Spotify Saved the Music Industry (But Not Necessarily Musicians)

http://freakonomics.com/podcast/spotify/

by ingve • 7 years ago

124 125 7 years ago

The long tail is dead. The algorithm that was supposed to help you find it has killed it instead.

mrob• 7 years ago

The long tail is more alive than ever, but algorithms have always been a bad way to find it. Instead, listen to personal recommendations on web forums etc. There are people who are passionate about any obscure micro-genre you can imagine, and they'll point you to the best of it. Bandcamp and Soundcloud are full of long tail music that's completely ignored by the mainstream music industry.

mr_tristan3• 7 years ago

It's interesting, I've gone back to Spotify from Apple Music primarily because I can easily find more interesting playlists from curators.

I don't think Spotify has any kind of special algorithmic sauce, they just make it easy for people create and share playlists.

It amazes me how most of the other streaming services try to turn everything into an algorithm, via "special radio" stations, etc. And yet, the best way to provide a long tail for music still seems to be basic web 2.0 - let the people make the content for you.

kurthr• 7 years ago

Yeah, load in all your varied collection of interesting indie tunes and watch them spit out modern pop covers as recommendations. It's surreal... almost like the training set was, "what will.make us the most money to promote?"

zwkrt5• 7 years ago

I've always found the opposite, in that Spotify points me toward music I'm sure they are paying almost nothing for.

longerthoughts• 7 years ago

Can you substantiate this? Based on conversations with musicians I know in that long tail, seems like it's helped them get discovered but they're not earning a livable wage from it. It's not clear to me that they'd be any better off in the absence of Spotify, although I don't have strong convictions either way.

criddell4• 7 years ago

If you are part of the long tail today, then you are definitely better off now than in previous years where your market was local audiences and whomever you could reach via zines.

zwkrt5• 7 years ago

It seems to me like musicians have always been in a precarious relation to the economy, same as all other artists. The only difference is that for a brief time in the 20th century the average person was willing to spend money on music, unlike every other time in human history.

Nothing will ever stop people from making music, and 99% of working musicians are making a meager living doing what they enjoy, just like always.

tunesmith• 7 years ago

That strikes me as dismissing "progress" as a mere blip in human history. The reason the average person was more willing to spend money on music is because we improved matters having to do with copyright and licensing. Good copyright and patent law serves a useful purpose in encouraging people to create or innovate in a system that would otherwise discourage doing so.

wolco3• 7 years ago

Complete nonsense. Physical media played a part. Before the walkman you had to share music with everyone in the room. The identity association that began in the 60s. The rise of popstars, the Beatles, cds, etc.

Nothing to do with copyright.. more people were breaking copyright during this period. In fact the people who broke copyright spent the most on music. Everyone broke copyright by recording songs from the radio. The first mass market recording devices were everywhere.

shmerl4• 7 years ago

That's nonsense. What improved are means of communication and distribution. I.e. Internet. You can reach a lot more people. Copyright and patents have nothing to do with it.

zwkrt5• 7 years ago

It wasn't progress, it was change.

wwweston7• 7 years ago

Nothing will ever stop people from making music

The funny thing is how true this statement is, and yet how often it's deployed as if that means nobody needs to further consider or negotiate the present economics.

How would one establish the idea that average person wasn't willing to spend money on music before the 20th century? Because I'd expect as long as there's been instruments and money, there's been some form of economic participation.

But let's say it's true -- does that really direct a normative discussion on current economics? Because a hell of a lot of things about human society after industrialization have only been true for a brief time in human history, and that's no clear indicator of whether or not they have value.

Here's a better standard: how well does what we're doing support people who are in a position to make musical contributions that people value?

Recording sales fared pretty well by that standard, although there was the problem of predatory middlemen. Streaming revenues seem to have the same problem, and don't fare anywhere near as well.

analog31• 7 years ago

Before recorded music, there was sheet music. It was a big business with "superstar" composers like Scott Joplin. It was common for a middle class house to have a piano in the parlor.

And as I understand it, even before the recording era, there were predatory middlemen exploiting the sheet music composers.

hannasanarion2• 7 years ago

The great musicians of 5he 19th century and earlier didn't make a living selling recordings and concerts. The price that would get butts in seats wasn't enough to cover the cost of living for all the performers, the composers, and the house.

Back then, musicians fed themselves using a system of funds that has popped back up again now that selling records isn't economically realistic anymore: patronage.

