Music industry better off with streaming...

[Djcoolray]

And the band plays on...

I believe that everything is a set of conditions pertaining to the accumulation of effort based upon the listener. It's what they feel is necessary to achieve the end result. Then how much something means to them determines how involved they will be in the process. How involved were people when listening to streams over listening to vinyl? We are talking about the majority of the population that just wants to plug something into a wall socket and listen to music. Sure music companies rip off artists......and the band plays on. As an example what industry has not been ripping artists and workers off. Look a the meat industry in Ohio and throughout the Midwest where workers are lucky to see $15 an hour though consumer prices have been escalating for decades. It's the great American rip off and our purchases fund it and we are convinced that we can't do anything about it. Maybe that's why vinyl is so popular, because it heralds an era of honesty and compassion when people had secure lives before the era of the selfish consumer. The distribution middle man along with senior management have always been ripping off the public and many ripped them off by jacking streams of music and felt good about it....I did and so did so many of you. But as far as music playback goes it's the simplicity of the interaction when playing vinyl along with the visual stimulation. Sure, if you live someplace with great infrastructure that has fiber optics streaming sounds great. But, the conditions for streaming isn't so great unless you've got a Hughes Net Sat uplink that bypasses all the land lines and you are really into swapping out gear, which most of the public can't afford. Affordability these days is a big one and that's why there are people these days just grabbing an old AVR that does not need an additional phono stage and any decent set of speakers with a starter turntable and spinning vinyl without any of the absorbent costs of doing so any other way. For a struggling public the cheapest way always wins out....

And the band plays on.....and on until the break of dawn !!

A new dawn.....

 

[Alobar]

Here's an actual study. I wish I had time to read it. While the effects of streaming could be considered a mixed bag, the fact that it's cut down on piracy is undeniably positive. http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/EU_JRC_Study_Spotify.pdf

I think the intro of the ipod and the 99 cent song cut down on piracy, that and the Napster crackdown. Streaming also cuts down on piracy in the sense that it is legal and with its vast store of music makes piracy obsolete. However in practice, the end result isn't that much different with virtually free music for the streaming listener and pizzas for all involved in the actual music creation.

 

[uofmtiger]

Oh yes I can't argue, streaming fits the needs of most casual listeners well and that it is so cheap nothing can compete with it from that standpoint. It is the musicians that suffer was the point I was making. Eventually, if we keep down this road of cheap subscriptions and no real money left for the musicians that at some point music itself will suffer. This may be a trend that will continue regardless with the music arts in schools being slashed from the budgets. Of course we will still have our football so all is good!

I think this is where our main disagreement lies. You believe good music and money are directly related. I don't. Robert Johnson is evidence that poor artists that spend most of their lives playing gigs and street corners for little money can be as influential as any multimillionaire artist we had in the 80s.

No, I think people driven to make music will still do so. Whether that means they will have to have a day job or tour constantly (BB King reportedly played 340 gigs in one year) is just part of what could become the new paradigm. I realize that artists that lived through the physical media era are bitter about the situation. I honestly don't blame them, but if having a job and performing music in your spare time is the new requirement for most (there will still be multimillionaires from streaming in the next generation), people will adapt and it will become the norm for the next generation of artists. One of my favorite local bands has a successful lawyer in the group, so the alternative isn't just a job at McDonalds.

Napster spelled the end of the physical medium era. There is no way to put that genie back in the bottle.

 

[RamblinE]

I don't buy the argument that streaming, a delivery vehicle, is the cause of artist woes. The cause of artist woes is the tug of war between the artists and the record labels that had been taking place since recorded music became a thing. Eighty years? Something like that. Meanwhile, when the record companies were no longer meeting consumers needs, consumers turned to pirating. Streaming, is the capitalist free market solution to piracy. It meets the needs of the consumer and the label. I know I'm leaving out the artist. The label has been the traditional intermediary betweeb artist and label. While streaming isn't a solution for giving the artist more money, the internet makes it super easy to contribute directly to the artist. Buy merchandise directly from them. Donate to them directly when you're digitally downloading their album from band camp.

