Thread For Chatter About The Streaming Music Economy

Maybe it's time to update the app? Before I switched to Premium I had a really old version that I for some reason thought was superior to the new ones and didn't update. Well, it wasn't better.

http://www.thembj.org/2016/06/the-drama-of-artist-payments/

^nothing too new here, but seems a reasonable and of the moment primer
(unless someone wants to disabuse me of that notion?)

_Should_ a song cost as much as an avocado? Discuss.

how ripe is the avocado?

Trying to buy more records new, but most of my records these days are bought off Discogs or the Cat Protection shop in Llandudno

I'm surely not the first to think this, but it just occurred to me that the economy of streaming is very different in that in order for songs to generate profit they need replay value - whereas you only need to sell a copy once, doesn't matter economically if people listen to a cd or not

Yeah -- i have favorite records, like all time favorite records, which I have never listened to more than a couple of times a year just because that's the kind of records they are.

And some conceptual/experimental music is probably not meant to be streamed over and over

The letter and signatories to the letter we've sent to @BorisJohnson this morning.#BrokenRecord pic.twitter.com/i8o9AWGRVs

— Tom Gray #BrokenRecord (@MrTomGray) April 20, 2021

wait, what are the two words??

The "two words" thing is kind of a flourish, but the idea is that there's an "otherwise than" in that particular law that, if removed, would facilitate applying the UK's "equitable remuneration" laws to streaming music by treating it as a form of broadcasting instead of a form of sale.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-57838473

I've read some pretty convincing theories around a possible trajectory for Spotify that gets further away from artist-centric music listening:
-Since they obviously make their money from subscriptions and ads, they only stand to lose money when you listen to music that has publishing/copyright holders.
-It's easy to imagine using machine learning to just generate long, endless AI background music based on your 'preferences'

But how would this square with their current moves toward TikTok-y videos from artists, which sucks in its own way but puts the human element right in front of the listener? Maybe it's a two-pronged approach...get human artists to use 'Discovery' mode and make even less money from listeners in exchange for exposure, and try to wrest eyes from other social media platforms, and then generate infinite copies based on what does well for the listeners who don't care about who makes the music?

sounds about right, what a terrible platform, anything with shareholders turns to garbage

One thing I have been wondering about is how the money works on streaming of all these Jazz complications and collections that have fell into public domain in Europe that are starting to really add up on music streaming sites.

You look at the artist pages for some classic musicians and there will be more of these comps than the actual records.

it's so annoying to navigate through as a listener

I'm finally switching to Qobuz btw, feels great so far.

I mean ok, it has some pretty quirky searching (searching by artist brings up a list of releases, not an artist page, so you have to find a release by the correct artist and click on their name to get all of their releases). But spiritually, it feels great to finally get away from Spotify and supposedly their royalty rate to artists is great. And so far I'm (eventually) finding everything I'm looking for in their catalog.

yeah I love Qobuz

they actually have some interesting playlists and articles too

Yeah it's cool that they're trying to do Bandcamp-style editorial.

the playlist are cool instead of being like "bougie mango beach coffee time zoning vibes" like there was a cool one on ECM record, stuff like that

recently started a move to apple music because my work has done something to make spotify not work. hard to find compilations and decent playlists. is there a trick I'm missing?

OK you got me wanting to check out Qobuz

Yeah it's cool that they're trying to do Bandcamp-style editorial.

Tidal does this too, but it's so hard to find it's like they're actively trying to hide it.

https://tidal.com/magazine/

I've only tried the Qobuz web app so far btw, the desktop app is blocked at my work and I haven't checked out the android app yet.

Qobuz is also the only generalist streaming service that has accompanying CD booklets (largely for classical but I have seen booklets for other genres, including some Blue Note jazz).

I usually use Amazon Music at home off the TV. Their interface on these is bare bones. Listening to Kenny Burrell, it seems like these comps keep being added all the time and the same on Mingus’ page.

I wonder if the money off the streams is all just going back to the labels that post these. Got to figure it must be.

It would be nice if they actually cared about the curation of this music. John McLaughlin has this goofy prolific home brew singer song writer whose catalog is completely mixed in with his discography.

recently started a move to apple music because my work has done something to make spotify not work. hard to find compilations and decent playlists. is there a trick I'm missing?

For Tidal, I knew if I wanted any of my saved/followed Spotify playlists, I'd have to create them myself. I paid for a month of tunemymusic premium and ported over the bigger ones I could think of. (Anthology of Dub, the two big ECM ones, Stax/Volt + Atlantic R&B, UK #1s, my own Bacharach deep dive being the biggest)