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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”

#421

Post by tomphoolery »

crazygringo wrote: post #401
alchemyromcom wrote: post #139

I wish more people, especially tech CEOs, could understand the incredible sacrifice of time, money, and energy it takes to make an album people actually enjoy. Everything you listen to, unless you are willing to listen to raw demos, is a miracle. I've worked both as a sound engineer and and a software developer. It's orders of magnitude easier to make working software than it is to make a hit record. The way tech com…

> It's orders of magnitude easier to make working software than it is to make a hit record. That's apples-to-oranges. Obviously a "hit" anything is hard in any field, by definition. A hit app is just as hard (even harder, probably, since there are a lot less hit apps than hit songs). But producing a single track? Seriously, it's not that hard. Yes, it takes a team of people and a lot of creativity and skill, but I do…

I find that in software, it's much easier to anticipate change. Companies are more open about their future plans and long-term goals. For example, GitHub just publicized their roadmap. This entire website is predicated on the fact that people like to share their latest ideas, inventions, and solutions to problems that everyone faces.

I've never seen Universal Music post their "roadmap" of how they plan to sign new artists, or what new social media marketing ideas they might have up their sleeve. This is because the music industry is, by far, more competitive than the tech industry. Record labels, publishing groups, etc. are not very willing to share their "trade secrets". If the tech industry was like the music industry, there would be absolutely no such thing as open source.

Also...

> I don't know what this "incredible sacrifice" or "miracle" that is "more effort than you could ever imagine" is that you're talking about. It's a creative project like any other.

Your second sentence answers the question in the first sentence. :)

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

#422

Post by voldacar »

pier25 wrote: post #211
falcor84 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if this was intended sarcastically, but novels written in a weekly serialized form were a huge thing [0] and Hemingway wrote at least one novel this way [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_%28literature%29 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Across_the_River_and_into_the_...

My point was not that artists need a long or short time to produce something, but rather that they need to pause and reflect on things between projects.

Pop music and everything surrounding it makes much more sense once you realize that it isn't art, and the people making it aren't artists

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

#423

Post by bmitc »

mpoteat wrote: post #281
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…

The statement of saying someone else's view of art is objectively incorrect or silly is in itself silly. I like your proposed definition of art, but as you know everyone is free to have their own conceptions.

I can agree with that to a degree. Of course, the gut reaction to any statement is typically the more emotional one. :)

However, I find that they didn't really make a statement about how they view art, although elaboration would help. I think people are confusing things being artistic versus being aesthetic. When people say "code absolutely can be art", I find it's too generic that it does indeed become a silly statement. It dilutes what art is and is overly biased to code, especially since it's likely to be coming from a software developer.

What I really think someone means by "code can be art" is that "code can be aesthetically pleasing", the latter of which I agree with. There's also a difference between " as an art" as in doing the thing can be an art or craft and also calling the thing art.

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

#424

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

Alupis wrote: post #21
unnamed76ri wrote: post #9

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

Let's be honest. The amount Spotify/Pandora/et al pay the majority of musicians per stream is far more than they'd make selling CD's. The overwhelming majority of music is unknown, has few fans, and will never "go platinum" nor sell out stadiums - ie, most musicians are not Taylor Swift. For all those artists... access to millions of potential listeners from around the world is an amazing advancement. The number of a…

>The amount Spotify/Pandora/et al pay the majority of musicians per stream is far more than they'd make selling CD's.

You have to back such claims with data.

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

#425

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

alchemyromcom wrote: post #139

I wish more people, especially tech CEOs, could understand the incredible sacrifice of time, money, and energy it takes to make an album people actually enjoy. Everything you listen to, unless you are willing to listen to raw demos, is a miracle. I've worked both as a sound engineer and and a software developer. It's orders of magnitude easier to make working software than it is to make a hit record. The way tech com…

The market does not necessarily optimize for hardest sacrifice or how much energy it takes to make something. It optimizes utility and in some cases scarcity. In other words, there are many situations where how hard something is to make is not that important, what is important is the utility of the final product.

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

#426

Post by nouveaux »

anticsapp wrote: post #400

Can someone explain why the revenue sharing model is broken on Spotify? A lot of bluecheck indie bands complain about their meager $28 monthly checks. I even saw a performative tweet from a label the other day: https://twitter.com/DonGiovanniRecs/status/12865225202213847... Let's say I run a bookstore. 70% of my revenue goes to pay workers. A works 32 hours, B works 5 hours, and C works 3 hours. Is it not fair to giv…

If you're running a brick and mortar book store, payroll would unlikely be 70%. Payroll would be your highest cost but it should be 30% on the high end.

If we want to try and analyze this, we should analyze what music distribution was like prior to digital. My guess is that for most artist who went through traditional publishing and distribution, they only received 10-20% per album sale. That seems high too.

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

#427

Post by JAlexoid »

egypturnash wrote: post #323

As a visual artist who regularly works on multi-year projects, and happily grabs a new album from bands she's been following for years who only put new work out once in a blue moon, I would like to cordially invite Mr. Ek to fuck himself. While I am handing out invitations to auto-copulation, I would also like to hand out a large number to every senator and representative who has voted to defund the arts. Making room…

So you're engaged with your audience enough for them to sponsor you on Patreon... and you managed to miss that you're literally doing what Ek talks about? You have auto-copulated right in front of everyone...

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

#428

Post by nsl73 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #411
nsl73 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over 80% of my music listening is full albums, even though I haven’t played a record or CD since 2015. I really hope the medium of the album survives, because I much prefer listening to a coherent and deliberate group of songs than any other method.

I don’t understand how an album wouldn’t survive if singles survive. An album is a collection of single songs.

> An album is a collection of single songs.

Releasing songs individually is a serial process. Releasing an album puts all of the songs published into the same context, and everyone’s first experience of all songs occur at the same time.

A band that makes a successful album produces something greater than the sum of the individual songs inside the album

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

#429

Post by tomphoolery »

I don't see the lie here. :)

Many of us in the music industry have been doing more single-based releases than album-based, because there really is no point to albums anymore. If you have a couple of tracks that all fit together, by all means, release them at once. But music isn't album-driven anymore, it's track-driven, and has been for a very long time.

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

#430

Post by adamsea »

JAlexoid wrote: post #386
wolco wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They do. It's their freedom to be on Spotify. They can go back to the olden model of no streaming as well.

This is a pretty narrow take IMHO.

We all have the freedom to do whatever; the issue is the consequences.

The question I think is more about if as a society we think it’s important for musicians to be able to make a decent living at their work and if so do we want to use our collective tools of law or government (or if someone gets lucky and innovates a better business model) to help that happen?

And if Spotify’s current business model is good or bad for our culture, if we believe that having musicians being able to make a decent living is important for our culture.

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