I have listened to so much more music then I would have otherwise before streaming. Back then I was pirating music. Torrent websites didn't have the suggested artist algorithms that streaming does. Torrent websites don't have the curated playlists that streaming services do. Streaming services have directly contributed to artist revenue from me via concert tickets, t shirt, poster and vinyl record sales for artists that I would have never heard of otherwise. In the last seven years since I started streaming the amount of revenue I've contributed directly to artists has probably tripled or quadrupled thanks almost entirely to the ease of discovery.

Streaming expands an artist's audience, not pays their bills.

The internet makes it easier for artists to directly receive revenue from fans. More fans = more revenue.

Record labels will continue to try to profit off of artists like they always have. Blaming streaming is just a deflection from corporate greed.

 

[chicks]

Let's see... Before Edison, songwriters could publish, and get royalties from sheet music. I'm guessing many of the publishers took the lion's share, and hid actual sales from the songwriters. Performers? On the road, singing for their supper, or lucky enough to have a long term gig in a band or orchestra, subsidized by some sort of patronage. Not many artists get rich (hence the term 'starving artist'), but it's a life they choose - and the rest of us are greatly enriched by their art.

 

[Alobar]

I think this is where our main disagreement lies. You believe good music and money are directly related. I don't.

Sure, in some cases starving artists can make good music on the streets. However does money hurt anybody, or does it help? Of course it helps. It is a vital component in living and I believe living well enough to work full time at your pursuit of music will produce the best music out there, which is what I am interested in seeing just as much as the musicians getting paid.

I don't buy the argument that streaming, a delivery vehicle, is the cause of artist woes. The cause of artist woes is the tug of war between the artists and the record labels that had been taking place since recorded music became a thing. Eighty years? Something like that.

Sure, they were getting screwed over, but it is a matter of degree that is what the issue is. Nowadays with streaming people spend $10 a month (often for the whole household) for music, period. This $10 must then be split off numerous directions, first the streaming corp takes its healthy cut, then the producers, recording studio etc. At the end, where it all was supposed to begin, the artists get by with the smallest piece of this $10 that there is. .001 cents. Before, when I was a bit younger (before digital) we spent way more money per month on music then the paltry $10 they are spending now. In the 70's LP's sold for 5 to 10 bucks and we usually bought more than a few every month. That, adjusted for inflation is probably between 5 and 10 times what streamers will pay now. Remember that $10 is all anyone who streams pays per month for music in 2017. In 1977, 40 years ago we happily paid that for one album (not adjusted for inflation)! The artists got a hell of a lot more than .001 cent per song on that lp too.. The ripoff that was going on back then simply cannot be compared to what is happening today. The math doesn't support it.

I can't believe this is so difficult to grasp. At least uofmtiger gets it that money don't matter because music can come right off the street by basically panhandlers that perform. That's a pretty fair assessment of how bad it has gotten for those with talent but not other sources of money to survive on How much of that music gets on AM is likely to be very small tho which does effect the streamer (but he won't realize it because it never was recorded)..

 

[Alobar]

Ten dollars a month. Consider that for a minute. That is one AMAZING deal when you consider what that brings to your living room speakers, your car, even jogging down the street every day! If someone were to have tried to explain to me back in the 70's that this would be all that the sum total of music is worth in the 21st century I would not have believed it. I still don't really. But that $10 household expense simply cannot begin to justly compensate for what went into the music in the past 50+ years, what goes into it now, and what will go into it in the future. And yet there it is, such a great deal that nobody questions it, like a grocery store handing out free T bone steaks out the back loading dock, nobody wants to know the details, just how many they can fit in their car and freezer..

 

[RamblinE]

Laissez-fare attitude aside the rules of supply and demand are what they are. They still apply to art and music.

