Spotify - anyone heard of it?

also prince fans may actually be more likely to check out his new song when it's placed next to "the best of prince" (if that) rather than 30+ full-lengths

radio stations also rely on audience research, and audiences notoriously hate unfamiliar material

yes, absolutely, of course. but radio stations have the power to make any track they want familiar to their audience, and that's a power that most stations rarely if ever exercise or experiment with.

i do think it's a mistake to ignore streaming entirely. but i think it makes far more sense financially for an artist to treat it as a promotional device - the latest and greatest evolution of radio/jukebox - then as a replacement for sales. which is what it becomes when you put everything you have to sell on it.

yes, absolutely, of course. but radio stations have the power to make any track they want familiar to their audience, and that's a power that most stations rarely if ever exercise or experiment with.

― fact checking cuz, Friday, July 31, 2015 1:29 PM (28 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

true; similarly, publications have the power to ignore pageviews and shares and make any artist they want the locus point of their coverage. but, uh, well, yeah

it's possible some day it will be impossible to even make your biggest fans buy music but there's no reason for musicians to pretend we've reached that commercial post-apocalypse

there's also no reason to deny yourself income just to be ahead of the times

i agree! i really do mean no disrespect to prince or any other artist that wants to pull some or all of his material off these services. an artist should figure out what makes the most sense for him and do it. power to the artists who do that.

i don't always love the results, and i'm not sure the model that artists would like to see in the long run is the model that's best for consumers in the long run. that's all.

well yeah obv itd be great for me if i could rent every song ever recorded for 10 bucks a month. but it's solipsistic-to-sociopathic to pretend that's a system that's going to allow artists to thrive.

true; similarly, publications have the power to ignore pageviews and shares and make any artist they want the locus point of their coverage. but, uh, well, yeah

i'm just suggesting there may be a balance to be struck somewhere in there between audience research, label payola, pageviews, shares, etc., and thinking about what music is worth playing and what stories are worth covering. of course you have to look at page views and shares. and if that's all you look at, well, then, buzzfeed, yay.

xpost
No it's not.

oh of course, I'm not disagreeing with you that ideally that'd be the case

No it's not.

good point

There have been tons of models showing (many detailed in this thread) that if streaming services can get a decent number of paying customers (at $10/month),l there will be plenty of money to go around. And, it's in perpetuity, not just at the time of sale.

prince likes to be on the charts and is happy to do whatever backflips necessary to get there
see also enclosing his new album in a newspaper or bundling it with concert ticket sales

There have been tons of models showing (many detailed in this thread) that if streaming services can get a decent number of paying customers (at $10/month),l there will be plenty of money to go around. And, it's in perpetuity, not just at the time of sale.

rather than debate the plausibility of those models, i'll concede that if and when those numbers are reached, it could create a more viable ecosystem of artists. but i don't think artists should give up the one they have until that happens. which is why i think artists should engage with streaming sites, but in the sense of providing the same songs they'd happily let radio blast out - which could be a few dozen depending on the artist!

if every artist put three-to-four songs from every album that would be a TON of music, totally worth 10 bucks a month to play with. But would still provide some motivation for consumers to spend MORE on the artists they truly love for more music.

every artist put on streaming three-to-four songs, i mean

I would argue that making money off the back catalog rather than having people just play MP3s/CDs they bought long ago makes more financial sense to the artists, right?

If all the albums Spotify became little samplers, I'd stop using it. I like albums.

again, people who wanna hear the hits would still be able to. you would just have two ways of making money off the back catalog - streaming for the hits, sales for the deep cuts, rather than one

I guess. Pretty customer-unfriendly, though.

and totally hypothetical

yeah see when people say getting four songs off every album ever for 10 bucks a month, where you'd only have to buy deep cuts, is "customer-unfriendly," that doesn't dissuade me from seeing the argument as "solipsistic-to-sociopathic"

I would cancel my subscription and click 'Forgot My Password' on What.CD

Happily paying 10 bucks a month forever for music doesn't seem sociopathic to me.

Are people who use the library sociopaths?

no, why would you think that

have you been to a library lately?

hahahaha

Freely reading/listening to/watching to stuff they didn't pay for like they deserve it.

open goal

i support libraries because they're a glimmer of socialism but guess what google play isn't

Hey, if artists want to window their music, and pull things on and off streaming services and whatever to maximize their revenue, they are free to do it. Doesn't mean it's not annoying, and that it might ultimately hurt them (and everyone) by turning people off to paying for music again.

