Ableton Forum

Question: how did you determine if letting your music to be streamed helps with sales or not?

I'm trying to determine this question myself, and the results are not convincing. Overviews of studies that examine how piracy (a free prelisten option similar to streaming) affects the sales of music e.g. the one by Smith and Telang show studies both proving and disproving that it helps sales.

One of the leading books on indie music biz (700+ pages) is all out for streaming. So I emailed the author and asked: how he determined that streaming helps when studies offer conflicting results? He answered: "Great question. I have had seriously conflicting feelings about this over time. As someone who rarely ping pongs on issues and does a lot of investigating towards all opinions I hold and reads the dissenting side often, this has been a rough one. My biggest opinion on this is I have come to trust from diligent reading and my own observations that streaming music will deliver a better music business. I actually explained this in depth on these episodes of my podcast"

So I went to the URL given and listened to his entire hour length podcast. There's no serious pro and contra streaming elaboration of any kind in it, the podcast touches barely the unearthing of the Sony - Spotify contract (mostly jokingly) the rest could be as well a paid commercial for various streaming services. Maybe it is. Perhaps the gentleman thought I won't put in the time to check. Hmmm...

If you make good music, streaming services help you gain a lot of followers (who may or may not buy your album/go to your shows). If you make crappy music, streaming services help you gain a bunch of haters (who otherwise might have accidentally bought your album/gone to your shows, but now definitely won't cause now they know you suck).

It helps to get people to stream your music even more

Seriously, it's all just whistling in the forrest at night to scare of the evil lurking in the dark.

I certaily won't scare of the danger out there, but it keeps you calm while it feasts on you.

I for one welcome our not really caring cheapskate overlords and the bright future in the poor house they bring

So... no one can tell for sure? Quite different from what the (paid) pundits are preaching...

I mean, the math seems pretty simple. If Spotify, eg. has 20 million paying subscribers and each of those subscribers discovers 26 new works in a month, as Spotify boasted the other day... with 26 million works in the catalog, this averages to less than 1 listener a day for the work you upload.

This is why, when I read outlier stories like Spotify boosts classical label's sales 412% on iTunes, my first hunches are 1) someone at Spotify said, "we need a success story for the media, let's pick a customer and fake one", 2) if I'm wrong and it's a genuine success story, than this label's millions of Spotify plays came out of everyone else's less-than-1-new-Spotify-listener-a-day average, lowering that fraction even further.

I just looked at YouTube's numbers at this page. So YouTube has 120 million videos, and 200 million videos are watched daily. This averages to 1.7 views per day if you put your masterpiece there, roughly the same ballpark.

Regular common sense is enough to tell you that no one will buy something that he has already payed for on an all you can eat buffet.

Sure that beef is delicious, but why get it al a carte, if it's already right there, on that buffet you are already eating from.

Oh, you say, but my beef has extra spices no one else added!
Let's see if anyone even notices, because there are 26 million types of beef scattered all over that everlasting feast.

Let's stop being chumps and giving the benefit of the doubt. We are being fucked, and fucking artists is the new cool all over.

mrdelurk wrote: One of the leading books on indie music biz (700+ pages)

Care to name the title of the book ?

Thanks

Comparatively nothing is going to help sales because sales are dropping. 5 years ago if you sold 100 tracks in a month that would be pretty good. Now you could sell 5 tracks in a month and that could be considered the same relative success.

This just came out:

http://www.newsbtc.com/2015/07/31/sound ... opyrights/



sounds promising!!

TomViolenz wrote:Let's stop being chumps and giving the benefit of the doubt. We are being fucked, and fucking artists is the new cool all over.

F@@@ artists for what benefit exactly? To sell a ton of portable player hardware?
What business objective could have not been accomplished without f@@@ing artists?

mrdelurk wrote:

TomViolenz wrote:Let's stop being chumps and giving the benefit of the doubt. We are being fucked, and fucking artists is the new cool all over.

F@@@ artists for what benefit exactly? To sell a ton of portable player hardware?
What business objective could have not been accomplished without f@@@ing artists?

Is that a serious question?

Well, make more money of course

What I don't really understand is why the music industry negotiated these even for them in the long term bad deals and didn't make its own service.

They MUST see that this will make them obsolete too. Right?!

TomViolenz wrote:Is that a serious question?
Well, make more money of course

Even a flea knows, just sucking some blood but not killing the host outright is a more productive business model.

mrdelurk wrote:

TomViolenz wrote:Is that a serious question?
Well, make more money of course

Even a flea knows, just sucking some blood but not killing the host outright is a more productive business model.

Well fleas are smarter than current CEOs and their next quarter or bust perspective.
(Regarding the music industry)

Apple and Spotify have nothing to lose though, because people are not going to stop making music. They are just going to do it for free in the future (while hanging on to the idea that it's advertisment)

TomViolenz wrote:Apple and Spotify have nothing to lose though, because people are not going to stop making music. They are just going to do it for free in the future (while hanging on to the idea that it's advertisment)

Or music might become just a bragging hobby for dope dealers and bored plutocrats who can throw money at faux media coverage and buying back records for the landfill to climb the charts. A pet circus.

I doubt Nero worried much if charred Romans pay him a living fiddler wage