Spotify CEO Daniel Ek says working musicians can no longer release music only “once every three to four years.” Spotify's stock value hit all-time highs of $50 billion this summer.

[Silent Member]

Hey guys I have an idea, let's cancel finance and like, redistribute wealth and stuff. Sounds good I'm in.

[Amen Lare]

7 hours ago, cyanobacteria said:

if the infrastructure used for distributing music is controlled by a smaller group of people than all of the musicians in the world, then those musicians WILL be exploited.  the governments don't care about music or else they'd create nationalized public utilities for distributing and selling music.  or else there is no free music market.  the music industry must be socialized to overcome these issues.  all of them can be pinpointed back specifically to capitalism

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/needs.htm

I like your solution! Baddie capitalist make it, we take it! Power to the people! In fact, since baddies were using wage slaves we already built it, baddie capitalist was actually being a thief building that.

And how sweet of you to quote none other than Marx! You know, here in Russia (i'm dually Niger / Russia to clarify) we have streets named after him in every city still. Kiddies were studying the theory in schools. All thanks to the majestic revolution that quickly disposed of millions (units of people, if you would call enemies of the equality such) and despite disgusting and totally unnecessary sort of counter-revolution that killed a bunch of other millions (all that before the big war that killed another boring 20-to-30 millions -- unfortunately not that inspiring a sacrifice culturally compared to Holocaust and brave American & British victims, but i digress).

Worked splendidly, that Marx stuff, nationalized everything, liberated women to work in factories, promoted the most incompetent people to highest positions, and happily disintegrated in just about 70 years leaving a bunch of previously non-existing dictatorships in its place.

Now, i'm no socialist (well aside from non-jokingly getting 100% Classical Marxist on a political test), yet i hate Spotify and don't use it at all. So i agree on your plan to socialize that thing, in fact guys like Mussolini would 100% agree on that and even that other funnily mustached ghost of every internet discussion would likely agree.

Who do you envision to do it? Are these billion zombies who is perfectly okay with using Spotify going to do it? Or maybe it's gonna take us to do it? You know, exactly like those 450 out of 550 jewish administrative apparatus of post-revolution Russia. So the real question is: you jew? If so, i'm in!

[auxien]

41 minutes ago, Silent Member said:

Hey guys I have an idea, let's cancel finance and like, redistribute wealth and stuff. Sounds good I'm in.

 

[fxbip]

5 hours ago, azatoth said:

Doesn't playfarming breach the TOS and it will get you tossed from Spotify if caught?

yeah this

not a good idea you could get banned from distributors too

[ignatius]

34 minutes ago, fxbip said:

yeah this

not a good idea you could get banned from distributors too

doesn't spotify do it for themselves though? isn't this part of the scam they run to generate revenue for themselves? fake songs in lot's of playlists so they get plays and generate income. if they can do it why can't someone else?

[luke viia]

Not quite the same, but Vulfpeck got caught abusing the system with their "Sleepify" album, which was removed, but they didn't really get reprimanded beyond that. Even got to keep their $20k in royalties.

(taken from wikipedia: "Although Spotify did allow the album to remain on its service for seven weeks and called it a "clever stunt", the service removed the album in late April [2014] without providing a specific reason for violation of its terms of service. Vulfpeck founder, Stratton, said he was surprised by the timing of the take down, given that the album could have been taken down much earlier.")

[zlemflolia]

3 hours ago, Amen Lare said:

I like your solution! Baddie capitalist make it, we take it! Power to the people! In fact, since baddies were using wage slaves we already built it, baddie capitalist was actually being a thief building that.

And how sweet of you to quote none other than Marx! You know, here in Russia (i'm dually Niger / Russia to clarify) we have streets named after him in every city still. Kiddies were studying the theory in schools. All thanks to the majestic revolution that quickly disposed of millions (units of people, if you would call enemies of the equality such) and despite disgusting and totally unnecessary sort of counter-revolution that killed a bunch of other millions (all that before the big war that killed another boring 20-to-30 millions -- unfortunately not that inspiring a sacrifice culturally compared to Holocaust and brave American & British victims, but i digress).

Worked splendidly, that Marx stuff, nationalized everything, liberated women to work in factories, promoted the most incompetent people to highest positions, and happily disintegrated in just about 70 years leaving a bunch of previously non-existing dictatorships in its place.

Now, i'm no socialist (well aside from non-jokingly getting 100% Classical Marxist on a political test), yet i hate Spotify and don't use it at all. So i agree on your plan to socialize that thing, in fact guys like Mussolini would 100% agree on that and even that other funnily mustached ghost of every internet discussion would likely agree.

