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Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

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Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#141

Post by SparkyMcUnicorn »

cryptarch wrote: post #121
quink wrote: post #66

Can't justify Spotify as I'm paying for YouTube Red/Google Play Music as I can stand YouTube ads less than the difference between Spotify and Google Play Music. I bet that'll come up more and more. One important differentiator might be to get the Japanese record labels a bit more aligned, all streaming providers have been faring terribly on that front.

What does YouTube Red do better than uBlock Origin?

It's nice not having to think about it across mobile, Chromecast, gamestation, and computer.

It's also not cheating creators.

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#142

Post by thirdsun »

tormeh wrote: post #92
thirdsun wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Labels take most of that as well. Spotify isn't the problem - the labels are.

I'm very tired of this myth. When I see these arguments they usually only cover major labels that operate in big budget, mainstream releases that might indeed be unfavorable to the artist.

However the fact that labels come in all forms and colors is often ignored. There are truly caring small, independent and successful labels that serve as curator rather than expensive middleman. Artists can absolutely have fair deals with a label.

Furthermore for music enthusiast seeing new releases on a favorite label is a strong indicator for quality. That is a valuable service.

Spotify is a problem if it's not sustainable - and it doesn't seem to be for the company and artist alike.

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#143

Post by SparkyMcUnicorn »

quink wrote: post #66

Can't justify Spotify as I'm paying for YouTube Red/Google Play Music as I can stand YouTube ads less than the difference between Spotify and Google Play Music. I bet that'll come up more and more. One important differentiator might be to get the Japanese record labels a bit more aligned, all streaming providers have been faring terribly on that front.

Same here.

Lack of an API and no real social aspect are the two big pressure points for me to move to Spotify.

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#144

Post by Eridrus »

thirdsun wrote: post #138
Eridrus wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, I understand that. Spotify is an excellent and criminally cheap solution for most people. I don't think it's good for artists, but that's another discussion. I just wanted to describe my point of view and as passionate music lover and collector Spotify alone wouldn't work at all for me. It's just too much music missing there, but that includes hard to find, rare stuff, vinyl-only releases and niche genres.

They're great value, but I'm not really convinced that they're bad from a total revenue perspective for artists: http://www.recode.net/2014/3/18/11624668/the-price-of-music

And digital has much lower distribution costs than CDs; you don't need to pay for physical CDs to be made, you don't need to pay for shipping, you don't need to deal with retail's huge markup. And on top of that Spotify's paying customers are paying 2-3x what average CD buyers were paying.

There might be issues with the split of revenue between artists and studios or super popular artists vs long tail artists, but the actual revenue going to music license holders seems to be very healthy.

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#145

Post by lucb1e »

thirdsun wrote: post #139
lucb1e wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I've thought about this. Grooveshark tried to cut out that middle-man and they got sued to hell by the labels. If artists keep signing with labels, their problem. You don't need a label to be on Spotify.

> Grooveshark tried to cut out that middle-man and they got sued to hell by the labels. Let's call it what it was: Plain piracy. Grooveshark had no rights and licensing in place for the content they streamed.

Does Youtube? Grooveshark complied with DMCA; the only thing they really shouldn't have done is upload music illegally as a policy (by the company itself). But I'm sure there are people who now work at Youtube that also uploaded music there in the past, it's just not official.

So yeah it's a bit more piratey than other upload sites, but that could have been solved with a policy change to not upload music illegally from corporate accounts. For artists they were much more accessible than Spotify currently is, but they hated labels for taking a huge cut and didn't make deals up front. I can't say I disagree with them. I still miss Grooveshark.

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#146

Post by lucb1e »

pepve wrote: post #131
lucb1e wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't expect to be able to listen to the songs forever? Fair enough; I mean, you can always take another subscription service if Spotify would go out of business. But I've been there. When Grooveshark quit -- I was a paying member and had no up-front notice -- I lost my complete library. I've looked into making a back-up before and figured out some technical requirements for that (e.g. I cracked the "encrypted" c…

There is actually a straightforward way to export data from your Spotify account, try this: https://developer.spotify.com/web-api/console/get-current-us...

Tell that to my mother. I'm serious here: it's easy for you and me -- heck, I'd just collect it via DBus, reverse Spotify's local storage or scrape it from the web player. But that takes effort and expertise, something very few people on this planet are both capable of and willing to do, unless it's clear that the service is going out of business soon. Furthermore, hacky exports like this will not be importable on other services either.

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#147

Post by wcummings »

yladiz wrote: post #99

I would rather pay slightly more per month (let's say $12 USD rather than the current $10) than pay the artists less, even if the effect is relatively small due to the labels taking so much cut out of the payout. But in any case, I do believe that the way Spotify will be able to have real leverage is for it to start being their own label, not just getting exclusive content. I feel like it would be cheaper to just bri…

Their contracts with major labels could preclude them being a label themselves.

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#148

Post by joshjje »

btschaegg wrote: post #113
andymurd wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Funnily enough, Discover Weekly almost never works for me. I like the overall service Spotify provides, but the discovery features don't really cut it for me. As an example, I usually don't really like most music that goes into the house, techno, electronica or even dubstep directions. Most songs I find to be horribly repetitive and lacking in good buildup/melodies. However, there are exceptions I can enjoy very well…

Im a bit opposite in that I love much of the "house, techno, electronica or even dubstep directions" (though much less dubstep these days) and Discover Weekly/Radio usually delivers some great stuff and is probably 95% of my new finds.

Im more inclined towards progressive trance/psy trance type stuff which I think aligns more with Classical music you mention (since I usually listen while I work). I love electronica remixes of Vivaldi and other classical pieces, for instance. I enjoy Tool as well, A Perfect Circle, and Puscifer and have a much more difficult time discovering in that direction, but I listen to them less frequently as well. I also listen to a lot of rap, and intermittently some other types (almost anything but country).

Im always finding good new electronica of the types I like and rap, but their algorithms definitely could use some improving. I would particularly like an unlike/thumbs down feature like Pandora had and may still have. Id like that so that it a) never show me that song again, and b)could potentially be used to further tailor the results.

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#149

Post by pepve »

lucb1e wrote: post #146
pepve wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is actually a straightforward way to export data from your Spotify account, try this: https://developer.spotify.com/web-api/console/get-current-us...

Tell that to my mother. I'm serious here: it's easy for you and me -- heck, I'd just collect it via DBus, reverse Spotify's local storage or scrape it from the web player. But that takes effort and expertise, something very few people on this planet are both capable of and willing to do, unless it's clear that the service is going out of business soon. Furthermore, hacky exports like this will not be importable on ot…

So make a service that emails people their saved albums. Send monthly incremental updates. Their backup storage will be their inbox, and restoring the data to a new service will be a couple hours manual clicking and typing.

The hard part is explaining to our mothers that their music app might become unavailable, that they should care about this, and that they should take action to mitigate the effects.

But on the other hand, consumers get locked in all the time, and civilization hasn't collapsed yet.

Re: Spotify is gaining leverage over record labels

#150

Post by quink »

cryptarch wrote: post #121
quink wrote: post #66

Can't justify Spotify as I'm paying for YouTube Red/Google Play Music as I can stand YouTube ads less than the difference between Spotify and Google Play Music. I bet that'll come up more and more. One important differentiator might be to get the Japanese record labels a bit more aligned, all streaming providers have been faring terribly on that front.

What does YouTube Red do better than uBlock Origin?

YouTube Music app, no ads on YouTube for the whole family and exclusive content beyond just YouTube Red Original Series (which I don't care much about)
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