I understood perfectly, Bob.
Spotify produces nothing.
It creates nothing.
It is software designed purely for the purpose of using the work of others to generate enormous profits for its owner.
As with most large corporate entities, its business model is an exploitative one.
Its owner has become a deca-billionaire on the backs of ACTUAL creators. If paying out 70% of its revenues to artists and writers isn't enough for their payouts to compare to Apple, Tidal, etc, then it needs to be an even higher percentage.
Or they simply aren't charging subscribers enough.
I've actually been saying since day one that a lousy ten bucks or so for unlimited 24/7/365 access to basically the entire recorded history of music is an absurdly-low fee, and is ultimately unsustainable. And the more music that gets added to the service (a staggering average of 100,000 songs per day, according to many sources), the more inadequate and unsustainable it becomes.
Not sure what your personal motivation is for pretending that Ek isn't the enemy, and that those of us standing up for fair artist compensation are, but…
It is what it is.
Mike Froedge
Step Up to the Mike Productions, LLC
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Has Napster been forgotten already? Never mind the era of Tower Records, Peaches, King Karol, ad infinitum?
Somebody needs to distribute music. And even CBS (now Sony) realized that it couldn't do an adequate job of this, that their focus should be production, nor retail, and the company sold Discount Records.
Oh, the acts could do it by themselves... Just like the Grateful Dead with "Wake of the Flood," an utter disaster financially, it wasn't long before the band went back into the system. You see there's more to distribution and retail than just manufacturing records, never mind shipping them. There's getting retailers to buy them and then PAY FOR THEM! Those with occasional releases had hell getting paid. You'd need a steady stream of product in order to get your invoices paid, and the retailer was always behind. To the point when they went bankrupt, which they frequently did, they owed even the major labels millions. Did the owners declare personal bankruptcy? No, most had the companies incorporated and walked away with their wealth.
Now in the old days you needed a physical space with its attendant costs of water, electricity and air-conditioning as well as employees... Which is why it was always about the margins. The difference between what you paid the distributor/wholesaler versus what you charged the customer. Same deal with Spotify.
However, Spotify has the advantage of being an internet company, with little physical space cost. Kind of like the people making the music, who can do so on their computers, costs have gone down. Also, Spotify can scale around the world relatively cheaply, as can your music. Good luck getting your music in a retail store in Uzbekistan or Chile, hell, here's a list of the nations where Spotify operates:
https://www.spotify.com/us/select-your-country-region/
But they're not the only ones. You've got Apple and Microsoft and Facebook and...the list of tech companies operating around the world is huge. And many of their creating entrepreneurs have become billionaires, some the richest people in the world. But if you make your money by distributing music, YOU'RE THE ENEMY! Never mind Daniel Ek single-handedly saved monetized music distribution, before Spotify piracy ruled. As for competing companies, none could come up with a solution, hobbled by limits from copy protection to price.
As for price... Venerated hero Steve Jobs refused to raise the price at the iTunes Store when implored to do so by the money-hungry/greedy labels. He said he was building a business and they wanted to kill it. There comes a point at which people say no. Otherwise everybody would be driving a Mercedes-Benz. The value of music is what people are willing to pay for it, not a penny more.
And here we have America in a nutshell. Everybody gets their information from a different source and believes they're right. And if you're Ticketmaster or Spotify or anybody dealing with the public today you know that the customer is not always right, and should be ignored. This is kind of like the Democrats...you're better educated with greater powers of analysis, luxuriate in this instead of constantly tearing out your hair trying to convince people of the truth, enlighten them when they prefer to live in the dark.
If you want to enlighten someone, employ art, it's the most powerful tool. It's based on speaking truth. But where is said truth today? Other than purveyed by people who can't sing, write or play who e-mail me their songs telling me that the public needs to hear them. No, you have to make the music so irresistible that people pull it, don't have it pushed upon them. And in order for your message to be believed, you must be trustworthy and honest, credible, you cannot take money and be a tool of the Fortune 500. But just like with Napster, people have forgotten about the sixties and the golden era of classic rock, and how music moved the world.
