Another reason to not stream

Randy Myers

Randy Myers

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I have never been a fan of streaming. I always prefer to purchase my music, weather it be a high rez download or a physical CD/SACD. The streaming services are screwing the artists. The artist need to get paid if we want to continue enjoying the wonderful music they make.

I was just reading and article and decided to do a little research to verify what they were saying. While the recording industry enjoyed a record breaking year thanks to streaming services, among other things, the artist are making less... a lot less. The number one service, Spotify pays by far the lowest to the artist, followed by... surprise surprise, Apple. Tidal pays more then almost all of the other services, but an artist will starve counting on pay from these services. An artist would require at least a million plays a month to make even a decent living. On Spotify it would require ten million plays a month.

If you enjoy an artist they deserve you to actually purchase their music. It is the only way they can make a living. And Independent artist, who finance everything themselves have a really hard time making ends meet. So, besides preferring owning my music that I play I firmly believe that the artist need to be paid if you want to continue enjoying their music...

The bottom line until these streaming service stop being greedy assholes I have another reason to not subscribe to their services. Come on people, support your favorite musicians. Buy the dam music! :D
 
I basically agree, but can see a possible use for streaming in the future. Currently, I have so many CDs, and downloads from HDTracks there is no way I can listen to all of it in the foreseeable future.
 
Randy Myers said:
...The streaming services are screwing the artists...
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The artists have all agreed to the terms of service of the streaming content providers. I'm not going to second judge that, so I'm happy to continue paying $11.99/mo for access to unlimited music.
 
Randy.......Although I understand the point you are expressing, a musician's income is not my concern. It's up to the individuals or groups to negotiate profitable contracts that ensure equitable compensation for their work. As a consumer of music products I already pay for the CD's, SACD's, Hi-Res downloads, and streaming. If musicians can't figure out how to be fairly rewarded for what they do, I don't see that as my problem.
 
apo1 said:
on your avatar it looks like your streaming :)
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No, I am playing local files on my server. That is not online streaming. I bought and paid for the albums (actually that one I bought twice... the SACD and the DSD512 download).
 
brodricj said:
The artists have all agreed to the terms of service of the streaming content providers. I'm not going to second judge that, so I'm happy to continue paying $11.99/mo for access to unlimited music.
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Actually this is not always the case. There have been many lawsuits where various artist do not want their albums available for streaming yet Spotify, for example, has the album available cutting directly into the artists sales.
 
brodricj said:
The artists have all agreed to the terms of service of the streaming content providers. I'm not going to second judge that, so I'm happy to continue paying $11.99/mo for access to unlimited music.
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Many times the artist have no choice in the matter. For example Spotify making a behind closed door deal with a distributor and the musician can't afford to fight them on it because again... record setting year, streaming companies flush with money and the artist are left with nothing....

The opinions of some I totally expected and believe there in lies the reason that much great music may not be available in the future. It is not my concern either what an artists income is, however if I want to incentive them to continue producing great music then I sure as heck should be concerned. Especially independent artist who finance and produce their own music.

I know one in particular who had 1/4 millions streams of her music and did not even make enough to pay for 2 hours of studio time. She is specifically asking her fans to purchase her music instead of only streaming it through Spotify and Apple especially, but even Tidal which does pay in the neighborhood of three times as much as Spotify.

The industry had a record setting year yet the ones who actually make the music are getting almost nothing. If you truly care for good music then you should be concerned that the ones who actually make the music are getting less and less incentives to continue making great music.

Many times, if at all possible, I purchase my new music directly from the artist. It is my little way of appreciating what they do.
 
Randy Myers said:
No, I am playing local files on my server. That is not online streaming. I bought and paid for the albums (actually that one I bought twice... the SACD and the DSD512 download).
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ah okay, sorry for the missunderstanding
 
jdandy said:
Randy.......Although I understand the point you are expressing ,a musician's income is not my concern. It's up to the individuals or groups to negotiate profitable contracts that ensure equitable compensation for their work. As a consumer of music products I already pay for the CD's, SACD's, Hi-Res downloads, and streaming. If musicians can't figure out how to be fairly rewarded for what they do, I don't see that as my problem.
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Again Dan, someone like you is not the problem. As you stated you already pay for CD's. SACD's, and Hi-Res Downloads. It is the person who does nothing but streaming, and even worse, the person who copies CD's, etc., with no intent of ever purchasing anything, who steals music.
 
I want to give a different perspective on what is wrong with the way money is distributed in streaming that, I believe, causes a “winner take all” distribution and makes it hard for popular artists in non-pop genres to make a living from streaming. I read this in an article a few months back but I don’t recall where.
The way streaming works is as follows- the streaming company counts the total number of times a song is streamed per month, divides by the total number of all songs streamed for the month, and that is that song’s share of the total streaming income the streaming service pays. For example, say the latest Taylor Swift song is streamed a million times, and the total number of songs streamed over the month is 100 million, then Taylor Swift gets 1/100 of all the revenue that they distribute- a very big number. The problem is that a Jazz musician, or a Ska musician, who may be very popular in his genre, will only get such a small % of the total that he may only get a $10 payout.


