Rdio's collapse another nail in the coffin of the 'digital economy' The “digital music economy” now resembles three bald men fighting over the same hairbrush. It’s hard to think of a better emblem for where the current “plantation era” of internet exploitation has led us than digital music. And it’s hard to imagine a more perfectly shitty outcome for creators, and ultimately for consumers who …
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When after six years of digital streaming music hype, the global income from music is less than half of the wage bill of one modestly successful Premier League team, something has gone horribly wrong.
Says it all really. Would the world economy notice if all these services went TITSUP?
Not that streaming anything or Permier League teams interest me in the slightest.
Streaming is IMHO just like the Cloud, the latest buzzwords that might earn a few people a lot of $$$$£££££ whilst everyone else gets horribly burnt when the bubble bursts.
Has the Music Streaming Bix bubble burst? Possibly.
Adele has the right idea in not letting any streaming service use her Album 25 at release. They obviously don't pay her and her agents enough money. Good for her I say. Keep Music Live!
I'm a huge fan of music released from the ECM label. In over 30 years and some 300 CDs I've not bought one that I hate or even regretted buying. This week I had 4 delivered. None of this stuff is on any of the streaming sites most was removed from spotify in 2010. It doesn't seem to have affected the artists or the label.
Says it all really. Would the world economy notice if all these services went TITSUP?
Well there is a lesson to be learnt here, the question is whether the music industry is in the learning game. Whilst the comparison with a football team is graphic, I suspect a more relevant revenue comparison would be with say the UK FM radio operators...
With UK government and it's quasi-independent regulator Ofcom set on turning off FM radio broadcasting - under pressure from those who do profit from mobile internet - there must be a question mark over the future of the recorded music industry, because with these sort of revenues from Internet broadcasting there ain't going to be a recognisable music industry...
Well, in the case of music, 'twas ever thus.
YouTube is just a modern version of the old record library "problem" - as soon as home taping became possible, people would borrow a record from the library, copy it a few times for their friends and return the original. As well all know, in the end, hope taping didn't destroy music.
The fundamental issue with monetising recorded music is that it depends ultimately on being able to freeze out consumers who don't pay. Musicians, though, want to be heard - more, in many cases than people want specifically to listen to them rather than some other artist. And in the end, they'd rather be heard and get no revenue than not be heard at all - and that's why the money tends to stick to the people in marketing who occasionally manage to turn the unpromising economics into positive revenue.
The "taping from the library" analogy doesn't wash, because the scale is completely different.
When I taped something I borrowed from a friend (as pretty much everyone did), I didn't immediately leave piles of copies of it in the street for anyone who wanted one to pick up. But that is what torrent distribution does. I don't even have to know someone to let them have a copy of my copied music: it's just "there", and it gets taken by anyone who happens by.
(Actually, I still buy all the music I own - as a self-employed software developer, I can't sit here and say that people shouldn't rip off my work while happily ripping off the work of other creators, so I put my money where my big fat mouth is. I enjoy listening to music, I don't see a problem paying for it.)
Now, much of the loss to piracy is overstated, because many people who acquire large amounts of pirated music never listen to it more than once, and so you get the "would have heard it on the radio anyway". Purchased music has always been bought for the purpose of repeated listening; it's not like a movie ticket, which is a once-off (and this is why the same excuse absolutely does not hold water for film piracy).
The fundamental issue with monetising recorded music streaming is that it requires customers to appreciate the value of recorded music. These days, with music used literally everywhere, the basic currency of "listening to a piece of music" is now so debased that people don't have a problem with stealing it. Downloads also look exactly like legitimate purchases, so there isn't even the stigma of you being that guy who's music collection is a huge stack of CD-Rs (or stacks of blank tapes for the even older).
Against this bleak background, I note that French download service Qobuz has just launched a 24-bit streaming offering that includes discounts on purchases of the high-bitrate files if you want to keep stuff. What's interesting is that they've pitched this at €200 a year - one annual payment, no monthly option. Maybe the idea is that you value things you've paid in one go for more than something that gets taken away in unnoticeable monthly payments.
"What's interesting is that they've pitched this at €200 a year - one annual payment, no monthly option."
I much prefer that to monthly payments.
"Maybe the idea is that you value things you've paid in one go for more than something that gets taken away in unnoticeable monthly payments."
Blame the bastards who make it difficult to unsubscribe from monthly payments, or ignore your cancellation requests for my dislike of monthly payments. They cease to be "unnoticeable" when they represent a charge for a service you either don't want or cannot use any more.
