Spotify

[DSOP]

I actually like the service provided by Spotify, and use it often. I feel that it would be churlish to complain about back catalogue, that has already generated significant sums over many years, being made available in this way. However, for new work, it just doesn't represent a sustainable business model for an industry that still needs to invest substantial sums in order to produce and promote quality work.

Commerce has always played a defining role in the actual nature of recorded music. Just like the printed music boom before it, the record business has only rarely been 'art for art's sake'! After the heady days of the 20's thru the 50's, Jazz has only ever been viable because a record could be made in a couple of days, often an afternoon. Sales volumes for most recordings are low but so are costs. This applies to other genres like 'world' music. Rock musicians, on the other hand, could spend 6 months on a record (ie Dark Side of the Moon/Pink Floyd) because of the monies generated on previous albums and anticipated sales in the millions. When Punk arrived in the mid-70's, record companies couldn't believe their luck because here was a music that could be recorded in a few days, like Jazz, and yet sales could be substantial (the first two Police albums cost about £1500 each). It was one of the reasons the music industry swung behind the genre, I believe; the business case was overwhelming. Same for House/early Hip-Hop, which was a largely home made affair, at least at the beginning. In the end, Punk, or New Wave would never match the sales figures of albums by Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, The Eagles, etc but it opened the door to a whole new generation of record company entrepreneurs who helped make popular bands that the older labels would probably never have signed. The same can be said of Hip-Hop.

But all these movements in the art of recorded music were dependent on the notion that significant sums, or enough money, would always be available to invest in new artists, many of whom would never be successful and would be written off after one or two releases. A label like Island would take the money generated by Cat Stevens and invest it in The Incredible String Band or John Martyn, artists who sold but not in large quantities. This is no longer the case.

With the advent of illegal downloads of perfect digital copies, or services like Spotify, which pay effectively nothing per stream, sufficient monies are not being generated to feed back into the system to support the whole array of talent required to sustain the level of quality people have come to expect from this medium. Young artists can no longer get tour support from their label so that they can develop their skills and craft playing live. Often a new artist will be dropped after the first record if it's not an immediate hit, depriving them and us of what might have been if they'd been given the chance to grow and learn. Great session musicians, technicians and engineers are now being offered, to record an album, what they once got to record a single track, sometimes not even that; simply not enough to sustain a career or, often, to even put food on the table. This whole support network of talent is at risk of evaporating. Young engineers sometimes don't know how to record drums, or strings, properly anymore, simply because they never get the chance to do it.

Radio stations are covered by PRS agreements requiring them to pay a license fee dependent on market share. Monies generated in this way are accurately recorded in the system and can be substantial for an artist with a successful track record with songs people continue to want to hear. This is not the case with Spotify. And iTunes takes a cut of more than £3 for the privilege of selling an album through the site. That's quite a large chunk of the £7.99 asking price!!

People can't have it both ways. They can't complain about a lack of quality and diversity in contemporary music when they are not even prepared to pay the asking price for music they do choose to listen to. The argument has been made before, but no-one will baulk, it seems, at paying £2 for a solo espresso in Starbucks, which lasts all of five minutes, but somehow take issue with paying 0.99p for a piece of music which could last a lifetime. This I simply don't understand!

[matthughen]

^Yet another article bemoaning the current state of the music business without so much as one single word about the poor business & marketing decisions made by a the record industry themselves. Much of the music industries misery is a result of self-inflicted wounds resulting from being slow to react to oncoming trends, being all to happy to keep their product over-priced for far to long and the quality issues are known to all of us here.

The internet didnt blow-up the music industry. If there is blame to be assigned for this "decline", the right amount of it should be assigned to the bloated, luddite execs at record labels who watched their industry shift right under their feet while they ate cake and acted like it was still the early 70's.

[Morgenthaler]

^Yet another article bemoaning the current state of the music business without so much as one single word about the poor business & marketing decisions made by a the record industry themselves. Much of the music industries misery is a result of self-inflicted wounds resulting from being slow to react to oncoming trends, being all to happy to keep their product over-priced for far to long and the quality issues are known to all of us here.

The internet didnt blow-up the music industry. If there is blame to be assigned for this "decline", the right amount of it should be assigned to the bloated, luddite execs at record labels who watched their industry shift right under their feet while they ate cake and acted like it was still the early 70's.

I couldn't agree more.

The record industry (I say that not to confuse it with the artists) is the most conservative,
backward-looking industry. Why should we pay for the multi million dollar glass offices of filthy rich record label and or Hollywood bosses?

This old joke just sums it up so well:

Heavy rains start and a neighbour pulls up in his truck. "Hey Bob, I'm leaving for high ground. Want a lift?" Bob says, "No, I'm putting my faith in God." Well, waters rise and pretty soon the bottom floor of his house is under water. Bob looks out the second story window as a boat comes by and offers him a lift. "No, I'm putting my faith in God." The rain intensifies and floodwaters rise and Bob's forced onto the roof. A helicopter comes, lowers a line, and Bob yells "No, I'm putting my faith in God."
Well, Bob drowns. He goes to Heaven and finally gets to meet God. "God, what was that about? I prayed and put my faith in you, and I drowned!"
God says, "I sent you a truck, a boat, and a helicopter! What the hell more did you want from me?"

How does that apply to this situation?

Same thing. The tech industry keeps sending Hollywood the tools it needs to save itself... and Hollywood keeps "waiting" for some miraculous savior, while missing all of the tools it's been offered to save itself:
All I can think is: we gave you the Internet. We gave you the Web. We gave you MP3 and MP4. We gave you e-commerce, micropayments, PayPal, Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, the iPad, the iPhone, the laptop, 3G, wifi--hell, you can even get online while you're on an AIRPLANE. What the hell more do you want from us?
Take the truck, the boat, the helicopter, that we've sent you. Don't wait for the time machine, because we're never going to invent something that returns you to 1965 when copying was hard and you could treat the customer's convenience with contempt.

