Spotify Saved the Music Industry (But Not Necessarily Musicians) • Hacker News Board

Re: Spotify Saved the Music Industry (But Not Necessarily Musicians)

#41

Post by wwweston » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

ninth_ant wrote: post #32

wwweston wrote: post #22

If something hasn't "necessarily" saved musicians, then there's not much of a defense of whatever else it's done for the industry. And any idea that services like Spotify were just the only way forward to revenue is one that thoroughly ignores the growth of digital recording sales that took place independent of it (not to mention what they may well have been like if it'd never happened). Buffet streaming services mar…

> Buffet streaming services marry the worst of piracy and the old-school middleman capture. You have an interesting perspective... as a consumer for me Spotify marries the best of those two worlds. I get the music I want and discoverability, quality, and ease of use is extremely good.

You're talking experience rather than economics. The consumer experience of Spotify is certainly much more convenient and pleasant than the experience of P2P piracy.

And it turns out that can be true even while the economics of buffet streaming services simultaneously effect the drastic cuts in first-order revenue that piracy brought directing it instead to distributor and label.

Re: Spotify Saved the Music Industry (But Not Necessarily Musicians)

#42

Post by wwweston » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

billmalarky wrote: post #11

Platforms like Spotify, YouTube, etc, are a marketing channel - not a revenue channel. They can be used effectively to develop an audience, but not to monetize it. For example see Pusheen the cat. Started off as a tumblr web comic/character and now generates millions in merchandising revenue: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/how-an-internet-cat-craze-be...

> Platforms like Spotify, YouTube, etc, are a marketing channel - not a revenue channel

Which would be cool, if Spotify wasn't meant to be a replacement for a revenue channel.

Re: Spotify Saved the Music Industry (But Not Necessarily Musicians)

#43

Post by thegayngler » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #33

thegayngler wrote: post #27

I would argue that most musicians should be salaried employees making 80-150k. The label would then handle everything else. The musicians only need to focus on creation and performing. I have always been interested in the problem Spotify is trying to solve for. However, I think they've only solved half the problem. The other half of the problem is solved by putting long tail musicians on a salary and then they can gr…

This is essentially the pre-Beatles model we saw in Tin Pan Alley and the Brill Building. Carole King's biggest hits were written for like $75/week. It declined as musicians started writing and recording their own songs and being self-contained creative acts, not to mention the, shall we say, "unfair equity strategies" the record labels used. That is, it's all well and good until the bosses take all the big money.

That's interesting. I didn't know this but I think this model should be brought back for most cases I think safe guards can be put into place to guard against "unfair equity strategies".

Re: Spotify Saved the Music Industry (But Not Necessarily Musicians)

#44

Post by criddell » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 5:51 PM UTC

matthoiland wrote: post #39

criddell wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Streaming pays so little, unless you're a big name Are you saying big acts get more per stream? Also, I'd love to hear what you think about how the incentives from Spotify et al are changing music itself. From what I understand, a play isn't registered until a certain portion of the song has been played. This hurts songs that have a slow build and so hooks are being pushed right up front. Do you think it's homogeni…

I don't think Spotify (streaming services) are influencing the composition of new music – listening habits are mostly unchanged since popular music in the 50's. The 3-minute song with the initial hook is a product of 50's AM radio. Whereas Radiohead/Sigur Ros/Slowdive artists with long builds do so intentionally, and their listeners enjoy that about them. But.... what has changed is the frequency in which artists nee…

> what has changed is the frequency in which artists need to release content

So, the album is dying? Could something like Pink Floyd's The Wall be released today? It's a two CD package with gapless songs.

Re: Spotify Saved the Music Industry (But Not Necessarily Musicians)

#45

Post by jononor » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

matthoiland wrote: post #39

criddell wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Streaming pays so little, unless you're a big name Are you saying big acts get more per stream? Also, I'd love to hear what you think about how the incentives from Spotify et al are changing music itself. From what I understand, a play isn't registered until a certain portion of the song has been played. This hurts songs that have a slow build and so hooks are being pushed right up front. Do you think it's homogeni…

I don't think Spotify (streaming services) are influencing the composition of new music – listening habits are mostly unchanged since popular music in the 50's. The 3-minute song with the initial hook is a product of 50's AM radio. Whereas Radiohead/Sigur Ros/Slowdive artists with long builds do so intentionally, and their listeners enjoy that about them. But.... what has changed is the frequency in which artists nee…

Listening habits almost unchanged since the 50ies?? Nowadays almost everyone (young) walks around with headphones on in public, in school and at work, even at home, listening to music of their own choosing.

