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Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

• danielhlockard 6y ago
  Try telling that to Tool.
  • shakezula 6y ago
    They’re the exception to the rule. Don’t pretend like they’re a model everyone should follow. It’s simply not feasible.
• tyingq 6y ago
  That's a strange stance. I assume there are a fair number of listeners that don't care to listen to anything new. Is there some business benefit to Spotify by artificially forcing churn?
  • shakezula 6y ago
    It’s not about listening to something new; it’s about the wave of hype and promo you do around each release, it keeps you relevant and gives you something to talk about, keeps you fresh in peoples minds.
    • tyingq 6y ago
      I get that side of it. But it seems to dismiss the listeners that don't care for any of that. The jist seems to be that they want to deliberately lower pay outs for older stuff even if it's played a lot.
    • mantap 6y ago
      This only works as long as everybody else isn't doing it.
      • shakezula 6y ago
        That’s objectively untrue, because in the music industry today, everybody is doing this.
    • jeffbee 6y ago
      There must be a niche for artists who record so rarely that each of their albums is accompanied by a 10000-word thinkpiece in the New Yorker.
      • shakezula 6y ago
        This is basically Tool, as someone else pointed out in this thread, but it’s not a reliable or sustainable model for 99.9999% of artists.
  • NotSammyHagar 6y ago
    Found the old person! You must be over 25! Just kidding, I'm double that. And it's true, I don't listen to much new music. Occasionally some rap song catches my fancy. I've branched out a bit after listening to various elaborations on the music and styles in Hamilton to new rap artists. But I still love 70s rock, I'm a dinosaur. I think this article does make sense though, new stuff gets more attention, eps for the young ones.
  • danmaz74 6y ago
    I'm similar, but I wonder how many people stream often enough minor artists or minor songs from the past. Maybe keeping the engagement up is the only way for non-unforgettable artists to make enough money to make a living?
  • tguedes 6y ago
    They've created new revenue streams by allowing the music labels to purchase advertising on spotify to promote new singles/albums. More singles/albums coming out -> More competition for listeners -> Drives up advertising prices. I imagine that's part of the reason.
• shakezula 6y ago
  I used to work in the music industry professionally, on the ground level doing booking and management. This trend has been happening slowly for nearly a decade but it’s finally here. Rap and Hip Hop figured out a long time before most other genres that rapid small releases was a far better way to keep hype and sales up. Before Spotify was a thing, the shift was happening with YouTube but it wasn’t as predominant. Now it’s basically assumed you’ll be releasing singles every month. The music isn’t your product, the music is your marketing. The shows, the merch, your influence - that’s your product.
  • quacked 6y ago
    > The music isn’t your product, the music is your marketing. The shows, the merch, your influence - that’s your product. Man, that's depressing.
    • shakezula 6y ago
      It’s not tho! It means tighter release cycles which means a tighter feedback loop which means bands can find their sound faster and grow their backing faster.
    • oconnor663 6y ago
      I think it could be depressing if we think of "your product" as "the most important part of what you do". But we could also think of it as "the thing that you need to make money from". If the music itself isn't the thing that you need to make money from, then instead of charging a bunch for it, now you want to spread it as widely as possible as cheaply as possible. That's a good thing!
      • Hoasi 6y ago
        > If the music itself isn't the thing that you need to make money from, then instead of charging a bunch for it, now you want to spread it as widely as possible as cheaply as possible. That's a good thing! It is, but only if the music gets better in the process. Unlikely to happen if you rush for faster releases. More production doesn't equal to more novelty.
• ses1984 6y ago
  How many artists on Spotify net more than $1k/year? How many net more than $10k/year? How many of those artists continuously engage with the community? How many were famous before Spotify existed?
• NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  I really wish bandcamp would be bigger. Much prefer their platform. The spotify monetization cycle is so bad for music
  • wldcordeiro 6y ago
    Agreed, not just the monetization scheme but Spotify and others just push the music listening experience to playlists and singles and have very little room for albums and collecting a library of music you refer to.
    • lotsofpulp 6y ago
      I’m not a music aficionado, and I have no interest in albums. I love the singles/playlist format, and consume far more music now that I can easily ignore the 9 out of 10 songs I don’t like in an album (back when CDs were still a thing). I also find it easy to have a library of singles that I like.
      • Larrikin 6y ago
        Most of an album being bad as a stereotype I believe was just from actual bad artists when basically anyone could get a deal and possibly go platinum from a single song. Good artists typically had good albums
        • lotsofpulp 6y ago
          Possibly, but I think albums are only significant due to the historical medium of music requiring grouping songs together on various disks. Once it’s digital, I don’t see the importance of grouping certain songs together, outside of certain categories like movie soundtracks. I guess some albums could tell some story about what the musician was feeling at some time, but that probably doesn’t apply for a lot of music if not most. Certainly not the music I listen to, release it one at a time or all together, makes no difference to me.
          • 6y ago
• unnamed76ri 6y ago
  Artists to Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer afford to make $0.00174927 per stream.
  • heavenlyblue 6y ago
    It’s not far away from musicians paying for others to listen to them.
  • Alupis 6y ago
    Let's be honest. The amount Spotify/Pandora/et al pay the majority of musicians per stream is far more than they'd make selling CD's. The overwhelming majority of music is unknown, has few fans, and will never "go platinum" nor sell out stadiums - ie, most musicians are not Taylor Swift. For all those artists... access to millions of potential listeners from around the world is an amazing advancement. The number of artists I've discovered, personally, through Pandora's recommendation system is staggering. I'd never know about these artists in a pre-streaming world.
    • Kaze404 6y ago
      That's a very bold claim to make without any data.
      • baddox 6y ago
        Does the fact that these musicians choose to put their music on Spotify count as data?
        • Kaze404 6y ago
          Picking between starving and making a penny is not a choice.
      • Alupis 6y ago
        How so? Any person can make a song, and list it on Pandora or Spotify. How many listeners do you think your average garage band has? How many radio spots would they normally get? Albums sold? Most of us have known or lived with someone in a band at some point in our youth. Some of us still play in bands for fun. How much money did they or do you make from selling CD's today? It's practically zero, and it's been practically zero the entire time I've been alive. Anecdata, the people in bands I currently know produce and print CD's at a total loss. They literally give them away for free, hoping to get someone to listen to their latest masterpiece. Pandora and Spotify are a massive boon for these folks.
• tehwebguy 6y ago
  Fiona Apple disagrees!
  • fotta 6y ago
    Adele too.
• sergiotapia 6y ago
  Title makes it seem like Spotify will ban an artist if they don't release content regularly. Article says different.
• striking 6y ago
  Article links to (based on) https://musically.com/2020/07/30/spotify-ceo-talks-covid-19-artist-incomes-and-podcasting-interview/ https://musically.com/2020/07/30/spotify-ceo-talks-covid-19-...
• jeffbee 6y ago
  COVID-19 is going to completely wreck the music business and the spotify guy is right: only endless social media campaigns with procedurally-generated soundtracks will survive in the future.
  • agumonkey 6y ago
    people enjoy music for various reasons but there are a few deep ones: beauty and live no system can replace a good live concert, it's a high grade experience (sometimes religious even) if the music industry goes toward absurdism, the "customers" will just find the real drug elsewhere
    • 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
      Gorillaz used to do their shows almost entirely hidden from the audience and the characters would be projected onto screens. If we get to the point where we can generate actual good music we can do it in a live setting with avatars.
      • agumonkey 6y ago
        it's not what I meant, not seeing the band is not 'not being live'
        • 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
          Ah, apologies. I had algorithm artists on my mind for whatever reason. Yes, that would still be a live concert and as someone who loves concerts I agree that there is no substitute.
          • agumonkey 6y ago
            Personnaly some of the weirdest and deepest hours of my life were live music. It catchs your soul and also bonds people together. No spotify playlist can do this I believe.
      • 6y ago
• agumonkey 6y ago
  Seems a bit weird not to have time to find deep creativity again.
