8 ms·

Spotify responds to Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich criticism

43 points by balbaugh 13y ago

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
balbaugh 13y ago
Boilerplate response. One would think that they would want to nip this in the but. At least cite some specifics, there are clearly lots out there... Writing or speaking about streaming music screwing artists? Read these articles first http://musically.com/2013/02/13/streaming-music-screwing-artists/ http://musically.com/2013/02/13/streaming-music-screwing-art...
rwhitman 13y ago
Lately I consume my music almost entirely via Spotify, and its increasingly apparent that there are a number of artists I love who are not a part of their catalog. As a consumer its frustrating, but then again I'm using the free service... I really wonder what the future holds for cloud based entertainment in this regard. I now consume all entertainment via cloud services and Netflix / Hulu etc have very similar if not worse problems when it comes to movie and TV catalogs. You'd think that now we're several years into it that these problems would have ironed themselves out by now, but it seems to be getting worse. For the consumers we're all just screwed
- balbaugh 13y ago
  One of my biggest fears, as someone who enjoys such wide access to music, is that the number of services will increase to such a large a number and result in such catalog segmentation that I will have to be a member of numerous streaming services to actually listen to what I want. Maybe this is the what is needed, though? Each major has their own service? Each independent label or groups thereof then do the same? One interesting service I have seen lately is http://drip.fm/ http://drip.fm/ I am really curious as to the success of it so far.
  - criley2 13y ago
    >One of my biggest fears, as someone who enjoys such wide access to music, is that the number of services will increase to such a large a number and result in such catalog segmentation that I will have to be a member of numerous streaming services to actually listen to what I want. As someone who enjoys playing games, it's frustrating to find that my games are fragmented between multiple cloud providers (Steam/Desura/Origin/UPlay), non-cloud middle-men like GoG/Amazon/HumbleStore and no provider at all, in the case of direct downloads from a games site. It's very frustrating that I have zero perspective of my library as a whole, and frequently lose lesser played titles depending on where in the chain they started.
- meritt 13y ago
  I subscribed to spotify premium for a year and a half but recently cancelled my subscription and went to a competitor. I feel the UI/UX quality of the desktop version has degraded significantly and they are actually removing features as opposed to adding them. Basic things like: drag-n-drop sharing with friends, my friends list was replaced with people suggested to follow, still no outbox for songs I sent, no back button on "radio" stations nor a way to see the radio playlist/history, new UI for albums/artists/songs is horrible, Ctrl+F to quickly filter items in current result set was removed for some reason, no fuzzy search capability, etc. I'm not sure what userbase Spotify is targeting but it's one I am clearly no longer a member.
  - koueri 13y ago
    Out of curiosity, which competitor did you move to?
    - aroch 13y ago
      I would guess rdio
      - sterlingross 13y ago
        Or Google Play.
    - meritt 13y ago
      It's Google Play for now. Great desktop (when chrome is in --app mode) app, pretty abysmal android app. It's not without its faults either. I did't mention the competitor because my primary complaint was to raise more awareness about the things Spotify could fix to bring me (and others) back as customers -- Not to drive business to someone else.
      - koueri 13y ago
        Sure, understood. I appreciate the heads up, though - I'm in a similar position, myself. A bit of a tangent, but I'm also having some issues swallowing the "pay for a license" pill in a lot of respects, e.g. Spotify and Steam (of course, we all do it anyway), so if there's a chance to continue to do that but also own things, or otherwise move away from that ephemeral type of usage, then I'm interested, so always interested to learn more about alternative products.
- EnderMB 13y ago
  A friend of mine set their Dad up on Spotify instead of listening to music through YouTube. She said to him that he could listen to anything he wanted using Spotify. The first thing he searched for was The Beatles, one of a number of popular groups that aren't on Spotify, and probably will never be. I had a similar issue when looking for Jimmy Eat World's cover of Take 'Em As They Come, by Bruce Springsteen. It was released as a bonus track for those that bought their album through iTunes. However, that album is no longer on iTunes, and the track itself cannot be bought anywhere else. My only choice was to find an mp3. It's these gaps that bring people back to piracy. Anything that someone cannot find on Spotify will be torrented or ripped from elsewhere.
joshSimms 13y ago