Back then, musicians were patronized by monarchs, feudal lords, aristocrats, churches and schools. Nowadays it's media conglomerates, bourgeois philanthropists, and patreon users.

zwkrt5• 7 years ago

how well does what we're doing support people who are in a position to make musical contributions that people value?

This is the best possible time to support an artist you enjoy. You can buy physical and digital copies of any artist in the world, artists can set up Patreon accounts, and you with a small amount of ingenuity can probably even mail your favorite artists a check directly.

The issue is that people don't do this, because they don't value the music enough to do it. It is not a great argument to say that Apple Music is mistreating artists, the fans are mistreating artists.

As a final point, the way most popular (not just pop) artists get popular is through marketing, advertising, venue promotion, radio deals, etc. The record company probably deserves the majority of the money produced by such enterprises because without their intervention no one would be that famous to begin with. Kanye West is a brand, just like Ford and Dockers.

Bud2• 7 years ago

This statement reflects wearing a certain kind of blinders, where you think the current pop-music industry is what the word "music" means.

I can assure you that people were spending plenty on going to operas in the 19th century, for instance. And in the 18th century. And of course world-class orchestras have been making money for a few centuries, as well.

bluGill• 7 years ago

You are correct that there were those making money in music for the last few thousand years. However they were a minority: the vast majority of music was made by someone who did something else. You farmed all day, and when the day was done you made music.

loudtieblahblah• 7 years ago

artists deserve to be paid more than technology companies that deliver us the art.

scarface742• 7 years ago

Spotify isn’t exactly rolling in money. They aren’t even making a profit.

reaperducer• 7 years ago

unlike every other time in human history

This is not true. People have paid for music for centuries. Before it was recorded on discs, tapes, wires, or cylinders, people bought and sold sheet music. It was a massive industry.

Before everyone had an electronic music player there were pianos in almost every middle-class home. Pianos were a huge industry with some cities having a half-dozen local manufacturers.

And before pianos became mass-market, people bought sheet music to... get this... sing! People would get together in each other's houses to sing. Companies had bands and choirs, and would compete against each other.

Spending money on music is not something new.

skookumchuck4• 7 years ago

Being in a band, even a low level band, is a great way for young men to get laid, and hence they are highly motivated to do it.

A friend of mine once had a conversation with the drummer of a nationally known band. The drummer was an ordinary looking fellow, who said he was a "high school loser never made it with a lady" type. After the band became known, he looked up and hooked up with every woman who'd rejected him in high school, including the married ones.

ZoomZoomZoom5• 7 years ago

That's completely anecdotal and isn't typical, at least in the current culture. More often than not this is just a myth that musicians themselves spread to boost their ego and perceived status. Although, there's of course some basis in reality.

rubyfan• 7 years ago

The thesis here is that more people are paying for music than in that golden age of music. Spotify in theory has enabled access to a diversity of music at a more tolerable price point which has grown the pool of music payers but not necessarily equated to more money for artists.

matthoiland2• 7 years ago

As an amateur musician I still make most of my monthly sales from iTunes. Streaming pays so little, unless you're a big name – which incentivizes the big labels while squeezing the smaller artists.

Early platform like Lala (bought by Apple) had a cool model – $0.10 per song, but you can only stream it. Ownership was still there, and artists were paid equally per sale.

Nevertheless, getting your music distributed is easier today than ever, and I'm sure all artists are grateful for that.

criddell4• 7 years ago

Streaming pays so little, unless you're a big name

Are you saying big acts get more per stream?

Also, I'd love to hear what you think about how the incentives from Spotify et al are changing music itself. From what I understand, a play isn't registered until a certain portion of the song has been played. This hurts songs that have a slow build and so hooks are being pushed right up front. Do you think it's homogenizing music to any degree?

jasode• 7 years ago

Are you saying big acts get more per stream?

The big acts may get more per stream because of 2 factors:

1) the Spotify allocation algorithm of subscription payments works top-down from the most popular artists' percentage of total streams instead of bottom-up from individuals' play logs. (The top comment of a previous HN thread discusses this.[1])

2) Some record labels have (had?) negotiated sweetheart deals with Spotify for different revenue share and stream payouts. So a Universal/Sony/Warner major label with a roster of desirable artists that Spotify wanted may get slightly more per stream than an unknown indie label with no leverage.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9226497

matthoiland2• 7 years ago

I don't think Spotify (streaming services) are influencing the composition of new music – listening habits are mostly unchanged since popular music in the 50's. The 3-minute song with the initial hook is a product of 50's AM radio. Whereas Radiohead/Sigur Ros/Slowdive artists with long builds do so intentionally, and their listeners enjoy that about them.

