Radiohead's Thom Yorke Pulls Albums From Spotify In Protest of Low Royalties

First time accepted submitter rpopescu writes "Thom Yorke of Radiohead fame has pulled his solo album 'Eraser' (as well as music made as Atoms for Peace) from the music streaming service Spotify, as a protest at how much it pays the artists. Quote: '"Make no mistake. These are all the same old industry bods trying to get a stranglehold on the delivery system."'"

Comments

Everything in its right place

[hawkinspeter]

So, it has come to this.

Re:Everything in its right place

[Sponge Bath]

Fight the man, man.

Re:Everything in its right place

[lxs]

According to every other news outlet it came to this two days ago and was reported back then as well, but better late than never I guess.

Re:Everything in its right place

[hawkinspeter]

Yes, but you must be forgetting the stringent editing process that all SlashDot articles have to go through.

Re:Everything in its right place

[Anonymous Coward]

It's definitely stringent when you factor in their pea-sized brains.

Re:Everything in its right place

[jools33]

No surprises, Before our very eyes Spotify are destroying the music industry. I Reckoner lot of what Thom says here is like all I need to hear on the music industry. I mean anyone can play Guitar, but what gives Spotify the rights to Creep around grabbing all the Dollars and Cents. Hail to the thief is what they say, call the Karma police and arrest Spotify I say! Spotify and their ilk are a bunch of High and Dry Thiefs. We should Stop Whispering and Start Shouting from the hilltops. Just the Million Dollar Question will our ranting make any difference; we might as well right a complaint to the Daily Mail for what good it will do. I might be wrong, but I think I hear the Exit Music playing for all these up and coming new bands. We should all act as the Judge, Jury and Executioner and leave Spotify; Dropped by the roadside of history like so many Stuck Together Pieces of other peoples art.

Re:Everything in its right place

[Myopic]

I'm curious, what is your threshold for news expiration dates? To me, fifty hours means the news is still very fresh. For you, is it like one hour? five hours?

Reward the artist

[Hatta]

Reward the artist by going to see a show and buying some merch. Nothing else really gets back to them in any significant amounts.

Re:Reward the artist

[Anonymous Coward]

There is more there then just money, the recording industry wants to keeps it monopoly on music. They are branching out into other countries to rob those artists of there copyrights. If you sign a deal you lose the right to control your own music, companies can re-release songs, or do whatever they want with the music. Obviously this has been talked about already, but they do not want artists to create and actually own there own music, they continue to go after artists with the DMCA take down. Where is the EFF is fighting all of this??

The merch, profits I believe still go to record companies, but your right, money artists make from concerts is there source of revenue. Some bands are not very ggod and because they had a couple of hits (at least in the states) they act as if they reinvented music and are god.

Re:Reward the artist

[Anonymous Coward]

Musicians? That's a hobby, not a profession. If they want to get paid, let them sell t-shirts. Heh heh you'd never catch me dead wearing one of those, but maybe some get-a-lifers would. BTW I downloaded some of their songs and most of them suck. They should THANK ME and PAY ME for listening to that crap they call music. If they recorded something worthwhile I might buy a CD, in fact I did that once seven years ago.

- typical Slashdot post

Re:Reward the artist

[alexander_686]

I will say no to that for 2 reasons.

First, there is music that I want to listen to that does not travel well. Sometimes the original artist is dead. Sometimes, like “Einstein on the Beach” – is a 5 hour beast which requires symphony, singers, narrator, choir, and dances. It’s done about once every 10 years or so. I worked with the tour manager. Kind of fascinating on how much work it took for a performance.

Back to the point. Some things travel better than other. It is easier to tour with a girl and a guitar then to tour with a four piece band, which is easier to tour then something that has a brass section.

Second I live in fly over land so shows are far and few between. And when I want to spend my money I want to spend it on music – not another t-shirt – I have too many already.

The problem is that the internet has shifted more power to the consumers and away from the producers – be they artists or record companies. Complaining that the record companies are taking a too large slice of the pie does not address the issue of the shrinking pie.

Re:Reward the artist

[darkitecture]

Reward the artist by going to see a show and buying some merch. Nothing else really gets back to them in any significant amounts.

Although I agree with you wholeheartedly and try to support my favorite artists as much as I can, this is nowhere near as practical for most of the world as one might first think.

One of my closest friends is a mad Dave Matthews Band fan and has been fortunate enough to attend at least four DMB gigs over the past twelve months. I'm sure Dave Matthews and my friend are both pleased as punch about this setup. My favorite artists include amongst others David Bowie and Tom Waits. I live in Japan. Go on and have a guess how many gigs either of them have put on in Japan in the past 12 months.

Now guess how many gigs either of them have put on here in Japan in the past 12 years.

Hint: you could have a nasty accident with a bandsaw and still count them on one hand. Now I'm not faulting the artists or their manager or anybody. That's life unfortunately. Even if my tastes were more mainstream, I still wouldn't come close to being able to see as many concerts as most Americans. I don't see Rihanna or Jay Z or Radiohead hosting many concerts here either. Radiohead hasn't toured here since 1994!

I've seen many of my favorite artists both here and overseas and almost without exception I've gone out of my way to get great (read: expensive) seats because I see great value for money in spending hundreds of dollars in seeing my favorite artists perform live. It's unfortunate for both me and the artists I would be willing to support that I don't live in the continental US or mainland Europe where most concerts seem to be held.

Re:Reward the artist

[fermion]

I know many artists and they do pretty well without many rewards. I am not saying that an artist should not make a living, but just like anything else it is a choice. One works to maximize money, like this guy or they guy who set up mortgages the guarantees families lose their life saving, or one works to try to make the world a better place, hoping to make some money along the way. And i do not mean high faluting things. If your music makes a few people feel better, able to deal with life,then that is the reward. Sometimes you end up with a product that is highly profitable, and sometimes that product is not art.

The reality is that the free market has set a value for recorded music. It may not be enough to support all the inefficiencies it once did, but the value is set. I heard a radio interview with this guy where he somehow felt entitled to a certain amount of money. That is not how it works. In my lifetime I have found my skills to be worth different values at different time, and if I were still doing the same thing I was doing 30 years ago I would be broke.

Everything has really changed over the past 20 years or so. I recall one duo, 25 years ago, who did shows for free and sold t-shirts to fund an album. The album then paid expenses. Now they perform and don't realy put out albums. They sell t-shirts. I was at a show a while back and was told just go to iTunes.

I wish more big recording people would get off Spotify. This might encourage spotify to do more local stuff, where local performers could get some exposure. People would then go out and see the shows, and we have a better music scene like when I was young, where you just went out to hear some cool music, not to be part of a crowd.

Re:Reward the artist

[datavirtue]

The market is setting the right price. If Spotify needed to pay more it would simply have to pay more.

Re:Reward the artist

[MightyYar]

"The market" - or at least the free market - doesn't really apply to music. First, the government creates a new kind of property and then gives a person (or corporation) monopoly rights to it. If you could still call it a free market at that point, then the government legislates prices for certain kinds of "performances", like radio or internet radio play (which for some reason have different rates). Once that happens, the supplier is totally written out of the equation. Spotify is still a little bit markety, in that they are not a "radio station" and are instead playing stuff on-demand so they still have to negotiate with the rights holders. So your comment has some truth to it, but Spotify has to compete against Pandora (and regular radio, for that matter), who pay the government-mandated rate. That is going to seriously distort Spotify's ability to arrive at a true "market" price for recorded music, which even with government support is very close to zero.

My artist friend hates Spotify. He'd rather get zero dollars from them than $5000, because he deems the deal to be "unfair". Um, OK. I'd take the "free" $5000, myself. It's not like Spotify is terribly profitable, laughing it's way to the bank.

Re:Reward the artist

[Endo13]

This, exactly. This is precisely what pisses me off about the entertainment industry in general. The vast majority of entertainment "artists" who are primarily in it for money seem to think they are entitled to get paid just because they're entertainment artists, and that they should get a free pass on reality.

Re:Reward the artist

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Reward the artist by going to see a show and buying some merch. Nothing else really gets back to them in any significant amounts.

This.

I read an interview with Mick Jagger on the BBC website a few years ago and the BBC interviewer asked him about MP3 and digital downloads, figuring that Mick would likely be a stuffy old guy who would rail about how MP3s were killing music and so. Was the interviewer ever mistaken! Mick stated that for the majority of his career the Stones had actually not made all that much money from recordings. He said that there were exceptions in the late 80s into the 90s when labels actually were paying the artists a lot of money, but from his perspective MP3s hadn't changed anything and the Stones made their real money off touring. He said he had no problem with digital downloads. In fact, the Stones long ago got on iTunes and they offer special downloads of selected old concerts on a website they run. Sadly, it's somewhat younger artists like U2 who just do not get it at all and continue to bitch about how things are not what they once were.

Re:Reward the artist

[Hatta]

Now guess how many gigs either of them have put on here in Japan in the past 12 years.

David Bowie must not need your money very much then.

It's unfortunate for both me and the artists I would be willing to support that I don't live in the continental US or mainland Europe where most concerts seem to be held.

It's not unfortunate for the artists. They are doing well enough that they can leave money on the table by not performing in your country. Good for them, you don't have to feel sorry for them. Save your money and give it to an artist who needs it.

Re:Reward the artist

[tbuddy]

I've always heard that Tom Waits was Big in Japan.

Re:Reward the artist

[somersault]

The record companies are setting the price. They hold an 18% share in Spotify. Still, Spotify is the only legal way for me to listen to music without buying shitloads of even more expensive albums each month. If artists want money from me directly, they need to skip the middle man.

Re:Reward the artist

[c]

He'd rather get zero dollars from them than $5000, because he deems the deal to be "unfair". Um, OK. I'd take the "free" $5000, myself.

If it's a free $5000, sure, it's a no-brainer. The problem comes when your "free" $5000 displaces $15000 (I'm making that number up, obviously) that you might have earned from another more lucrative streaming operation if Spotify hadn't stomped all over the market.

If it comea down to a choice between $5000 and $0, well, that's a bit harder to call...

Re:Reward the artist

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, Jagger could actually think that MP3 is just a new type of drug hes hasn't tried yet.

Re:Reward the artist

[omfgnosis]

I'll have you know that this is so typical I thought you were serious until I got to the end.

Re:Reward the artist

[omfgnosis]

Seems like as good a time as any to post Steve Albini's article on the topic: http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17

Re:Reward the artist

[PopeRatzo]

The problem is that the internet has shifted more power to the consumers and away from the producers

Problem? In our economic system, fewer and fewer transactions exist where the balance of power favors the consumer. The world has been on a "supply-side" fantasy for thirty years, and it has not gone well for most people.

