6 ms·

The problem has been solved for the public, but there's still issues for the supply side though. All the non-mainstream music makes I follow since I was a teen

by kace91 6y ago

The problem has been solved for the public, but there's still issues for the supply side though. All the non-mainstream music makes I follow since I was a teenager complain that music has never been in a harder place in terms of making money off of it. Apparently their piece of the cake has massively reduced.

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
Do we know if it has actually constrained supply? As far as I can tell there is an effectively limitless amount of new music to listen to in almost any genre you could pick. I just searched for one genre and I found no less than a hundred new albums this year. https://theboot.com/new-music-rundown-country-americana-bluegrass-folk-albums-coming-in-2020/ https://theboot.com/new-music-rundown-country-americana-blue... I think this is not exhaustive because most of the names I spot checked have produced chart topping singles or won industry-wide awards.
vkou 6y ago
> All the non-mainstream music makes I follow since I was a teenager complain that music has never been in a harder place in terms of making money off of it. Apparently their piece of the cake has massively reduced. This should be expected, given that the amount of artists making commercial non-mainstream music has skyrocketed. The pie has gotten bigger, and the non-mainstream share of the pie has gotten bigger, but there's a lot more people fighting over its scraps.
- riffraff 6y ago
  This is what I also believe but I haven't seen data that shows it (as in: I have actually seen none, not that I have seen it showing the opposite), do you know of any?
- lloeki 6y ago
  Lots of friends and my very own wife are musicians, their take on it is that to be competitive on Spotify and such, you have to produce content so regularly that quality is diluted. There’s a whole market of tool-assisted beat and melody makers that build and curate then offer these for sell for artists to buy. The whole process is heavily industrialised, tools allow the maker to produce dozens of such bricks a day, basically bruteforcing a whole space, but everything resembles everything else, diluted to no end, channeling the money stream and bleeding the “old way” creators to death. Albums have been dying for a while already, even EPs are barely living corpses in this attention grabbing landscape. Even for singles there’s just no way to mature ideas and create truly creative content in an amount of time that allows to keep up pace and make money through these platforms. So they stay on the local scene, which is being obliterated by COVID.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > their take on it is that to be competitive on Spotify and such, you have to produce content so regularly that quality is diluted. I think this idea is misguided. The more music you produce, the more good music you produce. Trying to keep average quality up by restricting production is counterproductive in two separate ways; (1) it ends up causing you to produce lower-quality output than otherwise, and (2) nobody cares that you released some bad songs if you also released some good songs. I read a fun paper documenting this very effect (the first one) in a college pottery class. One class was told the grading procedure would be as follows: 1. Over the course of the term, you make some pots. It's up to you. 2. Turn in all your pots at the end of the term. 3. The instructor will evaluate your pots for quality, and you will receive a grade accordingly. A second class was told they'd be graded like so: 1. Over the course of the term, you make some pots. It's up to you. 2. Turn in all your pots at the end of the term. 3. The instructor will never look at your pots. They will be smashed into tiny shards, and your shards will be weighed. Your grade will be based on the weight of your accumulated pots after they are destroyed. More is better. In fact, the pots in group two were evaluated for quality just like group one. Students in group two produced more pots. They also produced better pots.
