AC/DC recently did a tour in South America because streaming made them find out there's a fanbase there, Arctic Monkeys were a nobody before they self-published their shit online, Nine Inch Nails had to schedule an extra tour due to popular demand of concert tickets after publishing their album for free.
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Taylor Swift pulls music from Spotify because music shouldn't be free
- Thread starter jwk94
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AC/DC recently did a tour in South America because streaming made them find out there's a fanbase there, Arctic Monkeys were a nobody before they self-published their shit online, Nine Inch Nails had to schedule an extra tour due to popular demand of concert tickets after publishing their album for free.
You've named two established names who could distribute their music anyway they wanted and they would still have the money to tour and sell out venues pretty much anywhere. Arctic Monkeys also got big before streaming was a thing.
I was referring to smaller acts.
BTW AC\DC aren't on spotify. I just checked.
Zen_Arcade
Banned
The free membership doesn't feel that limited if you're listening on your computer. All that happens is that a commercial plays after every few songs. The only place it's really limited is on mobile where you can only play things on shuffle. Even then it's not that bad, you just make a playlist and put whatever you want on there.
It's not the streaming revenue that allows them to tour, it's the exposure from streaming. Hardly any acts tour off revenue from their direct sales. This is all stuff that's fronted by their label (if they're big enough to have a label, of course).
A small band's single takes off and gets streamed 50+ million times, while yes generating revenue, does the more important work of convincing their label that there's an audience for this band out there, which then convinces the label to shell out more money for said band's tour/promotional budget. The difference between a tour bus and a tour van.
All of this is connected.
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
Personally, I reckon that it is better to have a source of income aside from artistic endeavours, yes. Otherwise, it can lead to all sorts of compromises. Of course, if people are happy to bend to their work to the whims of others so that it can sell more or indeed create stuff that is very commercially motivated, then fair enough.
Rktk
Member
It was their popularity on MySpace that did a great deal to grow their fanbase, MySpace was (and still is) a music steaming service.
Ken Masters
Banned
Do people realize artists make SHIT from these streaming services, they make fractions of a penny from streams. They are the last on the chain to see profit from spotify, everyone else gets paid first
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
That's not what I'm saying at all. Money fuels Art; you simply have to make some money to keep it going logistically (instruments, petrol, etc.). If you make a profit on top of that, well that's brilliant.
What I'm saying is that if it's tied to your main income, you are at risk of compromising or diluting what you do to make sure that it sells, because in that situation you have to make that money to live. If it isn't tied to your main income, there it doesn't matter so much if you don't make it back.
I'm not saying you're wrong but I have not seen any convincing evidence to prove what you're saying is really helping musicians.
I know I have personally listened to new stuff through Spotify that I might not have otherwise and enjoyed it, but I have no idea how most people use the service/bands who claim to have benefited from it.
Arthr2ShdsJcksn
Banned
Good for her, I guess? Did she pull it from the pirate bay as well? Oh, wait....
That has way more to do with the labels than it will ever have to do with Spotify, or any other streaming service.
And that's what this all comes down to. When you think about it, this isn't a new conversation -- artists have been (rightly) complaining about only getting pennies for their album sales since the 8-track. It's an old conversation that has taken new form thanks to the internet, but at the core is the same culprit: labels that find any and every way to screw all but the largest acts out of as much of their money as possible.
purvispisgah
Member
I don't understand why you are putting essentially in quotes. The concerts you are describing are literally not free, as the artist is being compensated. That seems to contradict what you have previously been advocating for in the thread (artists should create art for its own sake and distribute it freely).
It is possible that I am misunderstanding your argument. Is that the case?
teruterubozu
Member
8-track? More like way back in the days of vinyl singles.
Did not know that. But MySpace is not Spotify which is a service with a shitload of the worlds discography on it I'm not sure a direct comparison is necessarily valid.
So why don't they, with their millions of dollars, go and sell their music directly? Why go through record labels in the present day when they have all of the resources available to them to do it themselves?
PHOENIXZERO
Member
Someone I'm acquainted with who's an indie artist in Australia posted this back in April. Not sure which platform it was from though that was basically the equivalent of her selling an album or two depending on how it was sold.
Streaming is great for previewing, better than piracy but beyond that artists are still getting screwed if no one is actually buying their music.
This isn't a good a comparison...
At least with piracy a lot of people still have some level of guilt which can prompt them to actually buy a legit copy, unlike streaming.
That AC/DC thing sounds like a story that was debunked earlier this year, got a source for it?
Streaming is great for previewing, better than piracy but beyond that artists are still getting screwed if no one is actually buying their music.
This isn't a good a comparison...
At least with piracy a lot of people still have some level of guilt which can prompt them to actually buy a legit copy, unlike streaming.
That AC/DC thing sounds like a story that was debunked earlier this year, got a source for it?
