Spotify boasts 10 million paying subscribers ... Um, is that all? Spotify says it now has 10 million paying subscribers and 40 million active users. The last official user numbers were released in March last year, when it said it had five million active users. Spotify now operates in 56 countries around the world, up from 20 a year ago, CEO Daniel Ek said. The privately held company, whose …
> a fiver for the Unlimited package
provided it is actually unlimited.
I.e. no limitations
which means:
no volume constraints
no time limit
no speed cap (but since my internet speed *is* capped we'd have to work something out.)
no later changes to the Ts & Cs
In fact, for that, I'd even be willing to go up to £6. No, not per month. Six QUID. period.
My research suggests that you might have recalled incorrectly. BBC Radio 1 only has to pay (via PRS for Music) about 15 quid a minute. US stations apparently pay nothing at all!
So Spotify doesn't compare too badly, after all. (And, it turns out, even Pandora wasn't as bad as it was painted.)
Well they did have more subscribers, but I binned mine because the shambolic new UI for the windows app smacks, and the windows phone app didn't have half the functionality of the one on other systems (and although I had the premium option, was still miffed that unlike android/ios you couldn't use it with a free subscription at all).
I must admit I still prefer my music on a CD. I do use a digital player when I'm away from home but it's copies of my disks that are loaded onto it. I like to have disks as my master copies and make the digital ones I need. I also like the better quality sound I get from the disks when played on a good CD player.
I don't think I'm alone in this.
And think its worth every penny. I was rather disappointed when they stopped selling tracks too though.
Personally, I'd like them to integrate physical media sales and concert ticket sales into the program. So, when a band releases their new album, I can listen to it just fine but I also want to buy the special edition box set, and book a ticket for their new tour... At the moment, Spotify isn't my one stop shop for music.
The article is supposedly about Spotify, so why does Orlowski dredge up the Pandora payment system?
Spotify state that artists should expect to get $0.007 per stream which would work out at $7,000 in payments for a single track played 1M times. When you compare that figure to what an artist would expect to earn selling 1M CDs (~$80K give or take) with ten tracks then the figures are very similar per track.
Musicians complaining about not getting enough money. Your product is worth what people will pay for it, not what they think people should pay for it. Netflix is cheaper than spotify. Which I find a bit nuts considering I would be prepared to pay more for a film than a song. I think musicians need to realise that music isnt worth anything, album sales, gig tickets are worth a lot. They need to make sure their music is on the albums being sold and they are playing live gigs. They should be glad Spotify is there, after all it allows universal access to your music.
As for spotify, if your reading this can you please let me install the old iOS app. Ive asked you 3 times in e-mails and you keep being patronising in your replies and asking me to try rebooting my phone etc. Theres nothing wrong with my phone, just your new app. Please let me download the old app.
Sorry but it's simply not that simple. You say "Your product is worth what people will pay for it"? Rubbish. If 1,000 people will buy your product at £5, but someone else comes along and offers to sell it to them for £1 what do you think they are going to do? Your product which was worth £5000 is now suddenly going to bring you in just a fifth of that.
Plus when you say "people"... what "people"? Everyone? Some group? If I've got 1,000 people willing to pay £10 for my product or 100,000 willing to pay 1p, I'll take the small number of people thank you very much.
I usually don't listen to a lot of different music. There's everything Monstercat releases, which I usually listen to dozens, to hundreds of times. And then there's a few Metal albums I treasure (Disturbed - Indestructible for example. The Album is just pure awesomeness). And then there's the few odd songs I pick up somewhere, but which don't amount to much of my listening habit (maybe listen once or twice on spotify). For the tracks I do listen to frequently tho, I really do listen to them all the time, I have music playing in my house 24/7, most of the time it's Monstercat. Through the payment per stream thing, Monstercat is awarded (if only slightly) for me repeatedly listening to their music, instead of having bought it once for a very low price and never pay for it again.
5 million extra people in one year is a lot of people.
Guaranteed income for musicians as long as the song is good enough for people to want to listen to it (forever) is quite a nice thing, I would have thought.
Using spotify on a PC, with sonos, on a mobile and in off-line mode in a car or a plane. Creating play lists compatible with any party, dinner date, Saturday night company or just messing around with music is worth £10 / month easily.
What's this article about - and what's the point being made here?
