Spotify Is Eating the Entire Music Business?

[osiris]

"One of the things that frustrates me is that I can't find all of my old (DJ) vinyl on Spotify. Is there a service with almost every record from the 90s? " n- Thank God I was around for Napster. I got all my old DJ vinyls in digital that way.

[dayjob]

if spotify was paying musicians fairly i wouldn't complain. i think a lot of people would be fine and more than happy. several years ago people were quite happy. even that guy in the video i posted was happy getting a couple grand a month from streaming royalties. this isn't the case anymore. they're a shit company run by shit people. they've reduced payouts to artists multiple times. the algorithm sucks and is full of scams. they don't care to fix it.

i understand that this isn't anyone's problem to solve and they enjoy the convenience and are indifferent to the situation with artists not getting paid so long as they get the convenience they want. that's certainly one way to look at and i imagine saying "not my problem" is something that translates to lot's of modern complications that people don't want to consider.

I don't expect things to go backwards to crate digging in record stores. i just think there's something better that we can have so people are treated a bit more fairly. things weren't anywhere near perfect in the past but the current situation is even worse for the artist.

nothing is perfect. we do our best. everyone is living a different life with different amounts of priorities and juggling of work and obligations. it's not possible to "die on every hill"

also, just worth mentioning, it's not always the artist's choice to put their music on streaming services. one of the scams people run is putting other people's music on them and claiming the rights. it's more common than you think.

[dayjob]

"One of the things that frustrates me is that I can't find all of my old (DJ) vinyl on Spotify. Is there a service with almost every record from the 90s? " n- Thank God I was around for Napster. I got all my old DJ vinyls in digital that way.

soulseek still exists. youtube is full of old vinyl too. monkey audio rewind is your friend.

[ghettosynth]

Let me be clear, Nadi's album is cool, but I would not buy it if I had to buy this music to listen to it. I would just listen to something else. So you have to weigh that in your calculus.

but if you didn't have the streaming option you might buy 2 or 3 tracks out of an album?

From Nadi? Maybe, maybe not. Streaming is the radio replacement. I like my life without commercials as much as possible. I'm even considering paying for a youtube account because of it. In some sense, the machine has already won.

I used to buy some music from Bandcamp. Not a lot, mind you, but some. I paid eight eurors for Donnacha Costello's Love From Dust album. Donnacha recorded the album, and other albums of that time, with a Buchla Music Easel and some reverb. He's since removed the albums from Bandcamp, but since I paid for them, I still have them. Here's one track that's on youtube, probably without his permission.



I followed Donnacha on Bandcamp and received some emails from his mailing list and it seemed like he was going through some sort of existential crisis. In 2019 he stated that he was getting out of music and put his entire discography for sale at a low price, so I bought that. I liked listening to his music along with some others, and my own 15 or so albums on Bandcamp.

He's since removed all of these albums from Bandcamp. I looked to see if Love From Dust was on Spotify, it's not. I dislike almost everything that he has on Spotify, in fact. Because I know his Buchla stuff exists, this is a loss to me, but if I didn't, how could it be?

I asked Bandcamp if they had any plans to allow streaming from one's collection. I'm not even talking about streaming stuff you don't own, only stuff that's in your collection. They said that they had no plans. I listen to music all day at least two days a week while I work. I put music on when I go to bed at night and I want it still playing when I get up in the morning. I don't want to make a decision after every song or album plays as to what to play next. I want constant playing music and I want it be stuff that I like.

I have some music in my collection that was free, but I paid at least a buck for it so that it would be in my collection. But bandcamp wants to be stuck in the past and won't let me stream all of that.

I looked at my purchases from that era, I spend more money per month now just on Spotify. It pales in comparison to what I spent when I was actively DJing, but that's what it is.

You can't put the genie back in the bottle and you can't blame the consumer for availing themselves of the choices that are available to them. If you don't like it, then it's on you to change it. Choosing records is very different from me today than it was when I was a kid and the family would choose which three or four albums to stack up on the record changer. I do spend some time actively choosing what to listen to, but, casual listening is no longer the radio, it's streaming and there isn't really a good choice other than playing music at random from my personal collection. I actually tried this for a while, but the key problem is that you can't easily limit playback to certain parameters without making playlists yourself. Too often I'd have to skip a track. AI solves this problem reasonably well, it's rare that something stands out so much that I have to reach for the next and/or pause button.

