Report on Music Streaming Services

[Beedster]

49 minutes ago, PaulWarning said:

Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift etc seem to do ok, I think it's only ever been the ones at the top of the food chain make big money, most live on scraps

These days they are very few and far between and generate wealth from diverse income stream by comparison with the like of Zep. As you say it was always the case that only a very few made it, but now it's a very, very, very few

[TheGreek]

When I were a lad having a record collection was a status symbol.  Now young people have no "hard copies " of any music.

Music has become the ultimate disposable product, where users don't pay for product in the first place then throw it away when they inevitably get bored with it. 

If you're making Music nowadays,  do it for the love,  there were very few musicians making money before,  the number has just gone down. 

[cheddatom]

Surely the people losing the most record sales are the ones in the charts with mass audiences. The local metal bands I go to see are selling tapes and vinyl to hipsters. I started gigging 25 years ago, and most of the original bands I spoke to weren't making money at all. They'd sell some CDs and merch, and occasionally get paid for a gig. Not much has changed about that. The big change is that the bigger artists on big labels are no longer shifting the physical product they once were

 

Anyway, my band are doing OK but it still amazes me when fans think we do it for a living. One lady properly guffawed when I mentioned my job as an IT guy "I thought you were a rock star but you're just a geek!"

 

I guess there were also people getting a fair bit of royalties from radio play but I don't know a lot about that. I imagine royalties are less now there are fewer listeners.

[neepheid]

3 minutes ago, cheddatom said:

Anyway, my band are doing OK but it still amazes me when fans think we do it for a living. One lady properly guffawed when I mentioned my job as an IT guy "I thought you were a rock star but you're just a geek!"

 

"I thought you were attractive, but you're a just an ar$e!"

Edited December 1, 2022 by neepheid

[neepheid]

@cheddatom - I've got your back, fellow IT person.

[TorturedSaints]

There was a thread on my FB feed about Spotify.  Here’s what I wrote in reply to some well-meaning idiot who said streaming was good for bands and they relied on it:

  

The only bands that rely on streaming (via Spotify) are the bands that get millions of streams. My band pays approximately £35 a year to be on Spotify and other streaming services. The last play of one of our tracks on Spotify earned $0.00273756147.  That’s just over one fifth of 1p. We would need 15343 plays of a track just to recoup our hosting costs. We have earned $9.58 in 7 years, including a vanity purchase by me of our EP from iTunes. As they say in the USA, do the math! I refuse to listen to bands on streaming services. 

If I want to buy music, I buy it direct from bands if I can and definitely buy merch at gigs - that’s where bands make their well-deserved money.

[neepheid]

1 minute ago, TorturedSaints said:

There was a thread on my FB feed about Spotify.  Here’s what I wrote in reply to some well-meaning idiot who said streaming was good for bands and they relied on it:

  

The only bands that rely on streaming (via Spotify) are the bands that get millions of streams. My band pays approximately £35 a year to be on Spotify and other streaming services. The last play of one of our tracks on Spotify earned $0.00273756147.  That’s just over one fifth of 1p. We would need 15343 plays of a track just to recoup our hosting costs. We have earned $9.58 in 7 years, including a vanity purchase by me of our EP from iTunes. As they say in the USA, do the math! I refuse to listen to bands on streaming services. 

If I want to buy music, I buy it direct from bands if I can and definitely buy merch at gigs - that’s where bands make their well-deserved money.

 

Why do you pay yearly?  We use emubands and it's a one time payment per release.

Edited December 1, 2022 by neepheid

[SumOne]

It sort of goes back to being like the days before recorded music - musicians still managed to make money. 

[BigRedX]

Interesting, if brief, and rather tactfully doesn't come out and say that the real problem with the lack of streaming royalty is two-fold:

 

1. There are simply too many artists all competing for tiny individual shares of the pie. It's all very well that it's easier than ever to make your music available to anyone who has an internet connection, but of course the downside is then that everyone does it, therefore the streaming royalties pot is divided up in ever diminishing chunks to ever increasing numbers of artists.

 

2. All the artists who are getting their music streamed a lot but aren't receiving very much money for it do so because of the contracts they have signed with their record labels. They only have themselves and/or their legal advice to blame. It's no longer the 50s and 60s and any artist who doesn't get proper legal advice before signing anything to do with they music is a fool.

 

So what can the UK Government do? Nothing. You can't stop musicians from uploading their music to the streaming services, you can't make record labels (most of whom aren't even based in the UK any more) go against contracts already signed just because they might not be entirely "fair" to the artists involved. You can't legislate against stupidity.

[TorturedSaints]

On 01/12/2022 at 10:55, neepheid said:

 

Why do you pay yearly?  We use emubands and it's a one time payment per release.

To be honest, the band is now defunct.  It’s on DistroKid and we were hoping to release more music. I’ll probably cancel this year, or pay DistroKid the one-off payment to have the music available “forever”.  I will check out emubands for the future though. 

[wateroftyne]

On 01/12/2022 at 11:59, SumOne said:

It sort of goes back to being like the days before recorded music - musicians still managed to make money. 

 

It sort of doesn't.

 

Back in the days before recorded music, if you wanted to hear music , what did you do? You got off your backside and headed to your nearest music hall to see a performance, and most likely pay for the privilege. Some of which went to the musicians.

 

Now, you can just fire up your favourite streaming service directly from your warm settee. Virtually none of which goes to the musicians.

