Slashdot Mirror
Why the Major Labels Love (and Artists Hate) Music Streaming
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Jay Frank writes that the big four music distributors and their sister publishers (Sony, Warner, UNI and EMI) make 15% more per year, on average, from paying customers of streaming services like Spotify or Rdio than it does from the average customer who buys downloads, CDs or both. Each label makes 'blanket license' deals with Streaming services with advances in the undisclosed millions, which is virtually the same as selling music in bulk; they receive these healthy licensing fees to cover all activity in a given period rather than allowing Streaming services to 'pay as they go.' 'Artists are up in arms, many are opting out of streaming services,' writes Frank. 'Lost in that noise is a voice that is seldom heard: that of the record companies. There's good reason for that: they're making more money from streaming and the future looks extremely bright for them.' The average 'premium' subscription customer in the U.S. was worth about $16 a year to a major record company, while the average buyer of digital downloads or physical music was worth about $14. Thus, year over year, the premium subscriber was worth nearly 15% more than the person who bought music either digitally or physically."
They don't want us to own our music collections!
I've been VERY careful with services like Spotify. If I really like a song, I still acquire a real copy that's mine, rather than depend on Spotify to listen to it when I want to.
The simple fact is that Spotify might be gone someday, yet my MP3s will still be sitting on my (backed up) hard drive.
Artists are up in arms because record companies make more money off of their work, and yet they end up making less!
Thirty four characters live here.
If the record companies were honest, the artists would be making more money so would love streaming services. Unfortunately, the record industry is controlled by a bunch of thieving assholes who see paying artists as unnatural. So the record companies are making money hand over fist, and the the artists get screwed, as usual.
-- Will program for bandwidth
tell me why I should give a shit? This is like a news item telling me how much Dropbox pays for hard disks or how much Google pays for electricity.
Streaming music services like Spotify provide a service, and I pay for it if I find it good value for money. I don't care what their overheads are or what deals they have in place with their suppliers.
The Hypebot article gives a few reasons artists don't like streaming. It includes things like having to wait longer for revenue, songs have to have "legs" and longevity, and finally the pie is cut into smaller pieces.
Do you see a pattern there? It isn't so conducive to pop / top 40 / disposable type music. An example given is that instead of consumer buying 3 CDs over the course of a year (and thus the money only going to 3 artists), with streaming that same amount of money may be split up over 18 artists instead. To me that sounds very good for indie artists, and, well, for music in general (if quality means anything). If a consumer is only going to buy 3 CDs a year on average, then there's a good chance those 3 artists will be the flavor of the month as shoved down everyone's throats by radio stations, TV shows, etc.
The artists that would be doing the most complaining are the highest grossing superstars, and to be honest, I'm not all that concerned for their financial well being.
The real question is do the record companies get an even larger percentage of the revenue with streaming, and I didn't see where these articles said that.
Better known as 318230.
A year for each song? Most pop music wouldn't even take the better part of an afternoon to write. It's a 4 chord song which follows a fairly standard pattern. The melody is generally the only unique part, and that's because that's what the copyright is based on. Nearly all lyrics are truly banal crap with little to no meaning. The vast majority of songs are limp love songs with tepid pointless sappy lyrics.
There are exceptions, of course, but if we're talking rock / pop then and especially anything that charts, then it's all drivel. Some examples:
Baby baby
Are you listening?
Wondering where you've been all my life
I just started living
Oh baby
Are you listening?
Unconditional, unconditionally
I will love you unconditionally
There is no fear now
Let go and just be free
I will love you unconditionally
I live for the applause, applause, applause
I live for the applause-plause, live for the applause-plause
Live for the way that cheer and scream for me
The applause, applause, applause
Yeah girl, I just had me,
One hell of a work week.
It's been driving me crazy,
Not enough of you baby.
And I been a-thinkin',
'Bout breakin' in the weekend
Not doin' any sleepin'
So get in, let's take a ride
Such insight! Such clever prose and phrasing! Truly these gems will shine till the sun itself have burnt out...
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
This is entirely true for your Bieber's, Beoynce's and Skrillex's. But it wasn't always the case. This is largely due to the fact that music has pretty much died and what we've been left with requires so much post production and marketing to sell, the "artist" is almost unnecessary. The only reason they still need real people is because of the uncanny valley. If we could make an image indistinguishable from a real person, record labels could get rid of the useless meat.
Long gone are the days where bands would write a new record almost entirely on tour, then produce it in a studio over 3 months and it would be mastered a short time later mainly because the band needed to get back on tour to earn money. I'm using Nirvana's Nevermind as an example, recorded between May and June 1991, Mastered on the 2nd of August 1991 and released on the 24th of September 1991. Between the 2nd of May and the 2nd of August, they produced one of the worlds greatest albums, a period of 4 months and half of that was recording. Most of the work was done by Cobain, Novoselic, Grohl and the producer, Butch Vig.
A far cry from today where most of the music is not only fixed by computers, it's actually generated by computers. Beyond the initial recordings, the "artist" (I'm using that term very loosely) isn't required and doesn't really have any input. We now have pop and rap which is largely the creation of computers but dubstep and electronic music is entirely the work of computers. This is why it has become so expensive and time consuming to produce a studio album. You dont start with a band using instruments to produce a near finished product, you have to create that from scratch.
And we're all suffering because of it.
Previously bands would work their way up, playing at parties, weddings, just about anything to get noticed, to get fans. Now so called "artists" are relying on marketing and saturating radio coverage to get people to like their crud. Music is albeit dead now, replaced with rap, dubstep and electronic substitutes. Soon the man with the guitar will be an endangered species.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.