Couldn't tell you, actually. The concerts I attend are mostly the smaller ones, with relatively unknown bands and every single one has their music on Spotify, which I use to decide whether or not I want to go and see them live. Then again, the events manager for that venue uses Spotify alot to discover acts to book.
Owh, and I checked, AC/DC flew to South America for a tour based on stats from a torrent-tracker. My bad. But according to Ms Swift, Torrents and Spotify are basically the same.
Because they don't have millions of dollars? They aren't all Taylor Swift. And the ones that are like Taylor Swift couldn't have gotten where they did without the label.
I've mentioned before that it might possibly make sense for established artists to do this.
But I doubt this is an option for emerging artists who I would suspect get lost in the waves.
Even after I buy an album, if it's convenient I still use Spotify to Stream it at work and such, as I figure I get the same experience but the artist gets a little something extra as well.
I do this every day when I start my day with Anamanaguchi's Endless Fantasy album at work, even though I've owned it for a while now.
I do this every day when I start my day with Anamanaguchi's Endless Fantasy album at work, even though I've owned it for a while now.
ClosingADoor
Member
7.49 dollar per 1000 listens. Doesn't seem that bad to me actually.
Plasticine
Member
Doing what established rock bands do is expensive and difficult. Trent Reznor found out how hard and frustrating it was to do everything himself. The last NIN record was released on a major label.
Radiohead do it, and plenty of artists use their own label. But new bands wouldn't even be able to afford to tour. Music could become almost exclusively middle class.
zephervack
Member
I wonder what kind of deals they get from Vevo (YouTube), her target audience is way more likely to be hearing her music there than Spotify/Pandora/Google.
PHOENIXZERO
Member
Yeah, compared to the previous poster's cap from a friend's Spotify statement but I imagine part of why it's where it is for her is due to not having cuts being taken from other sources. Do hope she at least sold a CD or two out of it.
That sounds even more like the bogus Iron Maiden story...
http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/27/ho...-love-of-music-pirates-became-internet-truth/
ClosingADoor
Member
Cloudkicker just had a successful tour, and he's never been on a label and says he never will for his studio albums. He uses soundcloud and streaming sites and things like that... and usually puts things up for free. Now, I realize he seems to be on the spectrum of people that doesn't actually care or want to make money on music, but I think that tour showed he absolutely could make a good amount touring and getting bigger through that.
teruterubozu
Member
Isn't he an accountant or something? I don't think anyone knows his real job.
Because...
Maybe Spotify does have some use for emerging artist if it really does have that effect.
So basically Spotify is just legalized piracy? If it is benefiting artists than that's fine, but that might not be such a fantastic thing if it isn't.
That would be an obvious downside. I know Radiohead haven't exactly been looking for a new label since they dumped EMI but I could imagine the challenges would be insurmountable for many artists, including big name ones.
EricTheCleric
Member
Maybe I just should stop paying for Spotify Premium and start pirating again?
I will save money and it is no worse morally
according to some..
I will save money and it is no worse morally
according to some..
Taken from another forum I follow where this is being discussed (sorry if its already been posted in here):
Spotify Overtakes iTunes Earnings by 13%...in Europe
If you look at the money Spotify is actually paying out, and not just how much of it is making it to the artists, it paints their pricing model in a much fairer light, I think.
The problem here are the labels. Always has been.
Spotify Overtakes iTunes Earnings by 13%...in Europe
If you look at the money Spotify is actually paying out, and not just how much of it is making it to the artists, it paints their pricing model in a much fairer light, I think.
The problem here are the labels. Always has been.
Speaking for myself I'm not saying that.
Arthr2ShdsJcksn
Banned
I find that most people who pirate have no guilt over doing so, or put up a facade of guilt while ravenously consuming even more pirated material.
I do support Swift for bringing this to the light, although I doubt it will change much. Of course, that opinion is coming from someone who paid Ticketmaster service fees the last time I saw Pearl Jam, so I'm a bit jaded.
The thing is that a lot of big bands started out by encouraging things very much like "piracy." Metallica wouldn't be discovered and thus not big without the tape trading they had back in the day, at least as far as I understand it. That's how you initially get things going. Get your music to as many people as possible for as little work to you as possible and build a name through that. Then people will come to your shows, you'll be discovered, and you have a fanbase of people to buy your next thing. What's better for that than things like streaming services? I remember a few indie artists on here saying hey go listen to my stuff on band camp or spotify and buy it if you like it. That wasn't possible years ago. So while Metallica had to take a leap into a label to take the next logical step in their progression, some bands going forward might not have to do that.
I think spotify helps bands on a bit of a curve. Starting out and getting into that sort of next tier of exposure worldwide, it helps. Once your face is already everywhere and everyone knows who you are, then it hurts. Basically when no one knows who you are, exposure is very important, and getting some revenue on that is great. When everyone does, then yeah you're just eating into some of your sales.
