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Post by bellyshere on Dec 21, 2020 19:28:26 GMT
Are they evil? Ripping off musicians. Or, are they a valuable way to get your music heard? There are loads of companies who will stick your music on all these streaming services for a fee. Cd Baby, tunecore etc. You used to be able to just stick your own releases on Spotify but i don't think they do that now. Anyone got their stuff on streaming sites?
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stringdriventhing
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Post by stringdriventhing on Dec 21, 2020 19:38:15 GMT
We have. I think it comes as part of the subscription to the mastering software that my mate uses. Presumably if we stop paying the subscription then it will be removed. I don't think many people ever listen to our music anyway, so it doesn't really matter if our stuff is on all these platforms or or not.
As for the ripping off musicians argument then yes, I think they are. It's worse if you're a well-known artist that could be selling stuff anyway. I do use spotify for convenience, but if I come across something that I really like and listen to a lot then I make a point of paying for a download or a physical CD.
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Post by bellyshere on Dec 21, 2020 19:58:38 GMT
My foray into mastering is just trimming the shuffling about in my seat off.
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Post by bellyshere on Dec 21, 2020 20:06:30 GMT
Yeah, I use streaming services but I always buy if i like it. However, loads of people do not.
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Post by Matt Milton on Dec 22, 2020 11:58:54 GMT
If I wanted to make money I wouldn't put anything I recorded onto Spotify. It just disincentives people from buying via Bandcamp. Also, apparently streaming uses more power than downloading and playing directly from a device, so streaming is less environmentally friendly.
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Post by jackorion on Dec 22, 2020 12:14:59 GMT
This is on my mind a lot at the moment as I start thinking about a release ‘strategy’ for the album I’ve just recorded...
Part of me feels that I’d like to NOT put it on any streaming service as I feel that they all essentially trick consumers into thinking they are paying for the music when they are in fact paying for the delivery method.
The streaming figures on my previous releases are nothing to shout about, but I average 2-3000 listens across all streaming platforms a year at the moment.
Since 2017 I have earned £30 from streaming - this is once the distributor I use (Routenote) have taken their 15%.
In contrast I had one song played on BBC6 nearly two years ago. That single play has earned me about £60 - this is because I get paid by PRS as the copyright holder for the song, PPL as the copyright holder of the recording, and also by PPL as the performer.
So part of me feels that by uploading my music to streaming sites I’m essentially agreeing that it is worthless. Whereas, of course, it’s not - I’ve already spent the best part of £2000 recording my album and that’s before mastering, artwork, and physical product has been paid for. And of course that doesn’t include all of my time writing the songs, and all the time I spend on admin making it all possible.
Of course, on the other hand, I want people to hear my music and I want them to come to any future shows, and I want them to follow me online so I can build an audience and, the fact remains, that a lot of people nowadays only listen to music via Spotify or something similar- my stepdaughters would never download an album or a track, if they heard an artist they liked and couldn’t find them on Spotify they’d just stop looking - in their mind Spotify is the only place to listen to music and they’ve not grown up having to ‘own’ music or films etc so they don’t really see that as a concept - all ‘content’ to them is digital and available to stream.
so I’m faced with choosing to support a system that I fundamentally disagree with in order to get my music out there on the platform that most people use...
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Post by PistolPete on Dec 22, 2020 12:28:45 GMT
It's easy to paint Spotify as the bad guys, but in reality, it's rather more complicated than that. I use Spotify as a listener. I'm also on it ( here & here plus all other major streaming services, if anyone wants to check out some music). I don't think it's evil particularly, so much as like any corporation it's effectively amoral - answerable to its shareholders, not to the musicians whose music it seeks to monetise. I also think that for all its faults, it's probably the best solution for the distribution of music in the digital era anyone has come up with and for that reason, it's going to be a fact of life for the foreseeable future. FWIW the revenue from streaming services actually works out better per-listener than national radio. The major record labels have actually enjoyed a big revival of fortunes off the back of the move to streaming, compared to the era of paid-for-downloads and widespread piracy. As the owners of the major catalogues, they had the leverage to negotiate generous terms from the streaming companies. So you may ask why do you see James Taylor or David Crosby or whoever keep sharing tiny royalty statements? Historical contracts from the 60s & 70s tend to give the artists a relatively small percentage the mechanical royalties. You can argue about the fairness of that of course, but they also enjoyed a level of investment most artists today can only dream of, with companies offering generous advances and being willing to weather a few loss-making albums to allow them time to build a following. It's almost always the mechanical royalty as well - the song publishing is reported separately and songwriters generally keep 50% or more of it. The share of money going to publishing has also gone up in the streaming era compared to on physical sales so when you see those you are only seeing what they get from one of two streams of revenue. One of the reasons Spotify have started heavily pushing podcasts is that the amount of revenue going to the creators of music has made it virtually impossible for them to make money. They don't have to pay the creators of podcasts, who are generally funded by sponsors and advertisers. For all of that, I make pennies from what I have up there. The discoverability question is rather two-sided as well. In theory, anyone in the whole wide world can find and listen to your music. In practice, it's such a crowded market that those who curate major playlists have replaced the old school A&R men as the new gatekeepers. Fundamentally the problem is that of perceived 'value' on the part of the consumer. Although the modern digital music (& movie & book) consumer is willing to spend significant money on technology, without a physical product they don't then expect to pay for the music itself. With CDs and records, only a relatively small amount actually went on production and distribution and most of the cover price went on A&R, recording costs, advances, sparkly guitars and whatever else was necessary to get the artist out there, but without something they can hold in their hand to show for their money people feel covering those costs just for the privilege of listening to the music is somehow a rip-off. It's a quirk of the human psyche, and whoever figures out how to convince people to part with money for digital art has a glittering market career ahead of them.
