Music artist: "Why I prefer piracy to Spotify"

Those numbers are shocking. $0.00029 per streamed song. I just back-of-the-enveloped my iTunes library, and with 8649 plays, it's worth $2.51 on Spotify.<p>That's disgusting, considering the value I've gotten from it.

I'm one of those people that buys CD's and Vinyl over mp3 or streamed music. This is how it works for me.<p>1. I download legal podcasts / radio shows and listen for stuff I like.<p>2.Then I'll maybe go an MP3 site and check I have the right stuff / listen a few times to make sure I'm happy.<p>3. Once I know I want the music I order the CD or sometimes if I feel like splashing out, and its available, I'll order the vinyl.<p>The joy I get from music and the importance it has to my happiness and productivity means I'm getting a good deal.<p>I have no idea if the artist gets a better deal because of it, but I hope so. The real reason I do this. MP3 sound quality is not the same and Spotify just sounds flat to me. (excluding your compressed to all fuck pop songs)<p>edit: Also I can honestly say, I do not have one pirated piece of music on my machine. That makes me feel good :)

This is not about the article, but about the page itself: can someone explain to me why you would load all the content statically, hide everything through CSS, and then show it by Javascript? I mean, I realise that I'm an exception and that most people simply have Javascript enabled all the time, but isn't it simply bad design to take the worst of both the AJAX load-everything-dynamically and the static HTML full-page-reloads-at-every-click worlds?

Relevant: <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/Jon_Hopkins_/status/137147753829646336" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/#!/Jon_Hopkins_/status/13714775382964633...</a>

Comparing Spotify to a one-off fee on itunes / album sales is not a fair gauge. For example; if I like a song I might listen to it 1000 times over my lifetime (...does that sound right...). If I used Spotify this would be a life value of $0.29 to the artist. This is very low but is a fairer comparison amount to revenue the artist receives from an itunes sale.<p>Also it is worth understanding the label will be paid $1.60 for these 1000 spotify song plays and the artist gets from this $0.29. So it's not the steaming services doing all the screwing here. If you compare this to a itunes sale where the label gets $0.64 per song sale you would need 400 plays over someones lifetime to get this revenue on Spotify or 160 plays on Last.fm. This to me is is a fairer simple comparison without bringing in factors like future value of money or if spotify reduces piracy....etc

&#62; Music does have monetary value.<p>The market says otherwise. People are willing to pay almost nothing for music, even risking huge penalties, because it does have value (the other types you listed). Just not monetary.

<i>"... The whole business used to be focused on the head of the sales curve, the handful of artists who were selling records in the millions of copies. ..."</i><p>Selling records, LP's (33rpm) only really took off after FM radio started playing up to 20 minutes segments of ad-free music, uninterrupted. Prior to FM, the single (45's) was king.<p><pre><code> "President Kennedy got shot. It wasn't only the president that got shot, 50's rock-n-roll died... then they started playing mourning music... then emerging out of the mourning music was FM radio... because during those days it was singles, you were selling singles. Nobody cared about LP's." Link Wray [0],[1] </code></pre> A combination of technology &#38; societal disruption allowed records to sell.<p>[0] Link Wray, interview <i>"Link Wray video interview-pt 3"</i> starting at 4.00min. Exert from <i>"Rumble Man"</i> cf [1].<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViHdDE0ks3E&#38;feature=related" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViHdDE0ks3E&#38;feature=relat...</a><p>[1] Link Wray, <i>"Rumble Man"</i><p><a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1650853964354373174" rel="nofollow">http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1650853964354373174</a>

These are just my views from what I've experienced during my time in the industry, but the figure being given by Derek Webb is extraordinarily low for a service like Spotify, even for an (assumed?) independent artist. The price he gives for Spotify's artist payment per listen ($0.00029) is even lower than Last.FM's ($0.00070). For additional comparison, Spotify pays labels $0.002 while Last.FM pays $0.005. I'm not exactly sure how/why Last.FM pays better than Spotify, but I would wager to guess that it is a combination of Spotify having larger operating expenses and advertisers willing to pay less per session. Nonetheless, these figures are awfully low and I would like to see more artists coming forward with information like this (even though it probably won't matter).<p><i>After looking through some notes, I found that Rhapsody is closer to Spotify when it comes to artist payments. Rhapsody pays artists ~$0.0002 but pays labels significantly more at ~$0.03 (!)</i>

