Spotify, YouTube pay musicians with ever-shrinking buttons Digital music is a loss leader for tech giants, driving traffic to other parts of the plantation as they harvest personal data. But it’s creators who are carrying the loss. “Leaked” Spotify numbers suggest its maintaining an audience lead over Apple in the digital streaming business - but only by giving the music away for …
Every time I read one of these I ponder how much el'reg is paid to publish the tosh without any form of balance.
If the labels don't want their tat played on youtube they just need to upload their tat to contentID select how long a piece of music will trigger it and pull any videos that use it. Job done.
Or they could do what many non British and American companies do and create content that people watch which boosts their brand and merchandise sales as well as getting more eyes on more ads to push up the revenue. But that would mean the labels doing work...
I like that the completely erroneous statement about needing to needing to license your music to google keeps getting upvotes.
All you need to do is submit and prove that you have the exclusive copyright on it, and if you don't own a world wide license what geographic regions you do. Then submit the sample required for content matching.
Youtube is as legal as Grooveshark was. It's just that Google are big enough to get away with it....
Music revenue from YouTube is less than that from vinyl sales. The paltry amount of revenue that any artist gleans from it isn't worth the hassle. The problem as the article states is that Google hides behind a law that was written before the issues of content piracy were known. It should be yanked out of its protective shell as you would a Winkle.
https://littlelessonslearned.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/2012-05-12_16-15-58_852.jpg
The better labels have nothing to do with Google, or Spotify.
http://www.marlbank.net/opinion/2314-are-jazz-labels-right-to-ignore-spotify.html
I'm in my 40s and find it rather bemusing that -most- 20somethings I've encountered seem quite happy to listen to 80/90s 'classics' and endless remixes. Is the whole thing just an issue for people who remember shopping at HMV? Does the commercial music industry even really matter?
I recall the last time it was the music recording companies killing live performance...
...the market will ultimately decide the value. If it costs nothing to duplicate, then just maybe it's actually worth nothing. That's why China invests in manufacturing, and real artists sell tickets to gigs...
'It costs nothing to duplicate, then just maybe it's worth nothing.'
Bt to create? A small orchestra records, say, Tartini sonatas and a fan uploads all their tracks to YouTube and then anyone can download every single track for free -- is the music worth nothing? The artistry worth nothing? Do we hold everyone who creates something intangible, but which can enrich and alter lives, worth nothing?
When anything is reduced to a commodity, it seeks to find its lowest cost level.
The amount of recorded music from the last 100 years has reduced music to a literally disposable commodity.
Oversupply does this to anything. Anything. Only artificial scarcity keeps prices from hitting rock bottom.
That's because there's no need for musicians to "emerge". That is an artificial and outdated construct of the label industry, from an era when carefully metered content was dripped down to you through a few narrow and global channels - radio then TV - or focussed on a few carefully selected mega-stars, whose only claim to fame, past a modicum of talent*, was being in the right place at the right time with the right connection and a willingness to do whatever it takes.
In the era of when anyone can reach at least a small audience, the idea of reaching global fame is as much a dinosaur as Youtube celebrities are rare - sure, there always are a few popular big names, but I for one am watching mostly almost-famous mini-stars who grew their audience not by getting rich and famous but by generating reliably good content. And those will never fucking "emerge". Nor do they need to - one of them happens to be a few guys (and gals) getting paid five figures a month on Patreon by a modest audience to make funny video series FOR EVERYONE that teach viewers some actual history...
* no longer a requirement. At all. Whatsoever.
The music industry was always based on selling goods for the maximum markup obtainable. Setting up a record label required enough of an investment to lock Fred-in-the-Shed outfits out of the market; but once that was covered, you could just carry on selling the same records over and over again. Even some of the performers -- who mostly were being exploited by the labels -- managed to get greedy, and think they were indispensible. There was just no alternative; if you wanted to listen to records, you had to pay for them. Reel-to-reel and eventually cassette tape still had to be recorded in real time, which limited their usefulness as an alternative distribution channel.
