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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”

#621

Post by NicoJuicy »

philmcc wrote: post #497
crazygringo wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Not touching the whole heft of the argument, I would like to point out that the original poster didn't compare the difficulty of writing a hit song to a "hit app", he compared a creating a hit song with creating working software. I can co-sign on this part of his premise. I worked for a music producer who has a number of #1 hits (Beyonce, Fergie, John Legend etc). He wrote >1 songs per day almost every day for over a…

But working/usable software takes months ( eg. Billing, authentication, DevOps, ... )

Profitability at least a year except if you can fall back to an existing social network/dev infrastructure, which is also based on a lot of work.

Eg. Only getting a decent ranking in Google could take months.

I'm not sure if it's that easy to compare.

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

#622

Post by zerotolerance »

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?

The primary value of OSS is marketing. Education is a distant second.

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

#623

Post by manigandham »

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…

It's comparing effort to get to the same monetization.

Software is easier to create, doesn't need to be a hit to be used, and you can be paid to write it and to sell it.

Music requires much more creative work, the production is often unpaid, and the work product usually doesn't make much unless it's a hit with millions of plays.

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

#624

Post by bogomipz »

>'"Ek claimed that a "narrative fallacy" had been created and caused music fans to believe that Spotify doesn't pay musicians enough for streams of their music. "Some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape," Ek said, "where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough.”'

I'm pretty sure that paying a streaming royalty of $00.0038 per stream is an established fact and not a "narrative fallacy."[1]

Only a small handful of artists in the world have ever been able to afford to take 4 years off between albums. These are the U2 and Cold Plays. These are also the touring acts that make a fortune on the road so it's highly unlikely that these people are complaining. The majority of artists are hard working. The only way they make money now is by going on the road. It's helps to sell tickets if you have a new release you are promoting that their fans are excited about. It takes time to write an album's worth of good material. Once that's done you have to record, mix and master the record. This can easily take months. Once the album is in the can its up to the record company to choose a release date. There's usually some strategy with the date that is chosen. It takes time to book a tour and tour dates have their own strategy so it's not uncommon for a record to be done but not release for another few months. Then the artists goes on the road - they will try to hit the festival circuit in the US in spring and the European festival circuit in summer and then a tour in the Fall. All of this take time. A lot of time. Maybe you could complete this cycle "write, record, tour" cycle every year and certainly band in the 70's did for a time but that's not sustainable. Certainly not for anyone but a young person in their early 20's. Even being able to complete the "write, record, tour" cycle every 18 months is a grind.

Does Daniel Ek really not understand any of the basic realities of being a musical artist in 2020? Is he that clueless or is he simply promoting his own "narrative fallacy" of the lazy complaining artist?

[1] https://help.songtrust.com/knowledge/what-is-the-pay-rate-fo...

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

#625

Post by IncRnd »

JAlexoid wrote: post #408
IncRnd wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Art is the highest pinnacle of human achievement. Perhaps, not everything you call art was made with artistry or is artistic.

All non functional human expression is art - PERIOD. Just because you may not like my perfectly polished cube and don't see the meaning I put into it - doesn't make it "not art".

I understand you believe that, but art is literally that which flows from a creative expression. Creative action or expression is the definition, the etymology, and the realization of art.

Artistry is that which finds expression in the creative act of expressing art.

That is not the same as all non-functional human expression.

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

#627

Post by aaanotherhnfolk »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #612
platz wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole analogy between working software and music production is flawed from the start and elaboration on the theme does not help. What's needed is to discuss artists compensation on their own terms. Don't distort it by relating it to software development.

This tendency to hyper-analogise everything oh so sinks my boat. I can’t think of even one example of the use of analogy that has helped me understand a subject better than if it were discussed and explained on its own terms. It seems all analogies do is enable the analogiser to delude themselves in to thinking similar is equal to same.

Analogies may be less about equivalency and more to do with bridging ideas. They can help the analogiser draw someone closer in thought, like a shout in the dark to help your friend find you

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

#628

Post by whiddershins »

The way in which Spotify (and other streaming services) hurts the development of music isn’t what most people say.

The problem with per-stream plays is that it is based on pop music logic: more streams equals more money. Fair!

But many recording artists made a modest living by releasing music that you might not want to listen to over and over and over. This music is often labeled ‘art’ or ‘experimental’ or whatever, and for the enthusiast, paying $15 for a record of this stuff was great.

Streaming services have no answer for this problem. It’s up to something like Patreon, if anything, to fill this gap.

This is all sorta fine, but what grates in me is that it seems none of the streaming providers have even thought about this. They just don’t seem to be that in to music, and just think of types of pop music as representing all of music.

This is where that above quote is just a little irritating.

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

#629

Post by mkl »

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.

It's about releasing, not creating. If you write 12 good songs a year on average, you can release 1/month. It doesn't matter if you actually write one song per month, or write and record them all in one frantic week, and then spend 51 weeks growing as a person and cultivating new ideas.

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

#630

Post by vlunkr »

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.

I think it's just inaccurate. People go to shows to hear the music, therefore the music is the product still.
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