• ricardo81 6y ago
  Sounds like he's trying to redefine the music industry. Seems like most artists have a 5 year window, likely in their 20s where they'll produce something resonating with the current generation(s) and after that the younger clientele will be looking for something to define their own thing as well as the artist scratching around for some inspiring material. Generally of course. I take the position that most artists are in that bracket but exceptionally talented musicians have a longer lifespan. Of course, a platform wants people to keep strutting out stuff on their own platform. As for royalties from Spotify, perhaps an issue of the middlemen required and not required. I remember chat about the web being a great evener on this front where independents could strut their stuff and virality would take care of the rest. Apparently convenience and one platform, as with so many things on the web trumps everything else.
• ilamont 6y ago
  > Ek claimed that a "narrative fallacy" had been created and caused music fans to believe that Spotify doesn't pay musicians enough for streams of their music. Fallacy? Scores of well-known musicians, from Bette Midler to Taylor Swift, have talked about how little they make through Spotify and other streaming platforms. IIRC Swift only joined the platform after cutting a special deal. Not everyone can do this. Quoting the guitarist for Mastodon, which has a much smaller following (https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/07/05/mastodon-guitarist-band-survive/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/07/05/mastodon-guitari...): I could live a thousand years, and Spotify plays [our music] all day long, and maybe I’ll just make a couple of thousand dollars. Ek also said this: > "Some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape," Ek said, "where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough.” This quote reminded me of Joni Mitchell, who would take years-long breaks earlier in her career to escape from the business, work on songwriting, and recharge. Many other musicians can't, as Ek puts it, "create a continuous engagement with their fans" for reasons related to privacy, family life, finances, or mental health. It's bad enough Spotify pays artists peanuts. But if Ek is tuning his platform to benefit only those artists who are willing to jump through Spotify's algorithmically generated hoops, and sideline everyone else, then the future of the music industry looks very dim.
  • amanaplanacanal 6y ago
    If you add it all up I bet musicians in total make far more money from live performances than from recorded music. Recorded music is just promotion.
  • JAlexoid 6y ago
    > Taylor Swift She wanted a lot of money, just like in the good old record label days. And BTW - her deal screwed indie bands even more... > Joni Mitchell Who TF is this person? > only those artists who are willing to jump through Spotify's algorithmically generated hoops Since when is general audience and human attention span a result of Spotify's engineering? Do you think that Taylor Swift doesn't have people earning 6 figures to make sure that she stays relevant?
  • satyrnein 6y ago
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
  I disagree. Musicians can do whatever they want. Not very many musicians spend their time riding a perpetual wave that they have to continually feed. Spotify benefits the most from this churn.
  • Denvercoder9 6y ago
    > Musicians can do whatever they want. They can, but only as long as they don't care about money. But musicians also need to pay rent.
    • 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
      How much money? Enough for personal private jets or enough to make a living? If the bar is to simply pay the rent then I still think that musicians can do what they want.
      • falcor84 6y ago
        Really? Do you have any stats to back that up? I'm not familiar with many musicians paying the rent with their music and it seems to me that you either make it big, or keep your day job.
      • jakelazaroff 6y ago
        It's just one data point, but here's a fairly successful artist (50k+ monthly listeners on Spotify) that still needs another job: https://twitter.com/HeartAttackMane/status/1288623136641036289?s=20 https://twitter.com/HeartAttackMane/status/12886231366410362...
        • jcdavis 6y ago
          Without trying to sound too harsh, 50k monthly listeners really isn't all that much. You can argue that spotify's discoverability (or lack thereof) has a large influence on those numbers, but there are no shortage artists with many times that many that aren't all that widely known.
      • 6y ago
• rurp 6y ago
  Ugh, I very much do not want musicians feeling forced to churn out more content on a set schedule. I don't get how anyone could look at the current music landscape and think that what we need is more quantity, at the expense of quality. Pushing for more new content is going to encourage more derivative low effort songs, and less original ideas.
  • anonAndOn 6y ago
    In the words of Mr. Mumble-Mouth, Curtis Jackson, "Yeah.. y'supposed to have a remix. that's how you make one hit record into two."[0] [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0VMB1gN6XA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0VMB1gN6XA
• default-kramer 6y ago
  > The artists today that are making it realize that it’s about creating a continuous engagement with their fans. It is about putting the work in, about the storytelling around the album, and about keeping a continuous dialogue with your fans. Maybe if you want to be mega-successful, but I have to believe there's room for other approaches too. My favorite band that I've discovered since joining Spotify is Darkwater. They have three albums (2007, 2010, and 2019). Right now, this is the only band I would absolutely make sure to see if they tour within a couple 100 miles. I have to believe they're paying the bills without too much trouble.
• pier25 6y ago
  Obviously the guy knows nothing about creativity and art. It takes time to grow as a person and cultivate new ideas. It may not be possible to do that if you don't get in and out of whatever it is you're doing. Imagine telling Hemingway he has to release a new blog post every week instead of a book every couple of years.
  • mkl 6y ago
    It's about releasing, not creating. If you write 12 good songs a year on average, you can release 1/month. It doesn't matter if you actually write one song per month, or write and record them all in one frantic week, and then spend 51 weeks growing as a person and cultivating new ideas.
  • NamTaf 6y ago
    I'm almost sure he knows all of that about creativity and art, and simply does not care. He has instead decided that he is going to try to commodify music, and this is the result. Factory-farmed music benefits the distributors over the artists, after all, because it's reliable.
  • 52-6F-62 6y ago
    What’s especially funny about your example is Hemingway wrote for periodicals as a day job for a long time, and so he kept that kind of schedule. Except some of his books came about because he didn’t keep to that schedule, and we don’t usually talk about Hemingway for his articles in the Toronto Star.
    • pier25 6y ago
      Ok, the metaphor doesn't really work for writers because the effort you put into an article or blog post is not comparable to a song. But anyway my point was more about producing significant and valuable work.
      • yxhuvud 6y ago
        The trend in self published novels is also towards putting out series of cheap and relatively bite sized books coming out in a tight schedule. Many of these are.. not so good. A few are great.
• j1vms 6y ago
  Looking at it in terms of one of the "golden ages" of recording music - back in the 1960s, think the Beatles - this would mean only returning to what has already proven possible before. Some artists in those previous eras were able to deliver remarkable music as much as twice a year over consecutive years. Perhaps it was a less competitive industry at the time, but certainly less efficient (and relatively more expensive) production tools were available compared to today.
  • smichel17 6y ago
    > Some artists in those previous eras were able to deliver remarkable music as much as twice a year over consecutive years. I'll just leave this here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Zappa_discography https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Zappa_discography
    • danieldk 6y ago
      I love Zappa. But I think John Zorn wins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Zorn_discography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Zorn_discography
  • danieldk 6y ago
    There are still plenty of musicians doing that. I haven't kept track lately, but John Zorn used to release albums every 2 months or so. Thee Oh Sees and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are also constantly putting out new albums (King Gizzard had 5 albums in 2017).
• alexilliamson 6y ago
  You hear that, Sufjan? Let's see the rest of the 50 state albums
  • sicher 6y ago
    Incidentally, he just released "America"... https://sufjanstevens.bandcamp.com/album/america https://sufjanstevens.bandcamp.com/album/america
    • alexilliamson 6y ago
      Lol I guess that's one way to cover all 50 states? I guess he doesn't owe us anything. It would just be so great to get like, an Alaska album.
• Gatsky 6y ago
  This is a MITM attack on one of our highest forms of art.
• ZinniaZirconium 6y ago
  Yup. Musicians are releasing like 20 new tracks per hour to Jango. I know because I'm on a mission to collect all of it. And like 71% is from independent artists who will never make it big and nobody will listen to. Not even me even though I like obscure stuff but even I can't keep up with the amount of new music that gets released all day every day.
• jdoliner 6y ago
  I prefer the Kanye West model in which every 8 months or so you promise to release an album on a specific date. Then that date comes and you go completely MIA, and pretend you never even announced the album. Then a few weeks later once all the hype has turned to dismay you quietly release the album and the dismay turns back into hype. Maybe that model only works if you're Kanye though.
  • jedimastert 6y ago
    Saaaaaaaaaalt (But yeah it's messed up just don't put out dates)
  • haram_masala 6y ago
    Kanye West is a singular being. He is a human work of art, this generation’s Warhol. Perhaps even more fascinating than Warhol, if less self-aware. I’m a huge fan of his brilliant public trajectory, yet I despise his music.
