6 ms·

Spotify has been villified since the beginning, and I certainly want a more fair system to exist for artists. That said, has there EVER been a business model i

by tpeaton 12y ago

Spotify has been villified since the beginning, and I certainly want a more fair system to exist for artists. That said, has there EVER been a business model in the US that was profitable for artists? I don't think there was ever money in music for artists from album sales. The cost of distributing and promoting music is just more expensive than making an album.

afarrell 12y ago
Is it actually the case that signing record contracts was always a bad deal for artists? I was under the impression that they reduced risk for artists who could then use money from the contract as a more stable source of income to pay for, say, childcare expenses.
- tptacek 12y ago
  That is my understanding as well; in particular, a lot of popular mythologies about artists "recouping" and being stiffed on royalties seem to be just that: mythological. Here's a good post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3850935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3850935
  - 6stringmerc 12y ago
    Actually, it's not a myth; see the above link to what Steve Albini wrote if you'd like to get more educated and enhance your understanding of a very calculating and explotative business model.
    - tptacek 12y ago
      Serious question: how much do you actually know about Steve Albini? Are you a Big Black fan? Are you at all acquainted with the Chicago punk scene he's from? Have you read anything else he's written, for instance about any band not from that scene? Or, for that matter, any of the story of his business relationship with the labels? And you know how he makes his money, right? (hint: not by touring Shellac). (I am an unabashed and somewhat obsessive Albini fan). I think at this point you can safely assume that anyone writing an opinion about the music industry has read that old Albini zine post. If you'd read Lowery's post, I think you'd see that he in several ways rebuts it.
      - 6stringmerc 12y ago
        I've followed him enough, can't stand his music because it sounds like noisy, barely competent shit to me and I know he makes his money just like Timbaland makes his money - getting paid on the back-end for production work. I can safely assume that most everybody has NOT read that article based on the ridiculous notion that somehow the music industry has changed its principles and methods since my family got started in the business in the late 1960s. Why would I take seriously a person who says "Sound recordings are not cheap to make" and goes on to state "Artists still have to pay for that highly skilled labor" when frankly neither of these are true? Maybe it is for musicians who live in a 1960-1995 dynamic, but I have more computing and music making power and ability in my home studio than I know what to do with. Recording studios are dying by the dozens. For all the talk of disruption, that's one legacy industry that is taking it on the chin. Lowery is part of the problem, not the solution. Plus he tosses out anecdotes like "For a very long period of time record labels provided a decent living to thousands of lucky artists" and cites...nothing... So the most ground breaking conclusion he has is Free+Streaming+Digital Sales? WOW. It's my business model for the past 10 years! Boy did I learn something from this guy! Oh, wait, no I didn't. That link is one of the most rambling and thinly veiled self-serving "discussions" of music in the new digital environment. I'll eventually study it more, simply to use it as cannon fodder for rebuttals. Thanks for sharing, I can always use more proof I know what I'm doing is right.
        tptacek 12y ago
        I can't tell whether you're talking about Albini or Lowery here. I think Albini is shackled to view of the industry that rejects anything that doesn't sound like The Jesus Lizard. For a good example of this: read the very long thread on the Electric Audio message board where his fans try to find a hip-hop track he'll like.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  No, of course not. Bear in mind that most bands/artists had a manager, who took care of the business side and who earned a percentage of the payout from labels, concert promoters, etc., and was thus incentivized to get the best deal on their behalf.
- 6stringmerc 12y ago
  No, whatever money is paid up front for the expenses (recording, shooting music video, child care while doing such things) must be repaid to the label. If you don't "recoup" enough through album sales, you have to pay them back out of touring...and on and on and on...Basically, just have a look at the following article by Steve Albini: http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17 http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17
  - snowwrestler 12y ago
    My brother has been a professional rock musician for almost two decades. Several of his bands have broken up after one or two albums, the recording of which was financed by their label. In those cases, the label simply takes a loss. They're not sending debt collectors out or something. The recouping terms are set in the contract. It's not conceptually different from the term sheets that govern how and when investors will be paid back when they invest in Internet startups. There are examples of bad labels screwing artists, and there are examples of good labels supporting artists. The terms, not the concept, of recouping are what it make it good or bad. Ironically, the more exploitative labels are the ones that have done better under the pressure of piracy, because they are more willing to force bands into "360" deals where every revenue stream is subject to recouping: merch, sync, publishing, tours...basically they own the artist. So they're not hurt much by piracy. But this is not how all label deals are done. Many smaller and mid-size labels have historically limited their deals and depended more on album revenue. These are the folks--the good, artist-supporting folks--who are being most hurt by piracy.