I have the iTunes agreement in front of me, for example. It specifically says I cannot use it outside my country, so what do I do if I get seconded abroad for a couple of months?
"The "taping from the library" analogy doesn't wash, because the scale is completely different."
No, the scale is identical. You (or anyone else) may not have copied tapes by the cartload, but I (and everyone else I knew) sure had every single song we cared to have more or less as soon as it became of popular interest. The specific distribution mechanism may or may not have been somewhat different, but ultimately we sure as hell had the tapes. ALL THE TAPES. Maybe not as zero-second convenient as it is today, but the exact same end result. So let's not go all "in the good old times..."
I'm sitting at my keyboard crying, no, sobbing as Andrew Orlowski tells me I owe him a living.
He then goes on to inform us music streamers are failing as only a small proportion of their users will pay for the music they hear all around them every day at work or play for free and he tops it off by saying and the 800lb gorillas entering the market won't pay instead of their "clients/users" (inverted commas as the term used is not quite the correct term for the products that Alphabet corpororation sells to it's clients).
Lidl and Aldi pay above minimum wage, they maybe looking for people who live in the real world.
By now we all know that there will always be, without fail, at least one comment from a freetard parasite who will seems absolutely determined to not understand that "the right to have an opportunity to make a living by not having one's work stolen on a massive, industrial scale" is not the same as being "owed a living".
@Turtle
How wrong you can be?
I'm a trained artist but gave up making a living at it, the equipment costs were high and I don't like the selling and money parts. I'm still self employed but not in Art, have contributed to a couple of open source projects, donated cash to a few more. I have open hardware designs available if you look for them, the latest released after designing some PCBs for a UK company who weren't bothered that others might use them too and a few years ago donated over a third of my income trying to get shool students interested in science.
I don't download music, I don't listen that much these days, it doesn't help concentration. I did download a film last Christmas and might do so again this year, because sometimes people do things they shouldn't or find away to get the entertainment for free, like watching fireworks from outside the barrier where you pay, looking out a window on to a football stadium or clicking a link that says listen free.
Selling recordings is fairly new, only really took off when young people had a lot of money and the means of playing them became cheaper. Made a lot of musicians playing music redundant too. Technology changes and sometimes you have to move on and make art for the pleasure whilst doing something that might be more mundane to make a living.
Now, what makes you sound so bitter, don't you really like your current profession?
It appears the era when musicians could make a lot of money from recordings and air play is winding down. Too much competition for time and money. However, it may lead to revival of concert going and those who can adjust may do quite well.
Also, being a financial successful artist, musician, or writer has always been hit or miss. Many who have the talent never catch on with the public to have long careers.
The digital economy cannot operate under the same rules as brick and mortar. Edison started the music industry and it had a profound effect on how music was created and performed. It rewarded the "best" performers and punished the rest. This had the effect of reducing diversity and created the ivory towers of the super stars, who could dash off an album every couple of years and spend the rest of their time doing drugs. Now technology has removed the barriers to entry and created a huge supply of original music and democratized music once again. Forgive me if I don't cry for the billionaires who have lost their meal ticket and are forced to work for a living like the rest of us. The good news is we might not be subjected to the formula driven "pop" garbage that the old model made possible. People will always make and listen to music. Now they will start doing it for the right reasons again.
I pay for streaming. I would be willing to pay a bit more than I already do. Not because I am terribly sympathetic to the musicians - I believe if you want to make a living playing music, you ought to regularly do so, in front of a paying audience. (If you are a musician who can't attract a paying audience, please excuse me if I have no sympathy that you're unable to make a living playing music, but don't blame streaming for your lack of success.)
I pay for streaming, and would pay more, because it is convenient delivery model for some music I might only care to listen to once or twice.
So what is the value of being able to listen to a prerecorded song one time? A song that, if it's quite good, may make me want to pay to see the performer(s)?
This is not a rhetorical question. You lot are smart and insightful. Tell me.
I believe if you want to make a living playing music, you ought to regularly do so, in front of a paying audience
Why? What makes recorded music inferior? I can imagine musicians who don't want to play live, for any number of reasons. They shouldn't be allowed to make a living?
Your position seems to me to be just as insupportable as any other on offer here.
You believe someone should be richly rewarded for years from a few hours work in a recording studio, eh? I think professional musicians should perform bexause, as they say, 90% of life is about showing up. I have to exert significant daily effort to make a living and don't have a ton of respect for those who don't.
I also once tried to get a job at Aldi, and was turned down due to my lack of retail sales experience. You can't get a dead-end food-costs-money job unless you already have a dead-end food-costs-money. It really has got to the point where you need a degree to dig a hole in the road.
