Radiohead’s Thom Yorke compares YouTube business model to Nazi art theft

"‘Sorry, was it yours? Now it's ours," as Yorke calls BitTorrent LP launch unsuccessful.

Read the whole story

 

[Some Idiot]

Undefinition[/url]":1hhaf5kk]

Meailda[/url]":1hhaf5kk]Silly Yorke. Ideas are for everyone.

And the profits made each time the "idea" is played go to...?

Supposedly, the artists.

However, there are so many middlemen involved in the recorded music industry that they have forgotten how to be honest, for the most part. A simple shift in focus from almost solely profits to enabling a greater community would save in particular the major labels' reputations, but also stop the sense that consumers are constantly being fleeced in terms of cost.

 

[ascagnel]

JustQuestions[/url]":ka16fw66]

Plissken[/url]":ka16fw66]I'm not sure why a band like Radiohead is counting dollars and cents when it's been so successful over its career and will literally have fans climbing up the walls to get the band's next album.

These people are artists, so I don't think the exact dollar amounts are what bothers them, but rather the principle of the situation.

You're talking about extremely eccentric/quickly individuals. The kind of people who want things to be just exactly so, right down to the exact album art. Typical artist types.

So YouTube to these people is like the fucking Antichrist. They can find their music uploaded but edited, with different art, different footage, you name it. This kind of shit REALLY BOTHERS them, far more than any dollar amounts. Their art is being fucked with. Stolen, essentially.

And to them, there's nothing you can do to stop it. If you put up a takedown notice, it will just get re-uploaded and re-uploaded again and again and again. So, it seems apparent (to them) that YouTube seems to make a business model out of enabling this kind of behavior and even revenue streams from it. You can't fight it. The second their art exist, it becomes stolen on YouTube and similar.

I can understand their rage as artists. Do I completely agree with it? No, but I can understand it.

Also, the YouTube Red program basically meant that they either had to agree with the new revenue sharing terms or get off the service. For Radiohead (the band that started the "pay what you want" idea with In Rainbows), could they post content under the terms of deals already in place that also handled YTR? ESPN had to pull down their videos because they couldn't make things work.

 

[jbrader]

lewax00[/url]":udokw417]

Tiernoc[/url]":udokw417]

While Yorke has been proactive about digital music distribution, he offered a brief get-off-my-lawn opinion about transitioning away from physical media. "With each vinyl there is a relationship, even physical. Like when I DJ, there is this direct contact, you have to take the album, select it, put it in a bag, put the bags in the cab, pull them down, open them, and so on. This rapport doesn't exist with digital media, with USB keys. And that has a corrosive effect on how the music is played."

I was pretty much on board with Yorke's position right up until this point, where he COMPLETELY lost me. I can't even compare it to audiophiles who prefer vinyl over digital, because they at least have an objective claim WRT the audio quality produced (even if most of us can't hear the difference).

Am I the only one who thinks he went full-hipster around this part?

You don't think the tactile feel of an object affects the way you use the object? You don't think you'd play an acoustic guitar differently than you'd play an electric? You don't think that if you were DJ you might produce a totally different set using the same source material using a set of turntables than you might if you used a laptop and that you might refer one version over the other?

Do you think you're going to listen to your music any differently if your car is playing it from a physical CD than if it were streaming via Bluetooth from your phone to the car speakers? Because frankly I can't tell the difference.

I'm not talking about the audio quality of a file but rather how the feel of the machine playing the file will affect the person using it to create a musical performance.

 

[under]

90% of musicians producing music would make more money each day if they picked up coins from the street than if they have their music streaming on Spotify, et.al.

 

[oblib__]

rick*d[/url]":3acpnt2g]

oblib__[/url]":3acpnt2g]

giltwist[/url]":3acpnt2g]

Infinity4011[/url]":3acpnt2g]
Here's my complaint towards the artists: release a CD with 45-60 minutes of music worth listening to, and maybe people would pay the extortionate rates your asking for. But when the average release has, at best, 2-3 songs that are even average why should I pay $12-15 for 10 minutes of music that was decent

So $1.25 is too much to pay for a single minute of music you will really enjoy the rest of your life? Jiminy Cricket.

Wow, that's actually a really good way of calculating per-play streaming prices.