I have to respect Thom Yorke's decision. These services only have their own profit in mind and do not come even close to fairly compensating artists. Thom's work is pretty niche to begin with and he probably doesn't see more than a few hundred dollars a month from streaming. For the number of plays he gets, this is probably not worth his time. Plus, hipsters love it when their bands turn down mainstream services. Makes them edgy and exclusive. This is a good business move for them
ThomPete 13y ago
It's an ironic fact of history that the easier it has become to be an artist the more entitled these artists feel like. Everyone else is forced to change their business models to just make a reasonable amount of money but somehow musicians feel like they should be exempt from this phenomena. The reality is that it has never been easier to make money, just not as many as you used to. The people they should complain to is the record labels not Spotify. They are the ones taking the big cuts without providing any value. Spotify is fundamentally a radio station with a few fundamental diferences. So welcome to the digital economy. It's not easy but at least you can make money performing. A luxury most other in this economy don't have.
- tptacek 13y ago
  Nobody is forced to change business models the way artists are forced to change business models. Other business models are obsoleted by market substitutes. But that's not what happens to Radiohead; people don't listen to Radiohead substitutes, but instead effectively coerce Radiohead itself into providing its offering to them for free. The core leverage Spotify has over artists is, at root, piracy.
  - ThomPete 13y ago
    Then so are radios. Artists are only forced to do what they did in the beginning, namely performing. They can do that on top of selling for scale. They have been fortunate enough being one of the first industries that got to take advantage of the scaleability technology has allowed for. There is no natural born right to make a lot of money from recording once and then reselling the same piece without any additional cost. Thousands of brilliant musicians never got a record deal when the record labels where the gatekeeper, now everyone has a shot. But everything comes with a price and so does this opportunity.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      No, radios are not analogous; artists can refuse to have their songs played on the radio, but cannot effectively refuse to have their work pirated. There are no natural born rights to anything. In the state of nature, humans contend not with audio licensing but with not being eaten by bears or having their heads split open by other humans. Past that, everything is a question of the social contract, and in our social contract, you are usually not entitled to consume the fruits of someone else's labor on your own unilaterally defined terms. The same logic you use to entitle yourself to download music without the artist or owner's permission is the logic I could use to entitle myself to download your application's database.
Yhippa 13y ago
What is the inherent value of a listen (as in, of a song)? I assume the music industry has been trying to prop that up but with the democratization of musical content creation that price has to have been driven down. I've heard new music from new bands that I wouldn't have had a chance to in the 90's. There are so many songs to listen to on Spotify that I can generally find something to listen to nowadays. If some artist I like withholds their catalog that does hurt me initially. I adapt and move on and listen to something else. Their loss.
l1ghtm4n 13y ago
Musician, Spotify user, and Radiohead fan here. Spotify fulfills my dream of working in a record store so I can spend all day discovering music. This argument is behind the scenes paperwork between the service and the content owners. They should figure it out without bothering me the end user. If they can't, then they're both at fault.
SolarUpNote 13y ago
I'd love to see a feature that showed how much I've personally paid to each band I've listened to.
iamben 13y ago
Whilst I don't see this being resolved any time soon, the whole thing is getting a little stale. It's the major record labels and the artists who've had (often big) pre Internet successes that are complaining the loudest. Things change (for some better, for some worse) - but you have to adapt and get on with it. Artists are still making (and enjoying making) music and labels are still releasing music. The ones that go the furthest are the ones that embrace the situation, take advantage of it and work towards making the most of it. Hell, a lot of the younger artists and labels don't know any different.
rlu 13y ago
I pretty much exclusively use Spotify to listen to music. It's incredibly convenient. I love it. It annoys me when artists decide not to participate. With Radiohead I at least 'kinda get it' in that their new album is a pay-your-price album, so sure whatever, fine. But for example, Taylor Swift's Red album is not there. What does she want me to do? Buy it on iTunes?? No thanks. If anything, it might make me want to pirate it. What Spotify should do for these cases is what Xbox Music already does. If the song is not available for free (a-la Radiohead, or Taylor Swift) then you can purchase it just like on iTunes. Except that you get the benefit that it acts like any other song on their free catalog (syncing playlists etc. etc. etc.) The only problem I see with this is that if it becomes an option, what would make an artist want to go the free route rather than the "pay to have" route? Then again, Xbox Music seems to be doing fine. Everything that is free on Spotify is free on Xbox Music (+ some others) and then Xbox Music gets the advantage in that many songs which just are not on Spotify are at least able to be purchased for ~1 dollar on Xbox Music.
