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Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

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Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#161

Post by chrisseaton »

shakezula wrote: post #141
7thaccount wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend once explained this to me a decade ago. I would buy albums, but he would torrent everything. In his eyes, music has shifted to the public domain now. He said the best way to support a band now would be to buy t-shirts and go to as many concerts as you can. I still buy all my albums, but finally see his point. I mean now, all artists have their entire collection of music on YouTube. If everyone almost always…

Your friend was absolutely right. I never cared if people pirated my bands music (or later the bands that I was managing) because the real thing I wanted was them showing up at shows, buying merch, posting us on facebook, asking events to bring us on, etc... At a certain point, Taylor Swift and larger artists _do_ make a good chunk of change from their actual music sales, but it isn't a feasible strategy to rely on t…

I listen to a lot of music but I’d never go to a live show (can’t think of anything worse) and I’m not going to wear a branded t-shirt. How do they capture revenue from people like me in your model?

Now I think about it I did once buy a video log of the production of an album. But that’s one artist from the thousands I listen to.

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#162

Post by amanaplanacanal »

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #94
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #33

I disagree. Musicians can do whatever they want. Not very many musicians spend their time riding a perpetual wave that they have to continually feed. Spotify benefits the most from this churn.

> Musicians can do whatever they want. They can, but only as long as they don't care about money. But musicians also need to pay rent.

Most musicians who need to pay rent don't do it from Spotify. They play gigs: bars, weddings, parties, etc.

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#164

Post by smrtinsert »

shakezula wrote: post #4

I used to work in the music industry professionally, on the ground level doing booking and management. This trend has been happening slowly for nearly a decade but it’s finally here. Rap and Hip Hop figured out a long time before most other genres that rapid small releases was a far better way to keep hype and sales up. Before Spotify was a thing, the shift was happening with YouTube but it wasn’t as predominant. Now…

Maybe if you want to be part of the eternal churn. I'd rather be no one and release real music on my schedule.

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#165

Post by number6 »

gwd wrote: post #81
quacked wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The music isn’t your product, the music is your marketing. The shows, the merch, your influence - that’s your product. Man, that's depressing.

>> The music isn’t your product, the music is your marketing. The shows, the merch, your influence - that’s your product. > Man, that's depressing. If the CEO of an open-source company said, "Software isn't our product, software is our marketing", would you feel the same way?

> How do I land a decent software engineer job?

Publish your work on github. Software is not your product, it's your marketing.

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#166

Post by jetti »

unnamed76ri wrote: post #9

Artists to Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer afford to make $0.00174927 per stream.

In the US, those rates are set by Copyright Royalties Board [0] and then collected by SoundExchange [1]. The current rates for streaming on a subscription service (such as Spotify) are $0.0024 per performance.[2] The rates aren't determined by Spotify, again in the US, so it isn't Spotify's fault if the royalty per stream aren't enough to live on.

[0] https://www.crb.gov/ [1] https://www.soundexchange.com/ [2] https://www.soundexchange.com/service-provider/rates/commerc...

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#167

Post by pier25 »

kbenson wrote: post #126
pier25 wrote: post #44

Obviously the guy knows nothing about creativity and art. It takes time to grow as a person and cultivate new ideas. It may not be possible to do that if you don't get in and out of whatever it is you're doing. Imagine telling Hemingway he has to release a new blog post every week instead of a book every couple of years.

Spotify is not for putting out art, it's for generating buzz about your art so you can get paid for it later. If your goal is the best art you can produce, then perhaps Spotify and that roller coaster isn't what you should care about. If you want to good art while also also getting a lot of buzz so you can make money or be popular, then you need to deal with market forces, just like everyone always has. Different art…

Right, but my point is that if you're absorbed dealing with market forces you won't be able to produce significant work. The more cookie cutter stuff you release, the more you will adopt that mindset and it will consume your creativity.

I guess in the past musicians toured and performed to satisfy that need, and relegated the "important" work to long term writing/composing. With Spotify (and specially now with COVID) it seems this has changed since the only way to generate income is by releasing music.

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#168

Post by falcor84 »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #119
Denvercoder9 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Musicians can do whatever they want. They can, but only as long as they don't care about money. But musicians also need to pay rent.

How much money? Enough for personal private jets or enough to make a living? If the bar is to simply pay the rent then I still think that musicians can do what they want.

Really? Do you have any stats to back that up? I'm not familiar with many musicians paying the rent with their music and it seems to me that you either make it big, or keep your day job.

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#169

Post by noelsusman »

wldcordeiro wrote: post #13
NikolaeVarius wrote: post #8

I really wish bandcamp would be bigger. Much prefer their platform. The spotify monetization cycle is so bad for music

Agreed, not just the monetization scheme but Spotify and others just push the music listening experience to playlists and singles and have very little room for albums and collecting a library of music you refer to.

You can listen to albums just fine on Spotify. It turns out most people don't want to most of the time.

Re: Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years”

#170

Post by hammock »

quacked wrote: post #12
shakezula wrote: post #4

I used to work in the music industry professionally, on the ground level doing booking and management. This trend has been happening slowly for nearly a decade but it’s finally here. Rap and Hip Hop figured out a long time before most other genres that rapid small releases was a far better way to keep hype and sales up. Before Spotify was a thing, the shift was happening with YouTube but it wasn’t as predominant. Now…

> The music isn’t your product, the music is your marketing. The shows, the merch, your influence - that’s your product. Man, that's depressing.

It's the same for fine art honestly
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