Assuming I should feel obligated to provide $1.25 for each song I like enough to listen to for the "rest of my life" and I listen to said song once a month for 30 years. If instead of purchasing the song, I decide to stream it every time, then the cost of each time I stream should be:
$1.25 / (30 yr * 12 mo/yr * 1 listen/mo) = $0.00336/listen

And then if I assume artists only get to keep about 70% of the proceeds of that $1.25, then from your post I assume you would agree that an artist should maybe receive about $0.00336*.7 = $0.00235

Or in other words, an artists should receive about a quarter of a cent every time their song is streamed. Sound right?

If that's agreeable, than according to the same source above, streaming revenue is not too far off what is fair. The artists just have to wait 30 years for their money now, instead of up front.

How can that 70% number possibly be true? iTunes keeps 30%, leaving the remaining 70% for the label, artist, advertising, etc. Given Hollywood Accounting we all know the label gets the majority of that 70%; no matter how it's split, there is simply no way the artist gets all of that 70%, so your source is wrong.

Funny, that's exactly the reason I included the link. If you look at the link, 70% like you said is what Apple provides, and that's what an unsigned artist gets (like Radiohead). Obviously an artist working for a label would only get his minuscule part of that like usual. According to the same link (as you would have seen if you clicked on it) they estimate a signed artist only makes $2.30 on a $10 album, or 23%.

giltwist[/url]":3acpnt2g]

oblib__[/url]":3acpnt2g]
Assuming I should feel obligated to provide $1.25 for each song I like enough to listen to for the "rest of my life" and I listen to said song once a month for 30 years. If instead of purchasing the song, I decide to stream it every time, then the cost of each time I stream should be:
$1.25 / (30 yr * 12 mo/yr * 1 listen/mo) = $0.00336/listen

Except I said $1.25 per minute of music, from the earlier poster's suggestion that $12 was too much money to pay for a CD that only has 3 good songs. So, while I like the overall gist of your math, it should be $4 per song, given that most songs these days are a little over three minutes. So, assuming your math works out to be about what artists make now, they need to be making at least double what they make now on streams. That is not to say I think streams are underpaid. I just suspect that record labels take too big of a cut.

My apologies for misreading, though I can't imagine how you came up with that number. At that rate, a 50 minute CD would cost $60. In any case, there's so much wild guessing in my math (primarily due to the frequency of listening to said song) that even a factor of 3 is still in the noise.

 

[oblib__]

under[/url]":1nvfuj0k]90% of musicians producing music would make more money each day if they picked up coins from the street than if they have their music streaming on Spotify, et.al.

And yet they get that money even if they just sat around all day from now on...

 

[Rene Gollent]

Completely ignoring the Nazi comparisons, I think part of the issue the music industry faces nowadays in general is purely economics. When I was growing up, only a handful of people I knew had cable, and that had far fewer channels than it does now, so simply listening to music was, on its own, a direct form of entertainment at home, where the only real competition was the occasional TV show or going out to the movies. Nowadays, you have many other avenues of entertainment such as streaming video and video games, as well as most people having more TV shows than they know what to do with competing for those same entertainment dollars. On top of that, the music industry's pricing hasn't really changed significantly in the meantime. Consider that a season pass to a new show, or an RPG on Steam or GOG can typically be had for a similar price to an album (if not less during a sale). Said game typically represents tens if not hundreds of hours of entertainment, and frequently even comes with its soundtrack bundled, which is often itself as long or longer than a typical music industry album. Dollar for dollar, seeing this happen repeatedly makes you seriously start to question exactly why the music industry's products cost so much in comparison, and makes all you can eat streaming services look like a much better value proposition in the end, if you care that much about music at all.

 

[Resolute]

I always get a laugh when these artists whine about how YouTube and Spotify rip them off. Because commercial radio pays nothing for individual plays either. BMI's rate, for instance, is in the neighbourhood of 12 cents per play from a station in the top 25% of paying stations, and 6 cents for all others. (It would be slightly higher, as the rate specifies "at least" in both cases) - and that rate is shared between all songwriters and composers of the song. Note that "performer" is not listed there.

Couple that with the number of people listening. In New York City, for instance, the top rated station in October was LITE FM with 6.8% of the market, on average. If a ratings point represents 141,000 people, then that would suggest just under one million people, on average, will hear a song on LITE FM. Based on the 12 cent royalty for that airplay, that means BMI is paying the songwriter(s) about 0.00000012 of a penny per listener.

