OT: Subscription Music Services, which one?

[Dead Man]

Originally Posted by jkbrwn

My big issue, to be honest, is Spotify. I have been a paying subscriber since 2010, so I'm a big fan of the service, but there's just no excuse to pay musicians that little. It's just inexcusable.

but what about listenership? could be spotify has twice the listeners of a platform that pays twice as well... so the artist gets the same check from both. its not as though theres more "work" to do to make that money once the music is recorded... promotion aside, once your stuff is uploaded you just sit back and let the checks come. if spotify is half the price for subscription, twice the listeners, and pays half as much, the checks the artist gets from spotify and apple music are the same figure.. what does the artist care if his music was listened to twice as much on spotify than apple? if anything, the extra exposure on spotify might help "sales" (used for expediency) on the other platforms, as people share their music w friends.

buncha what-ifs... my point is just that theres more to this than just how much one gets paid per listen, i think.

[Dead Man]

ill also add that the platforms themselves have different levels of internal promotion - as i mentioned in my first post in this thread, spotify has recommended me TONS - absolute untold kajillions of music likely never would have even known about if not for their internal promotion of artists. i dont have much experience with the other platforms to know how much of this they also do, but using the girlfriend's apple again- theres not much of that there. when a playlist runs out, the playlist just replays itself, rather than switching to a channel with "similar" music, like spotify does. and spotify has lots of other promotional stuff they do, like recommending all sorts of playlists they "think ill like" on the home page and stuff

[jkbrwn]

Well in my opinion that is kind of missing the point. It doesn't matter how many streams the artist gets on which platform and what that equates to in terms of payout. My argument is simply that Spotify should pay artists more. Spotify were a huge proponent of basically killing music sales, so they have to help support the musicians they profit off of and they aren't doing a good enough job of it.

Take musician Amber Coffman as an example. She is signed to a major label. She has an album released in 2017. It has, in total, 9,300,000 individual song streams across the whole album. That is approx $37,000 paid in royalties across the space of four years.

That's $9250 per year or using a forty hour working week as an example:

Hourly wage = $0.89
Daily wage = $35.54
Weekly wage = $177.69
Monthly wage = $770.00

The irony being is this is where the very vast majority of her streams occur so she'll be getting a much smaller cheque from other streaming platforms.

I dunno. I just think they are doing a poor job of paying musicians what they deserve.

[jkbrwn]

Originally Posted by Dead Man

ill also add that the platforms themselves have different levels of internal promotion... on the home page and stuff

I am with you on this one and it's the primary reason I've never bothered with any other service beyond the trial period. Spotify's algorithmic suggestions are simply too good to leave behind.

[Dead Man]

Originally Posted by jkbrwn

I am with you on this one and it's the primary reason I've never bothered with any other service beyond the trial period. Spotify's algorithmic suggestions are simply too good to leave behind.

well ill ask a question i dont know the answer to (if you do, please share) - whats the "cost" to upload music to any of these platforms? if it costs nothing, why not be on as many as one is eligible for? if an artist doesnt like that spotify pays half as much, even if the listens are twice as much - so the checks are the same amount - they can absolutely opt not to have their music streamed there.... but what would be the benefit of that? its literally "free" money... they already wrote and performed and recorded the music, might as well earn extra money by being on as many as possible.

im REALLY arguing from a place of ignorance on this one... i have no idea how all this stuff works.. im just offering what seems like decent logic to me.. but who knows.

have artists themselves had much to say on this topic?

[Dead Man]

my great uncles were both very accomplished musicians in their day (big band era) - my uncle Monty Kelly was lead conductor for a band called 101 Strings and composed a fair bit, his brother Rex played guitar wonderfully and played for the rat pack boys and other big names of the era and also wrote a little.. my mother gets royalty checks from ASCP i think(?) about twice a year for anywhere from $600 to sometimes as much as a couple grand, depending on how much their original music was played - mostly used in european film. its just "free" money... never expected, but cool.. my uncles wrote and performed the music decades ago, the "work" is done, but the money keeps coming.. and is available on spotify, and im sure shes never known how much she gets paid per listen.. or even if she does? i dont know how this stuff works... but who cares? its money!

[jkbrwn]

Originally Posted by Dead Man

well ill ask a question i dont know the answer to (if you do, please share) - whats the "cost" to upload music to any of these platforms? if it costs nothing, why not be on as many as one is eligible for? if an artist doesnt like that spotify pays half as much, even if the listens are twice as much - so the checks are the same amount - they can absolutely opt not to have their music streamed there.... but what would be the benefit of that? its literally "free" money... they already wrote and performed and recorded the music, might as well earn extra money by being on as many as possible.

have artists themselves had much to say on this topic?

Well, for a start it's often out of the artist's hands. It all depends on their label. If Columbia say: 'Here, Spotify, have our entire catalogue', then the average artist can't do a thing about it. We have seen this with popular artist's in other ways, for example Taylor Swift. Her music was not on Spotify because she didn't own the rights to the music. To get around this, she has deconstructed her old albums and re-recorded them. She owns the masters of the re-recordings and has made them available on Spotify.