    - eecc 6y ago
      The analogy is mildly inconsistent with what the OP was complaining about. The complaint is about the market being submerged with low quality knock-offs and automatically made products. The pottery story doesn’t apply because there’s no artistic craft learning curve involved in mindlessly running the tools. Also, it’s not justified to assume artists didn’t practice and produce early iterations e between public releases.
      - thaumasiotes 6y ago
        > Also, it’s not justified to assume artists didn’t practice and produce early iterations e between public releases. So what? Where did I make that assumption? I'm assuming some combination of these two factors: 1. If you have three public releases, you probably put in more work overall than if you had only two public releases. 2. There are diminishing returns to polishing a song, such that the same amount of work is more productive spent on two songs than it is spent on a single song.
- iamacyborg 6y ago
  The problem is the payment model. Even if all I listen to on Spotify are indies, my money will end up in the pockets of Ed Sheeran, Beyonce, etc. This article sheds some light on the issue https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/should-spotify-change-the-way-it-pays-artists-763986/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/should-spo...
  - rossmohax 6y ago
    Do you know if any streamin service implements user-centric payment model?
    - iamacyborg 6y ago
      I don't know unfortunately, but please let me know if you find one.
      - apecat 6y ago
        Deezer has reportedly been trying to switch. Not sure how it's going https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/deezer-launches-initiative-for-user-centric-approach-to-distribute-royalties-883310/ https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/deezer-launches-initia...
        iamacyborg 6y ago
        Nice, thanks!
    - grawprog 6y ago
      Not so much a streaming service, but I use bandcamp for any artists I listen to on the platform. They take a 10-15% cut on sales, but sales go to the artist otherwise.
LudwigNagasena 6y ago
What if there are simply not enough people who enjoy this sort of music enough to be ready to pay for it? Maybe the problem is not that it is hard for non-mainstream music to find its supporters. Maybe the problem is that non-mainstream musicians are deluded to think they have enough supporters to make a living off their music. Even YouTubers that produce free content can make a living off Patreon. Even some podcasters can.
- breakfastduck 6y ago
  Yes, but pre streaming and piracy the only way to listen to music from these artists was to pay for it. They just need to change the model. A Youtuber doesn't have 80% of their earnings go to a record label.
- kace91 6y ago
  There is enough people who enjoy it, however; the proof is that those artists used to be able to make a living through their followers in the past. The issue is that attention is a scarce resource, and the means to keep it through market formulas and analysis of trends have become way too effective. Artists are now in a race to the bottom where they have to choose between playing the game, and changing their style, message and work to chase engagement metrics, or resign themselves to be drowned and forgotten for staying "real" Youtubers suffer the same fate. You can see people moving from tech reviews to game streaming and then to music production or vlogging in their search for views. But they (most of them) are more businessmen than artists, and don't feel tied to a message or artistic vision that they need to communicate. I'd argue that an ideal system should have a place for artistic quality to shine beyond entertainment, and that used to happen, at least to a higher degree than it does now. Which is not to say that everything's worse: the tools to become a creator are better and more accessible than ever (hardware, resources to learn, etc).