New York is, of course, an extreme example. But, the question is, are Google and Spotify paying more than 12 cents per - lets say - 500,000 individual plays? Based on this blog entry which discusses Gangam Style, I would suggest the answer very much is yes.


tl;dr: People like Thom Yorke need to educate themselves about where their money comes from.

 

[juliano66]

Yorke is so original by using the word nazi to make his point. Hate anything? put nazi after it and everyone will agree with you. And I like the fact he never uses youtube. Such a man of the people! I'll miss easy access to millions of songs and documentaries and such, but if Yorke says the mighty tube is a bad thing, then I guess he knows his apples.

 

[0t]

salamanderjuice[/url]":a69roze3]

0t[/url]":a69roze3]

krimhorn[/url]":a69roze3]"With each keystroke there is a relationship, even physical. Like when I play the harpsichord, there is this direct contact, you have to take the sheet music, select it, put it in a bag, put the bags in the cab, pull them down, open them, and so on. This rapport doesn't exist with gramophones, with audio cylinders. And that has a corrosive effect on how the music is played."

He's right and your snarky. Sorry, no other way to put it. It's why e-book sales are declining, and that there's proof that when you read an e-book, you don't retain as much of it as when you read a physical book. The interaction matters, perhaps in a subtle way, but in a significant way. I've seen photos, including large posters and hi-res images of Starry Night hundreds of times, but seeing it in person is a totally different experience, and one that I will not soon forget, to see the brush strokes of Van Gogh, the mix of paint, the vividness despite the age of the painting, is transformative.

Source on the eBook thing? I could see reading on a computer or tablet with the web because it's easy to get distracted, but just the difference between an eInk screen and printed page? Doubtful to me.

And seeing an original painting vs. photo is a lot different then eBook vs. printed. They are both text on a page, no information like brush strokes, or sheer size,texture, or color vividness is lost. There is only one original Starry Nights but millions of Great Expectations books.

I honestly only think ebook sales are declining because they are too expensive and restricted, it's way too common to see the Paperback either a few dollars below or just a dollar above. Like LOTR, all of them in one volume is $11 paperback, but $16 on Kindle, what kind of nonsense is that!

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/a ... gitisation

 

[Sulla]

We cannot be burdened with all of the responsibilities of the record label.

You want the profits of the record label, but you don't want the responsibilities. I see.

 

[0t]

Sulla[/url]":1bn1bgdb]

We cannot be burdened with all of the responsibilities of the record label.

You want the profits of the record label, but you don't want the responsibilities. I see.

The problem is that in most cases the record label gets the majority of the profits... which maybe never made sense but certainly makes less sense in the internet age.

 

[lewax00]

Major name bands can make a big profit from the slim margins on both sides, but most bands, including ones you think should be doing OK, aren't actually in the music business at all - they're in the T-Shirt business!

Makes me think of Black and Yellow T-Shirts by MC Lars.

 

[Irascible]

JustQuestions[/url]":15id08i1]

Undefinition[/url]":15id08i1]

Meailda[/url]":15id08i1]Silly Yorke. Ideas are for everyone.

And the profits made each time the "idea" is played go to...?

Vast majority --> YouTube/etc.

The minimal remainder --> Artist.

I can understand his rage. Do you even get a say in the matter? Nope. The second you publish anything, it's everywhere, and the advertising behemoths gobble up most of the profits. Pretty disgusting.

The advertising industry is a cancer on society.

Said cancer pays for this site and a lot of other things.

 

[john-whorfin]

I have to agree with Mr. Yorke that there is a difference in listening to a vinyl recording and listening to any of the formats that have come since, whether they be cassette, 8-track, CD, or mp3 - PORTABILITY. I have a rather limited collection of vinyl, and it gets used when I want to LISTEN TO MUSIC. The more portable recordings work just as well, but the effort required to use vinyl changes my priorities. I listen to CDs or the radio when I'm driving, but driving is the primary task. When I was working as a DJ I moved all my music to mp3 as quickly as possible, for the sake of efficiency, because my primary task was to be able to switch from one song to the next without interruption. Streaming music is great for background noise while I'm doing other things. But if I go to the effort of putting vinyl on a turntable it is because I'm going to actually sit down and LISTEN to the music.