Now, thanks to the relentless march of progress, the playing field has been levelled, and the distribution companies have no secret weapon not available to the rest of us. Allowing the Free Market to decide what a song is worth. And it turns out to be rather less than when the record labels controlled the price.
As an artist, if you don't like the fact that people are going to listen to your work without paying, your redress is limited to plain, old-fashioned withdrawal of labour. Except even that isn't going to work, if people can live without the work you do.
Face it, the party is over. It was fun, for a lot of people, for awhile; but this is where it ends. With a whimper, not a bang.
As an artist, if you don't like the fact that people are going to listen to your work without paying, your redress is limited to plain, old-fashioned withdrawal of labour. Except even that isn't going to work, if people can live without the work you do.
Face it, the party is over. It was fun, for a lot of people, for awhile; but this is where it ends. With a whimper, not a bang.
Indeed, the party is over.
I have withdrawn my labour. I had some kind of fantasy about giving it all away for free, and I worked toward that to an extent, setting up a great website etc. etc.
But it's not worth it. I'm paying for the hosting and putting all the work in. It's just stupid. So I stopped.
There is also the fact that people just aren't interested in music anymore. Most people don't like music. I know I don't, even though I make it. Coupled with the fact, that the few people that do listen to music, don't like to listen to 'good' music, they like 'shit' music.
I do realise how that last paragraph sounds, but I'll just leave it there for those that can understand. Maybe you need to really be deep in to the music to get that, without a further explanation being required.
I know of other musical geniuses as well that have withdrawn their labour. There really is no distribution mechanism for artists to get paid - they get gouged everytime. It's a stitch-up, and all you can do is start drinking heavily, turn to drugs, give up hope, accept defeat and abandon the literally decades of gruelling hard work that molded you into that musical genius. It's what I do!
There is also another factor at play for the high-end musical geniuses like me. There is no scene any more. It's not possible to play a festival now without being privacy-raped. I will not have cameras pointing at me during a gig. And that's just the fucking parasitical BBC. What about the 'audience'? Bunch of mug-punters. If someone started filming me on their phone while I was performing, I would down tools.
In short, this modern world is not for me. I'll leave it to the gullible kids and the cynical old codgers exploiting them. It's actually reached a point, where anyone, anyone at all 'making music' now is not taken seriously. I can't think of one act off the top of my head that is active today that I have respect for.
One simply just does not go into the music biz any more. If you do, you're a prat. End of. It's over. Leave it to the clowns. It's clown world now, all the way to the top and to the bottom.
I have respect for certain niche artists who have made a nice little set up for themselves and because they have a decent income stream and families to feed and mortgages to pay, they soldier on in the face of it. But even they know it is over now. Still, if it pays for that new 20,000 quid mixing desk, more power to ya! A lot of these though will be making money by playing live and selling their souls. There is not an artist in this world that like being taken for a performing clown for someone's fucking bucket list and having cameras flashing at him while he is singing songs about the most intimate of details. Sure, narcissists will love it, and there are a lot of narcissists in the game. But we aren't all attention seeking idiots. You know, some of us are shy and introverted and sensitive.
There is also the myth that artists make money by playing live. Some do, some don't. Most don't. You need to be very big to do this. A small band can't make a decent wage by playing live, it is just not possible. You are gouged at every level from the venue to the booking agent etc. etc. - bit like google/youtube is gouging its exploited.
It's doubly ironic for me, because I worked my whole life to reach the point of artistic brilliance that I have been aiming for my whole life. I did this in the past year or two only, and now, just as I achieved it, the whole game has not just been turned on its head, but totally killed off.
Yes, game over!
But by all means, if you are a wannabee musician/producer reading this, then waste your life/money/time on trying to convince the world that your particular brand of 'music' (that everyone has heard a million times or more) is just what the world needs, if you could only get that 'big break'. I know, you could use the internet, youtube say! No one else has thought of that have they? And of course, your particular brand of crap is better than their brand of crap, so you have that going for you. Why don't you go and do a degree in becoming a 'pop star' - lots of that about too for the 'needy'.
