7 ms·

I love Spotify. It actually revived my joy in doing anything really. I've kind of grown bored of life, of coding, of anything. Music is the one thing that I am

by rfnslyr 13y ago

I love Spotify. It actually revived my joy in doing anything really. I've kind of grown bored of life, of coding, of anything. Music is the one thing that I am and will always remain passionate about. I'm Canadian, so getting Spotify running on all my mobile devices and my mac was tricky, especially with Premium, but I got it done. The ability to support artists, while discovering new ones, and not acquiring the material illegally is crazy awesome. I am discovering new artists day in and day out and it keeps life very exciting for me personally. I even got back into coding.

mphillips34 13y ago
can you expand on how you got Spotify as a Canadian? I've been wanting to do that for quite a while.
- rfnslyr 13y ago
  PAYMENT ------- 1. Use Hola Unblocker to initially view Spotify.com. 2. Register an account. 3. Disable Hola Unblocker as you only need it for registration. 4. Once registered, download Spotify. 5. Buy a gift card online (I used to maximuscards.com and jerrycards.com). 6. Redeem gift card on the website for your premium subscription. 7. Google "Latest Spotify APK". 8. Download "Easy Installer". 9. Open that Spotify APK with Easy Installer and install it. 10. Register a new itunes US account. 11. Login with it on your iPhone -> download Spotify and login. 12. Login back to your regular Canadian iCloud account. That's all.
- karnajani 13y ago
  Incase you're not looking specifically for Spotify, Rdio is available in Canada legally.
qq66 13y ago
It's great to listen legally, but keep in mind that the support artists receive is very small (all but the most popular musicians receive less than 40 hours of minimum wage from Spotify). If you like a few groups consider buying merchandise or making a donation.
- pionar 13y ago
  Wait, are you saying that artists rely just on Spotify for income? That would be foolhardy. I would think that Spotify would be just one small chunk in a wide portfolio of distribution channels. Also, artists have generally never been very richly paid on music sales. Touring and merch are where the money's always been.
  - wwweston 13y ago
    > Wait, are you saying that artists rely just on Spotify for income? That would be foolhardy. Well, yes. Since the entire premise of Spotify seems to be that we should pay broadcast royalty rates for a service that replaces recordings entirely, it would indeed be pretty foolish to rely on that. And in fact, some artists think it's so foolish they've realized its to their advantage not to participate. > I would think that Spotify would be just one small chunk in a wide portfolio of distribution channels. The problem being that once something's available on Spotify (or something like it), the structure of the service eliminates any access-incentive to look for it anywhere else. > Also, artists have generally never been very richly paid on music sales. Touring and merch are where the money's always been. This is pretty different from the history I'm familiar with -- touring supported/drove album sales for a long time, except for certain acts (huge like the Stones, jam-oriented like the Dead or Phish, or nostalgia focused). And people made a ton of money from recordings (though it wasn't always the artists because of gatekeepers). The reverse is often true now mostly because we entered a transition to a new format with the uptake getting waaay out ahead of the vendors and legit recording sales collapsed (and then, right as we started to see vendors come on board, we had the biggest economic contraction since the great depression). This isn't an inevitable trend, and revenue from recording sales this year is increasing again this year based largely digital sales increasing faster than physical sales are falling. And total revenue from recordings sales, while much smaller than what it was at its peak around 2000, is actually 50% more than it was at the beginning of the 1990s. We could yet see another golden age of recorded music. This time better in that digital albums are cheaper and, with a shorter distribution chain, people who make the music are often keeping more. At least, that's the potential. Unless we decide to go with buffet-streaming services that remove incentives to buy it. But maybe that's the next step for our culture: if art can't be supported by t-shirts and tchotchkes, it's not art that we should be economically encouraging, right?
