4 ms·

if the money never gets to the artists what is the point? its good to build up an infrastructure but this is more to keep the industry's pockets lined than the

by fat0wl 12y ago

if the money never gets to the artists what is the point? its good to build up an infrastructure but this is more to keep the industry's pockets lined than the artists, so i've seen at least a few who encourage to just torrent their work instead. there are some who argue that the pricing model is not really incorrect/askew, but i think even they tend to admit that its insignificant income from the perspective of the artist. (as someone who is not into pop music, i really don't care about building a whole economic/industrial mechanism just to make sure that beyonce & WMG keep getting a disproportionately large piece of the pie compared to independents, that is not really in the spirit of the internet IMHO it is just a web-based continuation of the old system that smaller artists hated...)

mej10 12y ago
Have any independent artists with a significant amount of listens posted how much money they are making? I am sure there are some rules against this... I know for signed artists it is a really small amount. It seems like most groups have accepted that they will make most of their money from shows and merchandising. At least that is the feeling I get.
- lbotos 12y ago
  RJD2 commented a few years ago on his reddit AMA about his royalties: "i got a check from spotify last month. $.22 was the amount. that help?" http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/y542u/hi_im_rjd2_producerdjlabel_ownergeek_ama/c5sglpr http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/y542u/hi_im_rjd2_produ...
  - anoonmoose 12y ago
    RJD2 only has about 100K followers on Spotify. For comparison, that is about the same amount as two of my favorite bands, Opeth and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. It's not Spotify's fault that RJD2 is only as popular as obscure Swedish death metal or obscure 80's folk goth music.
    - Kiro 12y ago
      But still, $.22 for 100k followers is not very much.
      - lione 12y ago
        Do remember it's also based off plays, not follows. I could have 100k followers, but if I get 500 plays a day, I'd get barely anything.
        fat0wl 12y ago
        Ha i kindof just want to repeat exactly this: "But still, $.22 for 100k followers is not very much." I understand there are technicalities but 22 cents/month is what you'd expect your complete unknown "electronica in basement" neighbor to make off a major distribution outlet, not known artists, even if they are obscure (which I think is a ludicrously out-of-scale term considering these bands have international followings). I'm sure someone in this equation is making money, thats why it rubs me the wrong way.... it is an extension of the industry rather than a correction of it.
      - WizKid 12y ago
        Did he have 100k followers 2 years ago when he posted that or does he have it now?
    - xorcist 12y ago
      I don't know RJD2, but does Opeth and Nick Cave really only make $.22 a month from Spotify? If that's true, something is deeply and terribly wrong with the license agreements. These are not some amateurs, but pretty big acts with fans from all over, and while I despise saying they "deserve" this or that I would at least expect the sum to matter.
      - r721 12y ago
        Yeah, Opeth has 735,477 listeners on last.fm - that's comparable with the best known artists in the genre ever like Deep Purple or Black Sabbath (around 2 million both).
facepalm 12y ago
Surely they'll figure it out somehow, otherwise why would artists continue to give them their music? Please no sob story about innocent artists being exploited by their publishers. Same logic applies - why would artists continue to work with such publishers?
ryanSrich 12y ago
It's so hard to put a value on something like Spotify. I use the Spotify Pitchfork app pretty much every day to find new music. Before that I'd have to read Pitfork.com and then either torrent or buy that artists music. This forced me to be super selective in who I gave the time of day (because reading + downloading would take hours). With Spotify I can listen to 4 whole albums in one day. If I find an artist I like I will definitely go to one of their live shows. I feel like I spend more on an artists now than I did when I bought their album outright.
- fat0wl 12y ago
  hah great for Pitchfork... i'm sure they are making much more than the artists off this deal. regardless, they don't cover the bands i like and half the music i like isnt on spotify so i just do it the old-fashioned way using discogs.com, downloads, and some good sites that have "related artist" webs. wouldn't you know it, the best site i know for related artist webs isn't a major industry service, its a torrent site! & they accomplish it trivially through user-edits... so i guess my point is i think its true that Spotify can be convenient for some people, but it doesnt refute my point that they are not trying to do anyone favors (unless it fits their current branding strategy). Spotify is not some techno-anarchistic's grand vision of the music industry. it's not helping music fans discover more about their tastes, it is generally colluding with industry to guide listeners toward their profit sectors. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there is a complex sequence of kickbacks between labels, Spotify, and the venues themselves, designed to minimize artist royalty/payouts. If you follow the music industry you know the deals for artists are generally pretty bad & I don't really believe in the "but I go see them live!" rationale because some artists don't tour or aren't big arena acts. AFAIK it's really hard to recoup tour costs unless you are playing decent-sized venues at every stop. i guess it is just hard for me to get into the feelgood mentality of the music scene when i feel like the technology available could allow us to be much more taste/trend/industry-agnostic but instead seems to just be an extension of industry power (Pitchfork being a major industry player as well...), and I generally feel like the quality of the artistic output is in decline so I don't want to buy into most of the over-produced crypto-pop junk they are selling (fans of 60s/70s/even 80s music are accustomed to a much greater wealth of musical diversity). As I mentioned though, I am not into music journalism i just use artist webs. Maybe if there were some tastemaker I really wanted to follow I would see this as more convenient but I just don't experience music that way. Or at most I'd be like "well, convenient for me, sucks for the artist". I think I mentioned in my previous comment -- it's not that I can even prove the pricing model false, I just know it doesn't do shit for the artists... 1 sale of a self-published physical album is more profitable for most of them then a year's worth of Spotify listens. i bet a solely torrents + physical sales model would actually be MORE profitable than involving Spotify... Spotify to me is really only a mechanism for absolving people from the guilt of theft, and conveniently it funnels money back to yet another corp.
rthomas6 12y ago
There's gotta be some way to make a pay-only streaming service that would fairly compensate artists... What if, instead of being paid per play, artists were compensated based on the number of unique visitors that played their music? So if one person plays one of their songs, they get paid (for instance) a whole dollar. If one person plays that song 5000 more times, the artist still only gets paid one dollar. But if 5000 different people play that song, the artist gets 5000 dollars. Once. I think this scheme would compensate artists much more fairly, like iTunes, while also providing the cloud hosting and flat monthly fee that attracts users.
- facepalm 12y ago
  How do you get one dollar per song and user, though? The users would have to pay for that. Since they probably listen to a lot of songs in a single month, it would become rather expensive.
  - rthomas6 12y ago
    Would they, though? I listen to a lot of different music, but I also create playlists that I listen to most of the time. As an example let's take the average user that listens primarily to the top 40 hits and a few select albums from those artists. In one month how many new songs would they listen to on average? 10? 15? Framed this way, a dollar does seem too high, but not by much. I think $0.40-$0.50 per song would be profitable, but that's just a guess.
    - facepalm 12y ago
      To me spending 10$/month seems about right - in former times I would probably have bought one CD per month on average. However, I think what might confuse people in terms of perceived fairness is that with a flatrate, people might listen to a lot more music. But it is a tradeoff between people listening more but paying less per song and people listening less and paying more per song. It's a mistake to think "whoa, if I had sold as many CDs as people listened to my songs on Spotify, I should have received x million $$$." The reality is people probably wouldn't have listened as much without the flatrate. So in the end all that matters is how much money you receive, not how many times people listen to your songs. And what have you gained if you limit people to 10 songs per months vs thousands, if they spend the same amount of money? It is only an inconvenience for the audience.