With all due respect, and you deserve more respect than most if you spend that kind of money on music -
It is not about you. It is about the people that make the music.
Have a look here:
https://krisweston.com/
Kris, if you didn't know, was the man behind The Orb.
He has a lot to say on the state of the art. He's damned entertaining and pretty hand with a BASH, PERL, or Python script too: https://krisweston.com/index.php/tech/
Hell. He's more of a hacker than half the people that visit El Reg.
But times are hard. It is not longer enough to be a musical genius in the right place at the right time.
Kris has some pretty strong views and some very strong thoughts against bandcamp and alternatives you might find are better.
Hit him up. Sub him a fiver and get an exclusive copy of his new album. If it ever gets made.
Who gives a fuck, you can all have fun watching him fail, if that is your thing, too.
Help a chin, do people's heads in.
Buying from a label?
No one does that any more.
This is the 21st Century.
... At least if they can help it. Jeez, it's bad enough paying for software. Just think of all your overheads - new hard drive: check - new laptop/tablet: check - new iPhoney with super duper minutes to all your best pals: check. What is a girl gonna do?
Certainly not pay for any fucking music. Software, ok, if you have to, but in the immortal words of the good Ian Paisley: NEVER! For music. No.
Not even a fiver?
NEVER!
A year?
Ney, Ney and Thrice Ney!
Sorry, the good Reverend has seemed to morph into the good Frankie. It's all good.
The Spotify model is not working and it won't ever work. It will fold in a year or three. It's being propped up by the majors, and when I say 'props', we aren't talking Westwood here. Then again, when I say 'majors', I probably should have said 'minors'.
Crisis all around. The majors were good for one thing. Not anymore. Now they are just being spiteful, what is left of them. We need them, but they are too insulted and dumb to take a hint. No, they will just keep crashing and burning. They missed a trick. Or two.
They had the cash and the contacts to create and invest in major infrastructure. They didn't. That boat has sailed. It ain't coming back. So, we all know where it went wrong. How to put it right?
Spotify will fail. It is contemptible. It is hated by artists and musicians and anyone that needs to pay the rent. Shit, at least before you could take your chances with a big major and IF you did hit it big, it might not have been mansions and swimming pools, but maybe a nice house/car. Allowing you to carry on crafting your art. It's all been sabotaged. Does no one else see a correlation between crap music and the loss of control from the major record industry? Honestly, if this is Rock 'n' Roll, I want my old job back. That was paraphrasing the Saw Doctors there.
I think I might be off on a bit of a rant.
Don't stop me know!
I'm having such a good time!
I'm.. never mind..
Where were we? Ah yes, I was ranting, you were humouring me.
The good days are gone and they aren't coming back.
The future is not what they said it would be.
But still, more and more money ploughed in. Debt grows deeper. Technology makes it simpler and faster to share music files. New generations don't even see it as a bad thing. They demand it even. With their bad haircuts and bad taste. It would be easy to beat on them. They aren't all as dumb as they seem.
Let's follow this flow chart through to the next say five/ten years. Where do you think we will be then? How many Ed fucking Sheridan records do you think the world can take?
The point is, no one cares anymore. This might take a while to register. But it will hit home in a big way in the next few years. Nobody cares. Music is not music anymore, and I am heartened by true music lovers that say: All music is crap these days. Because it is. And they talk about all the good stuff (that is even happening today, but is not mass market enough to make a difference). So I believe them.
It is just about accountants now (when was it never just about accountants and lawyers, I hear your cry?).
I am really sticking my neck out here and I expect it to be swiftly and violently chopped off. I'm hoping not, but I fear the worst.
There is a back catalogue of music that is listenable before the digital limiter/maximiser was invented. And too many people have too much money vested in maintaing that. The rest will just keep on fleecing the sheeple.
Fuck me. An Ian Paisley quote. Frankie Howerd. And bleedin' Gurdjieff thrown into the loop too.
Can't ask fairer than that.
Just be thankful I did not quote that wanker Thom Yorke (even if he technically is on our side coz he doesn't like Spotify very much either, but not because it doesn't take his music to a wider audience, but because he doesn't get as big a slice of the cake as he used to when he joined the music industry when it was in its last glory days, and he was getting paid in full like a mofo - ok, he doesn't get paid at all now, but still, shut up Thom boy!)