But artists have complete control over the pricing and over which distribution channels they choose to use. Once the last nails are in the coffin of the entertainment/industrial complex, you'll see that happen, and it will be better for all artists except the ones without talent at the top of the food chain.

Thom Yorke has benefited greatly from the mainstream music industry. Now that he's on the downward slope of his career, he decides that he doesn't like how things are done any more. That's fine. I buy a lot of music that I've first heard on Spotify. If Thom doesn't want to be part of that any more, it's his choice.

Re:Reward the artist

[Charliemopps]

Where is the EFF is fighting all of this??

They are busy protecting our civil liberties and trying to prevent our country from turning into a police state. Some millionaires making tens of millions instead of hundreds of millions of dollars because of the greed of their corporate owners may not be "just" but I'm betting it's not a real high priority for the EFF.

Re:Reward the artist

[jedidiah]

...except it's usually because of "mere entertainment" that we end up with increasingly lopsided laws when it comes to technology.

Hollywood is happily contributing to the construction of the American gulag system.

Re:Reward the artist

[jedidiah]

People only have so much money to spend and they are going to spend even less on that on extreme luxury items like entertainment. The fact that people don't have an infinite amount of money to spend on pop music is totally a 1st world problem.

The real problem here is that you've got artists that aren't too bright about anything that isn't music having their heads filled with nonsense by media executives. They start drinking their own kool-aid after awhile.

It's far more likely that the explosion of digital media of all kinds has devalued ALL forms of entertainment. If you think you can get a bigger payday from someone else then you're probably just kidding yourself.

You have to compete against EVERYTHING that can distract your customer. This includes freebie tablet games and LOLCats.

It's not 1950 any more.

Re:Reward the artist

[Connie_Lingus]

you know at one time Steve's essay really rang true, but things are soooooooo different now,,,$8000 for "tape" rofl a 32 gb usb stick costs about 20 bucks and will hold all the takes for at least 100 songs...

the point is his numbers are all wrong nowadays. producers are cheap mixing and mastering pros have leveraged the net and are available on a per song basis. i think he wrote this in the late 90's my my things have changed since then...

Re:Reward the artist

[alexander_686]

Saying t-shirts and live concerts is not the answer is not saying Spotify is the answer.

Look up economic surplus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_surplus

Back in the 80s, selling physical CDs with 1 or 2 good songs for $15 was a great way to extract money from the consumers – maximizing producer surplus going to artists, record companies, and distributors. That changed - You may say it was because of iTunes or Spotify – I say internet and technology - but the result is the same - producer surplus shrank.

As for artists, I think you are wrong. Being able to write a good song does not mean you have a good voice – just look at Bob Dylan. Or are you saying (almost) all symphony players and opera singers are not musicians because they play dead peoples songs? Like you, I tend to prefer singer / songwriters but I recognize they are two separate talents that lie along different axis.

Re:Reward the artist

[Frankie70]

What if an artist doesn't want to do shows?
What if the artist is a paraplegic who cannot do shows?

Re:Reward the artist

[tompaulco]

Yup, so is carpentry. I do woodworking as a hobby. Lots of people do welding as a hobby, so we shouldn't pay welders either. Lots of people write computer programs as a hobby, so we shouldn't pay computer programmers either. Lot's of people fly planes as a hobby, so we shouldn't pay pilots.

Re:Reward the artist

[MightyYar]

I suppose it is possible that someone will look for his music on Spotify, not find it, and then abandon Spotify for a service that does carry his music.

I think it's a lot more likely that someone will look for his music on Spotify, not find it, kind of shrug and move on.

Re:Reward the artist

[Dan667]

collusion is not the market price.

Re:Reward the artist

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm making that number up, obviously

Ah, the RIAA approach to arguments.

Re:Reward the artist

[asliarun]

Where is the EFF is fighting all of this??

They are busy protecting our civil liberties and trying to prevent our country from turning into a police state. Some millionaires making tens of millions instead of hundreds of millions of dollars because of the greed of their corporate owners may not be "just" but I'm betting it's not a real high priority for the EFF.

And there's a huge problem with precisely this type of thinking. Bands like Radiohead are trying extremely hard to "do the right thing" - i.e. what they consider fair to themselves and to their audience. We, the listeners, should be trying to prop them up instead of calling sour grapes on them because they happen to be millionaires or whatever. If you like Joe No-Name band that has sold all of 50 albums so far, good for you.

Do remember though that your (and my) media consumption largely consists of authors, bands, movie directors, and artists that have attained some level of commercial success. It is really sad to see initiatives like Radiohead's honor based payment scheme - not be wildly successful. I would actually have loved to see Radiohead make 10 times the money from this experiment than they would have from the record label. Just imagine the message that would have sent - not just to Radiohead but to every other artist and even to us.

Honestly, if Radiohead makes a hundred mil instead of ten mil, I wish him all the very best. Thom Yorke's talent, consistency, and hard work deserves all the money he can get. The concept of money is completely nonsensical when it comes to creative works anyway. Heck, even manufactured products nowadays cost what they cost because of factors that have little to do with their manufacturing cost.

But at the very least, if someone is doing good work in a creative field, they should at least have some level of trust in the fact that they can circumvent the established system with its attendant bloodsucking leeches, and still feel like they are getting the same level of respect, exposure, and money. In fact, it should be a lot more.

Re:Reward the artist

[MMC Monster]

And the solution to that is for each artist to open up their own website with downloadable mp3s for a relatively cheap amount.

A properly managed artist-owned site would have
1 - High quality mp3s with all the ID3 tags filled out and high res cover art embedded
2 - Liner notes available for free with purchase of an album at a time.
3 - Lyrics of all songs in the liner notes or even embedded in the mp3s (or both).
All at a relatively inexpensive cost ($1 a song, $5 an album)

When musicians I have heard of offer these services, I buy from their sites. Why worry about the stress of getting caught on a filesharing network (no matter how small the risk is in reality).

I would expect that good independent artists could band together and link their sites to each other or through a common portal. Kind of like a grown up myspace.

Re:Reward the artist

[c]

I'm making that number up, obviously

Ah, the RIAA approach to arguments.

Well, except for the part about admitting it. And maybe being somewhat close to reality. And not bribing politicians to believe my number. And...

Re:Reward the artist

[alexander_686]

Profits going to artists, record companies, and distributes have been falling for the past 30 years. That’s the shrinking pie that I am talking about.

As for more music being produced – maybe – it depends on your detention. The number of professional touring musicians and the number of major record label releases have been falling for the past 30 years in the North America and Europe market. And yes, it misses a wide swath, but it is hard data.

Re:Reward the artist

[ProzacPatient]

Second I live in fly over land

So you live in Columbia? PRAISE BE TO THE PROPHET!

Re: Reward the artist

[alexander_686]

In the old days of the 80s, the artist would get about 7% of the retail value. Or about a $1 on a $15 CD.

In the new days, the artist gets about 25% (if they are lucky) of the retail value, or $.25 on a $.99 download.

Consumers are spending less, buying only the popular tracks and not whole CDs. In this case, decreased revenue swamps the increased margins. And yeah, there is the whole wide world now, but international revenue has not made up decreased domestic revenue.

Re:Reward the artist

[asliarun]

Wowser, do these same ideas also apply to programmers??
I can easily make the connection between programmers and your statement:
"if someone is doing good work in a creative field, they should at least have some level of trust in the fact that they can circumvent the established system with its attendant bloodsucking leeches, and still feel like they are getting the same level of respect, exposure, and money. In fact, it should be a lot more."

Of course it does - and in fact this is happening all the time. What makes you think that certain dotcoms or even mobile phone apps are worth the hundreds of millions of dollars as compared to certain other apps that are worth a thousand times less?

I see no reason why a Monet should be worth a hundred mill, just as I fail to see why Instagram should be worth a billion. But I don't begrudge them whatever they are earning or are considered to be worth. If we are going to support "free enterprise" in the truest sense, we should support the big guys as much as the small guys. In fact, the big guys arguably need more help because they have a lot more to lose.

And most importantly, it sends a signal to all the others that this system works even if you get really big or semi-big. Otherwise, you are simply destroying the incentive, the goal post, that people strive for.

Re:Reward the artist

[Nyder]

...Being able to write a good song does not mean you have a good voice – just look at Bob Dylan. Or are you saying (almost) all symphony players and opera singers are not musicians because they play dead peoples songs? Like you, I tend to prefer singer / songwriters but I recognize they are two separate talents that lie along different axis.

Some might say Bob Dylan's voice was what made his songs so good.

Re:Reward the artist

[Nyder]

...

One of my closest friends is a mad Dave Matthews Band fan and has been fortunate enough to attend at least four DMB gigs over the past twelve months...

Here's the deal. No bands, except local every play anywhere 4 times a year. Sure, if you want to travel to 4 towns, or maybe you'll get lucky and they 2 of them in the same town. But a band that actually tours a city a few times a year? Local or very very small time.

Here's what I think. Musicians, instead of trying to sit at home, on the royalties your CD sales makes, and maybe doing a 10-15 city concert every year or 2, how about you go go tour more. Make live shows the must see performance. Have fans that get to actually see you play more then once in their life. You don't have to go sell out the biggest places in each city, have smaller concerts, little cheaper tickets.

In other words, why don't you fucking work for more money? I'd feel bad that you signed a contract with a record company, except I don't. You are the stupid ass musicians who sold your soul to become famous (not rich, famous). You want to make the money the record company is making? Go do the things where you get more of the money for.

In my opinion, most musicians are lazy fucks who want to do as least as possible, but yet be famous and rake in mass money. That is not how it works, and yet, it doesn't change.

Re:Reward the artist

[Nyder]

I've always heard that Tom Waits was Big in Japan.

Weird, i always thought Alphaville was Big in Japan.

Re:Reward the artist

[MightyYar]

You're free to set any price you want on your song or album, and I'm free to either pay that price or not.

Read my post. The whole thing this time. The government sets the royalty rate for radio and internet radio. There is no market at all in those cases, and the so-called "free" market is competing against those government-set rates. After all, if you price your CD too high, the consumer can always just wait for it to come on the radio. The consumer can even record it legally.

Re:Reward the artist

[Nyder]

The record companies are setting the price. They hold an 18% share in Spotify. Still, Spotify is the only legal way for me to listen to music without buying shitloads of even more expensive albums each month. If artists want money from me directly, they need to skip the middle man.

Legal. I like that term.

But there is a problem.

See, I can get music for free, very easy. I don't need to listen to the radio, i don't need to record it from friends. I, like you, can just download it off the internet. So explain to me why I should overpay (let alone pay) a corporation who treats everyone like criminals, wants to keep the copyright laws in the stone age, lobbies abusive personal freedom laws to the government, and are corporate greed bastards? So that maybe 1% of that money makes it to the musician?