    - bsder 12y ago
      > These are the folks--the good, artist-supporting folks--who are being most hurt by piracy. As much as I hate pirates, it isn't the pirates that killed the music industry. Look at this thread. Most of the people here are not going to spend more than $100 per year on music. That's simply too small a pool for the number of artists that exist. Think about these same people. They are willing to pay more than $100 for two video games. Guess which industry is doing better?
- smackfu 12y ago
  And remember that artists do not go to the press with stories of, "the label gave me a big advance and then the record was a flop."
  - 6stringmerc 12y ago
    Haha yeah that's technically true, because if that scenario actually happens that artist/band is effectively ruined, blacklisted, radioactive, whatever. Practically speaking though, are you aware of the "Sophmore Slump" concept at all? It's well known that after the first big success the record company wants MORE SUCCESS and that rarely happens. There are outliers like Adele, but far more often things go the way of Sisqo and "Return of Dragon" which famously had a $1 million video budget, banking on the success of "Thong Song." Guess what: Didn't recoup for the label.
    - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
      "Didn't recoup" doesn't necessarily mean the label didn't get its money back. More commonly it means that artist royalties - which are a small proportion of label income - don't exceed the initial advance. Book publishing works the same way. Labels/publishers can be comfortably in profit on a project, but the system is set up to make sure that artists don't get a share of that profit. Now - labels played all kinds of games to make sure they paid artists as little as possible, up to and including outright lies about the sales and income. (Some writers have discovered that publishers sometimes still try this.) Even so, most traditional label deals were far more generous to artists than today's streaming deals. Labels also spent significant money on PR, publicity, and payola, which Spotify and YouTube obviously don't. Even fairly minor bands could live comfortably for a few years from radio play and royalties from a single mid-list album. Top sellers could afford castles, private jets, and custom-built recording studios. This was partly a feature of scarcity, when there were far fewer artists selling music to a public that was more interested in music. But it was also a direct result of more generous accounting/royalty options, and the fact that once artists crossed a certain threshold they had enough spare capital to start developing alternative stand-alone businesses.
    - snowwrestler 12y ago
kochthesecond 12y ago
Spotify has me and all I know spending 9x12=108 per year on just music. If anyone expected any of us to ever spend more than this, they are very wrong. Even if we go back to the golden days of CD sales, I doubt the average consumer spent more than this, but I might be terribly wrong. I'm sure I wouldn't.
- nicpottier 12y ago
  Agreed, I finally admitted last year that I was tired of maintaining my own MP3 library and that $9/mo was a fair enough price to listen to whomever I want. But ya, that sure seems like that should be fair enough and profitable enough for the artists I listen to, so if Spotify isn't doing a good job of making sure that is the case then I hope someone else arrives on the scene who does. After all, switching costs are now incredibly low for us as consumers and that is where I want my money going.
  - pjc50 12y ago
    What I suspect happens is that most Spotify consumers are undiscerning and use it as either a radio substitute or for playing whatever their friends are listening to (which is going to be "Top 40" almost by definition). So like everything else it's profitable for the big acts and not for anyone else.
  - vinceguidry 12y ago
    > Agreed, I finally admitted last year that I was tired of maintaining my own MP3 library. If a subscription service could get me out of that chore, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But the music I listen to is crazy all over the place, and if the service doesn't have even one of the songs I want, then it's worthless. Even if I can upload mp3s, now I'm back to maintaining an mp3 library. If I switch services, I have to either pull out my mp3s or hold on to them, and if I'm holding on to them, why not hold on to all of them.
    - joshstrange 12y ago