by fat0wl 12y ago

mej10 12y ago

Have any independent artists with a significant amount of listens posted how much money they are making? I am sure there are some rules against this... I know for signed artists it is a really small amount. It seems like most groups have accepted that they will make most of their money from shows and merchandising. At least that is the feeling I get.

lbotos 12y ago
RJD2 commented a few years ago on his reddit AMA about his royalties: "i got a check from spotify last month. $.22 was the amount. that help?" http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/y542u/hi_im_rjd2_producerdjlabel_ownergeek_ama/c5sglpr http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/y542u/hi_im_rjd2_produ...
- anoonmoose 12y ago
  RJD2 only has about 100K followers on Spotify. For comparison, that is about the same amount as two of my favorite bands, Opeth and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. It's not Spotify's fault that RJD2 is only as popular as obscure Swedish death metal or obscure 80's folk goth music.
  - Kiro 12y ago
    But still, $.22 for 100k followers is not very much.
    - lione 12y ago
      Do remember it's also based off plays, not follows. I could have 100k followers, but if I get 500 plays a day, I'd get barely anything.
      - fat0wl 12y ago
        Ha i kindof just want to repeat exactly this: "But still, $.22 for 100k followers is not very much." I understand there are technicalities but 22 cents/month is what you'd expect your complete unknown "electronica in basement" neighbor to make off a major distribution outlet, not known artists, even if they are obscure (which I think is a ludicrously out-of-scale term considering these bands have international followings). I'm sure someone in this equation is making money, thats why it rubs me the wrong way.... it is an extension of the industry rather than a correction of it.
    - WizKid 12y ago
      Did he have 100k followers 2 years ago when he posted that or does he have it now?
  - xorcist 12y ago
    I don't know RJD2, but does Opeth and Nick Cave really only make $.22 a month from Spotify? If that's true, something is deeply and terribly wrong with the license agreements. These are not some amateurs, but pretty big acts with fans from all over, and while I despise saying they "deserve" this or that I would at least expect the sum to matter.
    - r721 12y ago
      Yeah, Opeth has 735,477 listeners on last.fm - that's comparable with the best known artists in the genre ever like Deep Purple or Black Sabbath (around 2 million both).