- tunesmith 13y ago
  I'm having trouble understanding your comment - because you explain exactly why artists would choose not to participate if there is a "paid" option, but then you say it annoys you when artists decide not to participate. Why does it annoy you? Spotify has a discovery benefit, but it also robs track/cd sales. This is in contrast to something like Pandora, where the discovery aspect is just gravy, and a person still has to buy the tracks to listen on demand. If an artist is being rational, they compare the discovery benefit to the track sales loss, and act accordingly. If a fan begrudges that choice to the extent of feeling justified in pirating, then what does that say about the fan? Spotify is actually complicit in reinforcing this attitude.
  - chadillac83 13y ago
    Maybe the happy medium is cutting the labels out of the deal, allowing artists to self publish on the platform and see larger cuts of the proceeds for their contribution to the network. $500/m and $1/bn aren't exactly chump change until you realize the artists are getting tiny percentages of those payouts. If Spotify were to offer a convenient distribution platform and enticing terms to ditch labels and self publish the might find a sweet spot. That being said, piracy is popular because it's easy and free, the artists aren't competing against it because everyone's a pirate, they're competing against it because it's a more convenient alternative. Skip out on the most popular platform and your fans will adopt the alternative with a path of least resistance.
zavulon 13y ago
This is not new. Spotify have been screwing artists for a long time. "Got paid £8 for 90,000 plays. Fuck spotify." https://twitter.com/Jon_Hopkins_/status/137147753829646336 https://twitter.com/Jon_Hopkins_/status/137147753829646336
alexvr 13y ago
What does this mean for In Rainbows on Rdio? It's basically the reason I subscribed.
kayoone 13y ago
Its kind of the same problem like pirating video games for example. People dont pirate games they really want to have, they pirate those they wouldnt be buying anyway..most atleast. For music its the same for me.. I might listen to the Radiohead stuff on spotify (which i pay for). But would i pay for it if they take it away ? No.
- chrischen 13y ago
  Do you have the data to back up that claim? Last I checked, there aren't any true communist societies out there and the ones closest to communism aren't doing too well... You're basically making the claim that if people were left to freely choose, they will automatically pay the fair price for things they want?
  - kayoone 13y ago
    No i am not. I am making the claim that most people that use something for free would not pay to use it if it wasnt as seen in countless fremium paying user percentages.
    - tunesmith 13y ago
      It's the same cost/benefit calculation I point out below. For services like spotify (and I'm specifically referring to the part of the service where you can choose to play a specific song), there is cost to an artist, in lost sales. Meaning, people who would normally buy a cd/track, and who do not since they listen to it on spotify. I think people can agree this cost is not zero - some sales definitely are lost - but they'll argue the magnitude of the cost. There is also a benefit in terms of discovery. This is the streaming revenue, plus the sales that come from discovery. I think people can agree the benefit is above zero - discovery does happen - but they'll again argue magnitude. The question is whether the discovery benefit outweighs the cost. There are widely varying opinions on this, and it can really only be answered with data rather than by someone's strong opinion. It's also tricky question to test because I think the counterfactuals may be impossible. How do you simultaneously test the success of a song on Spotify, and the exact same song not on Spotify? Maybe an artist with two equally popular cds could put one on Spotify and not the other and see what happens for a rough approximation, but I'm not sure. I'd love to hear more thoughts on ways this calculation can be approximately measured.
bluthru 13y ago
Spotfiy et. al need to evolve to cut out the middle man. Just as app developers can publish directly into the App Store, musicians need to own their work and publish it directly to different marketplaces.
- tommi 13y ago
  Funny how you would take App Store as an example of cutting out the middle man. App Store has been more about changing the middle man from multiple publishers on the market to just one.
  - bluthru 13y ago
    Good point. I guess I mean cutting out one of the middle men. As it is now with music there are two middle men: The publisher and the store. Publishers are getting decent money from streaming services, so that would be nice if it went directly to the artists.
- CoachRufus87 13y ago
  The middle man isn't imposed by Spotify. It's the few record labels to which many artists are signed to.