      I'm hitting this point right now. After years of maintaining an mp3 collection I jumped ship to Spotify to try it out and loved it. It was great that I no longer had to spend any time to get access to the music I loved. Also community playlists were awesome (Especially the Top X Hit playlists that were updated monthly). Spotify even supported Last.FM, I was in heaven... Until Spotify didn't have that 1 song, or that 1 cd, or that 1 artist. That coupled with CONSTANTLY turning explicit music on my playlists to the "clean"/"radio edit" versions pissed me off to no end (I know why this is happening and I find it completely unacceptable). For the last few months I've been using SoundCloud (Still paying for Spotify for every now and then or when a friend requests a song) for mashups (which are nowhere to be found on Spotify) but the SoundCloud iPhone is shit. It looks nice but whenever iOS knocks it out of memory it forgets where you were were and takes you back to the home screen (Which for long mashups sucks a lot). Furthermore it seems WAY more finicky with network connections than Spotify was. I have to turn off Wifi when I get in my car (from home -> work and from work -> home) because if I don't then SC will try to load over Wifi and I drive out of range almost immediately. Then I have to kill the app and re-launch (and re-navigate to where I was) before it will use my LTE connection. Also the mobile app doesn't scrobble to last.fm (neither does the website but I have chrome extentions for that). I decided, literally a couple hours ago, that I was sick of this and decided to go back to maintaining my own music collection. I've got to do some research on how best to do this (Subsonic or similar on my home server and an iPhone/OS X that let's me stream+cache and scrobble to last.fm) but I believe it will all pay off in the end. I've found that all of these services (Netflix/Hulu/Spotify/Rdio/etc) are great for getting started but that all comes at a cost and it WILL bite you in the ass one day.
adventured 12y ago
Sure, touring and sponsorships are extraordinarily profitable for artists. Those able to attract an audience or fill venues. The Eagles made $100 million last year; Springsteen $81 million; Bon Jovi $81 million; Calvin Harris $66 million; Toby Keith $65m; Taylor Swift $64m; Bruno Mars $60m; Pink $52m; Roger Waters $46m; ... Muse $34m, Gaga $30m, this list just keeps going. Michael Buble made $1+ million per tour date in 2014 (making $51 million overall). From the info I can find, there are at least 100 individual artists making over $5 million per year.
- tpeaton 12y ago
  Yes, but that represents a very small minority of artists. Most lose a lot of money or break even if they're lucky. Check out this article by Pomplamoose, who are a relatively successful band. https://medium.com/@jackconte/pomplamoose-2014-tour-profits-67435851ba37 https://medium.com/@jackconte/pomplamoose-2014-tour-profits-...
  - adventured 12y ago
    I find this to be a good examination article regarding the now infamous Pomplamoose tour breakdown: http://www.artistempathy.com/blog/the-pomplamoose-problem-artists-cant-survive-as-saints-and-martyrs http://www.artistempathy.com/blog/the-pomplamoose-problem-ar... I think that doing only 24 tour dates as a mid-popularity group, while not exactly managing costs well, to be an obvious setup to lose money. If they want to treat it like a business, they're doing a terrible job of running a business.
    - 6stringmerc 12y ago
      No, a terrible job of running a business is what Amanda Palmer did by trying to pay musicians in beer. I'm not a Pomplamoose fan or advocate, but they capitalized better than most could hope for - you know, like The Rembrants? I think you're arguing from a highly biased outlook in that you cite 1% of artists which cater to a monied audience (teenagers dependent on parents, Baby Boomers who have achieved success to afford $50-250 tickets) specifically to discount the realistic percentage that 80% of artists who make any money doing music don't actually make a living doing it.
6stringmerc 12y ago
In my experience, while Spotify pays little outright, it is one of the few services that genuinely provides exposure in a beneficial way, one that may actually correlate to iTunes sales. That mentioned, Spotify deserves credit for paying anything, rather than sitting around and saying that exposure itself is a tangible payment form (e.g. McDonalds & SXSW). As Spotify expands, I can genuinely see new nations discovering my music, and that's quite interesting and appreciated. I think it's important to remember that I'm speaking as an "unsigned" and independent artist. My income is not noteworthy from digital sales, and frankly does not even recoup the amount that I spend on distribution. However, unlike the majority of "signed" artists, I have extensive rights management avenues, very little overhead, and if I ever do make a lot of money through digital channels, it will not subsidize a system that I utterly dislike on practical and ethical grounds (ex: no health insurance for signed artists). YMMV.
- tomjen3 12y ago
  This. I signed up for spotify for the convinience and it is far too expensive, but it did help me actually find artists that I cared to hear. However they also have some pretty giant omissions and even for the top tier track they are very hostile to their users, which means I am looking for something better.
- hsod 12y ago
  > That mentioned, Spotify deserves credit for paying anything, rather than sitting around and saying that exposure itself is a tangible payment form (e.g. McDonalds & SXSW). Or the pro-piracy crowd...
JoshTriplett 12y ago
> That said, has there EVER been a business model in the US that was profitable for artists? As far as I know, the various music purchasing services (as opposed to radio or rental services) directly pay the artists a fraction of each purchase of their music. And if you're sufficiently popular, you can also sell directly to decrease the overhead. In a completely different direction, there's also Patreon and other patronage-model sites.

