Spotify

[Gentleman]

I'm loving Spotify, just think of any nasty obscure Punk band from the 70's and its there for you to listen for free!!

[ChrisW]

I don't have a Facebook account.
Plus, performers currently make very little income from Spotify. And several Aussie artists have already spoken out about it.

[Gentleman]

When you want to check out a song or production, it's there at the click of a button and I don't have to buy it on itunes just to hear something I need to listen too just once or twice!

[The Tasmanian]

Somewhere I read that it takes hundreds of downloads to equal 1 Itunes royalty for the artist?
Spotify makes a shitty record deals look really appealing.
We are being screwed in this time of "the artist is now empowered" BS

[The Tasmanian]

No Facebook for me too!

[ChrisW]

Spotify is screwing musicians, no doubt.

I will concede, a couple of producers I know in the UK (where Spotify has been around a while) have said it's great for quick research of a recommended artist.

[chribble]

I have heard the below - I am not claiming to be the person who made up these claims.
Heard these at songsummit this week in a workshop on international songwritin.

1) Streaming service financially based in Luxembourg where royalty payout is less than other countries?
2) Classified as 'streaming' so royalty payout is less than 'owning'.

BUT.

Think about how people listen to music now anyway, I would say youtube is the #1 point now.
Are there royalties being paid out on youtube/vimeo - be!@#$%^& knows what other streaming sites?? I don't know but I'd say no for the most part. Are there royalties paid on soundcloud?

Atleast it's better than piracy because there is no ownership, and atleast some payout.
And maybe people will start listening to some better music than what is playing on 104.1

interesting read:

CD sales have declined by 60% in the last 7 years; surprisingly, royalties have not declined, but have gone up the last years, with a growth of more than 5% in 2010. While the record companies have to cut costs due to a decline in CD sales, the publishing industry is relatively healthy. Last year was the first time in the US that the decline in CD sales matched the rise in digital sales. “So maybe we have hit the bottom”, Johan Ahlström hopes.

source:
http://www.lff.lu/nc/finance/news/news- ... y-last/21/


[quote="ChrisW"]Spotify is screwing musicians, no doubt.

I will concede, a couple of producers I know in the UK (where Spotify has been around a while) have said it's great for quick research of a recommended artist.[/quote]

[ChrisW]

Every report I've read over the last couple of years has agreed that digital sales have increased, but not as much as CD sales have decreased. So sales are still going backwards.
Another point that gets massaged in the debate is the widening gap between the top money earners and the rest (of us).
Yes, artists do get paid by Youtube (per video view) and I think some are now beginning to make a decent income from it, especially with their official YouTube channels.
Saying Spotify is better than piracy is a bit of a choker.
Spotify are a legitimate music company. So they could be paying a decent price for the music they need to run their online business.
The music scene/business (us) shouldn't settle for the odd crumbs tossed our way in this struggle to reframe the creation and distribution of our work.

[rob]

I wonder what the relationship is between the royalties that Spotify pay and what a radio station pays.
Is Spotify just a modern day radio station ... with a better request program?

[ChrisW]

This is the difference if people use Spotify to replace buying music:
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories ... rtistmakes

[chribble]

Got it. I was pointing out that this was a good way for people to legally access music online, easily, free. Not looking to start up that topic about downloading.

Sales are down, no doubt. That's not what I was highlighting as the most interesting point.
I am seeing that revenue is going up despite falling sales (in synchronisations and streaming?)

So if you're in the distribution business of moving CD's in a truck, Yep... you're in a bad spot..
But if you're in the business of publishing content into new areas such as music apps, online media, games and streaming radio. That's potentially a winner?
Businesses helping bands get music onto itunes/etc and taking a small cut?
There's most definitely ways businesses can be sucessful in music distribution.

As for artists, who knows - Hasn't it always been tough to make money?

Every report I've read over the last couple of years has agreed that digital sales have increased, but not as much as CD sales have decreased. So sales are still going backwards.
Another point that gets massaged in the debate is the widening gap between the top money earners and the rest (of us).
Yes, artists do get paid by Youtube (per video view) and I think some are now beginning to make a decent income from it, especially with their official YouTube channels.
Saying Spotify is better than piracy is a bit of a choker.
Spotify are a legitimate music company. So they could be paying a decent price for the music they need to run their online business.
The music scene/business (us) shouldn't settle for the odd crumbs tossed our way in this struggle to reframe the creation and distribution of our work.

[chribble]

That's a great link, good reading thanks.