43 points by balbaugh 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Boilerplate response. One would think that they would want to nip this in the but. At least cite some specifics, there are clearly lots out there... Writing or speaking about streaming music screwing artists? Read these articles first http://musically.com/2013/02/13/streaming-music-screwing-artists/ http://musically.com/2013/02/13/streaming-music-screwing-art...

rwhitman 13y ago

Lately I consume my music almost entirely via Spotify, and its increasingly apparent that there are a number of artists I love who are not a part of their catalog. As a consumer its frustrating, but then again I'm using the free service... I really wonder what the future holds for cloud based entertainment in this regard. I now consume all entertainment via cloud services and Netflix / Hulu etc have very similar if not worse problems when it comes to movie and TV catalogs. You'd think that now we're several years into it that these problems would have ironed themselves out by now, but it seems to be getting worse. For the consumers we're all just screwed

balbaugh 13y ago
One of my biggest fears, as someone who enjoys such wide access to music, is that the number of services will increase to such a large a number and result in such catalog segmentation that I will have to be a member of numerous streaming services to actually listen to what I want. Maybe this is the what is needed, though? Each major has their own service? Each independent label or groups thereof then do the same? One interesting service I have seen lately is http://drip.fm/ http://drip.fm/ I am really curious as to the success of it so far.
- criley2 13y ago
  >One of my biggest fears, as someone who enjoys such wide access to music, is that the number of services will increase to such a large a number and result in such catalog segmentation that I will have to be a member of numerous streaming services to actually listen to what I want. As someone who enjoys playing games, it's frustrating to find that my games are fragmented between multiple cloud providers (Steam/Desura/Origin/UPlay), non-cloud middle-men like GoG/Amazon/HumbleStore and no provider at all, in the case of direct downloads from a games site. It's very frustrating that I have zero perspective of my library as a whole, and frequently lose lesser played titles depending on where in the chain they started.
meritt 13y ago
I subscribed to spotify premium for a year and a half but recently cancelled my subscription and went to a competitor. I feel the UI/UX quality of the desktop version has degraded significantly and they are actually removing features as opposed to adding them. Basic things like: drag-n-drop sharing with friends, my friends list was replaced with people suggested to follow, still no outbox for songs I sent, no back button on "radio" stations nor a way to see the radio playlist/history, new UI for albums/artists/songs is horrible, Ctrl+F to quickly filter items in current result set was removed for some reason, no fuzzy search capability, etc. I'm not sure what userbase Spotify is targeting but it's one I am clearly no longer a member.
- koueri 13y ago
  Out of curiosity, which competitor did you move to?
  - aroch 13y ago
    I would guess rdio
    - sterlingross 13y ago
      Or Google Play.
  - meritt 13y ago
    It's Google Play for now. Great desktop (when chrome is in --app mode) app, pretty abysmal android app. It's not without its faults either. I did't mention the competitor because my primary complaint was to raise more awareness about the things Spotify could fix to bring me (and others) back as customers -- Not to drive business to someone else.
    - koueri 13y ago
      Sure, understood. I appreciate the heads up, though - I'm in a similar position, myself. A bit of a tangent, but I'm also having some issues swallowing the "pay for a license" pill in a lot of respects, e.g. Spotify and Steam (of course, we all do it anyway), so if there's a chance to continue to do that but also own things, or otherwise move away from that ephemeral type of usage, then I'm interested, so always interested to learn more about alternative products.
EnderMB 13y ago
A friend of mine set their Dad up on Spotify instead of listening to music through YouTube. She said to him that he could listen to anything he wanted using Spotify. The first thing he searched for was The Beatles, one of a number of popular groups that aren't on Spotify, and probably will never be. I had a similar issue when looking for Jimmy Eat World's cover of Take 'Em As They Come, by Bruce Springsteen. It was released as a bonus track for those that bought their album through iTunes. However, that album is no longer on iTunes, and the track itself cannot be bought anywhere else. My only choice was to find an mp3. It's these gaps that bring people back to piracy. Anything that someone cannot find on Spotify will be torrented or ripped from elsewhere.