by tpeaton 12y ago

afarrell 12y ago

Is it actually the case that signing record contracts was always a bad deal for artists? I was under the impression that they reduced risk for artists who could then use money from the contract as a more stable source of income to pay for, say, childcare expenses.

tptacek 12y ago
That is my understanding as well; in particular, a lot of popular mythologies about artists "recouping" and being stiffed on royalties seem to be just that: mythological. Here's a good post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3850935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3850935
- 6stringmerc 12y ago
  Actually, it's not a myth; see the above link to what Steve Albini wrote if you'd like to get more educated and enhance your understanding of a very calculating and explotative business model.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Serious question: how much do you actually know about Steve Albini? Are you a Big Black fan? Are you at all acquainted with the Chicago punk scene he's from? Have you read anything else he's written, for instance about any band not from that scene? Or, for that matter, any of the story of his business relationship with the labels? And you know how he makes his money, right? (hint: not by touring Shellac). (I am an unabashed and somewhat obsessive Albini fan). I think at this point you can safely assume that anyone writing an opinion about the music industry has read that old Albini zine post. If you'd read Lowery's post, I think you'd see that he in several ways rebuts it.
    - 6stringmerc 12y ago
      I've followed him enough, can't stand his music because it sounds like noisy, barely competent shit to me and I know he makes his money just like Timbaland makes his money - getting paid on the back-end for production work. I can safely assume that most everybody has NOT read that article based on the ridiculous notion that somehow the music industry has changed its principles and methods since my family got started in the business in the late 1960s. Why would I take seriously a person who says "Sound recordings are not cheap to make" and goes on to state "Artists still have to pay for that highly skilled labor" when frankly neither of these are true? Maybe it is for musicians who live in a 1960-1995 dynamic, but I have more computing and music making power and ability in my home studio than I know what to do with. Recording studios are dying by the dozens. For all the talk of disruption, that's one legacy industry that is taking it on the chin. Lowery is part of the problem, not the solution. Plus he tosses out anecdotes like "For a very long period of time record labels provided a decent living to thousands of lucky artists" and cites...nothing... So the most ground breaking conclusion he has is Free+Streaming+Digital Sales? WOW. It's my business model for the past 10 years! Boy did I learn something from this guy! Oh, wait, no I didn't. That link is one of the most rambling and thinly veiled self-serving "discussions" of music in the new digital environment. I'll eventually study it more, simply to use it as cannon fodder for rebuttals. Thanks for sharing, I can always use more proof I know what I'm doing is right.
      - tptacek 12y ago
        I can't tell whether you're talking about Albini or Lowery here. I think Albini is shackled to view of the industry that rejects anything that doesn't sound like The Jesus Lizard. For a good example of this: read the very long thread on the Electric Audio message board where his fans try to find a hip-hop track he'll like.
anigbrowl 12y ago
No, of course not. Bear in mind that most bands/artists had a manager, who took care of the business side and who earned a percentage of the payout from labels, concert promoters, etc., and was thus incentivized to get the best deal on their behalf.
6stringmerc 12y ago
No, whatever money is paid up front for the expenses (recording, shooting music video, child care while doing such things) must be repaid to the label. If you don't "recoup" enough through album sales, you have to pay them back out of touring...and on and on and on...Basically, just have a look at the following article by Steve Albini: http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17 http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17
- snowwrestler 12y ago
  My brother has been a professional rock musician for almost two decades. Several of his bands have broken up after one or two albums, the recording of which was financed by their label. In those cases, the label simply takes a loss. They're not sending debt collectors out or something. The recouping terms are set in the contract. It's not conceptually different from the term sheets that govern how and when investors will be paid back when they invest in Internet startups. There are examples of bad labels screwing artists, and there are examples of good labels supporting artists. The terms, not the concept, of recouping are what it make it good or bad. Ironically, the more exploitative labels are the ones that have done better under the pressure of piracy, because they are more willing to force bands into "360" deals where every revenue stream is subject to recouping: merch, sync, publishing, tours...basically they own the artist. So they're not hurt much by piracy. But this is not how all label deals are done. Many smaller and mid-size labels have historically limited their deals and depended more on album revenue. These are the folks--the good, artist-supporting folks--who are being most hurt by piracy.
  - bsder 12y ago
    > These are the folks--the good, artist-supporting folks--who are being most hurt by piracy. As much as I hate pirates, it isn't the pirates that killed the music industry. Look at this thread. Most of the people here are not going to spend more than $100 per year on music. That's simply too small a pool for the number of artists that exist. Think about these same people. They are willing to pay more than $100 for two video games. Guess which industry is doing better?
smackfu 12y ago
And remember that artists do not go to the press with stories of, "the label gave me a big advance and then the record was a flop."
- 6stringmerc 12y ago
  Haha yeah that's technically true, because if that scenario actually happens that artist/band is effectively ruined, blacklisted, radioactive, whatever. Practically speaking though, are you aware of the "Sophmore Slump" concept at all? It's well known that after the first big success the record company wants MORE SUCCESS and that rarely happens. There are outliers like Adele, but far more often things go the way of Sisqo and "Return of Dragon" which famously had a $1 million video budget, banking on the success of "Thong Song." Guess what: Didn't recoup for the label.
  - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
    "Didn't recoup" doesn't necessarily mean the label didn't get its money back. More commonly it means that artist royalties - which are a small proportion of label income - don't exceed the initial advance. Book publishing works the same way. Labels/publishers can be comfortably in profit on a project, but the system is set up to make sure that artists don't get a share of that profit. Now - labels played all kinds of games to make sure they paid artists as little as possible, up to and including outright lies about the sales and income. (Some writers have discovered that publishers sometimes still try this.) Even so, most traditional label deals were far more generous to artists than today's streaming deals. Labels also spent significant money on PR, publicity, and payola, which Spotify and YouTube obviously don't. Even fairly minor bands could live comfortably for a few years from radio play and royalties from a single mid-list album. Top sellers could afford castles, private jets, and custom-built recording studios. This was partly a feature of scarcity, when there were far fewer artists selling music to a public that was more interested in music. But it was also a direct result of more generous accounting/royalty options, and the fact that once artists crossed a certain threshold they had enough spare capital to start developing alternative stand-alone businesses.
  - snowwrestler 12y ago