This is the difference if people use Spotify to replace buying music:
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories ... rtistmakes

[rick]

having had spotify filling my house for a few days non stop i love it

I am in its radio I like camp
as long as the artists played have some kind of accounting system that is true and correct

frankly then I dont care how low the royalty payment is


lets get a reality check on australian artists .. just so the conversation is relevant

I can probably count on my fingers the number of australian artists that have actually ever made their full time income from record sale royalties ..
ie the best just get
the occasional boat size check in the good years and the get the car registered check in the lean years ..
this local argument holds water right across the stream of downloading issues

ok so not enough money for labels or managers or promo chicks to get a fulltime wage and a company car 5 times
the price of any australian musos humble chariot ... from downloading alone .. or in fact the licensing of the ip that they didnt even fork out to create ..
big F@#$ing deal

we are back in the 1950s - 1960s early 1970s royalty wise and opportunity wise
only now everybody knows it
now If we could get the crappola to great stuff ratio coming out to match the 1960s /early 1970s
then i am going to send mr spotify a christmas present

[Text_Edifice]

I reckon - not that anyone needs to give a shit - that this is just the next iteration of radio. I know you can now stream everything and this is supposed to render owning music irrelevant but having played with spotify for a while I don't think it actually works like that. Problematically Spotify don't pay a radio licensing agreement (it would bankrupt them if they did) so artists don't get the same amount in their pocket but I wonder if the "Spotify plays = lost sales" argument isn't just as spurious as the "torrents = lost sales" one. It might only bring in a few meagre extra dollars in but I don't think this is money that's necessarily lost from other revenue streams.

For indie (and probably label signed) Aus artists the markets too small; operates in a manner several years behind the rest of the world; and not what people are really logging into services like Spotify to listen to anyway.

Love this quote from Tim Harford's book on the transformational power of new technologies:

Historically, there has been no clear link between economic transformation and high profits for the average company. In fact, the reverse is often true: economic transformation destroys the profitability of old firms (by replacing or duplicating their scarce assets), while the new firms that replace them often face a high failure rate and very large costs of building their business. The advantages are enjoyed by workers who are paid higher wages on average and by customers who pay lower prices or get new and better goods and services. For example, Amazon's profits of $30milion in 2003 should be wighed against the fall in global music industry profits of around $2.5 billion in the same year, a drop that industry executives blame on internet music downloads and easy piracy. The internet can destroy profiets as well as enable them.
This has always been the case with previous revolutionary technologies such as railways or electricity. (Harford, 2006, p. 153).

[ChrisW]

Yes, Spotify might be the new radio, and yes Australian artists may never have enjoyed economic health, but this is not the 1950's or 1990's, this is 2012, and all of these web businesses are making a boatload of money.
People in the creative industries should not sit around saying "whatever will be will be", they need to stand up and shout about how little they are remunerated, while the big end of town (web tech and tech shareholders) are getting extremely well paid off our backs.
It's a simple as that.
No doubt Spotify is great for consumers, it's crap for musicians, studios and most labels.

[ChrisW]

Sales are down, no doubt. That's not what I was highlighting as the most interesting point.
I am seeing that revenue is going up despite falling sales (in synchronisations and streaming?)

Revenue is going up for Justin Beiber, Adele, and the next winner of X Factor or The Voice.
Revenue is going down for interesting, innovative musicians who aren't part of a ten week reality tv show/publicity campaign and can't fill Homebush like 90's acts U2, Madonna and Coldplay.
That's the concern I have.

[Text_Edifice]

Yes, Spotify might be the new radio, and yes Australian artists may never have enjoyed economic health, but this is not the 1950's or 1990's, this is 2012, and all of these web businesses are making a boatload of money.
People in the creative industries should not sit around saying "whatever will be will be", they need to stand up and shout about how little they are remunerated, while the big end of town (web tech and tech shareholders) are getting extremely well paid off our backs.
It's a simple as that.
No doubt Spotify is great for consumers, it's crap for musicians, studios and most labels.

Don't disagree with any of what you're saying Chris (though would point out that not all those web businesses are making boatloads of money and there has been a high failure rate in the Spotify-type market). And to clarify I wasn't suggesting a "whatever will be will be" attitude is an appropriate response.

I was pointing out that the impact of Spotify on the local market may not be as significant as other market forces – the real issue with Spotify (and similar services) is that, as has generally been the case, the IP owners are labels and not artists. Spotify and related services are actually old music business models leveraging the catalogs of labels for whom a share of millions of streams a day is profitable.

I was also pointing out that technological change has almost always rendered some markets and modes of business un/less profitable. In Spotify's case (and the online space more generally) I can see this playing out. What concerns me is that the innovative and interesting new markets and modes of business that might emerge haven't and instead we're getting iterations of a model for the sale / exploitation of recorded music that is, historically, an aberration.

[Wiz]

Interesting topic.

Here is a thought/question

How much should an artist receive, for a single online play of their material, and how much should they receive for a download?

thats actually something I haven't seen discussed, the actual amount of money.....lots of discussion on it being unfair all over the net.

