http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/musi...cision-fi.html

I think this is incredibly greedy and misguided. I understand and forgive the Led Zeppelin's, the Beatles', the Bob Dylan's, the Pink Floyd's of the music industry who hail from an entirely different era and made millions if not billions from the old ways, and have catalogs that will continue to make money no matter how. But any artist who has emerged in the past 20-30 years who has that sort of "I'm not allowing people to stream my music" attitude are greedy a-holes and I can't feel bad for them when someone downloads their album off a torrent if they have this attitude toward streaming. If you're on iTunes, you should be on Spotify and Rhapsody and the ilk.

Hell, if certain artists decide to make their music ONLY available for the premium and unlimited members who pay money, I can handle that... keeping your music from it period is just a-holey. Coldplay used "our album needs to be heard as a whole as not as separate songs" as an excuse about why Mylo Xyloto isn't on Spotify, but if that's the case, then why are the songs available individually on Itunes (if they are so intent on making Mylo Xyloto heard as one long work of music, do the Prince "Lovesexy" thing or disc two of Kate Bush's "Aerial" and make it one long 40+ minute track on Spotify then? ) At least The Beatles only allow their albums available as entire albums instead of where you can cherrypick buying "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" alone. Coldplay and The Black Keys have both lost a lot of my respect over this, a lot of us do pay for Spotify and consider it something worth paying for digital music. I was contemplating getting Mylo Xyloto on vinyl, but after this I can't give Coldplay a cent of my money, I'll buy 50 Words For Snow on wax instead, an album I've had the chance to really warm up to and get to know via Spotify. So Kate will make a couple cents every time I stream one of her songs, as well as making the money from an actual purchase of her album. Isn't that better than making NOTHING from a pirated download?

I wouldn't have bought their albums without listening to them first. Since I'm now doing that through Spotify, it more or less confirms that I won't ever be buying those albums.

I get where you are coming from...but...if you like these artists, chances are you'd buy their albums without hearing them first anyway. In this case, neither have made bad records in the past, and their track record alone is enough clout for me to go on. I believe that may be partly what their line or reasoning is, too. I don't think greed has as much to do with it as respect does. I don't think it's too much for an artist to say - "hey if you like us, then like us enough to just buy our album before having to hear the whole thing first".

I bought both records having heard very little of them, other than a song or two on the radio or a Saturday Night Live performance. And do you know what? Both are great, and did not disappoint. Do I personally care that they're not on Spotify? Not really. But then I am old school, myself, and come from that earlier time you mentioned, when pretty much the only way to hear a new album was to actually buy it first. I think some folks out there just may be getting a little too spoiled in this age of digital immediacy, and perhaps may be overreacting a bit.

That said, I do agree that in this day & age it does seem a somewhat foolish thing to do, to not let Spotify (or the like) have access to their latest albums. Bands should take the opportunity wherever they can to let there music be heard. If they were bad albums, then I could maybe see the need to not have people hear them first before buying them. However, in this case they are not. It's also nothing that's going to get me all up in arms about, either.

Bottom line, though - if you like the artists, just support them without too many caveats. If they put out crappy music, that's good grounds to lose respect for them. What you're talking about seems more like whiny sour grapes, only because you're not getting your way. So you're a little inconvenienced. There are worse things in life to contend with.

Well Spotify is largely designed to wean people off of illegally downloading music by making as much music as they want available to them for a small monthly fee (everyone I know pays for Unlimited or Premium because they hate the ads and the limited listening space the free service gives). Considering I still buy physical copies of albums, it is convenient to have the music I listen to on there so I can stream/listen whenever I want, and then make the playlists and the sort as well. With that, an artist is making 1-2 cents every time I listen to a song of theirs and that was after they made money from me buying an actual copy of it. If it's on Itunes, it should be on Spotify/Rhapsody. Kinda hard to want to support artists that I can't even be able to listen to on the computer. I listen to most of my music on the computer whether at work or at leisure. I pay for Spotify because I believe its worth it, but ALL music should be available on it instead of a few greedy rock stars who'd rather be pirated because there's more pride in that than making a measly cent for every time their song is streamed.

How dare artists decide what to do with their own music!