kochthesecond 12y ago

Spotify has me and all I know spending 9x12=108 per year on just music. If anyone expected any of us to ever spend more than this, they are very wrong. Even if we go back to the golden days of CD sales, I doubt the average consumer spent more than this, but I might be terribly wrong. I'm sure I wouldn't.

nicpottier 12y ago
Agreed, I finally admitted last year that I was tired of maintaining my own MP3 library and that $9/mo was a fair enough price to listen to whomever I want. But ya, that sure seems like that should be fair enough and profitable enough for the artists I listen to, so if Spotify isn't doing a good job of making sure that is the case then I hope someone else arrives on the scene who does. After all, switching costs are now incredibly low for us as consumers and that is where I want my money going.
- pjc50 12y ago
  What I suspect happens is that most Spotify consumers are undiscerning and use it as either a radio substitute or for playing whatever their friends are listening to (which is going to be "Top 40" almost by definition). So like everything else it's profitable for the big acts and not for anyone else.
- vinceguidry 12y ago
  > Agreed, I finally admitted last year that I was tired of maintaining my own MP3 library. If a subscription service could get me out of that chore, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But the music I listen to is crazy all over the place, and if the service doesn't have even one of the songs I want, then it's worthless. Even if I can upload mp3s, now I'm back to maintaining an mp3 library. If I switch services, I have to either pull out my mp3s or hold on to them, and if I'm holding on to them, why not hold on to all of them.
  - joshstrange 12y ago
    I'm hitting this point right now. After years of maintaining an mp3 collection I jumped ship to Spotify to try it out and loved it. It was great that I no longer had to spend any time to get access to the music I loved. Also community playlists were awesome (Especially the Top X Hit playlists that were updated monthly). Spotify even supported Last.FM, I was in heaven... Until Spotify didn't have that 1 song, or that 1 cd, or that 1 artist. That coupled with CONSTANTLY turning explicit music on my playlists to the "clean"/"radio edit" versions pissed me off to no end (I know why this is happening and I find it completely unacceptable). For the last few months I've been using SoundCloud (Still paying for Spotify for every now and then or when a friend requests a song) for mashups (which are nowhere to be found on Spotify) but the SoundCloud iPhone is shit. It looks nice but whenever iOS knocks it out of memory it forgets where you were were and takes you back to the home screen (Which for long mashups sucks a lot). Furthermore it seems WAY more finicky with network connections than Spotify was. I have to turn off Wifi when I get in my car (from home -> work and from work -> home) because if I don't then SC will try to load over Wifi and I drive out of range almost immediately. Then I have to kill the app and re-launch (and re-navigate to where I was) before it will use my LTE connection. Also the mobile app doesn't scrobble to last.fm (neither does the website but I have chrome extentions for that). I decided, literally a couple hours ago, that I was sick of this and decided to go back to maintaining my own music collection. I've got to do some research on how best to do this (Subsonic or similar on my home server and an iPhone/OS X that let's me stream+cache and scrobble to last.fm) but I believe it will all pay off in the end. I've found that all of these services (Netflix/Hulu/Spotify/Rdio/etc) are great for getting started but that all comes at a cost and it WILL bite you in the ass one day.

