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Comment by njl | Hacker News Reader

Spotify has internal fingerprinting stuff that can handle this easily enough. The shutdown is entirely due to pressure from the record labels. It's a shame; this was a surprisingly difficult product to get off the ground, and a lot of folks put in heroic efforts to make it work.

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Apparently not, because it's number one streamed track "Old Town Road" never cleared the Nine Inch Nails sample it used.

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2019/05/29/lil-nas-x-sample...

Think about it from the artist's point of view. What financial incentive does an unknown artist have to clear samples?

On one end of the spectrum, you create a song using an uncleared sample and it goes nowhere. Nine Inch Nails never hears about your song, and neither does the public.

On the other end of the spectrum, your song goes viral and makes you one of the most popular artists in the country.

Even if Nine Inch Nails claims every cent you make from the song, you have already accomplished your goal. You're a popular artist and now have a platform.You can sell merch, sign sponsorship deals, and get paid to advertise for brands on social media. You can put out new music with all your ducks in a row and go on to have a very successful career.

Why go through the trouble of clearing your sample when the chances of your song becoming popular are very slim, and even if it does become a hit, the reward far outweighs the risk?

Outside of ethics, there is no reason for an unknown artist to clear samples when they are trying to make it in the music industry.

It should also be noted that both the creator of Old Town Road(Lil Nas X) and Nine Inch Nails are currently under Columbia records.

There are theoretical risks, depending where you are based: Court costs Injunctions Risk of Punitive damages

They may share a record label, but do they share the same publisher?

You make an excellent point, and even if the song goes viral they are still unlikely to make any money from the song itself, regardless of whether they cleared samples. Presumably any physical merchandise they sell is clear of anyone else's copyright.

Music labels are strangling culture in America. Please pirate music to avoid funding music industry lobbyists in their efforts.

I donate lots of money monthly to my private music trackers because it's such a superior experience for music lovers, far better than Spotify and the like. I wish the labels would let these ecosystems emerge into the light, because I'd pay $100 a month for a legitimate version of Redacted...

Maybe labels are bad, but piracy is far worse for artists -- it reduces their incentive to produce. That's why, for instance, big bands have become such an endangered species. Almost nobody can afford to hire, say, a horn section today.

Big bands were essentially killed [0] by cheaper multitrack recording, synthesizers and samplers in the 80s, when there were no such things as torrent trackers. Even the wonderful although hugely inefficient Napster was more than a decade away. Today artists get most money from gigs, while record labels profit the most from printed music sales and royalties.

[0] The correct term should be "relegated to niche performances". If you love big bands you can indeed listen to them somewhere today, the difference being that mostly for economical reasons they're not anymore the default method used for example to make a film score.

> Big bands were essentially killed by cheaper multitrack recording, synthesizers and samplers

Excellent point.

This is uninformed and off-topic.

How so?

Pedantic nitpick: it's not just music labels, but copyright trolls/racketeers in general; music is just the industry where it's most obvious/egregious.

Parasites exist on every industry. Left unchecked, they multiply and eventually kill the host.

Instead of pirating: support local artists, go to concerts, Bucky their march from the stalls and their self-pressed cds.

Independent distribution is still extremely cheap and easy - there are still platforms out there that will upload music to Spotify and many others for free or for a small annual fee. Spotify offering the service directly isn't necessary for distribution to be accessible to all.

>Spotify has internal fingerprinting stuff that can handle this easily enough.

I'll admit I don't know about Spotify's inner workings but my understanding is that Spotify itself does not have its own fingerprinting algorithm. Instead, they rely on their distribution partners like DistroKid and CD Baby to use fingerprint services and prevent copyright violations. (DistroKid and CD Baby license the fingerprint algorithm from Audible Magic[1]. Google also initially licensed Audible Magic software before they wrote their own version of ContentID.)

I'm also not sure audio fingerprinting technology is enough. Even though Youtube's ContentID is a state-of-the-art algorithm with the largest fingerprint database, Google was still afraid it wouldn't be enough to satisfy the EU which is why they fought the passage of Article 13.

Maybe the EU Article 13 isn't the sole reason but it certainly gives more ammunition to copyright holders to use against Spotify's catalog of potentially unlicensed content and copyright violations.

>The shutdown is entirely due to pressure from the record labels.

Ok, let's say that the primary reason was pressure from the record labels. We need to dissect that "pressure" into smaller concepts.

To add precision to the discussion we can separate 2 different types of entities:

- record labels[2] : Universal, Sony, Warner, and EMI

- distribution partners[3] : DistroKid, CDBaby, EmuBands, etc

Look at the webpage[3] of non-record-labels that are distribution partners and they mention "protecting against infringement" and "infringement" -- 4 times. Also, Spotify's blog post[4] again mentions "protect artists from infringement".

For Spotify to offer direct uploads, they'd have to manage the extra logistical hassles of policing copyright violations that was previously outsourced to DistroKid & CD Baby.

I agree that record labels (Universal/Sony/Warner) can exert pressure... but what exactly is that pressure about? I believe it's preventing copyright infringement from crowdsourced random uploaders. If it's not about "protecting copyrights" but some other reason that's keeping record labels happy, what's that "other reason"?

[1] https://www.audiblemagic.com/

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=biggest+record+labels

[3] https://artists.spotify.com/guide/your-music

[4] https://artists.spotify.com/blog/we're-closing-the-upload-be...

Record labels are gatekeeping and defending their moat. The existence of their industry relies on friction in the music distribution system - the easier it is to release music own your own, the less money they will make.

You're not obliged to sign to a record label.

Correct, which is why the labels try to do things like this. If the labels pressure Spotify to kill the ability for independent artists to upload their own music, then they only way you get on Spotify is to sign with a record label. And if being on Spotify is important to you as an artist, then yes, you are indeed obliged to sign with a label.

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