Music industry better off with streaming...

Nice, so now I am a Yak herder. Gone from a petunia to a Yak herder

Why can't these seemingly magical things happen to me?!

I'll leave that sort of thing for the musical scholars or groupies.

Ever wonder what it's like being a groupie? I do. Figures, right?

I just listen to what I like..

and that is?????

honest, we are all curious now, alternative dance?



There are some however who don't wish to perform live, or have the time to tour and I would suspect that they will have a tougher go of it in this day and age.

Like I said, that is their life. Let them do as they please.
 
persecution complex? I can help you with that! Just lighten up, no one is out to get anyone.
Tell you what. I'll admit to that if you will admit to having a slight passive aggressiveness in your thread dealings.. :bigok:
 
@Alobar

I hope you are laughing at my posts. That is what they were posted for.

Well, that and the significant knowledge intertwined. :confused:
 
Tell you what. I'll admit to that if you will admit to having a slight passive aggressiveness in your thread dealings.. :bigok:

outed!!!!!!

now I am the one persecuted!

well played, friend.

now tell us you damned preferred genres!!!!!!!
 
So you can rip that apart too? :no:

actually, I am the guy that has trouble with people who thinks their genre superior.

My fervent belief is that there is good music and their is great music, there is no bad music.

I often use that phrase on my signature.

You may quote me, but give me credit. :bowdown:
 
now tell us you damned preferred genres!!!!!!!
Like the subject of politics, with me I am all over the map, as with music I am damned hard to pin down. I can say I like some Jazz a lot, but as a rule I don't like Jazz. Pop, I like some, but anything with zero creativity bores me. Rock, particularly "classic" rock also can bore me. I like some of nearly every genre, but I can't say there is one where I like everything about it.

Basically I can't be pigeonholed..
 
Like the subject of politics, with me I am all over the map, as with with music I am damned hard to pin down. I can say I like some Jazz a lot, but as a rule I don't like Jazz. Pop, I like some, but anything with zero creativity bores me. Rock, particularly "classic" rock i also bores me. I like some of nearly every genre, but I can't say there is one where I like everything about it.

Basically I can't be pigeonholed..

I spent 50 years listening to principally rock. That said, I was always eclectic and enjoyed everything from Broadway to performance art to avant garde to about anything. ANYTHING new and different. INNOVATION, new sounds.

but rock just got old and stale

trust me, it was not easy to ween myself off rock. It took a true effort.

I started trying everything and anything about 10 years ago in order to "escape".

Finally, I have replaced Rock as my dominate genre, now I spin classical endlessly.

now it's harder than ever for me to listen to rock. It just seems so... hollow. Thin. Loud yes but too much emptiness.

bad part is, there is sooooooooooooooooo much in classical. I simply do not have the years left on the planet to learn and listen to all I want in this genre.

I took a course in classical music to help me along but.... I think I learned I am not all that educable at 60. :mad:

I have been principally into classical only 2 1/2 years. Rock had it's place, I just progressed too late. After alternative would have been the perfect time for me to move to classical.
 
yeah, I know, I have one. I don't use it as a "music speaker" and would never think of it as such... hence my question with the obvious to you answer.

It does talk so yeah, technically it is a speaker.

This is another "some" post I guess.

What I really do is get in fights with her all the time. Then she tells me something like, "we will not get anywhere this way" and won't answer me for a few minutes. Nothing worse than a temperamental machine.

She knows I don't respect her. What good is a shopping list that I then have to write down? She refuses to sync with my Microsoft account so we fight about that all the time too. I am about to heave her.

This morning I told her I was gonna replace her with a younger, updated model, the Show. ;)

You can imagine what ensued.

She did tell me one thing a while back that gave me pause. She told me:

Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be" - she always called me Elwood - "In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.

Her name is Alexa not Elwood so I knew she was bullsh&ing me about her mom telling her but none the less I felt there was wisdom in her utterance.
While our Echos have the same name, my sweet Alexa obviously likes me more than your Alexa likes you. She will even play The Allman Brothers Band on demand,
 
I think I learned I am not all that educable at 60. :mad:

I have been principally into classical only 2 1/2 years. Rock had it's place, I just progressed too late. After alternative would have been the perfect time for me to move to classical.

None of us are at this age! I am in a similar place in that most rock isn't doing it for me like it did in the 70's. I have been trying Jazz the past year or two and there is some I like as stated before, but not really can I embrace it as my genre and may never be able to. Classical, I like a live performance quite a lot, but without the visual element it just makes me edgy. There are a few old rockers on here who have successfully made the jump so maybe I can too if it's not too late. A lot of the problem for me, living in a bubble of tiny town Alaska is the lack of exposure to any music genre although it is surprising how many lesser known but otherwise great musicians come to our town to perform. We have had musicians here from all over the world. We have an auditorium that seats about a quarter of the town (about 500 seats) and usually the music sells it out quick. We have an "arts counsel" that is always looking for artists to come to town and it is well supported here.