The truth of the matter is, your music is shit, and no one cares. It's all been done before, and even people who have invented new forms of music (such as myself) have no market, because people don't want new forms of music, they want a simulacra of what went before in the 6789'0's. It is just not authentic otherwise, and if it isn't authentic, then it doesn't count. Because it's all about being seen to have the experience, not to have the experience itself, hence all the cameras at gigs. Ask Kate Bush how she feels about that.
But at least I'm not bitter.
I still make music. I am an artisan. I write the songs. I play the instruments. Make the arrangements. I produce it. I engineer it. And then I edit it. And finally I master it. And I do all that to a 'good enough' level, i.e. it sounds fucking amazing, sonically, it makes you happy and warm, it makes you cry and it touches deeper emotions that you never even knew you had, or knew you had, but just had locked away until I opened the floodgates for you. No one can take that away from me, and it is my deepest pleasure and joy in this life, and the one thing I can count on in a world without friends or family, without any money to go anywhere - it's a counterpoint to a life so miserable, that I don't want to live anymore. It's probably the only thing that has stopped me from committing my long-planned suicide.
And on that cheery note...
I haven't given up (on life or music), and even though it is most definitely game over now, I am looking at new distribution and dissemination mechanisms. I can assure you, that this will in no way take into consideration any current 'music' platform at all. Youtube, Google, iTunes, Apple et al. are the enemy - they will not be dealt with in this new world I have planned. Sure, the stuff will end up getting ripped and put on youtube later one, but I'll worry about that if and when it ever happens.
I won't win of course, but at least I am going down fighting. Unlike all the other pathetic weak-willed wannabees sucking satan's corporate cock. Are you in a band? In the 'current year'? Shame on you. You are part of the problem.
STOP MAKING MUSIC NOW. YOU WILL NEVER EARN A LIVING WAGE FROM IT.
This is an extremely interesting time. I feel as if we are the verge of something big. There has been a vacuum in the music industry for the last 20 years, but yes, it's ending more with a whimper than a bang.
I'm actually quite excited by it all, these interesting musical times we live in. And of course, when it finally happens, everyone will say 'oh I saw that coming', 'it had to happen eventually', and my favourite: 'why didn't I bloody think of that?'.
That seems about right to me. If I understand the history right being a musician has pretty much always been an entertainment, a side hobby, not a pathway to riches. As with pretty much any other artistic endeavor the usual pathway has been to find one (or several) patrons that like your work enough to fund you directly.
This brief modern period when artists could expect to make (not just hope to make, but expect to make) vast amounts of money from semi-anonymous crowds seems ahistorical and unsustainable.
Like most other products this "packaged music" product went through an early invention phase, an explosive growth phase, and briefly returned excess profits. Then once everyone figured out the game more competitors jumped in, vastly expanding the supply, and profits fell. As per every other product the early winners are trying every angle to bar the gates and keep their oligopoly.
A combination of Patreon and live events is probably the right model and will likely be 'the new normal'. It blends the past (patron-supported artistry) with the future (global access/low barrier to entry) in a way that makes sense. Also like most other product arcs this will eliminate a bunch of middleman jobs but that is probably a) unavoidable and b) a good thing.
There's may be a lagging curve in less-connected parts of Asia and Africa where the old model will still be viable for a while though.
IMO/YMMV/IANAL
Music is certainly providing riches for some people today, but they're just not in the music industry.
The old models of the recent past supported a "middle class" of creators for 40 years, who never actually recouped. They were redistributive.
The idea that everyone who actually makes the music now has to be poor from now on is very self-serving. You're really just saying that a gigantic shit sandwich isn't so bad if you think about it enough.
It's still a gigantic shit sandwich.
> I won't win of course, but at least I am going down fighting. Unlike all the other pathetic weak-willed wannabees sucking satan's corporate cock.
> STOP MAKING MUSIC NOW. YOU WILL NEVER EARN A LIVING WAGE FROM IT.