 

[Statistical]

I have to agree with Mr. Yorke that there is a difference in listening to a vinyl recording and listening to any of the formats that have come since, whether they be cassette, 8-track, CD, or mp3 - PORTABILITY. I have a rather limited collection of vinyl, and it gets used when I want to LISTEN TO MUSIC. The more portable recordings work just as well, but the effort required to use vinyl changes my priorities. I listen to CDs or the radio when I'm driving, but driving is the primary task. When I was working as a DJ I moved all my music to mp3 as quickly as possible, for the sake of efficiency, because my primary task was to be able to switch from one song to the next without interruption. Streaming music is great for background noise while I'm doing other things. But if I go to the effort of putting vinyl on a turntable it is because I'm going to actually sit down and LISTEN to the music.

Except Mr. Yorke didn't say that at all. He pointed out that a physical CD is different than a digital file even if they are bit for bit identical because of the tangible aspect of buying and carrying the CD.

 

[parasyte]

Resolute[/url]":3vtjbvfu]I always get a laugh when these artists whine about how YouTube and Spotify rip them off. Because commercial radio pays nothing for individual plays either. BMI's rate, for instance, is in the neighbourhood of 12 cents per play from a station in the top 25% of paying stations, and 6 cents for all others. (It would be slightly higher, as the rate specifies "at least" in both cases) - and that rate is shared between all songwriters and composers of the song. Note that "performer" is not listed there.

Couple that with the number of people listening. In New York City, for instance, the top rated station in October was LITE FM with 6.8% of the market, on average. If a ratings point represents 141,000 people, then that would suggest just under one million people, on average, will hear a song on LITE FM. Based on the 12 cent royalty for that airplay, that means BMI is paying the songwriter(s) about 0.00000012 of a penny per listener.

New York is, of course, an extreme example. But, the question is, are Google and Spotify paying more than 12 cents per - lets say - 500,000 individual plays? Based on this blog entry which discusses Gangam Style, I would suggest the answer very much is yes.


tl;dr: People like Thom Yorke need to educate themselves about where their money comes from.

YouTube and Spotify are not radio, so why do you compare them as though they are?

Radio is a broadcast medium with minimal interactivity, i.e. it is programmed in advance and users have essentially no input on what songs are played.

Youtube and Spotify and other similar services such as Google Play Music are on-demand streaming; they are not programmed in advance and users have almost full control over when a song is played and in what order.

 

[zarmanto]

Why does that subtitle seem so familiar?.... oh yeah: it's from a popular meme, of course.

Original, for reference:

Spoiler

 

[pjcamp]

Thom gets the benefit of free advertising.

What kind of name is Thom anyway?

 

[rm0659]

MgSam[/url]":2qua818g]If only I could write code once and then get paid royalties for the rest of my life whenever someone uses that code.

The whole concept of royalties is outdated and ridiculous. Artists should make their money from putting on concerts of their music- you know- actually working for a living- and not just be spoon fed money for the rest of their lives for having played a song in a recording studio 30 years ago.

so by this reasoning, why even bother to record a song at all? why make something just to give it away for free to anyone else to make money from?

making the original recording isn't work? writing a book isn't work? of course it is.

what annoys me is that the creators typically aren't the ones who are most rewarded for the creation.

 

[ScifiGeek]

rm0659[/url]":3qtpyqkh]
what annoys me is that the creators typically aren't the ones who are most rewarded for the creation.

Same applies to software engineers, chemists, scientists,UBER drivers, construction workers, etc... Just about Everyone!

Someone on top of every enterprise known to man is always reaping a disproportionate reward. That is the way the world works.

In reality today, "creators" of intangible goods have it better than just about anyone else, because they have multiple outlets where they can sell their wares (iTunes, Google Play, Amazon) where they can get a full 70% of income from their work product.

So here is a tune for all the poor little rich boys like Yorke whining about how unfair the world is to him, and others in his line of work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tdsL4kvp_I

 

[MathieuLLF]

What gets to me is that Yorke has vented against Spotify and now YouTube yet he has no issues putting his music on Apple Music which really doesn't offer much benefit over others. Seems odd.