That is like me paying the bully money so he doesn't beat me up. That is like me paying the mafia protection money so my business doesn't get abused or rob.

Fuck the current music corporations. I am NOT paying them shit, I'd prefer they die away in bankrupt hell or something. You don't need to be part of the music corporate industry to get your name out anymore, shit you didn't need it before. Prime Example, Big Black https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Black They self funded all their albums, never took a "loan" out from a record company to get their music made. And yet I knew about them when they were playing, even made their last concert ever. And to this day, Steve Albini (main guy of Big Black) still does his music business that same way, doesn't take loans from record companies to produce his music. Oh ya, and he owns all his own music.

Re:Reward the artist

[alexander_686]

I tend to prefer the consumer over the producer, but I am aware that market structure is important. Starve the producers of all profits and they will collapse.

  So Artist are in complete control? So what? 100% of nothing is still nothing. It’s not that bad but take a look at the industry.

There are fewer major acts (which I know is subjective, but I go hard numbers) and profits are getting concentrated in fewer, older acts. It is easier to sell a $400 ticket with nostalgia to a middle age affluent guy then to a new college band.

I am seeing some people do interesting things with distribution and Kickstarter – but it is a far cry from the salad days when CDs ruled.

Re:Reward the artist

[marauder]

Radiohead played in Osaka in 2008. I flew from Australia to hear them, so I know all about inconvenient concert venues...

Re:Reward the artist

[PopeRatzo]

Starve the producers of all profits and they will collapse.

Speaking generally, we've had several consecutive years of all-time record corporate profits.

And if you look at corporate profits over the past 30 years, you will see an inexorable upward trend, in both total profits, and return on investment.

There are very few producers in big business that are being "starved". More specifically, I seriously doubt Thom Yorke is one of them. I don't know exactly how long Yorke expects "Creep" to support his children and grandchildren, but you know, at some point, stuff really needs to start becoming public domain again.

We have a model now where peoples' grandchildren are collecting royalties for some hit single grandpa had 40 years ago. Or more likely, some corporation that had nothing to do with anything creative is collecting royalty checks for some song written 40 years ago by a guy who died 25 years ago. I don't think that's why we have intellectual property.

If I could change the law, I would have all word (patents included) expire after 15 years) and if the license is assigned to a third party, after 5 years. As it is, we are tying up creative work virtually forever, and that's definitely not why people came up with intellectual property in the first place.

Re:Reward the artist

[PopeRatzo]

A music producer doesn't have complete control over the pricing and distribution of their product.

Sure they do. They have ALL the control. If they want, they can print up some CDs and sell them out of the back of a van, or at live shows. They can sell them off a website the way the Residents do.

Nobody is forced to put music on Spotify or sign with a record label, or major booking agency. The reason those entities have gotten too powerful is because too many artists see them as a way to not have to learn a little something about business.

Re:Reward the artist

[alexander_686]

I would like to see your numbers – this is not the impression that I have. Revenues have been dropping for the past 20 years for all sources except live performances.

I keep reading about media companies spinning out their music divisions, the independent music divisions declaring bankruptcy, being acquired by another record company – that goes bankrupt. Then it gets acquired by a private equity firm which fires everybody and just lives off the music catalog. (which is a good way to make money but does not produce any new music.)

Now, if you want to talk about corporations in general verse specifically record labels – well yes – but that is a different story.

Re:Reward the artist

[alexander_686]

Being able to publish around the world is good for producers – but that is not my point.

As a consumer I can now spend less on music and get more enjoyment because I can fine tune my purchases – people buy tracks not albums. People use streaming music services instead of normal radio.

Because of this there is less revenue – people are spending less on music. Technology and the Internet have lowered costs but not as fast as the falling revenue. So what if smaller acts get more exposure because of the Internet? For the small, struggling artist its cold comfort that their income is falling at a slower rate than the major acts.

And I am not trying to say Spotify and their ilk are evil. When progress happens there are winners and losers and, sadly, right now, progress is not being kind to artists.

Re:Reward the artist

[OneAhead]

If you like Joe No-Name band that has sold all of 50 albums so far, good for you.

And there's a huge problem with precisely this type of thinking. You have no idea how many extremely talented and extremely good musicians there are out there. Only a few of them achieve celebrity status, and it doesn't necessarily happen because they're better than everyone else - just think of how one would define "better" - but because of arbitrary events, like the agent of a big record company liking you, or your breakthrough hit just coming out at the right time and gathering enough initial attention. Those lucky few catch a disproportionate amount of consumer spending, a majority of which goes to the pockets of the record industry, their shareholders, their lawyers, their politicians-for-hire and their yelling-contest-style promotion apparatus. Without the almighty record industry and their winner-picking one-size-fits-all promotion style, a bigger percentage of that money would be divided over a bigger and more diverse collection of artists.

Not disagreeing with the other 90% of your post, though. Radiohead does have an impressive track record of delivering consistent quality, they are trying hard to do the right thing, and ignoring this just because they're rich is unfair. I just really wanted to point out that having those attributes (except the "being rich" part) is hardly unique. The "Joe No-Name band" mentality represents the group think that keeps the current system in place and prevents the following lofty goal from becoming reality:

But at the very least, if someone is doing good work in a creative field, they should at least have some level of trust in the fact that they can circumvent the established system with its attendant bloodsucking leeches, and still feel like they are getting the same level of respect, exposure, and money. In fact, it should be a lot more.

Re:Reward the artist

[alexander_686]

Read the link – It’s a 2008 article which asserts higher profits but does not bother to cite numbers or sources. If that is not hype.

I prefer audited finical statements myself and the past has been bleak. Can you count the number of record labels that have bankrupt in the past 10 years? It is the end of the day for me so I am going to be lazy – here is wiki with sources and numbers. Revenue is down by 20% in the last 8 years. Now wonderful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry#Total_revenue_by_year

Is the current trend bad for big artists? Possibly - people are no longer forced to buy 10 crap songs to get the 1 good song.

Like I said, technology in this case is favoring the consumers and I am for that. As for the artist, I can count 9 bad things.

Is the current trend bad for new artists? Can't see how it could be.

.
Let’s see – The internet is making music distribution more efficient for both consumers so revenue is declining. Good for society – no longer have to by 9 crap songs – bad for artist – les revenue. Such is progress. But wait – maybe technology can save the day by increasing the margins of the artists? Yes, that is happening – but as of today slower than the fall of revenue.

Re:Reward the artist

[Myopic]

I've never used Spotify, and I never worry about the legality of my enjoyment of human culture, but I do buy music regularly. I like to buy CDs used because I can usually get them for a few dollars (I use half.com but there are lots of other sites too), or buy a CD from the artist website. If you are legally scrupulous, and also financially pinched, you could always listen to the enormous amount of high-quality free music produced. Or you can get discs from friends when they are done with them -- I often pass on discs. If Spotify works for you, then by all means go with it, just remember it's hardly the only way.

Re:Reward the artist

[somersault]

Well, first of all I use it because it's a more convenient delivery/playing system than torrenting or downloading individually - though as I've said elsewhere in this thread, I've bought some albums on Bandcamp and imported them to Spotify if they've not been available directly.

Artists don't have to go with the record corps these days. If they do it's their own choice. Self publishing your own album, and/or using services like Soundcloud/Bandcamp, is incredibly easy these days. I used to want to help "fight the good fight" for them kind of thing, but if people can't figure out how to do things without the big record corps, it's their own fault for being stupid. Really. Right now I just want to listen to some music.

Re:Reward the artist

[somersault]

It's not the only way of course, but it's got the majority of the music that I like past and present (and when it doesn't, it lets you import your own songs). Plus it has a nice mobile interface that synchs everything wirelessly between your tablet/phone/PC (including non-Spotify tracks now). It's far better than any other system I've used so far. So I'm happy to pay for it.

Re:Reward the artist

[Myopic]

It sounds awesome. Maybe I should check it out. Is it focused on streaming or is it more like a cache/download type of system? Well I guess I could just go look at the darn website instead of asking you to explain it to me. It's obviously a popular service so I'll go educate myself. Good luck, thanks.

Re:Reward the artist

[somersault]

You can stream and/or cache offline. You can have your mobile offline for up to a month at a time without having to check in again with the license server.

One thing to watch out for if you're using the desktop version: if you cache any playlists to use offline, Spotify then actually makes your machine a peer-to-peer server to take some load off the main server. You can't disable this in the settings, but you can set firewall rules to block or throttle it:

CONCLUSION

The only Requirement for Spotify is ALLOW Outbound Connections to "Remote Port" 4070 to *.ash.spotify.com (currently 193.182.8.3 - 193.182.8.90 or IP 193.182.8.1/Subnet 255.255.255.128).

http://mrlithium.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/spotify-and-opting-out-of-spotify-peer.html

Re:Reward the artist

[PopeRatzo]

A music producer doesn't have complete control over the pricing and distribution of their product. The pirates have a lot to say about it, too.

So what you're saying is the consumers have a lot to say about it.

An artist can set the price wherever he wants. That doesn't mean anyone's going to buy.

I actually know a growing number of artists who make their work Creative Commons, attribution only and are still able to make a middle-class living. I've had income from music since the '90s, and only distribute my work that way (plus, I do a lot of work on commission, where I only retain attribution rights).

Nobody's forcing anyone to sell recorded music. And, despite what you consider rampant piracy, there is still a living to be made as a musician.

This is what you get when you mess with us

[hawkinspeter]

Atoms for Peace self publish - I recommend AMOK.

Re:This is what you get when you mess with us

[Idimmu Xul]

From memory Radiohead and NIN have both offered albums, available online where you can pay what you want for them, and both walked away with over $1million.

Unless there's some crazy contract shenanigans going on, I really don't see why some of the bigger artists don't pull a Valve and create their own content delivery platform that is fair for the artist, fair for the consumer and criticism free.

Re:This is what you get when you mess with us

[cinky]

Yup, I bough "In Rainbows" for $20 just to show support for such actions.

Re:This is what you get when you mess with us

[hawkinspeter]

I can't remember how much I paid for "In Rainbows", but it was definitely more than the usual album price (for much the same reasons you paid over the odds).

Re:This is what you get when you mess with us

[jasenj1]

You mean like Bandcamp? - Jasen.

Re:This is what you get when you mess with us

[dcollins]

Like United Artists Corporation, now part of MGM.

By which I mean to say that endeavors that start like this wind up being "captured" over time by industry managers anyway. To keep that from happening you'd need some kind of clever artist-ownership arrangement, maybe a bit like the Vanguard Group or TIAA-CREF.

