Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is Spotify even profitable?
I spend more on Spotify than I ever did on buying music, so someone’s winning
I'd buy more than ten times the number of tracks if they were ten cents rather than a dollar.
The Internet Saved the Record Labels
11–20 of 38 posts
Re: The Internet Saved the Record Labels
#12You see record labels promoting new albumns on posters and billboards - with the call to action being to listen on Spotify. How can that make financial sense if they're not even getting a penny a stream?
It makes financial sense by being a loss-leader product, which the make up with tshirts, ticket sales, lunch boxes, and whatever the kids buy from singers these days...
Re: The Internet Saved the Record Labels
#13The article goes into this, but it's more accurate to say that the aggregator subscription business model saved record labels -- paying a flat but recurring fee to access a diverse (but ever-changing) library sourced from various rightsholders. This is the same model as Netflix, which licensed all sorts of content when studios were glad anyone was offering, but as they realized they can launch their own streaming ser…
>"Spotify might court artists to sidestep record labels, but that only helps for new content. Yet there's other destinations now for emerging artists and future fans thereof, and better platforms for discovery."
For niche genre enthusiasts, Spotify is more of a convenience than an essential service. We've always been good at promoting stuff through word-of-mouth and genre-focused zines/websites, and we're generally very avid concert-goers with a tendency to buy physical merch at the shows.
I could get the majority of my music from Bandcamp, and I do buy a lot of downloads from bands I enjoy, in order to support them directly. Spotify does have an edge in the size (width and depth) of their library, which is extremely handy when you want to play something that you occasionally enjoy, or quickly look up something a friend mentioned. Lately Youtube has been extremely good at adding music to their library however, obviously because of Youtube Music.
I also find the trend in Spotify's recommendations to be very "safe", which does make sense. After all, they build their recommendations on what most people listen to, not niche bands with When I first signed up for Spotify Premium, I thought I wouldn't ever need my local collection anymore, because why would I? Spotify had/has the biggest library, right? I'm glad I kept my local collection, because Spotify does get a little weird about removing albums because of rightsholder nonsense, and I've seen new albums just never get added, despite earlier releases being available from the same artists.
I still enjoy having millions and millions of tracks available, and their recommendations are decent, if not amazing. But my own curated collection is irreplaceable.
But I'm an enthusiast. For more casual listeners, Spotify (or Google Play Music or Apple Music) would cover all their needs for new music and popular classics. And I think Spotify could easily woo artists into direct releases and promote them through their platform.
Re: The Internet Saved the Record Labels
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is Spotify even profitable?
I spend more on Spotify than I ever did on buying music, so someone’s winning
Conversely, I used to spend $75-100/month on CDs and downloads before I signed up for Spotify Premium, so I do save money. People like me are probably outliers in the grand scope of streaming vs buying, though.
I still buy a lot of music from sites like Bandcamp, to support artists directly, especially after learning how small of a cut the artists get from streaming services.
Someone's winning from the average person spending more on a Spotify subscription than they would on buying music. Unfortunately it's not the artists, it's the lumbering dinosaur major record labels.
Re: The Internet Saved the Record Labels
#15You see record labels promoting new albumns on posters and billboards - with the call to action being to listen on Spotify. How can that make financial sense if they're not even getting a penny a stream?
It makes financial sense by being a loss-leader product, which the make up with tshirts, ticket sales, lunch boxes, and whatever the kids buy from singers these days...
yeah but don't the artists make that money? I thought it was the albums etc. the record companies made the money on. Of course they probably also put the promotional stuff of the billboards into a list of things the artist needs to pay them for.
Re: The Internet Saved the Record Labels
#16Is Bloomberg blocking the Internet Archive? http://web.archive.org/web/20190206043030/https://www.bloomb...
>We've detected unusual activity from your computer network To continue, please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot.
Looks more like automated protection against scrapping, or perhaps DDoS-like access patterns. Bloomberg certainly could, and ought to, add an exception for Archive.org, but iI wouldn't read any nefarious intent to the current state of affairs.
On the other hand, Archive.is and similar work just fine [1], given that they download the website via your computer rather than via centralized servers.
Re: The Internet Saved the Record Labels
#17Honestly, I did not see the paid streaming model succeeding. But damn did Spotify and Beats/Apple knock that out of the park. I wonder if the younger generation even considers illegal downloading or if they just go straight to the streaming platforms?
Is Spotify even profitable?
Last quarter report they had -$0.22 eps, and they report today, analysts are still expecting it to be less than zero per share.
Edit: earnings beat with $0.44 eps, haven't looked at full report though for any gotchas.
Re: The Internet Saved the Record Labels
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I spend more on Spotify than I ever did on buying music, so someone’s winning
Conversely, I used to spend $75-100/month on CDs and downloads before I signed up for Spotify Premium, so I do save money. People like me are probably outliers in the grand scope of streaming vs buying, though. I still buy a lot of music from sites like Bandcamp, to support artists directly, especially after learning how small of a cut the artists get from streaming services. Someone's winning from the average person…
But the spotify model is artists share = total spotify payments * (total number of this artists plays / total number of listens to all artists)
so if i only listen to 5 artists but they are some of the least listened to artists then they get basically none of my money and taylor swift, beyonce etc. get it all... what is worse spofity have been gamin gthe numbers to make sure even more money goes to a few big players.
Spotify also have a really horrendous set of privacy rules. they are storing every tie you touched the controls right back to 2008 and selling that crap like mad.
I just go straight to band camp, then look for the artists own site, then look for othre sites hosting flacs, then look for second hand CDs.. then i save the file myself and just look after it.
all else fails i will just listen on youtube as i see companies like spotify being a real problem as they sell them selves as the exact opposite of what they are :(
Re: The Internet Saved the Record Labels
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Conversely, I used to spend $75-100/month on CDs and downloads before I signed up for Spotify Premium, so I do save money. People like me are probably outliers in the grand scope of streaming vs buying, though. I still buy a lot of music from sites like Bandcamp, to support artists directly, especially after learning how small of a cut the artists get from streaming services. Someone's winning from the average person…
But the spotify model is artists share = total spotify payments * (total number of this artists plays / total number of listens to all artists) so if i only listen to 5 artists but they are some of the least listened to artists then they get basically none of my money and taylor swift, beyonce etc. get it all... what is worse spofity have been gamin gthe numbers to make sure even more money goes to a few big players.…
Yes, they pool all payments, then portion out according to the share of plays compared to the total number of plays on the platform. That obviously favors popular artists, but it is a reasonable way of portioning payment, based on absolute popularity. Exactly as with traditional record sales, highly popular artists get the lion's share of the total revenue. In that sense, they payment scheme behind Spotify is absolutely nothing new.
I would absolutely prefer if my subscription payment got portioned out to only the artists I personally listened to, but I can also see how that would be a daunting task to portion payment based on the listening profile of every individual user out of millions. It would be more fair, obviously. I bet there is/would be a lot of pushback from the big labels, obviously.
All of this mess is why I still buy downloads from my favorite artists, especially if they're niche bands. I'm not gonna necessarily going to buy the next Kreator or Judas Priest album, but I'll definitely buy the next release from Bonehunter or Blackrat, precisely because they get shafted by the combination of Spotify, big labels and "creative accounting".
Re: The Internet Saved the Record Labels
#20You see record labels promoting new albumns on posters and billboards - with the call to action being to listen on Spotify. How can that make financial sense if they're not even getting a penny a stream?
Streaming revenue isn't negligible, even if it seems intuitively that it should be.
Record company revenues are textbook Long Tail.
Source: spent the last two years working on a digital sales processing platform for a major label.