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Post by matt@IAA on Feb 2, 2020 20:32:53 GMT -6
Equal for everyone doesn’t pay the bills. The reason Taylor Swift makes more is because she’s worth more, for better or worse. How many Indy bands would you need to make up the revenue she brings? I wouldn’t be surprised if proportionately she was under paid in those terms. Meaning, one Taylor swift who brings x audience is better than y number of small artists who each bring x/y audience.
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Post by johneppstein on Feb 2, 2020 21:45:07 GMT -6
Are the streaming companies making bank? I thought Spotify was losing money? Pretty sure YouTube was always losing til Google bought them... now who knows. It depends on which book makingkeeping school you went to and which set you're looking at.
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Post by Martin John Butler on Feb 2, 2020 22:02:01 GMT -6
Here's the thing, it doesn't matter to the people at the top running these companies. They can show on paper they're losing money and make multi-millions personally. If their "salary" plus bonuses total 250,000,000 a year. it's no surprise the company might show a loss. They're doing the 80's dirty money management tricks and flying their golden parachutes to their sailboats.
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Post by johneppstein on Feb 2, 2020 22:19:41 GMT -6
With Billie Eilish making her record in her bedroom with her Brother maybe there is a way for musicians to join an Association nationwide where a network of recording studios become a place that member artists can record projects where they will own the Masters. In return these Artists would donate back 2% to the Union/Association from their streams to fund more growth of union owned studios where Artists own the Masters. And then get a union owned streaming platform and educate consumers to buy from it versus Spotify. Get Taylor Swift and others to join.. The people like Taylor are the ones who make the model unsustainable. They price the subscription based on how much they have to pay out to to the top artists per stream. So, she’s doing just fine I’m sure - but the little guy can’t compete with her amount of streams, so they get pennies on the dollar. What they need to do is base it on a curve. You get 50,000 plays and under, and you make a certain amount per play. You get 100,000 plays and the payout changes. It seems backwards, and would be frustrating the further up the ladder you go, but I feel like it would make things more equal for everybody. That's a really kookie idea.
You should run for Congress!
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Post by johneppstein on Feb 2, 2020 22:23:14 GMT -6
Here's the thing, it doesn't matter to the people at the top running these companies. They can show on paper they're losing money and make multi-millions personally. If their "salary" plus bonuses total 250,000,000 a year. it's no surprise the company might show a loss. They're doing the 80's dirty money management tricks and flying their golden parachutes to their sailboats. Another thing - They're gauging "wealth" or "value" by stock valuations, not by income.
Which is fine, as long as the ponzi scheme lasts....
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Post by swafford on Feb 3, 2020 2:12:58 GMT -6
The sea is too big right now. Without some level of promotion and marketing, independents stand virtually zero chance to get noticed. It’s even worse than it was before every knucklehead with a computer could “make beats.” As someone said earlier, maybe the labels will cut out the middleman somehow. The sea has been expanding exponentially since the advent of mass marketed digital recording and the Internet. 15 years ago it was still possible to self-release and work AAA-Non Comm and community radio without paid promotion. From 1988 to 2003, I successfully self-promoted releases to AAA-Non Comms, college and community radio from Miami to Anchorage and could leverage those spins into local press, on-air appearances and tour stops. By about 2008, most AAA Non-Comms stopped letting self-represented people in the door and now streaming has pretty much made most kids forget there was ever such a thing as community radio and local press (what's left of it.) It is both the worst time to be a independent music creator in terms of monetizing and marketing and the best time in terms of being able to create high quality tracks in your bedroom (or barn ). And while the distribution has never been easier, that applies to everybody...and that is the water that is filling the sea. I'm happy I came up when there was a shithole to play, a radio station to spin and a rag to print in just about every small to medium sized city and even happier I jumped off that log roll 10 years ago. This internet thing would make a bitter old man.
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Post by saltyjames on Feb 3, 2020 13:32:55 GMT -6
Another thing - They're gauging "wealth" or "value" by stock valuations, not by income.