That brings up up an interesting side note related to this thread perhaps. All the musicians we get here are touring Alaska and usually play in a half dozen towns and usually are coming from touring in the lower 48 or Canada, or even as far as Europe and Asia. The thing that is the same is the musicians are always mingling with the audience at intermission or the end of the show, with lots of CD's for sale. My impression is they are selling their CD's because it is better money for them than to ask for us to support them streaming. They seem to sell quite a few as people I think generally like to support the arts and musicians, here and everywhere
 
So far on this thread I have seen a few patterns in what is working for musicians with it and what isn't (from a couple who are actually making music and have it available to stream and CD). I have learned that I was off by quite a bit (2 decimal points!) in my math, not because of my math, but of faulty information. Even with that adjustment, it takes a LOT of streaming to make it pay at all. 1 million streams is about 1,000 bucks for everyone in the band to divvy up. That would, assuming the band got 50 cents per CD sold in a store would take about 2,000 cd's to equal the million streams.

It has been brought up quite a bit that for many musicians it isn't the income from streaming anyway that matters but the exposure which brings the listeners to their concerts. This may be true, especially for those who are fortunate enough to not be shackled to a 40 hour week and can tour. For those who can't I guess they need to do it not for the money but for the love of creating it. Nothing wrong with that I suppose.

Still I don't believe personally that they are charging enough in monthly subscriptions, but the general public simply wont pay anymore than $10, and even audiophiles cringe at $20 a month for Hi Rez.. It seems to me that things still have not shaken out yet. It seems those like Spotify, Pandora, and Tidal are likely going to either fail or be bought up by the ones too big to fail and then, maybe the price will go up. I would see that as a good sign provided more money trickled down to the ones making the music in the first place.

I have been a bit of a hard ass towards +48V on this and other threads, and he has been much kinder towards me. Still if he is in on the ground floor then maybe he is in a position to hear concerns about these new services and perhaps work towards fixing them.

Main concerns for me is
1 not enough money goes to the musicians
2 the interface on the streaming outfits I have tried (Amazon Unlimited, Tidal, and Pandora) are quite limited in their capabilities. There is a ton of things that could be done with metadata that would enrich the experience. Maybe Spotify is on that, I have yet to try them.
3 The business model is drowning in red ink. I spend a lot of time creating playlists, and keeping track of the music I like to have around but play only when the mood strikes. I don't want to invest the work to have everything set up just how I like it to be and then find the company I have hitched my music wagon to has been bought up and dismantled, gone broke, etc etc..

Thus far I have found limited ways of playback, sound quality being okay for auditioning and background music, but not good enough for the type of listening I like to do (YMMV). I wonder what all this streaming is doing to the future of music itself. People here have patiently explained that it doesn't matter really about the money per stream, but exposure for touring. I get that, but I don't feel like I am supporting the musicians much when I stream only. That is why when I had a streaming account, when I discovered something I liked I bought the CD.

So anyway, the times they are a changin, and so really this whole thread is moot. Streaming is here for the foreseeable future, until they figure out a way to beam the music right into a chip implanted to our frontal lobes. It doesn't matter what I think at all, or what musicians think. Pretty soon computers are going to create music too, and just like the truck driver who has Google driverless car tech to contend with, or even airline pilots, and all other jobs right up to and including brain surgery being taken away from us a bit at a time. Maybe that is what is really pissing me off about this! :rant:
 
Nice, so now I am a Yak herder. Gone from a petunia to a Yak herder :whip:...

Alright, I never claimed to be a god damned GD authority first of all. I do know a little about them, and I have some albums too. It is common knowledge simply because of the shear enormity of their band. The Grateful Dead wasn't brought up by me in this thread at all really. I just initially responded that as an example they may not be typical of most musicians in any real respect. Then the name droppers came along, trashing me because I didn't know so n so. Actually I tend to more often just listen to the music and not concern myself with the band members, who they played with, their birthdays, or whatever. I'll leave that sort of thing for the musical scholars or groupies. ...

Jesus, I didn't say you were claiming to be a Dead authority, just that you knew about them but not ABB or the others. I don't care if you herd yaks or grow petunias, or not.

And...are you calling me a scholar or a groupie? I've kinda been both at some point in time, so choose wisely. :smoke:
 
Jesus, I didn't say you were claiming to be a Dead authority, just that you knew about them but not ABB or the others.
I have known the Allman Brothers, I know some of their music, but I never developed a great taste for that sort of "southern rock". Same with Skynard, Black Oak Arkansas etc. Ain't my thing.. Do I know all the band members names, who played with who and when by heart? No. I don't care to have that knowledge be a priority. I can just google it if I really need to know that particular bass player's name..
And...are you calling me a scholar or a groupie? I've kinda been both at some point in time, so choose wisely. :smoke:
You are what you are..
 