 

 

Edited December 4, 2022 by wateroftyne

[Dad3353]

34 minutes ago, wateroftyne said:

...Some of which went to the musicians...

 

Indeed; whilst they were playing music. Not much went to musicians sitting on their warm settee, at home, and why should it..? 

[wateroftyne]

6 hours ago, Dad3353 said:

 

Indeed; whilst they were playing music. Not much went to musicians sitting on their warm settee, at home, and why should it..? 

Because the musicians have paid money to make it, and someone is benefiting from it. Is it not obvious?

 

This ‘Music is free’ line of thought is the reason we’re in this quandary.

Edited December 5, 2022 by wateroftyne

[Beedster]

7 hours ago, wateroftyne said:

 

It sort of doesn't.

 

Back in the days before recorded music, if you wanted to hear music , what did you do? You got off your backside and headed to your nearest music hall to see a performance, and most likely pay for the privilege.

 

Or made it yourself for pleasure as opposed to income

[wateroftyne]

6 minutes ago, Beedster said:

Or made it yourself for pleasure as opposed to income

Which is still an option in 2022.

[Beedster]

12 minutes ago, wateroftyne said:

Which is still an option in 2022.

Absolutely, and always been why I play 👍

[SumOne]

11 hours ago, wateroftyne said:

 

It sort of doesn't.

 

Back in the days before recorded music, if you wanted to hear music , what did you do? You got off your backside and headed to your nearest music hall to see a performance, and most likely pay for the privilege. Some of which went to the musicians.

 

Now, you can just fire up your favourite streaming service directly from your warm settee. Virtually none of which goes to the musicians.

 

 

 

Yeah, there is that, but the flipside being that it sort of does.

 

If you wanted to make money from music you got off your backside and headed to your nearest music hall to give a performance and get paid. You couldn't sit on your warm settee and have money roll in without having a physical product being sold.

 

 

Edited December 5, 2022 by SumOne

[wateroftyne]

57 minutes ago, SumOne said:

 

Yeah, there is that, but the flipside being that it sort of does.

 

If you wanted to make money from music you got off your backside and headed to your nearest music hall to give a performance and get paid. You couldn't sit on your warm settee and have money roll in without having a physical product being sold.

 

 

I’ve bolded(?) the relevant point below.

 

4 hours ago, wateroftyne said:

Because the musicians have paid money to make it, and someone is benefiting from it. Is it not obvious?

 

…but I should also have added ‘and time’.

Edited December 5, 2022 by wateroftyne

[wateroftyne]

3 hours ago, Beedster said:

Absolutely, and always been why I play 👍

Of course. And that’s absolutely your choice to make.

[Dad3353]

6 hours ago, wateroftyne said:

Because the musicians have paid money to make it, and someone is benefiting from it. Is it not obvious?

 

This ‘Music is free’ line of thought is the reason we’re in this quandary.

 

How much do you pay 'per sitting' for the chair you're sitting on..? The musicians got paid when they played their music. Why do they need paying again every time it's played at home..? This 'gravy train' line of thought is the reason we're in this quandary. 

[wateroftyne]

5 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

 

How much do you pay 'per sitting' for the chair you're sitting on..? The musicians got paid when they played their music. Why do they need paying again every time it's played at home..? This 'gravy train' line of thought is the reason we're in this quandary. 

Umm… we’re talking about recordings,  not live performance.

[Dad3353]

27 minutes ago, wateroftyne said:

Umm… we’re talking about recordings,  not live performance.

 

Recordings, when made, were 'live' performances; 'live' in a studio with no audience is all. Session musicians get paid for such work; others get paid when they sell the product (it used to be a vinyl record, then a cassette, then a CD...). They should get paid when they 'sell' it for radio play, or streaming, just the same as if selling a physical product, and that's the case, albeit a small amount per play. Those listening are not listening 'for free'; their listening is paid for by the advertising and spin-off stuff, otherwise the 'streaming' companies would have no revenue at all. It's paid for, but indirectly.
For the record, I think it's a daft set-up from end to end, but it's not 'free music' at all.

[wateroftyne]

19 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

 

Recordings, when made, were 'live' performances; 'live' in a studio with no audience is all. Session musicians get paid for such work; others get paid when they sell the product (it used to be a vinyl record, then a cassette, then a CD...). They should get paid when they 'sell' it for radio play, or streaming, just the same as if selling a physical product, and that's the case, albeit a small amount per play. Those listening are not listening 'for free'; their listening is paid for by the advertising and spin-off stuff, otherwise the 'streaming' companies would have no revenue at all. It's paid for, but indirectly.
For the record, I think it's a daft set-up from end to end, but it's not 'free music' at all.

Again, relevant point emboldened.

[BigRedX]

WoT has hit the nail on the head.

 

Remember all those establishments using recorded music to make the places more attractive to their customers, would have had to employ actual musicians or made do with silence in the days before it was possible to use recordings, so shouldn't the musicians who wrote and performed on those recordings benefit when they are used in lieu of the performers in person?

[Dad3353]

3 hours ago, BigRedX said:

WoT has hit the nail on the head.

 

Remember all those establishments using recorded music to make the places more attractive to their customers, would have had to employ actual musicians or made do with silence in the days before it was possible to use recordings, so shouldn't the musicians who wrote and performed on those recordings benefit when they are used in lieu of the performers in person?

 

No more than the craftsmen or women that made the tables and chairs need continual remboursement; without those, all would sit on the floor. No, the music should have a fixed price which, once paid, ends the matter, the same as buying chairs to sit on.