> This is an extremely interesting time. I feel as if we are the verge of something big.
Too long, rambling, and contradictory.... but nice rant nonetheless :)
If they really cared about the little guy, why don't all the mega rich superstars, the likes of Thom Yorke, Taylor Swift et al start up their own Music Label?
As an aside, if "stealing" music was good enough for major record companies in the 70's, then why be surprised when others do likewise? Compare :
https://www.google.co.uk/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=TleFV4TsKMXU8geG5ZXQDw#q=t+rex+i+love+to+boogie
to
https://www.google.co.uk/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=PleFV-W1E8XU8geG5ZXQDw#q=webb+pierce+teenage+boogie
Mr O's articles often refer to insufficient or falling revenue. But one could rightfully ask, where does all the massive increase in revenue, in relative terms, go to?
I understand that tickets to see the first Glastonbury Festival or the Derek & the Dominos tour ( a series of gigs) circa 1970 were priced at £1 , yes 1 single GBP each.
That's £15 in today's value, adjusted for inflation.
Where on earth, well the UK, the US. can you see anyone live for that amount nowadays?
Take Scarborough for example, an open air venue, yeah you get piss wet through when it rains and it does, the shittiest "bands"/acts start from £37
Also, whatever happened to half price tickets for children?
How about just making art for arts sakes? Accept that there's probably zero money in it but then that's what day jobs are for. Writing and playing music, by yourself, with friends, at a pub, on a big outdoor stage or even going through the recording process once in a while...it's all thoroughly enjoyable life experience, so long as you don't ruin it by hoping you see the money you put in again. Just spend within your means how you see fit and have fun.
Er, that is what I just wrote a 2000 word essay on, gratis, for you, for you to read. And you obviously did not read it, or at least, did not digest it.
No worries.
Quite a few good points here, and tomorrow I shall revisit and tackle them all one by one, even yours too Alexgs138.
Making art for art's sake? That is what all us great artists do.
It's not that people won't pay for it. They will. They will pay an arm and a leg and get the tattoo. They just don't get to hear it. And this is the crux of the problem, with google and youtube effectively taking over distribution and dissemination.
I resorted to hyperbole in my post, but there was seed a of truth in there.
Maybe tomorrow?
Listen to this as a possible reference point:
Talk Talk - Laughing Stock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7FxqsNO4-Y
It is the final work in series of masterful works, each a piece of genius in its own right.
Mark Hollis had the right idea. Look up his interviews on youtube. He did everything he wanted to do.
His record company raped him and made his mind up.
He don't make any money from touring coz he dropped out of the game. I hope his record company still give him some royalties (pretty sure they do).
Very few people reach this level of musical self-actualisation. He marries all his work with this final album. I would die happy, easy and fulfilled to have reached this point.
But I will die alone, without more than a dozen people hearing my work. Good job it's not just about me.
The people that make music do it coz they have to. Very rarely does money or recognition come in to it with the big boys.
If you haven't heard Laughing Stock before, listen to it now. It's on youtube for free. Buy the album if you can and put a few pennies in the jar. Mark don't care. He has a family. Kids he takes to school. He has more than the respect of his peers. He has their respect for his music. And he has their greater respect for telling the man to fuck off.
I can't compete with this level of talent. But I know something special when I hear it.
This is what I'm talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MnpgEAG3bM
And I know a man of suitable morals when I see one. Not a hero. Just someone with the right idea. Shame so many have stars in their eyes.
It's a new day. If you want new music, you are going to have to help us. So far, you are just all leaving us out to dry, with big words. We will be gone soon.
Anyway, tomorrow. Maybe.
Google is bending copyright holding commercial musicians over and rodgering them.
As it should.
I have to work for my money and justify my exorbitant rates.
I have no automatic algoritm for preventing other engineers doing the same job and I dont have the mobey to sue every engineer that has the gall to do what I do.
Fuck copyright. Either be an expert in something or dont be. Dining out on the same dead horse for 3 generations is bullshit and is a crime against humanity.
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