But.... what has changed is the frequency in which artists need to release content in order to compete in the algorithm arena. Some artists understand this, and more singles, EPs and early album previews allow for more "touch points" with their audiences throughout the year.

billmalarky• 7 years ago

Platforms like Spotify, YouTube, etc, are a marketing channel - not a revenue channel. They can be used effectively to develop an audience, but not to monetize it.

For example see Pusheen the cat. Started off as a tumblr web comic/character and now generates millions in merchandising revenue:

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/how-an-internet-cat-craze-be...

geden3• 7 years ago

Not true for Spotify, if you are regularly racking up millions of plays ie you are hitting editorial playlists, then Spotify is very lucrative. Good Spotify stats also signals to promoters that you are a good to book, so it boosts live income.

I'd agree on YouTube however, artists I work with see very little income from YouTube, which is quite sickening and problematic for artists given how much of the younger demographic use YouTube as a primary source of music.

wwweston7• 7 years ago

Platforms like Spotify, YouTube, etc, are a marketing channel - not a revenue channel

Which would be cool, if Spotify wasn't meant to be a replacement for a revenue channel.

lmpostor• 7 years ago

You can't replace something that is dead.

shmerl4• 7 years ago

I prefer to buy, not rent music. Luckily we have enough DRM-free music stores around that simply sell you music files. FLAC is the best option.

kilroy123• 7 years ago

Like what stores?

ApolloFortyNine• 7 years ago

Beatport and Bandcamp, at least.

Though obligatory fuck Beatport, they only give you 24 hours to download what you buy and then the only way to download again is to rebuy, or beg. Even a FLAC is only ~30MB, there's no need to be this cheap.

ry-n• 7 years ago

https://bandcamp.com/ is really wonderful if you're asking about music in general and not artists hitting the billboard charts. However, as it supports free listening there isn't a barrier to searching around and discovering new things.

If you want some good coding music for the day I'd suggest starting with https://wanderband.bandcamp.com/

wallacoloo• 7 years ago

Bandcamp, for one. CDBaby used to offer flac downloads for 1.5x the cost of lossy, IIRC. Not sure what their role here is anymore.

tangental• 7 years ago

As someone who (happily) pays for music and needs it in a high quality format, I really like Bandcamp. After buying say 10 tracks I notice on my credit card statement 3 or 4 transactions, one for each of the labels the tracks belong to, so I know the artist should end up with a fair cut.

HuggableSquare• 7 years ago

I buy FLAC from digital stores pretty regularly and my favorites are (obligatory) Bandcamp, 7digital, HDTracks, and TIDAL. I also end up buying physical cd's pretty often and just ripping them to FLAC (this is actually my preferred method, I only go to digital if I have to). Alternatively, I've heard good things about murfie, but have never personally used it.

shmerl4• 7 years ago

Often on Bandcamp and GOG.

* https://bandcamp.com

* https://gog.com

Some other stores that you can find DRM-free FLAC in:

* https://www.7digital.com

* https://us.7digital.com

* https://www.hdtracks.com

* https://murfie.com

* https://www.junodownload.com

* https://store.tidal.com

* https://www.prestomusic.com

* https://www.prostudiomasters.com

* https://www.jamendo.com

fetus8• 7 years ago

https://bleep.com/

rchaud5• 7 years ago

Bandcamp for sure. The radio/streaming landscape is extremely bleak for anything that isn't Top 40 material. Fortunately, Bandcamp has become the go-to community to upload stuff that's more indie feeling. As a result, it's the place to go now if you're looking for music off the beaten path. Bandcamp also has a weekly newsletter highlighting artists across many different genres, from African guitar music from the '60s, post-punk and alternative rock, minimal electronic, indie hiphop, you name it.

kristianc3• 7 years ago

It's interesting how different types of music have thrived through the streaming economy.

Hip hop is huge on Spotify, where it struggled for radio play and sales before because commercial radio is so conservative (in the sense of risk-averse). Then there's the whole Billie Eilish thing: huge on Spotify, almost no radio play at all.

On the other hand, there are Billboard 100 artists who are more or less absent from the streaming landscape. Some sell lots of albums but aren't on the streaming charts at all.

It's probably not as simple as saying that streaming is only good for established artists, but bad for the long tail. For some of the previous long tail, it's been very good. And for some of the oldies, it's been phenomenal - Spotify enables them to monetize their back catalogue with near zero promotion or distribution costs, year round.

linuxftw3• 7 years ago

Hip hop is huge on Spotify, where it struggled for radio play and sales before because commercial radio is so conservative.