    • nabergh 6y ago
      Interesting. I feel the exact opposite. I think he is a great artist, but I think his persona outside of the actual songs is just noise.
      • SparkyMcUnicorn 6y ago
        I used to be on your side of the camp, but now I'm both sides. The guy just struggles with some mental health issues and isn't that great at talking to the public outside of his music. I disagree with him on some things, and he definitely has his issues, but I think he means well for the most part.
        • Niksko 6y ago
          The problem is that if you're a nobody, you can say stupid things but mean well. If you're a global celebrity, when you say stupid things, there are consequences.
• briga 6y ago
  So many bands lose their creative spark after the first album or two, and it's exactly because of this mentality. I'd rather have one album of music carefully curated over 4 years than four albums than have 4 albums rushed out over a year. The creative process takes time. If you just rush out the next album you're probably just adding onto the already massive heap of formulaic uninspired music. I'm not saying you can't have quality AND quantity, but the number of bands who can crank out both is limited.
  • Xenoamorphous 6y ago
    Some famous musician (can’t remember their name) said something along the lines “you take 10 years to write your first album and they expect you to write the second in 6 months”.
• zuhayeer 6y ago
  Music release trends are now converging towards software development speed & iteration cycles haha
• chadlavi 6y ago
  capitalist who keeps all the money from musicians' work: "work faster"
  • lucb1e 6y ago
    > Net worth US$4.5 billion (July 2020) (Wikipedia) > Ek owns nearly 9% of the shares (Forbes) Spotify seems to be about 50B on the stock market, so 9% of that is... 4.5B. It seems that nearly 100% of his known money is virtual. I'm not sure he takes home a huge salary rather than paying out to artists ("Ek and his business parter Martin Lorentzon founded the company in 2006" so he didn't invest a lot to get those 9%). The company is also unprofitable currently, but having seen what non-profits like Mozilla take home I guess that doesn't say much (they also don't make any profit, and yet...). Not sure if the actual salary is known. It seems like the kind of thing that would be, but duckduckgo annoyingly only turns up articles about this latest news.
• unabst 6y ago
  As Spotify CEO, we should think he isn't speaking to musicians, but to all the bigger labels on how to make the most money. Musicians should feel they can do whatever they want, and should, and probably would, but I reckon they would eventually hear it from their manager once the instructions trickle down the chain of command. That is, any musician signed and making money. To everyone else, the industry itself is largely irrelevant to their craft or their income.
• dade_ 6y ago
  Great, but 80% of it is crap either way. Does anyone else have difficulty finding good music suggestions? Recommendations from friends for movies and TV shows are usually very good, but not with music. My opinion of Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music recommendations is much worse. I find that I am better off randomly picking music tracks.
  • jxramos 6y ago
    I've found some feeds where people produce mix of other people's work. It's been a great way to discover more great tracks in that particular genre. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg4sBFBtLRE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg4sBFBtLRE When I craze the music often enough I go and purchase those tracks in bandcamp. This particular music mixer has a ton of content and clearly goes out of their way to sift through a bunch of music in that space they think is worthy to compile into a collection which they do a good job of. Their mixes are reposted to soundcloud too I think.
  • tyrust 6y ago
    There are a lot of good options for finding music. Some take more work than others. Some things I've done with success: * go to the wikipedia page for an artist or album you like and look for * reviews and ratings that line up with what you thought: you might find a critic or outlet with similar tastes that can provide new recommendations * the producer or label: their other works might be similar to what you already like * (on the artist page) the "associated acts" of the artist: you might like other projects with which the artist is involved * any influences listed: you might like what the artist liked * find a forum that aligns with your taste * reddit has many music sub-reddits https://www.reddit.com/r/Music/wiki/musicsubreddits * /mu/ is actually a pretty good 4chan board. The essentials wiki is a good starting point that doesn't require filtering through trolling: https://4chanmusic.fandom.com/wiki/Essential_Charts Good luck!
  • y2bd 6y ago
    I typically use https://rateyourmusic.com https://rateyourmusic.com to find new stuff. Not their recommendation system, that’s trash. Instead, I find albums I already know I like and look for well-written reviews on the album page. Then I click into the reviewer’s profile, see if I like/recognize any of the other stuff they’ve reviewed, and if so, I follow them. Boom, it’s like you’ve found a friend who actually enjoys the same music you do.
• k__ 6y ago
  I guess, that's why the best music I found was made by people who didnt do it as work.
  • lucb1e 6y ago
    Same for software. Sometimes I dream of basic income and everyone having time to do just what they really believe others and they themselves will like to use/listen to/watch/experience, but it probably won't play out like that in my lifetime.
• selimnairb 6y ago
  Don’t people write and listen to entire albums anymore? When I listen to music, I almost always listen to entire albums, not individual songs.
  • oblio 6y ago
    Not really. Most people hated getting and paying for whole albums, out of which most stuff was garbage. Few artists have whole albums worth listening to.
    • ecocentrik 6y ago
      We must listen to very different genres of music.
      • oblio 6y ago
        Probably. It's almost like the world is a big place :-)
    • NikolaeVarius 6y ago
      I dont know why people listen to artists who can't put out reasonably consistent music. If only 10% of an artists output is not garbage, are they any good at all? Reviews for metal bands will trash albums that only have 1 or 2 good songs.
      • JAlexoid 6y ago
        Because music isn't plain engineering. Some artists have one piece that is great for a wide audience and all of their other stuff is only for select listeners.(aka one hit wonders) If you only listened to people who release consistently good music - you'd listen to 10 artists in total(or something like that).
        • 3131s 6y ago
          No, only vapid pop music follows that one-hit-wonder blueprint. In almost every other genre the expectation is that a great album will be consistently great. Sorry that you know of only ten decent bands, when there are actually tens of thousands of artists that never add filler to their albums.
• amw-zero 6y ago
  Tell this to Tool.
• tehjoker 6y ago
  Spotify's CEO justifies Spotify business model by deflecting blame to musicians. News at 11.
• jxramos 6y ago
  Why not? Crack that whip!
• kaelig 6y ago
  Daft Punk might be an exception to the rule, then.
• coliveira 6y ago
  I think the main issue is that people don't buy albums anymore. They only buy/listen to singles. So it doesn't make sense to work on a full album and release it a the same time. Because of the new channels, it makes more sense to release individual songs at regular intervals.
• alchemyromcom 6y ago
  I wish more people, especially tech CEOs, could understand the incredible sacrifice of time, money, and energy it takes to make an album people actually enjoy. Everything you listen to, unless you are willing to listen to raw demos, is a miracle. I've worked both as a sound engineer and and a software developer. It's orders of magnitude easier to make working software than it is to make a hit record. The way tech companies have abused musicians to get rich is one of the most shameful things to ever happen. Furthermore, I'm sick of these guru edicts about how everyone will need to work that much harder in the "new normal". I got into software to pay the bills, but the way geeks talk about the industry and people I love drives me right up the wall. Have some appreciation--even awe--for the art you enjoy. It requires more effort than you could ever imagine.
  • Kalium 6y ago
    Would you be more open and accepting to commentary if there was more kindness, more love, more empathy and compassion in discussions of how the old normal is gone? Expressions of admiration and awe coupled with opining that the old multi-year release cycle doesn't work anymore, and legions of hard-working humans making sacrifices for what they love may need to change? Thank you for sharing. The world is always a better place with more human warmth.
    • fallingfrog 6y ago
      Platitudes about humanity coupled with inaction. You should run for Congress.
      • Kalium 6y ago
        It's how you tease apart if someone cares more about presentation of ideas or the substance of said ideas.
    • tsimionescu 6y ago
      The message itself is wrong. We live in a world of plenty. We should be working less, not more. We have created more music in this century than all of the last combined. We have the ability to listen to thousands of years of music at the touch of a button. A concert that would have taken hours of work for 50 people to entertain 200 now takes nothing - a million people put on their headphones and listen to a recording made 20 years ago. And that is just music - the same plenitude is available in almost all aspects of our lives. And yet, people insist on ever more growth, on ever more work. Hopefully in the next decades, as the reality of global warming and worker empowerment gain traction, we'll realize that in fact the work week can be drastically reduced without affecting our material needs, as long we let go of this level of consumption.
