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> They priced an entire month of music at about £10, the same as a CD. That's 720 hours (30 days)

Yeah, but who listens for 24 hours a day, all month?

Also, that £10 CD can be played infinitely. That's infinity hours of music, which comes out to around 0p per hour. That's completely unreasonable! ;)

The convenience of Spotify converted me from piracy, getting my money back into the recorded music game. I don't think I'm alone in that. That 29% cut quoted in the article doesn't seem unreasonable to me, especially when some of that is "new" money. What were the margins of old record shops?

That was the main thing I wanted to discuss, but let me also question some assumptions you seem to make.

> the labels have less control to "dictate" or push specific artists.

Why is that a problem? The curation and popularity lists are not gone, btw: the streaming services have taken over that role.

> The availability of everyone to release their own music has diluted the market so now there is so much volume, nobody gets heard

On the flip side, more people get the opportunity to be a little heard. Seems like a win to me. Also, there are definitely still those who are heard more than others.

The whole INDUSTRY that you are talking about is what happened in LA in 70s. I don't understand why would you take it as picture of how things should be done. It has not been like that before and it's getting back to "normal" now.

Most musicians play because they need to. Because it's the only thing that makes sense. Nobody sponsors their years of very hard work which they do voluntarily and with joy before they become great at what they're doing.

Original bands are doing just fine. They have big following because they offer something new. They have patreon, sell tshirts vinyls and whatnot.

Many average musicians can afford equipment which top bands couldn't dream of 20 years ago.

If somebody wants to just create another pop song then yes they will have a hard time.

And existing artists who sold their soul to big labels may suffer because those companies never thought they would need to move a finger. Not ideal but there's some worse suffering happening in the world than that.

Big record labels and expensive CDs were basically a dotcom bubble. Music is entertainment and people have a lot to choose from now.

Those who need to play music will be fine and enjoy life with their instrument(s) as they always do. Those who went in with "I've heard there's some good money there" are getting disappointed.

' Those who went in with "I've heard there's some good money there" are getting disappointed'

This is true, but I think it's also more of the "I hear you can make SOME money there" or "I hear you can live on the money you make there" which is the point. You can't.

I am a musician and all of the guys I played with over 30+ years had main jobs alongside their gigging. There would be no way to afford it otherwise, and that was when CDs were being sold. The streaming issue has only made this worse, which is the point in question (is it a valid payout?), not whether every single artist can be a millionnaire.

It is also interesting about "selling their soul" because a lot of fans believe "their" band hasn't sold out and is doing it solely for the love of music - they never are. They might enjoy what they're doing ("do something you love and you'll never work a day in your life") but they would cease touring and recording if they were making £0.00. Even all the "alternative" bands were signed to labels and relied on distribution; they just promoted an image of not "playing the game" like everyone else, and being "alternative" even though they never were. It's an odd mindset people get when looking at bands and somehow believing that the musicians somehow lived without money and did their art solely for the love of the art.

In my ~10 years of buying CDs I probably bought 50 albums.

In my ~10 years of streaming on Spotify I’ve definitely spent a lot more than that on subscription.

I spent more than that since I have closer to 1000 albums. Never spent a penny on Spotify though. I didn't like the audio quality when I heard my friends (who strangely insisted on some amazing speaker, and then played grubby audio quality through the speaker...)

> 3. The cost of streaming music is WAY WAY WAY too low. They priced an entire month of music at about £10, the same as a CD. That's 720 hours (30 days) for the same price as just over an hour of music. This works out at £0.013888888888889 per hour, or just over 1p for an hour of music. This is then SPLIT between the streaming company, the label (if one), the artist's manager, and the artist.

But, unlike movies or any other service, the music service is repeatable and potentially generates infinite value over the years, with very minimal cost of maintenance. Once it is submitted to spotify, it is there forever, generating revenue, without you doing anything at all.

But that IS the same as movies and any other service - once it is available on iTunes does the film producer need to do any more work to make revenue? No. Once someone has written their software and hosted it somewhere, do they need to do any more work to extract money from it? No.

Yet the film industry saw sense to charge £7 - £13 for a film rental or purchase PER FILM and not charge £10 for an entire month of cinema films.

This isn't true for Netflix since they get old films, but it isn't true for "just at the cinema" new releases.

But, usually*, people do not re-watch the same film more than once or twice (except when you like it very, very much :) ).

I usually listen to a song multiple times each day.

It still doesn't reduce the initial price/cost of the film simply because you choose to watch it only once. You still paid a reasonable price for it, and can rewatch it many many many times if you want.

This isn't the same with the music cost - you paid a tiny amount; they made a tiny amount of money - that's the unsustainable bit.

I'm the opposite to you - I will watch a film a few times, but only if I enjoyed it (as you said). I don't listen to the same song multiple times per day, let alone multiple times per week.

>I usually listen to a song multiple times each day.

Used to be I bought a CD for say $10, listened to it probably hundreds to thousands of times, say around a penny per listen. Then I'd resell the CD, say for $5, and someone else could get another 1000 listens with no money going to an artist.

An artist used to get around 10% minus packaging costs, so say at most $1 per CD.

So an artist then could get under 0.1 cents per listen, maybe vastly less.

Next, a song plays on the radio to millions, and the artist gets (?). I think that was quite small too. Even then, touring was where most of the money was made - the CD and radio game was to get exposure and fans, many of whom would then pay $50-$100 for one evening of listening to the band live.

I'm not sure how all the econ works out now without spending too much time digging into it, but making music has never been a good income stream for any but a tiny, tiny percent of artists.