I do think the answer lies in some form of voluntary payment from consumers to artists. A radically different form of market where it is _the done thing_ to pay what you think is fair for what you enjoy. We already have the technology needed to make this work. Perhaps the distributors will have to accept their role and wodge of money will be greatly reduced, unless they can be trusted again to nurture and develop talent like perhaps they did way, way back.
I do think the answer lies in some form of voluntary payment from consumers to artists
Yes! YES! Consumers could choose what they like, make a voluntary payment to the artist's commercial representative, and they could be given a digital token to prove their right to listen to the music from then on.
Obviously multi-character codes used by software are impracticable here, so my idea is that the consumer gets a physical-digital token, that could be accompanied by lyrics, commentary and visual artwork. I suggest a round, silver coloured disc about five inches across (or for luddites a black analogue token about 12 inches across, pressed from a mixture of pocket lint, human hair and hard liquorice).
"giving alms to beggars"
I was thinking more along the lines of busking. Anyway, what I intended to point towards is a post-capitalist system of rewarding artists for their work. Now that reproduction is trivial and the means of distribution is almost ubiquitous (here in the west, anyway).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that what is called a 'concert'? My daughter goes to them and spends an awful lot of money.
She discovers musicians she likes by listening to free copies of their songs on the internet. I believe that in an alternate universe called 'Real Life' it is referred to as 'advertising'. It certainly seems to be an effective way to communicate one's music to listeners who would otherwise never hear of you. Perhaps Orlowski's pop singing pals should try it sometime.
In the 'Good Old Days' of physical recordings, apparently, most pop singers on the planet, apart from maybe three or four, played their arses off for thirty years and still ended up in debt to their record companies. Great days indeed. Now, instead of forking out millions of pounds for worldwide publicity, they actually get paid for it by the publicists! And all they seem to do is moan.
It seems that while nuclear physicists and bin men have to work for a living, pop singers consider they have a divine right to one; for eternity based on three minutes of three chords.
> a post-capitalist system
Last time I checked we still live in a capitalist system (unless Jeremy Corbyn has staged a revolution over the weekend). This is a battle between different centres of capital. Despite the idealism of numerous woolly thinkers who seem to live exclusively on the Web, the intertubes are built wholly on massive amounts of largely private capital. The artists would still be engaging in capitalism, it's just that their means of partaking would be somewhat less predictable. Works fine if you don't value professional musicians.
Seems now everyone is slave to the big-money branded information mediators (Google, Apple etc.)
Whilst it is unfashionable to say it, it is a simple fact that middlemen and retailers perform a valuable service. I could, for example, buy a cow, milk it, order my own tea from the plantation by air mail, and order artisan sugar from a Fairtrade cooperative in Whoknowswhere, all for a brew. But its a lot simpler to drop into the shop of my choice, or order all the necessary from a single online retailer.
But what the web has done for us is to systematically eliminate inefficient intermediaries. So record shops were toast when Amazon came along, simply because record shop prices were very high reflecting low turnover per square foot and per employee, often accompanied by poor stock levels, patchy service, and slow buy in of emerging artists. Likewise, the common or garden department store is disappearing - the posh ones seem to be doing OK, but all the workaday ones are going to the wall for similar reasons to record shops. High street electrical shops, same again (did anybody shed a tear when Dixons and Comet went bust - other than in laughter?). But in all cases, would you really want to have to go to every original manufacturer's web site to find out what's on offer before buying? Probably not unless you know exactly what you want in the first place, so you choose to use a different middleman.
So lots of things you can do more efficiently online, but you still need an intermediary, and you always will. You could automate online sourcing, but then the software IP owner becomes the intermediary. Cutting out the middleman is a great idea, but it only every works where you have the time, skill, resource and willingness to deal directly with a manufacturer - and they generally don't want to be in retailing.
The article did a good job of pointing out, a key problem is walled gardens, being tied in to a particular music "ecosystem" & not being able to move preferences / settings between them.
Also, different offerings have different catalogues and often you might not find all the music you want (that was my experience even with market leader Spotify, good for broadening music horizons but lacking too many of my favourite artists, so not worth using in the long term).
In the UK, streaming can be a PITA when out and about with erratic mobile reception (zero signal with the 2 providers I have sims for in remote areas of Scotland when I was there on holiday & would have liked to stream music for added variety when hiking the hills), so to *guarantee* being able to listen to music on your phone it always makes sense to load some music on, in case streaming fails.
