Ableton Forum

It's easy to be very successfull and well liked by your customers, if you are basically a fence who sells good gained through extortion.

I honestly don't find it surprising that the subribers like it, but why so many here, including you, who are independent musicians defend being stolen from.


If they wan't to gain any semblance honesty they start to pay per track listen from these 10 bucks to the artists that the subriber actually listened to. Not some weird algo that only gets the very big mainstream acts everything.

No one's stealing.

Unethical maybe, morally incorrect. Capitalist? Maybe. Not really stealing though.

Your pirating example was stealing.

When you make a deal with a pimp, you expect to be whored.

Sign up with a label, give away control of your music, in exchange for what they give you and you get what you sign up for.

H20nly - Agree with all. Especially on the fine print. That's a crazy amount of streams to be getting and unless it was some guy in his pants with 300 accounts streaming your music all day, you would/should/could be exposed enough to the general population to capitalise in some way.

Well good luck with that

it's the business model of Spotify that is so horrid.

Ok, so we do agree on that. It's still one of the best libraries of music to sift through out there, apart from YouTube of course.

So here we are with a solution like iTunes Plus.

Sounds great, but it's not the default that people go to already.

How do we change that? How do we now convince people that because we feel we are worth more than 0.0000000000001 of whatever currency it is, that they should agree. Not many care about fair deals for music or artists, even though they consume all the time.

How do you get something that has already been devalued, to be worth more again?

How can you get the 10 year olds that are earning Nicki Minaje (just a random example) her wages, to get an iTunes plus account and start buying music instead of using Youtube?

ITunes is completely over for 'the kids'. It's old school already.

How about increasing the subscription model price? Would there be a monthly price you would deem fair for streaming access?

How do we tackle YouTube? The real fly in the ointment that people barely mention. There are people on it right now, making money from other people's music, that they have illegally uploaded, and YouTube/Google are paying them, not the artist, with contracts draw up etc, and no one is saying anything. If the artists complain to the Youtube channel they get blackmailed into agreeing due to the 'exposure'. It's completely nuts, and funny with it. I say that from experience. You gotta give them credit for the idea though.

Have you checked how many plays Beck gets? Just because he's been around for years, doesn't mean anyone listens or cares.

U2 have been around for years also:

http://www.whoisu2.com

No one knows except the artists... and I guess that Taylor wasn't making enough to be bothered about losing it.

At some point, a lot of music makers in this new paradigm are going to have to accept that everything we ever knew about earning wage from music has been turned on it's arse and we just don't cut the grade... or can't make it work for ourselves. If no one's listening and we're not earning, maybe we're just boring.

In the meantime, people like this guy are having fun with it:

http://noisey.vice.com/en_uk/read/youne ... nd-spotify

Surely we're all in the same boat here and it's not being disrespectful. If your screwed with it, then so am I.

I'm genuinely interested in this or else wouldn't post, as you can tell from my past post count.

Either that or the concrete sealant fumes that I'm forced to be breathing in all night have finally kicked in.

TomViolenz wrote:Well good luck with that

It's over 4 million plays. Surely you could sell a few t-shirts?

TomViolenz wrote:I honestly don't find it surprising that the subribers like it, but why so many here, including you, who are independent musicians defend being stolen from.

If they wan't to gain any semblance honesty they start to pay per track listen from these 10 bucks to the artists that the subriber actually listened to. Not some weird algo that only gets the very big mainstream acts everything.

Here's some other points to consider...

1. It's not stealing if the artist opts in and gets paid
2. With Spotify (at least) when you pay you can then listen to the whole album. About a year or two ago I had a Spotify account for a while and at least one artist benefited from that (K.Flay).
3. You can buy an album in iTunes and/or Google Store if you like it. There's even a link.
4. The exposure artists have got from iTunes and Pandora causes people who are willing to buy to go ahead and purchase something they may not have heard otherwise...