 

[RamblinE]

Then don't call it "art." Call it Cheerios. Or Petroleum. Get your streaming subscription to Triscuits. But don't think of yourself as a music lover. You will be mistaken.

GJ

So the point about exposure was completely lost on you? I've gone to so many shows for bands I wouldnt otherwise have heard of, thanks to streaming services. No value in that added concert ticket, band merch, and vinyl record revenue?

 

[Alobar]

I've gone to so many shows for bands I wouldnt otherwise have heard of, thanks to streaming services.

I have heard this many times. Makes me wonder how they managed to have concerts, and how we found out about them back before streaming and even the internet existed..

 

[Alobar]

Well to be fair it isn't just musicians that are SOL, but the rest of us too. They are coming for ALL our jobs, just as soon as the tech is ready it will run us over.. Driverless buses, trucks, planes. Hell even artificial doctors will be with us in most of our lifetimes. This tech bubble has no end really, and maybe we all will be better off when we are out of work.. I rather like it myself being retired, but I am 62. I think I would have gotten into too much trouble if I had been out of work back then.

 

[RamblinE]

I have heard this many times. Makes me wonder how they managed to have concerts, and how we found out about them back before streaming and even the internet existed..

My taste in music has expanded much more in the last seven years than the previous ten. I still remember in 1998 when the Clear Channel takeover was complete and they killed the final non-format station in my market with the exception of two university sponsored stations. They wiped my favorite indie radio station off the map replacing it with top 40. While I do get plenty of get recommendations from my friends I've made much richer discoveries on my own thanks to the internet.

Perhaps my last post was overly harsh. But I was responding to a harsh, one-dimensional statement.

Yes, of course there is value there, and in as much as I can say "thank you" for the music community at-large-- Thank You.

But that is a drop in a bucket in a Walmart warehouse. And yes, if you purchase that band's vinyl or CD, that is awesome. But you (y'all) just spent several thousand words arguing against that (physical product), and basically saying that the unfair compensation scheme for streaming is "A-OK," so help me understand what it is you are really saying here...

GJ

I never got the feeling anybody was exactly arguing for the demise of physical media per say. I sure wasn't. I see the value in augmenting existing collections, trying something you may have been interested in buying, and ease of portable use.

 

[+48V]

Some good points 48, but you are confusing "mechanicals" with other royalties ("performance"). Streaming would fall under performance (like broadcast/BMI/ASCAP).

Seems we're on the same page to a point but I think we're talking past each other. Let me try again and be more specific with who gets paid what royalty and when.

Songwriters/Composers - They receive a royalty when their song is used on a record (CD, LP,). Movie soundrtrack, TV commercials, etc. (Sync license). --Mechanical--Harry Fox Agency is the clearing house for those pieces. They also get paid when their music is played/performed in businesses (bar/restuarant/retail store, etc.) Played on AM/FM radio stations, cable music channels, Sirius/XM, non-interactive internet radio stations, and on-demand services like Spotify. BMI/ASCAP/SESAC/SOCAN accounts for and disperses payments. --Mechanical--

Performing Artists/Bands - They receive a "performance" royalty on all digital broadcasts--- Cable music channels, Sirius/XM, and streams of non-interactive Internet radio stations/commercial webcasters (Pandora, SomaFM, etc.). SoundExchange collects airplay/stream stats and apportions payments directly to the featured artist, background players/singers, and the owner of the sound recording. This is a statutory/compulsory blanket license whose royalty rate is set by the CRB -- US Copyright Office every 5 years since 2002.

Under the law, 45% of these performance royalties are paid directly to the featured artists on a recording, and 5% are paid to a fund for non-featured artists (a session musician or a back-up vocalist). The other 50% of the performance royalties are paid to the rights owner of the sound recording. This split is beneficial to the artist because it keeps the recording owner's (label) grubby mits off the artist's share with "creative accounting".