This rant may not be my finest hour. But, as culture and society sink into oblivion, I just felt I had to say something. Even if none of it makes sense.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, any ole fule with an inerwebnitz connection can call up the youtubers and get anything they want, faster than a mole can be whacked. And download it to their hd/usb stick/iPhoney for posterity. For free. And youtebntizz just loves this. Keeps on selling the advertising, cross fertilizing the collateral maintained, then selling that again. And you all feel so smug about getting a little naughty something for nothing.
Even if it was just the vids that have a 100,000 hits - not uncommon - a fraction of that payed to an artist could mean the difference of paying the rent for the month or not. No small matter, when the matter at hand is paying the rent for the month. But too much is being made off too many. Google/youtube will never sort out a micro payment system. They will keep on infringing copyright with their system. And we will all dumbly think that we are reaping the benefits, when it is just the whirlwind.
All I know is, this system will not be changing in our immediate lifetime. It is entrenched enough now that I feel I can make that assertion. There is too much work out there by too many people to be exploited, a fatter goose to be plucked you will not find. And to even begin paying what is due to those it is due to, well that is just not on, just like giving power to people by giving them a vote that can change things. That is never done.
Too much easy money to be made from too many dumb people.
Spotify? A distraction.
I know not of one distribution mechanism in these wonderful days of the internet that even three musicians/songwriters/producers can agree on.
That last statement was a bit too Frankie Howerd for my liking.
I think I'll stop there.
(Sorry about the spelling in this instance, but why worry about the style when the content was so lacking, eh?)
Perhaps the Musicians should consider that there are far more people making music as it's fair easier to do? In the days of old getting signed to a label was a big thing, now you can get discovered on youtube etc. More competition = lower prices etc. Same happening in eBook land - anyone can publish an ebook easily. So should Spotify do an Amazon and allow people to upload their own works?
BTW: I use Spotify to save me the pain of digitizing my old Vinyl/CD collection! Though their habit of dropping Albums I had saved as playlists is a PITA.
Making music may be easy, but getting your music in front of people interested in listening to it has never been more challenging. Your competition is now a million bands of whom nine hundred and fifty thousand are terrible. Even the most ardent music fan is going to be hard pressed to search through that much awfulness in the hope of finding something outstanding- I have experience of this both as a fan and as a musician and the ability to make one's music easily available is definitely a double-edged sword.
10M * 5 = 50M/month or 600M per year in revenue. That's assuming their unlimited deal. Actually most of their subscribers are on the 10/month type deal. So, in reality it is probably closer to 1B /year in revenue, if not more. Not bad given that most western countries are still recovering from an epic recession.
Assume Spotify continues growing, and they could be looking at 20-30M paying subscribers a few years down the line. Add in advertising, promotional deals, and other revenue, and we're talking somewhere in the range of 5B/year that needs to be split between Spotify's expenses, shareholders, and the music industry. Spotify does not have a monopoly on this market and there are other sources of revenue for the music industry including competing streaming media, sales of traditional albums, online sales via iTunes, Amazon, or other outlets, and national licensing companies that rake in tons of cash from the sales of empty harddrives, radio plays, etc.
And of course good artists can always earn money in the order of thousands per gig if they bother to tour. If you are any good, Spotify is a great way to advertise that kind of business. This is a big reason why artists are actually paying to be on Soundcloud, which then gives away the music for free. Think about it: mass distribution is more important for some artists than licensing revenue.
If you add it all up, basically the music industry is not doing bad at all right now and are probably looking forward to healthy revenues the next few years. The fact that little of it ends up in the pockets of artists is not the fault of Spotify but the fault of a largely redundant network of middle men that add little artistic value but still grab most of the cash.
So, the numbers add up: this is already a multi billion $ industry and it is growing. It does change the dynamics of the industry. Being a one hit wonder is not going to be profitable unless it is a really big hit that people will be playing for decades to come. However, accumulating tens of millions of plays over time actually does bring in a steady stream of revenue. This favours quality music rather than shit record company garbage that goes out of fashion in weeks. If you are a wannabe musician, online sales is not going to bring in the goods until you are established as a solid artist: you'll have to perform live and convince people your stuff is worth listening to and more importantly: re-listening to over and over again. If you can't do that, why should you be payed?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
