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Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid subscription streaming

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Re: Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid subscription streaming

#131

Post by dreadlordbone »

basisword wrote: post #51
bryans wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I have tons of evidence for this, and for why all of your claims have no foundation. Allow me to provide one example of the hundreds that I personally know of or worked with (which is a tiny fraction of the numbers finding success independently). In late 2020, a band called Sub-Radio had a couple thousand followers on each social media platform and around ~15k monthly listeners on Spotify, and this was after man…

How long does that work for though and for how many artists? If you get on a new platform early you can find success, but once the platform becomes swamped with content it's impossible to stand out without creativity, luck...and funding. Unless you're lucky enough to find the next platform. Additionally - 15k monthly listeners on Spotify is a pretty great starting point. Most indie artists, regardless of quality, wil…

Are you saying reddit is a new platform?

Re: Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid subscription streaming

#132

Post by Jensson »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #18
LegitShady wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this was true before streaming as well. smaller artists would say 'the label takes so much of the record sales, touring/swag is where I make money'

I don't disagree, but streaming services have dramatically exacerbated the problem. Any artist that's been around before and after streaming will tell you that they make far less money, now, than they did when they were selling records, even after their labels and publishers and distributors took a cut.

The same thing happened in games with the rise of digital platforms. The issue isn't streaming, the issue is that competition became 100 times larger thanks to how much easier it is to publish your stuff today.

Re: Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid subscription streaming

#133

Post by Jensson »

skinnymuch wrote: post #93
bryans wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're maybe putting too much emphasis on the platforms, particularly on them being a single opportunity that goes away at some point. Every platform, regardless of whether it's a specific function like Spotify or a content hub like YouTube, is a separate venue representing a series of opportunities, not a singular event. If you need evidence of that, you can find countless new YouTube channels finding succes…

> countless new YouTube channels finding success in the same markets This is seeing the survivors. Even if there are 100 new big YouTube channels per year for some saturated niche. That number might practically speaking basically mean zero if 10 million people every year earnestly try to succeed in that niche. The hit rate on this example is 1 in 100K.

Why would you need more than 100 new creators per year in a specific niche? How many tries to fill the niche doesn't matter, what matters is if the niche gets filled. And today more niches gets filled than ever before, at least from what I see. So the problem isn't that the modern system doesn't successfully make people able to support themselves with these things, but that it lowered the barrier to entry to much that many more people fight over the same pie so you have many more losers than before.

Re: Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid subscription streaming

#134

Post by bryans »

mtalantikite wrote: post #123
bryans wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I have tons of evidence for this, and for why all of your claims have no foundation. Allow me to provide one example of the hundreds that I personally know of or worked with (which is a tiny fraction of the numbers finding success independently). In late 2020, a band called Sub-Radio had a couple thousand followers on each social media platform and around ~15k monthly listeners on Spotify, and this was after man…

Out of curiosity, did they book their own tour? What sort of rooms are they playing? And who is dealing with their music publishing? All of my close musician friends generally have teams that deal with those sorts of things, but not necessarily from their label (although the more famous ones playing large rooms/stadiums definitely go through their labels).

They handle everything themselves. The recent tour was 200-300 cap rooms, with a couple of large clubs in the mix. Booking can definitely be a grind, but at the end of the day, the booking agencies are saving you about 5 hours of work in exchange for ~15% of gross, which they hope translates to at least $150 to make their own 2 hours of work worth it. But if you're grossing $1,000 from each gig, that's $30/hr that could be going to a band member instead of some third party, presuming somebody has the motivation to do it and they're not already making more at a day job.

Re: Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid subscription streaming

#135

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bryans wrote: post #134
mtalantikite wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, did they book their own tour? What sort of rooms are they playing? And who is dealing with their music publishing? All of my close musician friends generally have teams that deal with those sorts of things, but not necessarily from their label (although the more famous ones playing large rooms/stadiums definitely go through their labels).

They handle everything themselves. The recent tour was 200-300 cap rooms, with a couple of large clubs in the mix. Booking can definitely be a grind, but at the end of the day, the booking agencies are saving you about 5 hours of work in exchange for ~15% of gross, which they hope translates to at least $150 to make their own 2 hours of work worth it. But if you're grossing $1,000 from each gig, that's $30/hr that co…

> if you're grossing $1,000 from each gig, that's $30/hr that could be going to a band member instead of some third party

These are massively different economies of scale than the labels deal with. Unless we see technological breakthroughs that make scaling easy for a DIY musician, the labels look well protected for the next generation.