One annoying crunchy nugget is that U.S. terrestrial AM/FM radio does not pay a performance royalty on the use of the sound recording. The NAB has lobbied successfully for the past 60 years to have an exemption. The U.S. is one of only two other countries in the world that do not pay this to artists/rights owners--North Korea and some other small island nation that escapes me at the moment.
Low rates? Doesn't get much lower than ZERO. Where's the outrage there?

Bottom line, the music business has always been a rip-off industry (see my sig line), but yes, Alobar is right, Spotify and others have set their royalty rates (which are not statutory rates set by law such as mechanicals) unnecessarily low.

Again, Spotify and other on-demand providers do not set the rates for songwriters. Congress used to set the rates but it's now done by the CRB...a division of the Copyright Office. The current rates were set 10 years ago...and I agree they are low. Have been for years that predates streaming. The CRB held hearings in March for a new rate setting.

As to Sound-Exchange, I have looked on occasion, but none of the recordings I've been on ever seem to appear in their roster : ( ...

That's really not how it works. The "roster" is listed by Artist/Band name. By "looked" I assume you mean here? This is a listing of all artist/bands that have had their music streamed on all digital broadcasts/streams as outlined above. Even if "your" band is not listed, you should still register with SoundExchange in the event is get airplay somewhere. SoundExchange will notify you and send a statement.

Hope this helps clear things up.

 

[stevo137]

Great thread!
The musicians deserve so much more!
Without them we are nothing!

Here's my idea:

Simply have a link to like and donate directly to the artist!

One dollar, they get all of it.
.50 cents, they get all of it.

You pay .50 cents or more, you get the song and all of it goes to the artist.

The steaming companies get their subscription fees either way.

Done, they stop eating cheap pizza and earn what they truly deserve!

 

[Alobar]

Great thread!
The musicians deserve so much more!
Without them we are nothing!

Here's my idea:

Simply have a link to like and donate directly to the artist!

One dollar, they get all of it.
.50 cents, they get all of it.

You pay .50 cents or more, you get the song and all of it goes to the artist.

The steaming companies get their subscription fees either way.

Done, they stop eating cheap pizza and earn what they truly deserve!

I wish the world was really that good. My thoughts and what I practiced when I did have Tidal for a few months earlier was anything I found and wanted to listen to more than once or twice I just bought the CD. At least the artists got something from me that way. If I just counted on streaming alone I would have to stream a song upwards of 1000 times for them to get a penny..

 

[Johnno_Oz]

Very interesting thread. Especially from those musicians in the business putting their perspective on it.

I recently saw a really interesting (and long) recent interview with James Hetfield with Joe Rogan. It got interesting when they were talking about the business side of things. What I found most amazing that record companies now demand a cut of the touring and merch., that and Metallica finally got to own their master tapes only recently. Final thing they formed their own record company and then signed partnerships with other distributors in other countries.

I know Robert Fripp was having grief with Universal who swallowed up record companies Fripp had signed with before and were authorizing streaming and licensing of his material. They lost the master tapes there for awhile as well.

https://www.ft.com/content/f588e100-d7ee-11e1-9980-00144feabdc0

 

[+48V]

Been off the grid a week+. Yikes....I've got some apologizing/rectifying and catching up to do.

All that is nice, but performance royalties (BMI/ASCAP) are NOT mechanicals. Mechanicals are for physical (i.e. "mechanical") copies-- CD's, Records, Tapes.

Indeed. Short of getting into my 17 year background in this business, I can wholeheartedly assure you I know the difference between songwriter performance & mechanical, and sound recording performance royalties. Yet thanks to an obvious and most unfortunate paste/typo in my last post, it would appear that I confused the two. Not so. Sorry about that. Trust me, I know better. It was a simple slip of the mouse.

Re-read that first paragraph. Where I’m clearly delineating the two types of Songwriter/Composer royalties…but errantly made the mistake of suffixing the next and opposing sentence with –“Mechanical--“ when I meant to paste –Performance--“. I was in a feeble and wee houred state. So Ooops.

