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The Music Industry's Latest Shortsighted Plan: Killing Freemium Services
An anonymous reader notes that there have been rumblings in the music industry of trying to shut down freemium services like Spotify's free tier and YouTube's swath of free music. The record labels have realized that music downloads are gradually giving way to streaming, and they're angling for as a big a slice of that revenue as they can manage. The article argues that they're making the same mistake they always make: that converting freemium site listeners (in the past, music pirates) to subscription services will be a 1:1 transfer, and no listeners will be lost in the process. Of course, that's no more true now than it was a decade ago. But in doing trying to do so, the labels will do harm to the artists they represent, and shoot themselves in the foot for acquiring future customers by getting rid of several major sources of music discovery.
You mean more than they already do ?
From what I have seen the sites pay next to nothing and most of what they do pay goes to the labels, because the artists are still in debt to them.
The last two records I purchased I paid for and downloaded from the artist pretty directly. I assume they were paying the hosting service a fee.
This is the way of the future. I'm sure the artist in question got > 50% of the revenue direct into their pockets, compared to the tiny slice a record company would pay them, this is huge.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
"Lose" money? I don't think so. They get money from being on Spotify.
The question is, do they get as much as they could/should?
Their model for distributing music has only been around a little over 1/2 a century. New technology invalidated their business model. Guess what? That's how it's always worked. They can either adapt, or they can die.
So a few bands will make less because they won't have the album sales. Most musicians have traditionally made their money by playing live, and that's what'll happen. The difference now is, streaming services will help introduce people to new music, and some of those will go to their live shows. Some of those will buy the $30 t-shirt to further support the band. You might not have as many multi-millionaire musicians, but the internet should benefit the ones who never sold enough to make a profit on an album anyway.
>Of course they deserve to be able to live off their work.
Do they? Any time prior to a few centuries ago, a musician only made money via patronage and live performances, and maybe selling some sheet music or other products on the side. And sure, I've got no beef with anyone claiming a (decent) musician should be able to make a living off their work in that fashion. Today though we've created the strange idea that an musician should be able to record their music once, and get paid for it repeatedly over the course of the next century. This is very much a historical anomaly. Even authors and other creators of much more involved and substantial works were historically only granted a decade or two of profits from their one-time labor. This is an aspect of our economic system that's still very much evolving.
There is much to be said for patronage or government grants, done well. Grants especially though have the issue of who decides which artists receive them? It's easy to abuse the position of spending other people's money to support something as nebulous and subjective as art. Especially considering the elitist "echo chamber" effect that often surrounds such things. Personally I'd consider the world to be better off without much of modern art, by what right are my taxes spent on such things?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Of course they deserve to be able to live off their work.
A few years ago I went to an Elton John concert. In Costa Rica, where I was living at the time. Now Sir Elton is no young puppy. Neither am I. Still I was impressed that this rather elderly entertainer was banging out these tunes, visibly sweating and working his ass off. The tickets weren't that expensive either, so he can't have been raking in a lot of money from that concert. But he worked and worked. And of course we applauded and cheered as he played exactly what we wanted to hear. Later on, I logged on and I found out that this little central america tour was just a break from his real job which was playing Vegas every weekend that year. So here is Elton John at 60 plus years old working his fucking ass off weekdays AND weekends. Yeah, Sir Elton has his own jet, and no doubt several sets of equipment and all the people he could need to keep his show on the road in many places at once. But he is working, working, working, and I don't care how many millions he makes he has earned every single penny.
Now the stupid arsehole who thinks the world owes him a zillion dollars for that one crappy song he wrote though, no, I think THAT guy doesn't "deserve" to be able to live off his "work" at all. Writing a tune is not WORK. You wrote a song. Congrats! You think you're special? I wrote a song. My daughter painted a painting. My wife wrote a poem. Big fucking deal. Now get to fucking WORK if you actually want to live off your song! Then maybe the regular people, those of us who actually DO work every day, will respect this "artist". Copyright should never be entitlement.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.