• dakiol 6y ago
  Scrum sprints for musicians. Sad news.
• _jal 6y ago
  Commodity sales outfit wants more predictable suppliers, film at 11
• dnprock 6y ago
  I used to hunt for music and movies. I was an enthusiastic movie and music fan. But these days, I mostly give up. I listen to underground/indie artists and some classical music. I ignore popular music and movies, especially those promoted on big platforms like Spotify. It's sad that many talented artists are brainwashed by these big platforms. They chase after big money. They don't produce anything original. I think the same thing is happening to software.
• saul_goodman 6y ago
  I wish I had this much audacity in my own life, lololol. "We're not making enough money from you lazy idiots we stole from the main music industry, noses to the grind-stones!!!"
• arthurofbabylon 6y ago
  As my musician friend told me -> “In music, you don’t get to update your songs. Once it’s out, it’s there for the world to see.” (Or something like that.) It’s not like software where we can iterate/improve as we learn. In music, you capture a moment, a sensation, an experience - and you had better capture it as intended, even if that means an extra month in the studio. This same musician told me that the increased ubiquity of singles is intended to speed up iteration/feedback/ship cycles.
  • tguedes 6y ago
    It's interesting cause Kanye intentionally or unintentionally experimented with updating Life of Pablo several times. He changed track order, changed the production, changed the lyrics a bit. I believe he released 4 different versions. It was super interesting at the time and a lot of internet music circles were talking about the potential of this going forward considering it's only possible because of the streaming services. But unfortunately it didn't seem to catch on and I haven't seen any other examples.
• fallingfrog 6y ago
  Imagine being in charge of a major media company and knowing this little about the product you sell!
• mnort9 6y ago
  I notice an interesting adaption to this in the metalcore scene. Bands release shorter EP's (5-6 song mini albums) more frequently. In some cases 2 separate EP's are re-released after as a combined album plus 1-3 new bonus tracks. At first I didn't really like this trend b/c I enjoy listening to the full album through on first listen. But I do understand why they are doing this to adapt to the streaming age. Instead of releasing a 12-song album once every two years, they split that release into 3 every 6 months (5 song EP, 5 song EP, combined album + 2 bonus). As consumers we get the music earlier and more frequently. They get 3 release hype cycles for the same amount of creative work, which is what they need to be discovered in streaming platforms.
  • KozmoNau7 6y ago
    That has been going on in the greater metal scene for a long time. Especially for smaller artists, they put out a bunch of demos and EPs before putting together an album. In contrast to what you're mentioning, often the main tracks of some of the EPs will be on the album, but all of the "b-sides" will only be available on the EPs, but I've also seen examples of multiple EPs being re-released together. Not necessarily as an album in the traditional sense, but as a compilation.
• ArmandGrillet 6y ago
  It's probably true and I find it sad. The best musical experiences I had have been from albums, not single tracks. No more albums every 3/4 years means no more singles leading to the hype of an album nor more meaningful shows around one theme. No more albums means no more ways to put something on for an hour of development and feeling like you're (re)living something that has a beginning and an end while having consistency. During this quarantine, After Hours by the Weeknd and The Slow Rush by Tame Impala have been my best partners. Sure I've listened to playlists, but the delusion of The Weeknd and the tempo of Tame Impala's album will stay in my mind as elements of this period, not single tracks. Asking musicians to constantly release is like removing the concept of books to only satisfy ourselves with news articles and tweets. Maybe it makes more money, but what a depressing artistic world.
  • btmiller 6y ago
    Huge +1 I really only listen to whole albums. Especially Tame Impala, Father John Misty, Mac DeMarco, Lana Del Ray, Fleer Foxes, St. Vincent, Sufjan Stevens, and on. Those type of artists won’t change because of whatever the Spotify CEO believes. There is still a place for thoughtfully-crafted full albums and they’ll continue to exist.
  • JAlexoid 6y ago
    That's really not what he said. The gist of it all - don't got dark for 4 years, unless you're planning to retire.
• rdiddly 6y ago
  "The artists today that are making it realize that it’s about creating a continuous engagement with their fans. It is about putting the work in, about the storytelling around the album, and about keeping a continuous dialogue with your fans." Translation: We don't have a marketing department to handle this royal pain-in-the-ass for you, like a record company would've in the old days. Selling stuff still requires marketing though, so the people who do well are the ones who handle that part themselves, along with making the music. If you're not good at wearing all the hats at once (for example you're amazing at music and not particularly at marketing) well I guess you don't belong in the new future landscape. Corollary: This future landscape tends naturally toward being filled with mediocre musicians who work at it part-time - almost like a moonlighting side gig to their marketing jobs.
  • JAlexoid 6y ago
    > I guess you don't belong in the new future landscape There's really nothing unusual in bands losing fans and appeal. If you don't want to change and loose fans - that's your choice. This isn't even new. Many artists had to recreate themselves to stay relevant or just retire. Now - you have much cheaper and much more direct means of engaging with your audience. If you decide to ignore this - then you probably will not make a splash, but there's always a need for wedding singers and backup vocals...
    • jedimastert 6y ago
      > There's really nothing unusual in bands losing fans and appeal. If you don't want to change and loose fans - that's your choice. This isn't even new. Many artists had to recreate themselves to stay relevant or just retire. Pretty hard to lose fans you don't have...and it's really REALLY hard to get fans
      • JAlexoid 6y ago
        But that's work, that needs to happen. That's why Ek is saying that you can't just "release and forget for the next 4 years".
• DoreenMichele 6y ago
  I don't know enough about it to know if they are paying enough or if their payment rules need to change, but not everyone needs to be Britney Spears. In fact, having tremendous wealth and fame come with additional costs. You end up needing a mansion, not for the space per se but for privacy and security. You end up needing bodyguards. Etc. One way to make services like Spotify make sense for "average joe" musicians and other creatives is to address the other half of the equation: The cost of living for the average joe. We basically only build upper class housing these days. The average new home in the 1950s was about 1200 square feet and housed about 3.5 people. These days, it's more like 2400 square feet (or more) and houses about 2.5 people We have also torn down a million SROs and we largely have done away with things like boarding houses, where you rented a room and got breakfast and dinner as part of the rent and you supplied your own lunch elsewhere. Instead, we default to expecting young people to share a house or apartment designed for a nuclear family with a bunch of strangers. Then we make horror movies about it, like Single White Female, and then fail to go "Huh. Maybe that's not such a wonderful thing to insist young, single people do." Health care is another major issue in the US. It costs way too much and many other developed countries handle that better, so we have many other examples to draw from. It's not like we need to brilliantly design something that's never been done before to make this work. We just mostly need the political will and to take our heads out of our butts in this country.
• rewgs 6y ago
  You know that feeling you get when you see, say, CSI "building a GUI interface in Visual Basic to track the killers?" That's how I feel whenever a post about music hits the front page of HN. Save for a few genuinely educated and empathetic comments (thankfully towards the top for once), these comments (such is tradition) are a sea of Dunning-Kruger effects in full swing. I'd like to respond to a few confident-and-wrong assertions I'm seeing rear their heads again: No, "most musicians" don't make most of their money from gigs. That one band you know is not indicative of an entire diverse industry, nor is it a proper sample size. Those are amateur musicians, not pros. A pro musician who makes the bulk of their cash from gigs is doing it wrong. And not all musicians are instrumentalists: some are primarily writers, some are producers, or audio engineers, or synthesists, or whatever. There's so much diversity in this world that you're not aware of. If your idea of a "musician" is "someone carrying an instrument," that's a good sign that you know as much about this world as your family member who says "you're a software developer, why can't you fix my TV" as if knowing about computers means you know about hardware and electronics -- it just betrays a huge amount of ignorance on your part. No, streaming does not pay people better than album sales. This is just...I don't even know where to start with how wrong this is, so if you believe this just know that you're dead wrong and I'll leave it at that. Look into my previous comments for more info if you'd like. No, streaming is not supposed to be "exposure." It is a replacement of both album sales and radio plays. Artists and musicians constantly have to defend against the moving of goalposts -- first it was album sales nearly going away, then gigs becoming "exposure" for their albums, then their album sales becoming "exposure" for their gigs, then album sales became totally replaced by streaming and still being seen as "exposure" for their gigs/merch. It's a constant chipping away of previously-decent-income-streams that we're then told to be grateful for because they can apparently "expose" us for better payment. Which takes the form of...what? The only truly reliable thing left is licensing/royalties, which is also very heavily under attack. Just -- people, please understand that you just probably don't understand very much about the complexities of a market with which you have zero experience. Your armchair analysis that makes sense only within the context of near-total ignorance isn't helping. HN tends to be full of smarter-than-usual people, so at least be smart enough to know when you don't know what you're talking about, and try approaching these topics with more empathy and humility.
