Daniel Ek...opinions??

[TheGreek]

https://weraveyou.com/2024/12/spotify-founder-daniel-ek-surpasses-every-musician-in-history-with-68bn-net-worth/?fbclid=IwY2xjawHhHPpleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHUiwp7ImRLyR1DucRRIdKLr0pT4P6_Gpu2PRWg_C2zZuj8xIImfwB_lyqA_aem__9MXkE5DKmvQccBJeUWVeA

[Doctor J]

He gives the people what they want. 

[tauzero]

1 hour ago, Doctor J said:

He gives the people what they want. 

 

Unless the people in question are musicians whose work is on Spotify, and what they want is more money.

[Doctor J]

He gives the people what they want. There is nothing to stop Joe Public from buying physical media or bandcamp downloads should they want to better support artists. They appear to prefer Ek's model. An interesting question would be how many musicians here subscribe to a streaming service.

Edited December 31, 2024 by Doctor J

[LowB_FTW]

34 minutes ago, Doctor J said:

An interesting question would be how many musicians here subscribe to a streaming service.

Not me.

 

Mark

[tauzero]

53 minutes ago, Doctor J said:

An interesting question would be how many musicians here subscribe to a streaming service.

 

I don't.

[Hellzero]

1 hour ago, Doctor J said:

An interesting question would be how many musicians here subscribe to a streaming service.

Neither do I, when I like an artist I buy his stuff on CD.

[AMV001]

Nor me. I buy direct from the artists website or bandcamp page if I can, or official record label outlet.

Occasional physical purchase from a record store (preferably an independent).

[BigRedX]

From me all streaming services are for having a listen to decide if I want to buy the physical product.

 

However if you really want to support an artist financially you should go and see them play live and buy a T-shirt afterwards. Unless they are selling CDs and/or vinyl in thousands they are unlikely to be doing more than breaking even on sales.

[tegs07]

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

From me all streaming services are for having a listen to decide if I want to buy the physical product.

 

However if you really want to support an artist financially you should go and see them play live and buy a T-shirt afterwards. Unless they are selling CDs and/or vinyl in thousands they are unlikely to be doing more than breaking even on sales.

I largely agree with this.

 

My days of going to multiple gigs a month are largely gone, but Spotify helps me identify new music that I would no longer get to hear about.

When I was younger I regularly go and see unsigned/emerging artists live and buy music magazines. 

 

Spotify can bridge this gap and I will keep an eye out for tours and get tickets. I don’t think it’s just Spotify that is at fault. The world has changed and the way people consume entertainment has changed with it. I’m not sure that the DIY approach of Punk or early Hip Hop is there anymore or particularly relevant to the younger generation. 

[Merton]

I think for me it’s about balance and use. Spotify is useful for creating a playlist of songs to learn by artists I wouldn’t normally listen to. 25+ years ago I had to buy countless CDs to do the same.

All the artists I listen to I will always buy physical media and t shirts, gig tickets etc, and I will use Spotify in the car.

[Bilbo]

I don't subscribe to any streaming services, music or videos. I will listen to odd tracks but mostly stuff I have already bought that I want to access when I am away from home. I do acknowledge that I link my transcription website to Spotify and YouTube so, obviously, I am a total hypocrite.

[Wolverinebass]

I think it's important to separate your opinion on Spotify and steaming in general from Ek as a person.

 

Streaming is useful for finding things and testing the water. It's unfair in how much musicians are paid, but that won't change anytime soon if ever.

 

Now, let's get on to Ek. He's a tech bro who though Spotify makes more money in a quarter than Paul McCartney has in his whole life being the most successful songwriter in history.

 

In 2013, Q magazine did an article on Spotify and although they couldn't work out if it made a profit from the actual music, they did work out that they were making $73 million a month from the adverts. Okay, fair enough.

 

Ek has come out with ludicrously tone deaf comments about how if musicians want paid more they should release more music. This is whilst he's lobbying governments to lower the royalty rate musicians get. 