kitsune_ 13y ago
They paid around $500 million in 2013. With 24 million users, that's $20.883 per user per year. To check this: According to Spotify, their 24 million users listened to 4.5 billion hours of music in 2013. This gives us 166.667 hours per user per year. If you take an average song length of 3.5 minutes, this results in 2857 plays per year, which, if you assume Spotify's number of $0.006 to $0.0084 (let's take 0.0072 USD) per stream, this results in 20.57 USD per user per year. Wow, very close, it indeed looks like a user generates around $20 per year. If the entire US population would use Spotify, this results in roughly $6.5 billion per year. Of course, that's a bit rubbish, let's use the amount of households in the US. Around 120 million. So that's more like $2.5 billion. If we assume an average household income of $45'000, this would support around 55'000 individual household incomes in the music industry (artists, studios, engineers, right holders and so on). Of course, since most money flows to the mega stars. It would support much fewer people. So let's take 31'400 people. Why? Because it goes well with the US population figure of 314 million. It's exactly 0.0001% of the US population. Still thinking about making a living with music?
- pathy 13y ago
  Music streaming (be it Spotify or otherwise) is not the only source of revenue for musicians though. Touring, Merch and so forth also generate revenue. That said, most musicians obviously cannot live off their music.
- brianmcc 13y ago
  0.01%, not 0.0001% surely? I.e. 1 in every 10,000.
- Bsharp 13y ago
  I'm going to assume the revenue numbers you mentioned are US numbers. The entire population isn't trying to be musicians - you're only competing with other musicians for that money. This website[1] offers various estimates for the number of active musicians, but the numbers are quite scattered due to the subjective and numerous definitions of "musician" (orchestra player doesn't need royalties, rock band member does, music teacher doesn't, etc.). I'm going to use the number of albums produced to determine the number of active musical acts who would get paid by Spotify, which according to the source was 76,875 in 2011, and one album per active musical act seems reasonable. Assuming that is a US number for conservatism (not a global number) then we get 76,875 active musical acts competing for your $2.5B. Since most musicians won't assume that they will become superstars, using the 80/20 rule we'll chop off the top 20% of active musical acts and the top 80% of the revenue (which imo is probably most artists that anyone knows) to get 61,500 musical acts competing for $500M. Now lets assume 3 musicians collecting royalties per musical act (seems reasonable, lots of 4-5 member bands, lots of solo artists, conservative) for a total of 184,500 musicians competing for that $500M. $500M supports 11,111 people under your $45,000/year income assumption, meaning 6% of the bottom 80% of active musicians would get a livable income from Spotify alone. As other posters have pointed out, musicians have many other sources of income such as other streaming services, touring, record sales, merch, etc. So yes, since you have a 6% chance of earning a livable income from a singular source of music streaming while being in the bottom 80% of active musicians royalty-wise, I'd say it's definitely worth it to keep doing what you love. This also ignores the many non-royalty-based careers for musicians, such as teachers and session artists. [1]:http://money.futureofmusic.org/how-many-musicians-are-there/ http://money.futureofmusic.org/how-many-musicians-are-there/ - "Other sources of data"

