Spotify Is Eating the Entire Music Business?

[vurt]

It must be challenging to be a person with no history at all.

a lot less challenging, than lacking a sense of humour,. probably.

[Shabdahbriah]

Or tolerating the (who designed this, and thought it was a good idea) Discord interface.

[ghettosynth]

Well, Neal Young making news this week (off topic in this forum), led me to this awesome video from 1972. Now, I'm posting it here for those that want to use it as a jumping off point for any discussion about the topic, however, for me, I mostly found the experience of visiting a record store in the 70s worth the cost of admission. So many little details in how things have changed.

Enjoy, argue, or comment, whatever floats your boat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-3rFhXVrvI

[harryupbabble]

saw that video.
.
"fool on the hill" was playing in the background.
who buys bootlegged records in 1972?
the sound quality must suck.
are they fools?

[FarleyCZ]

So sorry, heaven't read the whole discussion, but:

One thing I hate about Spotify is when you take a few steps back and look at the bigger picture. Who's paying who? If I oversimplify it for comical purpose, it works something like this:

• A Swiftie listening to Taylor Swift pays Daniel Ek and Taylor Swift.

• A hardcore fan of independent polka-punk-metal fusion band pays Daniel Ek and Taylor Swift.

• Underground deep neurofunk drum and bass fan, searching just for those weird quirky tracks by his DJ friends and who wholeheartedly hates all top40 music pays Daniel Ek and Taylor Swift.

• Your fan listening to your track (with the intention to support you) pays Daniel Ek and Taylor Swift.

• You, when uploading your track so your fan can even find it, pay Daniel Ek and Taylor Swift.

• You, when chcking your own self-released and already paid for release, pay Daniel Ek and Taylor Swift.

Now, by Daniel Ek I mean the whole staff and infrastructure of Spotify and by Taylor Swift I mean all the major record labels and everyone working for them. But you get what I mean. Essentially there's zero pressure for any of the cost to go down, zero pressure for anybody anywhere to be paid less in relation to what artists get from Spotify. No effective competitor on the horizon, Spotify is the default choice. The default distribution channel. It is a monopoly. So my 2 cents? No Spotify is not eating the entire music business. It has already swalloved it like it was nothing.

[osiris]

I've already heard these arguments about Itunes after the Napster fallout. But at least when Itunes started it was pay .60 cents per listen. Now the average is like a penny, so the 3 cents Spotify is paying is better.

[bermudagold]

Well, Neal Young making news this week (off topic in this forum), led me to this awesome video from 1972. Now, I'm posting it here for those that want to use it as a jumping off point for any discussion about the topic, however, for me, I mostly found the experience of visiting a record store in the 70s worth the cost of admission. So many little details in how things have changed.

Enjoy, argue, or comment, whatever floats your boat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-3rFhXVrvI

rick beato had an interesting take which mirrored some discussions I've had with peers on the record store experience and how it impacted the perceived AND actual value of music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bZ0OSEViyo&t=652s

[VOODOO U]

Spotify Is Eating the Entire Music Business

I know. Isn't it wonderful?

[ghettosynth]

I've already heard these arguments about Itunes after the Napster fallout. But at least when Itunes started it was pay .60 cents per listen. Now the average is like a penny, so the 3 cents Spotify is paying is better.

For streaming? I don't think so. iTunes was 99 cents for a song, but, you paid only once.

I have no had spotify premium for about five years at about $10/month. It's gone up a bit recently, but let's just use that to make the math easy. That's $120/year or $600 total. I don't think that I spent even $6 on iTunes for music. I purchased a few songs, but, you know what, it's been so long that I don't even know if I can still log into to that particular account or where/how I could play those songs.

I think that this is a key problem with digital ownership. I have a few movies on Apple TV and I also have a few movies on Prime. However, I'm very reluctant to purchase digital copies of media on any platform and so tend to do it only for things that meet certain criteria. Typically, I know that I would want to watch it more than once, I know that it won't likely ever show up in rotation on one of my services, and I don't have a desire to keep it around for all time. So, as an example, I buy movies from the Alien's franchise on Blue Ray. They are one of the few kinds of media that I want to keep long term.

So, for sure, that $600 pales compared to what I spent on DJ vinyl. However, it's vastly more than I would pay otherwise.

A different way to look at this, is that cultural ties inflate the value of music. Is Taylor Swift really that good? I don't think so, I think that she's the lucky lottery winner of the current, and IMNSHO unhealthy, cultural link to music.

So, yes, in the past we had to pay more for music, I don't think that means that it had more value so much as it means that we had no choice. The price of services today has to have some balance or people will stop using them. Max keeps sending me emails to come back. It's not happening. I consumed what I wanted and now I'm done. There's new material to consume elsewhere.

What really changed, I think, is the cost of media storage. People like to talk about mixtapes, but, mixtapes were not free. Blank media could be had for $1 to $20 per tape, let's settle on $3 to make the math easy and be conservative for arguments sake. So, $3 for 90 minutes generally meant that you could get two average albums on one tape, or, about $1.50 per album. Ok, now compare that today. If the average rock album is 150MB in 256kb MP3, we can get many thousands on a 1TB ssd. Let's say 5000, (the math says 6666, but we're being conservative to make a point), and that the typical 1TB SSD costs $100. That means it costs about two cents to store an album. That's two cents for non-degrading quality, easy and random access, and can be played on devices that costs peanuts and essentially require no maintenance.

Consumer are ware of this, at least subconsciously. Consequently, I view the reduction in consumer prices to consume music more of a correction of an overvaluation of music in the past. I have a lot more to say, but, I've gone on too long so I'll stop here for now.

[DrGonzo]

I saw a video a couple of months ago about an artist who decided to release her latest album on cassettes. At the end she earned considerably more than what she did on Spotify.

Found it. It's a cool video.

https://youtu.be/pSBQC85ZLEE

[BertKoor]

And then there was this Dutch musician (Hans Dulfer) that handed out USB sticks with his last album at concerts, and asked visitors to give copies to all of their friends. He was of the opinion that compact disks were basically flyers for his concerts. His publisher was not so happy.

[gearwatcher]

I buy my music on Bandcamp. I don't even use the free Tidal account I got through my cable provider (kids do though).

I would be glad to hear Spotify finally ultimately folded. And wouldn't mind if music industry followed quickly.

Then maybe a few more Bandcamp competitors would crop up with a similar business model.

People who pay for Spotify will probably be happy with the stuff made with Suno soon enough anyway.

[Scrubbing Monkeys]

I saw a video a couple of months ago about an artist who decided to release her latest album on cassettes. At the end she earned considerably more than what she did on Spotify.

Found it. It's a cool video.

https://youtu.be/pSBQC85ZLEE

Who has a cassette player? And why?

[revvy]

People who pay for Spotify will probably be happy with the stuff made with Suno soon enough anyway.

Lol. Bullshit. You're so rad.

[osiris]

I love this article: https://www.awal.com/blog/history-of-record-deals/
//In 1904, one of the earliest record deals ever recorded, pun intended, came courtesy of Victor Talking-Machine Company, which produced, among other things, record players. The deal gave one artist $4000 per song, plus 40 cents (or 26% to 40%) per sale, and resulted in the States’ first platinum seller, a 78rpm opera piece.//

//One early hip-hop deal exchanged $10,000, recoupable, for a single and 50% of the publishing rights, while a superstar folk artist signed a 5-year, 10-album deal with $425,000 per project advanced, and A similar act received a $1M guarantee per album, plus a $2.5M advance. As these upfront payments swelled, contractual periods lengthened and few acts ended up in the black.//

That's why TLC despite being one of the top acts of the 90s were broke.