People are clamoring for great music, great art. If they find it they tell everybody they know about it, they believe in it. How many can excite the populace? Very few, but that's the artist's job, not making a living...making a living comes AFTER!
One more thing... If you've got a problem with Spotify and Daniel Ek, create your own music distribution platform, no one is holding you back. So far, no one has been able to compete with Spotify, which keeps nimble and innovative, since there's no royalties from other enterprises to keep the company afloat. People CHOOSE to subscribe to Spotify.
And you can choose to become a business person. And most make more money than the artists. Then again, Clive Calder, who had the biggest financial victory in the history of the music business, is unknown to youngsters today, whereas the songs he purveyed...hell, Backstreet Boys are still playing the Sphere!
You make your choice. If you want to make bank, you probably shouldn't become a social worker. Then again, being a social worker can be extremely fulfilling.
But everybody wants what everybody else has, someone is holding them back...when the dirty little secret is you are holding yourself back.
Do you have the wherewithal to complete umpteen years of schooling? The networking ability to make things happen? I believe in a social safety net, everybody is entitled to a roof over their head and food on the table. But not everybody is entitled to be rich. That's your responsibility. Life isn't fair, but if you want to be wealthy just don't sit at home and do the same thing and complain, CHANGE! Never mind work harder and sacrifice. Or be happy where you are.
But seemingly nobody is.
________________________________________
You need to keep repeating your message. There is a false narrative that needs to end.
The music industry is a popularity contest. Always has been. It doesn't matter the genre, format, or monetization model. If you are popular, you make money.
Sinatra, Elvis, Beatles, Led Zep, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Madonna, Beyonce, Taylor Swift and on and on. Popular = $$$
Scott Cohen
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I can't tell you how often I've explained the "no-such-thing-as-a-streaming-rate" thing to songwriters and, as simple as the concept is, they can't/won't accept it. In their minds they are being cheated. And don't get me started on what they think about Spotify taking a cut for operating costs.
Michael Battiston
Previously Director of Copyright and Music Usage at ASCAP.
________________________________________
Seeing these responses to your articles about Spotify reminded me of something…. a few years ago I was teaching part time at a college for recording arts. I had students for music production, songwriting and engineering, some music business, etc. Every single quarter I'd ask the same question… "what do you think is the reason most artists fail in their goal to become successful in music, in this case let's define successful as being able to quit your day job and make a living solely from music"?
I would listen as each student gave their answers….
"bad management"
"drug problems"
"couldn't get a break"
"not enough promotion"
And on and on and on; I then gave MY answer, which was simple. They aren't good enough. Never once did I hear that come from a student first and when I said it they all looked a little surprised and maybe even taken aback. I used the example of "if Jimi Hendrix was on the street corner outside playing guitar don't you think a crowd would probably gather?" I'm not saying talent always wins but true exceptionalism very often does and the lack of it usually doesn't. Not that every act currently on the pop
charts is oozing with talent, but the ones who aren't are often working with writers and producers who are, even if the music might not be my thing. I just thought it was important to remind these kids that NOT EVERYONE IS GOOD ENOUGH. Art isn't democracy, where one person gets one vote. Some people are just better at art than others!
Most work their asses off to be that good, some are just kinda born with it, it's not fair, get used to it!
I will say as a guy who was a little kid in the '60's, my generation is pretty much responsible for this attitude because my generation was the first to grow up with that sense of entitlement… "if you can dream it you can do it!" "everyone gets a medal just for TRYING", etc. My parents generation was a little different, I think their mantra was "if you work your ass off for your entire life then maybe you won't starve to death or get killed by the Nazis". I understand why people are pissed off reading what you write on this subject but the numbers don't lie. I'm working with a completely independent artist right now, no label, no publisher, we split everything 50/50 just like I do with sync music. Several of our songs are over a million and the money coming in is cool, not like 90's platinum record cool but cool. If she continues like this it will be amazing- but it's happening because she's exceptional and works her ass off and apparently people want to listen to her music.
