How does Spotify make money for the record industry?

[Karloff70]

Originally Posted by tenfold

The benefits of lowering the threshold for the masses to gorge on music are hard to pin down and serve to you on a silver platter. What I'm saying is, if spotify truly is detrimental to the continued production and/or quality of music, we have yet to see any signs of it.

lol.......the signs are that finally people like Coldplay and others are opting out basically saying "no, you're not putting my stuff out there for free".

Some say it's like radio, gets your stuff known. It's good for you. That's bullshit. If you don't know of the music already you stand a slim chance in hell to stumble upon it there, unlike on radio. Also unlike radio, here you can listen to it again and again. For free. In arguably decent quality. So, remind me again, WHY THE F*** WOULD I BUY THE RECORD NOW? It's like having all the records and not having payed a penny, consumers paradise. And yes, I have it too and love it while it now is here, but I will not be sorry when it's gone as that to me will be a signal of the start of that 'next phase' I am expecting, including thieving files being made just a little more tedious and risky all hopefully adding to a next chapter where making a living in this will be a little easier again.

Please do tell how Spotify helps anyone sell their music for a living???!!! Benefits? Silver platter? LOL Wake up man!

[tenfold]

There is, and has always been, more to the music business than selling records. A lot more. And yet, I personally spend tons more money on recorded music then ever before. I'm paying to get rid of the ads mostly, so 5e month * 12 = 60e a year. While the major labels are reluctantly allowing the phenomenon of streaming services to unfold they are still approaching the problem with closed minds while bitching about it every step of the way.

These are philosophical discussions I'm not sure we want to get in to, but mostly I'm allergic to this obsession over records records records. Evolve ffs!


Please do tell how Spotify helps anyone sell their music for a living???!!!

I see that you don't believe in the indirect benefits and I already said I won't serve you them on a silver platter since it would be a purely speculative debate. But none of you have yet commented on the first statement I made. If the music business is in such a rut please explain why the quantity of produced music keeps growing and the quality is at least the same. If anything we should keep moving in the direction we're moving until we notice a clear drop in either quantity or quality, and that's when we've found the correct balance of copyright restriction vs free-for-all.

[Karloff70]

Originally Posted by tenfold

There is, and has always been, more to the music business than selling records. A lot more. And yet, I personally spend tons more money on recorded music then ever before. I'm paying to get rid of the ads mostly, so 5e month * 12 = 60e a year. While the major labels are reluctantly allowing the phenomenon of streaming services to unfold they are still approaching the problem with closed minds while bitching about it every step of the way.

These are philosophical discussions I'm not sure we want to get in to, but mostly I'm allergic to this obsession over records records records. Evolve ffs!


Please do tell how Spotify helps anyone sell their music for a living???!!!

I see that you don't believe in the indirect benefits and I already said I won't serve you them on a silver platter since it would be a purely speculative debate. But none of you have yet commented on the first statement I made. If the music business is in such a rut please explain why the quantity of produced music keeps growing and the quality is at least the same. If anything we should keep moving in the direction we're moving until we notice a clear drop in either quantity or quality, and that's when we've found the correct balance of copyright restriction vs free-for-all.

I'm sorry, but what you are saying in case you haven't noticed is we need to get the right balance of what is thieving and what we now in novel fashion 'should' name something other, while it is nothing but basic thieving as last I looked intellectual PROPERTY meant exactly that. Or else we might as well slacken the laws on people being allowed to go into a shop and walking out with stuff without paying while we're at it. Whether there are other parts of the music industry is neither here nor there. People make a product. It gets stolen. You say, cool, let the stealing be called ok. I get the impression you do not live off music income.

[rack gear]

Originally Posted by tenfold

Please do tell how Spotify helps anyone sell their music for a living???!!!

I see that you don't believe in the indirect benefits

there are no benefits to spotify, indirect or otherwise, unless you own equity.

[Sonatta Music]

Hi all,

We are Sonatta Music and we have been using this forum for a very long time but never registered. So as we are in the press every month now. We have decided to bring our news to the forum and get some ideas and options.

Here's the plot:

The core idea is to let Facebook users know instantly what their friends are listening to on Spotify and, by doing so, giving tips about “who are the cool acts at the moment” and, as a consequence, helping people discover new artists and boost artists sales.