 

[Natt]

abundance[/url]":1lr9nyfg]

Statistical[/url]":1lr9nyfg]

Am I missing something here? He hasn't taken his music down from YouTube, so presumably he is still making money from them. Yet he is complaining that they are stealing?

Interesting approach to taking a stand.

Yes apparently voluntarily keeping your music on youtube and profiting from it but at a lower rate than one likes is comparable to being persecuted by the Nazi regime.

The way Yorke puts it is clumsy, but the point behind it is:

Major streaming services like youtube are huge pipes.
Users are encouraged more and more to stream from these huge pipes, so for artists there's no point in fighting upstream and have thier content taken down. You've to be on youtube & co. for discovery and convenience for your listeners.

These pipes costs a lot of money to mantain, and generate a neat profit for a lot of actors - from telcos to cdns to advertisers and sites owners - on top of agency and studios cuts.

So basically, the internet distribution of music has evolved from cutting the old middlemen (self publication) to enable new ones that diminish further the artists actual profits.

That is, as the market forces orient consumption towards streaming libraries of music for a fee, vs buying personal copies for private use, artist will find harder and harder to make decent revenues from music recordings.

All while customers will keep spending nice amounts on music consumption (mobile data, streaming services fees...).

I don't care what the point is behind it. The way he puts it matters. So eff him. If it's really important to him then he can learn to articulate his point without making asinine hyperbolic analogies to Nazis.

 

[jbode]

ScifiGeek[/url]":31ir59sn]

rm0659[/url]":31ir59sn]
what annoys me is that the creators typically aren't the ones who are most rewarded for the creation.

Same applies to software engineers, chemists, scientists,UBER drivers, construction workers, etc... Just about Everyone!

Difference being that most of those people are paid in wages for their work according to fairly straightfoward principles. I mean, when I write code for my company, I get paid the same amount for it no matter how often it's run.

If I were paid like a recording artist, I'd get a nominal salary that's way too low to actually live on, and then get like a millionth of a cent every time a subroutine executes. Except out of that millionth of a cent, I'd need to give 30% back to the company to pay for the equipment I wrote the code on.

 

[wolfigor]

rabish12[/url]":30r1n032]

RT81[/url]":30r1n032]

JustQuestions[/url]":30r1n032]

F Pasm[/url]":30r1n032] If you don't want your music on spotify or pandora, then don't license it. But because you want more and they are not willing to pay it does not make them the bad guys, much less Nazi's.

Doesn't work for YouTube/Google.

Your shit is going to end up on YouTube no matter what. It is a bit evil, in that respect. YouTube clearly enables this behavior. It's insanely easy to just make a new account and upload whatever.

If YouTube/Google honestly wanted to stop this kind of thing, they could, by making it much more difficult to make new accounts and upload content.

Don't they already do that? All I hear from new media people is how it's becoming harder and harder to upload content to youtube before it get's flagged and they make no money off of their movie reviews and such.

For example, see my original post. TotalBiscuit will only play copy write-free music or music he has permission to use as background noise because he knows if he whips out...say, "Highway to Hell" by AC/DC, he's going to run into problems.

Yeah, Google specifically invested a huge amount of money into (pretty massively oversensitive) content detection specifically to allow rightsholders to control what happens with their stuff, despite having no real obligation to do so. At this point it's trivially easy for someone like Yorke to stop all but the most ridiculously low-quality versions of any works he owns the rights to from being played on the service, but I'm guessing he won't either because he signed those rights off to a label (in which case he can shut the fuck up) or because he wants to be able to license his music to people who want to play it in YouTube videos (in which case he can shut the fuck up).

Very good points.
I would also to add that, for old songs, the "cost" of creating them as already been abundantly paid off with a huge margin.
In this context streaming is a pretty good vehicle to make money on the catalogue: At The end the additional cost for the artist is zero and any money coming from streaming is pure profit.
The value of each catalogue song in streaming thus tends to be pretty low.
In thus view the relatively low fee paid to the artist (via copyright owner) is pretty much justified.

This is completely different for newly produced content and that is asinine for an artist to make it available on a streaming service.
However it's usually the label that does it... But I rarely hear the artist bitching against their label as loudly as they do against streaming services.

 

[ScifiGeek]

jbode[/url]":2rwi0bdo]

Difference being that most of those people are paid in wages for their work according to fairly straightfoward principles. I mean, when I write code for my company, I get paid the same amount for it no matter how often it's run.