What? See how many rap albums are in this list [1].

1: https://www.billboard.com/archive/charts/2000/top-album-sale...

kristianc3• 7 years ago

There's a bit of cherry picking going on choosing a year where Eminem and Jay-Z were at their peak. 2000 was probably one of the top three years in the last 20 or so for hip hop.

Scheduling Eminem for radio play while he is arguably the biggest artist on the planet is not really going out on a limb.

bitwize• 7 years ago

Hip-hop has been on the mainstream radar for about 30 years, dude. If Spotify had come out in '90 (that's a "Wonders of the World Wide Web" video begging to be made), you'd have a point. But as it is, for a while in tge early 2000s the Billboard 100 was consistently topped by R&B acts, or as Chris Rock liked to call it, "singing over rap beats".

Where Spotify comes into play is granting exposure to artists who are still trying to make it, or whom mainstream radio won't play. But that's cross-genre and diesn't affect the mainstream viability of hip-hop itself.

geden3• 7 years ago

Spotify has had a severe and negative effect on musicians who make what I term 'peak experience music'. Amazing music, but not something you listen to every day. Say you listen once a month or even just a few times a year.

Before: 2 listens = dealer price of a CD in UK = about £7.5 (on a good UK indie that's split 50/50 with the artist).

Now: 2 listens = income from 2 streams on Spotify = about £0.0006

I'm thinking of artists like Autechre.

Spotify is starting the shape the sort of music that artists can be successful with, in a bad way.

GuiA• 7 years ago

If you care about an artist, buy things from them. Records, tee shirts, posters, concert tickets, etc. Streaming revenue is essentially a rounding error.

pertsix• 7 years ago

This is not true/unfair interpretation.

An artist does not get paid after the first payment from the label from the sale of a CD. If you play the CD on repeat, the artist does not benefit, nor does the label.

/Labels/ get paid for every single listen on Spotify.

There is also Spotify Direct, too, and the artist can directly benefit more than if they went with a label.

neves• 7 years ago

I spend less music in streaming than before, but surely a lot of people didn't spend US$20 each month in music

wwweston7• 7 years ago

If something hasn't "necessarily" saved musicians, then there's not much of a defense of whatever else it's done for the industry.

And any idea that services like Spotify were just the only way forward to revenue is one that thoroughly ignores the growth of digital recording sales that took place independent of it (not to mention what they may well have been like if it'd never happened).

Buffet streaming services marry the worst of piracy and the old-school middleman capture. They give the illusory impression that you're actually rewarding value.

ninth_ant• 7 years ago

Buffet streaming services marry the worst of piracy and the old-school middleman capture.

You have an interesting perspective... as a consumer for me Spotify marries the best of those two worlds. I get the music I want and discoverability, quality, and ease of use is extremely good.

wwweston7• 7 years ago

You're talking experience rather than economics. The consumer experience of Spotify is certainly much more convenient and pleasant than the experience of P2P piracy.

And it turns out that can be true even while the economics of buffet streaming services simultaneously effect the drastic cuts in first-order revenue that piracy brought directing it instead to distributor and label.

thegayngler3• 7 years ago

I would argue that most musicians should be salaried employees making 80-150k. The label would then handle everything else. The musicians only need to focus on creation and performing. I have always been interested in the problem Spotify is trying to solve for. However, I think they've only solved half the problem. The other half of the problem is solved by putting long tail musicians on a salary and then they can graduate out of that once they achieve a certain level of commercial success.

(Why is this being downvoted?) It is on topic and is not at all hostile.

rhizome2• 7 years ago

This is essentially the pre-Beatles model we saw in Tin Pan Alley and the Brill Building. Carole King's biggest hits were written for like $75/week. It declined as musicians started writing and recording their own songs and being self-contained creative acts, not to mention the, shall we say, "unfair equity strategies" the record labels used. That is, it's all well and good until the bosses take all the big money.

thegayngler3• 7 years ago

That's interesting. I didn't know this but I think this model should be brought back for most cases I think safe guards can be put into place to guard against "unfair equity strategies".

kevincennis• 7 years ago

The problem with this is that it requires really successful artists to work for far less than the value they create, which they won't – because they know they could make far more money independently.

And without the top performers subsidizing the salaries of everyone else, the whole thing falls apart.

thegayngler3• 7 years ago

Top performers are already working for far less than the value they create allegedly. Usually, there are a whole host of people working on a project.