by rfnslyr 13y ago

mphillips34 13y ago

can you expand on how you got Spotify as a Canadian? I've been wanting to do that for quite a while.

rfnslyr 13y ago
PAYMENT ------- 1. Use Hola Unblocker to initially view Spotify.com. 2. Register an account. 3. Disable Hola Unblocker as you only need it for registration. 4. Once registered, download Spotify. 5. Buy a gift card online (I used to maximuscards.com and jerrycards.com). 6. Redeem gift card on the website for your premium subscription. 7. Google "Latest Spotify APK". 8. Download "Easy Installer". 9. Open that Spotify APK with Easy Installer and install it. 10. Register a new itunes US account. 11. Login with it on your iPhone -> download Spotify and login. 12. Login back to your regular Canadian iCloud account. That's all.
karnajani 13y ago
Incase you're not looking specifically for Spotify, Rdio is available in Canada legally.

qq66 13y ago

It's great to listen legally, but keep in mind that the support artists receive is very small (all but the most popular musicians receive less than 40 hours of minimum wage from Spotify). If you like a few groups consider buying merchandise or making a donation.

pionar 13y ago
Wait, are you saying that artists rely just on Spotify for income? That would be foolhardy. I would think that Spotify would be just one small chunk in a wide portfolio of distribution channels. Also, artists have generally never been very richly paid on music sales. Touring and merch are where the money's always been.
- wwweston 13y ago
  > Wait, are you saying that artists rely just on Spotify for income? That would be foolhardy. Well, yes. Since the entire premise of Spotify seems to be that we should pay broadcast royalty rates for a service that replaces recordings entirely, it would indeed be pretty foolish to rely on that. And in fact, some artists think it's so foolish they've realized its to their advantage not to participate. > I would think that Spotify would be just one small chunk in a wide portfolio of distribution channels. The problem being that once something's available on Spotify (or something like it), the structure of the service eliminates any access-incentive to look for it anywhere else. > Also, artists have generally never been very richly paid on music sales. Touring and merch are where the money's always been. This is pretty different from the history I'm familiar with -- touring supported/drove album sales for a long time, except for certain acts (huge like the Stones, jam-oriented like the Dead or Phish, or nostalgia focused). And people made a ton of money from recordings (though it wasn't always the artists because of gatekeepers). The reverse is often true now mostly because we entered a transition to a new format with the uptake getting waaay out ahead of the vendors and legit recording sales collapsed (and then, right as we started to see vendors come on board, we had the biggest economic contraction since the great depression). This isn't an inevitable trend, and revenue from recording sales this year is increasing again this year based largely digital sales increasing faster than physical sales are falling. And total revenue from recordings sales, while much smaller than what it was at its peak around 2000, is actually 50% more than it was at the beginning of the 1990s. We could yet see another golden age of recorded music. This time better in that digital albums are cheaper and, with a shorter distribution chain, people who make the music are often keeping more. At least, that's the potential. Unless we decide to go with buffet-streaming services that remove incentives to buy it. But maybe that's the next step for our culture: if art can't be supported by t-shirts and tchotchkes, it's not art that we should be economically encouraging, right?

kitsune_ 13y ago

They paid around $500 million in 2013. With 24 million users, that's $20.883 per user per year. To check this: According to Spotify, their 24 million users listened to 4.5 billion hours of music in 2013. This gives us 166.667 hours per user per year. If you take an average song length of 3.5 minutes, this results in 2857 plays per year, which, if you assume Spotify's number of $0.006 to $0.0084 (let's take 0.0072 USD) per stream, this results in 20.57 USD per user per year. Wow, very close, it indeed looks like a user generates around $20 per year. If the entire US population would use Spotify, this results in roughly $6.5 billion per year. Of course, that's a bit rubbish, let's use the amount of households in the US. Around 120 million. So that's more like $2.5 billion. If we assume an average household income of $45'000, this would support around 55'000 individual household incomes in the music industry (artists, studios, engineers, right holders and so on). Of course, since most money flows to the mega stars. It would support much fewer people. So let's take 31'400 people. Why? Because it goes well with the US population figure of 314 million. It's exactly 0.0001% of the US population. Still thinking about making a living with music?

pathy 13y ago
Music streaming (be it Spotify or otherwise) is not the only source of revenue for musicians though. Touring, Merch and so forth also generate revenue. That said, most musicians obviously cannot live off their music.
brianmcc 13y ago
0.01%, not 0.0001% surely? I.e. 1 in every 10,000.
Bsharp 13y ago
I'm going to assume the revenue numbers you mentioned are US numbers. The entire population isn't trying to be musicians - you're only competing with other musicians for that money. This website[1] offers various estimates for the number of active musicians, but the numbers are quite scattered due to the subjective and numerous definitions of "musician" (orchestra player doesn't need royalties, rock band member does, music teacher doesn't, etc.). I'm going to use the number of albums produced to determine the number of active musical acts who would get paid by Spotify, which according to the source was 76,875 in 2011, and one album per active musical act seems reasonable. Assuming that is a US number for conservatism (not a global number) then we get 76,875 active musical acts competing for your $2.5B. Since most musicians won't assume that they will become superstars, using the 80/20 rule we'll chop off the top 20% of active musical acts and the top 80% of the revenue (which imo is probably most artists that anyone knows) to get 61,500 musical acts competing for $500M. Now lets assume 3 musicians collecting royalties per musical act (seems reasonable, lots of 4-5 member bands, lots of solo artists, conservative) for a total of 184,500 musicians competing for that $500M. $500M supports 11,111 people under your $45,000/year income assumption, meaning 6% of the bottom 80% of active musicians would get a livable income from Spotify alone. As other posters have pointed out, musicians have many other sources of income such as other streaming services, touring, record sales, merch, etc. So yes, since you have a 6% chance of earning a livable income from a singular source of music streaming while being in the bottom 80% of active musicians royalty-wise, I'd say it's definitely worth it to keep doing what you love. This also ignores the many non-royalty-based careers for musicians, such as teachers and session artists. [1]:http://money.futureofmusic.org/how-many-musicians-are-there/ http://money.futureofmusic.org/how-many-musicians-are-there/ - "Other sources of data"