I don't use Spotify, but this does seem a little counter-intuitive to making money off their music. Some people are going to buy music, others aren't; I don't think services like Spotify really affect sales at the end of the day. But hey, it's their music and they can do whatever they want with it.

Fixed

One thing for the artists who are opposed to digital music period (AC/DC are one of the biggest holdouts), another when you decide that those who stream music shouldn't have the right to hear your album. Artists who are anti-streaming deserve to be pirated. Like what I read on another forum with someone who admitted to torrenting Coldplay's "Mylo Xyloto", "they didn't want my money the way I was willing to give it to them, so they're not getting my money period", and I can't feel sorry for them for that.

Like said, I have no beef with artists like The Beatles, Zeppelin, Dylan, Metallica, AC/DC, Floyd and the sort who never show up on these type of services (even though I feel like they should be available for the Unlimited/Premium users who pay to listen) but other more contemporary artists just look like spoil-sports.

I agree that the artists that keep their music off streaming services are short-sighted and/or greedy.

Of the 800+ albums I actually own, the only ones I still regularly listen to are the ones that are available on Spotify. Why? Because it's easier than pulling out the CD or ripping my entire library to MP3s, and deciding which albums are worthy enough to go on my phone. If I can stream them, I don't have to worry about any of that crap, and I can just listen to the songs I love, instantly. I've already paid my $10 for each CD (or a lot more, depending on the album), and now everytime I listen to it on Spotify, it generates a TINY bit more revenue for the rights-holders (labels, artists, etc.), and a ton of data IF they're willing to ask their label for it.

The larger problem, though, is that they're hugely misinformed on what it really means for them because services like Spotify are still in their infancy. There's a great interview with a guy from Universal who explains it pretty well, but here are a few interesting bits.

- The average iTunes customer spends $40/year.
- Spotify Premium users spend $120/year.
- iTunes visibility is User X bought Album Y on Day Z.
- Spotify visibility is FAR more detailed. User X listens to Song Y 10 times a month, and listens to the entire album W times a year. Or, if Artist U appears on David Letterman, then R people in Baltimore listened to Song Y the next day, and of those people, X of them listened to a few more songs.
- Coldplay held their album from Spotify (and the other streaming services)
- You can listen to the entire Coldplay album on YouTube, for which they get a FRACTION of what Spotify would pay them per play (if they get anything at all... YouTube isn't clear on how royalties work for copyrighted music).
- Spotify is the second-largest revenue generator for the music labels in the European countries in which they operate. This took 2 to 3 years. Spotify has only been in the US for 6 months.

The streaming services are leading the change in the industry, and it IS a good thing. But, because it's such a radical change (from owning to access), it's no longer about first-week sales of albums or tracks. It's about finding out WHERE you biggest fans are, so you can get them to buy deluxe albums, vinyl, or more importantly, tickets to your shows. If a band in Philadelphia finds out that thousands of people in Vancouver are listening to their music on Spotify (instead of YouTube or torrents), you can damn well be sure that they're going to try to book a show there.

This site is pretty fascinating:
http://nextbigsound.com/5478/stats-T...#5478----plays

The above link is for the number of plays The Black Keys have seen on various services (YouTube, MySpace, etc.). They don't track every service (ie: Spotify), but it's still fascinating to me.
So The Black Keys had 6.9 MILLION plays in the last 30 days. 99% on services for which they get $0 in revenue. Now, if those plays were all on Spotify/MOG/etc. instead, then they'd be looking at an estimate of $34,500... per MONTH. (I say estimate because no one knows exactly what they get paid per play because it's not that simple, so I estimated 1/2 cent per play.)

If you use the above site for Coldplay, it's even better. 6.5 million plays on Youtube ALONE in the last 30 days. 11.9 million total on the services that are monitored by NextBigSound. That's an estimated $714,000/year of lost revenue for the band (again, assuming 1/2 cent per play).

It's tough because I don't want to call them stupid. They just don't know any better.

That's money that they're completely leaving on the table, along with a lot of data on how many people are listening to the music, and where they live.


last edit, I swear:
Sorry... I had to add one more from the NextBigSound site.
http://nextbigsound.com/13455/stats-...13455----plays
Justin Bieber... 102,500,000 plays in ONE MONTH. And I think RDIO is the only one in the list, at a paltry 127,000 plays, that directly generates revenue for that little twerp.