Right now you have fake writing and producing credits simply designed to generate a stream of income for the musician. I think going to a salary would allow people who are best at writing or production or something other than singing being able to focus and it brings the cost to produce a record down.

You may or may not be able to make more money independently. You never know when the public is going to move on to some other sounds and you never know the perks that are lost as a result. The top of the top performers probably could swing the independence but for many it may not be the way to go. The bottom line is that for the vast majority of musicians a salary system could be better to work under.

I think everything should be on the table as it relates to how the music business is run and that's what the Spotify CEO said he was interested in. He's just doing from one side instead of both sides of the equation. That's why the vast majority artists and content creators are on the losing end of Streaming.

rob74• 7 years ago

The thing that fascinates me about Spotify and other streaming services is that the people who weren't willing to fork out 15$ for a CD in the past are now willing to pay 10$ every month for... pretty much nothing at all, if you think about it?!

codetrotter• 7 years ago

pretty much nothing at all

Except for instant access to what is probably the biggest collection of music in the world. I don’t mean to be snarky but, have you ever used Spotify? It’s a godsend.

renjimen• 7 years ago

You're getting a service? I used to buy a CD a week and listened to less music than I do now with Spotify for a quarter of the cost. Yes, it's nice to have a physical collection but I'd rather discover more new music

dmitriid2• 7 years ago

willing to pay 10$ every month for... pretty much nothing at all

A collection of 14 million songs doesn't sound like "nothing at all"

melq• 7 years ago

For a company that doesn’t really make anything

People think technology just develops itself huh?

kraftman• 7 years ago

What technology are they developing that people are asking for?

dmitriid2• 7 years ago

So, Spotify pays 70% of revenue to labels. In the end it's labels who pay the artists.

Why does no one, literally no one ask: where the hell does that money disappear? Everyone is busy writing 20,000-word essays on how streaming is bad for artists. Maybe, just maybe, it's not streaming that's bad but the labels and their agreements with both the artists and the streaming services?

IloveHN84• 7 years ago

It saved music labels from illegal p2p (maybe). But it introduced the shitty model pay-per-service and now you need 10 accounts to get 10 different things. The same applies for videos.

The unique true service that can centralise everything is still Kodi + plugins

esilver2• 7 years ago

This interview sets up this false dichotomy where people ostensibly accessed music by spending $15 on a CD or not at all. The contention seems to be that piracy/Napster were a forgone conclusion because there was no real choice.

People listened to ad-supported radio or they listened to records socially or borrowed them. That’s how it worked for about 80 years.

I’m not defending the music industry, its practices, or its stalwart backwardness. But suggesting music was inaccessible is plainly false.

rchaud5• 7 years ago

Or they made copies of friend's records ("ripping"). the CD-R drive has been around for 2 decades now, and came as a default option on many laptops and desktops in the early 2000s. And before that, people had CD/Casette Boomboxes where you could record CD tracks to the cassette. It was the only way to make mix tapes.

I remember the days of ripping CDs borrowed from friends on a 4x speed drive; back then, you could do 8x but there was a risk of file corruption/recording failure.

esilver2• 7 years ago

I completely forgot about this set of practices. Yes, a huge part of youth culture concerned itself with the creation and sharing of mix tapes. Looked at through this lens it makes me almost wistful thinking about the mix CDs I exchanged with friends in high school. They took a fair amount of work to put together and were often deeply personalized for the receiver. Makes you wonder who’s missing out, us or “kids these days.”

Animats• 7 years ago

Now can someone do Spotify for old movies? The online Netflix catalog keeps shrinking. Studios are cracking down on Youtube showing movies that used to be used as filler on late-night TV.

Daishiman2• 7 years ago

People love to complain about nothing, eh?

Think about what the distribution landscape for musicians used to be like in the past.

You can literally put up your entire music catalog at almost no effort and and generate enough popularity to support your act through live plays. Live shows have always been the main source of revenue for artists.

People saying that the situation for artists is bleak have no idea of what they're talking about. It has never in history been easier to start a music act and get followers from all around the world. It has never been easier to concentrate fans of every possible little genre into their own communities.

What most people don't realize is that the live act scene has exploded all over the world. There a literally thousands of live music festivals going on every summer that just weren't there 20 years ago. Modern festival culture is fueled by streaming media, Soundcloud, BandCamp and Youtube.

I follow scenes where an artist's greatest hit gets 20k plays on YouTube and 500 physical vinyl copies. That's literally enough to make a living and tour around a little on your free weekends. How possible do you think that was before Youtube?

Spotify Saved the Music Industry (But Not Necessarily Musicians)

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