Re: Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid subscription streaming

#136

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bryans wrote: post #88
colinmhayes wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The vast majority of curating and playlisting is through bloggers or social media Not sure about this. Maybe for big music fans, but most casual listeners aren't reading music blogs. They're throwing on spotify playlists which allow artists to pay to get boosted. Guess what, it's the major label artists that can afford those payments. They're seeing that their favorite tiktoker made a video with some new band. Gues…

You have entirely misunderstood the conversation and how playlisting works. We were already literally discussing Spotify playlists. The curators (bloggers and social media personalities) use their platform to solicit submissions, which they filter and then add to their Spotify playlist. Nobody said anything about Spotify listeners reading blogs to find music. You're also being very conspiratorial by pretending that a…

> curators (bloggers and social media personalities) use their platform to solicit submissions, which they filter and then add to their Spotify playlist

This is a solid but niche market. There is no conspiracy. But distribution is hard. Getting a few thousand listeners is different from serving hundreds of millions.

Re: Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid subscription streaming

#137

Post by bryans »

skinnymuch wrote: post #96
bryans wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're giving them far too much credit. They're still very much trying to figure out the Napster era, as to this day they are suing pirates left and right because they genuinely see that 0.01% of the market as a threat to their security.

What do you mean by pirates? RIAA is suing the distributors and creators of pirated content. They are not suing individual pirates much at all. You said “to this day…left and right” which indicates your average person as that was the most know thing they were doing before in the 00s. That’s not true any more.[0] 0. https://jolt.richmond.edu/2018/03/15/has-the-riaa-given-up-o...

In what universe are the "distributors and creators of pirated content" not pirates? You are being pedantic to an extreme, while still being entirely wrong in the process.

This is the third time that you've responded to one of my comments with personal theories and ideologies, but with no apparent knowledge of the subject at hand, all in an attempt to "prove me wrong" about something that you can't actually articulate. You appear to desperately want to "win" an argument against me, and while maybe I should be flattered by that, I really just find it creepy and disturbing. Please stop.

Re: Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid subscription streaming

#138

Post by JumpCrisscross »

birdyrooster wrote: post #12

Art is best when it's unpaid. I don't want you paying me for my music and I won't pay for yours. I am tired of corporate rent seeking in the art space. Yes this is historical for art of all kinds, but I think that was to the detriment of art rather than its benefit. The talent of artists has been used to ingratiate and inflate the perception of some truly awful people and ideas.

> Art is best when it's unpaid

This is the equivalent of saying only the wealthy can make art. As it’s been for most of history. (Brief periods when patronage existed aside.)

Re: Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid subscription streaming

#139

Post by bryans »

davtbaum wrote: post #22
bryans wrote: post #15

The self-congratulatory nature of the article and quotes actually betray a self-reassurance, because in reality, record labels are rapidly becoming irrelevant. They're scrambling to figure out how they fit into the TikTok era, where artists no longer require years of financial incubation to succeed. The music industry is growing because independent musicians are finally figuring out how to navigate it without any nee…

Disagree hard - every major label I follow is embracing TikTok and encouraging their artists to leverage the platform for growth. Also, labels have so much infrastructure for marketing, merch, booking shows etc. The need for this support doesn’t magically go away with new distribution channels. It just helps newer artists get signed quicker :p

I didn't say that labels don't use TikTok, so you're disagreeing with nothing. What I said, was that labels don't have any legitimate value in a TikTok era, because there's nothing that they can do which an independent artist can't do on their own.

> Also, labels have so much infrastructure for marketing, merch, booking shows etc.

No, they actually really, genuinely don't. They use the exact same channels that independent musicians do. Booking agencies, merch providers, publicists -- all of them are hirable by anyone, not just labels. Everything you think that labels do, they hire someone else to do that, and then tell you that they need to keep ownership of your music to recoup those costs. That is how the music industry has worked for a hundred years, and if you disagree with that, then go read literally any book on the subject.

Re: Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid subscription streaming

#140

Post by bryans »

phphphphp wrote: post #24
bryans wrote: post #15

The self-congratulatory nature of the article and quotes actually betray a self-reassurance, because in reality, record labels are rapidly becoming irrelevant. They're scrambling to figure out how they fit into the TikTok era, where artists no longer require years of financial incubation to succeed. The music industry is growing because independent musicians are finally figuring out how to navigate it without any nee…

There’s lots of independent artists that are successful, you’re about 5 years late on the “…independent musicians will kill labels…” prediction which hasn’t been borne out. Musicians are actively choosing to sign to labels, even when they don’t have to… make of that what you will.

You're trying to twist this into a scenario of absolutes, as if there's an on/off switch at which point independent artists make 100% of the money and labels don't exist anymore. That's clearly not what I said, and it's rather inflammatory of you to suggest that it is.
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