Nobody "deserves" to be pirated, but I agree that it is strange that they're not on Spotify, especially in light of SomethingMore's post.

Thank you SomethingMore. This is not the same as when people complained about Metallica and Napster. These are artists actually shooting themselves in the foot and losing potential new purchases, as well as generated income.

And like you too, I have nearly 1000 albums and cd's and its so much easier to stream (and therefore helping artists I've already helped) them. I listen as much to artists I'm well versed on as with artists I'm trying out.

I think there should be one or two things for the apprehensive artists... withhold their music from Spotify for the first week, or even month after its release... kinda like in the day where people like Michael Jackson or U2 would have their albums held for a year before being sold through BMG, etc... or only make their music able to listen to those who pay for the service. Dangle the idea of being able to pay as the only way of being able to stream the entire Beatles discography and there'd be a lot of people who'd warm up to the idea of paying for Spotify, and then Paul, Ringo, Yoko and Olivia would all have even more money in their already loaded accounts. It's a gift that keeps on giving. Yea, they make less than a regular sale, but isn't it better to have the mentality of paying what something is worth? If you really like a song, you'll listen over and over. You can't put a price on what songs you like better than others.

Well some artists act like getting paid 1-2 cents for every stream is so demeaning, when I think they seem to forget that it is still better than getting not a penny when people torrent download them.

Right. It's about reaching as many fans as possible in a way that still generates some kind of revenue. The exec from Universal, Rob Wells, said it best. In an interview on "This Week in Music," he said (I'm paraphrasing), that one of his colleagues asked him what he thought of Coldplay keeping their music off Spotify. He replied within 3 minutes, with a link to a playlist on YouTube of the entire album, simply saying, "This is what I think of this. And in another 3 minutes, I could have these ripped to MP3s and stored in a DropBox." I can only imagine how many people did exactly that.

And this is probably what's most confusing for the artists. All they think is, "Hey... my song was played 100 times and I only got $0.50." What they don't realize, is a good percentage of those plays are from people who already bought the album for $20 in 1994 or whatever. I don't know about you, but when I opened Spotify for the first time, one of the first things I did was search for albums that I already owned, just to see if they were there. When they were, I listened to them. When they weren't, I shrugged and searched for something else. I was curious about the new Black Keys album, so I searched for it in Spotify on release day. It wasn't there... and I still haven't heard/bought it. I'm not a big enough fan to buy the album blindly.

Interestingly enough, before the US launch of Spotify, some artists were putting their albums on there a week before the release date, only for Premium members. It was great. Even Metric had an exclusive EP of acoustic songs. (Metric, interestingly enough, doesn't have their latest album on Spotify in the US, but it IS available in the UK. Go figure.)

I'd even pay an extra couple dollars per month if The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Black Keys, Pink Floyd, Tool, Robert Fripp, etc. all allowed their music as a Spotify Premium PLUS option. If it's easier to listen to, then you'll have more people listening legally, as opposed to how it is now where 95% of music consumed online is in an illegal or unlicensed manner.


This is why I personally think the iCloud, Google Music, and Amazon Cloud Drive model is very detrimental to the artists. Not only do you lose all the "per play" data you get from streaming, but you're enabling pirates to upload anything they want to one of those three cloud services, so they'll never be compelled to pay for anything again (except that $25/year iCloud fee, I guess).

Artists don't get nearly that much. I believe the current royalty rate is $.0007 per play. There is an interesting graphic which shows that in order for an act to make minimum wage ($1160/month), they would need over 4 million streams on Spotify.

http://www.informationisbeautiful.ne...s-earn-online/

To me, that seems like you're giving up a lot of potential sales in exchange for pretty low dollars. So I can understand why an act like Coldplay or Black Keys puts a moratorium on new releases. Kind of like movie studios making sure there's a blackout window between a DVD release and PPV/cable viewing.

That graphic is incredibly out of date (April 2010), inaccurate, and extremely misleading. Essentially, it's comparing revenue from the sale of a self-pressed CD full of music to a single play of a single song on Spotify for a performer who is not a songwriter and is on a major label. Please.