Re:This is what you get when you mess with us

[Jaysyn]

Ditto, great album. King of Limbs was just as good if not better.

Re:This is what you get when you mess with us

[Iniamyen]

Mod this up, great site.

Re:This is what you get when you mess with us

[tompaulco]

From memory Radiohead and NIN have both offered albums, available online where you can pay what you want for them, and both walked away with over $1million.
For a professionally produced album, I would imagine that the production costs are in the several hundreds of thousands of dollars and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the big name artists spend over $1 million producing an album.

Re:This is what you get when you mess with us

[Anonymous Coward]

This is true, but it doesn't have to be true. It is true because the big labels run their own studios and can "charge" whatever they want. If one wanted to, they could use an independent studio and create an album just as good in the 10's of thousands range.

Re:This is what you get when you mess with us

[CastrTroy]

I didn't really like the album that much (no offence to anyone who did), but because I could pay whatever I wanted, I think I tossed $5 their way just because I liked the whole concept, and felt like they deserved a little bit. Just like I bought that AFI album many years back, because it only $7 at the time, which I thought was probably what most CDs should cost. I'm much more interested in paying for a subscription type service to music, like RDIO or Spotify, where they have a much bigger collection then I could ever hope to own, and I can also discover new music without wasting money on albums I won't end up listening to more than 4-5 times.

Re:This is what you get when you mess with us

[denmarkw00t]

Sure, but in the case of the two mentioned, the members of Radiohead and Trent Reznor are all pretty adept at studio work, so there's a lot less spent hiring sound guys, producers, etc, when you can do it yourself. If you've got the money (which they do), then time/labor isn't really an issue either since you can rely on saved cash to get by while you do it your way. Not saying this will always be the case, but generally, if you can do it yourself at a fraction of the cost you would face going through an agency, you'd probably walk off in the black no problem (assuming too that your music is good and you can find a fanbase).

Re:This is what you get when you mess with us

[brit74]

Keep in mind the fact that Radiohead said that they won't repeat that, which makes me wonder how successful it really was.

Radiohead won't repeat 'In Rainbows' giveaway

"I think it was a one-off response to a particular situation," the band's lead singer Thom Yorke told The Hollywood Reporter. "It was one of those things where we were in the position of everyone asking us what we were going to do. I don't think it would have the same significance now anyway, if we chose to give something away again. It was a moment in time."

Many music fans had hoped that the band's now famous pay-what-you-want promotion was an attempt by the group to discover a new way to sell music. Now it appears Radiohead at best was after publicity.

Radiohead has never revealed the promotion's sales figures but there was speculation that the money wasn't very good.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9932361-7.html

Pay the artists?

[smooth wombat]

Is this guy nuts? Who gets paid for their work? Just steal it from TPB or someplace else.

Pfft. Getting paid for their work. How quaint. Move into the 21st century!

Re:Pay the artists?

[hawkinspeter]

Funnily enough, Radiohead/Thom Yorke/Atoms for Peace are artists that I will actually pay for their music as I'm a big fan and they typically self-publish these days. Radiohead were one of the first artists to do a "pay what you want" price for their album.

Re:Pay the artists?

[Anonymous Coward]

The lazy fucks can tour if they want to earn some dosh from their music.

Pfft. Getting paid for life for 2 weeks' work. How quaint. Move into the 21st century!

Re:Pay the artists?

[hawkinspeter]

I can't remember if they had a minimum of 1 penny or not, but if you want it for free, just grab it from PirateBay. I'm sure Thom Yorke has enough money and would rather you enjoyed listening to it for free than forgo listening to it because you couldn't afford it.

Re:Pay the artists?

[HeckRuler]

On one hand it costs them to let you download the song straight from them. An oh-so-small amount.
But on the other hand, it let's them know if their model is working or not and gives them metrics about how many people just won't pay for their shit.

If it feels EXTRA WRONG to steal the very bread from the starving artists mouth... that just means you're a good person. And the more they can rub that feeling of wrongness into the fanbase, the more will pay for their tunes.

Re:Pay the artists?

[omfgnosis]

I hate when I get done typing up what I think is an insightful comment, then look down and discover someone else basically already did. I've already posted so I can't mod you up. So this is a statement that your point about metrics and evaluating the model is spot on.

Re:Pay the artists?

[Charliemopps]

There are plenty of ways to get paid as a musician that do not invovlve selling albums. They were doing it for thousands of years before the record was invented. For a long time in my home town there was a great music scene. We have a lot of great local musicians. But they stop playing clubs to instead do studio work for labels that were passing off their work as whichever band the record company was pushing at the time. Well all that studio work is drying up now and guess what, the music scene is coming back.

Re:Pay the artists?

[omfgnosis]

Which two weeks? Do you think artists just vomit out tunes in the studio? Maybe you're listening to the wrong music.

Re:Pay the artists?

[smooth wombat]

Yet based on his current rant, he would rather get paid than you get to listen to it.

Which was my point all along which everyone, including folks who modded me Funny, missed. Artists want to get paid, regardless of what they claim. In this case it's even more funny because he was being paid BUT, according to him, he wasn't getting paid enough.

Also, the line about not being able to afford it is completely bullshit. You can find used CDs at yard sales for $1 a piece. You can download individual songs for less than a dollar.

People use every excuse for why they shouldn't have to pay for something someone else produced but they are all just excuses. If you don't want to get paid for what you do, fine, that's your right. That does not mean you get to apply this to someone else. As Yorke so clearly shows, he does want to get paid for his work and going to TPB or elsewhere and getting his work for free is not what he's about.

Re:Pay the artists?

[hawkinspeter]

I think you're misinterpreting his actions. I read it that he's protesting about the fees paid to other artists (he's got truckloads of money and if not, he's not going to find it difficult to get a paying gig) and by removing the Radiohead catalogue, it makes his point in a way that less successful artists can't manage.

I could be wrong, but the impression I've got about Thom is that he loves making music and is far less concerned about monetary matters than you might think (especially as he must be made for life by now).

Re:Pay the artists?

[Bogtha]

When you pay for Spotify etc., you aren't paying a musician for their work. You're paying to copy bits on their behalf. Anybody can copy bits without permission, which is why copyright infringement is so widespread.

Paying a musician for their work involves going to see them live, or alternative business models, such as ones based on the Street Performer Protocol. In those cases, you're actually paying a musician to create music.

Re:Pay the artists?

[internerdj]

Well maybe not artists, but I'm pretty sure that is what most of the people who make their living trying to sing for my money do.

Re:Pay the artists?

[jsepeta]

Do you get paid for radio airplay? I'm not sure. Pretty much the controlling interests (mass-market radio like ClearChannel) only play certain "hit" artists, so even cutting-edge musicians like Thom Yorke don't make the playlist.

Re:Pay the artists?

[vakuona]

That's like saying Usain Bolt gets paid for running for 10 seconds!

Re:Pay the artists?

[msobkow]

That's not entirely true. Historically, most musicians either worked as minstrels at bars and fairs, or else they found a sponsor with a nice fat bankroll and played for their court.

Re:Pay the artists?

[GiganticLyingMouth]

I can't remember if they had a minimum of 1 penny or not

There was no minimum.

Re:Pay the artists?

[betterprimate]

Pfft. Getting paid for life for 2 weeks' work. How quaint. Move into the 21st century!

No kidding! The creators of Spotify need to get a real job!

Re:Pay the artists?

[mjwx]

Which two weeks? Do you think artists just vomit out tunes in the studio? Maybe you're listening to the wrong music.

Rap, techno, remix and electronica.

Seriously, if they take longer than 2 weeks to excrete that crap they simply aren't trying.

Then again, I cant call them artists either, so you might be right.

He ought to know

[Anonymous Coward]

Radiohead was one of the first to use online distribution.

Nice graph

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially now that Spotify has become more popular, it is indeed time for them to start paying up.

http://musictechpolicy.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/how-much-do-artists-earn-online/

Re:Nice graph

[jedidiah]

Spotify pays up. It's the labels that aren't sharing.

Internet streaming services shouldn't be expected to pay any more per head than any other form of "broadcast" out there. If you put all of this stuff out of business, you will have NO ONE to help promote the talent.

You'll be trapped in a vaccuum where no one can here you b*tch and moan and whine.

Re:Nice graph

[somersault]

With the advent of the the internet, and convenient social networking, word of mouth is a pretty good way of "promoting talent". Nobody really needs publishers any more, as long as they're good.

I use Spotify because it's very convenient, and legal to boot. I've bought a few songs/albums on Bandcamp even since I started using Spotify though, from seeing songs posted up by friends, or in groups on Facebook.

Re:Nice graph

[Anonymous Coward]

Spotify is popular because labels deliberately drowned all the competitors by refusing to license their catalog. Reap what you sow.

Re:Nice graph

[Sockatume]

Which competitors? When it stepped onto the market the only equivalent I could see in the UK was Last.fm's premium service.

Re:Nice graph

[Sockatume]

Spotify does not pay up. Labels an artists get about a 5:1 split of the payment from both iTunes and Spotify, but Spotify's payment per play is five hundred times smaller than iTunes payment per purchase. Unless each of your listeners hits that Spotify play button five hundred times, you don't make the same money by streaming.

Re:Nice graph

[StatusWoe]

Comparing an internet stream to a purchase seems unfair.

I'd be interested in seeing how an internet stream compares to a radio broadcast. Given that a radio broadcast hits a huge but mostly uncountable (or difficult to accurately count) audience I would expect a single stream to be a small fraction of even the cost of playing a single song on the radio.

Re:Nice graph

[Sockatume]

That's exactly my point. iTunes rates are deplorable but a musician could count on making a few cents per person who liked their record enough to listen at home; now that listener has to be enthusiastic enough to listen to that track eight times a day for two months for the artist to make the same pittance. Revenues will go down for almost all artists, and the ones that aren't superstars - who don't have superfans listening to their single five hundred times - will get absolutely obliterated.

Re:Nice graph

[Sockatume]

From my perspective as a user they're interchangable. If one can replace the other as the way I listen to music, a comparison seems reasonable.

Re:Nice graph

[Sockatume]

For those catchy songs and the artists that made them it's good news. For the guys who made that concept album you only played four times but love deeply, it's the end of the line.

Re:Nice graph

[blane.bramble]

Unless, of course, many more people click play who would never have bought the track, kind of like they were using Spotify like a personalised radio service.

Re:Nice graph

[CaptBubba]

And your point?

Owning something or even having it for exclusive use on demand (more analogous to an mp3 purchase) is vastly more expensive than renting it in nearly every case. Cars, houses, DVDs, food service, aircraft, etc etc etc. Because there is no purchase in the spotify transaction comparing it to a purchase is completely useless and would be like saying that taxi or car-2-go/zipcar rates are way too low because it costs $20k to buy the equivalent car (or $500/month to lease it) but only $15 to get a ride to the store.

