The RIAA Armageddon has begun

about half of my pre-iPod listening time was on cassettes and car radios so i'd be totally fronting if i said i ever think about or mind the fidelity or mp3s or streams, even if i notice the difference.

with a physical good, the cost to buy is very related to the cost of production.

lol in what universe

some dude OTM

like I get that's how it's supposed to work in Econ Theory 101 but in the real world that is just not the case

xp

god this is so fucking stupid. it's like you think the only point at which money was required in the music industry is at the point of sale of a physical product.

yeah I stopped reading here because you're putting a lot of words in my mouth. you really think I don't know it takes money to create the music? what I'm saying is there's a difference between a product that costs you $5 to make and distribute vs. a product that costs $10000 to make but $0 (okay, a few cents) to distribute. say you sell each for $10. if Product A sells 50,000 but you get 50,000 stolen, you broke even and that sucks. if you sell 50,000 of Product B then you made $40,000 regardless of how many are stolen. get it?

*sigh*

backing away slowly

IMO bitching about a streaming service having an incomplete catalog makes absolutely no sense; would you expect a single record label to release every album you've ever wanted to hear, from the past to the present? If not, why would you expect that of a streaming service? Even paid television subdivides into packages and different carriers may offer different channels. Neither Hulu nor Netflix has every television show or movie ever made available for physical rental, let alone download. It's a wholly unrealistic expectation; the question shouldn't be "do they have EVERYTHING?", it should be "do I like enough of what they have?"

*sigh*

backing away slowly

― a dense custard of infinity (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, June 19, 2012 2:06 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

this is my favorite part of the festive dance!

yeah well that answer (in my case) is no

xp

lol some dude

*sigh*

backing away slowly

― a dense custard of infinity (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, June 19, 2012 1:06 PM

lol, this was me yesterday on the Zappa thread when he showed up

xp hahaha

dude WmC you were bitching about something I *didn't even write*! cmon man

I don't get it why do people constantly mock the RIAA for using this type of bad logic yet champion our posters around here that do the same? This place is weird

You instantly misread my criticism of the quote you pulled by that critic, and in general your posts have the logical and rhetorical rigor of a pile of wet spaghetti, so there was no need for me to carry on with you in that thread, and the same thing is happening here. xp

http://www.v-r-a.org/ppp/MJFrog/MJF1.gif

when I want to listen to obscurities I don't own I sequence a bunch of YouTube clips together. Is it any worse than paying for Spotify?

yeah WmC I admit that part you pointed out might imply something you didn't like but I don't see how A) asking you to read the whole fucking thing or B) asking why you're obsessing over such a minor point represents "the logical and rhetorical rigor of a pile of wet spaghetti"

but seriously if you have anything to say w/r/t the similarity of the economics of physical and digital goods, I'm all ears, otherwise I'm glad you felt the need to come on this thread just to be a prick about an unrelated topic

when I want to listen to obscurities I don't own

Acts that are not on Spotify obscurities like Royal Trux and De La Soul and Can ...?

when I want to listen to obscurities I don't own I sequence a bunch of YouTube clips together. Is it any worse than paying for Spotify?

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, June 19, 2012 11:20 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think the difference is you can pretend you own it a little better w/ spotify.

also you can play a whole album without clicking in between each song to find the best version.

genuine q: do artists get royalty from Youtube plays? At least Spotify pays a royalty, however pitiful that might be.

"royalties" in first sentence above obv

genuine q: do artists get royalty from Youtube plays?