The "current" royalty rate that you speak of is entirely dependent on the artists' contract with their labels and is by no means set at any specific rate like you suggest. If artists don't like the payout they're getting, they need to take it up with their labels, not Spotify. Actually, the streaming services make it very simple (yet detailed). The CEO of MOG hinted that he pays out $6 or $7 out of every $10 to rights-holders. Spotify must be in the same range. So, at the end of the month, they say "Hi Label X. You had 10% of plays this month. We earned $25m this month. Our cut is 30% ($7.5m), so you get 10% of $17.5m, which is $1.75m. Also, here's a giant Excel file with ALL of the data on your plays. Distribute your cash as you see fit."

Put another way, if I spend $120/year on Spotify, and I only listen to one specific artist for that entire year, then Spotify (and their shareholders) get $36 from me, and the artist's label gets $84. How that label pays royalties to the artist is entirely dependent on his contract. If he's on a major label, he's lucky to get 10% (or $8.40). If the artist IS his own label, then he gets the full $84. Obviously, no one listens to one single artist for a full year, so the numbers aren't quite that simple. I may listen to 50 artists over that time, all at varying numbers of total plays. Spotify will give all the data to the labels who then pay the artists. So Universal might get 20% of that $84 while Ipecac will get 70% and the last 10% goes to various rights-holders of songs I only listened to once or twice.

So if you increase that scale to 2.5 million paying users, then the numbers start look better. Increase that to 50, 100, or 500 million paying users (through various options like adding it to your cable bill, car lease, phone service, etc.), then you suddenly hit a massive scale where those 19 out of every 20 people who were listening to your music illegally, are now generating revenue (and data) that you can use to determine where to play live shows, or which markets to target your music to.

So if you're selling your car, and I want to buy it and pay you with a certified check, but you'll only accept cash, it's OK for me to just steal your car?

I've never used Spotify, but I can't even count how many new bands I've discovered for myself via Last.fm. And not only did I realize that I liked those bands, but I've purchased CDs, vinyl and bought downloads for a lot of them.

I'm 100% in agreement with the line of thinking that sharing music can help drive sales. I'm also 100% against the ridiculously over-the-top anti-piracy actions we've seen in the last decade. Both of those things said, the mindset of 'If you make something and decide not to sell it the way I want to buy it, then fuck you, I'm stealing a copy' is pathetic. Believe it or not, you don't have some fundamental right to read, watch or listen to anything anyone creates.

Well said.

Maybe so, but there's nothing wrong with choosing to instead listen to and support artists who "get" the Spotify thing. The music industry finally found a way to try to curb illegal downloading and found a formula making people willing to pay for music again and not feel ripped off (people forget downloading started because of the high price of cd's back in 1999-2000 and how a lot of people weren't feeling like they were getting their moneys worth), so instead of pirating the Coldplay and Black Keys albums, I'll check out other artists and albums that are willing to move into the 21st century and don't consider 1.5 cents per stream per song to be such a horrible demeaning thing when they're the ones charging $100 for concert tickets.

You have the option to choose other bands, yes. By that same token, some bands have the option to not go along with the new method. Doesn't mean they deserve to be stolen from. And it also seems like you're holding a double standard, agreeing with bands like Led Zeppelin and The Beatles not being on Spotify, while the "next generation" all should be. Just because they're from a different era doesn't mean they somehow have better reasons to opt out. I mean, they were convinced to join iTunes, so it's not like they're behind the times.

There is also the old fashioned method of buying the album based off of the lead single (which is conveniently available for free legally on Youtube). It worked wonders for me, but I'm a Black Keys fan to begin with.

Normally I'd assume that statistic is just hyperbole, but since you bolded it I have to ask for a link.

That argument makes very little sense on multiple levels. The cloud services just offer increased accessibility to the music you possess. Do you really think someone who pirates an album is somehow less compelled to pay for it than they already were, just because they can play it on their iPhone without syncing over USB? That's absurd.

In addition, uploading pirated music to one of the cloud services requires the uploader to ensure they have scrubbed any evidence that the files may be pirated, since all the services have TOS violations associated with uploading pirated music and presumably have checks in place. When a pirated file goes on a server in the cloud connected with a user account, it becomes much more of an incriminating risk making such services less appealing to pirates.

