract, is just a bunch of sour grapes and entitled behavior. Don't like the cut you get per stream, don't sign up for streaming. it's simple. alternately, write music as popular as Beyonce or Radiohead and you'll be making millions from streaming with absolutely zero additional effort required on your part.

I spent the morning experimenting with applying tip-jar-like extra-payment models to current Spotify listening data, and can sadly report that at any plausible level I could imagine, and even some implausible levels I couldn't imagine but tried anyway, it doesn't make a very big difference. To make notable changes, we (streaming services, I mean) are going to have to do some actual work and innovation to build better connections between fans and artists and communities.

Starting to think Paul Heaton was right all along that the music industry should be nationalised.

my favorite thing about driving a Prius is listening to Spotify thru the USB input

my least favorite thing is that my iPhone wants to autoplay "Adidas In Heat" by Adrian Belew whenever I plug it in because I bought that album on iTunes 10+ years ago

Glenn, are Spotify doing much work on including mixes, mixcloud-style? Because this is a what I want, had enough of playlists.

I know there has been talk about mixes, but that's the only thing I know about it.

if you don't want to agree to that bargain, don't do it. complaining after the fact, after you've signed a contract, is just a bunch of sour grapes and entitled behavior. Don't like the cut you get per stream, don't sign up for streaming. it's simple.

The problem is that by systemically devaluing the notion of paying for music, Spotify* have eradicated many other options for musicians. The bargain is weighted.

Non-streaming works well for dance music too, which thrives on Bandcamp and other digital download platforms because DJs need digital files to dj with (and I don't think streaming is going to replace that for a long time, even though the waters are being tested). The most money I've ever made from digital music has been through tracks that had some popularity with DJs.

FGTI's enthusiasm for streaming services nearly snowed under his one true complaint: it pays (way) too little. I think most here would agree that it should not take 1,000,000 streams to make $ 4,370 (as per that calculator). That's not a "fair" reimbursement for such a huge amount of plays. What is? I don't know, but I know this is way too little. The flaw is not with the service, not with "building better connections between fans and artists and their communities" (they've social media for that); the flaw is in its very fabric, in the economics behind it.

sigh. i can't keep up with this thread and probably at this point everybody is just shouting at each other, but i'll lay out my concerns again and probably be ignored because everybody is shouting at each other.

i am not sure i can understand the benefits of getting one's music on spotify as anything greater than that of getting into the checkout aisles at best buy, if you remember those. any artist on spotify is at best going to be an afterthought, and any hope of maintaining some sort of symbiotic relationship with spotify is... shortsighted.

because spotify, like any business in this day and age, has larger ambitions, of course, has a Strategic Plan, of course, and it doesn't stop with monopolizing music delivery on the internet. that's not _enough_, there are _limits_ to the growth that can provide.

so you _pivot_. and in this case we can already fucking tell which way spotify is pivoting, because they gave a billion fucking dollars to joe fucking rogan, am i using the word "fucking" enough here, let me know. even if spotify _were_ "ethical capitalists", you know, of course they're not going to stay that way. i have no idea if ethical consumption is possible under capitalism, but ethical monopolistic corporate control of the means of production is an idea i'm slightly skeptical of.

the problem here is one of scope, in that there are about a billion telescoping problems embedded inside each other. on the top level one supposes the goal is "global socialist revolution", at or the bottom level the goal is more "find something to eat for the day". spotify is somewhere in the middle. in the meantime actually not using them, either as a consumer or a producer, is increasingly unthinkable. not only are they too big to challenge, they are, like seemingly everything else these days, too precarious to even consider mounting a challenge against before they suffer a swift and unforeseen collapse.

i'm less concerned about the innate goodness or badness of spotify than the _direction_ they're moving, into what possible uses glenn's extremely clever data analysis can be put to that none of us have considered because spotify is a Music Streaming Platform.

my other concern is the increasing universality of this sort of blatantly oligarchical approach to workers and work. lack of effective collection action makes us all easy prey for "divide and conquer" tactics. i am fascinated by the three-year Recording Ban that occurred in the 1940s. i don't think such a thing would be feasible today, but what's the alternative? "negotiate" from a position of utter weakness, utter insignificance, with giants. it's farcical.

Also I'm curious if Ek's comments are actually about shortening album cycles to 12 - 18 months, or does he think that artists should be releasing singles every month (or constantly)?

On the one hand I would mourn the devaluing of the album, because I like the idea of musicians building a discography of long-form works. And making a career out of a steady stream of more disposable music seems kinda depressing. But on the other hand, I totally recognize that this idea of the album that we all grew up with is also totally artificial and a product of capitalism and technology.

Still, while technology and the market will always affect how people make music, it's not like this is a natural and inevitable process, it doesn't have to be this way.

I will try not to repeat this too many times, but the numbers suggest that subscription streaming services have actually done not too badly at convincing people to spend money on music again. It would take 4-5 more years of continued growth for streaming revenue to reach the CD-era peak, adjusted for inflation, and it's hardly certain that that will happen. But it doesn't look as impossible as it once did.

The RIAA has an interactive chart thing you can play with here, including an inflation adjuster: https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/

(This chart is "music industry" revenue, not royalties, which overstates higher-margin CD sales vs lower-margin streaming; and it's just the US.)

@ LBI

Yes, I am concerned about this as well. This is why I'm curious about this secret-arrangement-between-Spotify-and-major-labels that I once heard whispered about. These billions of dollars of revenue have to be going somewhere

Also, I'm definitely aware of the possibility of doing more harm than good with algorithmic tools. But the music industry was totally fucked when I got to it, so the bar is...reassuringly low.

(xpost: Spotify is a public company, you can read the extremely boring financial reports if you want to know where the money goes...)

And to be clear: I am enthusiastic about streaming services strictly as a consumer, and as an artist who desires for my work to have high levels of accessibility. This enthusiasm does not negate or skew my simultaneous criticism that we need for Spotify's payout model to change, or for people to be urged to move to a more "benevolent" platform such as TIDAL. This criticism also does not negate or skew my pessimism that things will actually get ineffably worse regardless, and that we'll have to consider other methods of creating a sustainable way for recording artists to get paid-- which, as I've proposed above, is state funding-- which makes up for a significant portion of my own personal income as a Canadian. (Interestingly, I don't think that this is too much of a stretch for similar models to be developed/implemented/improved in USA, despite a poster's expressed pessimism upthread.)

@ glenn, can you link to those boring reports? I'm interested!

https://investors.spotify.com/financials/default.aspx