Kevin Bowe
________________________________________
Living wage or better is for those who actually work in the music business and many do well. I co-own a booking agency here in Florida and we book 300+ shows a month in our area. It's mainly singles and duo's, but these guys and girls are making a good living and the market is healthy here for the most part. The other problem is most of these complainers don't even know how to get their money even if they are getting decent streams. I talk with artists all the time who haven't registered their songs with a PRO and don't have a clue about the MLC or SoundExchange. We are flooded with Hobbyists. I have a number of friends in known bands that work other jobs when they are off the road. Look, all the great songs have been written, all the great movies have been done. Not to say that someone might get lucky once in a while, but everything is a retread. We saw it, we lived it, we're lucky. Onward.
B Chapin
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Thank you for continuing to fact check these ridiculous, never ending, claims that Spotify pays a worse "per stream rate" than Apple or Tidal. Same conversation for 20 years now - in spite of Spotify's efforts to explain their model, most people have no idea how a shared pool model works.
Michael Abbatista
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Hi Bob — I truly do not have much sympathy for musicians who complain that they are not getting paid much for streams.
Back in the "old days," when a top 40 station, say, WLS, added a record, it would get played, maybe, 12-15 times a day. Each play reached an audience of, say, 800,000 or more listeners. A chart record would be played on, say, 200 top 40 stations around the country.
Today, one stream on Spotify or any other service, reaches one listener.
Even a spin on a juke box in a tavern or teen club, reached more listeners than one stream on Spotify.
Do the math.
Jim Charne
________________________________________
Spot on Bob
Again you hit all the basic data points
that it's more emotion than fact. That people not only don't know basic math, but they hate it because it's neutral to feelings
You also remind us that in this "imaginary golden age", Mythologized by rock 'n' roll movies and stories of trashed hotel rooms, the majority of artists never got royalties and tons of them were ripped off so badly It's not funny.
The big difference however was the record companies were not yet grabbing touring revenue -360 deals were not even a thought- so many acts that were excellent live (or even just decent), made fortunes, bought their houses & jets , had the rockstar life, but it was touring money they made.
The biggest thing…. You brought this up the other day, there was a time when going to a studio was absolutely Unreachable for the vast majority of Musicians, the expense to just lay down a little 4-song demo was a huge amount of money and inaccessible to most.
What a lot of musicians refuse to acknowledge is that in any other economic venture, for any other commodity, even in any other art; if the costs of production dropped as far as they have for Musicians, while the number of people now creating that commodity exploded —- the remuneration for said commodity would approach zero.
Today with a $200 Mac from a pawnshop, a 10-year-old interface and a couple microphones, you have more studio power than artists During most of the last century. And there are top ten hits done on GarageBand, like it or not
With free synthesizer plug-ins, free compressors and reverb units, free effects processor, free mastering software, free, free, free, free free. Free storage & distro online. Free word processing & spreadsheet software. These were all costs of doing business not long ago. Free Gmail and Instagram to promote with.
Bandcamp Is essentially free, some would argue that taking the percentage is a cost, but that is a debatable concept.
We have all this FREE stuff and yet no one wants to admit that that means the COST of production has shrunk astronomically. Meaning the entry point bar is low, so there are infinitely more people creating the product we are trying to sell, vs "the golden age" of 1975. But people HATE THE MATH.
Basically, if everyone had a brick oven in their house, every single person…. and a cheap or free supply of flour, spices, cheese and tomato sauce……Slices of pizza would be worth a nickel. If that!! Pizzeria owners will understand that the math is the math, but Musicians would complain that somebody moved their cheese
Thank you
Andre´Cholmondeley
________________________________________
Alright Bob, that was an excellent rant! I have been reading your blog for years… but this one you spelled it out so clearly…particularly the Spotify math concept… I'm grateful to understand it now. Thanks!
Cheers,
- Brett Currie
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Good God, Bob, that you have to explain this SIMPLE TRUTH ad nauseum to imbeciles, is truly pathetic.
You have incredible patience, not to mention balls of steel to put up with the blowback.
WAKE UP, PEOPLE.
DG
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