Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 162 posts

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#81

Post by bobsam »

raverbashing wrote: post #76
quanticle wrote: post #75

As we said above, their artists would suffer from the loss of distribution, but they’d also suffer a loss of revenue. Not much revenue. Spotify is famously stingy in how much it pays artists, to the point where big names like Taylor Swift are keeping their releases off Spotify.

I'm not worried about Taylor Swift outside of Spotify. I'm happy to listen to the artists I favour, as much as they get paid little, they do get some revenue from it https://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/5h2lmk/i_am_an_indep...

To add to what you said: when Mrs Swift demands to get paid much more than everyone else, that money is taken from the payout of less famous artists.

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#82

Post by dom96 »

bergjs wrote: post #59

Spotify is the one service I'm happy to pay for. Their weekly mixes keep blowing my mind because it's such a great way to discover new music tailored to my taste. Plus, Spotify connect is a genius way to play music on loudspeakers. It works incredibly well with my Bose speakers. My impression is that they will continue to innovate in all kinds of areas so I think they have a good chance of winning. I needed to write…

While i have discovered a couple good songs in Spotify's Discover Weekly playlist, i do find it a common occurrence nowadays that songs which i have listened to in the past are included. Does anyone else have that experience? Perhaps Spotify is just having a really hard time finding music related to my tastes?

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#83

Post by davidgerard »

quanticle wrote: post #75

As we said above, their artists would suffer from the loss of distribution, but they’d also suffer a loss of revenue. Not much revenue. Spotify is famously stingy in how much it pays artists, to the point where big names like Taylor Swift are keeping their releases off Spotify.

The numbers compare fairly well to what artists get paid per listener for being played on the radio, IIRC.

The 1990s CD boom is over, and it turns out it wasn't a law of nature.

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#84

Post by thirdsun »

lucb1e wrote: post #79

As a paying Spotify member, practices like these only make me want to switch to DRM-free music more. Blackmailing artists with "we won't promote you if you don't lower your prices" and wasting half a million on 2 weeks of exclusivity. That's not what I'm paying them for; I pay them because I want to compensate artists.

> I pay them because I want to compensate artists.

You're paying the wrong people then. If you want to help artists buy their music instead of renting it from streaming services, which may lose access to it at any time.

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#85

Post by thirdsun »

SteveNuts wrote: post #16
shmerl wrote: post #11

I prefer DRM-free stores and musicians who release there.

I prefer the convenience of having access to an effectively unlimited music library, on demand, for a flat cost per month. I can see how it would be a fun hobby to curate your own collection, but for me it's really hard to beat services like Spotify, Steam, Netflix - DRM or not.

I get that, but I think that convenience comes with a price: Missin gout on great music. Now or in the future.

While I consider myself an enthusiast, I understand that people have different priorities and for many music may not be that important, but Spotify's library is anything but unlimited - there's just too much music not available on any streaming service. And more importantly you can lose access to music at any time - licensing deals end, labels and artists change their mind and suddenly your favorite album is gone. Netflix knows a thing or two about that.

Renting music is not an option for me. While I use Spotify as a preview platform and for minor discovery (though it's mediocre for that), I prefer to buy and own my music losslessly.

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#86

Post by Eridrus »

thirdsun wrote: post #85
SteveNuts wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer the convenience of having access to an effectively unlimited music library, on demand, for a flat cost per month. I can see how it would be a fun hobby to curate your own collection, but for me it's really hard to beat services like Spotify, Steam, Netflix - DRM or not.

I get that, but I think that convenience comes with a price: Missin gout on great music. Now or in the future. While I consider myself an enthusiast, I understand that people have different priorities and for many music may not be that important, but Spotify's library is anything but unlimited - there's just too much music not available on any streaming service. And more importantly you can lose access to music at an…

I used to care about this, but I've come to believe music is somewhat fungible for many people. If you're really into music you probably disagree, but in the 5 years I've paid for Spotify, the fact that some artists/albums have been missing hasn't really been a big deal for me. The fact that lots of people listen(ed) to the radio is further evidence of this.