Which is fine, as long as the ponzi scheme lasts....
A critical distinction. And one most don't understand.
I have 2 vintage 87's that are worth $2.2k each.
They should be worth about $400.
They will likely be worth $5k+ in 10-15 years. But they may be worth only $25 by that time. It all depends on what people are willing to pay, and what they believe the value of something to be.
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Post by Johnkenn on Feb 3, 2020 14:05:29 GMT -6
With Billie Eilish making her record in her bedroom with her Brother maybe there is a way for musicians to join an Association nationwide where a network of recording studios become a place that member artists can record projects where they will own the Masters. In return these Artists would donate back 2% to the Union/Association from their streams to fund more growth of union owned studios where Artists own the Masters. And then get a union owned streaming platform and educate consumers to buy from it versus Spotify. Get Taylor Swift and others to join.. Who then pays for promotion, publicists, payola, etc? The labels are a necessary evil, they’ve just got the world by the balls.
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Post by Johnkenn on Feb 3, 2020 14:06:30 GMT -6
Here's the thing, it doesn't matter to the people at the top running these companies. They can show on paper they're losing money and make multi-millions personally. If their "salary" plus bonuses total 250,000,000 a year. it's no surprise the company might show a loss. They're doing the 80's dirty money management tricks and flying their golden parachutes to their sailboats. Another thing - They're gauging "wealth" or "value" by stock valuations, not by income.
Which is fine, as long as the ponzi scheme lasts....
They’ve all cashed in
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Post by Johnkenn on Feb 3, 2020 14:07:54 GMT -6
The sea is too big right now. Without some level of promotion and marketing, independents stand virtually zero chance to get noticed. It’s even worse than it was before every knucklehead with a computer could “make beats.” As someone said earlier, maybe the labels will cut out the middleman somehow. The sea has been expanding exponentially since the advent of mass marketed digital recording and the Internet. 15 years ago it was still possible to self-release and work AAA-Non Comm and community radio without paid promotion. From 1988 to 2003, I successfully self-promoted releases to AAA-Non Comms, college and community radio from Miami to Anchorage and could leverage those spins into local press, on-air appearances and tour stops. By about 2008, most AAA Non-Comms stopped letting self-represented people in the door and now streaming has pretty much made most kids forget there was ever such a thing as community radio and local press (what's left of it.) It is both the worst time to be a independent music creator in terms of monetizing and marketing and the best time in terms of being able to create high quality tracks in your bedroom (or barn ). And while the distribution has never been easier, that applies to everybody...and that is the water that is filling the sea. I'm happy I came up when there was a shithole to play, a radio station to spin and a rag to print in just about every small to medium sized city and even happier I jumped off that log roll 10 years ago. This internet thing would make a bitter old man. This
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Post by Johnkenn on Feb 3, 2020 14:09:06 GMT -6
Another thing - They're gauging "wealth" or "value" by stock valuations, not by income.
Which is fine, as long as the ponzi scheme lasts....
A critical distinction. And one most don't understand.
I have 2 vintage 87's that are worth $2.2k each.
They should be worth about $400.
They will likely be worth $5k+ in 10-15 years. But they may be worth only $25 by that time. It all depends on what people are willing to pay, and what they believe the value of something to be.
Sure wish the music world was free market.
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Feb 3, 2020 14:10:34 GMT -6
I've been saying this for twenty years!
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Post by saltyjames on Feb 3, 2020 14:38:44 GMT -6
Y'all gonna love this. Based on the basic economics. It is Taylor Swift that should be getting the smaller share of Spotify as she is a larger more common commodity. Like She can be heard everywhere / anywhere at anytime. I wouldn't know one of her songs if she knocked on my door and sang it to me. But I BET I can hum at lest two or three. Meaning I've already heard her. No big discovery there if I spotify her etc. But say for sake, I hear TC Young, or DAMN Union or some left field shit like that. Well now I'm a lot more interested!! Cause it is good and new.