I got it here

[DSOP]

The big record companies, and many of the independent record companies, made many mistakes, ripped off many artists, and made more money than they deserved, but the current state of the industry is a mess. And it's going to get worse. The change is subtle, and many of you are too young to grasp what has been lost, but try getting a band off the ground and let me know how it goes.

[Morgenthaler]

The big record companies, and many of the independent record companies, made many mistakes, ripped off many artists, and made more money than they deserved, but the current state of the industry is a mess. And it's going to get worse. The change is subtle, and many of you are too young to grasp what has been lost, but try getting a band off the ground and let me know how it goes.

You probably are older than me, but I started buying music when it was still sold predominantly on (vinyl) LP and MC, and I remember the
amazing revolution that the cd was - so unless you can remember buying loads of shellac discs, I think we have pretty similar frames of reference.

I absolutely get how hard it is to get a band going. I've failed miserably at it.
And I work every day for Virgil (Donati) with YouTube's Content Verification Program to delete
copyrighted material (usually his instruction videos) - so I also know about the issues through first hand experience.

But as a musician today, you simply have to embrace the technological reality. It might be moving faster
than it did at some point (I honestly don't know if it does) but if you don't keep up, you're done.

When I tell non-internet super users about the Nataly Dawn story (raising $100,000 for her debut album as a relatively unknown artist)
or Louis CK's massive succes selling his latest show for $5 per download, DRM FREE and earning tons of money - people generally think I am lying.
I am not. There are ways. Artists just have to stay inquisitive and open, and they will find ways. Oh, and they have to lose the record labels fast.

[matthughen]

Im old enough to remember the music industry making the following claims:
Cassette tapes will destroy our business! (remember all those adds int the back of Goldmine mag?)
Drum machines and synthesizers are destroying creativity!
CD's will last forever!
MD recorders will undermine our business model!
CD-r's will undermine our business model!
File Sharing is undermining our business model!

With every tech advance, the Luddites will complain. Maybe I have become a bit immune to the business folks claim that their model is under constant threat and that the integrity of music is being constantly undermined.

... but try getting a band off the ground and let me know how it goes.

Kind of a weird statement. Has this ever been easy? Are you referring to getting a deal on a major, releasing a CD on a major and expecting tour support from a major? This has been an impossible dream to all but the luckiest few ever since there was a music business.

Short of getting a deal on a major, just about every other aspect of controlling your own destiny is WAY EASIER than ever before. Record yourself, release yourself, tour for yourself and support yourself. Artists have an unprecedented amount tools at their disposal to inspire their creativity and see that through to a final product and then get it heard! Major label support has only ever been a pipe dream that works out only for a few lucky folks. This is clearly still the case. However, the tools at the disposal of a creative individual or band have never been more democratized.

[DSOP]

There are ways, yes. But it requires skills way beyond what should be required of a musician. I think musicians spend more time on marketing and social media than on studying music and learning the craft of composition. THAT is what I am talking about. There will be less revolutionary artists going forward and there will be much more deriviative or clone-like art that reeks of nostalgia.

The only guys that stand a chance at saying something important or unique are those from a wealthy family that can afford to devote time to their craft (or a country that subsidizes the arts in a major way).

And I'm not talking about me. I am far from being revolutionary as an artist. I make most of my living developing software that runs on web servers. I know what can be accomplished on-line and with studio gadgets (I also worked as a recording engineer for a long time in the 80s and 90s). I am talking about REAL breakthrough artists. I just don't think it happens as often anymore, and I think it will happen even less in the future.... UNLESS, somehow, there comes a time when there is a fair distribution of wealth as a result of all the content that EVERYONE is listening to and viewing DAILY.

What happens to all the poor bastards graduating out of all these "music" schools? There are only so many cruise ship gigs out there. There isn't much of a network of live music clubs that can support enough work to live off of. Studio work is non-existent except for a token few and only in several large cities.

The cost of living has gone WAY up; And the income sources for musicians has quickly disappeared. Embracing technology isn't the answer. There needs to be an awakening of the general public that music (art) is important and its creators should be compensated.

[DSOP]

Are you referring to getting a deal on a major, releasing a CD on a major and expecting tour support from a major?

No, I was mostly recalling a time when a band could book gigs all over the place once they secured a booking agency. This would be the stage before potentially getting a "deal" with a record company, but a band could stay at this stage playing clubs all over the country for a long time and make a living. Not a glamorous living, but a living.

To suggest that a band can now just load up a van and tour is silly. You can't just set up on the street and play. Gigs need to be booked, and contracts need to be signed. It can be done, yes, but it's all but impossible without a booking agency, some serious sacrificing and a lot of money behind you.

I've lived in Toronto, Miami and Los Angeles. Pretty big cities. Toronto used to have a very healthy music scene. Numerous clubs with live music. Same with Los Angeles.

Now it's just a bunch of (usually) average to horrible bands sharing the bill every night at the three or four showcase clubs left, and playing for free, for their friends. How did it get so bad?

[circh bustom]

There are a lot of "careers" that don't really present a viable way of making a living anymore. It sucks all around. I understand all of us being musicians, this seems to hit closer to home. This all might, just might, also turn out to be somewhat of a temporary setback if/when the economy as a whole turns around and bounces back. Although, I have to agree with Morgenthaler and Matthugen on this one.

[DSOP]

I know. At least I'm consistent though, right?