by kace91 6y ago

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

Do we know if it has actually constrained supply? As far as I can tell there is an effectively limitless amount of new music to listen to in almost any genre you could pick. I just searched for one genre and I found no less than a hundred new albums this year. https://theboot.com/new-music-rundown-country-americana-bluegrass-folk-albums-coming-in-2020/ https://theboot.com/new-music-rundown-country-americana-blue... I think this is not exhaustive because most of the names I spot checked have produced chart topping singles or won industry-wide awards.

vkou 6y ago

> All the non-mainstream music makes I follow since I was a teenager complain that music has never been in a harder place in terms of making money off of it. Apparently their piece of the cake has massively reduced. This should be expected, given that the amount of artists making commercial non-mainstream music has skyrocketed. The pie has gotten bigger, and the non-mainstream share of the pie has gotten bigger, but there's a lot more people fighting over its scraps.

riffraff 6y ago
This is what I also believe but I haven't seen data that shows it (as in: I have actually seen none, not that I have seen it showing the opposite), do you know of any?
lloeki 6y ago
Lots of friends and my very own wife are musicians, their take on it is that to be competitive on Spotify and such, you have to produce content so regularly that quality is diluted. There’s a whole market of tool-assisted beat and melody makers that build and curate then offer these for sell for artists to buy. The whole process is heavily industrialised, tools allow the maker to produce dozens of such bricks a day, basically bruteforcing a whole space, but everything resembles everything else, diluted to no end, channeling the money stream and bleeding the “old way” creators to death. Albums have been dying for a while already, even EPs are barely living corpses in this attention grabbing landscape. Even for singles there’s just no way to mature ideas and create truly creative content in an amount of time that allows to keep up pace and make money through these platforms. So they stay on the local scene, which is being obliterated by COVID.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > their take on it is that to be competitive on Spotify and such, you have to produce content so regularly that quality is diluted. I think this idea is misguided. The more music you produce, the more good music you produce. Trying to keep average quality up by restricting production is counterproductive in two separate ways; (1) it ends up causing you to produce lower-quality output than otherwise, and (2) nobody cares that you released some bad songs if you also released some good songs. I read a fun paper documenting this very effect (the first one) in a college pottery class. One class was told the grading procedure would be as follows: 1. Over the course of the term, you make some pots. It's up to you. 2. Turn in all your pots at the end of the term. 3. The instructor will evaluate your pots for quality, and you will receive a grade accordingly. A second class was told they'd be graded like so: 1. Over the course of the term, you make some pots. It's up to you. 2. Turn in all your pots at the end of the term. 3. The instructor will never look at your pots. They will be smashed into tiny shards, and your shards will be weighed. Your grade will be based on the weight of your accumulated pots after they are destroyed. More is better. In fact, the pots in group two were evaluated for quality just like group one. Students in group two produced more pots. They also produced better pots.
  - eecc 6y ago
    The analogy is mildly inconsistent with what the OP was complaining about. The complaint is about the market being submerged with low quality knock-offs and automatically made products. The pottery story doesn’t apply because there’s no artistic craft learning curve involved in mindlessly running the tools. Also, it’s not justified to assume artists didn’t practice and produce early iterations e between public releases.
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      > Also, it’s not justified to assume artists didn’t practice and produce early iterations e between public releases. So what? Where did I make that assumption? I'm assuming some combination of these two factors: 1. If you have three public releases, you probably put in more work overall than if you had only two public releases. 2. There are diminishing returns to polishing a song, such that the same amount of work is more productive spent on two songs than it is spent on a single song.
iamacyborg 6y ago
The problem is the payment model. Even if all I listen to on Spotify are indies, my money will end up in the pockets of Ed Sheeran, Beyonce, etc. This article sheds some light on the issue https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/should-spotify-change-the-way-it-pays-artists-763986/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/should-spo...
- rossmohax 6y ago
  Do you know if any streamin service implements user-centric payment model?
  - iamacyborg 6y ago
    I don't know unfortunately, but please let me know if you find one.
    - apecat 6y ago
      Deezer has reportedly been trying to switch. Not sure how it's going https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/deezer-launches-initiative-for-user-centric-approach-to-distribute-royalties-883310/ https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/deezer-launches-initia...
      - iamacyborg 6y ago
        Nice, thanks!
  - grawprog 6y ago
    Not so much a streaming service, but I use bandcamp for any artists I listen to on the platform. They take a 10-15% cut on sales, but sales go to the artist otherwise.

LudwigNagasena 6y ago

What if there are simply not enough people who enjoy this sort of music enough to be ready to pay for it? Maybe the problem is not that it is hard for non-mainstream music to find its supporters. Maybe the problem is that non-mainstream musicians are deluded to think they have enough supporters to make a living off their music. Even YouTubers that produce free content can make a living off Patreon. Even some podcasters can.

breakfastduck 6y ago
Yes, but pre streaming and piracy the only way to listen to music from these artists was to pay for it. They just need to change the model. A Youtuber doesn't have 80% of their earnings go to a record label.
kace91 6y ago
There is enough people who enjoy it, however; the proof is that those artists used to be able to make a living through their followers in the past. The issue is that attention is a scarce resource, and the means to keep it through market formulas and analysis of trends have become way too effective. Artists are now in a race to the bottom where they have to choose between playing the game, and changing their style, message and work to chase engagement metrics, or resign themselves to be drowned and forgotten for staying "real" Youtubers suffer the same fate. You can see people moving from tech reviews to game streaming and then to music production or vlogging in their search for views. But they (most of them) are more businessmen than artists, and don't feel tied to a message or artistic vision that they need to communicate. I'd argue that an ideal system should have a place for artistic quality to shine beyond entertainment, and that used to happen, at least to a higher degree than it does now. Which is not to say that everything's worse: the tools to become a creator are better and more accessible than ever (hardware, resources to learn, etc).