For reference: Radiohead's pay-what-you-want model for <i>In Rainbows</i> was the first of its kind, and groundbreaking. It's entirely possible this starts a trend.<p>On the other end: I don't like the idea of new artists not getting paid (I try to go out of my way and buy tickets for indie musicians I like or, failing that, purchase swag), but as a consumer I like Spotify a lot. It's also hard for me to conflate the ideas that new artists are being trampled by Music 2.0 with success stories like Karmin and Chance the Rapper, who put out free material (via YouTube and a free mixtape, respectively) and the massive coverage launched them into the national spotlight.<p>You know what would be awesome? A Flattr-esque system for music. You pay $XX/mo, can listen to whatever, and your money gets divvied up to artists based on play count. (if half of my play count in July comes from Blind Pilot, for instance, then they get half my money.)
This is only for Thom Yorke solo tunes, Atoms for Peace music from Thom and Nigel, and Nigel's side project Ultraista. The two make the argument that new music is hurt in the Spotify revenue equation.<p>With the large stake of Spotify that is owned by the Majors and other large corporate entities such as Coca-Cola, it would be interesting if the 'independent labels' were to come out with some sort of streaming service of their own, whether it be on a label by label basis or on a combined level.<p>Anyways, let's see what happens with this in the news cycle.<p>Edit: Found an interesting Thom Yorke quote on his feelings about digital content:<p><i>Radiohead have often riffed on the edge of that thoroughly modern disjunction. From their landmark album OK Computer on, the band seemed like evangelists for the revolutionary possibilities of a digital world, self-releasing 2007's In Rainbows on a pay-what-you-want download. Yorke is a bit more sceptical about all that now.<p>In the days before we meet, he has been watching a box set of Adam Curtis's BBC series, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, about the implications of our digitised future, so the arguments are fresh in his head. "We were so into the net around the time of Kid A," he says. "Really thought it might be an amazing way of connecting and communicating. And then very quickly we started having meetings where people started talking about what we did as 'content'. They would show us letters from big media companies offering us millions in some mobile phone deal or whatever it was, and they would say all they need is some content. I was like, what is this 'content' which you describe? Just a filling of time and space with stuff, emotion, so you can sell it?"<p>Having thought they were subverting the corporate music industry with In Rainbows, he now fears they were inadvertently playing into the hands of Apple and Google and the rest. "They have to keep commodifying things to keep the share price up, but in doing so they have made all content, including music and newspapers, worthless, in order to make their billions. And this is what we want? I still think it will be undermined in some way. It doesn't make sense to me. Anyway, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. The commodification of human relationships through social networks. Amazing!"</i>[1]<p>[1] <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/feb/23/thom-yorke-radiohead-interview" rel="nofollow">http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/feb/23/thom-yorke-radio...</a>
I may be wrong, but is seems like a central part of the complaint is that newly released/recorded music isn't getting a big enough piece of the pie.<p>I'm not sure if this is just a trollish interpretation but it sounds like they are they asking for a return to the system where "this summer's new hits" get played relentlessly until everyone is sick of them and ready for "this year's christmas albums?"<p>I understand the argument that sales of new music funds new albums getting recorded while new sales of Hotel California don't promote any kind of artistic work. That's a purely producer side perspective though. For a listener, there is a lot of recorded music that exists. Very little of the best stuff was recorded this year (or in any given year).
Technology giveth, technology..<p>I think a great analogy is/was the porn industry. Every time a new technology made it big, the industry was turned upside down. Ferraris bought by new guys. Ferraris repossessed for others. Home VCRs created an industry that dwarfed adult cinemas. Selling DVDs over the internet was even better until streaming/download video killed that model. The porn industry collapsed and immediately started trying building a new economy on newer technology. How about interactive and realtime? Can that work? If it can, they'll figure it out pretty quick.<p>No one takes an indignant pornographer seriously so the industry doesn't spend much energy being indignant. It just grows and shrinks as it can or has to.<p>Thom and Nigel are great artists. I'm glad they're out there making music. But I'm a little turned off by the tone of their comments (now and at other times) it all rings of a feeling that the world owes them or (more often than not) younger artists a certain business model.
