PSA: 99p Spotify for 3 months

Sporky

Indeed - I am not entirely taken with Spotify's logic.

But album sales have (as I understand it) been on the decline for ages now. Complaining about a loss of revenue there seems like complaining about not selling as many horseshoes after the invention of the car.

guitarfishbay

Sporky said:

Indeed - I am not entirely taken with Spotify's logic.

But album sales have (as I understand it) been on the decline for ages now. Complaining about a loss of revenue there seems like complaining about not selling as many horseshoes after the invention of the car.

The music industry was too slow to monetize digital. Once Napster was a thing and the industry's response was to stick their fingers in their ears and try and sue a couple of people that was it...

Declining album sales started pre-Spotify, doesn't mean it's not still a factor.  From reading these debates before there are clearly a number of people who used to be large consumers of music - as in multiple album purchases per month - who no longer do that and just pay a Spotify subscription.  Physical media is basically dead, but digital files don't have that much value either if you can access pretty much every digital file you'd want each month for the price of buying one album give or take a few £.  And I don't blame them for that - but it has resulted in a shift in revenue for artists.

Personally I'd prefer for streaming revenues to be directly split from the individual sub fees.  So if all a person does is listen to a single artist then all the portion of the fee after the service has taken it's cut should go to that artist, rather than being done as a slice of the total listens on the platform.  Then it'd better support smaller artists.

bingefeller

I still like having the physical CD. I only use Spotify or Amazon Music to sample the music and if I like it I'll buy it.  

Sporky

guitarfishbay said:

Personally I'd prefer for streaming revenues to be directly split from the individual sub fees.  So if all a person does is listen to a single artist then all the portion of the fee after the service has taken it's cut should go to that artist, rather than being done as a slice of the total listens on the platform.  Then it'd better support smaller artists.

That doesn't seem unreasonable.

I'd also happily pay double if all the extra went proportionately to the artists I listen to.

kaypeejay

I buy CDs, LPs -cheap 2nd hand and also exorbitantly proced new vinyl -  and also listen to Spotify with a subscription. I often Spotify stuff I have on physical media because of convenience. It is also brilliant for making playlists for when people come around and I totally agree about its worth for finding new stuff. I feel I am definitely doing my bit for the music industry. 

darthed1981

guitarfishbay said:

Sporky said:

RocknRollDave said:

professorben said:

The revenue the artist sees is a pittance tho. 

If you compare a single song streamed once to a CD sale, maybe, but that's comparing apples to oranges 

Spotify always compare themselves to radio, and the numbers suggest they're a lot more generous than the radio stations.

But this ignores the fact that previously radio was supplemented by album sales, because people wanted to listen whenever they wanted wherever.  Spotify replaces both radio and album purchasing for most people so it has to be seen within the same framework if we're talking about what money the artist makes.

That ignores the fact that new technology came along, and people decided they didn't want to buy ten mediocre songs to get a couple of good ones, and a lot of them started stealing music as a result.  Still more customers were just unhappy with it, the industry loved and pushed albums not for artistic reasons, but because they could sell them for a lot more than singles.

Spotify is a new market, that sits in terms of revenue generosity somewhere between radio and physical media, physical media is a dying market, and the current faddish revival of vinyl is its last gasp.  Seriously that will not last, and the decline will eventually continue.  As with almost all of us, technology causes changes to our jobs and we have to adapt, musicians are the same.  People are quite willing to pay £100 for gig tickets for top artists, gigs make the Katy Perry's and Taylor Swifts the megabucks they used to get from CDs.

A commercial change took place that favoured the consumer, it doesn't happen often, enjoy it!