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Post by PistolPete on Dec 22, 2020 12:36:55 GMT
In contrast I had one song played on BBC6 nearly two years ago. That single play has earned me about £60 - this is because I get paid by PRS as the copyright holder for the song, PPL as the copyright holder of the recording, and also by PPL as the performer. If you aren't getting PRS money for streams then something has gone wrong - they should still be collecting publishing on your behalf from the licence they have in place with the streaming service?
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Post by jackorion on Dec 22, 2020 14:01:40 GMT
In contrast I had one song played on BBC6 nearly two years ago. That single play has earned me about £60 - this is because I get paid by PRS as the copyright holder for the song, PPL as the copyright holder of the recording, and also by PPL as the performer. If you aren't getting PRS money for streams then something has gone wrong - they should still be collecting publishing on your behalf from the licence they have in place with the streaming service? I do get PRS money for streams but it's percentages of pennies...
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Post by bellyshere on Dec 22, 2020 16:26:49 GMT
The streaming services aren't going away. There are still lots of young people buying physical stuff though. The last record fair i went to was full of yoofs.
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Post by martinrowe on Dec 22, 2020 17:21:50 GMT
I don't try to sell my music so I'm not speaking from any kind of experience. This thread makes me think of when I was a teenager and was first getting interested in music. There was one record shop in Plymouth (it would be packed on a Saturday morning) where specific records might be found. It was part of the fun hearing about a band and then searching out their music. Some was almost impossible to find. This was especially true of Blues, which was why most of my early Blues records were picked up in second hand shops. It was, sort of, the opposite of the situation now where anything is easily accessible. It makes me wonder if this easily accessibility will give rise to that 'rarity' element that has all but disappeared. The thing was then, was that, supposedly, these bands were targeting their music to a specific kind of listener i.e. the underground scene. I think part of the attraction was that they were trying to do things in a different way. Just thinking out loud really.
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Post by andyhowell on Dec 22, 2020 17:50:42 GMT
An interssting topic and something I am grappling with at the moment. Both Pete and Ben's comments reflect different sides of the same coin. Back in the good old days very few artists made it on to commercial radio and R1, which is hwere tghey got their explosure from. They could gig incesantly to build up a following but they needed that airplay not least in order to get a record deal. Selling records was the thing then. Of course, only a handful of people made money — labels invested in people and stood 2 or 3 bad selling albums but only because they had blockbusters to anchor them. It was a small eco system. Not many big labels and not many radio stations. The internet has revolutionised both the delivery of music and the discovery of it. This is inevitable given what the internet is. You might say it is easier to conenct with more artists than ever before, or you might say music has been far more fragmented than what it was — both are probably true. So the dilemma is this. You make an album but then how do people encounter it? Once you've sold a copy to your mates and family where do you go next? Streaming gives you an option of meeting mnore people but this is hit and miss. A review on a local radio station might help but how much? In the world we are talking about we are talking about hard graft and that means live gigs. You do loads of gigs and hope to sell a few CDs and so on. In the days when there were actually gigs I used to marvel at how hard PistolPete worked. I'd be surprised if Pete ever turned down a gig :-) From what Pete has said before — and from conversations with him — this is what Pete wants to do with his life. He is living a dream but it is as if we have redefined the word 'dream'. In our world this level of graft is hard. I recently heard Martin Simpson talking baout how at the beginning of lockdown he was in conversation with his manager as to how he could not tour as much — he's getting on a bit! Every few years or so I meet Martin carthy on a train somewhere. He's well into his 70's and still touring whenever he can as there is no pension plan I guess. If you want your music out there can you afford to not use streaming services? But then wat benefit does getting you music out htere have — very little if some of the streaming incomes I've heard about are true. It is a portfolio existence. You hope to get paid gigs. You might get some streaming income whicg might help wiht the guitar strings. PRS income can be significant and if you write your own songs it is well worth it. You will hope to sell CDs at gigs. ANd you might hope that you are discovered big time as an artist or a songwriter! It