Re:Nice graph

[David Gerard]

That's evading the question. I'm seeking solid numbers (having trouble finding current ones on radio performance royalties), but as far as I can tell Spotify and Pandora pay slightly better per listener-play than the radios they substitute for.

Re:Nice graph

[David Gerard]

How many records can you say that you in fact love deeply that you've played a total of four times?

Great graphic from Information is Beautiful

[blarkon]

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

I believe since the graphic was made, there has been extensive lobbying for royalties per play to be reduced from the figures shown in this picture. There's something to the original musician's case if it takes more than 4 million plays per month to get to one individual's *minimum wage* of $1160 per month (and that's with the *generous* current pay per play rate).

Re:Great graphic from Information is Beautiful

[BenJury]

What's really impressive is how much more the label takes. For Spotify: 0.16c to the label, 0.029c for the artist. (~85%/15% split) That's a huge chunk for something that someone else is distributing etc.

Re:Great graphic from Information is Beautiful

[Thanshin]

I still don't see what the problem is. Spotify (et al) have done their math and decided that's what they will pay. If an author doesn't like it, nobody is forcing him to sell his songs to Spotify.

Making songs today doesn't pay as much as they expected? Well, that's so bad, they can surely find another job and leave music to people who do it because they love it.

If a miracle killed every single person involved in the music industry and all existing music records, I'm pretty sure we'd be hearing music again before 24h had passed.

Re:Great graphic from Information is Beautiful

[JaredOfEuropa]

That's not impressive but outrageous.

I'd be interested to see how much Spotify gets out of all this on average. Are they greedy or are they not charging us enough? If a popular artist's work gets, say, half its plays through Spotify, how much would Spotify have to charge us to provide a decent income to the artist?

By the way, that graph seems to be comparing CDs against single songs, if I'm reading it right. Also, the retail royalty figure is deceptive, as this is rarely an $x per CD deal. Usually your get a certain % in gross revenue after which the label deducts your share of the costs (production / promotion). For starting bands the scummier labels will charge a lot, so even after a debut album that sells nicely the band will not do all that well, or even end up owing the label. Hollywood accounting at its finest.

Re:Great graphic from Information is Beautiful

[gl4ss]

don't need a label though..

Re:Great graphic from Information is Beautiful

[MerceanCoconut]

Agreed, the split is completely out of whack. For a retail CD where the label takes $1 and the artist takes $1 (for $10 album) the label is printing, distributing, and marketing. For the same album at the same price on iTunes, the label takes $5.35 with no printing or distributing and probably less marketing and gives the artist $0.94 to add insult to injury. It also suggests that a $10 retail album should sell for $6.70 on iTunes. And as you pointed out the split is even more ridiculous for streaming.

Artists: Be your own label!

Re:Great graphic from Information is Beautiful

[BenJury]

None, Spotify would be paying for the bandwidth and infrastructure. Obviously other mediums that would be the case, also there is of course the physical artwork and the like. But via Spotify? You'd expect it to be a little more equal.

Re:Great graphic from Information is Beautiful

[darkstar949]

How's that compare to terrestrial radio though? My understanding is that the artists are paid a royalty based upon the number of plays on the radio, but a large station might broadcast to hundreds of thousands of people. If you were to break down to the cost per person listening on the radio to a streaming site the the royalty might actually end up being more in that case.

Re:Great graphic from Information is Beautiful

[Somebody Is Using My]

So, I'll start by admitting I'm not at all into any of these online streaming services and how they work so I apologize if any of my assumptions below are incorrect and am open to correction... ... But aren't these streaming services funded by advertising? That is, listeners don't have to directly pay to hear the songs; they just see an advert. Given this, comparing the number of plays on streaming services to number of albums or songs sold seems disingenuous. There's less income-per-play to begin with, so obviously there will be less to share with the artists. It's not as if the label revenue is all that high either. Those giant ovals on the graphic paint a nasty picture for the streaming services, but are they accurate?

Which isn't to say that the division of revenue is fair, but the portrayal of this information is definitely done in a way that is biased against the streaming services.

So, plugging in some numbers we see the following:

Retail album CD: artist gets 17% of what the label takes ($0.30 versus $1.70)
Rhapsody: artist gets 25% of what the label takes ($0.0022 versus $0.0091)
LastFM: artist gets 18% of what the label takes (0.00075 verus $0.004)
iTunes Track download: artist gets 16% of what the label takes ($0.09 versus $0.53)
Spotify: artist gets 18% of what the label takes ($0.00029 versus $0.0016)

So Spotify seems to be right in the middle there. Of course, how much Spotify rakes in is an unknown but I would wager it isn't particularly high to begin with.

(Did some research: Rhapsody seems to be able to offer better deals because they require a paid subscription. Looking at it's website, Spotify offers a premium subs too but the advantages seem minor and I bet most users just use the free version). Last.Fm is also free.)

So, yeah, the graphic makes it look as if the streaming services are ripping off the artists but it isn't entirely accurate. More honest would be for the graphic to show how many plays every CD and downloaded track get and calculate cost-per-play f, because then at least you would be comparing oranges-to-oranges...

I wonder how Spotify's revenue-per-song to the artists compares to radio?

Re:Great graphic from Information is Beautiful

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if you want to distribute through Spotify you do - they don't deal with individual artists.

They don't even deal with small labels afaik. A friend of mine has a small recordlabel and he had to deal with a larger label that has it as their "thing" to aggregate smaller labels. This larger label then in turn has a deal with Spotify.

Re:Great graphic from Information is Beautiful

[u38cg]

Yeah, except network effects. For certain genres if you're not on Spotify you're dead.

Re:Great graphic from Information is Beautiful

[Nyder]

... If a popular artist's work gets, say, half its plays through Spotify, how much would Spotify have to charge us to provide a decent income to the artist?...

If you buy a CD and listen to it 20,000 times. How much should the artist receive? After all, you want to provide a decent income to the artist right? And you are listening to the CD lots and lots of times.

Oh wait, you pay a set price for the CD and the record company pays the musician whatever set fee that decided on.

How much do artist get paid for radio play? Very little, if not nothing. The record compaines get paid royalties for their music getting played, but does it trinkle down to the artist? Very doubtful based on the record companies histories.

The fact that as an artist you might get some money for people using services like Spotify is a bonus, not a right. You want to make more money on Spotify? Get rid of your fucking label and self produce.

Re:Great graphic from Information is Beautiful

[DerekLyons]

I still don't see what the problem is. Spotify (et al) have done their math and decided that's what they will pay. If an author doesn't like it, nobody is forcing him to sell his songs to Spotify.

Precisely this. I'm getting fed up with the Slashdot attitude that the people who front all the cash, take all the risk, pay all the operating costs, etc.... etc... year after year are somehow screwing over the 'little guy' who shows up for a days work and expects to get the lion's share of the income ten years later. And it's interesting how all the labels which survive and prosper follow more-or-less the same arc - so, is everybody that greedy or is the simple economics of the music industry? Given that even small indie labels end up on that arc, I'm betting that the needle tends more towards the right hand side of that scale than most Slashdotter's (who are notoriously bad at grasping business matters) think.

Re:Great graphic from Information is Beautiful

[Kjella]

Nobody held a gun to an artist's head and forced them to sign up with a major label before either, unless you wanted radio time, shelf space or any other form of access to the market. A lot of people thought the Internet would change all that and artists could now just put up their own songs for sale on their own website. Which I suppose they still can, but that's not where most the market is going. To a lot of people, either you're on Spotify or you pretty much don't exist, they'd have to be a real fan and go out of their way to buy it directly from you. And maybe they don't want it that badly, they just want to stream in once in a while in their huge playlists.

If you don't see where I'm going with this, it's that power is again concentrating in a oligarchy, it's not MGM and Universal and EMI anymore it's Spotify, iTunes and Amazon MP3. To the individual, independent artist they're the same kind of giants offering the same shitty deals because you need them a lot more than they need you and they know it. Meet the new middle man between artists and consumers, same as the old middle man between artists and consumers. Every so often we have the stories of artists leaving because they pay shit but at the same time others return because it still beats toiling in obscurity, I'm pretty sure Spotify keeps a close eye on just how tightly they can screw the vice, if the tide turns against them they can sweeten the deal a little and bring artists back, before they make another push in the race to the bottom.

Re:Great graphic from Information is Beautiful

[Myopic]

That is informative but I want to point out that they start out with one base unit (albums) then move to a different base unit (songs). If an album is 10 songs, then the last few pink dots should be about 10 times smaller. Also, the graphic starts out with a unit of music sales and ends with music streams. If I play an album 100 times, then the last few pink dots should be another 100 times smaller. If you make those adjustments (dividing streaming pink dots by 1000), then those last few pink dots all fall into the range of the other pink dots, and the largest pink dot is iTunes downloaded MP3s.

Massive sense of entitlement & missing perspec

[Idimmu Xul]

Nearly 90% of the artists who get a cheque for digital play receive less than $5,000 a year

Technically I think that's pretty good, isn't it? Write some songs, receive residual income whilst you do nothing else for the rest of the delivery platforms life. Win win.

What none of these reports seem to show is any perspective on how much the delivery service (Pandora/Spotify) is making. (Raising IPO capital isn't exactly making a profit..)

If (without creative accounting) they're breaking even, then the artists are getting paid too much.

If they're running at a loss, then the artists are definitely getting paid too much.

If they're reaping in huge profits then the artists aren't getting paid enough.

That kind of transparency isn't available (or I haven't seen it).

Either way I'd quite like $5000 for work I did last year.

Old news

[dirtypoole]

wasn't this poster here roughly three days ago? get with it /. !

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[squiggleslash]

If they're running at a loss, then the artists are definitely getting paid too much.

Or listeners are paying too little. Or the CEO of ${MUSIC_STREAMING_SERVICE} is overpaid.

And no, if my paycheck for the last couple of weeks work were to be spread out over the remainder of my employer's lifetime as a few dollars a month, I wouldn't consider it a "good deal". People have to eat now.

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[Sockatume]

If Spotify was purely supplementary income that'd be accurate, but many people have stopped buying music in favour of buying streaming subscriptions, or simply putting up with adverts; if Spotify is replacing your album and singles income, then depending on how much your label is shafting you it could be quite a pay cut.

Re:Not sure which side I'm on

[Lazere]

How about somewhere in between? Negotiate year one royalties and then every its played after that sees diminishing royalties until it's finally zero? That way, it keeps companies like Spotify honest, and keeps artists from being able to ride the gravy train on something they did 20+ years ago.