This is all very fine and looks promising. However, in order to help the major labels fight piracy and the culture of getting music online for free, the reality isn’t as rosy. It’s been a while since Spotify ceased to offer a decent free membership plan. Today, users are limited to only ten hours of free music streaming per month. If one wants to have unlimited access, one has to upgrade to one of the two plans available, with prices starting from £4.99. It is definitely not a lot of money, but people tend to resist paying for music that they do not properly own.

In truth, everybody is taking a gamble here. Major and small labels, publishers and artists don’t really know whether they will see any real benefits from the alliance between social networking and streaming music services. Facebook does not know whether it will benefit from having its millions of users sharing what are they listening to, and Spotify is yet to find out whether it will help increase the number of users paying for the service.

From my personal experience, listening to music online does not give me the sense of security that I get when I know that I have the tracks stored on my computer and available at any given time without having to bother about a connection. Maybe that’s the way Spotify needs to go if it wants to thrive, but then it would depend on cutting difficult deals with the labels and artists. Or not.

Please let us know your thoughts about it and also ideas for the future.

Best


Mike & Joao (www.sonatta.co.uk)





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[rack gear]

to me, the facebook/spotify partnership is really a non-issue.

getting paid is the issue.

stopping piracy is the issue.

spotify is sham for everyone but the major labels with equity investments, that's the issue.

[rack gear]

not that this should be news...
Digital Music News - Study: Spotify Is Detrimental to Music Purchasing...

[AwwDeOhh]

Originally Posted by rack gear

not that this should be news...
Digital Music News - Study: Spotify Is Detrimental to Music Purchasing...

And that's why (besides their non-existant pay to artists...) that there will be/already is starting a mass migration of artists getting their stuff pulled from Spotify.

Unless Spotify changes their payment to creators model, it's a definate 'stay away from' for musicians.

[rack gear]

Here's some real world Spotify math...

$1,062.31 From 157,579 Plays of 500 Songs over 3 1/2 months...

- or -

.0067 per stream

- or -

105 Streams = 1 Itunes Song Download...

The way this is trending now, I may breakeven over a year on the Tunecore costs to upload this experiment... and I put in a few titles to see if it would have a negative effect on sales, which also appears to be the case on the more popular titles (which I'll probably be removing soon as to stop the cannibalization).

No surprise, Spotify works just like piracy, the most popular titles are the most played, but not at enough ROI to make it make sense.

Meanwhile, there is NO DISCOVERY mechanism to drive sales of developing artists and smaller titles.

LOSE / LOSE / LOSE

There is no found money here, only cannibalization. The only people profiting from this are distributors and labels with equity.

[Don Hills]

... all of these are sapping the juice out of higher-end impulse buying, once a music industry lifeblood. "New sources of listening, watching, and researching make it even easier for the average music fan to avoid taking 'high value' action, e.g. paying either for a CD, download, or subscription," the researchers noted.

And about time, too. Over the years I've developed a healthy resentment of being charged for an album full of music that I only know one or two tracks off (heard on the radio), with little opportunity to find out if I like the rest of the album before buying it. Nowadays I take every opportunity to listen to full albums before buying them, and ironically I now buy more albums than I used to because I can buy with confidence. Over the last few years I've worked through a huge list of albums I didn't originally buy because I didn't know if I'd like them.

On topic: I don't think Spotify's rates are high enough, either. For Spotify to survive, I would expect their rates to come up until they strike a revenue balance between subscribers and providers. (Too low, content providers leave. Too high, subscribers leave.)

[AwwDeOhh]

Yeah.
Thing is, Spotify isn't a streaming site. It pays (worse than) a streaming site.. but it's an 'On Demand' site that allows several thousands of downloads to 'listen offline'.

You'd be financially much much better off selling your entire album for 10-cents than signing up with Spotify... (and if selling your album for 10-cents won't bring you into the red, don't expect Spotify to be any better.. in fact it is much worse.)

Other actual streaming sites, on the other hand, are a much much better bet for the artist. Pandora, Rhapsody, ect all both pay better and have 'discovery'. no one, i mean NO ONE will 'stumble' onto your music at Spotify...

As much as i fuggin hate piracy, i'd almost rather that - than sign up with Spotify atm. Spotify= signing a legal license for them to pirate your music...

[huggybear]

My 2cents...interesting points.

The Awkward, Unanswered Questions That Led to Coldplay’s Spotify Embargo

[tenfold]

I know the solution! -- PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet on Vimeo

[rack gear]

oh lord stop it, that's nonsense as has been addressed in many threads already... the truth is, the internet is ALREADY broken, thank God there's some effort going into FIXING it...