facepalm 12y ago

Surely they'll figure it out somehow, otherwise why would artists continue to give them their music? Please no sob story about innocent artists being exploited by their publishers. Same logic applies - why would artists continue to work with such publishers?

ryanSrich 12y ago

It's so hard to put a value on something like Spotify. I use the Spotify Pitchfork app pretty much every day to find new music. Before that I'd have to read Pitfork.com and then either torrent or buy that artists music. This forced me to be super selective in who I gave the time of day (because reading + downloading would take hours). With Spotify I can listen to 4 whole albums in one day. If I find an artist I like I will definitely go to one of their live shows. I feel like I spend more on an artists now than I did when I bought their album outright.

fat0wl 12y ago
hah great for Pitchfork... i'm sure they are making much more than the artists off this deal. regardless, they don't cover the bands i like and half the music i like isnt on spotify so i just do it the old-fashioned way using discogs.com, downloads, and some good sites that have "related artist" webs. wouldn't you know it, the best site i know for related artist webs isn't a major industry service, its a torrent site! & they accomplish it trivially through user-edits... so i guess my point is i think its true that Spotify can be convenient for some people, but it doesnt refute my point that they are not trying to do anyone favors (unless it fits their current branding strategy). Spotify is not some techno-anarchistic's grand vision of the music industry. it's not helping music fans discover more about their tastes, it is generally colluding with industry to guide listeners toward their profit sectors. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there is a complex sequence of kickbacks between labels, Spotify, and the venues themselves, designed to minimize artist royalty/payouts. If you follow the music industry you know the deals for artists are generally pretty bad & I don't really believe in the "but I go see them live!" rationale because some artists don't tour or aren't big arena acts. AFAIK it's really hard to recoup tour costs unless you are playing decent-sized venues at every stop. i guess it is just hard for me to get into the feelgood mentality of the music scene when i feel like the technology available could allow us to be much more taste/trend/industry-agnostic but instead seems to just be an extension of industry power (Pitchfork being a major industry player as well...), and I generally feel like the quality of the artistic output is in decline so I don't want to buy into most of the over-produced crypto-pop junk they are selling (fans of 60s/70s/even 80s music are accustomed to a much greater wealth of musical diversity). As I mentioned though, I am not into music journalism i just use artist webs. Maybe if there were some tastemaker I really wanted to follow I would see this as more convenient but I just don't experience music that way. Or at most I'd be like "well, convenient for me, sucks for the artist". I think I mentioned in my previous comment -- it's not that I can even prove the pricing model false, I just know it doesn't do shit for the artists... 1 sale of a self-published physical album is more profitable for most of them then a year's worth of Spotify listens. i bet a solely torrents + physical sales model would actually be MORE profitable than involving Spotify... Spotify to me is really only a mechanism for absolving people from the guilt of theft, and conveniently it funnels money back to yet another corp.

rthomas6 12y ago

There's gotta be some way to make a pay-only streaming service that would fairly compensate artists... What if, instead of being paid per play, artists were compensated based on the number of unique visitors that played their music? So if one person plays one of their songs, they get paid (for instance) a whole dollar. If one person plays that song 5000 more times, the artist still only gets paid one dollar. But if 5000 different people play that song, the artist gets 5000 dollars. Once. I think this scheme would compensate artists much more fairly, like iTunes, while also providing the cloud hosting and flat monthly fee that attracts users.

facepalm 12y ago
How do you get one dollar per song and user, though? The users would have to pay for that. Since they probably listen to a lot of songs in a single month, it would become rather expensive.
- rthomas6 12y ago
  Would they, though? I listen to a lot of different music, but I also create playlists that I listen to most of the time. As an example let's take the average user that listens primarily to the top 40 hits and a few select albums from those artists. In one month how many new songs would they listen to on average? 10? 15? Framed this way, a dollar does seem too high, but not by much. I think $0.40-$0.50 per song would be profitable, but that's just a guess.
  - facepalm 12y ago
    To me spending 10$/month seems about right - in former times I would probably have bought one CD per month on average. However, I think what might confuse people in terms of perceived fairness is that with a flatrate, people might listen to a lot more music. But it is a tradeoff between people listening more but paying less per song and people listening less and paying more per song. It's a mistake to think "whoa, if I had sold as many CDs as people listened to my songs on Spotify, I should have received x million $$$." The reality is people probably wouldn't have listened as much without the flatrate. So in the end all that matters is how much money you receive, not how many times people listen to your songs. And what have you gained if you limit people to 10 songs per months vs thousands, if they spend the same amount of money? It is only an inconvenience for the audience.