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.

[no part of it]

14 hours ago, cyanobacteria said:

 

haha you fell for the market competition meme

I'm not sure what meme that is.  

It just seems inevitable to me that bandcamp will get in on the streaming.  Anyone can, but I'm curious what Amazon, Spotify, etc do to prevent their competition from growing.  I've tried Beats Music because they pay their artists better, but they pandered to not only the mainstream, but also the college radio top 30 vibes, but not the underground in really any capacity.  I guess it is the underground's fault for not submitting their music, but I do think a better advertising campaign could fix that problem.   I'll look into the rest of it, thanks. 

[psn]

Bandcamp are already streaming.

[dr lopez]

aleksi really took spotify ceo's demands to heart

[zero]

12 hours ago, chenGOD said:

Some more recent info on potential for regulation (or not):

https://musically.com/2021/02/23/spotify-apple-and-amazon-at-the-uk-streaming-economics-inquiry/

It’s all pretty vague as you’d expect from general counsel. 

that article made slight mention as to how streaming music vs. streaming video are different in market terms, but it made me think about how widely acceptable in our minds that video streaming services like netflix have become, compared to the more divisive topic of streaming music. both have done massive damage to the brick and mortar, physical sales and all related industry, yet any type of societal pushback to Hulu, etc. has largely fallen off a cliff. don't know where I'm going with this, or if I really have a point, just food for thought, that's all.

 

[Nil]

I'm not sure we can compare music and series/movies here.
I suppose everyone's involved in the making of a movie, TV show / series to be streamed via Netflix is paid, prior to streaming. Not sure there would be much content available otherwise.
On the other hand, I suspect the vast majority of the artists on Spotify don't get a cent before streaming... and won't get much once their music is available. 

[auxien]

7 hours ago, chenGOD said:

Maybe, but as the spotify lawyer said, its like radio plus...that user focused experience. I hardly ever listen to the radio shows that apple music has for example, whereas i will stream music that i own but either don't have access to (my record collection remains in korea with my friend) or am too lazy to find the hard drive its on.

The thing that's frustrating is that there is much more possibility with the internet, and labels have less power (though they still function as good indicators of aggregate sound or curators), but artists need a very strong union, or Spotify et al. will fuck them over harder than the labels/A&R men ever did.

i guess i was imposing my own ideas onto what would happen. anyway yeah artists needing a union is probably the most promising path, but i'm not betting on that one happening any time soon. too many egos, and most want to keep the class system that labels have imposed on the industry for nearly a century because they're all wanting to rake in the cash and notoriety of a Skrillex or a Jay-Z.

4 hours ago, psn said:

Bandcamp are already streaming.

yep, that gets glossed over by many, even people on here. mostly because they don't want to pay up to support the artists directly and are okay pretending that paying for Spotify is still giving the artists a little bit.

 

13 minutes ago, Nil said:

I'm not sure we can compare music and series/movies here.
I suppose everyone's involved in the making of a movie, TV show / series to be streamed via Netflix is paid, prior to streaming. Not sure there would be much content available otherwise.
On the other hand, I suspect the vast majority of the artists on Spotify don't get a cent before streaming... and won't get much once their music is available. 

well said, yep. sure Hulu/Netflix etc would strip every cent of profit from the production if they could, but those industries are, for the most of the workers, dominated by unions. and further, that up-front cash/'producers' model has its own issues of course, and don't think the comparison is terribly useful because of that, but maybe there's some lessons in there for the music industry as well

Edited March 2, 2021 by auxien

[psn]

Speaking of...

https://community.soundcloud.com/fanpoweredroyalties

[chenGOD]

4 hours ago, psn said:

Bandcamp are already streaming.

Yes, as i've said in this thread, the bandcamp model is really preferable for me. Purchase of all sorts of media (physical/digitals), streaming, a variety of formats for downloading, no region restrictions etc. I really hope more and more artists go to bandcamp. For artists with a large back catalogue, Uwe Schmidt provides an excellent example of how to transform that back catalogue into something cohesive. And the AtomTM_Audio_Archive is really a remarkable achievement.

1 hour ago, dr lopez said:

aleksi really took spotify ceo's demands to heart

Speaking of, tomorrow is payday - time to reup on my Colundi habit.

[White Rainbow]

Quote

11 minutes ago, psn said:

Speaking of...

https://community.soundcloud.com/fanpoweredroyalties

 

Meet Aphex Twin

[Nil]

6 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

Speaking of, tomorrow is payday - time to reup on my Colundi habit.

... wait for Bandcamp Friday then (and add countless WATMM talents to your cart as well )

[auxien]

2 hours ago, psn said:

Speaking of...

https://community.soundcloud.com/fanpoweredroyalties

interesting, will probably be good for some. might've made more sense about 5 years ago. weirdly you've gotta be paying for Pro or Pro Unlimited (idk how pricey these are) ...plus, you've gotta have at least 500 streams per month (dunno how many might qualify for this?) or they won't even bother.

[psn]

Haha, that's a bit of fine print.  

[no part of it]

On 3/2/2021 at 7:07 AM, Nil said:

I'm not sure we can compare music and series/movies here.
I suppose everyone's involved in the making of a movie, TV show / series to be streamed via Netflix is paid, prior to streaming. Not sure there would be much content available otherwise.
On the other hand, I suspect the vast majority of the artists on Spotify don't get a cent before streaming... and won't get much once their music is available. 