• jp57 6y ago
  I'm not sure why this is controversial. In the vinyl era, when a single LP was about 40 minutes long, it was pretty normal for artists to release roughly an album a year. (e.g. Led Zeppelin's eight studio albums were released over a span of 10.5 years, but one was a double album and they took a long break when Robert Plant's son died. The first 7 albums were released over 7 years). It seems like it was only when albums started to be recorded for the longer CD format (75 min or so) that the time between albums seemed to increase, as if artists felt they needed to have enough material to fill a substantial fraction of a CD's capacity before releasing. Now that we're in the streaming era, there isn't any particular container size to "fill" to make an album, so there isn't any particular reason for bands to wait long periods, except for their own creative cycles. The notion of an "album" isn't really constrained by any physical limits anymore and it's really just "a bunch of songs released together". I think the Ek's statements just reflect the fact that it's easier to be successful if you're prolific, and the the new model actually pays when people listen (roughly speaking), rather than just when they buy. [edit: punctuation]
  • jedimastert 6y ago
    The idea behind creating an album, a collection of songs behind a theme or era of your creative life, lets you tell more of a story in a cohesive way. It lets you create more interconnected works, rather than one idea per song. Also, it lets you take breaks and lets things breathe. It's really hard to take a song from creation to recording to mastering to releasing without giving yourself a break in the meantime. Also also, batching out writing, recording, and post-prod makes it go much faster as well In short, it's far far easier to make 12 songs in a year than one song in a month, and you'll get a much better product out of it.
    • jp57 6y ago
      But he said 3-4 years. Also, there's nothing stopping anyone from recording a bunch of work at once and then releasing it over time.
      • hashkb 6y ago
• jacquesm 6y ago
  Yes they can. Spotify fortunately is not the only way in which musicians can reach and audience and for some musicians it is still an art rather than a sausage of which they need to produce an extra quota to boost every Spotify quarterly earnings report. Quality takes time, especially in music. I wonder if that CEO has ever made any music themselves?
  • JAlexoid 6y ago
    Even the best musicians get left behind. If you completely ignore your audience and don't work with them - who's going to buy your stuff?
    • jacquesm 6y ago
      That's a good time to ask yourself why you make music in the first place.
      • JAlexoid 6y ago
        And that's one of the points Ek was making - work with your fans and keep them engaged. Frequent releases help a lot with that.
        • jacquesm 6y ago
          You are missing my point I think. Musicians do not necessarily make music for their fans and to 'engage' with people. It is art. It doesn't necessarily have to please anybody but the person that made it and it is still perfectly valid. Yes, people have to eat. But plenty of art was made by people without any form of compensation or interaction with their 'fanbase'. That's just mr. Ek saying what would help him.
• user00012-ab 6y ago
  I think they are confusing musician with "content producer" Musicians make the music that we end up listening to 20 years later, content producers are the ones that create crap for us every day so we don't get bored that day.
• waffletower 6y ago
  It takes enormous hubris to build a business as a parasite of music and its creators, and subsequently whip them for more productivity. I don't think I am the only person that associates the name "Daniel Elk" with the word "douche-bag" in my head.
• deltron3030 6y ago
  People who produce for playlists aren't artists, they're designers. Check out Bandcamp or your record store for art.
• thereare5lights 6y ago
  This is a such a clickbait title. Here I thought Spotify was requiring musicians to require more frequently, when all he meant was that if you release once every 3-4 years you're not going to see good results.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• sova 6y ago
  Shameless plug: we recently released an album. Features trombones, vocal harmony, keys, drums, positive lyrics, strings. https://open.spotify.com/album/5x7xJwg3ZkohX8sLcPHe9x https://open.spotify.com/album/5x7xJwg3ZkohX8sLcPHe9x
• n0on3 6y ago
  I wish as a species we were smart enough not to turn everything good we did or could do into shit in the name of profit by building models that just churn more. TBH, reading "what is required [by music artists][...] is creating a continuous engagement with their fans" my arms fell off to the ground. Seriously, now the requirement for a form of art is engaging with fans? Well thanks Spotify for the nails to seal the coffin of good music I guess.
• egypturnash 6y ago
  As a visual artist who regularly works on multi-year projects, and happily grabs a new album from bands she's been following for years who only put new work out once in a blue moon, I would like to cordially invite Mr. Ek to fuck himself. While I am handing out invitations to auto-copulation, I would also like to hand out a large number to every senator and representative who has voted to defund the arts. Making room for people who have learnt creative skills to pursue their craft without having to constantly worry about whether or not this week's piece is gonna make enough money for them to pay their rent is an important part of society. Finally, I should express my absolute delight that Patreon continues to exist, and that I have enough people willing to spare a few bucks per month that I can pay my rent while continuing to work on my long, slow projects. I keep on worrying that Patreon will fall apart when it becomes clear that their burn rate is higher than their profits, but I will enjoy it while I still can. It's about the closest thing to the NEA I'm likely to experience in my adult life.
  • JAlexoid 6y ago
    So you're engaged with your audience enough for them to sponsor you on Patreon... and you managed to miss that you're literally doing what Ek talks about? You have auto-copulated right in front of everyone...
    • egypturnash 6y ago
      I am, and I am not, there's a huge difference between "I am releasing one page of my long graphic novel on a regular basis" and "I am regularly producing stuff designed to stand alone as complete objects" IMHO.
      • JAlexoid 6y ago
        That is not the only thing that he said, it was the opposite to make his previous statement more prominent. Congratulations on being caught by the title and completely missing the whole argument. Imagine if I came out and said: "I'm an atheist and I don't need God to tell me to treat people well, love freedom, help the needy and be a nice person... no longer can I justify killing, pillaging and raping using the word of God." And you put all focus on "I justify killing, pillaging and raping using the word of God"
• xvector 6y ago
  > The artists today that are making it realize that it’s about creating a continuous engagement with their fans. It is about putting the work in, about the storytelling around the album, and about keeping a continuous dialogue with your fans The CEO shows a concerning misunderstanding. Some music is timeless. Some songs remain landmarks even decades after their release. I abhor it when people force their own music preferences and beliefs on others. As other people have said, Mr. Ek can go fuck himself.
• merrvk 6y ago
  Shows spotify doesn’t give a fuck about the actual musicians.
• olivermarks 6y ago
  I have never used Spotify and I never will. For me it's the Clear Channel of this decade, more interested in monetizing 'content' and having other people define genres so they can pipe similar music into people's ears for profit. A giant swathe of the 'music industry' has zero interest or understanding of creative processes, they just want product that sells easily. These formulaic eras always bland out and I'm sure Spotify will be no different
• Marazan 6y ago
  The Spotify scam is incredible. Negotiate a 'deal' with the people that own you. Negotiate with hat deal. In favour of your owners and against the artists. Justify not paying more to the content creators based on making no money but the money you are 'losing' is going directly to your owners. Hollywood accounting at its finest
• Marazan 6y ago
  #brokenrecord Is the hashtag for explication about what a crock of utter shit this is and the unbelievably bent deal that is streaming revenue.
• anticsapp 6y ago
  Can someone explain why the revenue sharing model is broken on Spotify? A lot of bluecheck indie bands complain about their meager $28 monthly checks. I even saw a performative tweet from a label the other day: https://twitter.com/DonGiovanniRecs/status/1286522520221384704 https://twitter.com/DonGiovanniRecs/status/12865225202213847... Let's say I run a bookstore. 70% of my revenue goes to pay workers. A works 32 hours, B works 5 hours, and C works 3 hours. Is it not fair to give A 80% of the pay pool, since she worked 80% of the hours? Finally, terrestrial pop radio, independent college radio, and ham radioesque bedroom experimentalists are all on the same platform, the swim lanes have been erased. Everything is flattened, everything is discoverable, yet the sobering truth that few people are streaming their work elicits attacks on Spotify from bands and marginal artists. How is their contempt justified?
