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Spotify Saved the Music Industry – Now What?
- shmerl 7y agoWe need more DRM-free music instead.
- yCombLinks 7y agoWell, you should write some.
- toast0 7y agoDRM free music is widely available. You have to buy the songs/albums though, not a subscription. Or record it from over the air sources.
- shmerl 7y agoIt is, but not always. And it's harder to get it in lossless at times.
- adimitrov 7y agoSeeing as DRM music is lossy in practically all of the cases, getting lossless music has always been synonymous with getting DRM free music. I don't have a Spotify subscription. For me, bandcamp saved music.
- Semaphor 7y agoSame here. I buy almost all music on bandcamp nowadays, the site is amazing :)
- askvictor 7y agoYou can always buy a CD/LP/tape (I hear these are making a comeback). Rip them if you want, or not.
- shmerl 7y agoSometimes I do that, when it's the only way to get the lossless source. But physical media is slowly becoming obsolete. At some point no one will be selling it that way.
- isostatic 7y agoC90 cassettes are objectively terrible
- lostgame 7y agoMost LPs come with download cards these days anyways. At least about 50% of new LPs I buy, anyways.
- scarface74 7y agoAll of the mainstream digital music stores where you buy music have been DRM free for over a decade.
- shmerl 7y agoNot all sell FLAC, and some music can be only available for rent, not for buying.
- scarface74 7y agoSelling FLAC and selling DRM music is completely unrelated. Which musicians don’t sell their music and only stream?
- shmerl 7y agoI need both. And most of those who don't sell FLAC also don't want to sell DRM-free. Since there is no reason not to sell lossless if someone is already selling DRM-free. In my past experience, trying to find some music that was announced on Spotify didn't give any results anywhere like Bandcamp and the like.
- scarface74 7y agoSo you can tell the difference between 256kbps AAC and FLAC?
- shmerl 7y agoIt's not about the difference. It's about ability to encode to anything you want transparently. You need to have lossless source for that. For portable devices I prefer all of my audio in Opus.
- leksak 7y agoIt's common to bring up the decline in profits that the music industry saw but no-one seems to ask the question as to how their profit margins were so high. As I understand it, cassettes and CDs were dirt-cheap to produce but the average consumer hadn't caught on to the fact and on each sale of either the profit margin was tremendous. Another tangent, maybe it saved the music industry but what effect did it have on our culture? I believe Spotify fundamentally changed our previous read/write-relationship with music to be a read-only type of affair for most individuals.
- stellar678 7y agoThat's interesting...that's my theory about recorded music in the early 20th century when folks figured out how to commoditize music and stamp it out as a product to be consumed instead of a culture to be shared. How do you see Spotify as promoting a read-only consumption of music? If anything, it feels like digital platforms have increased the accessibility of broad music distribution and making a name for yourself without signing your soul away to a major label - and we've seen a Cambrian Explosion of genres and subcultures as a result.
- lordgrenville 7y agoI don't understand this at all. If you're talking about the culture of making mixtapes/CDs, it's as easy or easier to make and share a playlist on Spotify. And in terms of creating music, free or cheap recording software and distribution platforms make that exponentially easier as well.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y agoIt's not about the object - "a playlist" - it's about the means of distribution, the networks that are created, and the relationships between artists, middle-men, and buyers. Spotify is an example of the consolidating and centralising tendency of Internet technology. Physical media with low cost of entry make it possible to create your own channel to buyers. In the 80s you could set up a short-run cassette label from a back bedroom, send a tape to an indie DJ like John Peel and get some priceless attention with your music highlighted on national radio. In the 90s you could make your own white label 12" pressings and distribute them personally to record shops. That's no longer possible today. Spotify (YouTube, etc) are all oligopolies that own the most important channels between new artists and customers/fans. They don't curate, they ingest. Established artists can bypass them, but newcomers have no choice. They have to go through one of the channels - at which point they're immediately competing head-on with hundreds of thousands of other artists. There is no other way to reach an audience now. And the rewards mean it's rarely worth the effort.
- MuffinFlavored 7y agocardi b gets a lot of streams. she raps about how tight her pussy is and tops the charts. that’s the bulk of the audience of the music industry in my eyes to me. kim kardashian and her family are billionaires because she made a sex tape, kylie’s makeup company is worth billions. that’s the world we live in. every downvote i get represents ignorance. pull up the billboard top 10 hits. those consumers are the ones voting en masse for who should be president/government. science and logic take a back seat when you have suburban 18-25 year olds in drones idolizing rappers who “catch bodies” and “smoke a ngga” with the “30 clips” while a “hoe” gives him “slop” $0.00001/stream or not, people want to listen to crap and that’s that black on black violence, gun violence, materialism, sexism, drug references, that’s what sells hackernews and reddit are a bubble the average american is a $15/hr customer service/retail rep/food service employee/truck driver and statistics show they spend their free time listening to vapid nonsense deeply rooted in hate look up the lyrics of any modern popular rap song ngga this ngga that ngga look at me the wrong way, i’ll shoot him in my gucci belt with my 30 clip extended magazine that’s what’s all over the radio “post your best outfit and vacation on the gram” that’s what’s mainstream not “max out your 401k as hard as you can” or “support your family” it’s all about rolls royces and hate for one another
- djohnston 7y agoTbf, mainstream music for the last 50 years has basically been about sex and drugs. Explatives and shock factor have risen, but I don't remember the Beatles handing out sound financial advice either.