My point is: there is a little Italian deli near me and This morning me and my wife took a close friend there to have coffee and eat their chocolate chip cookies (they're crazy good). Well, he's a super foodie and he had a Chicken Panini. He said it was the best damn chicken panini he ever had and the dude is a super picky foodie and has been all over the world. The cookie is $5, the sandwich $15. Cuz it's a one of a kind and truly unique.
I see music the same way. I would rather pay $150 to go see 5 regional unique artist than pay $75 to meet Norah Jones. And I think Norah Jones is great.
Unique has a deep value. I mean, it has to anyone who has taste and or brains, or both.
And so it is that IMO, the last point is the real problem.
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Post by christopher on Feb 3, 2020 15:23:01 GMT -6
Thanks for this topic, it’s really important. I hope you don’t mind me having a little daydream.
We here are all pretty smart people who find solutions to problems. Why can’t we solve this problem that tech has given us? Do we start our own musician friendly streaming service? Just bypass the labels, start fresh as new music creators?
Here’s some math.
Let say a song is 3 minutes.. $0.005 royalty
If a user listens: - 24/7: royalties would cost over $72 per user per month. So we can’t have users just letting it run forever, that doesn’t work.
- average 3 hours per day: royalties $9 per month. Better.
- average 1 hour per day: $3 per month. I think this is doable, but we’d have to charge twice as much to cover running the business. (Hopefully)
This gives me an idea: What if the user pays for the royalty themselves? If it only costs a penny to hear your favorite song, knowing it’s helping directly the artist..what true music fan would turn that down?
How about we give users tokens.. say 600 jukebox tokens per month: $6.. they could earn more tokens by watching ads, or buy more. The tokens don’t roll over, because we need their monthly pay (I think).. just refill every month.
Anyway.. I wish it was as simple as starting a server and making it happen. : [
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Post by swafford on Feb 3, 2020 15:57:35 GMT -6
I've been saying this for twenty years! Church of Bob O. 15 years ago you and Ed put a lot of thought worms in my brain that are still squirming around.
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Post by johneppstein on Feb 3, 2020 15:59:31 GMT -6
Thanks for this topic, it’s really important. I hope you don’t mind me having a little daydream. We here are all pretty smart people who find solutions to problems. Why can’t we solve this problem that tech has given us? Do we start our own musician friendly streaming service? Just bypass the labels, start fresh as new music creators? Here’s some math. Let say a song is 3 minutes.. $0.005 royalty If a user listens: - 24/7: royalties would cost over $72 per user per month. So we can’t have users just letting it run forever, that doesn’t work. - average 3 hours per day: royalties $9 per month. Better. - average 1 hour per day: $3 per month. I think this is doable, but we’d have to charge twice as much to cover running the business. (Hopefully) This gives me an idea: What if the user pays for the royalty themselves? If it only costs a penny to hear your favorite song, knowing it’s helping directly the artist..what true music fan would turn that down? How about we give users tokens.. say 600 jukebox tokens per month: $6.. they could earn more tokens by watching ads, or buy more. The tokens don’t roll over, because we need their monthly pay (I think).. just refill every month. Anyway.. I wish it was as simple as starting a server and making it happen. : [ I think $3/mo is WAY too low.
I think $9/mo is still too low.
$20/mo is about the sweet spot. I think that most people who like music would go for 20, if there was no "free" competition. What has devalued music is the pervasiveness of piracy, be it illegal piracy like Bittorrent or so-called "legal" piracy like Spotify and Pandora. Maybe even more. When I was in college most people I knew spent AT LEAST $20/mo on recorded music and money was worth a lot more back then. Remember, $20/mo was only 2 or 3 albums. Most college kids back then bought at least that many. Many of my friends had a wall of milk crates or the equivalent.
Even $72/mo isn't that bad if you compare it to what people spend on cable TV and internet.