Originally Posted by terryhart

I've written up a "walkthrough" of the House version of the bill introduced yesterday: Stop Online Piracy Act [Walkthrough] | Copyhype

You can see what the bill actually does instead of hearing about it second-hand from tech interest groups.

while you're at it, if you want to truly understand what's going on and how we got here, read these two books:


Free Ride, How Digital Parasites Are Destroying The Culture Business ... by Robert Levine
http://www.amazon.com/Free-Ride-Para.../dp/0385533764
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/M...17011&s=143455

You Are Not A Gadget by Jaron Lanier
Amazon.com: You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (9780307269645): Jaron Lanier: Books
Connecting to the iTunes Store.
iTunes - Books - You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier

oh yeah, Stopping THEFT is NOT a FREE SPEECH ISSUE... Duh!
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/perm.../111104clinton

[dan p]

One more reason not to like spotify.The publishers will take what they can
and leave the pennies to musicians.
Are consumers the winner here and does anybody listen to 100's of songs.
I sure don't.

[mattiasnyc]

Originally Posted by dan p

One more reason not to like spotify.The publishers will take what they can
and leave the pennies to musicians.

How is that the fault of Spotify?

[dan p]

Originally Posted by mattiasnyc

How is that the fault of Spotify?

By cheapening the music business further and I'm not blaming Spotify per se.Thats the music biz in general right now.
There is no need to go into detail here,you cannot survive as a musician/composer on pennies.
Publishers are eager right now to make money where they can at your expense.
Don't forget that publishers could care less about you as a composer for the bottom line is revenue.

[dan p]

Originally Posted by tenfold

There is, and has always been, more to the music business than selling records. A lot more. And yet, I personally spend tons more money on recorded music then ever before. I'm paying to get rid of the ads mostly, so 5e month * 12 = 60e a year. While the major labels are reluctantly allowing the phenomenon of streaming services to unfold they are still approaching the problem with closed minds while bitching about it every step of the way.

These are philosophical discussions I'm not sure we want to get in to, but mostly I'm allergic to this obsession over records records records. Evolve ffs!


Please do tell how Spotify helps anyone sell their music for a living???!!!

I see that you don't believe in the indirect benefits and I already said I won't serve you them on a silver platter since it would be a purely speculative debate. But none of you have yet commented on the first statement I made. If the music business is in such a rut please explain why the quantity of produced music keeps growing and the quality is at least the same. If anything we should keep moving in the direction we're moving until we notice a clear drop in either quantity or quality, and that's when we've found the correct balance of copyright restriction vs free-for-all.

Very simple really!
Computers have turned everyone into a producer/writer/Photographer.....the list goes on.So many produce sub par music you wonder why here in america they keep playing oldies while letting the few new artists break/money their way into the biz,and those who are talented are either old and not marketable/no money to put into making you a star.It the entertainment business.
The biz has further been split by special interest.My words for so many genres and too many liking artists spread over the creative map.
Hard to get traction in sales and notoriety without the big dollars of the last of the mohicans,the big record companies.
So what you have is great music by the few who do it for art sake,and those who are in it for entertainment sake.Some blur that line as well.
That said,I think Europe has a completely different scene than America.

[AwwDeOhh]

Here's the reality of Spotify as a buisness model for musicians... :

The Musical Disconnect: A Pointless Debate

[rack gear]

update, looks like the truth is in the numbers...

Black Keys - No On Spotify
The Black Keys Choose to Block El Camino Stream on Spotify | mxdwn.com News

Cold Play - No On Spotify
Coldplay Withholds Latest Album from Spotify

Paul McCartney - No On Spotify
Paul McCartney yanks his solo albums from Spotify. Oh NO! They were all SOOO GOOOOOD!!! | News Article | Tiny Mix Tapes

Projekt Records - No On Spotify
Digital Music News - Projekt Records: Spotify Is 'Not a Viable Way Forward...'

200+ Labels Leave Spotify
200+ Labels Withdraw Their Music From Spotify: Are Its Fortunes Unravelling? | Epicenter | Wired.com

...and if they're opting out of Spotify, don't you think they'd be opting out of the pirate bay, grooveshark and the like if they actually had the ability too?

Originally Posted by tenfold

I know the solution! -- PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet on Vimeo

and uh... the internet is already broken when artists can't get paid because tech corporations are stealing from them.... Protect IP would FIX the internet...