What if they distributed the money based on an individual consumer’s streaming data? Take me for example - I don’t stream Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, rap, hip hop, country or pop music. I do stream a lot of 60’s music, Jazz, Zydeco and Ska. I pay Qobuz $25/ month. What if they took my $25, less expenses, and divided up my money based on what I streamed? This is much more equitable because I never intend to pay any money to be able to stream Taylor Swift. It would also have the result that less popular genres/musicians, who have a passionate following, could make more of a living from streaming. And it would be a simple software change to implement. Unfortunately it may not ever happen because established popular artists may balk at this change. Caveat- my examples are totally made up and it isn’t my intention to knock Taylor Swift or any other musician/genre.


Incidentally, if you are interested in a book about the economics of the music business I highly recommend “Rockonomics” by Alan Krueger, a famous economist, just published this year.
 
Before Tidal and before Spotify, there was Slim Devices.

Slim Devices idea was that you could rip your CDs (the Fair Use doctrine allows that), and save them on your computer or a NAS and then STREAM your music to your Slim Device (your Squeezebox for example).

You could also download (buy) music online, save it in your computer and STREAM them to the same Slim Devices.

And you could also STREAM your favorite radio stations from anywhere in the world.

All of those functions were called streaming. There was STREAMING before there was a Spotify or Tidal.

Spotify and Tidal and other MUSIC SERVICES came later. And while today that method of streaming might be the most popular, it is not the only one.

So in my view, Randy's beef should be directed to using the music services (Tidal, Spotify, Qobuz, etc.) and not to STREAMING in general.

The great majority of the music I listen to on a regular basis is music that I already bought in one form or another (LPs, CDs, SACDs, and even cassettes(!)) So I personally don't feel bad by paying those artists EXTRA money when I listen (stream) that same music from a music service like Tidal. Put another way, I am paying those musicians money that they would have never have received from me if it were not for Tidal/Spotify.

And Tidal allows me to listen to new artists for which they get paid and that could entice me to pay to go to their concerts and see them live. So while in the past I could only listen to new artists on the radio and pay nothing, now they can get paid everytime I stream their music.

I just listened to an interview of Sheryl Crow where she announced that she was no longer going to record any more albums. The reason she gave is that nobody listens to albums anymore and therefore she only plans to release music for streaming.

Let's face it, the music business has changed.
 
You are definitely correct. It is the music services. The term streaming has came to mean these services therefore I did not mean to make it seem all encompassing. It is the music streaming services such as Spotify, Tidal, Qobuz, etc., that are screwing artist and in my view will in the long run will hurt music in general.

The person that listens to various music on one of the music streaming services and when they find something they like they support the artist is a good thing. This is how, in my view, these services should be used. I do believe this is more of an exception then a rule. Statistic show that a vast majority of subscribers never support any of the artist in any way and further more many subscribers have a sense of entitlement, like they are owed to be able to listen to anything and everything without paying the artists (their small monthly fee does not go to the artist, it goes to the big companies that own these services). This is simply wrong and very short sighted.

Ms. Crow is releasing another album. She is also talking about other artist who "drop songs". That is a whole lot different then going through the music streaming services. What she is referring to is artist who release songs, and then albums independently, or through online selling services for downloads, not through Spotify, etc. Or so that is what was indicated in the article I just read. This is exactly what Patricia Barber recently did with her latest album. She is selling it online, and it is not being offered on the streaming music services; so far anyway.
 
Mick Jagger doesn’t care about my problems and I don’t expect him or others to and frankly they never will but yet I purchase music, stream music, buy merchandise and they get a piece.

Artists chose to be artists,and certainly could of followed the traditional entrepreneur role and created internet streaming, but chose not to.




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The current situation with streaming reminds me of when Napster was started for file sharing. We shall see how it shakes out over the next few years.
 
interesting discussion... on the flip side, there quite a few indie-type artists that i never would have discovered let alone listen to without streaming.

one example: over on the classical music thread members recently posted a few recordings of baroque / ancient music. these seemed interesting and i wanted to hear what they sounded like when played on my system. turns out i really liked them and then began exploring the genre. now, i have bookmarked a number of albums from these and other artists on small europenan labels which i listen to regularly.

take away here is that in a world without streaming there is an exactly zero probability that i would have dropped $25 on a baroque music CD just to have a listen... even if my local music shop had those obscure CDs in stock. also, i probably listened to five recordings for every one that i liked and then bookmarked. again, zero probability that i would have done that at $25 per listen.

so, question is: are the smaller / indie artists better or worse off in a world with streaming? in my case, i would posit that there are quite a few of this type artist better off with streaming because their listener base is larger by one; they are receiving revenue from me; and i might even go to a live show. without streaming, that amount would be exactly $0.00 -- recorded or live.

given the number of artist who make their music available for streaming, it would seem that there is large agreement here.

as for the economics of streaming which is actually the real question here -- artists are free the charge what the market will bear. they are also free to adopt alternate business models.
 
UltraFast69 said:
Mick Jagger doesn’t care about my problems and I don’t expect him or others to and frankly they never will but yet I purchase music, stream music, buy merchandise and they get a piece.

Artists chose to be artists,and certainly could of followed the traditional entrepreneur role and created internet streaming, but chose not to.
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Mick Jagger is not the one that I am concerned for :D...
 
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