  • nouveaux 6y ago
    If you're running a brick and mortar book store, payroll would unlikely be 70%. Payroll would be your highest cost but it should be 30% on the high end. If we want to try and analyze this, we should analyze what music distribution was like prior to digital. My guess is that for most artist who went through traditional publishing and distribution, they only received 10-20% per album sale. That seems high too.
    • anticsapp 6y ago
      I should have been clearer, I used 70% of revenue because that is what Spotify gives to artists. Of course, software can do that as it scale infinitely, retail cannot. I can't tell if 70% is generous or not -- many independent artists think it isn't.
• Animats 6y ago
  Ok, musicians, you wanna be in a band, get your nose to the grindstone! We have a lot of streaming time to fill up, so quit goofing off! The Beatles only produced about 10 hours of unique music in their entire career. Can't coast like that any more!
• exabrial 6y ago
  Tool disagrees with Spotify CEO
• tomphoolery 6y ago
  I don't see the lie here. :) Many of us in the music industry have been doing more single-based releases than album-based, because there really is no point to albums anymore. If you have a couple of tracks that all fit together, by all means, release them at once. But music isn't album-driven anymore, it's track-driven, and has been for a very long time.
  • ZoomZoomZoom 6y ago
    >But music isn't album-driven anymore, it's track-driven, and has been for a very long time. This is exactly the problem: the technological advances changed the music consumption and music, unfortunately, follows. So instead of empowering the artists with more creative freedom it forced everyone to follow the same route. It's appalling.
    • WA 6y ago
      I don’t know. Even back when CDs where still a thing, I never listened/liked the full album of any band. I think the most was like 50%. Maybe the technological advancements only make visible what was there before: only a minority listens to everything by one artist. Most people prefer a song or two and skip the rest, but they aren’t forced to buy the whole album anymore.
    • Juliate 6y ago
      On the other hand, technology has always shaped music: each instrument's specific technology shaped what could be done, or not done, with it. And how disks, then tapes, then disks again, before Internet, all shaped how music was "packaged", experienced and distributed outside of live concerts.
  • KozmoNau7 6y ago
    That may be true in your corner of the music industry. In the corners I'm familiar with (metal, rock, a bit of punk, various niche crossovers), the album is still king. Most artists will drop an album every couple of years and maybe an EP or two in between. Some of the most beloved and admired artists have released maybe 3 or 4 albums over a multi-decade career. They put together concept albums that work as a whole. Some will put out 40+ minute albums as a single track, because it's meant to be listened to in full, and needs you to take the time to do so. There has been a slow change more towards EPs, especially for the more underground and independent bands. There's no reason to make a full album if you have 3-4 tracks that stand up on their own as a cohesive whole. In the old days, label's would often force artists to pad out those with filler tracks, just to produce a "full album". These artists make their money through merch sales and touring, and it works because of a dedicated fanbase. Popular music may be singles-driven and I would say that it has always been so. Thankfully there is a lot more out there than popular music. For all I care, every single one of the big labels and streaming services could disappear tomorrow.
• URSpider94 6y ago
  People are railing at Spotify, when in reality this is responding to the desire and behavior of customers. All of the platforms are moving to a $10/month all-you-can-eat model, because customers love it and will pay. What this does is move the industry from an album model, where people buy bundles of songs and own them forever whether they listen or not, to a radio model, where people snack on music in curated playlists. In the album model, artists are incentivized to put out one or two hit tracks and then backfill with lesser material, or spend time curating an hour-long story. In the radio model, artists are incentivized to iterate on and tweak their hits with mash-ups, remixes, collabs, etc. That's why Lil Nas X put out FIVE versions of Old Town Road.
• diebeforei485 6y ago
  "Albums" are an artifact of the LP, cassette, and CD era. It's no longer necessary to release music as a collection, unless the point is to tell a larger story (eg. Kendrick Lamar's DAMN). I think singles and smaller albums (5 tracks or less) are the sweet spot these days - for consumers and for artists.
• newbalance 6y ago
  Honestly, this seems beneficial to the musicians too. No longer worry about months/years of work going into an album that flops. Be more iterative, experimental, and user driven by releasing an album's worth of content over the course of a few years. Seems like this reduces the risk for musicians publishing music that doesn't have an audience.
  • zo7 6y ago
    > Be more iterative, experimental, and user driven My heart has fallen at the thought of agile software development invading the creative process
  • KozmoNau7 6y ago
    I prefer the artists who put thought into creating a cohesive whole that requires more than a quick 3-minute track to tell. Getting caught up in a "rapid release cycle" means a race to the lowest common denominator in search of popularity.
• aphextron 6y ago
  Someone should really tell that to Daft Punk.
• lucb1e 6y ago
  I don't get the fuzz about this. He can claim whatever he wants but fans will continue to listen to whatever they want. Artists can cater to it or not and all of it is outside of this CEO's control. It seems to be meant to discredit Spotify when I really don't think the alternatives are much better; even if alternatives currently pay artists better, they don't charge significantly more, which is the only way to pay artists more in the long run. Someone else said it somewhere in a subthread: charging subscribers enough to pay all those artists a livable wage just means they lose subscribers, go bankrupt (they're already not profitable), and end up paying artists zero in a few years.
• vemv 6y ago
  How broken must your business model be, such that you tell artists what they should do?
• jonplackett 6y ago
  The problem with Spotify is how they allocate royalties. If I pay my £10 a month and only listen to whatever 5 indie bands I like, I’d expect them to get £2 each from my listening. But they don’t. Lady Gaga will get most of my money despite me never listening to her music, because all they do is put everyone’s money in a big pile and divide it up depending on who got the most listens. They have to do that because otherwise Lady Gaga wasn’t put her music on Spotify.
• throwawaymanbot 6y ago
  who cares about spotify... Dont use it..
• auiya 6y ago
  Imagine we treated audio production the same way we treated video/movie production. The whole paradigm between starving musicians and Hollywood film stars is ridiculous. And to be honest, the two trades are not that much far removed from each other.
• uberdru 6y ago
  Musicians should be getting closer and closer to 100% royalties as the infrastructure gets cheaper and cheaper. But, tech CEOs all like crappy music. Which is why they should never be in control of the livelihoods of creatives.
  • raindeer3 6y ago
    The reason there are any royalties to distribute at all is that Spotify has managed to create a distribution service that ppl are willing to pay for. You can get free distribution for your music easily. Just put it on any torrent site...
• hootbootscoot 6y ago
  Spotify pays independent artists (that aren't part of large negotiated artist pools from seriously major labels) poorly. Indie artists are sinking more into getting their songs promoted on playlists than they gain in streaming revenue in return. It's literally "pay to be played" (Remember "Pay to Play" in Sunset Strip clubs in the 80's? You would literally front the money for renting the club on a Tuesday or Thursday and then sell tickets and hope to pay off your "concert" (Friday/Saturday had music the club actually booked & paid, hence their "reputation" was solid) Anyway, I severely resent the massive influence these relatively new corporate overlords have had in reducing the value of music significantly. BANDCAMP is one suggested remedy, as they take their (relatively small, I think its' around 10%?) cut from your sales and allow you to have your bands page and sub-domain "yourband.bandcamp.com" etc... in other words: they treat you respectfully as humans should treat other humans. This race to the bottom can only end in more Aututuned Pop, lol...
• bondolo 6y ago
  Based on the Spotify revenue model my favourite artist might make a few dollars off me over our entire lifetimes. This is not enough to sustain all but the biggest artists. I am happy to contribute more to smaller artists I appreciate. Seeing them on tour, buying CDs, buying merch, patreon type models and even straight up contributions on paypal and venmo. I've been buying a couple hundred bucks worth every bandcamp Friday since the start of covid. It is not just Spotify, none of the streaming fremium music subscription services provide me an effective way to support the artists I like. Cory Doctorow points the way in Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free talking about future models for artists to make a living. It might superficially seem like the Spotify CEO is saying the same things but this is just cover for the gatekeepers to keep an unconscionable share for themselves.