must be hard to approach work as a full time musician not least as many of us who are not are motivated by simply getting their music heard. Otis Gibbs has a very interesting take on this in one of his recent podcasts. His main priority is sharing his music and he worries about making money it next! As they say — behind every folk artist is a wife with a secure job !!! Even Steve Knightly's wife is a GP. I was chatting to Steve Tilston at one ofthe last gigs I went to. Now Steve is now of a certain age! He seems to gig a lot. He was telling me there has been another change ovr the last 18 months which is thta people have stopped buying CDs at gigs! So te squeeze goes on! Ultimately, you have to hope that Streaming Service exposure leads to some album purchases. Does it? It's hard to know. But when services like Distrokid allow you to produce as much as you like for £25 a year maybe we should see this as almost marginal cost advertising? Maybe there will be a realignment over time. I put stuff on a variety of platforms inna very modest way but I am struck by the number of people that seem to use these to listen to new music — something I don't do unless it is from someone here. My problem is that I ama dinosaur. I have an account with TIDAL and use it sparingly. I still by an album when I really like something as I consider this to be my duty to the artsit, my way of saying thanks. I also like listenning on decent sound equipment. I am so yesterday I suppose. I guess the dream is getting further and further away and the hope ofmmaking a decent living is receeding fast as well. Finally, I contrast me with the younger people in my family. I scour the listings for local venues. (I gave up big areanas years ago). If something looks interesting I will search on YouTube or a streaming service. If somethgn really appeals I will buy a ticket or two for the gig. I tend not to go higher than £15 — and you have to be bloody good for me to pay that. If the gig is very good I might buy a CD. So, £15 for a ticket, £5 for beer and maybe £10 for a CD. ABout £30 if you are lucky. If you are vdyr lucky there are two of us and it might be £30. On top of this there are gigs in proper concert halls but there are few who can fill them these days. Ralph MCtell sometimes. Show of Hands. Richard Thompson? You will have your faves. And then there are festivals — I do probably two a year. Both are big expences and I tend to come back with a few CDs. THe youngsters seem to buy few CDs at all. They are more likely to buy PC games. They will go to festivals for the lager experience — but I bet they listen to the music on Spotify. Spotify turned a profit for the first time in 2019. I'm not sure TIDAL has evef made a profit and seems to survice by telcom companies buying big chunks of it. It is all pretty depressing. So, why do people do it? Wnat value do you get out of a life in music? But is this that different? I know loads of people that had an slbum out once in the 70's and 80's, who got a single played on John Peel. It was a life highlight but few of them are earning a living from music now. So,is Spotify evil? Probably not. Is it the internet? Is it us with hanging purchasing habits? Maybe — with music — we won't to what it is is 'till its gone!
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Post by lavaman on Dec 22, 2020 19:40:18 GMT
There was one record shop in Plymouth (it would be packed on a Saturday morning) where specific records might be found. It was part of the fun hearing about a band and then searching out their music. Some was almost impossible to find. This was especially true of Blues, which was why most of my early Blues records were picked up in second hand shops. It was, sort of, the opposite of the situation now where anything is easily accessible. It makes me wonder if this easily accessibility will give rise to that 'rarity' element that has all but disappeared. The thing was then, was that, supposedly, these bands were targeting their music to a specific kind of listener i.e. the underground scene. I think part of the attraction was that they were trying to do things in a different way. Just thinking out loud really. martinrowe, was that "Pete Russel's Hot Record shop". I've still got loads of LPs I bought there Iain
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Post by martinrowe on Dec 22, 2020 20:39:07 GMT
Yes Iain lavaman , Pete Russell's. In a previous post, you mentioned the hi-fi shop that bore his name that was on the top floor of a building around the corner. For some reason I was never brave enough to go in there. Probably not enough money, or not enough knowledge of tweeters, etc, or a combination of both. Some combination that seemed certain to lead to acute embarrassment in front of others, in my head anyway.
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Post by Amit on Dec 23, 2020 14:58:10 GMT
When I released my album Santiago, I decided to delay putting it out on Spotify for about 18 months, so I could sell physical CD’s and get some (a lot more!!) money back into my hands, coupled with a bit of PRS/PPL.
After I’d sold the majority of what I thought I would at gigs, I put it on Spotify and forgot all about it.
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