And yeah, if it were up to me, seems like it would make more sense to just tax everyone some nominal amount and have digital libraries with everything available to all citizens, but then socialism.

in a void, its not the belief that one has a right to experience creative works that's solipsistic-to-sociopathic. it's the arguments for why avoiding putting all your music on streaming is a bad thing for artists to do.

Hey, if artists want to window their music, and pull things on and off streaming services and whatever to maximize their revenue, they are free to do it. Doesn't mean it's not annoying, and that it might ultimately hurt them (and everyone) by turning people off to paying for music again.

nothing about the sales of albums held from streaming suggest this is what happens

I'm more saying that if Spotify became basically whatever is on the radio, I wouldn't pay for it.

well from the beginning i said artists should give streaming what they would GIVE the radio, not that spotify should only have what is ON the radio

There have been tons of models showing (many detailed in this thread) that if streaming services can get a decent number of paying customers (at $10/month),l there will be plenty of money to go around

Except there is never enough money to go around when some parties want moooooooooooooore.

one big difference between industries that's part of the huge difference between netflix and spotify is film/tv has pretty effective unions for actors and writers while musicians' unions aren't nearly as common (in pop at least) or powerful, way more open shop in practice (i mean gang of four crossed picket lines). key exception of music industry where unions are a force is w/ classical music which is making me wonder now if that's why so many classical recordings are difficult to find on spotify or only get released hella later or disappear after a month or so. the artists that have pulled their stuff or only allowed their stuff to stream after a while (the big catalog guys - zep, floyd, ac/dc, eagles)(saw a 'best of apple records (non-beatles)' that came out years ago but was hyped as a new release made me wonder if spotify could somehow get that holy grail) have generally been big artists making leverage plays, their may be lip service to 'artists deserve to be rewarded' but really they've meant 'fuck you pay me', the only exception to this has kinda been taylor swift and even then it was just 'dear apple plz pay something anything'.

i really wanna know if badfinger genuinely doesn't want their shit on spotify or if they're just held hostage by paul'n'yoko

or rather the badfinger estate

When blank cassettes (and CDs?) were first introduced, wasn't there some sort of tax rolled into their price to counter piracy/copy losses? In theory, given that the internet is overwhelmingly copyrighted material being viewed for free (not just downloading music/movies), they could just slap a buck or two onto internet service bills, and that would make a ton of money. But then there's the problem of moooooooore. How can you share the revenue generated from such a seemingly equitable solution when some think (justifiably or not) that they deserve more, or generate more, or more more more mine mine mine. I wish there were some sort of one-stop shop for streaming. I'd pay more for that. But no one wants to give up any share of the potential pie, no matter how small the slivers are getting.

also w/ classical profits from recordings really kinda are an ancillary benefit, it's not the main gig and maybe never was? (even when classical had a larger presence in the popular sphere it meant more 'toscanini gets a huge contract from nbc radio') anna netrebko would feel it if her money from recordings went away for sure but i can't imagine it aproaches what she gets from performing.

xpost
There's that, and then there's the American thing of "I'm not paying to support a bunch of artists that I don't personally listen to!"

even though the big boys are def just holding out for what's theirs rather than what's everybodys, i'm glad they're doing it so that maybe little people will realize it's fucked. some say my fantasy of people only putting promotional tracks on spotify would be a dealbreaker for the service and artist but tell that to the beygency

lol croup after i posted that i thought 'wait..so is badfinger...' and the answer is still kinda no, they're not really on there BUT there is a comp that has the big apple corps hits (finally a non-re-recorded 'no matter what'!) on there that wasn't there the last time i checked (which wasn't super recently but was more recently than 2010, when that comp came out). the first james taylor album is on spotify now which wasn't there before.

"I'm not paying to support a bunch of artists that I don't personally listen to!"

Well, ads used to take care of this, across the board. We paid with our ears and eyeballs. But now that we have (or were given, or stole) greater choice and freedom, we also have ways to avoid the ads. Which is what single-handedly has wrecked havoc across all number of mediums (radio, TV, newspapers).

xpost oooh didn't know they finally got a (non-re-recorded) comp up

despite my antipathy towards streaming in theory i am a big fan of "oh apparently whoever has the rights to the Giant Records catalog coughed Tara Kemp up" moments

latest and greatest was the belated arrival of "Return Of The Mack"

but then as i said, it's only the mark morrison album tracks that should be withheld

Not bummed about destroying the advertising model. Cuz I AM A SOCIOPATH!