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Why Spotify will fail...

Witterings said:
Whatever, the music industry isn't in a great way at the moment and unless there's some change I don't see it getting any better.
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It is in uncharted territory for sure, but there is an amazing amount of music happening at present.

As I see it is all part of the same groundshift; that of the democratisation that computer technology and the internet has brought to all aspects of life. Musicians can produce release-ready music with a MacBook, USB interface and a couple of mics now which has removed so much power from industry gatekeepers; record labels, A&R men etc. The DIY thing that took its first steps in punk and new-wave is now vastly easier and more acceptable. This has left the corporate interests looking for other things to monopolise and gatekeep, and that has turned out to be streaming. Where things end up is yet to be seen, but as someone who’s interests have always been fairly obscure leftfield music that existed a good distance from the mainstream I’m finding vast amounts of stuff I want to buy. I also don’t feel I need a streaming service at all, there is always a big stack of records on the floor from new bands.

I’d like to see some coordinated radical action where vast swathes of musicians just remove their wares from mainstream streaming services. If they are not being paid anything by the corporate gatekeepers they may as well just publish a limited subset of their music on YouTube and persuade folk to buy the physical product. That may help strangle gatekeeping entities such as Spotify, Tidal, Apple etc out of viability and enable more of a Mastodon distributed model in the future. I definitely want to see these corporate entities fail. They are as destructive as the huge record labels and advances were in past eras.

We are in the early stages of whatever this turns out to be, anything can happen, but vast swathes of great music is being made and is certainly available to buy.

The idea you can access 80 million tracks for a tenner a month, with about £9.93* of which going to corporate gatekeepers and middlemen, is clearly not viable for artists.

*I made that figure up as I don’t know the exact amount, but it won’t be far off, and as Benn Jordan points out many artists actually end up paying to be platformed.
 
Witterings said:
It's ironic that years ago the tour was the loss leader to promote the band so people bought their records and that's how they made their money.
Now it's the reverse, the record's become the loss leader to promote the band so people go and see them live / buy their merchandise and where the profit is.
As there was more money in it for labels years ago they used to be able to finance promising bands to do 2 / 3 albums, now they're only interested in dead certainties and if the 1st album isn't a hit they get dropped like a hot potatoe.
It also means a lot of "fringe bands" ... in other words the ones that may or may not be mainstream aren't getting the support & investment in them and given the exposure / opportunity that may make a difference.

Certainly in my opinion Spotify or at least streaming will be around in 10 years as it's too convenient and as a result highly popular, especially as I have 80 million tracks availabe at my fingertips for the approximate cost of buying 1 CD a month, whether they have to change the way they do it or how they reward the artists only time will tell.

Whatever, the music industry isn't in a great way at the moment and unless there's some change I don't see it getting any better.
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The ultimate irony is that the rapacious greed of the music industry in the 80s & 90s ultimately led us where we are now.
 
Woodface said:
The problem is that no musicians make money without touring. Even back in the day artists did not earn anything like what we imagine.

John Martyn left an estate of £80k. Only actual songwriters make any kind of bank & then they have to sell a lot.

I remember Lloyd Cole saying that it took more than 30 years for Mainstream to pay back its advance.

The plus side is that people still want to see live acts, even absolute crap like Shed Seven are playing larger Theatres. Festivals are always looking for acts.

The days of acts like Pink Floyd surviving on royalties are long gone.
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LOL

faroutmagazine.co.uk

The Price of Music: Artists on the huge expense of touring

Existential crisis looming?
faroutmagazine.co.uk faroutmagazine.co.uk
 
I was wondering about the difference between radio royalties and streaming royalties. I found this online - quite an interesting (and long) read of the legal situation

grmdaily.com

GRM Exclusive: The Outdated Disparity Between Streaming And Radio Royalties Explained - GRM Daily

In this two part article, we discuss the evolution of music consumption in relation to streaming and re-examine the way in which the law will have to adapt traditional principles in favour of a more balanced approach towards exploitation in a modern day economy.
grmdaily.com grmdaily.com
 
Woodface said:
The ultimate irony is that the rapacious greed of the music industry in the 80s & 90s ultimately led us where we are now.
Click to expand...
Absolutely this. They were so crap at just ignoring the internet and allowing file sharing to happen as it was just a thing that would go away. A friend of mine was in a meeting with record company execs and the Spotify main man and he basically did a protection racket thing on them…if you don’t come with me then it will all just be pirated anyway.

I’ve no idea where it goes from here. I subscribe to various things and buy heaps of physical media. I guess it’s good that there’s such a choice for consumers, but for musicians it’s blooming awful.
 
RickyC6 said:
Absolutely this. They were so crap at just ignoring the internet and allowing file sharing to happen as it was just a thing that would go away. A friend of mine was in a meeting with record company execs and the Spotify main man and he basically did a protection racket thing on them…if you don’t come with me then it will all just be pirated anyway.

I’ve no idea where it goes from here. I subscribe to various things and buy heaps of physical media. I guess it’s good that there’s such a choice for consumers, but for musicians it’s blooming awful.
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It’s never clear cut, I think it’s always been pretty difficult. Probably easier to find an audience but more difficult to monetise it. A lot of older musicians still have an active career who would otherwise be forgotten.

Lloyd Cole sells handwritten song lyrics & tours mostly on his own.

Spotify probably should pay more but I have no idea how possible that is. The vast majority just don’t want physical product anymore, in the old days people would buy a handful of albums a year (if that). On here we are massive outliers.
 
