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Post by user211 on Mar 27, 2021 21:15:16 GMT
Their token is up 30% today on Binance. audius.co/This could be interesting. |
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Post by MartinT on Apr 26, 2021 14:52:53 GMT
Just received an e-mail from Spotify increasing their Spotify Family subscription to £16.99. I get Qobuz hi-res for less than that!
I wish it were the musicians who will benefit but I saw no such assurance from them.
Time to say bye bye to Spotify, I fear.
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Post by MikeMusic on Apr 26, 2021 17:54:47 GMT
That's only up two quid isn't it ?
Qobuz to up theirs too ?
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Post by MartinT on Apr 26, 2021 19:25:27 GMT
Qobuz lowered theirs recently. I don't want to pay for two services and hardly use Spotify any more.
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Post by ajski2fly on Apr 27, 2021 15:51:22 GMT
Just read this thread, IMO digital streaming has done quite a bit of damage primarily to musicians, they rarely get a suitable financial payment for airplay of their compositions which are streamed. I know a couple of musicians and in their opinion any possible control for them has been lost.
Music streaming in its many forms is a two edged sword, for the artist if they don't do it then they get little exposure, but if they do then any meaningful financial return from the medium is unlikely. However if as a result of the exposure they get a very large hit rate and become popular if they then carefully market their music it is possible to become a phenomenon over-night, a few famous modern day artists have managed to pull off this trick.
For us the listening public it is also has several aspects, compared to 20+ years ago we now have a nearly limitless supply of all types of musical genres, but this has its pros and cons. Where and how do you start to find 'Good' new music, if you spent all day listening to new releases on say Spotify, Qobuz or Tidal, I doubt you would ever listen to it all, probably an awful lot would not be that good or not to individual taste. So do you use the ubiquitous computer generated playlist based on your own music library or what you have previously listened to, this is also problematic in that often the links are somewhat tenuous or are more of the same. Personally for these very reasons I find listening to streamed music (Spotify, Tidal, Qobuz etc) rather disappointing. Nowadays I tend to go to one of them to listen to a specific album or artist recommended to me by a friend or in a review I have read, if I then like what I hear I will generally go and purchase it on vinyl if possible or occasionally pay for FLAC download.
In some ways digital streaming engines have down-valued the musical experience, maybe it has just become too easy to listen to music for nothing, and as a result there is no real need to invest in it emotionally or financially anymore. I remember hearing that special song/artist for the first time on the radio, on TOTP or Old Grey Whistle Test and then being excited until I could go and get my copy on record or cassette and listening to it many times over. Times are different now but I am not sure it is better for it!
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Post by MartinT on Apr 27, 2021 21:48:21 GMT
Conversely, let's not forget the many stories of an artist celebrating getting a recording contract and an advance only to spend many years paying it back through disappointing royalties.
Also the many buyers of used records and CDs who are not contributing a sausage towards those artists.
Whatever your thoughts on streaming, and in my case I'm never going back, at least every time I play a song I am contributing a royalty towards them. Yes, there are issues with the percentages, but the point remains.
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Post by jandl100 on Apr 28, 2021 4:45:16 GMT
Personally, I'd very happily pay 2x or 3x or more the current Spotify subscription rate if I knew that, say, half the increase was going to the musicians and the rest going to make the streaming services profitable. I admit to being baffled by those complaining about a £1 or £2 monthly increase in their music provision service. I mean, really?  I used to shell out 5x the Spotify sub back in my LP and CD buying days. I go back to my 2nd post; we're a bunch of blood sucking parasites. I'd happily pay for what I get - enabling a profitable music provision service which fairly rewards the musicians. |
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Post by MartinT on Apr 28, 2021 5:25:47 GMT
It's not the cost, Jerry. It's the almost certain knowledge that the price hike doesn't benefit musicians.
In my case, it's also about my disuse. However, the family have complained so I shall continue with it for a while.
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Post by jandl100 on Apr 28, 2021 5:53:17 GMT
OK, I understand that.
But, allegedly, none of the streaming services are breaking even.
It's not sustainable - frankly I don't understand how they are managing to continue over a period of many years. How does that work?
Either we as users cough up more money or the services we enjoy will not be around much longer.
We aren't paying enough to pay for what we receive.
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Post by petea on Apr 28, 2021 9:00:06 GMT
I too am uncomfortable with the streaming model. I tend to buy either files or, more often, both files and physical media (CD and LP) versions of the music I like. Now, whether that helps or not I am not certain. I also support a couple of artists via Patreon and buy albums via Bandcamp and directly from the artist (eg Andrew Bird, Maria Schneider, Agnes Obel) occasionally as well (and have started looking at this route more often of late). However, I do have accounts with Tidal and Qobuz which I use to 'try out' music (and, with Qobuz, to purchase files when I cannot find them on HighResAudio in Berlin). The reason I chose Tidal over the others was because they paid the highest royalities to artists for CD quality audio (Napster pay the highest it seems, but for MP3 only) and maybe that was the result of its purchase by Jay-Z at one point; it is not clear. I cannot find what Qobuz pay, but they do appear to be involved in initiatives to support artists at least.
