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I like how they've even managed to shove the middleman bullshit into digital distribution, where there's practically no way to even justify it. You can't just

I like how they've even managed to shove the middleman bullshit into digital distribution, where there's practically no way to even justify it. You can't just upload music to Spotify or Apple Music or whatever as an independent artist. You need to pay rent to a distributor who is allowed to interact with the streaming service. (Some of them offer the convenient feature of administering royalties for cover songs, but it's an additional cost and not a given...) Most will probably never make enough royalties to cover the fees. Then you have the whole growing SubmitHub thing. (Pay for consideration on playlists to get exposure.)

IndySun 3y ago
Who are 'they'?
sethhochberg 3y ago
I do wonder how much the influence of the distributors has helped the streaming music world avoid the problems of the streaming movie/TV providers, where content rights are usually exclusive and it’s almost impossible to be an indie service The blessing of the way the music side is set up is that if you want to be an indie streaming music company, you can, you just need to contract with a critical mass of the big distribution houses and royalty reporting agencies and you’ll be able to play pretty much anything your customers might want to hear. If that didn’t exist, nobody would bother uploading their music to anyone but the giant incumbents like Spotify and Apple
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nucleardog 3y ago
Worked with a company that did stuff like that for a while. My view on it (take it for what you will) is those companies exist mainly as a way for the streaming platforms to outsource and scale their quality control/checks. The expectation from platforms like Spotify was basically that anything we sent over can go up without further review and that it added value to the platform, didn’t violate copyright law, was appropriately encoded, etc. If we let anything they rejected or later found issues with through, our status as a distributor was at risk. I expect if Spotify had to staff and scale to deal with the garbage our users were trying, they would end up charging enough extra that you’d pay the same anyway. Basing that mostly on the fact that we weren’t really making much money.
theoriginaldog 3y ago
huh? A friend of mine is an independent musician and he uploads his song on the platforms directly without a middleman, at least on spotify.
- extraduder_ire 3y ago
  One or two years ago, they started requiring you to be a label or something to start uploading. Before that, individuals could join and start publishing their own music, and I assume everyone already in was grandfathered.

IndySun 3y ago

Who are 'they'?

sethhochberg 3y ago

I do wonder how much the influence of the distributors has helped the streaming music world avoid the problems of the streaming movie/TV providers, where content rights are usually exclusive and it’s almost impossible to be an indie service The blessing of the way the music side is set up is that if you want to be an indie streaming music company, you can, you just need to contract with a critical mass of the big distribution houses and royalty reporting agencies and you’ll be able to play pretty much anything your customers might want to hear. If that didn’t exist, nobody would bother uploading their music to anyone but the giant incumbents like Spotify and Apple

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nucleardog 3y ago

Worked with a company that did stuff like that for a while. My view on it (take it for what you will) is those companies exist mainly as a way for the streaming platforms to outsource and scale their quality control/checks. The expectation from platforms like Spotify was basically that anything we sent over can go up without further review and that it added value to the platform, didn’t violate copyright law, was appropriately encoded, etc. If we let anything they rejected or later found issues with through, our status as a distributor was at risk. I expect if Spotify had to staff and scale to deal with the garbage our users were trying, they would end up charging enough extra that you’d pay the same anyway. Basing that mostly on the fact that we weren’t really making much money.

theoriginaldog 3y ago

huh? A friend of mine is an independent musician and he uploads his song on the platforms directly without a middleman, at least on spotify.

extraduder_ire 3y ago
One or two years ago, they started requiring you to be a label or something to start uploading. Before that, individuals could join and start publishing their own music, and I assume everyone already in was grandfathered.