 

Now, for the really insidious part. Have a read of this.

 

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-ugly-truth-about-spotify-is-finally?utm_source=multiple-personal-recommendations-email&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

 

Basically, Spotify are paying artists flat fees to write songs then putting them out under multiple artist and song names to skew the amount they have to pay everyone else. In other words, just wait until AI becomes more of a thing. They'll become more aggressive with playlists, yet actively feed this stuff to the top to avoid paying anyone anything.

 

In Wall Street 2 Shia LeBouf asks Josh Brolin how much it would take for him to retire, saying that most people have a very specific figure in their head for how much it would be. Brolin smiles and just says "More."

 

That is what you're going to get with Ek. Nothing is going to be enough. The minimum stream number will only continue to rise. 1000 isn't much. How would you feel when it reaches 20,000 per song to get anything at all? How are you going to feel when he undoubtedly wins in his quest to bring the royalty rates down? Or as he quietly pushes AI or in effect "muzak" to pay musicians even less by reducing their percentage of the daily streams, by increasing the stuff he controls?

 

Look, I'm an originals musician. I appreciate that the technology is out there and the genie can't be put back in the bottle to pre 1998, nor do I deny the usefulness of streaming as a whole.

 

All that being said, I think Ek is a criminal who is making obscene amounts of money from ripping us all off. He has used the weakness of the record companies in the wake of Napster to build a vast fortune. It is however, being done by stooping our backs and systematically crushing us.

 

The fact that people in reasonable arena level touring bands have to do multiple projects/businesses/teaching and whatever else just to live is wrong to me. I won't get to that level, but I object to a jumped up little tosser like Ek ripping us off, then trying to take away the merest crumbs from the table that he gives us, whilst telling us to "work harder" as he trys to reduce our amount of crumbs to atoms.

[chris_b]

Ek is eating steak while the people whose talent has made him obscenely rich are thrown a few scraps.

 

The American dream in a nutshell.

[SteveXFR]

Spotify and Ticketmaster have destroyed music between them. Now musicians can't make money from recording, touring or even merch sales on tour. They're only good for a tiny minority of bands at the very top of the industry. 

I use Tidal for streaming but buy records I like and I'll only go to independent venues now and to be honest, I'm seeing far more interesting bands

[Bilbo]

I think there is something inevitable about all of this. Let's face it, the market for music is totally saturated and there is no element of quality control whatsoever. You only have to see how many videos there are of Andre Rieu. We have all contributed to the devaluation of music by producing so much of it, a lot of it mediocre, whilst the vehicles for distribution take advantage of the fact. We all fantasise about making it and our expectations are being exploited. The American dream absolutely.

[SteveXFR]

The problem is that it's the mediocre that thrives while the interesting, original and innovative struggle. 

I'm a metal fan and I see Metallica outsell all other metal bands with the same old sound, less interesting than their early stuff whilst the original sounding artists like Julie Christmas, Blood Incantation and Nails make interesting and original music and will never get a fraction of Metallica's success

[Elfrasho]

I've got a few thoughts on this, I haven't looked into it properly so I might be wrong, but here they are:

 

• I'm not saying the deal for the artists is particularly favourable to the artist, but i think folk forget the illegal download scene a few decades ago; there was already a push against buying music. Who knows how big that would've been without streaming services. a small bit of the pie is better than none of it!
• a very high percentage of people using streaming wouldn't have purchased the music. They're getting a small amount of money, but from a different and wider audience than they'd ever have had
• If I buy a cd from an artist, only a small amount goes to the artist. That is a one hit for them.  If I like an artist and over the next 10+ years, I might listen to thousands of their songs which overall might result in not alot of a difference to the artist.
• If artists are more accessible, they're morelikely to pick up fans, and then the whole snowball thing happens.

 

Excellent points I'd say!