Furthermore, all 3 cloud services offer immediate access to music purchased from their respective connected stores. If this convenience is a motivating factor for pirates, it's also a motivating factor for legal purchasers and so such a system should presumably increase potential digital album sales.

There is a place for both streaming services and for cloud services. I don't see any reason why individual acts shouldn't be able to make judgment calls on how their music is distributed in both types of services.

It's shortsighted and stupid. If you're already a big fan of a band that chooses to black out streaming, then it's no problem. You're going to buy the album anyway. But for the people who aren't already big fans, streaming services like MOG and Spotify are the best way to find new artists you might like. I've been going through the "best of 2011" thread here and listening to those albums on Spotify, and it's been a blast. I've liked some of the albums enough to recommend them to others and may even go see those artists live when they come through town. That's exactly how these services should work. I get access to the music for a small flat fee (I pay for premium), and find music I like.

Now, granted, you couldn't pay me to listen to Coldplay, so them being on Spotify or not makes no difference to me, but I would have liked to hear The Black Keys. I'm not going to buy their album unheard.

A report from the IFPI. http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/DMR2009.pdf
QUOTE: ...collating separate studies in 16 countries over a four-year period, estimated unauthorised file-sharing at over 40 billion files in 2008. This means that globally around 95 per cent of music tracks are downloaded without payment to the artist or the music company that produced them.
Yes, it's from 2009, but I can't imagine it's gotten any better, other than from the introduction of streaming services.

Right. Which is fine for non-pirates. But it's just as easy for pirates to use the same services, too.
No. I think they're not going to be compelled to pay either way; when your chances of buying an album are 0%, it can't get any lower. But making piracy more convenient doesn't help the cause. Music piracy has been rampant for 10 years. I know people who will pay $200 for concerts, but won't pay $0.99 for the tracks they like; yet their libraries have 20,000 songs in them... The cloud services just make it easier to keep listening to the stuff they don't own.

I highly doubt that there are any sort of "checks" in place for pirated music on any of those cloud lockers. You asked me for a link, so I'm going to have to extend the same request on that one. I call bullshit. I believe the TOS rules exist, but I'd like to see proof of the "checks" for pirated files. I presume that your presumption is dead wrong.

Again, no way in hell they're checking for this stuff. Apple, Amazon, and Google don't care WHERE you got all the music you already have. They just want you to store it on their service because they think you'll be compelled to purchase from them going forward. Even better if you purchase their hardware to consume the music, too.

I'm not arguing against the positive implications of these services. You're absolutely right on this point. If they can convince a pirate to upload their music to their servers (or "match" it with iTunes, I guess), then they're betting on the possibility that they'll start to buy albums from them. But what they're missing is... pirates don't pay for music. So if they can get away with pirating AND uploading the songs to the cloud, then they'll just keep grabbing the songs from torrent sites and "legitimizing" them on those services.

Again, I don't totally disagree. Different services work for different people. I just don't see any evidence that they're trying to curb piracy. They just want you to use their service so you're more likely to buy their hardware. The streaming services don't sell hardware (yet), and the good ones are format-agnostic (look at Spotify, which is on every modern mobile platform in addition to Sonos, Squeezebox, and even Onkyo home theater receivers!)

Oh, don't get me wrong. I hate the fact that Beatles, Zeppelin, Floyd (the Pulse album is available, but really, is post-Waters live PF as coveted as Dark Side or Wish You Were Here?), etc... aren't on Spotify, but I can at least excuse 60+ year old billionaires who are so far removed from the modern times musically moreso than I can younger "hungrier" artists who know all about word of mouth and the sort. But I do find it odd that if you can get the entire Stones, Elton and Bowie discographies... three 60+ year old billionaire artists who hail from a much different environment, what's holding the others back?

Coldplay are a highly commercial band and Chris Martin is married to Hollywood royalty, so he's lost some touch, but The Black Keys have been a cult band gaining from album to album who just finally "broke mainstream" with their last album, and I think not allowing their new album on services will hurt them in the long run, because those who bought Brothers aren't yet cemented die-hards who'll buy anything.

"The new Coldplay album on Spotify?"

"Nope."

"Shit. That sucks. Better go torrent it then..."


Well played, shitheads. But then again, it's fucking Coldplay so who gives a Christ...