If I were paid like a recording artist, I'd get a nominal salary that's way too low to actually live on, and then get like a millionth of a cent every time a subroutine executes. Except out of that millionth of a cent, I'd need to give 30% back to the company to pay for the equipment I wrote the code on.

Or you could get musician work that paid a steady reliable income, instead taking the lotto mentality of hitting it big.
http://www.musicianwages.com/how-to-act ... -musician/

But really the complaints are usually from multi-millionaires complaining that they deserve more, after already winning that lotto.

 

[CppThis]

Rene Gollent[/url]":2bfsdxip]Completely ignoring the Nazi comparisons, I think part of the issue the music industry faces nowadays in general is purely economics. When I was growing up, only a handful of people I knew had cable, and that had far fewer channels than it does now, so simply listening to music was, on its own, a direct form of entertainment at home, where the only real competition was the occasional TV show or going out to the movies. Nowadays, you have many other avenues of entertainment such as streaming video and video games, as well as most people having more TV shows than they know what to do with competing for those same entertainment dollars. On top of that, the music industry's pricing hasn't really changed significantly in the meantime. Consider that a season pass to a new show, or an RPG on Steam or GOG can typically be had for a similar price to an album (if not less during a sale). Said game typically represents tens if not hundreds of hours of entertainment, and frequently even comes with its soundtrack bundled, which is often itself as long or longer than a typical music industry album. Dollar for dollar, seeing this happen repeatedly makes you seriously start to question exactly why the music industry's products cost so much in comparison, and makes all you can eat streaming services look like a much better value proposition in the end, if you care that much about music at all.

There's a good bit of truth to this. While a lot of a game's revenue comes from high-priced console sales, we're still talking hundreds of developers, artists, animators, voice/music talent, etc. versus a relatively small team of musicians and sound engineers. The rest of the world has found ways of dealing with the changes the digital era bought.

 

[brutaltruth]

Thom Yorke wishes he was special, but he's just a fucking creep.

 

[pete1063]

First you have to make music people actually want to pay for.
For most of history musicians we're panhandlers.

Be happy for whatever they toss in your guitar case.
Quit your whining.

 

[Cloudgazer]

ScifiGeek[/url]":3mrh6tin]

jbode[/url]":3mrh6tin]

Difference being that most of those people are paid in wages for their work according to fairly straightfoward principles. I mean, when I write code for my company, I get paid the same amount for it no matter how often it's run.

If I were paid like a recording artist, I'd get a nominal salary that's way too low to actually live on, and then get like a millionth of a cent every time a subroutine executes. Except out of that millionth of a cent, I'd need to give 30% back to the company to pay for the equipment I wrote the code on.

Or you could get musician work that paid a steady reliable income, instead taking the lotto mentality of hitting it big.
http://www.musicianwages.com/how-to-act ... -musician/

But really the complaints are usually from multi-millionaires complaining that they deserve more, after already winning that lotto.

Because we all pay so much attention to the complaints of musicians who didn't win the lottery?

 

[Cloudgazer]

MathieuLLF[/url]":ef6ojyo1]What gets to me is that Yorke has vented against Spotify and now YouTube yet he has no issues putting his music on Apple Music which really doesn't offer much benefit over others. Seems odd.

It has one big advantage over spotify (from the perspective of artists and labels) which is that it has no free tier.

 

[fivemack]

Cloudgazer[/url]":2kogft9g]

MathieuLLF[/url]":2kogft9g]What gets to me is that Yorke has vented against Spotify and now YouTube yet he has no issues putting his music on Apple Music which really doesn't offer much benefit over others. Seems odd.

It has one big advantage over spotify (from the perspective of artists and labels) which is that it has no free tier.

Of course it has a free tier; you can press the 'preview' button and listen to ninety seconds of as many songs as you like without paying a penny. This is more relevant if you like floor-filling disco choruses than if you like long-form choral music.

 

[Cloudgazer]

fivemack[/url]":2svrq3w2]

Cloudgazer[/url]":2svrq3w2]

MathieuLLF[/url]":2svrq3w2]What gets to me is that Yorke has vented against Spotify and now YouTube yet he has no issues putting his music on Apple Music which really doesn't offer much benefit over others. Seems odd.