RickyC6 said:
Absolutely this. They were so crap at just ignoring the internet and allowing file sharing to happen as it was just a thing that would go away. A friend of mine was in a meeting with record company execs and the Spotify main man and he basically did a protection racket thing on them…if you don’t come with me then it will all just be pirated anyway.

I’ve no idea where it goes from here. I subscribe to various things and buy heaps of physical media. I guess it’s good that there’s such a choice for consumers, but for musicians it’s blooming awful.
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Legal streaming did pretty much kill illegal filesharing, which was absolutely rampant, something that seems to be all but forgotten now.
 
I recommend reading David Byrne's How Music Works.

Even for a successful musician like Byrne, he says the revenue he gets from streams of some of his 'hits' on Spotify amounted to less than $500. He of course has additional income from songwriting royalties, licensing, etc but even so, he states musicians need to earn a living by performing (& touring). A record label can help in promotion and organization and recording but they all recoup their costs from the artist, so he needs to be especially careful how the budget is spent. It may be surprising but little money is made by the artist net of cost from selling physical albums (unless they sell millions) so that's not enough.

I reckon almost all musicians, save for the biggest artists, make a tough living. Spotify or no Spotify.
 
Bob McC said:
Proper music fans go to gigs.
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…attracted by the terrible dangerously loud sound, expense and claustrophobia!

PS FWIW I’ve not been to a gig since before covid and I suspect I’m done. To get to 60 as an ex-indie muso with reasonably intact hearing is an amazing achievement, one many of my friends have failed (I used earplugs for decades). I’m now at the point of hating standing in packed venues wearing ear-plugs and listening to awful sound quality. I’ll go and see a string quartet, or similar chamber stuff, but I’m done with live rock. I’d not even go to the cinema these days as that’s often dangerously/irresponsibly loud.
 
I agree but I haven't been to a standing venue yet that could not provide me with a reserved seat once I explained how arthritis prevents me from standing.
And I don't do "rock" music anymore.
Cinema is too loud I agree, and always use ear plugs.
 
Same here. Too loud everywhere. You can’t even have a chat at a wedding party, for heaven’s sake. Plugs mandatory.
DJs are ear criminals.
Spotify I find very useful and it’s got everything I want to listen to.
But I like to have the impression I’ve got the music, so I have loads of CDs and records. In effect, expensive slices of plastic!
It was always about the money, wasn’t it?
 
Tony L said:
I’d not even go to the cinema these days as that’s often dangerously/irresponsibly loud.
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Yep, completely agree. Went to a viewing of Oppenheimer 2 weeks ago at my local Cineworld. Ridiculously loud , not just the film but the ads as well. Ending up stuffing tissue paper into my ears. Last week went to see Dune 2 prepared with my Etymotic earplugs.
 
hockman said:
I recommend reading David Byrne's How Music Works.

Even for a successful musician like Byrne, he says the revenue he gets from streams of some of his 'hits' on Spotify amounted to less than $500. He of course has additional income from songwriting royalties, licensing, etc but even so, he states musicians need to earn a living by performing (& touring). A record label can help in promotion and organization and recording but they all recoup their costs from the artist, so he needs to be especially careful how the budget is spent. It may be surprising but little money is made by the artist net of cost from selling physical albums (unless they sell millions) so that's not enough.

I reckon almost all musicians, save for the biggest artists, make a tough living. Spotify or no Spotify.
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A quick hypothetical example off the top of my head:

A CD sells for £12 retail. The retailer collects £10 minus VAT and pays the distributor the dealer price of £7. The distributor collects 20% and pays £5.60 to the label. The label pays the contracted artist a 20% royalty of £1.40 on the dealer price of £7, but it's an old deal with a packaging deduction of 15% for CD format, so that's £1.19. Of the £5.60 the label collects it will have to pay 8.5% mechanical royalties (47p) to the publisher and say £1.20 for manufacturing, so it's left with £2.74. This assumes it's a catalogue release with no recoupments for recording, mastering, promotion etc.

So in summary:
£1.19 to the artists
£2.74 to the label
£0.47 to the publisher (50-75% of which flows to writers)

This would be quite typical but deals can differ significantly.

I can guarantee you that David Byrne has made a handsome living from his career.
 
The record companies must be laughing all the way to the bank. They are probably not paying directly towards costs associated with running these massive server farms that are making streaming available to the masses. If Spotify fails, the record companies are not going to step in. They will wait for another provider to do that for them. All they will do is license the content and take the royalties.
 
tricky1 said:
Yep, completely agree. Went to a viewing of Oppenheimer 2 weeks ago at my local Cineworld. Ridiculously loud , not just the film but the ads as well. Ending up stuffing tissue paper into my ears. Last week went to see Dune 2 prepared with my Etymotic earplugs.
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I’m just not prepared to sit through a movie with earplugs in. Not a chance. I’ll wait for it to be on TV or Prime and watch it via my 4K Sony and Spendors at a sensible level. I remember thinking sound levels were starting to creep up in the late-90s, but it was still tolerable then. I’ve never really been one for mainstream cinema to be honest, I tended to attend arthouse cinemas (NFT, Fact etc). I suspect the last time I went to a typical one was again back in the ‘90s to watch a Batman movie with some comic book artist friends, and that was getting loud, but not earplug loud. I do want to watch Barbieheimer, but I’ll wait for the TV to catch up.
 
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