But that takes me to another point. If I do have to skip a track I can do it from my desktop while the music plays on my XBOX. The player technology is quite good with Spotify and I don't have anything comparable.

So, would I give Nadi a buck? Probably not. I would either not know it existed or would just listen to it casually once or twice. It's cool, but it wasn't so cool that I thought that I should part with money to make sure that it's always in my life.

[ghettosynth]

if spotify was paying musicians fairly i wouldn't complain. i think a lot of people would be fine and more than happy. several years ago people were quite happy. even that guy in the video i posted was happy getting a couple grand a month from streaming royalties. this isn't the case anymore. they're a shit company run by shit people. they've reduced payouts to artists multiple times. the algorithm sucks and is full of scams. they don't care to fix it.

i understand that this isn't anyone's problem to solve and they enjoy the convenience and are indifferent to the situation with artists not getting paid so long as they get the convenience they want. that's certainly one way to look at and i imagine saying "not my problem" is something that translates to lot's of modern complications that people don't want to consider.

I don't expect things to go backwards to crate digging in record stores. i just think there's something better that we can have so people are treated a bit more fairly. things weren't anywhere near perfect in the past but the current situation is even worse for the artist.

nothing is perfect. we do our best. everyone is living a different life with different amounts of priorities and juggling of work and obligations. it's not possible to "die on every hill"

also, just worth mentioning, it's not always the artist's choice to put their music on streaming services. one of the scams people run is putting other people's music on them and claiming the rights. it's more common than you think.

Terrible I'm sure. It's, however, just a minor manifestation of the much bigger problem of identity theft. Sorry, as big of a problem as song stealing may be, more serious identity theft is a much bigger problem and we can't seem to solve that. Come tell me more about how some artist isn't getting royalties after we can figure out how to stop scammers from stealing people's credit identities.

[dayjob]

if spotify was paying musicians fairly i wouldn't complain. i think a lot of people would be fine and more than happy. several years ago people were quite happy. even that guy in the video i posted was happy getting a couple grand a month from streaming royalties. this isn't the case anymore. they're a shit company run by shit people. they've reduced payouts to artists multiple times. the algorithm sucks and is full of scams. they don't care to fix it.

i understand that this isn't anyone's problem to solve and they enjoy the convenience and are indifferent to the situation with artists not getting paid so long as they get the convenience they want. that's certainly one way to look at and i imagine saying "not my problem" is something that translates to lot's of modern complications that people don't want to consider.

I don't expect things to go backwards to crate digging in record stores. i just think there's something better that we can have so people are treated a bit more fairly. things weren't anywhere near perfect in the past but the current situation is even worse for the artist.

nothing is perfect. we do our best. everyone is living a different life with different amounts of priorities and juggling of work and obligations. it's not possible to "die on every hill"

also, just worth mentioning, it's not always the artist's choice to put their music on streaming services. one of the scams people run is putting other people's music on them and claiming the rights. it's more common than you think.

Terrible I'm sure. It's, however, just a minor manifestation of the much bigger problem of identity theft. Sorry, as big of a problem as song stealing may be, more serious identity theft is a much bigger problem and we can't seem to solve that. Come tell me more about how some artist isn't getting royalties after we can figure out how to stop scammers from stealing people's credit identities.

lols. "there's worse problems so i'll ignore this one" is something people rationalize all the time.

it's not a matter of identity theft but copyright theft. spotify is awash in scams and they don't care to sort things out. you'd think they could figure out the rights and who they belong to because these tech people are soooo smart. .but alas here we are. they don't give a shit so long as they can suck wealth out of the stock market

[ghettosynth]

if spotify was paying musicians fairly i wouldn't complain. i think a lot of people would be fine and more than happy. several years ago people were quite happy. even that guy in the video i posted was happy getting a couple grand a month from streaming royalties. this isn't the case anymore. they're a shit company run by shit people. they've reduced payouts to artists multiple times. the algorithm sucks and is full of scams. they don't care to fix it.

i understand that this isn't anyone's problem to solve and they enjoy the convenience and are indifferent to the situation with artists not getting paid so long as they get the convenience they want. that's certainly one way to look at and i imagine saying "not my problem" is something that translates to lot's of modern complications that people don't want to consider.

