Spotify - anyone heard of it?

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!

i remember when that tidal ad came out thinking 'what gets me to sign up is paul and yoko walking thru that door w/ robert fripp and bob segar'.

otmfm

schwantz if you take from me saying a stance was "solipsistic-to-sociopathic" that i'm saying a group of people are sociopaths...not my intent, and i apologize if i invoked the new godwin's law or something

I don't really see how this Beatles material is such a big deal according to just about every article/opinion I read about it - a boomer band who, fifty years ago, recorded a mere five great albums shouldn't in any way be relevant to the livelihood of thousands of musicians today and for the next decades. I mean, if you like em, just fucking steal those red and blue albums and then enjoy the millions of other song that *are* out there on whatever service you sign up for.

which five

Nevermind, OU812, The Chronic, Trout Mask Replica and Saturday Night Fever

wtf how could you list the five greatest beatles albums and leave out sgt pepper u mad

I don't really see how this Beatles material is such a big deal http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bazald/l/tutorial/zenitank/boom.png according to just about every article/opinion I read about it - a boomer band https://www.facebook.com/PaulOrselliWorkshop?ref=nf who, fifty years ago, recorded a mere five great albums https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/3531249963/96346c0ee3449c2eddea7920e705a6af_bigger.jpeg shouldn't in any way be relevant to the livelihood of thousands of musicians today and for the next decades. I mean, if you like em, just fucking steal those red and blue albums and then enjoy the millions of other song that *are* out there on whatever service you sign up for.

http://www.ringophone.com/HDcolorWP/atomic-explosion_.jpg
― Siegbran, Friday, July 31, 2015 2:16 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

WREAKED havoc, jfc

anyone who wants Spotify URLs to open in the desktop app ...

glenn advised to just click "Play in Spotify" but I never saw that option, it just opened the player. Figured it out: open a Spotify URL. Click the settings gear in the Spotify webapp, look for a setting like "Open Spotify URLs in desktop app". Confusingly, it will have a checkmark, but if the checkmark is gray it's not enabled. Click it so it's green. Next time I opened a Spotify URL it gave me the option to Play in Spotify before it opened the web player.