Using my example above, Amber has been a vocal opponent of Spotify because of how little they pay while having the market share of the streaming market. I guess it is particularly bad for musicians right now as they can't perform or tour, so the 'free' money is their only source of income and it is a tiny income at that. It is their only job. It's not a legacy royalty cheque to coincide with a lifetime's worth of savings or a pension. It's literally their job (not meaning to sound disparaging to your Uncle's royalty cheques, but in this scenario its not quite a direct comparison of circumstance).

It's an interesting conversation. The touring and performing side of music is more important than ever for musicians to survive, financially, but they can't do it right now. Spotify even added donation buttons on artist's profiles, that would redirect to musician's personal PayPal accounts. Would this be necessary if Spotify just paid more? Who knows. To me, this solution is like paying your staff way less than minimum wage while allow customers tips to make up their income.

[phishrabbi]

I use none of them. The thought of having to pay a monthly fee to music is too much for me. I want to *own* my data.

[MikeD]

Which service has the largest catalog of music?

[benb]

Payouts per stream weren't even accurate last time I saw.. those are averages but it's much more complicated.

Most of the streaming sites don't actually keep track of who is listening to what, or at least they didn't for a very long time.

That's a MASSIVE cloud analytics job that will cost them a lot of money to run.

Instead they just pool all the money together and count how many times each track is run. It reduces the data they have to gather and crunch and saves them a ton of money. Then they were ranking the artists and paying out based on % of the total # of streams.

If they did the more complex thing and actually tracked every listeners payments right to only the artists they listened to it could be much more equitable.

The "payout per stream" is a back calculated average that's estimated by people trying to figure out exactly what they're doing.

There are all kind of extra things going on too, like big labels demanding payments to have their catalog on the service even if the music isn't being streamed.

In the end it's another middle man who demands to be paid "FU money" just like the record companies.

[gngroup]

Tidal
Apple Music

[19wisconsin64]

Also an audiophile and also use Tidal.

[makoti]

Originally Posted by Dead Man

well ill ask a question i dont know the answer to (if you do, please share) - whats the "cost" to upload music to any of these platforms? if it costs nothing, why not be on as many as one is eligible for? if an artist doesnt like that spotify pays half as much, even if the listens are twice as much - so the checks are the same amount - they can absolutely opt not to have their music streamed there.... but what would be the benefit of that? its literally "free" money... they already wrote and performed and recorded the music, might as well earn extra money by being on as many as possible.

im REALLY arguing from a place of ignorance on this one... i have no idea how all this stuff works.. im just offering what seems like decent logic to me.. but who knows.

have artists themselves had much to say on this topic?

I'll chime in. I actually have a few songs on Spotify. It didn't cost me anything, but I don't see any money, so that's even, I guess. I didn't sign up, send in music, or do anything. I had/have the songs on CDBaby, and I believe they marketed them to the different services. I've found them on Apple, Amazon, and Spotify. Once in a very blue moon, I'll get a deposit of a few bucks but it's rare. I'm sure big artists do well, but even they aren't making what they should, IMO.

[barnabyjones]

Originally Posted by jkbrwn

Well in my opinion that is kind of missing the point. It doesn't matter how many streams the artist gets on which platform and what that equates to in terms of payout. My argument is simply that Spotify should pay artists more. Spotify were a huge proponent of basically killing music sales, so they have to help support the musicians they profit off of and they aren't doing a good enough job of it.

Take musician Amber Coffman as an example. She is signed to a major label. She has an album released in 2017. It has, in total, 9,300,000 individual song streams across the whole album. That is approx $37,000 paid in royalties across the space of four years.

That's $9250 per year or using a forty hour working week as an example:

Hourly wage = $0.89
Daily wage = $35.54
Weekly wage = $177.69
Monthly wage = $770.00

The irony being is this is where the very vast majority of her streams occur so she'll be getting a much smaller cheque from other streaming platforms.

I dunno. I just think they are doing a poor job of paying musicians what they deserve.

Historically the music industry has always been a hustle with a foundation of exploitation embedded in its DNA. Labyrinthine copyright/royalty laws and opaque distribution networks. Major labels subsidizing loss leaders with superstar releases and the majority of signed acts finding themselves in perpetual debt due to exploitative contracts and "advances" (loans). Know a few guys who currently live in poverty but were given $500,000 advances (against nonexistent future sales) when they were in their early 20s. "We're rich!"

That said, in many ways, the Spotify model mirrors the heyday of the major labels. The labels are drowning in record profits and a few superstar artists are cashing in. Look at this guy:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6eUK...Sp2OboG23kDTlw

Approximately $33M (more or less depending on his contract) for the 4 songs with over 1B streams. Easy money...

[Rada]

Spotify has recently announced they will be rolling out Hi-fi later this year.