Perhaps working backwards from the artist, might spark some new thoughts?

[ChrisW]

The link I posted earlier actually addresses this.
Follow the link, and the artist (linked) who made the initial comments.
I'll selectively quote for the sake of saving space:

With Spotify, we’ll get 0.003 EUR/play.
If you listen to the album all the way through, we’ll get 0.029 EUR.
If you listen to the album 10 times on Spotify, we'll get 0.29 EUR
If you listen to it a hundred times, we’ll get 2.94 EUR
If you listen to the album 1,000 times (once a day for 3 years!) we’ll get 29.47 EUR!

Edit

Amazon MP3
You’ll pay 7.11 EUR to download the MP3’s. We will get 4.97 EUR of that. That’s a 70-30 split.
iTunes
The album will cost you 8.91 EUR to buy from Apple.
There’s a 70-30% split there too, so we will keep 6.28 EUR/album.
That being said, it costs us 35 EUR/year to keep an album on iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon (105 EUR per year for all 3 of our albums!) so we don’t make any money until 24 people have bought a digital copy of the album on iTunes, or 150 single songs, or if we get tens of thousands of listens on Spotify! In most cases, it’s actually more economically viable not to sell the music at all.

[jkhuri44]

there is no music industry...

[rick]

I am in the entertainment business
I make records

[ChrisW]

My ultimate opinion is:
Records have great value.
(Despite Spotify and the views of the Pirate Party)

[Wiz]

The link I posted earlier actually addresses this.
Follow the link, and the artist (linked) who made the initial comments.
I'll selectively quote for the sake of saving space:

With Spotify, we’ll get 0.003 EUR/play.
If you listen to the album all the way through, we’ll get 0.029 EUR.
If you listen to the album 10 times on Spotify, we'll get 0.29 EUR
If you listen to it a hundred times, we’ll get 2.94 EUR
If you listen to the album 1,000 times (once a day for 3 years!) we’ll get 29.47 EUR!

Edit

Amazon MP3
You’ll pay 7.11 EUR to download the MP3’s. We will get 4.97 EUR of that. That’s a 70-30 split.
iTunes
The album will cost you 8.91 EUR to buy from Apple.
There’s a 70-30% split there too, so we will keep 6.28 EUR/album.
That being said, it costs us 35 EUR/year to keep an album on iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon (105 EUR per year for all 3 of our albums!) so we don’t make any money until 24 people have bought a digital copy of the album on iTunes, or 150 single songs, or if we get tens of thousands of listens on Spotify! In most cases, it’s actually more economically viable not to sell the music at all.

hi Chris

yep, thats what they GET paid...but I was posing the hypothetical...would SHOULD they get paid...8)

what do people think is a fair price, to pay ,to hear a song online once, and again to download it and keep it (until the next format change...8)....)

which reminds me, Rick, you wrote an article some years back, about the next big format, relating to the fact that we had gone from LP to CD to Mp3..and that there was something on the horizon, and IIRC it was going to be really good.... can you talk about what it was?

cheers

[ChrisW]

There is a balance between a fair price and the cost of production.
Workers in the music industry need to charge a price that reflects the cost of production, so we aren't going backwards and so we can continue to produce.
By most accounts, Spotify isn't doing that.
Which is why artists in other countries have removed their content from Spotify, and why some Australian artists have spoken out against Spotify.

It's similar to the $1 litre of milk scenario.

[rick]

It was the iPhone 6 months before
Any apple employee in Australia even knew It was coming
he says as he types from his
iPhone ..

And I was correct .. Well
But I was gagged
But correct

[Wiz]

It was the iPhone 6 months before
Any apple employee in Australia even knew It was coming
he says as he types from his
iPhone ..

And I was correct .. Well
But I was gagged
But correct

Hey thanks for that...you don't know how many times I sat on the ablouter reading that old mag, wondering what it ended up being...

8)

[walding]

Streaming music is the future, well in fact it's now.

The smart ones stream their music on spotify, then offer hi Rez DL, limited edition (ie vinyl, autographed CDs etc, remixes blah blah) from their OWN website.

I think it's a great idea, radio if u will where u get to choose.

[audioio]

What concerns me is that the innovative and interesting new markets and modes of business that might emerge haven't

Which ones would those be?

instead we're getting iterations of a model for the sale / exploitation of recorded music that is, historically, an aberration.

Since musicians have been getting ripped off since cylinders, surely it's not an aberration at all.

[ChrisW]

Many musicians did ok in the 70's, 80's and 90's.
You did actually get paid for your work a lot of the time (nearly all of the time in my case).
It's also a bit of a drag every time you talk about workers in the music industry struggling to get paid you're told it's nothing new.

[The Tasmanian]

At first I thought Spotify was a product to clean soiled underwear?
I wasn't far off