I haven’t been able to catch everything on Twitter, but Kno, do you think you could explain the Spotify issue further and why you’ve ultimately decided to make all the albums on the CL Bandcam free until further notice? I’m just curious because I didn’t quite get to read everything.
I’ve never used Spotify, and after seeing some of your tweets, it’s not something I’ll ever sign up for.
Doesn’t mean everyone should just download them free of course, they still deserve every penny. Kno simply said that he would rather have people who stream from Spotify get a free digital copy than think that their Spotify streams are actually helping pay and support the artists. Also, he made the point that people don’t realize it but Spotify and other tech executives that pay artists for streams are ripping the artists off just as much as labels have and making a ton of money from it.
I’ve been using Spotify the last few days and Kno’s tweets got me thinking. I think the ultimate/ideal digital music service would be a hybrid of Bandcamp and Spotify. Putting full albums on Bandcamp lets people stream any time they want for free anyway. Spotify is pretty awesome as a music fan, but I don’t see any buttons on it anywhere encouraging me to buy any artists music/merch.
If they could combine the ‘stream most any full album/song in high quality immediately and have the artist get a small royalty, plus scrobble to last.fm and have radio/‘related artists’ to discover new music’ aspect of Spotify with the some of the customizable artist and user friendly aspects of selling music and merch on Bandcamp, it would be the ultimate tool for both fans and artists.
So basically Bandcamp needs to make a software app that will take their fair share of every purchase, but at the same time give artists/labels (whose music is the very lifesource for all these bend-you-over companies) a majority of the dough that you click “Pay” for.
Spotify claims that all the artists on there get paid, but I know my friend’s band doesn’t get a cent and another guy I knew didn’t even know his album was on there until I mentioned it. I don’t know what the situation is, but if everyone does get paid then that should be a positive.
“Basically its like this: Spotify is only “artist-friendly” in that they are damn near the only streaming service that actually pays. It’s like saying your girlfriend is wife material because she fucks all your friends with condoms unlike those raw-dogging whores of your past—the upside only exists because the downside is some barrel-scraping horseshit. They use that angle—the fact they pay SOMETHING, even if its a sliver of a penny—to feign legitimacy, and it is indeed working. My only point is—just know you aren’t actually supporting artists by using this service. If you feel you’re getting your $9.99 worth, by all means use it. That is all they owe you as a consumer, and I’m not hating on capitalism—but that money is buying Daniel Ek another Bentley, not paying for our engineering, artwork & mastering.”
“I don’t argue with the tech side at all. Spotify is dope as far as layout, reliability, as a tool to spread music etc.—and my HOPE is that as revenues go up payout will increase, but knowing they already strike backdoor deals with majors so that “all streams aren’t equal”—because apparently one stream of a CL song isn’t worth as much as one stream of a Chris Brown song—and the CEO’s pompous attitude, I highly fucking doubt it. And if I champion THIS service, they “kill iTunes” but never start paying us more than a sliver of a penny, then what? I’m completely willing to quit music and get a dayjob if I truly have no fans, that isn’t at issue here—I simply can’t create, record, engineer, master, replicate and distribute music making $56 a month from streams while the company makes millions. It’s a principle issue—beyond the fact that $56 a month won’t even pay the electricity bill in my studio.”
That is all they owe you as a consumer, and I’m not hating on capitalism—but that money is buying Daniel Ek another Bentley, not paying for our engineering, artwork & mastering.”
This pretty much sums up all angst I have against the way spotify has things running. The priorities of who is receiving what is completely ass backwards. It almost feels that through cheating you out of the money you earned, deserve, and worked hard to make, they are only in turn cheating the users/costumers by not giving you the means/money that have you earned to create new music that we and others will all enjoy. For me, cheating the costumer is typically not the best business practice.
Kno said:
I simply can’t create, record, engineer, master, replicate and distribute music making $56 a month from streams while the company makes millions. It’s a principle issue—beyond the fact that $56 a month won’t even pay the electricity bill in my studio.”
This makes me Really $56?!? That’s just fucking bullshit.
In the end its almost a catch 22. Applications like spotify are needed to get the word out about the music and have new users share and listen to the music. Until someone changes the system, what can you do but “name your own price” on Bandcamp or rely on Itunes? And even there you risk losing money or profits.
I learned somewhere that the Itunes app store pays out 70% to developers, Is it the same when it comes to music (just curious)?
Either way, everything you said is pretty spot on about how greedy the music industry has become and is becoming.
Thanks for the thoughts.
More to Kno’s point, they constantly run commercials for those of us (myself included) who don’t pay for the subscription service - that literally say:
“PIRACY IS SO YESTERDAY! SPOTIFY PAYS YOUR FAVORITE ARTISTS! SIGN UP TODAY!”
Like… they’re selling you the idea that you’re supporting your favorite artists by giving money to Spotify - and then only pay out a sliver of a penny. It’s extremely underhanded and bullshit. I just look at it as a way to spread music around, but it is by no means “SUPPORTING” anything we do from a monetary standpoint.
QN5 said:More to Kno’s point, they constantly run commercials for those of us (myself included) who don’t pay for the subscription service - that literally say:
“PIRACY IS SO YESTERDAY! SPOTIFY PAYS YOUR FAVORITE ARTISTS! SIGN UP TODAY!”
Like… they’re selling you the idea that you’re supporting your favorite artists by giving money to Spotify - and then only pay out a sliver of a penny. It’s extremely underhanded and bullshit. I just look at it as a way to spread music around, but it is by no means “SUPPORTING” anything we do from a monetary standpoint.
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