It has one big advantage over spotify (from the perspective of artists and labels) which is that it has no free tier.

Of course it has a free tier; you can press the 'preview' button and listen to ninety seconds of as many songs as you like without paying a penny. This is more relevant if you like floor-filling disco choruses than if you like long-form choral music.

Apple generally doesn't give you the 90seconds you would want, even of floor filling disco tracks - at any rate, for most consumers, those 90second previews are a poor substitute for owning the track, just as regular radio is a poor substitute for owning the track. Spotify, even free tier spotify, is a very good substitute for owning the track.

 

[fivemack]

Cloudgazer[/url]":1nbotczr]
Apple generally doesn't give you the 90seconds you would want, even of floor filling disco tracks - at any rate, for most consumers, those 90second previews are a poor substitute for owning the track, just as regular radio is a poor substitute for owning the track. Spotify, even free tier spotify, is a very good substitute for owning the track.

And that's why Spotify should be paying the record companies who own the rights to the track as if it were allowing its users to own the track, rather than as if it were a radio station - say, 10% of what iTunes would charge for the track per time played, capped at 100% of the track price. Obviously that's incompatible with having a free tier.

 

[nonfer]

hi there, been a while... hasn't it?

Rindan[/url]":t9qkkcbm]You either had to be a music junkie immersed in a genera to find new things, or you were stuck with listening and buying what the radio shat out.

https://www.google.com/search?num=100&q ... aYYzL4oYmg

Rindan[/url]":t9qkkcbm]
I don't want to go back, and I am pretty happy to accept the VASTLY wider variety of music that I listen to now, even if it means those particular artists have to be less professional and get a day job, tour, or in general struggle like all the other starving artists doing something they hopefully love.

https://soundcloud.com/nonferrousnature/irony-lost

 

[UUU]

But musicians like Yorke can listen to youtube all day long and get a million tracks for free. It goes both ways. Musicians are the biggest ripper-offers of each other's work. Even in the days of tape every musician would have a big pile of copied stuff in the corner of the living room.
They BENEFIT from this.
If you're a broke aspiring musician, you can have musical inspiration for free off the internet that would cost thousands if bought on CD.

And making a 50 minute album every two years isn't hard work, it's pot smoking interspersed with occasional lyric writing.

 

[nonfer]

Rindan[/url]":w1l7mlc8]
I know it sounds a bit callus, but we frankly don't need those folks.

nice typo, did someone break your hands?

Rindan[/url]":w1l7mlc8]
Hell, you could eliminate all profit from music tomorrow so that only amateurs with a day job make music, and we would still be a-okay. The cost is low enough and a enough people like making music for less tangible rewards (status, fame, creative expression, joy) that we don't need people making a living off of it.

https://soundcloud.com/spystep/come-into-my-kitchen

 

[ShakesMcQueen]

One thing I think artists (and the industry) need to truly come to grips with, is that the world has changed, and "a song" is not worth what it used to be.

When music CDs and LPs could only (realistically) be created by the labels, and there was no other way to easily spread and share songs beyond recording the radio, they held all of the cards. Thom Yorke was around during this era.

Now he sees an era where even the conceptual value of "owning" personal copies of songs is being challenged by services like YouTube or Spotify. Not only can they not sell you the entire CD any more, but they can't even necessarily sell you the one song you want

The music world needs a fundamental reorganization (and downsizing) back to focusing on revenues from merchandise and live performances, and the existing record label structure needs to wither away. I think you'd quickly see the vacuum filled by self-publishing artists intelligently USING a platform like YouTube - much like plenty of YouTube channel creators are now.

The one thing that has become clear, is that you can't try to fight technology

 

[ruddy]

UUU[/url]":1pfpfxmt]
And making a 50 minute album every two years isn't hard work, it's pot smoking interspersed with occasional lyric writing.

Your resentment and contempt of creatives is showing.

 

[WaveRunner]

ruddy[/url]":2nlqt0ox]

UUU[/url]":2nlqt0ox]
And making a 50 minute album every two years isn't hard work, it's pot smoking interspersed with occasional lyric writing.

Your resentment and contempt of creatives is showing.

Reminds me of the line from the movie Frank. Paraphrasing...

Friend: "His mental illness must give him his creativity"
Parents: "No it's only slowed him down"