Derek Webb (article author) has been pushing alternative distribution for music for a long time... well before it was popular. Take a look at his most recent album's store: <a href="http://derekwebb.com/store/feedback" rel="nofollow">http://derekwebb.com/store/feedback</a> Different options for different levels of fan, fairly common these days, but Derek has been doing this a long time.<p>I discovered him after he gave away his 2005 album, Mockingbird (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mockingbird_(album)" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mockingbird_(album)</a>)

Wish I could forward this over to some of my favourite, although small, bands and have them take notice. But they won't - the label deal is too important.

I'm intrigued: what massive negotiating power does spotify have to force labels / artists onto their platform? Is there a market failure here? What keeps the pricing unfair?<p>Why not just pull your music from spotify if you don't want it "sold" there?<p>(Written as a spotify premium subscriber who loves the service, but assumed that the music was legitimately obtained through a negotiation with the labels and / or artists).

Artist royalties have gone from dollars (physical albums), to dimes (digital singles), to fractions of pennies (streaming). Once you can track how much it actually gets used, it becomes readily apparent just how overvalued it's been.<p>See the progression in advertising from print and broadcast to adsense.

It seems to me that there is a major market opportunity in a co-operatively owned version of this sort of service, one that placed getting $ to the artist as it's highest goal. A more or less P2P exchange that let consumers stream/discover to their heart's content, but after a certain number of plays prodded them to buy. It'd be open only to artists without label/licensing encumbrances, and would therefore be able to funnel most of the money back to the artist themselves.<p>It seems really obvious if not simple, but the chief goal isn't to make piles of money for whomever builds it. That's the only reason I can see that it doesn't already exist.<p>Semi-side note - It irks the shit out of me that even something as cool as Spotify is still just a means of propping up the same old major label system.

Hm, is there a Web platform for musicians to give away their music away in return for the fans' social info? With an added feature of discovering new music and artists?<p>If not, maybe someone could start it up. This field is definitely ripe for disruption.

Something is going to have to give. Either artists quit bemoaning Spotify OR they withdraw their music.<p>Spotify has created a business model that works for them. If it isn't working for individual labels or artists they can withdraw their music and provoke a change in Spotify's business model.<p>Spotify's value exists because of the huge range of music it supports. If you take that away Spotify will be forced to react.<p>Perhaps the simplest thing Spotify could do is charge more for power users. I've listened to 46,000 tracks on Spotify. Charging people like me more would mean they could up the price paid to artists.

Musicians and labels need to find new ways to monetize instead of distributing copies of master recordings. If artists have records that are widely listed to they can play well payed gigs or get endorsment deals. Seems like the average consumers thinks, that listening to music must be free.

<i>It’s true that iTunes is a place for people to purchase music, but it offers all the same benefits of Spotify in terms of discovery.</i><p>Last time I've checked to discover music on iTunes you had to purchase it.

Is the story the same with other services like Rdio? I only seem to see stuff like this talking about Spotify but the models seem similar.

A redable version: <a href="http://www.readability.com/articles/9lzok3re" rel="nofollow">http://www.readability.com/articles/9lzok3re</a>

Title is arguably inaccurate; is freely distributing by the artist still piracy?

Hey musicians: Stop trying to make money and focus on creating great music.<p>If you're focused on the business angle, you're doing it wrong. In fact, it's none of your concern. Success will come if you create great music.

I lose a bit of interest in artists who complain about not making money on people listening to their music. It then seems that they make music to make money, instead of making money because they make music.

Hooray, now all the people stealing music can feel good about themselves because one particular artist agrees with them. Ergo, it is ethically ok.