adventured 12y ago

Sure, touring and sponsorships are extraordinarily profitable for artists. Those able to attract an audience or fill venues. The Eagles made $100 million last year; Springsteen $81 million; Bon Jovi $81 million; Calvin Harris $66 million; Toby Keith $65m; Taylor Swift $64m; Bruno Mars $60m; Pink $52m; Roger Waters $46m; ... Muse $34m, Gaga $30m, this list just keeps going. Michael Buble made $1+ million per tour date in 2014 (making $51 million overall). From the info I can find, there are at least 100 individual artists making over $5 million per year.

tpeaton 12y ago
Yes, but that represents a very small minority of artists. Most lose a lot of money or break even if they're lucky. Check out this article by Pomplamoose, who are a relatively successful band. https://medium.com/@jackconte/pomplamoose-2014-tour-profits-67435851ba37 https://medium.com/@jackconte/pomplamoose-2014-tour-profits-...
- adventured 12y ago
  I find this to be a good examination article regarding the now infamous Pomplamoose tour breakdown: http://www.artistempathy.com/blog/the-pomplamoose-problem-artists-cant-survive-as-saints-and-martyrs http://www.artistempathy.com/blog/the-pomplamoose-problem-ar... I think that doing only 24 tour dates as a mid-popularity group, while not exactly managing costs well, to be an obvious setup to lose money. If they want to treat it like a business, they're doing a terrible job of running a business.
  - 6stringmerc 12y ago
    No, a terrible job of running a business is what Amanda Palmer did by trying to pay musicians in beer. I'm not a Pomplamoose fan or advocate, but they capitalized better than most could hope for - you know, like The Rembrants? I think you're arguing from a highly biased outlook in that you cite 1% of artists which cater to a monied audience (teenagers dependent on parents, Baby Boomers who have achieved success to afford $50-250 tickets) specifically to discount the realistic percentage that 80% of artists who make any money doing music don't actually make a living doing it.

6stringmerc 12y ago

In my experience, while Spotify pays little outright, it is one of the few services that genuinely provides exposure in a beneficial way, one that may actually correlate to iTunes sales. That mentioned, Spotify deserves credit for paying anything, rather than sitting around and saying that exposure itself is a tangible payment form (e.g. McDonalds & SXSW). As Spotify expands, I can genuinely see new nations discovering my music, and that's quite interesting and appreciated. I think it's important to remember that I'm speaking as an "unsigned" and independent artist. My income is not noteworthy from digital sales, and frankly does not even recoup the amount that I spend on distribution. However, unlike the majority of "signed" artists, I have extensive rights management avenues, very little overhead, and if I ever do make a lot of money through digital channels, it will not subsidize a system that I utterly dislike on practical and ethical grounds (ex: no health insurance for signed artists). YMMV.

tomjen3 12y ago
This. I signed up for spotify for the convinience and it is far too expensive, but it did help me actually find artists that I cared to hear. However they also have some pretty giant omissions and even for the top tier track they are very hostile to their users, which means I am looking for something better.
hsod 12y ago
> That mentioned, Spotify deserves credit for paying anything, rather than sitting around and saying that exposure itself is a tangible payment form (e.g. McDonalds & SXSW). Or the pro-piracy crowd...

JoshTriplett 12y ago

> That said, has there EVER been a business model in the US that was profitable for artists? As far as I know, the various music purchasing services (as opposed to radio or rental services) directly pay the artists a fraction of each purchase of their music. And if you're sufficiently popular, you can also sell directly to decrease the overhead. In a completely different direction, there's also Patreon and other patronage-model sites.