[Wolverinebass]

1 hour ago, Elfrasho said:

 

• I'm not saying the deal for the artists is particularly favourable to the artist, but i think folk forget the illegal download scene a few decades ago; there was already a push against buying music. Who knows how big that would've been without streaming services. a small bit of the pie is better than none of it!

Maybe you should realise one of the people responsible for enabling quite a lot of that piracy is Daniel Ek who was the CEO of uTorrent. 

 

Nowadays he's being both the arsonist and firefighter by running Spotify. A legalised form of theft if you will.

 

[Elfrasho]

46 minutes ago, Wolverinebass said:

Maybe you should realise one of the people responsible for enabling quite a lot of that piracy is Daniel Ek who was the CEO of uTorrent. 

 

Nowadays he's being both the arsonist and firefighter by running Spotify. A legalised form of theft if you will.

 

 

Nope. Even if he was, he wasnt the only one and he certainly wasnt the one who would have kept it going. I'm no tdefending him. I'm just saying things were invetible. And what we have now is a slight negotiable.

[Elfrasho]

52 minutes ago, Wolverinebass said:

Maybe you should realise one of the people responsible for enabling quite a lot of that piracy is Daniel Ek who was the CEO of uTorrent. 

 

Nowadays he's being both the arsonist and firefighter by running Spotify. A legalised form of theft if you will.

 

 

Any thoughts one my other points?

[Wolverinebass]

30 minutes ago, Elfrasho said:

 

Nope. Even if he was, he wasnt the only one and he certainly wasnt the one who would have kept it going. I'm no tdefending him. I'm just saying things were invetible. And what we have now is a slight negotiable.

True, he's not solely responsible and yes, things were inevitable in that way post Napster. I was merely illustrating that the guy doesn't value music and never has.

 

I don't know what you think is "negotiable" when the guy is actively trying to pay us less by any means possible whilst he's making hundreds of millions of pounds a month. The royalty rates will never go up. Ever. Spotify have cornered the whole market and as such won't play ball. The whole "made up artist" thing to me reeks of fraud, but because it hasn't been legislated, he's going to get away with it. 

 

As for the snowballing thing. Considering the cost of touring, that's a very different question which again, doesn't have an optimistic answer sadly for most smaller artists.

 

Anyway, as I say, streaming is great for discovering new things. A bit less so for actually being paid for your work.

[BigRedX]

I think a lot of musicians need to wake up to the the fact that it is no longer the second half of the 20th century, the music business has changed, and trying to make a living based on the old model is not longer a viable option.

 

Not that it's ever been easy making a living solely as a musician, that's something else that appears to have been forgotten. There's a lucky (very) few at the top and everyone else has to be doing other things in order to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.

 

It's not just the music business, it's society that has changed too. Traditional touring doesn't work because it's difficult to get enough people out on a "School Night" to make playing gigs on anything other than Friday and Saturday an economical option. Working people are much more caught up the their jobs/careers and students are desperate to have something to show for their tuition fees, to be going out on a week night. Apart from well established bands (most of whom became established under the old model) "tours" these days are a succession of weekend gigs spread over a month with the occasional Thursday and Sunday thrown in for cities and venues that can support them.

 

And let's not forget that "popular" music simply isn't as important to people as it used to be.

 

If we really wanted to make a stand, we wouldn't have our music up on Spotify or even use it to check out new artists, and we wouldn't go to gigs where Ticketmaster or any of its associated companies were involved in the sale of tickets or the promotion of the event. 

 

 

 

Edited Thursday at 16:59 by BigRedX

[cetera]

On 31/12/2024 at 20:42, Doctor J said:

An interesting question would be how many musicians here subscribe to a streaming service.

 

Nope. Never have, never will.

[Owen]

I don't subscribe because 1. I am too tight. 2. If I want new music Tiny Desk and it's derivatives fullfil all my needs. 3. I get overwhelmed when presented with too much choice and consequently listen to nothing I do not already know.