I don't expect things to go backwards to crate digging in record stores. i just think there's something better that we can have so people are treated a bit more fairly. things weren't anywhere near perfect in the past but the current situation is even worse for the artist.

nothing is perfect. we do our best. everyone is living a different life with different amounts of priorities and juggling of work and obligations. it's not possible to "die on every hill"

also, just worth mentioning, it's not always the artist's choice to put their music on streaming services. one of the scams people run is putting other people's music on them and claiming the rights. it's more common than you think.

Terrible I'm sure. It's, however, just a minor manifestation of the much bigger problem of identity theft. Sorry, as big of a problem as song stealing may be, more serious identity theft is a much bigger problem and we can't seem to solve that. Come tell me more about how some artist isn't getting royalties after we can figure out how to stop scammers from stealing people's credit identities.

lols. "there's worse problems so i'll ignore this one" is something people rationalize all the time.

it's not a matter of identity theft but copyright theft. spotify is awash in scams and they don't care to sort things out. you'd think they could figure out the rights and who they belong to because these tech people are soooo smart. .but alas here we are. they don't give a shit so long as they can suck wealth out of the stock market

LOL yourself! You're mistaken, I'm not rationalizing it, I don't care. I'm not a part of the problem, I'm not scamming anyone. The point is that we can't seem to solve the problem of scams. What people also do all the time is assert that X has a problem so don't consume X. It's really manipulation because you have an agenda. If you don't want to use Spotify, then don't. However, if you want to convince others, then you are going to have to come up with a better argument than "it's not perfect." Especially when your argument is, some people don't get all 18 cents of their royalties coming to them because someone else is collecting it.

The music industry has been full of assholes since the beginning of time. Ask Credence Clearwater Revival or any other band that got f**ked back in the day.

I'm not sure why you feel that it's important to distinguish, i.e., "it's not identity theft...it's copyright theft." Abstractly copyright theft is a form of identity theft. In any case both are scams, some are more serious than others. You thinking that you have some argument with me isn't doing jack shit to solve either problem.

Absolutely, tech companies are greedy assholes. Yet here you are clicking and a grinnin on low rent social media. Comcast are greedy assholes too, but I still have to have internet and my choices are limited.

Why aren't you living like a hippy like my neighbor who doesn't even have a cellphone? Is it because you want to live in a world with tech but only if you can get more money for your music? You want people to buy your music but you don't like what you get from Spotify? Cool, don't put your music on Spotify and sue anyone else who does.

As I mentioned above, singling out the few people on KVR who disagree with you isn't going to change a god damned thing. We are a drop in the bucket. I just looked at a couple of artists on Spotify. As expressed above, the typical artist that I listen to has about 10k monthly listens. I checked Richie Hawtin who is someone I like, relatively famous, but not so much in the mainstream, he has 135k monthly listens. This is nothing compared to Ariana Grande, the first artist in the pop category that I knew the name who has 84 million monthly listens. So about 10,000 times the number of monthly listens as the obscure stuff that I like.

So, sure, she's going to make a lot more money, and, preferential attachment is real, welcome to the twenty first century. It seems that you're mad that the labels take too big of a cut. Well, how is this any different from how it ever was, e.g., CCR? It seems that your fight is with the labels, not me. I suggest that you take your battle to them.

[ghettosynth]

"One of the things that frustrates me is that I can't find all of my old (DJ) vinyl on Spotify. Is there a service with almost every record from the 90s? " n- Thank God I was around for Napster. I got all my old DJ vinyls in digital that way.

soulseek still exists. youtube is full of old vinyl too. monkey audio rewind is your friend.

So how is pirating music a solution to the complaining in this thread? I'm willing to pay for a valid service, I'm not asking to be able to download the music without the artist receiving whatever compensation they've been able to negotiate with any particular platform.

This also misses the point with respect to the value that I think modern services provide. I don't just want my music in digital form, I want subsets of it in playlists so that the algorithms can find similar music that's available today.

[vurt]

"One of the things that frustrates me is that I can't find all of my old (DJ) vinyl on Spotify. Is there a service with almost every record from the 90s? " n- Thank God I was around for Napster. I got all my old DJ vinyls in digital that way.

soulseek still exists. youtube is full of old vinyl too. monkey audio rewind is your friend.

So how is pirating music a solution to the complaining in this thread? I'm willing to pay for a valid service, I'm not asking to be able to download the music without the artist receiving whatever compensation they've been able to negotiate with any particular platform.