Compared to the 50ies, 70ies or even the 90ies, several things have changed significantly: How many hours of the week that people listen to their own music has increased tremendously. The number of artists and genres that people listen to over a year increased massively. How long an average song is in "the rotation" has decreased massively.

Re: Spotify Saved the Music Industry (But Not Necessarily Musicians)

#46

Post by NoodleIncident » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 5:58 PM UTC

mr_tristan wrote: post #6

mrob wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The long tail is more alive than ever, but algorithms have always been a bad way to find it. Instead, listen to personal recommendations on web forums etc. There are people who are passionate about any obscure micro-genre you can imagine, and they'll point you to the best of it. Bandcamp and Soundcloud are full of long tail music that's completely ignored by the mainstream music industry.

It's interesting, I've gone back to Spotify from Apple Music primarily because I can easily find more interesting playlists from curators. I don't think Spotify has any kind of special algorithmic sauce, they just make it easy for people create and share playlists. It amazes me how most of the other streaming services try to turn everything into an algorithm, via "special radio" stations, etc. And yet, the best way t…

I don't know if this is (still?) true, but I've heard that user-generated playlists are their special algorithmic sauce, at least for "Discover Weekly". It's designed to take songs you're familiar with, look for them in other peoples' playlists, and fill the gaps between songs you already know about with songs that other people have filled the gaps with in their own user-generated playlists, but that you haven't heard yourself.

Re: Spotify Saved the Music Industry (But Not Necessarily Musicians)

#47

Post by ghaff » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 5:58 PM UTC

wwweston wrote: post #41

ninth_ant wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Buffet streaming services marry the worst of piracy and the old-school middleman capture. You have an interesting perspective... as a consumer for me Spotify marries the best of those two worlds. I get the music I want and discoverability, quality, and ease of use is extremely good.

You're talking experience rather than economics. The consumer experience of Spotify is certainly much more convenient and pleasant than the experience of P2P piracy. And it turns out that can be true even while the economics of buffet streaming services simultaneously effect the drastic cuts in first-order revenue that piracy brought directing it instead to distributor and label.

Short-term experience anyway. Long-term experience requires remaining a subscriber ad infinitum. I admittedly come from the perspective of someone who prefers to own music that I care about. Which, in turn, is very influenced by the fact that I had a very large digital/digitized music catalog before streaming came along so incremental purchases aren't very expensive.

Re: Spotify Saved the Music Industry (But Not Necessarily Musicians)

#48

Post by linuxftw » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

kristianc wrote: post #28

linuxftw wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hip hop is huge on Spotify, where it struggled for radio play and sales before because commercial radio is so conservative. What? See how many rap albums are in this list [1]. 1: https://www.billboard.com/archive/charts/2000/top-album-sale...

There's a bit of cherry picking going on choosing a year where Eminem and Jay-Z were at their peak. 2000 was probably one of the top three years in the last 20 or so for hip hop. Scheduling Eminem for radio play while he is arguably the biggest artist on the planet is not really going out on a limb.

I picked year 2000 because it was well before streaming. There were dedicated rap/hip-hop stations for well over a decade at point.

> Scheduling Eminem for radio play while he is arguably the biggest artist on the planet is not really going out on a limb.

I mean, you can't be the biggest artist on the planet without some level of main-stream support in the first place.

To say that hip-hop became more popular due to streaming is just obviously nonsense.

Re: Spotify Saved the Music Industry (But Not Necessarily Musicians)

#49

Post by HuggableSquare » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

kilroy123 wrote: post #24

shmerl wrote: post #18

I prefer to buy, not rent music. Luckily we have enough DRM-free music stores around that simply sell you music files. FLAC is the best option.

Like what stores?

I buy FLAC from digital stores pretty regularly and my favorites are (obligatory) Bandcamp, 7digital, HDTracks, and TIDAL. I also end up buying physical cd's pretty often and just ripping them to FLAC (this is actually my preferred method, I only go to digital if I have to). Alternatively, I've heard good things about murfie, but have never personally used it.

Re: Spotify Saved the Music Industry (But Not Necessarily Musicians)

#50

Post by lmpostor » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 6:05 PM UTC

wwweston wrote: post #42

billmalarky wrote: post #11

Platforms like Spotify, YouTube, etc, are a marketing channel - not a revenue channel. They can be used effectively to develop an audience, but not to monetize it. For example see Pusheen the cat. Started off as a tumblr web comic/character and now generates millions in merchandising revenue: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/how-an-internet-cat-craze-be...

> Platforms like Spotify, YouTube, etc, are a marketing channel - not a revenue channel Which would be cool, if Spotify wasn't meant to be a replacement for a revenue channel.

You can't replace something that is dead.