joshSimms 13y ago

I have to respect Thom Yorke's decision. These services only have their own profit in mind and do not come even close to fairly compensating artists. Thom's work is pretty niche to begin with and he probably doesn't see more than a few hundred dollars a month from streaming. For the number of plays he gets, this is probably not worth his time. Plus, hipsters love it when their bands turn down mainstream services. Makes them edgy and exclusive. This is a good business move for them

ThomPete 13y ago

It's an ironic fact of history that the easier it has become to be an artist the more entitled these artists feel like. Everyone else is forced to change their business models to just make a reasonable amount of money but somehow musicians feel like they should be exempt from this phenomena. The reality is that it has never been easier to make money, just not as many as you used to. The people they should complain to is the record labels not Spotify. They are the ones taking the big cuts without providing any value. Spotify is fundamentally a radio station with a few fundamental diferences. So welcome to the digital economy. It's not easy but at least you can make money performing. A luxury most other in this economy don't have.

tptacek 13y ago
Nobody is forced to change business models the way artists are forced to change business models. Other business models are obsoleted by market substitutes. But that's not what happens to Radiohead; people don't listen to Radiohead substitutes, but instead effectively coerce Radiohead itself into providing its offering to them for free. The core leverage Spotify has over artists is, at root, piracy.
- ThomPete 13y ago
  Then so are radios. Artists are only forced to do what they did in the beginning, namely performing. They can do that on top of selling for scale. They have been fortunate enough being one of the first industries that got to take advantage of the scaleability technology has allowed for. There is no natural born right to make a lot of money from recording once and then reselling the same piece without any additional cost. Thousands of brilliant musicians never got a record deal when the record labels where the gatekeeper, now everyone has a shot. But everything comes with a price and so does this opportunity.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    No, radios are not analogous; artists can refuse to have their songs played on the radio, but cannot effectively refuse to have their work pirated. There are no natural born rights to anything. In the state of nature, humans contend not with audio licensing but with not being eaten by bears or having their heads split open by other humans. Past that, everything is a question of the social contract, and in our social contract, you are usually not entitled to consume the fruits of someone else's labor on your own unilaterally defined terms. The same logic you use to entitle yourself to download music without the artist or owner's permission is the logic I could use to entitle myself to download your application's database.

Yhippa 13y ago

What is the inherent value of a listen (as in, of a song)? I assume the music industry has been trying to prop that up but with the democratization of musical content creation that price has to have been driven down. I've heard new music from new bands that I wouldn't have had a chance to in the 90's. There are so many songs to listen to on Spotify that I can generally find something to listen to nowadays. If some artist I like withholds their catalog that does hurt me initially. I adapt and move on and listen to something else. Their loss.

l1ghtm4n 13y ago

Musician, Spotify user, and Radiohead fan here. Spotify fulfills my dream of working in a record store so I can spend all day discovering music. This argument is behind the scenes paperwork between the service and the content owners. They should figure it out without bothering me the end user. If they can't, then they're both at fault.

SolarUpNote 13y ago

I'd love to see a feature that showed how much I've personally paid to each band I've listened to.

iamben 13y ago

Whilst I don't see this being resolved any time soon, the whole thing is getting a little stale. It's the major record labels and the artists who've had (often big) pre Internet successes that are complaining the loudest. Things change (for some better, for some worse) - but you have to adapt and get on with it. Artists are still making (and enjoying making) music and labels are still releasing music. The ones that go the furthest are the ones that embrace the situation, take advantage of it and work towards making the most of it. Hell, a lot of the younger artists and labels don't know any different.

rlu 13y ago

I pretty much exclusively use Spotify to listen to music. It's incredibly convenient. I love it. It annoys me when artists decide not to participate. With Radiohead I at least 'kinda get it' in that their new album is a pay-your-price album, so sure whatever, fine. But for example, Taylor Swift's Red album is not there. What does she want me to do? Buy it on iTunes?? No thanks. If anything, it might make me want to pirate it. What Spotify should do for these cases is what Xbox Music already does. If the song is not available for free (a-la Radiohead, or Taylor Swift) then you can purchase it just like on iTunes. Except that you get the benefit that it acts like any other song on their free catalog (syncing playlists etc. etc. etc.) The only problem I see with this is that if it becomes an option, what would make an artist want to go the free route rather than the "pay to have" route? Then again, Xbox Music seems to be doing fine. Everything that is free on Spotify is free on Xbox Music (+ some others) and then Xbox Music gets the advantage in that many songs which just are not on Spotify are at least able to be purchased for ~1 dollar on Xbox Music.

