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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”

#461

Post by recursive »

Bud wrote: post #439
enumjorge wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the CEO’s take reminds me of Jobs’s “you’re holding it wrong”. So it’s not that Spotify is not paying artists enough, it’s that artists aren’t working hard enough. And even though artists have been complaining about the money they make from streaming for years, “in private” some of them are happy. Sure.

Jobs never said that, so maybe avoid putting it in quotes.

"Just avoid holding it in that way,"

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/mobile/06/25/iphone.problems.re...

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

#462

Post by zo7 »

newbalance wrote: post #443

Honestly, this seems beneficial to the musicians too. No longer worry about months/years of work going into an album that flops. Be more iterative, experimental, and user driven by releasing an album's worth of content over the course of a few years. Seems like this reduces the risk for musicians publishing music that doesn't have an audience.

> Be more iterative, experimental, and user driven

My heart has fallen at the thought of agile software development invading the creative process

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

#463

Post by JAlexoid »

adamsea wrote: post #430
JAlexoid wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cur…

We, as a society, have already decided that musicians have to be "all in" and "exceptional" to make a good living... and if the rest want to make a living - then private events is the way.

We cannot support a million Beyonce's, a million Gaga's and millions of other musicians - we don't live in a Communist utopia.

Now as for Spotify - they are not a monopoly, in US they are neck and neck with Apple Music. So... Why should we intervene with heavy handed laws* - when there's still a fierce battle happening in the market?

Also - Let's not have the government decide how culture should progress.

* - laws are always conservative and change slowly

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

#464

Post by URSpider94 »

toohotatopic wrote: post #376
adamsmith wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there are orders of magnitude of scale in both fields. In software it can cost $10k to build an app but Google Search costs $10^10: a six orders of magnitude difference. In music there’s got to be a big dynamic range in effort involved as well. (I doubt it’s 10^6 though!) But comparing the best music to the lowest end app is apples to oranges.

If you have an orchestra with 100 musicians who receive something like $10^5 per year, you pay $10^7 per year. You need several years to practice and to form the orchestra into a team with a repertoire. If it takes 10 years, then that is $10^8.

Your numbers are grossly off here. I would bet that zero orchestra musicians are making anywhere close to $100k just from playing in an orchestra - the absolute top of the top might make that across all of their engagements. Most are making far, far less.

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

#466

Post by jacquesm »

JAlexoid wrote: post #417
jacquesm wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good time to ask yourself why you make music in the first place.

And that's one of the points Ek was making - work with your fans and keep them engaged. Frequent releases help a lot with that.

You are missing my point I think. Musicians do not necessarily make music for their fans and to 'engage' with people. It is art. It doesn't necessarily have to please anybody but the person that made it and it is still perfectly valid. Yes, people have to eat. But plenty of art was made by people without any form of compensation or interaction with their 'fanbase'. That's just mr. Ek saying what would help him.

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

#467

Post by JAlexoid »

scrumbledober wrote: post #450
JAlexoid wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years ago you needed all of the same stuff in software engineering, as you described in music. Things change... It costs as much to "release an app" as to "get a record out" today.

But I don't need to "release an app" to make money as a programmer. I just need to work on small parts of an app that already exists and I can have a comfortable salary with reasonably good job security.

As a musician you can also be a wedding band, sing only covers and make a living off it.

It's really not that different...

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

#468

Post by NateEag »

jahlove wrote: post #80
NateEag wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have not improved the platform because the platform is there to make money, not help musicians. Making it better for musicians would likely reduce their revenues.

Are you talking about Spotify or Bandcamp? I believe OP was talking about Bandcamp.

I was talking about Spotify. I guess I misunderstood - thanks for clarifying that.

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

#469

Post by anticsapp »

nouveaux wrote: post #426
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.

I should have been clearer, I used 70% of revenue because that is what Spotify gives to artists. Of course, software can do that as it scale infinitely, retail cannot. I can't tell if 70% is generous or not -- many independent artists think it isn't.

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

#470

Post by ryandrake »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #415
aczerepinski wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is sad and feels to me like a dumbing down of everything due to short attention spans. I still prefer to listen to full coherent albums, and one of the highlights of my week is my Sunday run, which gives me time to listen to an album start to finish with no interruptions. I hope some of my favorite musicians will continue to conceptualize albums that have a 45+ minute arc, even if market pressures mean that they…

Even before streaming music, I don’t think many people listened to whole albums. I distributed a lot of custom CDs to people in high school because they wanted various singles off of different CDs and I had access to a CD burner and could rip and record them in custom mixes. I personally find it too tedious to even work out the lyrics of the song because most of the time I can’t figure out what the singer is saying,…

There was once a time in popular music when you could actually understand the words coming out of a singer's mouth, as they weren't digitally over-processed, enhanced with autotune, and mixed into a zero-dynamic-range soup of loudness. Maybe I'm just old and out of touch, but I often can't tell the difference between modern pop song singers--many sound more like the output of a DSP than human.
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