As for artist earnings - streaming used to be comparable with radio play rates (in terms of what the "record company" received, how much they give the artist however due to contract legalese ..) which seems fair enough as streaming is like roll your own radio
> Also, different offerings have different catalogues and often you might not find all the music you want (that was my experience even with market leader Spotify, good for broadening music horizons but lacking too many of my favourite artists, so not worth using in the long term).
Same goes for TV & movies, how many f'ing subscription/app combos do I need? Actually, it turns out, none - I really just can't be arsed. So that'd be another customer lost then.
"streaming is like roll your own radio" - no, it's not. There are no radio stations which play only the music I want, at the time I want, in the order I want.
I worked out through last.fm stats that if I'd paid my most-played artiste at Spotify royalty rates for all the tracks played, it would have cost me around £17. But, in fact, I'd bought 13 CD albums, roughly ten times as much.
(As a musician myself, I'm well-aware that the "music industry" is designed to enrich the industry, while any money that actually gets to the writers and performers is basically leakage; but that's another matter.)
In the modern age of negligible replication cost, getting people to pay for art is a question still begging an answer. Technological means will never work. Moral means do not (currently) work (see the last two paras of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_what_you_want#Research). So what is left?
Hence, why does a physical, plastic CD cost me less than an intangible MP3 download of the same album from Amazon?
When asked why $17 CDs were £17 here in the UK, a Virgin Records rep once spouted on TV that "they're made in Japan on very expensive equipment and England is a long way away" from that country. So, when I was in New York, I popped into the Virgin store and noted that their own-label CDs were actually pressed by Nimbus in England... and with $2 = £1 were therefore half the price.
Why was that I wonder?
The usual answer works well enough for politician (they have to be seen to do some good). For a music rep (or anyone in promotions/PR etc) I think the answer would have something to with the presence of a discernible pulse.
"Moral means do not (currently) work. [...] So what is left?"
Oh, gosh, dunno... why don't we ask some lowly free-to-read webcomic artists making upper-four-digits each month on Patreon, from entirely voluntary contributions by people who could easily have the exact same thing for free...? And yes, that does mean you do need an audience of more than three people for the not-all-of-them-will-pay statistics to actually work...
A lack of foresight by the major labels led to music lovers evolving file sharing networks, followed by the ensuing battles between the labels and the more enthusiastic consumers. They've missed the boat, they could have got a handle on this before Apple and Google became dominant and way before the first viable streaming services came online.
Not sure what the solution is at this point, I suspect that the tech behemoths have much greater lobbying clout (and likely budget for such, given their stellar incomes compared to the labels' dwindling pot). Perhaps the labels could get their heads together and come up with an open, competing platform and then pull the plug on the other players? They'd need to cover all delivery mechanisms and all payment models and ensure that the indies and even self-published artists could join easily, with minimal/no cost barriers to entry.
I suspect that they won't though, they're more likely to continue with their current strategy of whingeing acquiescence, anti-consumer rhetoric and in-fighting.
If the incentive is there the consumers will come back.
Perhaps the labels could get their heads together and come up with an open, competing platform and then pull the plug on the other players?
That would struggle under competition law, but I think there's a core problem that there's no underlying commercial model yet for streaming. The data shows what we already believe that most users don't want to pay, and in preference to a streaming subscription will either use the free versions, or listen to the radio instead. Removing the free streaming services will restrict new signup of paying customers, but still won't force the freetards to pay for streaming.
To put all this another way: Free streaming services need to find a better funding model or (more likely) exit the market, and paid streaming services need to understand that they operate in a relatively small niche that shows few signs of becoming a volume market.
Thinking about the UK Spotify premium offer, that's £10 a month. Now think about how you'd make the free streaming profitable: It's difficult to see £10 a month in the value from untargeted adverts (or even targeted adverts), so the current Spotify free model looks unsustainable. And when you think of Spotify's need for £120 per year per user, its even more problematic - the total size of the UK digital advertising market (all channels, all markets) in full year 2014 was only about £170 per adult. Can you see Spotify cornering 70% of the entire digital UK marketing spend per "free streaming" relevant household?
Many users love streaming, and that certainly looks like a potential mass market. But in economic terms, demand is the desire for a service backed by the willingness and ability to pay, and we're not seeing any willingness.
The answer is right in front of them. Spotify, Deezer, Jango all find that with their short term lower price offers they get a lot more people signing up.
I listen to Deezer while I'm driving to work. I hate all the ads and popups(?) they put into the free service, and when they started their recent offer I took it up. But it isn't worth £10/month to me, maybe £3 tops.
As has been the case since CDs first came out, they ask too much for the market.
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