Good move, Thom.

[intermodal]

If you are motivated more by money than by whether people are enjoying or appreciating what you've created, I don't want to listen to your music. Thank you for making it easier not to help money get into your pocket.

Misinformed, a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that this kind of action does not help anyone.
My take on it is that although the pulling of music may be a good gesture my belief this person is misinformed about the situation.

So the 'per play' costs are low, they are 1000x higher than the per play for radio.

A simple example ( I made up the costs )

- Radio plays song to 100,000 people - $1 royalties
- Streaming service plays song to 1 person - 10cents royalties

The issue is that streaming services are not reaching (yet) the massive audiences like radio has done in the past but they will. If they get killed now using the cost model that is being applied then we are all knackered.

Re:Misinformed, a shame

[Sockatume]

Unlike Spotify, radio didn't displace album sales; radio doesn't let me cue up whatever track I want, on demand.

Re:Misinformed, a shame

[gl4ss]

Unlike Spotify, radio didn't displace album sales; radio doesn't let me cue up whatever track I want, on demand.

radio also paid a lot to a small circle. a circle he was part of, but now nobody gives a shit so he is trying to be all "new artist"... it ends up being the natural progression that more artists are paid - but each is paid less and he is seemingly arguing this is unfair to new artists, while the only thing unfair to new artists in this new system is the labels and they were unfair to new artists before as well... if anything he should be promoting that you don't need a label. this only affects few people on the top though at all.. like 0.1% of performing artists are actually affected("ug" is _huge_ compared to top 40).

Re:Misinformed, a shame

[Sockatume]

How does it only affect a few people on top? Suppose I'm in a garage band selling 150 copies of a 12-track album every month through iTunes, to people who've seen me play live. To make the same amount on Spotify I need to have 900,000 listens* per month. That's probably not going to happen.

*Spotify pays about 1/500 per play what iTunes does per purchase. Multiply the 500 plays you need, by 12 tracks, and by 150 copies.

Re:Misinformed, a shame

[Sockatume]

(One million Spotify listens - earning you the same income as selling 150 CDs - is a lofty enough target that Pink Floyd used it as a publicity stunt.)

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/121824-pink-floyd-catalogue-added-to-spotify-after-1-million-plays-of-wish-you-were-here

Re:Misinformed, a shame

[Sockatume]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that radio is good, I'm just saying that Spotify causes problems in ways that a radio analogy doesn't capture.

Re:Misinformed, a shame

[Wookact]

12 dollars is overpriced for something that has no physical media. If I pay you 12 dollars I want a CD. I will not pay 12 dollars for a "License" to listen to it. Instead I will pay 12 dollars to Slacker radio and listen to whatever I want all month long. I agree that artists should make more money per listen then they currently do. What you need to realize is that the customers are not your enemy. The fat cat skimming 90% of the profit off the top IS your enemy. Once artists start taking up the view point that customers and potential customers are the enemy, then they alienate the people that they need the most, the ones willing to pay for music.

The Music Industry must Die!

[MrKaos]

They have fucked over Artists and the IT Industry. Copyright laws that are unequitable, extensible, DRM. WTF makes the Music Companies such a protected species in business anyway? Wasn't capitalism designed to cull business models that were no longer viable?

Seems to me that the existing music business establishment is trying to devise an internet business models that will fuck over music creative types until the end of time.

Re:The Music Industry must Die!

[Rob_Bryerton]

WTF makes the Music Companies such a protected species in business anyway?

I'll re-phrase your question, and it might make a bit more sense to you: "WTF makes the Banking Industry such a protected species in business anyway?"

The answer: Money. As in, how to turn other people's money into THEIR money. And once you have have money, you can buy power and legislation.

You see, the "Music Industry" has never been about music at all; that's just the advertising end of it really. Think of the music as the commercials, the suckers (the fans) pay to buy the advertising, and the TRUE SUCKERS, a.k.a. the musicians who sign with these labels, are the source of the money so to speak. Stay with me, now.

The "record labels" are analogous to banks who give out extremely high risk, high interest predatory loans. (Go to your bank and ask for a $100,000 loan to record a music album, and you'll be laughed at or escorted out). The labels act as the banks for the musicians, providing the loan. These loans are known as "advances" to the musicians. And this is where it gets really good.

The labels just happen to have all manner of management and production people and studio engineers and studios and pressing plants and distribution networks and advertising channels (and on and on) at the "musicians disposal" for the marks ( a.k.a. the musicians) to "utilize". The musicians shop at the company store, so to speak, and poof, the loan (advance) is gone. In other words, they record their album, get CD's pressed and get airplay (this is all the company store, remember), and the money is all returned back to it's source, the record label (the bank).

But wait! You see, that advance money is still owed from the marks back to the company at this point, AND the company now owns the music, distribution rights, etc, etc at this point, AND has the marks on the hook for their loan, AND has their original money back as well.

And this is how the "music industry" works. You see, it's not about music at all, it's about running naive musicians through the wringer for everything they have, and then everything they can then earn, until this loan is paid off. That original loan (say, $100,000) is turned into millions, and the marks see not one cent of it.

And all along the way, the skids are greased by the record labels with outright bribery using cash, drugs, prostitutes, you name it. Whatever it takes.

The money is multiplied by working the indentured servants to the bone, politicians are lobbied (bribed/blackmailed/whatever), laws are passed, and we end up with the current state of affairs.

Neat, huh?

Open source music store

[sl4shd0rk]

Is there not an online place where artists can just produce and sell music without the MAFIAA being involved? If so, why are not more musicians using it?

Re:Open source music store

[cyber-vandal]

Do you need a record label to make your music available on Spotify?

Re:Open source music store

[gl4ss]

technically no. but you can't directly commit music to spotify, you need to use a content service.
http://www.merlinnetwork.org/joining/

plenty of very indie stuff on spotify.. for shits'n'giggles search c64 and amiga on there.
anyone can be a "label" nowadays too. doesn't take anything.

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[C0R1D4N]

This is different from people buying FM radios how?

be your own label

[fredan]

and get all of it.

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[seven of five]

Either way I'd quite like $5000 for work I did last year.

By "less than $5000" they don't mean "most make about $5000." A handful make $5000, a bunch make $500, the rest make $5 to $50. So enjoy the juicy hamburger you just bought with your earnings from last year.

Spotify's retort

[fatgraham]

http://www.musicweek.com/news/read/spotify-responds-to-thom-yorke-and-nigel-godrich-criticism/055383

Doesn't seem so bad. I think Thom Yorke is missing a step... spotify pays the LABELS. The LABELS obviously decided the royalties from spotify are enough... Perhaps the labels aren't paying artists enough...

Re:Spotify's retort

[Crimey McBiggles]

I think if anything, Thom Yorke is seeing the big picture, in which the labels still ultimately control everything, with or without facades such as Pandora or Spotify. It seems like the removal of their albums is more to provoke discussion than to promote a boycott.

Re:Spotify's retort

[T.E.D.]

step... spotify pays the LABELS. The LABELS obviously decided the royalties from spotify are enough

Good point. And the benefit that the Labels bring to this entirely online transaction is .... um ... wait a bit, it'll come to me...

Re:Just Listen on Youtube

[Skarecrow77]

Spotify's "basic" quality is Q5 Vorbis, which is roughly equivalent to VBR mp3 in the 192kbps range (only with better handling of edge cases than mp3). i.e. virtually transparent to most listeners on most equipment. Spotify's premium quality is Q9 vorbis, which is, well, complete overkill. Even more pointless than 320kbps cbr mp3.

Youtube's "basic" quality is shit. Youtube's premium quality is... is there even such a thing?

Don't misunderstand me, I find out about songs often though youtube, but then I go load the tune up on spotify to actually enjoy the music.

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[Sockatume]

Playing an album on the Spotify app, and playing an album off my MP3 library, are essentially identical from a user experience (moreso if I have Spotify Premium and have the album cached locally). Leaving the radio on all day and hoping the tracks I want to hear will be played is very different.

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[Sockatume]

(And to complete the thought, listening to an FM radio is so different that listening to the album that I will buy the album regardless. I might not, however, buy a CD if I can get it on demand from Spotify for free.)

Switch to Pay What You Want

[advid.net]

Some music groups have switched to Pay What You Want for a digital copy (mp3 download) of their album.
I bet they will have much more money than with any other distribution model.

For example, Psygnosis band started with this model, along with other merch and bonuses for those who want extra.

Even if I'm not a big fan, I paid a whooping 8€ for their album, digital copy, because I was happy to have it DRM free, and to be trusted by the band which feels confident that their listeners will pay a fair price.

All this money goes to the band, this is at least three times what they could get with physical sales.

Re:Switch to Pay What You Want

[isorox]

Some music groups have switched to Pay What You Want for a digital copy (mp3 download) of their album.

I bet they will have much more money than with any other distribution model.

For example, Psygnosis band started with this model, along with other merch and bonuses for those who want extra.

Even if I'm not a big fan, I paid a whooping 8€ for their album, digital copy, because I was happy to have it DRM free, and to be trusted by the band which feels confident that their listeners will pay a fair price.

All this money goes to the band, this is at least three times what they could get with physical sales.

I'm fairly sure Thom Yorke knows all about pay what you want, and How much he's likely to make

Re:Switch to Pay What You Want

[advid.net]

Thanks for the refs, I forgot that...

So... do you also know why did they not carry on with this model ?

Re:Switch to Pay What You Want

[advid.net]

> Psygnosis

I asked them to pay me.

Still waiting for my check...

Maybe you are talking about Psygnosis - the company, but I am talking about Psygnosis - the band

Re:Why?

[gl4ss]

You seem to be having difficulties understanding the concept of protest.

it's not royalties artists put their stuff on streaming services.. it's for pr. this guy didn't get enough plays on spotify so he dropped it to get some pr. you have to remember just who this guy is. the problem for him is that nobody gives a shit about his solo music, I hadn't even heard that he had a solo album. and the guts to say that he is doing this for new artists, hah.

if you spread the royalties and plays to 10 000 artists.. of course it's not that much that any single artist is going to get. the "problem" here being that there are 10 000(and more, way more) recording artists.

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[Aguazul2]

You're assuming that the artist knocks out a few tunes over the weekend, and have no other costs. Mostly music takes a lot more effort, time and money to produce than that -- the stuff you want to listen to at least.

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[Sockatume]

Spotify limited you to 10 plays per track for a while back there. They rescinded that because it was unpopular with users.

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[Skarecrow77]

Well quite honestly nowadays you can leave the radio on and be fairly certain that the song you want to be played will come on within the next 30-40 minutes... as long as what you want to hear is one of the current top 15 songs or so for the genre of the station in question.