I don't think he's ever made the details of his job public.
In this interview he says "A big part of what I do for a living is travel."
He also says there "All the profits that I make I’ve used for equipment – I bought a new computer, a guitar, obviously, guitar strings. Then, of course, putting out albums – everything is funded. At this point, it’s a self-sustaining machine."
This is a guy that refuses donations from fans (says so in that interview), puts everything up for free, and has only toured once. He's not living on his art, but he could very well be if he actually wanted to, and that's because of the wide distribution the internet and streaming services like spotify and band camp give him.
Rktk
Member
I think it is an example of a band that may have gone no where without streaming, at the time MySpace was the biggest social network with a lot of popular music on there, it wasn't like the Spotify library but it's a good comparison for the time.
That said just because there are a few examples of artists that could chalk up part of their success to streaming, such as Beiber, that doesn't necessarily mean that overall small bands and musicians are better off for it. Personally I think they are but there is this romantic notion that the internet made it easy to become famous.
I think the point is for a lot of artists, it's nigh impossible to do art and work other jobs. Why should artists live their lives differently? You don't tell a white collar worker to get another job because his 9-5 pays for all of his needs, it should be the same for the arts. If you like it, buy it. Yeah for artists starting out they'll need to work another job, but once they're sufficient in size, I don't think it's unrealistic to say, 'I can do this fulltime'.
A dollar earned on streaming is paid out to an artist exactly the same as a dollar earned on downloads or physical though.
Media reporting on streaming revenue almost always compare a single stream to a single download, without taking the volumes in account. Take a look at http://charts.spotify.com, the Taylor Swift single is/was streamed more than 13 million times a week. The US is still an early market, but in a lot of the more mature streaming markets in Europe the volume of streams seem to balance out the much lower per-stream revenue.
Plasticine
Member
Radiohead doesn't have to look for a new label, because they already have a couple. Physical production and distribution for their albums is handled by XL Recordings, TBD Recordings and Hostess Entertainment. While they have a greater measure of control over their releases than the average band, they're still not doing everything on their own.
Well I was talking about Taylor Swift lol.
Emerging artists were shut out 20 years ago because the only way you could get your content out there was through radio or signing with a record label. You better hope you were what the record label wanted too in terms of genre, look, and voice. In the present day there's more variety, choice, and voices out there than ever because of streaming services.
Yes, the pay rate sucks but this is literally the best era for artists minus the pay rate which would be remedied by just having direct sales rather than using analog era marketing techniques in a market that tiers toward digital.
People like Taylor Swift could easily make more money if she decided to make her own music service and sell directly to her fans while struggling musicians can get their names out there for little to no money to produce their content.
There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding how the music industry has evolved today, especially at the top. Why would I buy a CD at this point? Physical media for me is just a burden now. With the way bandwidth and the internet have evolved, its simply pointless to have a physical copy of a CD. If you're banking on CD sales as the reason your pulling out of Spotify, I can't believe that's an artist choice. A simple google search will reveal, that on average, the artist makes 13% of the sale from the CD. For someone like Taylor, the volume of sales makes this a decent income, but for most people, its simply a means of getting the music into someone's hands that likes it. As has typically been, tours are artists biggest income generator.
Having said all that, Spotify is too convenient, and too easy, and its not going away. The sheer amount of competition in the streaming space obviously shows that.
Having said all that, Spotify is too convenient, and too easy, and its not going away. The sheer amount of competition in the streaming space obviously shows that.
CapitalismSucks DonkeyBalls
Banned
Torrented the album anyway so I could put it on my phone. Listened to it this weekend with the wife and neither of us liked it.
I don't get the hype for this. It's still boring and the songwriting is bleh. With her earnings, the stunt she pulled with this, and the fact that the album wasn't that good--it makes me glad I didn't indulge in the hype and actually buy the damn thing.
I don't get the hype for this. It's still boring and the songwriting is bleh. With her earnings, the stunt she pulled with this, and the fact that the album wasn't that good--it makes me glad I didn't indulge in the hype and actually buy the damn thing.
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
That's not the point I was making. I'm not saying you can't do that, I'm saying you will dramatically increase the likelihood that you will have to compromise your work to earn money to live day to day. When that happens, that's not your Art any more; that's your Art by committee. I've seen it happen far too many times.
If you can do your Art full time without that ever happening then more power to you, but very very few artists will ever find themselves lucky enough to be in that position. In my opinion, it simply isn't worth the risk if you value what you do.
dantevsninjas
Member
Now if she'd just pull it from everywhere else.
I understand your point. I think artists would rather just make money off of their work, compromise or not. At the end of the day, it's a way to get income so it comes down to money and most artists would rather have money than a 100% pure rendition of their art.
As far as your edit, yeah it sucks, but guess what, you still got paid.
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
MoodyFog
Member
You sure you don't mean Iron Maiden, and not ACDC?
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