Who do you envision to do it? Are these billion zombies who is perfectly okay with using Spotify going to do it? Or maybe it's gonna take us to do it? You know, exactly like those 450 out of 550 jewish administrative apparatus of post-revolution Russia. So the real question is: you jew? If so, i'm in!

quite a few factual errors in here.  it was not the capitalists who made it, it was workers.  your post isn't very comprehensible care to rephrase it without strange sarcasm and vague references.  mussolini abandoned marxism

Edited February 20, 2021 by cyanobacteria

[zlemflolia]

also its hilarious you said it left a previously non-existent dictatorship in its place and that it "dissolved". it was dismantled by US and UK capitalism intentionally and immediately after capitalist shock therapy was applied the quality of life dropped dramatically.  do you prefer the literal monarchist dictatorship from before? i agree the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie that came after yeltsin was no good

Edited February 20, 2021 by cyanobacteria

[fxbip]

1 hour ago, ignatius said:

doesn't spotify do it for themselves though? isn't this part of the scam they run to generate revenue for themselves? fake songs in lot's of playlists so they get plays and generate income. if they can do it why can't someone else?

well they're in charge haha

i know from good sources that they do not take it lightly to be robbed out of their money and can be quite ruthless if you scam them a decent amount of money

like they will send merciless lawyers after you until you beg

[ignatius]

12 minutes ago, fxbip said:

well they're in charge haha

i know from good sources that they do not take it lightly to be robbed out of their money and can be quite ruthless if you scam them a decent amount of money

like they will send merciless lawyers after you until you beg

totally not surprising since that's obviously what they're about. 

[joshuatxuk]

On 2/19/2021 at 7:55 AM, fxbip said:

I've done all thoses things and it's a rich journey of amazing musical experience, amazing human experience and growth.

You do beautiful gigs, meet amazing people, feel the passion.

But there is no money in it.

Maybe i'm not good enough.I'm not Beethoven.I just make tracks.

But i know the whole game is rigged too.

I personally dont have any illusions of it.I don't think i'll ever make a living off music but that's ok.I don't really care that much.

I do my thing.I love music.

That's enough for me.

 

James Stinson worked as a truck driver during his artist career, there's another interview that sounds like he's driving while on the phone.

I feel like there's something of a apprehension to discuss the realities and pitfalls of working to live with time and energy spent on music. Things like social media and patreon has some navigate this dilemma but it still exists. Music journalism rarely dives into in detail. I feel like it was something of a common occurrence in the early 00s especially to find out that even fairly successful indie rock bands or bands/artists with modest major label deals had members who still worked jobs between tours and/or after contracts ended. 

I've noticed that Stinson is among a few artists I really respect and like who also is upfront about addressing making money from music and actively trying to segregate it from their creative ethos and their artistic process, even on a subconscious level. Jandek notoriously released music under his own imprint and never really admitted he was the same man on the albums. He alluded to being a machinist and I've wondered if he partly started to do live performances after decades of seclusion in the late 2000s because he retired and/or hit social security age. Fenriz of Darkthrone has been very upfront about never not having a job of some sort and was a mail sorter for years. He and his bandmate Nocturno Culto (who has worked as a schoolteacher) have also agreed to never tour again even though that could easily prevent them from having to work again. Fenriz has stated making any livelihood on his music, even though they are overtly anti-commercial, would subconsciously affect his creative efforts. 

[Amen Warrior]

I googled a bit more about my bot idea and some cunt from vice has already done it exactly, down to using free tier cloud instances.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/gv5xbx/i-built-a-botnet-that-could-destroy-spotify-with-fake-listens

Difficult to see how their systems could distinguish it from actual peeps. I imagine they can't, but obviously can't admit that.

All the articles I can see where people have got caught is because of ridiculous pisstaking behaviour like uploading exactly 30 second fake trax and then giving them a wildly unrealistic number of bot plays.

[Cryptowen]

11 hours ago, joshuatxuk said:

Jandek notoriously released music under his own imprint and never really admitted he was the same man on the albums. He alluded to being a machinist and I've wondered if he partly started to do live performances after decades of seclusion in the late 2000s because he retired and/or hit social security age.

There are a number of Jandek album covers that show [The Representative of Corwood Industries] in what appears to be a corporate environment, I could see it. I'd be curious to see what his financial situation was like vis a vis music....I have to imagine that (at least early on) the man must have been losing serious coin on the endeavour (he was producing significant amounts of vinyl & mostly just mailing them to college radio stations. i seem to remember one of those early interviews where he says some ridiculous statistic like he had done full vinyl runs of at least half a dozen albums at that point, and had actually sold something like 15 units total). That being said I imagine his sales must have gotten better over the years, after he became the cool outside musician for all of the cool rock bands to namedrop in the early 90s.