It was bad enough when I was young, but now it's to the point where the same song will be played multiple times per hour, like the stations just have a "greatest hits of summer 2013" cd on repeat.

Re:Not sure which side I'm on

[TheMathemagician]

If you build a car then it's not the case that anyone else can perfectly replicate that car and distribute it globally at effectively zero cost. Therefore your analogy is invalid.

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[Sockatume]

Interesting point. Radio ate into boy band sales more than it ate into indie or obscure records, levelling the playing field. Spotify cuts into both equally.

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[Sockatume]

Most professional musicians do work all year round. Most of them aren't superstars, and losing all of their album income to streaming would be enough to force them into a desk job.

Re:Why?

[MightyYar]

People who have spent a long time in an institution naturally want to protect the status quo. These big, famous musicians might not honestly care about money, but they certainly have had their egos stroked and owe their entire livelihoods to the way the music business works (or worked in the 90s). It is impossible to separate them from what they grew up in, even if they profess to hate it. (See also, the US Senate or the British Monarchy.)

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[dataminator]

First, it says "less than $5,000" which I would expect to be "*much* less than $5,000" for the vast majority.

But most importantly, you claim that this is what artists get for "work they did last year" which I also don't expect to be true in the majority of cases. This income is most likely usually from continuously producing new music, not "residual income whilst you do nothing else for the rest of the delivery platforms life".

I wasn't able to find more detailed numbers, but I would expect income to be more driven by recent releases than "some song I wrote 10 years ago". Which means that of the small proportion of artists who even get any money at all, 90% get very little, including those that work very hard to produce new interesting music. Of course, without more detail (how many artists, how many new releases, the actual income distribution, etc.) it's impossible to really interpret that statement in any meaningful way, but I'm pretty sure that your interpretation of "getting $5,000 whilst you do nothing" is not the most appropriate.

Re:Why?

[cinky]

Nobody gives a shit about his solo music? what rock have you been living under? also his solo album (the eraser) was released 7 years ago and "The album debuted at #3 on the UK Albums Chart and at #2 on the Billboard 200 in the United State" (wikipedia). But yeah no-one gives a shit about his solo music, or radiohead, or atoms for peace...

Startups are the new business model

[pr0nbot]

Note to musicians. Here is a possible business model.

1. Set up a retarded hipster startup - something like http://www.hellolamppost.co.uk/
2. Get dumb people to fund you (if you're struggling, maybe you need to dumb down your concept a notch or two)
3. Pay yourself that money and do what you really want instead
4. Wait for the world to lose interest in your startup, fold, and GOTO 1

Re:Startups are the new business model

[Deflagro]

Well heck, it works for politicians and they can end up running a country.... :P

Re:Startups are the new business model

[hawkinspeter]

Typical - I live in Bristol and hadn't even heard that you could talk to street furniture until seeing it here.

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[Rich0]

Nearly 90% of the artists who get a cheque for digital play receive less than $5,000 a year

Technically I think that's pretty good, isn't it? Write some songs, receive residual income whilst you do nothing else for the rest of the delivery platforms life. Win win.

I think there are two issues with this kind of logic.

The first is counter to your argument - the residual income is essentially a big part of the total compensation. When I get paid at work to do a job, I get paid the full value of the job. I don't really have an expectation of residual income. Now imagine that I'm a software developer and I get paid a share of productivity savings over time - I get paid $10k up-front for six months of work, but then I get 30% of any efficiencies the company that bought the software realizes as a result of using my software. Then the company uses accounting games to undermeasure the savings. In a situation like this the residual income was promised as the major component of the total compensation.

On the other hand, I think that a statement that 90% of artists make less than $5000/yr is very misleading because of the way the payments tend to be distributed. With digital distribution there really is no barrier to getting your item listed. That means that I can probably play a few bars on a kazoo and put it up for sale, and maybe sell a few copies to relatives if I'm lucky. When the same service sells that alongside of a top-10 hit I don't think you can really talk about averages in any kind of meaningful way.

Spotify

[Anonymous Coward]

I looked at Spotify some time ago, and they were so amature that they were using Facebook accounts instead of accounts on the service itself.

Not being into giving up every bit of privacy I have, I went with Pandora One instead.

Re:Spotify

[Sockatume]

You can sign in with a regular old Spotify login.

Re:Spotify

[Wookact]

Yes but for a while there you could not sign up without a facebook account. I believe that has changed, although not before I chose Slacker radio instead.

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[Endo13]

When you're trying to force your way as a supplier into an industry where supply already vastly exceeds demand, you should expect that to happen.

As a poster above indicated, if you could wipe all contemporary professional musicians and their music off the face of the earth, we'd still have more new music tomorrow. People make music because they love to make music, and that will always be the case. You actually don't have to have paid professionals to supply it. Much of the stuff produced by the paid professionals isn't even that good, and gets surpassed in quality by no-name indie bands a thousand times every week.

Re:I smell a plot

[Sockatume]

Yes, Thom Yorke is a famous fan of Google and Napster.

Unbelievable how Spotify replies

[cerberusss]

The reply from Spotify:

"Spotify's goal is to grow a service which people love, ultimately want to pay for, and which will provide the financial support to the music industry necessary to invest in new talent and music," a company spokesperson said today. "We want to help artists connect with their fans, find new audiences, grow their fan base and make a living from the music we all love. Right now we're still in the early stages of a long-term project that's already having a hugely positive effect on artists and new music. We've already paid US$500M to rightsholders so far and by the end of 2013 this number will reach US$1bn. Much of this money is being invested in nurturing new talent and producing great new music. We're 100% committed to making Spotify the most artist-friendly music service possible, and are constantly talking to artists and managers about how Spotify can help build their careers."

Unbelievable how they respond with corporate drivel. For me, this is the sign that no real human is at the helm and I'd rather keep downloading than give money to this faceless entity.

Re:Unbelievable how Spotify replies

[mjwx]

The reply from Spotify:

"Spotify's goal is to grow a service which people love, ultimately want to pay for, and which will provide the financial support to the music industry necessary to invest in new talent and music," a company spokesperson said today. "We want to help artists connect with their fans, find new audiences, grow their fan base and make a living from the music we all love. Right now we're still in the early stages of a long-term project that's already having a hugely positive effect on artists and new music. We've already paid US$500M to rightsholders so far and by the end of 2013 this number will reach US$1bn. Much of this money is being invested in nurturing new talent and producing great new music. We're 100% committed to making Spotify the most artist-friendly music service possible, and are constantly talking to artists and managers about how Spotify can help build their careers."

Unbelievable how they respond with corporate drivel. For me, this is the sign that no real human is at the helm and I'd rather keep downloading than give money to this faceless entity.

Spotify oddly enough is doing the right thing (by law) and paying for the copyrighted materials they use.

It's the "rightsholders" who aren't paying the artists. They're the ones who deserve your ire.

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[Sockatume]

No, professional music isn't necessary, but I'd like to live in a world where someone at least has the option of making a living doing the thing they love. And if they can't, the reason isn't "we refused to give up unlimited streaming content".

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[boristdog]

FWIW: I know many musicians (I live near Austin) who play and record professionally, and most of them DO have other jobs. Many are quite good, too. I've seen some of the most amazing and talented musicians playing around a campfire on my ranch. But they make maybe a couple hundred playing in clubs a couple nights a week, with the occasional big gig (usually weddings or other events) where they'll maybe clear a grand.

It's just 1% of musicians that actually make enough to live on, and 1% of that 1% that make really stupid money doing it.

Like anything, it's a combination of talent, luck, current trends, business acumen and charm that enables the various levels of success. Most do it because that is what they love doing - playing music. Invite them over and give them beer and you'll hear some real music.

I wouldn't say it's exactly the same problem...

[doc6502]

...as Yorke was able to pull the albums from Spotify. In the old days, he would have had to take the label to court to block distribution (see Ringo Starr's suit against Chips Moman)

put it in perspective

[xeoron]

Lets put it in perspective. If there are 1 million plays on Spodify/Pandora/etc vs 1 million active listeners over the radio for 1 song, which income is higher and by how much?

Re:put it in perspective

[David Gerard]

This is a number the Spotify/Pandora whiners will never give you. They keep fraudulently comparing it to sales.

RH gets NOTHING for radio play

[Overzeetop]

According to the WSJ:

"In the United States...radio companies pay only songwriters and music publishers, not record companies. The system, dating back almost a century, is based on the idea that radio play has enough promotional value for performers that they do not also need to be paid royalties."

Yes, that's right - the actual performance of the song gets them NOTHING, NADA, ZILCH, not one thin dime. So if Clear Channel plays a Radiohead song on 200 radio stations 100 times in a month reaching (on average) 40,000 listeners per station, that's 800 Million listener-plays for absolutely $zero.

Remind me again why RadioHead is getting such a raw deal at $1000/4M plays, but $0 is just fine?

Re:RH gets NOTHING for radio play

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm almost positive Radiohead writes their own songs.

Re:RH gets NOTHING for radio play

[Chris Pimlott]

A band like Radiohead write their own songs; so according to what you wrote, wouldn't they be getting paid as songwriters?

Re:RH gets NOTHING for radio play

[jsepeta]

only if your songs are played on the radio, it's tracked, and a group like ASCAP or BMI is actively seeking to enforce payments to you.

Re:RH gets NOTHING for radio play

[brit74]

Because radio is a promotional vehicle to drive record sales, while Spotify cannibalises album sales?

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[Sockatume]

Yeah, I've used a really bad definition of "professonal" here that is downright tautological. I agree, many of the best musicians, full stop, just do it (or did it) on the side. And that's always the way with art, and it's how it should be. I just don't want to see the idea of being able to pay your way with your talent get written off casually as unsustainable in the information age.

Re:Why?

[Archangel Michael]

Being an "Artist" doesn't take much. And "Artists" are dime a dozen. If you can't make a living being an "Artist" then perhaps you're like every other "Artist" out there. Get over it. Basic Supply / Demand curve applies. I've heard of Radiohead, but I couldn't tell you the title of one song. Are they good or just like every other band in their class, I wouldn't know.

My daughter, is fairly talented artist, but not commercially viable. She is not spectacular or exceptional, but I love her work (bias). But she has no illusions that she will get rich doing her craft, as there are at least a dozen or two other artists in my small town that are at least equal to her in capabilities(styles aside), there just isn't a demand for two dozen (or so) artists' work.

Re:Lame Copout

[jedidiah]

> I'm so tired of reading "I help myself to all their stuff but I'll buy their merch". Quit being a freeloader.

"Stop listening to the radio you thieving scum!"

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[gnasher719]

You're assuming that the artist knocks out a few tunes over the weekend, and have no other costs. Mostly music takes a lot more effort, time and money to produce than that -- the stuff you want to listen to at least.

