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

thefader.com

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

#251

Post by andybak »

wolco wrote: post #248
adrr wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious what you think the optimal solution for music in today’s world with massive storage and high bandwidth. Spotify is paying 70% of revenue to artists. You have factor in piracy if the price is to high or the solution is inconvenient. The public has rejected DRM and songs are easily give away to their friends. Lastly, No one wants physical media.

Artists/creators should be able to determine what they want to charge for streamed songs.

And I predict that would result in a race to the bottom like it has for mobile apps.

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

#252

Post by shakezula »

chrisseaton wrote: post #161
shakezula wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be honest - they don't. You're not the target demographic for them, and that's fine! But for this approach is optimized for the audience that will wear those shirts, go to those shows, buy the posters, follow them on instagram, etc...

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

#253

Post by AlexandrB »

singhrac wrote: post #90
gwd wrote: post #81

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. If the CEO of an open-source company said, "Software isn't our product, software is our marketing", would you feel the same way?

It's not comparable - music is art.

That's irrelevant. Both software and music are:

    * infinitely reproducible for near zero marginal cost
    * subject to changing tastes and style
    * easily obtainable through illegal means
This is especially true for games. Many software companies seem to have solved this dilemma by becoming surveillance or advertising companies that happen to make software. Games have solved it by peddling an increasing quantity of paid, high-margin add-on content and integrating gambling mechanics into their products. I hope the solution musicians come up with isn't as slimy as these.

Edit: I also find that most people treat most music as a commodity much of the time. Why else would random feeds of related music be so popular?

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

#254

Post by kbenson »

rewgs wrote: post #177
kbenson wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. And how exactly will people get paid, when Spotify (and other streaming services) have effectively replaced album sales? This is just the same tired old "exposure" argument.

> And how exactly will people get paid, when Spotify (and other streaming services) have effectively replaced album sales?

Touring and merch sales, which is why the aggressive release schedule on Spotify to keep buzz up is supposed to be good in the first place.

> This is just the same tired old "exposure" argument.

The whole argument about needing to release more often is predicated by that exposure argument. If you don't think it works, then when you release on Spotify doesn't matter at all.

Either you accept that Spotify buzz drives attendance and thus more buzz from more releases more often brings more money, or you don't accept that and then there's no pressure to release more often.

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

#255

Post by shakezula »

quattrofan wrote: post #191
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…

And why most is utter dross. People still buy millions of classic albums from the 70's and 80's, in 30 years time very few artists will have that same comfort.

Ah yes, the "new music sucks" argument. I've definitely never heard this one before. Please tell me how Metallica is relevant right now.

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

#256

Post by jp57 »

I'm not sure why this is controversial.

In the vinyl era, when a single LP was about 40 minutes long, it was pretty normal for artists to release roughly an album a year. (e.g. Led Zeppelin's eight studio albums were released over a span of 10.5 years, but one was a double album and they took a long break when Robert Plant's son died. The first 7 albums were released over 7 years).

It seems like it was only when albums started to be recorded for the longer CD format (75 min or so) that the time between albums seemed to increase, as if artists felt they needed to have enough material to fill a substantial fraction of a CD's capacity before releasing.

Now that we're in the streaming era, there isn't any particular container size to "fill" to make an album, so there isn't any particular reason for bands to wait long periods, except for their own creative cycles. The notion of an "album" isn't really constrained by any physical limits anymore and it's really just "a bunch of songs released together".

I think the Ek's statements just reflect the fact that it's easier to be successful if you're prolific, and the the new model actually pays when people listen (roughly speaking), rather than just when they buy.

[edit: punctuation]

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

#257

Post by gt2 »

jeffbee wrote: post #43
agumonkey wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people enjoy music for various reasons but there are a few deep ones: beauty and live no system can replace a good live concert, it's a high grade experience (sometimes religious even) if the music industry goes toward absurdism, the "customers" will just find the real drug elsewhere

The only live music I'm getting these days is when my neighbors hang out on their respective porches. They are Berkeley's best trombone-and-banjo duo, probably. The last concert tickets I bought, for which I paid a rather incredible $540/pair, have been postponed to 2021 and realistically there's no reason to believe the concert will ever happen.

What artist?

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

#258

Post by bmitc »

meheleventyone wrote: post #235
bmitc wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really silly argument. There is an art to building software, no doubt, in terms of it being a craft. But I think you've misspoken about functional things being artistically beautiful. What you really should mean is that functional things can be aesthetically beautiful, which is true and different. Art is primarily defined by expression and exploration, particularly revolving around human emotions. Software…

Some software products. There are loads of artistic pieces of software.

Can you elaborate on what you're referring to or talking about?

Of course there are loads of software that people use in art. But in the end, those are still solving a problem and are not art. Examples are TouchDesigner, Processing, Logic, Studio One, Pure Data, vvvv, and much more. These software products are not art themselves but are rather solutions to problems to allow artists to create art easier. They are not art products, in my opinion, since they aren't the result of an exploration of expression.

Where the line is blurred for me is in live coding artistic performances. The software there is considered part of the art, as part of the performance. But even then, the software is a tool. If a person uses a hammer in a live art piece, is the hammer now suddenly art? No, I wouldn't think so. It's a tool serving as a utility or maybe medium. It isn't art itself. The art is the performance.

Of course there are always exceptions which cannot be captured in every argument. Something that blurs the line is something like DIN . But see, in such a software product, we begin to see expression and not just a thing solving a problem or being a tool. Similarly with Orca (although I wish they would change the name so as to not interfere with actual orcas which some populations are in danger of going extinct).

https://dinisnoise.org/

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

#259

Post by andybak »

lux wrote: post #210
singhrac wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not comparable - music is art.

Musician and software developer here, and I'm calling BS on that. Here's a transcript of a talk I gave last year on "code as art" (apologies if this sounds like self-promo). You can skip the first half and scroll down to where it says "Which leads me back to code as an artform". There are a lot of ways to demonstrate that code IS art, and this was just a quick 5-minute overview of the subject. Cheers! https://www.joh…

Good response. It's simultaneously true that coding (and engineering and science and maths) is more artistic than generally accepted and that "art" in the conventional sense has more in common with those disciplines generally considered to be it's polar opposite.

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

#260

Post by adrr »

wolco wrote: post #248
adrr wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious what you think the optimal solution for music in today’s world with massive storage and high bandwidth. Spotify is paying 70% of revenue to artists. You have factor in piracy if the price is to high or the solution is inconvenient. The public has rejected DRM and songs are easily give away to their friends. Lastly, No one wants physical media.

Artists/creators should be able to determine what they want to charge for streamed songs.

How does that work for a streaming service that charges a flat rate? Do you think public has an appetite for a pay per usage model/micro transaction model or would it drive users back to piracy? Micro transactions in online news media hasn’t managed to get any traction.
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