  • coffeefirst 6y ago
    Yep, he’s telling musicians what he wants them to optimize for his platform, which does not pay viable rates and never will. Which means if you ARE a musician you should run the other direction.
• hootbootscoot 6y ago
  Spotify are effectively parasites. They pay poorly. Dominate the market. Force everyone to accept their poor treatment through their market domination. (Go watch some Youtube tutorials on paid spotify placement services) And thus, this youthful tech CEO is speaking from a position of extreme privilege with an eye towards what is good for HIS business, but bad for musicians. I hope Spotify goes away, but it probably won't. The consumer side is pretty good/enticing etc. The musician side is 2-tiered. The vast majority of the POOLED streaming revenue goes to large labels who manage global pop stars. Indie artists can just go die under a rock... ermmm "try harder" I don't really want to read 20 hackernews' argue about how hard it is/isn't to make a hit album. Quality music takes more effort, training, and skill to make than low-quality music, and this is not about the production alone. Expert-level musicians are generally disregarded by Joe Q. Public in favor of Joe Q. Publics "favorite" musicians, training and knowledge and compositional skill notwithstanding. The limiting factor is Joe Q. Public's musical listening skills, which certainly will not improve in a world that is racing to achieve cheaper mass-produced conformist "music" that likely will be replaced by algorithmic generation in the near future. I am hardly a great composer, but even I could describe formulaic "genre music" in such a manner that a decent music AI could iterate it nonstop. The subject of people "liking genres" rather than following individual artists of talent across their works as they explore all genres, etc... that's a different topic for a different day. I will also contend that grooming a public to like simplistic rhythms that are easy to program on 16-note step sequencers is not accidental.
• partiallypro 6y ago
  The secret to modern music isn't releasing full albums, but to release singles throughout the year. That is the future. I've even seen some (small-mid size) musicians simply have Patreon subscriptions to get new music, and then release the best on Spotify, etc. (I live in Nashville, so I feel like I'm near the cutting edge)
• chucke 6y ago
  Another distribution middleman telling content providers what to do. The value chain is so fundamentally messed up.
• pmlnr 6y ago
  > "The artists today that are making it realize that it’s about creating a continuous engagement with their fans. It is about putting the work in, about the storytelling around the album, and about keeping a continuous dialogue with your fans.” FU. A musician's job is to create music. Period. It's hard enough on it's own.
• oxymoran 6y ago
  I hate Spotify. So much.
• hurxnid 6y ago
  Uninstalling Spotify.
• pietrovismara 6y ago
  This moron's statements piss me off so deeply I don't even know where to start. The commoditization of Music? The complete lack of understanding of how creativity works? Telling artists to "work harder" while his net worth is in the billions, all thanks to the exploitation of said artists? All this non-sense during a terrible crisis that puts many musicians out of job since nowadays they have to rely on live performances to make a buck, all thanks to....platforms like spotify? Can we please boycott spotify to hell?
• ignorntashell 6y ago
  Imho allow free streaming and pay for downloads of what i like. Happy to pay £10-15 direct to artist with 100% going to them. Streaming can be covered by adverts. Simples, but apperently so far :( Otherwise paid performance amd commissions etc are always ways to generate more revenue. No time for diatribution companies these days.
• lostgame 6y ago
  I publish one five-track mixtape as a solo artist once a year; and whatever singles I end up just naturally doing, as well. It’s a nice method that has successfully netted me some actual revenue, shockingly.
• kin 6y ago
  I'd be curious to see the data behind these claims. There has to be artists that are successful from timeless music/instant classics.
• bestnameever 6y ago
  I don't see anyone discussing this but I wonder if this also is a consequence of the platforms making more music available to people. Artists are now competing in a larger pond. It would make sense (to me), that people move on from certain music quicker than they used too.
• kmeisthax 6y ago
  "Man who pays people less says they should work more, film at 11"
• c3534l 6y ago
  I went back and read the original interview and I still don't know what he was actually trying to say. He stressed that artists need continuous engagement with their community and the old business model didn't work anymore. But I really can't tell if he was trying to say staggered, small releases, and do away with the big promos for albums, or if he really was saying "stop being lazy and churn out more product." He could easily claim the former for PR reasons, but the language he uses in the interview is incredibly ambiguous I honestly just have no idea what he's talking about. The sensationalist reporting obviously wants to play up the controversy, acting like the least favorable interpretation is unambiguously the correct one, but that's precisely why the public no longer trusts news media.
  • wyxuan 6y ago
    Ah yes: the fader, a smaller music publication, is just an example of why we should disregard media as a whole. /s I don’t think the article is that sensational, I just think that you might have a predisposed belief that news media is always (or at least most of the time) sensationalized.
    • c3534l 6y ago
      My point was of course they're going to go with one interpretation. I myself can't figure out what the hell he actually meant to say.
• diogenescynic 6y ago
  Tool just laughs mercilessly.
• srmatto 6y ago
  Time immemorial: Man who builds a service on the backs of creative people then dictates what they do.
• som88 6y ago
  Beeping Prick !
• bogomipz 6y ago
  >'"Ek claimed that a "narrative fallacy" had been created and caused music fans to believe that Spotify doesn't pay musicians enough for streams of their music. "Some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape," Ek said, "where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough.”' I'm pretty sure that paying a streaming royalty of $00.0038 per stream is an established fact and not a "narrative fallacy."[1] Only a small handful of artists in the world have ever been able to afford to take 4 years off between albums. These are the U2 and Cold Plays. These are also the touring acts that make a fortune on the road so it's highly unlikely that these people are complaining. The majority of artists are hard working. The only way they make money now is by going on the road. It's helps to sell tickets if you have a new release you are promoting that their fans are excited about. It takes time to write an album's worth of good material. Once that's done you have to record, mix and master the record. This can easily take months. Once the album is in the can its up to the record company to choose a release date. There's usually some strategy with the date that is chosen. It takes time to book a tour and tour dates have their own strategy so it's not uncommon for a record to be done but not release for another few months. Then the artists goes on the road - they will try to hit the festival circuit in the US in spring and the European festival circuit in summer and then a tour in the Fall. All of this take time. A lot of time. Maybe you could complete this cycle "write, record, tour" cycle every year and certainly band in the 70's did for a time but that's not sustainable. Certainly not for anyone but a young person in their early 20's. Even being able to complete the "write, record, tour" cycle every 18 months is a grind. Does Daniel Ek really not understand any of the basic realities of being a musical artist in 2020? Is he that clueless or is he simply promoting his own "narrative fallacy" of the lazy complaining artist? [1] https://help.songtrust.com/knowledge/what-is-the-pay-rate-for-spotify-streams https://help.songtrust.com/knowledge/what-is-the-pay-rate-fo...
• BurningFrog 6y ago
  I think Ek said this as a factual analysis of how the world works now. The Angry People here seem to read it as him ordering musicians what to do to have a place in his world. It's all about what tone you read the quote in.
• whiddershins 6y ago
  The way in which Spotify (and other streaming services) hurts the development of music isn’t what most people say. The problem with per-stream plays is that it is based on pop music logic: more streams equals more money. Fair! But many recording artists made a modest living by releasing music that you might not want to listen to over and over and over. This music is often labeled ‘art’ or ‘experimental’ or whatever, and for the enthusiast, paying $15 for a record of this stuff was great. Streaming services have no answer for this problem. It’s up to something like Patreon, if anything, to fill this gap. This is all sorta fine, but what grates in me is that it seems none of the streaming providers have even thought about this. They just don’t seem to be that in to music, and just think of types of pop music as representing all of music. This is where that above quote is just a little irritating.
  • dinglejungle 6y ago
    Bandcamp?
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • swinglock 6y ago
    They could stop paying out flat per listen. If I pay $10 and listen to 50 tracks, I want $10 (minus the provides fee) to be split among precisely those 50 tracks. The difference is if you only listed to 50 tracks your listens are worth more that someone that diluted their listens over 5000. Throwing everyone's fees into one big vat and dividing that according to the total listens, is bullshit. I want my favorite artist to be paid by me and I don't want to subsidize the worlds most popular artists that I never listen to.