This also misses the point with respect to the value that I think modern services provide. I don't just want my music in digital form, I want subsets of it in playlists so that the algorithms can find similar music that's available today.

most of my dj vinyl is white label stuff, that never saw release.
good luck searching for any of it mind you, no titles, no artist name, occasionally they might put a catalogue number.

[ghettosynth]

"One of the things that frustrates me is that I can't find all of my old (DJ) vinyl on Spotify. Is there a service with almost every record from the 90s? " n- Thank God I was around for Napster. I got all my old DJ vinyls in digital that way.

soulseek still exists. youtube is full of old vinyl too. monkey audio rewind is your friend.

So how is pirating music a solution to the complaining in this thread? I'm willing to pay for a valid service, I'm not asking to be able to download the music without the artist receiving whatever compensation they've been able to negotiate with any particular platform.

This also misses the point with respect to the value that I think modern services provide. I don't just want my music in digital form, I want subsets of it in playlists so that the algorithms can find similar music that's available today.

most of my dj vinyl is white label stuff, that never saw release.
good luck searching for any of it mind you, no titles, no artist name, occasionally they might put a catalogue number.

Sure, I have some of that, but that's not what I'm talking about. Here's a track for which the artist is on Spotify, with a big 433 monthly listeners, but this isn't included. In any case, released or not, that doesn't justify piracy. Are you suggesting that because it wasn't released that it's ok to violate the author's copyright? Because, I'm pretty sure that people violating other people's works on Spotify have a similar argument.

[vurt]

no, i was pointing out, that even if i wanted to (i don't, i have the records still) id never be able to find any of them.

just chatting

[ghettosynth]

no, i was pointing out, that even if i wanted to (i don't, i have the records still) id never be able to find any of them.

just chatting

To be clear, I also still have my records. It's just a pain to play them anymore. The value in having them in a service like Spotify is the similarity algorithms that can find other stuff for me.

[osiris]

I remember Soulseek but it was scary. I downloaded what I thought were presets for a VSt and it was nekkid ladies. Seriously, a friend almost got her kids taken away from her because her husband d/l what he thought was a game and it was planted kiddy porn. I LOVE the nattering about piracy. How can it be piracy when I have a physical copy? I got replacements for old DJ 12 inch vinyls that weren't on CD (back then), and there was really no way to digitalize them. I ended up buying a Nero rig A/D converter. Youtube was good back when you could record straight into Audacity.

[sqigls]

i wish there were some better (perhaps ai assisted) play randomisers, in iphones for example.
most of the time lately i've been connecting via bluetooth to a small bose speaker and listening to everything on random generally. but the shuffle algorithm doesn't always seem very random, and it often plays a song i'd already heard the day before, even though i have weeks if not months of music on there.
more intelligent algorithms please

[ghettosynth]

I remember Soulseek but it was scary. I downloaded what I thought were presets for a VSt and it was nekkid ladies. Seriously, a friend almost got her kids taken away from her because her husband d/l what he thought was a game and it was planted kiddy porn. I LOVE the nattering about piracy. How can it be piracy when I have a physical copy? I got replacements for old DJ 12 inch vinyls that weren't on CD (back then), and there was really no way to digitalize them. I ended up buying a Nero rig A/D converter. Youtube was good back when you could record straight into Audacity.

Whether it's piracy if you actually own it is a question for the courts, however, Soulseek is a piracy platform. Piracy platforms are not a solution to the problems that I'm discussing regardless of the nuance of whether it's piracy to download a copy of something that was, most likely, uploaded illegally in the first place.

Further, it's somewhat expected that you aren't leeching, right? From Wikipedia:

Banning
All Soulseek clients contain a ban feature whereby selected users may be banned from requesting files. This is in response to users who might be free-riding (i.e. taking files from others without sharing any files themselves) or who might be causing a nuisance for other reasons, such as a personal argument through the chat facilities or just taking up a user's bandwidth by downloading too many files, or simply on the whim of the banning user. Banning can be a contentious subject, and was the subject of much discussion in the user forums particularly in the early days. Users with download privileges can still be banned.

So it's not just as simple as "I am getting the files that I already have copies of." The expectation is that it is a file sharing portal where you share files that you almost certainly don't have the rights to share.