FWIW, I wrote a bit of blather on this subject, with the final bit of impetus stemming from this thread.   Netflix is not being held accountable for the amount of streams they claim to have on any given film, much less an accurate royalties system.  They are trying to "buyout" rights to music from composers, rather than giving them royalties per stream.  The buyout situation tends to not even cover the costs of production.  

https://vocal.media/beat/encountering-the-future-of-streaming-music-as-a-utility

[Nil]

Copyright is quite a flawed system too by the way. It almost never benefits the artist.
FWIW / FYI : https://societe.sacem.fr/en/commitment

[dcom]

Quote

While artists struggle, Daniel Ek has gotten rich off their boundless creativity. Spotify had 345 million monthly active users at the end of 2020 (a 27 percent annual increase), and 155 million paid subscribers. The company pays 70 percent of all revenue out to artists, and it has almost never turned a profit, but according to Castle, that’s not the goal. He has assembled what he calls the “COVID Misery Index,” a selection of tech stocks whose prices have soared as people stay home. Spotify has outperformed Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google between January 2020 and January 2021, reaching a market cap of $57.65 billion. Ek owns 9 percent of the shares (but through a special mechanism, 37 percent of the voting shares) and had a net worth at the end of February of $5.3 billion.

Musicians, despite supplying virtually all the value for Spotify, share in none of that value. Ek could deposit some of those billions into accounts of the artists that keep Spotify successful, but that’s not on the table. “Daniel Ek says he’s the savior of the music business,” Castle said. “I think the music business is the savior of Daniel Ek.”

Islands in the Stream (David Dayen/The American Prospect)

[chenGOD]

2 hours ago, dcom said:

Ek owns 9 percent of the shares (but through a special mechanism, 37 percent of the voting shares) and had a net worth at the end of February of $5.3 billion.

Musicians, despite supplying virtually all the value for Spotify, share in none of that value. Ek could deposit some of those billions into accounts of the artists that keep Spotify successful, but that’s not on the table.

I'm sorry, I hate spotify as a business model, but this idea shows a fundamental lack of understanding on how net worth is calculated in the instance of these billionaires. Ek doesn't have $5.3 billion kicking around in his bank account. In order to realise any of that money, he would have to sell stock. In order to realise a billion dollars, Ek would have to sell around 3.8M shares at the current price, or slightly over 10% of all the shares he owns.

When the founder sells off 10% of all the shares he owns to give away (as opposed to funding something else like with Bezos) , that raises serious questions, which would likely (not certainly, but likely) cause the other institutional investors to start selling off their shares, causing a crash in the price. Which of course, would mean Ek's net worth would be a fraction of what it is. So it's simply not possible to give away that type of money.

None of that is to excuse the spotify model, or the fact that this idea of measuring wealth is completely fucked up, it's simply saying that while the idea of stock market billionaires giving away their wealth sounds appealing, it's really a simple attempt at solving a bigger problem (partially that Ek's spotify model is fucked, and is a perfect example of what is wrong with the stock market as it has evolved), which is that while capital investment is necessary to provide services, the profit ratios are completely skewed.

I'm not advocating for doing away with capitalism (someone has to build the code, buy the servers, pay for people to maintain them, etc etc). What I do hope for is that more and more artists move to a bandcamp model, which makes it easy for artists. This article from NPR is a good illustration of the differences between the two: https://www.npr.org/2020/08/19/903547253/a-tale-of-two-ecosystems-on-bandcamp-spotify-and-the-wide-open-future

[Cryptowen]

it's a damn shame that just as they're about to perfect AI-generated computer music, the aesthetic taste pendulum is just about to swing the masses back in the direction of watered-down populism in the form of limp-wristed pop rock, country, folk etc. Now we gotta teach Microsoft SAM how to play banjo, jfc, someone get Richard on the phone plz

[dcom]

Quote

Ever since the music industry began its streaming-fueled recovery around five years ago, the songwriting and publishing communities have been protesting not only the uneven payment structure of streaming — which sees recorded-music rights holders being paid three times what publishing is paid — but also the imbalanced power and payment structures of the music industry. This situation has been thrown into dramatic relief in recent weeks by the formation of the songwriters’ group the Pact and its calls for artists to stop demanding credit and publishing income for songs they did not write — but the organization’s founders also say that it is just the first step in a music economy that has tilted against the people who create the very foundation of that economy: songs.

Songwriters Are Getting Drastically Short-Changed in the Music-Streaming Economy, Study Shows (Variety)

[TubularCorporation]

On 3/27/2021 at 10:34 AM, chenGOD said:

I'm not advocating for doing away with capitalism (someone has to build the code, buy the servers, pay for people to maintain them, etc etc).

 

Markets and capitalism aren't the same thing. 

[chenGOD]

2 minutes ago, TubularCorporation said:

On 3/27/2021 at 10:34 AM, chenGOD said:

I'm not advocating for doing away with capitalism (someone has to build the code, buy the servers, pay for people to maintain them, etc etc).

 

Markets and capitalism aren't the same thing. 

How does that have any bearing on what I said?

[TubularCorporation]

25 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

How does that have any bearing on what I said?

Implying that

Quote

someone has to build the code, buy the servers, pay for people to maintain them, etc etc

was incompatible with

Quote

doing away with capitalism

 

[chenGOD]

@TubularCorporationYes that is a market economy (or capitalism), where people decided to sell goods and services (servers, code, people to maintain both). Are you confusing markets with trade?

Also, fuck Daniel Ek.

[prdctvsm]

[ignatius]

jfc these people really know just what to say. 

 

[Silent Member]

lol