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Post by spindrift on Feb 3, 2020 16:08:26 GMT -6
christopher, I’ve run a small tech consulting business for 20+ years in Silicon Valley. The people in Silicon Valley starting these successful companies are wicked smart, have access to amazing capital resources, come from Ivy League schools, and are hungry for success. These people are way smarter than all of us and have all the connections and advantages to boot. I’ve worked along side them and while I’m smart, I’m not that level of smart. I think the train has already left the station in regards to an “artist friendly streaming platform”. The big dogs have lost (investor) money for so many years in order to gain one precious thing: ADOPTION. Once you have mass adoption, then the profits come. I don’t think that anyone with any money to invest is going to fall on their sword for the sake of musicians and songwriters. You would have to lose millions a month for a long time to compete with these guys. That said, some artists have leverage where they could only choose to release on certain fair platforms if they knew about one. Those signed to labels probably don’t have that kind of control. I’ve seen people only releasing on vinyl etc and this idea might be akin to it.
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Post by drbill on Feb 3, 2020 16:17:27 GMT -6
Unique has a deep value. I mean, it has to anyone who has taste and or brains, or both. And so it is that IMO, the last point is the real problem. I don't disagree. But how is it any different than 1975. 1985. 1995. etc.. It was exactly the same back then. This is a different problem, exacerbated by the above.
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Post by swurveman on Feb 3, 2020 16:20:40 GMT -6
Here's the thing, it doesn't matter to the people at the top running these companies. They can show on paper they're losing money and make multi-millions personally. If their "salary" plus bonuses total 250,000,000 a year. it's no surprise the company might show a loss. They're doing the 80's dirty money management tricks and flying their golden parachutes to their sailboats. Another thing - They're gauging "wealth" or "value" by stock valuations, not by income.
Which is fine, as long as the ponzi scheme lasts....
Not exactly. For example in 2017 five of Spotify’s senior executives earned a combined total of $26.5 million. That's personal wealth for one year, not future stock sale wealth. Ponzi or not, string 10 years of that personal income together and it's a lot of personal income. I'm not putting it down, just pointing out the executives are doing pretty well without any potential stock benefits. FWIW: I'm about to release an album and I'm not going to stream anywhere but a few Youtube videos to promote the album. Everything else is going to be Bandcamp, which limits streaming to three per song. I understand, and empathize, with those unhappy with the streaming model. It sucks.
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Feb 3, 2020 16:29:29 GMT -6
I knew a bunch of that crowd when I lived there. They aren't nearly as smart as the people I worked with at Motown but they did manage to blindside the majors with a bunch of B.S. claiming the problem was student hacker contemporaries of their customers while in fact, it was investment banksters.
There could have been very effective copy protection that would have seriously slowed down the proliferation of pirate copies. Unfortunately, the folks at Apple and Microsoft wanted to turn personal computers into an entertainment platform in order to move beyond just selling word processors so they wouldn't allow tying software licensing to CPU chips. They had built their businesses on pirate software. Software sells hardware and not vice-versa.
I think at this point, artists should set up their own streaming links rather than working through middlemen. Management companies will probably replace record labels which was actually the Motown business model.
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Post by christopher on Feb 3, 2020 16:33:48 GMT -6
christopher, I’ve run a small tech consulting business for 20+ years in Silicon Valley. The people in Silicon Valley starting these successful companies are wicked smart, have access to amazing capital resources, come from Ivy League schools, and are hungry for success. These people are way smarter than all of us and have all the connections and advantages to boot. I’ve worked along side them and while I’m smart, I’m not that level of smart. I think the train has already left the station in regards to an “artist friendly streaming platform”. The big dogs have lost (investor) money for so many years in order to gain one precious thing: ADOPTION. Once you have mass adoption, then the profits come. I don’t think that anyone with any money to invest is going to fall on their sword for the sake of musicians and songwriters. You would have to lose millions a month for a long time to compete with these guys. That said, some artists have leverage where they could only choose to release on certain fair platforms if they knew about one. Those signed to labels probably don’t have that kind of control. I’ve seen people only releasing on vinyl etc and this idea might be akin to it. congratuations and great comment! I’ve wondered is Spindrift your company? I love that stuff... Being a sound engineer in Silicon Valley has also provided me insight to behind the scenes at enough of these tech companies to see how it works. Tech is all pump and dump, hot potato game. Much of the money is from outside the US, and with that come foreign influence or worse. The basic model around here is get in early, spread your bets, lose on 90% of startups so that 9% might almost be worth something, and 1% is the homerun. Either IPO or sale the company, who cares about ethics. The thing I’ve seen, and seen a lot... All startups suck. They all lose money for a long time. Most of them are Stanford grads around here. And I have to say, they may be smart but they are terrible at public speaking. Atrocious! they are either incapable of using a microphone, or as fake as an actor in a commercial. On the rare occasion you get someone who is comfortable with a mic and a room, the investors are easily swooned. Elon Musk has them investing in a rocket to mars! And that’s what musicians have in spades. They know how to hold a mic, look at a crowd, and work the room. In Silicon Valley, that’s all you need. That and zero ethics of course.