- MuffinFlavored 7y agowhen in the past 50 years has something like bruce jenner/the kardashians happened? most rap/music is about killing/causing harm to one another if you listen closely yet i’ve been downvoted 4 times so far why do you think that might be
- djohnston 7y agoMost mainstream rap music is actually about having lots of money and spending it not wisely. Violence in hip hop is usually more metaphorical and euphemistic these days, as opposed to late 90s early 2000s. I know this because I listen. And nothing you said refuted my previous point, pop music is consistently vapid throughout the decades. Hell, at least violent hip hop in the 90s was reaching above some bubblegum pop nonsense and showing people an American existence they were generally unfamiliar with. AFA Kardashians, these people have also always existed. The royal family, the Olson twins, basically any pop star who was famous without talent (boy, there really are too many to count). I don't agree with you. I don't think anything has fundamentally changed, save perhaps the mediums these people use to reach the masses
- redis_mlc 7y agoThis is foremost an article about Spotify, not the music industry. The #1 streaming service is ad-supported Youtube, barely mentioned. https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/more-music-is-played-on-youtube-than-on-spotify-apple-music-and-every-audio-streaming-platform-combined/ https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/more-music-is-played-...
- zerr 7y agoIsn't the audio quality usually worse than spotify?
- mcny 7y agoMy understanding is Spotify (premium?) can also serve low quality audio when the user has a poor connection? YouTube compression is horrible but passable for many people, I think. People listened to music on AM short wave and medium wave just fine as well. The key point was that radio was readily available.
- Biganon 7y ago320 kbps mp3 is not horrible at all. You wouldn't use it to archive your music, but it's barely distinguishable from FLAC.
- paganel 7y agoFor non-audiophiles such as myself the YT music videos are more than ok, I used to listen to YT music videos almost all day long until not that long ago while doing office work. The good thing about YT was that you could find almost anything on it, from that rare Italian giallo album to traditional Tajik music. Not sure if that’s still the case or if Spotify doesn’t offer the same huge variation of choices.
- vemv 7y ago15 years ago, a niche artist could earn tens of thousands a year by selling CDs and especially digital albums. Not enough to make a living, but definitely an encouraging amount that enabled touring and buying more music gear. Now in the Spotify days that same artist would earn essentially nothing. This "saving" of the music industry is just a temporary patch that works by redistributing niche money to the mainstream. It should be quite evident (or at least intuitive) that 90% of Spotify subscribers are niche (deep into rock, electronic, hip hop etc) and couldn't care less about saving the old industry. Soon this will become unsustainable (even more than today). Source https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/3511 https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/3511
- djaychela 7y agoWas going to say much the same here. I release trance music with a friend of mine (nothing serious, just a couple of friends who spend an evening a week working on music together), and have done for years. Pre-spotify, we used to make some money from sales of tracks - not a lot, but enough to have a few nights out here and there. Now we make literally nothing, due to the way that royalties are paid - we see tiny (£0.0001-scale) royalty payments for the hundreds of listens that the tracks get, where we used to sell a few tracks a week. Most spotify listeners assume that their monthly payment goes to the artists they listen to, but that couldn't be further from the truth.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y agoFor a long time the industry relied on an external cultural of independent producers and distributors - all genres, not necessarily "indie" music - to keep the system running. The indies generated, promoted, and distributed the next generation of music. The majors would then either sign the bigger artists or buy out the bigger indie labels. Both would get rolled into the big machine and the cycle would start again. Spotify has killed that. Never mind earning money - indie artists can't get significant exposure. Not from unit sales, not from touring, not from streaming, not from anything. Sooner or later someone is going to realise that an indie-Spotify has to be a thing, because there's always going to be a significant market for people who want to discover non-mainstream music and music is going to stagnate and choke on its own products if the main distribution system is a monopoly.
- panpanna 7y agoNow the music industry will manage to kill itself by being totally incompetent and extremely greedy. 50% of the industry seems to be centred around talent show participants to make a quick buck (no need to pay for marketing). The other 50% is trying to bite the hand that feeds them, while thinking we are still living in the golden days of music when the coolest thing you could own was the latest Beatles record. Meanwhile, I have started listening to the British wave music, generating them zero sales...
- fwn 7y ago> In 1999, ... the global recorded music industry logged a record $25.2 billion in revenues... (For perspective, Starbucks had just under $25 billion in sales last year.) USDs in 1999 do not have the same value (purchasing power) as in 2019 and comparing them over time without acknowledging inflation does not really create perspective all that well.
- ngcc_hk 7y agoIt is different business model. If this does not keep the industry going something else will find their way. Sponsorship for individual artist only work for continuous production. It is hard even for Beethoven to survive in his era of that business when only concert get you money. (Handel get most by doing his concert in England. Beethoven complaint he will starve to death when London symphony society immediately commission no 10 with prepayment. Still meant he was not ok). The industry moves on.