_Performance_ royalties are paid for the "performance" of a song-- as in, even a pre-recorded performance on radio, in some cases TV, etc. (the Internet is still a bit sketchy, but many are voluntarily following the broadcast model).** That is why BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC are called "performance rights organizations." I'm sorry, I really should read the rest of your post, but if you're wrong about these basics...

Yes. It’s a good rule of thumb to read an entire post. Again, we are cross-posting the same basic facts. Aside from the typo, I see nothing in your post that counters/corrects anything that I laid out in my prior post. You’re preaching/parroting to the choir mate.

In Europe, they have "performers" royalties, which have been lobbied for here, but are not currently in play. Those are the "black box" payments I mentioned earlier. But those are not performance royalties, nor are they mechanicals... None of these are the same as synchronization payments, which are for performance uses in film and TV, or "grand rights," which have to do with theater production.

Yes. As I mentioned earlier, Harry Fox, now aka SESAC handles sync licensing for film, TV, etc..

As for "performers”, which was the main gist of my earlier post and counters your assertion, they are most certainly “in play” and most definitely not "black box". In the US, there has been a “performer” royalty for the sound recording for non-interactive streaming since 2003. They are reported and accounted for monthly and paid quarterly & directly to performers & rights holders of the recording (not songwriters) by SoundExchange.

If you are really, really interested in this stuff, I could suggest a few books. I hope this clears things up.

Thanks mate, but I’m good.

**To clarify-- Yes, there is a standard set by the CRB (extremely low), but due to complexities of International law and business arrangements or lack thereof, the net result is that there really isn't a "standard," and that royalty rates will be different for different types of plays, in different countries, for different services (Spotify and Pandora still have different payment schemes, as do many of the other streaming services).

Worldwide is indeed a sordid mess in progress. Same as it ever was. Reciprocal agreements are/have been in place for years via IFPI. But the convoluted International pipeline and slack databases along with a myriad of dirty mits along the way chew away what ultimately ends up in the artist’s hands. No argument there. But it’s wholly unfair of you to compare & strawman CRB rates to what US rights holders are dictated to receive directly vs. the hand-off “complexities” of International legal beagle buffoonery. Yet again, streaming did not invent that paradigm.

As I've mentioned in previous posts, streaming is one giant nascent industry shift, work in progress. Internationally, (royalty wise) it's slugging along well behind the overall trend. Arguably however, it's much better than the 1950's. Makes me wonder how many direct royalty checks Buddy Holly & his bandmates cashed with a European or Asian postmark?



PS. Did you register with SoundExchange?

 

[+48V]

A $30 a month charge would kill streaming, so it won't happen.

At this point up the ladder of course it would and won't.

I was being, erm...extravagantly facetious. Making/seeking a point.

 

[Cadillac Kid]

Interesting thread. How about a musical interlude. Here is Gillian's two cents..

 

[+48V]

Help me understand why I should register. Are you saying that when I register, my discography will suddenly appear in their list and then I'll get paid?

I have had a charted worldwide terrestrial radio hit (albeit in a niche genre). I have played on several albums by other artists that are in-play (available for download, streaming, Internet radio, etc., etc.) through iTunes, Spotify, CDBaby, Amazon, Record Bird, and a host of other sites worldwide. No checks. Ever. _Please_ use your years of experience (and especially your experience in the streaming industry) to help me understand what registering will do. Inquiring minds want to know.

GJ

1. Why? Why not. Because it's free to register... to claim what's rightfully yours for the taking.

2. Your discography will not "appear" in their registry when you register. It will appear, (not instantaneously) when any non-interactive streaming service (Pandora, multitudes of Internet radio stations, SiriusXM, etc.) airs/plays any of your associated songs.

3. iTunes, Spotify, CD Baby, Amazon, Record Bird, etc.. (on-demand streaming or download service) Those royalties are at the behest of your label and/or negotiated independently with your distributor(s).