I am sure the big names make a good income from streaming (especially those that sell their back-catalogues), but I fear that smaller and emergent artists do not and it 'feels' somewhat biased against them. I would happily pay more if a bigger slice went back to them or maybe even if the streaming services were then able to make a profit (I suspect though that the loss is somehow accommodated by the involvment of the music publishers in the businesses).
I do watch the occasional video of a live performance on YouTube and worry how that works for artists as Google pay pitiful royalies, but do not 'listen' to tracks that way. I used to go to a lot of concerts in my youth, but that had dropped to a couple per year by the time the pandemic struck. I have though started looking at streamed events (Milk Carton Kids tomorrow night for example - well 2:00 AM actually, and so I will watch the recorded version that will be available for 48 hours after) and they work surprisingly well. It now seems that Napster have been bought by a UK-based live event streaming service and it will be interesting to see how that pans out. Maybe it is all beginning to settle and will get better for muscicians (and other live performers). Let's hope so.
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Post by jandl100 on Apr 28, 2021 10:05:49 GMT
I love the streaming model. Like Martin I would be happy to continue using it as my primary or sole source.
I'd like it even better if it cost more and paid people fairly for their work.
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Post by julesd68 on Apr 28, 2021 10:22:26 GMT
OK, I understand that. But, allegedly, none of the streaming services are breaking even. It's not sustainable - frankly I don't understand how they are managing to continue over a period of many years. How does that work? There are some very serious professional and institutional investors knee deep in Spotify. Amazon ran at huge losses for years and look at it now. |
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Post by MikeMusic on Apr 28, 2021 10:23:14 GMT
Streaming has taken what we had before and made it worse.
A big organisation coining it and artists getting pennies, now fractions of pennies
Hopefully there is a way artists can get decent payback in the future.
Charging more for concerts is one - then of course you get Ticketmaster and touts
Merchandise and probably others
It bears consideration that if streaming an album was say £1 a go then there would be drastically reduced streaming as many wouldn't bother
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Post by MartinT on Apr 28, 2021 11:44:59 GMT
I'd like it even better if it cost more and paid people fairly for their work. Agreed, and it's an easy mechanism to give us peace of mind that every time we play a song a tiny kickback goes to the artist. Now we need the streaming companies to be open about their payouts. |
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Post by MartinT on Apr 28, 2021 11:47:01 GMT
Streaming has taken what we had before and made it worse. Disagree. We could never in our lifetimes build a collection as large as what we have now at our fingertips. The idea is brilliant. Now we just need the cost model to work and artists to make a living out of it. |
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Post by user211 on Apr 28, 2021 13:08:09 GMT
Their token is up 30% today on Binance. audius.co/This could be interesting. I looked into this a bit more, downloaded the app, and I bought some of their tokens. This business model might have some potential. I was basically looking for low cap alt coins to invest in. What better than one related to your hobby? |
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Post by julesd68 on Apr 28, 2021 13:39:59 GMT
Hopefully there is a way artists can get decent payback in the future. Charging more for concerts is one - then of course you get Ticketmaster and touts Merchandise and probably others Large scale concerts are already very expensive - the last two rock concerts I booked for were £60-70 a ticket and it's easy to pay hundreds of pounds to see big names. Do we really want to pay more? Music merch shows steady growth year on year - $3.48bn in 2018, up from $3.33bn in 2017 and $3.08bn in 2016. |
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Post by Slinger on Apr 28, 2021 13:53:37 GMT
Streaming has taken what we had before and made it worse. Disagree. We could never in our lifetimes build a collection as large as what we have now at our fingertips. The idea is brilliant. Now we just need the cost model to work and artists to make a living out of it. When Mike says "worse" I think he's taking about from the arists' point of view, not the end user. End users are happy, the big record labels are happy, the bands are getting ripped off from both directions. There's some decent info here www.recordingconnection.com/reference-library/recording-entrepreneurs/how-do-record-labels-turn-a-profit/ about how record companies do business. It's where I got the above quote, and don't forget, a lot of what goes on is before the artist actually sees a penny, or even 0.0034. of a penny. |
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Post by MartinT on Apr 28, 2021 14:29:01 GMT
Conversely, let's not forget the many stories of an artist celebrating getting a recording contract and an advance only to spend many years paying it back through disappointing royalties. Agreed, Paul, and I was recognising that in the above. |
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Post by MikeMusic on Apr 28, 2021 14:31:18 GMT
Streaming has taken what we had before and made it worse. Disagree. We could never in our lifetimes build a collection as large as what we have now at our fingertips. The idea is brilliant. Now we just need the cost model to work and artists to make a living out of it. For the artists. Streaming has taken what we had before and made it worse. A big organisation coining it and artists getting pennies, now fractions of pennies Punters are getting a stupendous deal |
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