tunesmith 13y ago
I'm having trouble understanding your comment - because you explain exactly why artists would choose not to participate if there is a "paid" option, but then you say it annoys you when artists decide not to participate. Why does it annoy you? Spotify has a discovery benefit, but it also robs track/cd sales. This is in contrast to something like Pandora, where the discovery aspect is just gravy, and a person still has to buy the tracks to listen on demand. If an artist is being rational, they compare the discovery benefit to the track sales loss, and act accordingly. If a fan begrudges that choice to the extent of feeling justified in pirating, then what does that say about the fan? Spotify is actually complicit in reinforcing this attitude.
- chadillac83 13y ago
  Maybe the happy medium is cutting the labels out of the deal, allowing artists to self publish on the platform and see larger cuts of the proceeds for their contribution to the network. $500/m and $1/bn aren't exactly chump change until you realize the artists are getting tiny percentages of those payouts. If Spotify were to offer a convenient distribution platform and enticing terms to ditch labels and self publish the might find a sweet spot. That being said, piracy is popular because it's easy and free, the artists aren't competing against it because everyone's a pirate, they're competing against it because it's a more convenient alternative. Skip out on the most popular platform and your fans will adopt the alternative with a path of least resistance.

zavulon 13y ago

This is not new. Spotify have been screwing artists for a long time. "Got paid £8 for 90,000 plays. Fuck spotify." https://twitter.com/Jon_Hopkins_/status/137147753829646336 https://twitter.com/Jon_Hopkins_/status/137147753829646336

alexvr 13y ago

What does this mean for In Rainbows on Rdio? It's basically the reason I subscribed.

kayoone 13y ago

Its kind of the same problem like pirating video games for example. People dont pirate games they really want to have, they pirate those they wouldnt be buying anyway..most atleast. For music its the same for me.. I might listen to the Radiohead stuff on spotify (which i pay for). But would i pay for it if they take it away ? No.

chrischen 13y ago
Do you have the data to back up that claim? Last I checked, there aren't any true communist societies out there and the ones closest to communism aren't doing too well... You're basically making the claim that if people were left to freely choose, they will automatically pay the fair price for things they want?
- kayoone 13y ago
  No i am not. I am making the claim that most people that use something for free would not pay to use it if it wasnt as seen in countless fremium paying user percentages.
  - tunesmith 13y ago
    It's the same cost/benefit calculation I point out below. For services like spotify (and I'm specifically referring to the part of the service where you can choose to play a specific song), there is cost to an artist, in lost sales. Meaning, people who would normally buy a cd/track, and who do not since they listen to it on spotify. I think people can agree this cost is not zero - some sales definitely are lost - but they'll argue the magnitude of the cost. There is also a benefit in terms of discovery. This is the streaming revenue, plus the sales that come from discovery. I think people can agree the benefit is above zero - discovery does happen - but they'll again argue magnitude. The question is whether the discovery benefit outweighs the cost. There are widely varying opinions on this, and it can really only be answered with data rather than by someone's strong opinion. It's also tricky question to test because I think the counterfactuals may be impossible. How do you simultaneously test the success of a song on Spotify, and the exact same song not on Spotify? Maybe an artist with two equally popular cds could put one on Spotify and not the other and see what happens for a rough approximation, but I'm not sure. I'd love to hear more thoughts on ways this calculation can be approximately measured.

bluthru 13y ago

Spotfiy et. al need to evolve to cut out the middle man. Just as app developers can publish directly into the App Store, musicians need to own their work and publish it directly to different marketplaces.

tommi 13y ago
Funny how you would take App Store as an example of cutting out the middle man. App Store has been more about changing the middle man from multiple publishers on the market to just one.
- bluthru 13y ago
  Good point. I guess I mean cutting out one of the middle men. As it is now with music there are two middle men: The publisher and the store. Publishers are getting decent money from streaming services, so that would be nice if it went directly to the artists.
CoachRufus87 13y ago
The middle man isn't imposed by Spotify. It's the few record labels to which many artists are signed to.