Here are just a few of the artists that i've purchased after being exposed to them from streaming (either for the first time or the first time in a long time)

Morcheeba
Suzuki
Typical Cats (I bought all 3 of their albums and one of the members solo album. I had never heard of them)
Molemen
Surreal & The Sound Providers
Surreal and DJ Balance
Peter Bjorn and John
The Pharcyde
The Hebalizer
Modest Mouse
Flobots
Fatlip
Emancipator
Thievery Corporation
Cool Calm Pete
Cunninlynguists
Aim
Gotan Project
Nightmares on Wax (2 albums)
Living Legends
Binary Star
Chet Faker
Common Market
Jazz Addixx
Massive Attack
Tricky

There's more...
With the exception of The Pharcyde, Living Legends, and Thievery Corporation I would not have walked into a record store and purchased any of those albums. I either did not know about them or had long since forgotten them. The purchase from iTunes feature on Spotify, Pandora, and iTunes Radio is responsible for making purchasing the albums possible while I was sitting on the crapper and the fact that they played a song (and an artist got paid for that) meant that I was inspired to make that purchase.

Then kill iTunes and sell CD. Problem solved.

I think in this day and age, best to let the listener decide whether or not to donate. Many musicians still don't seem to understand that they are sacrificing dollars for exposure (not by choice, times have changed). Nobody needs a record label to be exposed to the world anymore. If you're in it for the money, you better be working real hard to produce bangers and hits. Besides, it's a better motivating factor, because not all music is going to sell. It's just not.

On a deeper note, I honestly believe that when you create art or music and release it to the public, it no longer belongs to you, but that's purely my opinion. And music is not as tangible as an art piece, so thrice as difficult for us.

uthemus wrote: If you're in it for the money, you better be working real hard to produce bangers and hits. Besides, it's a better motivating factor, because not all music is going to sell. It's just not.

And music is not as tangible as an art piece, so thrice as difficult for us.

+1

...and no point in us hating on the people that are talented at producing 'bangers and hits'... even if they are not what we listen to... it's like hating on high paid soccer players... more power to you if you can do it.

This guy sums it up another way... it's not about the streaming money at all, or album sales, but it IS likely about Taylor getting more money... and not necessarily taking a stand for the 'artists':

http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/ ... s-spotify/

H20nly wrote:

TomViolenz wrote:I honestly don't find it surprising that the subribers like it, but why so many here, including you, who are independent musicians defend being stolen from.

If they wan't to gain any semblance honesty they start to pay per track listen from these 10 bucks to the artists that the subriber actually listened to. Not some weird algo that only gets the very big mainstream acts everything.

Here's some other points to consider...

1. It's not stealing if the artist opts in and gets paid
2. With Spotify (at least) when you pay you can then listen to the whole album. About a year or two ago I had a Spotify account for a while and at least one artist benefited from that (K.Flay).
3. You can buy an album in iTunes and/or Google Store if you like it. There's even a link.
4. The exposure artists have got from iTunes and Pandora causes people who are willing to buy to go ahead and purchase something they may not have heard otherwise...

Here are just a few of the artists that i've purchased after being exposed to them from streaming (either for the first time or the first time in a long time)

Morcheeba
Suzuki
Typical Cats (I bought all 3 of their albums and one of the members solo album. I had never heard of them)
Molemen
Surreal & The Sound Providers
Surreal and DJ Balance
Peter Bjorn and John
The Pharcyde
The Hebalizer
Modest Mouse
Flobots
Fatlip
Emancipator
Thievery Corporation
Cool Calm Pete
Cunninlynguists
Aim
Gotan Project
Nightmares on Wax (2 albums)
Living Legends
Binary Star
Chet Faker
Common Market
Jazz Addixx
Massive Attack
Tricky

There's more...
With the exception of The Pharcyde, Living Legends, and Thievery Corporation I would not have walked into a record store and purchased any of those albums. I either did not know about them or had long since forgotten them. The purchase from iTunes feature on Spotify, Pandora, and iTunes Radio is responsible for making purchasing the albums possible while I was sitting on the crapper and the fact that they played a song (and an artist got paid for that) meant that I was inspired to make that purchase.

All well and good, if the masses would use it like you claim to do. But Spotify already having 18% of the market and rising, indicates to me that people will likely just do away with buying music altogether and rent it. Meaning the advertisement angle you talk about will go away. Advertisment only works if people actually still buy the product and not consider the advertisement to be the product already. I already talked about this above.
Maybe that wouldn't be as bad as it is, if Spotify had a sane way to determine who gets what, and how much of it on a per-listener basis.
Something like this:
Listener A listened to all the groups mentioned above x times and nothing else? Then the 10 bucks get distributed between exactly these acts. (It's still not fair, since the reason why this is more economical to you is not some sort of internet magic, but simply the fact that the acts you like get less!).
As it is now though an algo determins a cummulative number of plays averaged over all users and distributes the money based on that, and even puts another algo over it (I'm sure the big labels are to blame for this ) that pays more money/play to the brackets with the most listens.
In effect shuffeling money from the small acts to big mainstream ones. (Geez, does that remind only me of how capitalism always does it )

And regarding discovering the music above only through Spotify: Seriously?! You needed Spotify to discover the bolded acts? I didn't take you for a teen just developing a taste. Where have you hidden in the decades before this one?!