I have always wondered why Spotify does not raise their subscription fees (maybe after one year for example). If they asked me to pay more than $10/month, which seems a totally unreasonable number for everybody in this market, I would just do it because the convenience is awesome, and it is so much cheaper than any other legal alternatives for music lovers...
i'm an avid spotify user (~4+ hours a day) and honestly have no idea how this is a sustainable business. how much are the 20+ artists a day that I listen to making from my $10 a month? genuinely don't understand how this is working. there are so many artists that come out with new albums that I <i>would</i> buy except for the fact that I can get them free on spotify. It's saving me probably 100-200/year and that's being conservative. That means it's costing artists that much * users.<p>Why don't more artists take the Jay-Z approach? Build an app for your album, make people buy it, or sell it in bulk to a big brand like Samsung. This seems like a way for artists to take back the industry. Pirating music from a Jay-Z app seems much much harder than from a desktop. I think we're on the verge of a total shift back to the world of pre-CD burners where you simply had to pay 10-20 to listen to an album.<p>What am I missing?
The streaming-music business reminds me of Netflix in its early days, before movie studios became worried that it was cannibalizing rental/VOD revenue for new releases. There are a certain group of fans who are willing to pay $10-20 per album for access to music the moment it's released. With Spotify, those fans are treated like any other stream even though they're willing to pay more. It's inefficient pricing, except from Spotify's perspective as they're able to use immediate access to new release music as a lure for subscribers. So really, you can look at Spotify as capturing that demand and converting it into free advertising for themselves. I don't see that as sustainable in the long run. Some artists are already holding back new releases from streaming services. Like Netflix, I think that in the future you will see few new releases from popular artists until they've been available through premium services long enough to capture demand from hardcore fans.<p>Spotify treats all songs as if they have equal value, but that's obviously not true from the listener's perspective. For any given person, there are going to be some songs that they're willing to pay a premium to hear, and some that they'll only listen to if it's free. Spotify is a good deal for the latter case, but not if it offers a discounted version of the former to people who could pay for it. Just because Spotify counts every stream as a single interchangeable unit of value doesn't mean that listeners value every stream equally.
I wonder if artists who withdraw their music from services like this because they don't make "enough money" from them, realize they are getting paid again and again for me listening to albums I've already bought.<p>You may not be getting paid in buckets and buckets of cash, but what you're getting is really just a freebie. You cannot complain about getting free money.<p>If enough artists do this, services like Spotify will not offer me enough convenience, and the other option (simply mirroring my 100GB music collection to my work PC) will then be good enough that no artists stands to earn free money for albums I've already paid for.<p>As far as Thom Yorke's argument goes: That artists are severely underpaid in the streaming-world, I'm not going to debate that or even oppose that. He probably knows better than me.<p>But we've already established that this was a problem with the album-model as well. You have record companies taking $10 per album and the artist getting paid $1. With a $100,000 "credit" for studio-engineers to repay.<p>It seems the only truth and rule in the music-industry is that the artist always gets screwed.
'New artists' always had it hard, I don't think it was easy to get your record printed and distributed all over the world, at least now people can find them easier with youtube, spotify and other services without a big risk (investment). If an artist is good, they will probably get viral (see Justin Bieber) and then earn all the big bucks like Thom and Nigel. Maybe I'm missing something else since I haven't read anything related to spotify in the last few weeks.
Why can't Spotify follow the old VHS/Cinema model? If you want it today, you pay the premium. If you want to rent, you have to wait a bit longer.
Avid Spotify-user here (paying about $15 a month in Sweden). I just wish they can work it out so the artists get paid fairly - it shouldn't be that hard, should it?<p>On the topic of pirating as an alternative - it is just <i>sooo</i> nice not having to manage a bunch of MP3s. Playlists are just way more convenient.
I had no idea that individual artists had any say in this (thought that the mega labels determined the fate of everything related to their signed artists).<p>Or are Yorke and Godrich's solo arrangements with the labels nonstandard, which makes this possible?
Could someone throw up a pie chart showing exactly how much of your $10 actually goes to an artist? I'm guessing you're going to need to make it pretty large for it to be even visible.<p>Good on them.