I think he was imagining that musicians get a good fixed monthly salary that is related to the quality of their work (like I do), and on top of that get thousands and thousands every year after that for doing nothing (unlike me).

And that's wrong on two accounts: One, they don't get a fixed amount of money for their work. And second, if someone creates music this year and next year so many people buy it that he makes $5,000, then his music must have been bloody good in the first place, so he fully deserves it. You can try to compare him to a plumber who doesn't get money forever for work he's done once, but the reason he gets that money is because he did a much better job and deserves it.

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[Endo13]

You're assuming that the artist knocks out a few tunes over the weekend, and have no other costs.

Whether he's assuming that or not is completely irrelevant.

The correct assumption to make is that music artists are making music because they like to make music, not primarily to make money. Art is something that almost always suffers when money is the primary motivating factor. Not to mention the fact that music really is a pretty basic and easy art, (well, at least the stuff that's currently popular) and there's guaranteed to be a never-ending new supply for the foreseeable future.

We all have things that we spend a lot of time on because we like to do them, and I'm sure we'd all like to keep making *any* amount of money for posterity for the time invested. But that's not how reality works.

So GP is right. They're making as much as $5,000 a year for the simple act of uploading their music to Spotify. They should be pretty happy with that.

Mostly music takes a lot more effort, time and money to produce than that -- the stuff you want to listen to at least.

It takes exactly as much time, effort, and money as you want to put into it. And putting more of any of those things into it doesn't necessarily make it better. Most of the expensive contemporary pop music sounds like shit, and is easily surpassed by thousands of tracks indie artists give away for free.

Re:Why?

[jedidiah]

You had to dig back 7 years for that little statistic.

That really speaks volumes about the situation.

You didn't even follow up with the final numbers. It could be that he only blipped on anyone's radar for a single week and then quickly disappeared. A lot of crap movies do that. They make a somewhat respectable number for their opening weekend and then quickly fade.

It's all in what numbers you choose to present.

After 7 years it looks more like this guy belongs on an episode of "Where are they Now?".

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[IndustrialComplex]

Either way I'd quite like $5000 for work I did last year.

Last year? Don't copyrights last 150 years now?

Infinitely more

[bobbutts]

I switched from torrenting to Spotify because it is more convenient. By supplying this service, the industry turned my $0 into $120/yr Perhaps the goal is to eliminate Spotify so everyone will have to buy CD's again? Unfortunately the genie is out of the bottle, it would be impossible to return to the old ways.

Re:Infinitely more

[Myopic]

How does Spotify make money? I've never used it. Are there ads, or do you pay a little bit?

Re:Infinitely more

[Shirley Marquez]

The free version has ads and limits your listening hours. You can buy a subscription for $5/month that gets you unlimited ad-free listening, or pay $10 and also get mobile download support.

Arguments for and against

[GeekWithAKnife]

I'm pretty sure I read this stuff before many times...artists are not getting paid, studios overcharge, streaming services don't spread the cash etc etc.

Historically "artists" have never been richer. I'm not sure why so many people think they can give some sort of Earth shattering performance, record it and live like millionaires for the rest of their days. Why is it that when they get paid about or below average it's some grave injustice?

Look at the amount of poor poets out there, no one even pirates their stuff on a scale worth mentioning. Not too many poor IT experts though. No one told you what to do for a living.

what I'm saying here is that it's a free market with all sorts of self-interested parties that do not give a damn. This is not new, this is very old. Don't hate the players, hate the game...but if you choose to play it, shut the fuck up about it.

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[Endo13]

I'd like to live like that too. Reality is, it's not possible for everyone to make a living doing exactly what they love. I, for example, love playing video games and tabletop games. As do hundreds of millions of other people on the earth. It may be possible for a very small percentage of us to make money by playing video games and/or tabletop games. For the rest of us, we actually have to get a job doing something we may not necessarily love. That's life. You don't get a free pass just because you work in entertainment.

I love radiohead

[fazey]

You know, I really love Radiohead. Back when the RIAA started getting all hot in the pants about mp3s, Radiohead release their new album for free on their site. You simply went to the site and downloaded it, with the option of donating. Now this... Thom, and the rest of Radiohead have my respect.

Shrinking Pie?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the old days of the 80s, the artist would get about 7% of the retail value. Or about a $1 on a $15 CD.
 
In the new days, the artist gets about 25% (if they are lucky) of the retail value, or $.25 on a $.99 download.

Nobody's forcing you to sell for less than $4. If your competitors are selling for $1 and you're choosing to match them, then Welcome To The Real World. I can buy a "contemporary size" hard disk for $125, whereas in 1996 I paid $900, but nobody calls the computer hardware industry a shrinking pie. We call that a "disgustingly gluttonous Jabba-the-Hut-with-a-thousand-young" size pie, despite the lower prices.

While still in the pre-bitcoin era, we have limited availability for "payment processors" but shit, even paypal doesn't charge 75%. It sounds like you're using a product (not just payment) middleman. The cool thing about Internet downloads is that you don't really need one of those at all, or the margin will be razor thin (disk space and bandwidth really are commodities). Seriously, do something about that 75% figure. I'd say that's a way bigger problem than your competitors making you sell at quarter price.

Consumers are .. buying only the popular tracks and not whole CDs

Ok, this is a lot more interesting and I think we're getting closer to what's really happening here. I think this might be a by-genre thing, but who knows. Would you say that in the old says, people wanted to buy less than whole albums, but simply weren't allowed to (i.e. preferences haven't changed, service has merely improved)? Or have the preferences actually changed, where people really only want a single song from "Dark Side of the Moon" or "Houses of the Holy" because most of the songs are not considered to be crap?

If it's the former (people always just wanted a single) then that's not a shrinking pie; that's just a matter of who gets it or keeps the pie. Bundling is bad, a la cart is good. Or rather, they're bad or good depending on whether you're paying or receiving. ;-) But it's the same size pie.

If it's the latter (people wanted more music in the past, and now they want less music) then you might be right that it's a shrinking pie. Be careful and make sure you know that they're really obtaining less total music, rather than less per seller. They're not just diversifying, are they? If they're buying 100 songs from 100 musicians, instead of 100 songs from 10 musicians, that's not a shrinking pie.

Re:Shrinking Pie?

[alexander_686]

You are talking about a different pie, and in fact your pie not only stays the same but gets bigger - and the artist is still screwed. For the size of the pie I was talking about only the producer’s (artist, record label, distributor) profits – but if you want to talk about the whole pie we can do that. The correct term is economic surplus – I have already posted a link.

To illustrate, in the old world let’s say consumers spent $100 on music that they valued at $150, so they have a consumer surplus of $50. Producer’s make a profit, a Producers Surplus, of $50 which will be split 3 ways. Consumer Surplus + Producers Surplus = Economic Surplus of $100.

Today, pick out individual tracks or use Spotify (which pays out less then radio) and spends $80 (because they can buy the individual tracks they want, or they listen online which generates less ad revenue then the radio, etc.) on music that they value at $200, for a consumer surplus of $120. Technology helps cut the costs – but not that much – producers make a profit of $35. Total Economic Surplus is now $155. So, yes, society is better off with a bigger pie, but the producer’s slice is now smaller.

But that’s o.k. you contend – the magic of the internet will wipe out the middle men – leaving the virtues artist with all of the profit. Expect that is probably not happening in the real world. Anecdotally, from the independent artist I have talked to, the higher margins they are earning because they own more of the distribution channel does not make up for the falling revenue.

Sorry to rain on your parade.

I long for the day

[John Allsup]

When the beauty is wrested back from the consumer oriented performance art it has become, back to a deep and meaningful means of learning and communicating.  Music without interaction is like a one-way conversation, and listening to most music these days is little more an inspiring experience than reading a mass-media tabloid newspaper.  Yes,  some works of music are true beautiful works of art, but really the fact that musical beauty can be expressed through recordings is a done thing, and we need to move on.  It is in the ability to move each other that music's true beauty lies, and much of the industry is devoid of this.  But until people realise that music is more than buying CDs and sticking them in your hifi, they won't move back to the days where music was always performed, each and every time, to the audience you had around you.  Until the industry is weakened, this won't happen.  Thus I shed no tears for much of the industry, nor for professional artists who prize income over getting heard.  Spotify is a good legal way to get your music out, though it doesn't pay as much as the industry of old.  Maybe that is because in the past the music business was too lucrative?  Anyway, music is bigger than business, and music will outlive the music business, and I care not for business, only music.

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[HeckRuler]

Either way I'd quite like $5000 for work I did last year.

Well, me and the wife have about $150K in the bank, stocks, retirement, etc. On average I'd say they're getting about 3%. Truth be told I haven't really looked in a while. Probably should.

But yeah, that's... about $5000 we're earning a year. For doing nothing other than having worked last year (and years past)(and not spending it all).

Go away, you're not 21

[tepples]

Most do it because that is what they love doing - playing music. Invite them over and give them beer and you'll hear some real music.

The problem here is that a lot of the audience for music consists of high school students and college underclassmen, who are prohibited by law from possessing beer. Many states forbid people under 21 from even entering music establishments that serve alcohol.

Needing to be 21 to see live music

[tepples]

For a long time in my home town there was a great music scene. We have a lot of great local musicians. But they stop playing clubs

Did they stop when they realized that enough of their audience was too young to get into clubs without fraudulent identification?

Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers

[brit74]

> "Either way I'd quite like $5000 for work I did last year."

You have to count up all the payments. Would you rather get paid $60,000 a year (and get your paychecks every two weeks for your previous two weeks of work), or would you rather get paid $10,000 this year, then $5,000 next year, $2,000 the year after that, and then $1,000 the following year? My point is that "getting paid for work you did last year" is completely irrelevant if the total amount you got paid was quite low to begin with. In my example, I contrast earning $60,000 immediately with $18,000 dragged out over four years. Obviously, it's not always better to get paid for work you did x years ago, even though "getting paid for work you did last year" makes it sound like you're unfairly reaping lots of cash.

Re:Why?

[cinky]

Can't find the final numbers but 900 000 albums were sold in the first week, it was nominated for Mercury Music Prize and Grammy and was no. 17 in the 2006 billboard top independent album list. during the seven years since his solo album he released two albums with Radiohead and one with his new band atoms for peace which is headlining festivals across Europe at the moment. Seems like you have absolutely no idea who Thom Yorke is but you decided to talk crap anyway...

What about radio?

[Shirley Marquez]

Why is Yorke upset about the low royalties from Spotify, but not about the ZERO royalties paid by terrestrial radio? (I'm talking about performance royalties; both pay songwriter royalties.) We should have a level playing field where all media pay the same rate.