BaronVonAbelDong wrote:

TomViolenz wrote:Well good luck with that

It's over 4 million plays. Surely you could sell a few t-shirts?

If I would have wanted to sell t-shirts, I would have become a designer, not a musician.

No pleasing some I guess.

The stats you refer to in the image are completely skewed, that was my point. All other kinds of income streams kick in to support someone that is able to generate 4 million listens with music that people want to play and hear.

It's getting there which most will find hard, and that part doesn't change, wether it's Spotify or iTunes or vinyl...

If you are at a position where you are getting 4 million plays on Spotify, you won't really be too worried about how much it's bringing in, it will be icing on the cake that you are already being served.

The stats are disingenuous and are taking the focus away from the fact having 4 million streams means you 'should' already be in a position that just from publishing, performance, mechanicals (if any) and other royalties you would be on enough to pay the bills and have some to spare.

Too many spoilt 'musicians' holding on to the past at the moment no? Maybe my take on it is backwards or there's something I'm missing. I'm completely open to changing opinions, as what benefits any of us can be shared. Maybe I just haven't found a piece of the puzzle that you or someone else has and will share?

Again, I would love to hear of a solution for moving forward, with the technologies we have, that ensures fair payment (whatever that is) and is still 'fair' for the 'consumer'. Do we have anything better than DIY or iTunes plus?

In the meantime I'm off to press up some more vinyl while I still can.

BaronVonAbelDong wrote:

No pleasing some I guess.

The stats you refer to in the image are completely skewed, that was my point. All other kinds of income streams kick in to support someone that is able to generate 4 million listens with music that people want to play and hear.

It's getting there which most will find hard, and that part doesn't change, wether it's Spotify or iTunes or vinyl...

If you are at a position where you are getting 4 million plays on Spotify, you won't really be too worried about how much it's bringing in, it will be icing on the cake that you are already being served.

The stats are disingenuous and are taking the focus away from the fact having 4 million streams means you 'should' already be in a position that just from publishing, performance, mechanicals (if any) and other royalties you would be on enough to pay the bills and have some to spare.

Too many spoilt 'musicians' holding on to the past at the moment no? Maybe my take on it is backwards or there's something I'm missing. I'm completely open to changing opinions, as what benefits any of us can be shared. Maybe I just haven't found a piece of the puzzle that you or someone else has and will share?

Again, I would love to hear of a solution for moving forward, with the technologies we have, that ensures fair payment (whatever that is) and is still 'fair' for the 'consumer'. Do we have anything better than DIY or iTunes plus?

In the meantime I'm off to press up some more vinyl while I still can.

That's a weird way to look at it. Sure if you manage to pull in 4 million streams, the 1100 USD you get probably are just some sort of icing on your cake.

The point of that chart was to show how that compares to other means to sell your music.
Are you seriously arguing that the person who would be able to sell 150 CDs a month under the old system is in any way capable of generating 4million streams?
That's ridiculous!
Just do the the math:

So 150 people bought a CD with let's say 10 tracks.
To generate the same revenue these 150 people would need to listen to each track on Spotify 3000 times a month or 100 times a day. Does that seem like a likely scenario to you?!
Most people listen to their favorite album at most once a day. So in order for Spotify to be worth it to the artist, Spotify would have to get this indie artist 100 times more fans. Or let's be generous and say that the 150 people would keep generating on Spotify for a while, while the CD buy was a one time thing. Let's say they keep up this high rotation listening for 10 months (sure...). That's still 10 times more fans the artist would need to get from Spotify just to stay revenue neutral.
Yeah, right...

Disclaimer: I rounded 4 million streams up to 4.5 million to make the math easier.

maybe this is a bit beside the point of where this discussion has gone, but respect for little taylor swift.. once again being a stand-up pop star (writing her own songs / sticking with a cool small label / making her own decisions).. i dont think she gets enough respect for being more than a teenie bopper.