If the uploader "claims" the video, they get paid when it plays.

okay, thanks.

well how much do they really make? I mean I read that Rebecca Black apparently made a ton of $$$ but how much does your average say Field Music-level band made?

ultimately this seems like the best way to pay artists (in addition to album sales, which I don't think will go away completely) but I'm guessing Spotify ad revenue is just a drop in the bucket (not that iTunes pays them much more!)

this is out of left field but i keep thinking about the power of the idea that carrier is different from content. i think it's basically what made the record industry possible and now it's what is killing the record industry. and it's like, a lie. carrier just gets endlessly outsourced and fractured into new industries and you pay for it w/ your phone bill or whatever. more fingers in the pie, less for everyone? idk.

anyway i'm with the fidelity/physical object geeks for the most part. there still isn't a way to get cassette-quality music for free. if there was, i'd be all over that.

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/

well how much do they really make? I mean I read that Rebecca Black apparently made a ton of $$$ but how much does your average say Field Music-level band made?

― frogbs, Tuesday, June 19, 2012 2:41 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark

note these numbers:

By March 21, 2011, the "Friday" music video had been viewed more than 30 million times on YouTube.[50] Forbes estimated that as of that date, Black and ARK Music had earned $20,000 from YouTube's revenue-sharing program,[51] and Billboard estimated iTunes sales of approximately 43,000 copies, roughly equivalent to $26,700 in royalties.[52]

40k in iTunes sales yielded roughly the same amount of money as 30 million YouTube views, so the ratio is roughly 1000 to 1 in terms of iTunes vs. YouTube

i think it's funny that everyone became such an expert about major label contracts, royalty rates, merch sales, touring income, and like ~the nature of what ownership of information even is, man~ right about the time they could download a music for free

well how much do they really make?

I don't have hard numbers in front of me (and wouldn't share them if I did), but where I work, YouTube streams generate a significant revenue stream. To give you an example, Nickelback's video for "When We Stand Together" has been viewed over 56 million times. Even if we get paid a tenth of a penny a play, that's a lot of money.

not really. you think that's a fair price? a tenth of a penny? for one play?

$56,000 isn't a lot of money?

it is nickelback though

woah i didn't know the nickelback dude posted here

yeah i mean, a dollar for every thousand views, or a thousand dollars for every million views, that seems pretty decent.

we are talking, after all, about a site where you can click it over and over to up your views, and nobody pays to watch anything. advertising can only generate so much revenue.

woah i didn't know the nickelback dude posted here

I run Roadrunner Records' website.

the fact that the artist gets only 9 cents per iTunes download is ridiculous

...if you don't mind my asking, how many employees are left at Roadrunner now anyway?

where did that statistic come from? (xpost)

mr. que's link up there

woah i didn't know the nickelback dude posted here

I run Roadrunner Records' website.

― 誤訳侮辱, Tuesday, June 19, 2012 2:19 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha i figured it was a typo...are they on roadrunner now?

They've always been on there, I think?

...if you don't mind my asking, how many employees are left at Roadrunner now anyway?

A really loose, off-the-top-of-my-head count yields about 40 in the New York office, with a few other people still floating around in other parts of the world (Canada, Australia).

are they on roadrunner now?

Nickelback have been on Roadrunner for almost their entire career (their first album was originally independently released in Canada).

xps that chart is a little bit misleading as it only tallies the royalties paid to the artist rather than the writer + also publisher of the song, which is where a more significant amount of royalty money goes - in the US at least, afaik. But i'm sure the relative scale of it is probably accurate enough that the point its making isn't lost

it looks like a DIY artist self-releasing an mp3 gets 57 cents out of a 99 cent song purchase according to that graph, though. of course signed acts are gonna lose most of that money to the label. (xpost)

i think it's funny that everyone became such an expert about major label contracts, royalty rates, merch sales, touring income, and like ~the nature of what ownership of information even is, man~ right about the time they could download a music for free

the internet made it easier to download songs around the same time it made it easier to read that steve albini piece

lol I was gonna call that out too but decided against it

Did you?

$56,000 isn't a lot of money?

Let's see, divide that by 4 for each band member, take away taxes. So an optimistic royalty for having the most popular video on youtube as a concert act is probably less than poverty level wages.

does Nickelback really split songwriting royalties four ways...?