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Historically, artists never made much money selling music. Artists made most of their music going on tour, selling merch, or monetizing their likeness. I see s
by devmunchies 6y ago
Historically, artists never made much money selling music. Artists made most of their music going on tour, selling merch, or monetizing their likeness.
I see spotify more like as an audio-based customer acquisition channel, like the radio.
Maybe it could build in some kind of "donate" patreon-like feature into the app. I wish Soundcloud had this.
- ilamont 6y agoHistorically, artists never made much money selling music. Artists made most of their music going on tour, selling merch, or monetizing their likeness. In the early 1990s I worked for Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond's record label, back when they were dominating the UK and European pop charts as The KLF (https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/07/20/537708922/how-three-austrian-unknowns-misunderstood-klf-s-the-manual https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/07/20/537708922/...). They never made a pound touring. Their success and much of their impact was tied to European club playlists, the sales of singles, album sales, and the media. You can talk to many other artists from that era who did depend on touring and merch, but also used distribution and sales of singles and albums (and advances on record deals) to establish themselves. While plastic media was doomed long before Spotify, this "audio-based customer acquisition channel" is, by design, set up to benefit Spotify, record labels, and top artists, in that order. Everyone else in the 98.6% tier gets the scraps.
- devmunchies 6y ago> Everyone else in the 98.6% tier gets the scraps. yeah because they're getting 1.4% of the listens.
- ilamont 6y agoAsk yourself why they are getting fewer listens than the 1.4% who get the most listens. It's not because Spotify is a meritocracy for music.
- willis936 6y agoHave societies justly and fairly treated individuals in the past? If not then there’s little reason to point to it when talking about a person in power “doing the right thing”.
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoWhile artists made much more of their money on tour or selling merch, it didn’t take all that many sales of physical releases for an artist to top $12/month. Yes, the distributor and label took their share, and the royalty paid to the musicians was a minority of the sale price, but they could still make more money than they do now on streaming platforms.
- rawburt 6y ago> Historically, artists never made much money selling music. Yup, so why start now, right? That would go against tradition.
- devmunchies 6y agowhat do you propose? > That would go against tradition. a tradition of it being unprofitable, perhaps. It just goes against the numbers. Small artists just don't get enough listens. Everybody complains, but you aren't entitled to success. Once you're popular, there's plenty of ways to monetize. The only solution is basic income, because you probably aren't gonna live off your music otherwise.
- dubme1 6y agoSoundCloud does have a donate button. At least in the sense that an artist can setup a paypal button that shows up on their profile. I have created something similar with SoundRat (https://soundrat.com https://soundrat.com) that connects more with the patreon-like features and makes listening of music free but gives fans an option to donate to artists and get some perks for doing so.
- devmunchies 6y agoI meant like a patreon model, where I can donate $5 recurring and it bundles with my soundcloud monthly payment.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoPre-radio, the music industry was much healthier, because ‘winner take all’ did not exist. Each location could have their share of top talent to perform for the region.