For anyone who hasn't listened yet, Four Tet is really good. A lot of base in very organic sounding samples from analogue instruments like hand pans, chimes, xylophones, steel pan drums and similar kind of percussion but it's still pretty much techno/house electronic music (not tech house) [1]. His newer stuff [2] is starting to sound a bit more synth based but it's still really top work.<p>I'm glad they're doing something with fighting to get proper compensation, the industry really needs to check themselves in terms of respect for who's out there doing the hard creative work. Way to be a repellent to talent, Domino Records!<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWInZ4N6C2g" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWInZ4N6C2g</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6T9Q5mUYqc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6T9Q5mUYqc</a>
> The difference is far from academic because most artists receive 50% of the royalties for a licence but a much lower figure, typically between 12% and 22%, for a sale.<p>Hard to comprehend how a label can seriously claim they deserve 86.5% of streaming revenue. Not like they sunk any considerable money into Four Tet, just sat back and watched the money roll in. What a ripoff, that's 2.2 million streams to make $1000 on spotify.
13.5%? Jeez.<p>No wonder so many 'signed' artists have a problem with streaming. And no wonder so many young artists are choosing to self release. We really are getting to a point where labels need to properly prove their worth.
> After the advent of iTunes and Spotify, labels often argued that downloads and streams should be counted as sales.<p>I'm guessing this is still the case for many artists. How can they argue this at all? Who is the sale to? I doubt the record labels would say that I purchased a song after listening to it on a streaming service.
Random thoughts:<p>At various points in the past, record labels were the ones taking the big risks and getting the big paybacks, just like any business, fronting the funds for expensive studio time and the people to run them.<p>And many bands took personal offence at this, and continue to do, despite being the beneficiaries of the whole sordid industry at the time. Now that the costs of production and distribution have dropped in certain areas - there’s still things that you need Abbey Road Studio One and 96 expert musicians for - artists expect a fairer deal.<p>But who decides what the value was of the label’s work in the first place? If they did all the promotion and legwork to get the artist into the limelight and keep them there, does or doesn’t that work deserve perpetual royalties?<p>I don’t know why streaming rights and licensing weren’t newly negotiated deals but I guess for artists like FourTet who arrived when they did, downloads and streaming were covered by a ‘digital’ clause.<p>Labels are full of people who love music and work their nuts off promoting musicians, building their web and social presences, getting them booked onto support slots, playlists, radio shows, festivals, cleaning up after them, and championing them, but labels are also cynical and heartless and will drop an act without compunction if sales don’t happen. I’ve hundreds of brilliant promo albums on my shelves from my days on student radio and nearly all those acts released nothing more.<p>Given the scale of competition and number of acts, I have no idea how anyone could be a sales success without a central organization coordinating things. I don’t know much about Taylor Swift but is she a huge success without the involvement of a label?
I’m happy to hear it went his way. He’s deserving and I was surprised Domino pulled his back catalog in the dispute. I enjoyed his back catalog and hope he sees income for it.