- nabla9 7y agoMusic market is almost perfectly competitive market. Extremely low margins should be the norm. The supply is endless. Talent pool is huge. Millions of amateurs are making music even if nobody is paying for them and are delighted if someone wants to listen them. People are willing to take huge pay cut to earn living doing music and perform in lousy bars. I think the best model is patronage. Music online is almost completely free and works as marketing to get people to listen. If people like the music and want to hear some more, they will pay in advance for musician to produce it and perform it. Superstars are somewhat separate category. It's a showbiz and fashion industry where people like what others like to connect. The product sold is famous persona with music.
- londons_explore 7y agoYou have forgotten that most people like to listen to music they have heard before. That leads to music that is popular becoming more popular (since it is played in public places), and that music can then be sold for a high price because it is part of a small set of popular songs.
- praptak 7y agoThat totally stops working when people start YouTube autoplay or similar ML-based picker. It makes discovery of niche artists practically zero-friction.
- londons_explore 7y agoExcept the ML based picker soon learns that people like to hear music they've heard before too, so recommends popular tracks disproportionately often, amplifying the effect.
- ehnto 7y agoI used Spotify to find a bunch of great new artists with one of their "Made for You" daily playlsits. Now, either the shopping center near me has great taste, or they got the same "Made for Them" playlist I got. Because they are playing some great music, which has never been the case before. Normally malls, stores and other public venues have the same Top 40 playlist fed to them by a corporate subscription as everywhere else. This makes me wonder if Spotify isn't a tastemaker, just like radio and television were. Not playing the hits, but defining what becomes a hit.
- raverbashing 7y agoIf the music industry had started selling an album for a dollar instead of fighting Napster they would be making more money than now. Spotify pays very little to the artists but I'm not sure the margins are there. Tidal promised to be more generous and everybody saw how that went.
- StreamBright 7y agoI seriously doubt that Spotify saved the music industry. If anything, Bandcamp is the one that could claim such thing. Having an easy way to pay for music where I buy an album or song is the way to go if you respect musicians. Downloading ALAC is the same as buying a CD but a digital way. Using a streaming service is a much more complicated way where niche artist are not going to be too happy. (Some examples from musicians below).
- maaaats 7y agoNever heard of Bandcamp. Been paying for Spotify for a decade, though (since oct. 5 2009). Edit: Cannot find a single mention about Bandcamp on any news site in my country (Norway), and virtually no results in some more countries I checked. Do they have a European presence at all?
- layoutIfNeeded 7y agoYou’re probably listening to mainstream music. You won’t find Rihanna or Beyonce on Bandcamp. If you prefer listening to such artists then Spotify is perfect for you. Bandcamp is for more nuanced, underground content. E.g. ¾ of reviews on Pitchfork link to the Bandcamp page of the artists.
- StreamBright 7y agoMaybe you should check it out. Plenty of music available even from your country.
- hootbootscoot 7y ago"saved" = streaming model, which, given the layers of brokerage, provide nearly no money to artists popular enough to generate millions of streams/listens. The tech world has colonized a succession of industries, from publishing, to music, and the net result is dead industries whose shells serve as mere promotional funnels for the illusory big gig in the sky in which the artist will make their money, despite the fact that said artist makes quiet music people like to listen to in their homes and will never likely be able to pull off large concerts. Per the commenter below "there's loads of talent, let them eat cake", well friend, I like good music made by people who cared enough to study, play multiple instruments fluently, collaborate with others, and sometimes form large ensembles that are economically unfeasible. Where is big band? there is a reason bebop and rock and later singular dj's took over = simple event economics... Meanwhile, the elephant in the room is how our industry preaches lovely lies about freedom and how other peoples products should be free, while our vampire industrial sector sucks the remaining blood from various markets we first destabilized and weakened. I know that I certainly participated in plenty of music sharing (and creation) and I am not denying the positive benefits of being able to find loads of different music through the magic of text searches, but simply urging my fellow tech zealots to back the XYZ up a bit and aknowledge the absolutely devastating effect we have had. Spotify, incidentally, is one of the worst offenders in treating the artists poorly, compared to something like Bandcamp, let's say.
- FraKtus 7y agoI have a subscription to YouTube Music (premium). But I still download my music the old way because most of the time my data is off on my mobile. And it's how I like to listen to music for more than 20 years :-) It would be nice to have a bot that could pretend that I am listing to some of my best artists so that they can get their pennies from the streaming companies. Is there anything like that? It would help music fans to pay their favorites artists through the streaming companies?
- lostgame 7y agoIf there was anything like that, every manager and marketer would be using this tool to artificially inflate their streams (who says they're not already?).
- ozzmotik 7y agojust fwiw as an independent musician and someone who is trying to get by on monetizing my creative output, I certainly have spoken to many creatives who will just keep their music on loop on Spotify all day to accumulate royalties. there are also loose groups based around making playlists of music by independent artists that the entire group then commits to streaming all day to help generate those streaming royalties. just figured a bit of relevant information might be nice to share :)