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#87

Post by LaSombra »

shmerl wrote: post #21
SteveNuts wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer the convenience of having access to an effectively unlimited music library, on demand, for a flat cost per month. I can see how it would be a fun hobby to curate your own collection, but for me it's really hard to beat services like Spotify, Steam, Netflix - DRM or not.

I buy in stores like Bandcamp which sell FLAC, and then encode in Opus for playback. Also, prospects of your collection evaporating because DRMed service could suddenly close down tomorrow don't sound good. Convenience or not, I prefer to back up what I paid for.

I do the same but at the same time I upload to Google Play so I have access to my library wherever I go. Its quality is good enough and it accepts FLAC uploads, which then they convert, so I don't have to encode it again.

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#88

Post by andymurd »

dom96 wrote: post #82
bergjs wrote: post #59

Spotify is the one service I'm happy to pay for. Their weekly mixes keep blowing my mind because it's such a great way to discover new music tailored to my taste. Plus, Spotify connect is a genius way to play music on loudspeakers. It works incredibly well with my Bose speakers. My impression is that they will continue to innovate in all kinds of areas so I think they have a good chance of winning. I needed to write…

While i have discovered a couple good songs in Spotify's Discover Weekly playlist, i do find it a common occurrence nowadays that songs which i have listened to in the past are included. Does anyone else have that experience? Perhaps Spotify is just having a really hard time finding music related to my tastes?

Discover weekly is the reason that I pay for Spotify. I'm an old guy that prefers vinyl to mp3s, misses the local record store terribly and hates radio, so modern music distribution sucks for me.

I first tried Spotify many years ago, back when playlists were quite new. At the time, I was living in the UK and a big user of last.fm but, out of curiosity, I spent an afternoon building one playlist out of the few tracks they had that I liked.

I was/am into house and techno but the tracks were not yet available on Spotify back then - but the originals which were heavily sampled sure were. So I ended up with a playlist of funk, disco, blues, hip-hop and jazz that was kinda familiar, lotta fun.

Fast-forward several years and I'm living in Australia, where last.fm is a paid service that had stagnated, so back to check out Spotify again...

It had millions more tracks.

It had learned from my playlist. Discover weekly is soooo good.

It had my attention and my credit card.

To the parent poster, I suggest you treat Spotify like a friendly muso willing to lend you her near infinite collection. I've you've ever wondered about $GENRE, go and play. I have no relationship with Spotify except as a very happy customer.

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#89

Post by k-mcgrady »

tjoff wrote: post #78
quanticle wrote: post #75

As we said above, their artists would suffer from the loss of distribution, but they’d also suffer a loss of revenue. Not much revenue. Spotify is famously stingy in how much it pays artists, to the point where big names like Taylor Swift are keeping their releases off Spotify.

Isn't that because the artists are having shitty deals with the record labels though?

If you are completely independent the amount you get per play (before your distributor - e.g. CDBaby - takes a cut) is $0.006 - $0.008. If we say you get the max per play and you're a one person act (not a band) you need about 250,000 streams to make $2000 (just about enough money to live on). Obviously you have other ways to generate income (merch, touring) but even getting anywhere near that number of monthly streams for an independent artist with no marketing power/skill/money is almost impossible regardless of how good your work is.

If not going to get into the usual debate about free market and value but I thought it was worth laying out some actual figures as 'labels are taking the money' is the go to argument here when in reality having no label isn't going to work for most artists either.

NB: To get your music on all of these digital services you need a distributor like CDBaby (many others are available). I left out their cut in the figures above but for digital services it is 9% of net income.

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#90

Post by detaro »

shmerl wrote: post #23
SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Netflix and Spotify, but dislike Steam. I just find it different to rent me content transparently, eg Netflix and Spotify, versus rent-by-pretending-to-sell, eg Steam. If you sell me something, I should be able to use and transfer it at my discretion without your permission. Steam, instead, leases you something on no fixed term and presumably without any guaranteed lifetime.

I don't see why music should be different than games in regards to DRM-free.

The parent doesn't seem to say that they should be different, just that they don't want DRM in "buy" models.
Post reply on HN