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Post by spindrift on Feb 3, 2020 16:40:02 GMT -6
Then there's always the "Who is John Galt?" approach. Creators stop releasing widely...
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Post by Johnkenn on Feb 3, 2020 16:41:03 GMT -6
Another thing - They're gauging "wealth" or "value" by stock valuations, not by income.
Which is fine, as long as the ponzi scheme lasts....
Not exactly. For example in 2017 five of Spotify’s senior executives earned a combined total of $26.5 million. That's personal wealth for one year, not future stock sale wealth. Ponzi or not, string 10 years of that personal income together and it's a lot of personal income. I'm not putting it down, just pointing out the executives are doing pretty well without any potential stock benefits. FWIW: I'm about to release an album and I'm not going to stream anywhere but a few Youtube videos to promote the album. Everything else is going to be Bandcamp, which limits streaming to three per song. I understand, and empathize, with those unhappy with the streaming model. It sucks. I have no problem with executives making millions of millions if they’re bringing in millions for their company. The problem is, A) these companies haven’t even turned a profit and B) this money is made from the virtual labor we songwriters perform. And we don’t even have the right to pull our music if we don’t like it.
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Post by Johnkenn on Feb 3, 2020 16:41:47 GMT -6
Then there's always the "Who is John Galt?" approach. Creators stop releasing widely... Only the owners of the masters can do this. And since they’re making the lions share, that ain’t happening.
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Post by swurveman on Feb 3, 2020 16:45:57 GMT -6
Not exactly. For example in 2017 five of Spotify’s senior executives earned a combined total of $26.5 million. That's personal wealth for one year, not future stock sale wealth. Ponzi or not, string 10 years of that personal income together and it's a lot of personal income. I'm not putting it down, just pointing out the executives are doing pretty well without any potential stock benefits. FWIW: I'm about to release an album and I'm not going to stream anywhere but a few Youtube videos to promote the album. Everything else is going to be Bandcamp, which limits streaming to three per song. I understand, and empathize, with those unhappy with the streaming model. It sucks. I have no problem with executives making millions of millions if they’re bringing in millions for their company. The problem is, A) these companies haven’t even turned a profit and B) this money is made from the virtual labor we songwriters perform. And we don’t even have the right to pull our music if we don’t like it. I totally agree with you that songwriters are getting screwed. You're not going to like what I have to say, but I see music getting even less expensive for the consumer as Silicon Valley goes to the next level of automating jobs and the necessity for a larger welfare state- with cheap, lousy food, cheap highs and cheap entertainment- becomes a necessity. Nobody spends more money than Silicon Valley in Washington and both parties have their hand out. Andrew Yang's "Freedom Dividend" (welfare) is the first political manifestation/proposition of what is going to happen. From this article, you see the Silicon Valley thought process supporting the "Freedom Dividend", because as one guy says, “Being in the Bay Area, you know first-hand the impacts of AI: You have peers working on technologies to streamline and make processes more efficient — which effectively automates away millions of jobs." Unless voters on both side of the aisle unite to force politicians to put jobs over technology, which they've never done, it's a fait accompli. The fact that, in a post Citizens United world, there is so much Silicon Valley money for election campaigns doesn't help.
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