    • abraae 6y ago
      That's your view, but artists likely hold the opposite view. I imagine they want to be paid more if more people listen to their music.
      • 6y ago
• variable11 6y ago
  "Mozart isn't releasing enough new material to stay relevant and keep our audience engaged."
• chiefalchemist 6y ago
  It's interesting he's focused on quantity, and not quality. Maybe it's Spotify's suggestion algorithm but too much of what I hear sounds disposable. Not bad. Not a lack of talent. But a lack of ambition and a willingness to take chances. Or am I too old for my own good?
• kebman 6y ago
  I'm a musician. But I will never make music like that. Also I will never use Daniel Ek's platform, unless I just by pure chance become one of the biggest out there, which I doubt. But then I don't make music for a living, and nor would I want to–especially in this day and age–despite a lot of folks telling me that I probably should. The question then becomes, when I already know other valuable professions, why would I want to? Then the income would have to rival the other work I can do. I mean, I do get more pleasure from making music, but only because I don't overdo it. Work, on the other hand, is work. If I made music into work, I'm not sure I'd like it anymore. So then whatever I produce is intermittent. But, if I wanted to make music a secondary activity, that doesn't need to be my main source of income, then yeah, I'd probably keep pushing music to places like Bandcamp. And I guess that's the beauty of it, because now there finally is a niche for us who don't want to be slaves to the art. Or to Ek's platform. So while Ek makes these outrageous claims, I'll be doing something completely different. And when I do decide to make love to my guitar, the music that comes out of it, will be a love child, and not the work of a mindless slave. This is why I think "working musicians" never have to become slaves of the stupid and oppressive ideas of people like Ek. I just don't buy into that crap. There's a market. And that market has alternatives that also works for us who "just" want to release stuff intermittently. In fact I don't even use his platform to listen to music. Why, when there are so many great alternatives, that are also much more fair to the creators? (I guess an Ek fanboi downvoted. Hey if you've got something to say, say it, coward!)
• Pxtl 6y ago
  Frustrating, but unsurprising. I look at electronic musicians online and you can see that - 15 years ago they'd drop one album every few years and it would be wall-to-wall perfection. Now they drop multiple albums per year and it's mostly... okay. YouTube did the same thing to video content. The internet drives everything to the lowest common denominator.
• 8f2ab37a-ed6c 6y ago
  I'm curious if anybody here has the experience to compare how much harder it is to make a living in music as an artists vs how hard it is to break into tech. I'm biased myself, having spent the last 20 years studying software dev and then working in software. I feel that while it is a lot of work, the market is quite hot for any technical talent, and making a decent living is straightforward. Even a shitty software dev likely makes a comfortable living, you don't have to be Jeff Dean. In CS you can graduate from MIT and probably be set for life, but in music you can graduate from Juliard or Berklee and likely still be living on a futon for decades. Or am I off here? Whereas as a solo producer/composer (or someone in a band) it seems that getting anywhere near ramen profitability is really really hard. It's reminiscent of startups: you have to find your niche, you have to constantly stay relevant, you have to market yourself incessantly on every medium, and most likely you'll be drowned into obscurity by someone else who became a winner-take-all in that space. And while the payoff for founders in small to medium startups is still pretty decent (and can be life-changing), as an artist is seems like the polarization between starving and huge is even greater. Even in photography you can always "sell out" and shoot weddings in perpetuity while you're doing more artistic work on the side. And that "main gig" pays reasonably well, even though it's exhausting. But with music things like playing gigs will likely not get you anywhere close to sustainability. Maybe teaching is the "weddings" of music?
  • peterlk 6y ago
    I have flirted with the music industry for longer than I've been an engineer, and the reason I kept getting pulled back into programming is that it is much easier to make much more money. But I think your question makes a false dichotomy. Building a band/solo act is like founding a startup, and being a programmer is more like being a wedding DJ. I think in both cases, you have better odds in the tech world. I once had a piano teacher who remarked: "why do musicians make so little money? For the same reason they do so many drugs. Professional musicians are paid in dopamine." There is nothing like a crowd cheering for you. But you're right, you can make a living being a wedding DJ, or if you can get gigs at upscale hotels/restaurants playing cello or piano, you can make a pretty decent living as a musician. But it takes a lot more work than learning to hook up a bunch of web forms to a database, and usually, it pays a lot less money. Then there's always teaching; and I believe if you have the ability to kindly teach music to children, you have attained enlightenment. If you are striking out on your own, the grind is like founding a startup. If you build yet another photo-sharing app (or you're a guitar player who sings about love), you have to be uncommonly talented and lucky to break through. Similarly, startups come in many genres; maybe high tech startups are like jazz - often founded by PhDs, and very often failures because no one can wrap their head around it - even though it is brilliant. If you can make it work - either startups or music, you get paid in dopamine and money. If you make it out the other side of that gauntlet, I believe you have also achieved enlightenment. If you want to "make a living", it can be done in music. However, you will generally be more stable and comfortable in the world of tech.
• benzguo 6y ago
  Sharing a concrete example: 4 friends of mine are in a moderately successful band in LA. They have 1M monthly listeners on Spotify, and their top track has 17M plays. Spotify sends them ~$2k/month, which isn’t enough for 4 to live on (they live together, and record with their own equipment in a rented house). To make ends meet, they play live shows and tour (which isn’t an option anymore). Support your favorite bands by buying merch.
  • hedora 6y ago
    Assuming a 90% cut for record stores and labels, I imagine they’d have gotten about a million collectively back in the 90’s. 1M * $15 * 0.1 = $1.5M
    • why_only_15 6y ago
      Well, you would probably have a lot less monthly listeners.
    • SomewhatLikely 6y ago
      I would guess there are a lot more artists getting a million listeners each month today than in the nineties.
    • satyrnein 6y ago
      This implies that every listener would have bought the CD. In reality, many of these listeners were just letting the playlist roll without thinking about it, and would not have spent a penny out of their pockets for that particular song.
• mensetmanusman 6y ago
  Every new song is competing with every previous song in existence now. Data acquisition destroyed music economics.
• osigurdson 6y ago
  Buckethead should do very well in this new reality.
• ComputerGuru 6y ago
  Tomorrow Github announces developers pushing releases (or commits) with less than a certain cadence will be unlisted. What a time to be alive.
• modzu 6y ago
  shopify business man confuses pop for music
• polskibus 6y ago
  That sort of discourages deep work, similar to journalists encouraged to tweet often instead of releasing larger , more in-depth articles once a month.
• dnlbtlr 6y ago
  When it comes to Spotify’s payment model I would rather that my $10 a month be split between the artists I listen to (based on number of plays) rather than the artists only getting $0.006 to $0.0084 for every play. I think for the more niche artists that can’t rack up the plays this model could be more sustainable. Thoughts?
• mnd999 6y ago
  Strange interview. As a Spotify customer this doesn’t give me that warm fuzzy feeling about supporting artists. It’s more likely to make me think twice about giving them my money. It’s almost as if he was trying to annoy his artists and his customers. At best it comes across as pretty arrogant.
• pacifika 6y ago
  No single platform shouldn’t dictate how an art form operates
• moonbug 6y ago
  multibillion dollar company tells its digital sharecroppers to work harder for their pennies.
• mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  I don’t think this is true remotely. In the last few years my only music purchases have been album releases on Bandcamp or independent record label sites, for musical acts like The Field, Swans and Nation of Language. They release every 3-4 years and I buy albums. Works great. I don’t have any streaming music service.
• stuaxo 6y ago
  Definitely an "oh, fuck off" headline.
• scoot_718 6y ago
  Meh. The music I listen to is mostly a decade old.
• 12xo 6y ago
  Music is a commodity, a very easy to produce and distribute commodity. The facts are that the market was artificially controlled for the later half of the 20th century. Musicians, throughout history, have seldom made money. The later half of the 20th century was the anomaly, not the market of today or of prior... As a musician and someone who spent years in the "biz". Its never going to be like it was in the 70's. Those days are gone.
• mproud 6y ago
  Title is misleading.
• swrobel 6y ago
  Try telling that to Daft Punk