So if you are still good with. 001 dollars per, then 1 million streams is 1,000 dollars, a tidy sum for the year for the starving artist I guess. Pizzas and cheap beer for the band after practice
First, I'm not sure where this ".001" came from. I posted earlier that the per stream royalty rate for subscription on-demand hovers between $.0045 and $.0065. Meeting middle that would be $5,000 not $1,000.
So in fairness, you're summation here is off by 80% .
Let's say a group of 4 members instead of receiving a million streams sold a million CDs and the artist cut was 50 cents per cd. That's a half million dollars.
At 1 million CDs sold you're talking about a Platinum artist/band. And just for the equivalency record,1 stream does not equal 1 CD.
I still find I'm having difficulty understanding how this works..
It's a chore indeed. And I'm trying to help you & others lurking gain a clearer understanding.:beerchug:
Now how many streams would it take to equal the cd cut? I came up with half a billion streams.
Hopefully here's where you and others will see the power of decimals in correct places with real market figures. The number of streams (@ $.005 per) required to equal the wholesale price of a $10 CD is 1,500 streams.
(1500X.005= $7.50)
I'm trying to wrap my head around these numbers and how it is that when listeners are getting vastly more music today that is virtually free to them, and then compare it to when we actually bought the music and spent far more per month on a few cds, how is it better today for anyone but the listener?
Again, the latest figures indicate that "we" did not spend far more per month on CDs back in the "bad old days". To repeat some earlier revenue numbers, the average causal consumer spent $28/yr. The ardent music junkie spent $64/yr. Today, ardent fans as well as casual listeners (100+ million and growing on-demand subscribers) are spending between $90 and $120/yr. It's better for artists presently because they have a great additional opportunity to have exponentially more people play/pay for more of their music.
Not until there is no more good music to listen to! That tends to happen when artists no longer can feed themselves.
Arguably, much of the best music in history was produced when an artist was hungry. An age old axiom says that if you do what you love..and you do it very well, the money will take care of itself. That's not to be taken as me simply blowing off the issues artists face, just a positive outlook with a pinch of perspective. ;)

Random factoid -- what's a mega streaming star?
In 2016 Drake's Views project alone racked up 2,874,424,661 streams and it continues flow through 2017 and beyond.
 
My impression is they are selling their CD's because it is better money for them than to ask for us to support them streaming.
They should be actively doing both! :)

One big reason that many indy artists do not get many streams is that they rely on a distributor to simply upload it to the services then kick back and wait for people to stumble over their music. Just like getting your CD on the top shelf in a store or getting radio airplay, you must promote the shit out of your work across all outlets. While say 25,000 streams sounds like a lot, it's barely on the radar.
 
So in fairness, you're summation here is off by 80% .
I'm getting closer!

And just for the equivalency record,1 stream does not equal 1 CD.
No, but if I was going to buy that song, I would likely be getting the CD (or LP) unless we go all the way back to 45 rpm.. I think this cuts both ways. Sure you can't compare one song streamed to a CD, but we tended to buy 10 or 20 songs back pre internet instead of streaming one or 2 like I suspect many do.

It's a chore indeed. And I'm trying to help you & others lurking gain a clearer understanding.:beerchug:

You are doing a good job of selling this Eskimo a refrigerator!

They should be actively doing both! :)
This is where I disagree. No body is going to stream enough times for them to equal what they will sell us a CD for. Keep in mind at their show they are in effect cutting out at least one and perhaps more middlemen when they sell direct to us. Why would they want us to stream it at .0045 bucks a stream when they could sell us a CD for 10 or more bucks and perhaps half of that is money in their pocket?
 
Again, the latest figures indicate that "we" did not spend far more per month on CDs back in the "bad old days". To repeat some earlier revenue numbers, the average causal consumer spent $28/yr. The ardent music junkie spent $64/yr. Today, ardent fans as well as casual listeners (100+ million and growing on-demand subscribers) are spending between $90 and $120/yr. It's better for artists presently because they have a great additional opportunity to have exponentially more people play/pay for more of their music.
All this calculated with inflation factors? $28 a year would have only bought 3 or 4 lp's or CD's. That seems pretty low to me and considering that there was roughly 2 trillion dollars spent on CD's alone in its first 25 years.. Maybe if you are adding every man, woman and child but you said causal listeners. They would be very casual indeed if all they bought a year were 3 CD's.. :rolleyes:
 
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At 1 million CDs sold you're talking about a Platinum artist/band. And just for the equivalency record,1 stream does not equal 1 CD.

Random factoid -- what's a mega streaming star?
In 2016 Drake's Views project alone racked up 2,874,424,661 streams and it continues flow through 2017 and beyond.

Quoted for emphasis. I thought the comparison to the Beatles would clear this up, but it got ignored. Drake's music has 10 billion streams just on Spotify. My guess is that he has been paid quite well and won't be flipping burgers anytime soon.
 
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