---

As for my own relationship to the money question, I've made basically no attempt to monetize or promote my music. Early on I was sending stuff out to radio stations & maintaining some social media activity, but that all seemed really boring to me so I stopped a decade ago. I've never approached a label or a show venue but I've had a few approach me. Honestly on some level I try to avoid it because as soon as the music starts feeling like a product I'm putting out (rather than, say, my journal) it changes the whole feeling of it. Stops being fun. If anything music making is something that functions as an anti-productive process in my life, at least in the capitalistic sense. Those tens of thousands of hours I've spent making the stuff could have been spent more actively pursuing "the hustle", going to school, building social networks etc (or even, say, attempting to make more widely "professional" music). Or they could have been spent playing video games & watching tv. I'm not trying to suggest that any of these activities are objectively better or worse (in a productive sense, in a moral sense, etc), but simply recognizing that there are many mountains one can choose to scale in this life. Some of those mountains offer a clear path to financial remuneration, some do not; and in fact some are weird/extremely personal mountains, and the efforts you expend in scaling them might never become apparent to anyone other than yourself. Still worth it imo

Edited February 21, 2021 by Cryptowen

[mause]

23 hours ago, azatoth said:

Doesn't playfarming breach the TOS and it will get you tossed from Spotify if caught?

yeah but they dont care enough to catch everyone doing it, infact its kind of in their best interests to let it happen to an extent. more traffic through spotify, regardless of real or farmed, raises their value and provides more interest from advertising providers. 

however, the day Ek tries to change the company (either away from the royalty pool model OR stricter TOS enforcement) is the day he gets kicked out. it would jeopardize the whole Ponzi scheme which is the biggest draw to investors. 

[chenGOD]

I like the bandcamp model. Mostly cause I can still pay artists and download lossless versions, while still having the convenience of streaming through the bandcamp app. Plus I dislike physical goods. 

[dcom]

Spotify to Add 85 New Markets With 1 Billion People (Bloomberg)

Spotify HiFi is a lossless streaming tier coming later this year (Verge)

Spotify unveils the lovechild of its acquisitions: an audio advertising suite (Input)

[Nil]

On 2/21/2021 at 8:14 PM, chenGOD said:

I like the bandcamp model. Mostly cause I can still pay artists and download lossless versions, while still having the convenience of streaming through the bandcamp app. Plus I dislike physical goods. 

I just wish the streaming quality for purchased releases was better. Otherwise, +1!

[chenGOD]

Just now, Nil said:

I just wish the streaming quality for purchased releases was better. Otherwise, +1!

My ears are old and crappy. But I do agree. They should offer the same option for streams over data that they do for Wi-Fi.

[Nil]

It's more about the induced ear fatigue of "lo-quality streaming + in-ear headphones + noisy surrounding" than anything else. If at home I just listen to the lossless files (99% of times on monitors).

[chenGOD]

34 minutes ago, Nil said:

It's more about the induced ear fatigue of "lo-quality streaming + in-ear headphones + noisy surrounding" than anything else. If at home I just listen to the lossless files (99% of times on monitors).

Yes if I'm listening from the laptop it's the lossless, but sometimes I'm out in the yard on wi-fi which is nice. When I'm driving, that's the issue, as I'm often too lazy to transfer the lossless files to my SD cards which are stuck in the car (which has a surprisingly decent audio system).

[auxien]

Bandcamp are probably pretty correct to assume that most of us who care about audio fidelity while streaming will be downloading the releases and using other players to stream at high quality. i think i remember reading some stuff about Tidal's high quality streaming actually being a partial strain on its profit margins (but i could be mistaken or that info could be outdated, i think it's been a while since i've read that)

the option of HQ streaming via Bandcamp would be great of course, but they may never go that way.... and also it wouldn't surprise me if they're gonna hold that back for when they transition their apps over to allow a more playlist/streaming/discovery-centric option....and they'd very possibly charge for a higher tier app experience in cases like this. keeping Bandcamp artist support but allowing for a Spotify-like experience for a more general audience could be a win/win. (would likely emphasize for artists to limit plays for un-purchased material like they already can)

[zlemflolia]

streaming is a waste of resources every company selling phones without extendable sd card slots should be dismantled by the government and the ceo put in jail

[zero]

1 hour ago, cyanobacteria said:

every company selling phones without extendable sd card slots should be dismantled by the government and the ceo put in jail

the trick is to just buy a bigger iphone dood

[ignatius]

1 hour ago, cyanobacteria said:

streaming is a waste of resources every company selling phones without extendable sd card slots should be dismantled by the government and the ceo put in jail

bitcoin as well ma dude. 

but how much energy does to take to create millions of DVDs and later put them in landfills with plastic cases etc? everything modern life consumes takes a lot of energy and a lot of it is inefficient and wasteful. 

[Scaramouche]

https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/23/22295315/spotify-ceo-interview-podcast-daniel-ek-music-stream-on