There Is No CD Revival
dadadrummer.substack.com
dadadrummer.substack.com
However, my households use of streaming media (mainly Spotify) has increased for 'casual' listening, so I think there is a balance, and I hope that buying physical media for music wont disappear completely any time soon.
All my CDs (over 1,000 of popular/rock/metal and about 400 of classical, at the last count) are ripped in a lossless format, and on my file server, to be enjoyed in a modern way. I do dislike jewel cases, and all my CDs (and inlays etc.) have been re-homed into archival bags, which take up a lot less space. I think while CDs (and DVDs, and Blu-rays) are still being sold, they should 100% shift to carboard packaging instead of plastic.
I know I'm showing my age, but there's just something enjoyably tangible about physical media, as opposed ephemeral files stored in a cloud.
- bandcamp.com - mostly indie, but I've actually purchased a few more "mainstream" artists from here in the last couple years. - hdtracks.com - have a wide selection, but tend to be pretty pricey.
I bought some Peter Gabriel records and they came with a code for downloading multiple formats including huge, lossless. And the site for one wasn’t working because it was too old and I had to email someone. But an actual human responded and send me a code to the new site.
Not sure if that’s just for RealWorld or for all Geffen LPs.
I think this is a good model where you get some limited release physical world thing and then the digital version to go along.
Doing similar with movies/tv but more slowly. Partly because the only legal option is ripping blurays/uhds (Need to clarify I'm not in the US), which is more hassle and also they're bulkier to store and finally there's less tv/movie content I'm inclined to rewatch. But movies/tv have the plaftform fragmentation/content going away problem even worse, and the streaming services love to try serve low bitrate content, or even refuse higher resolutions altogether if you're not using a locked down enough setup, so that's been picking up steam for me
Sadly bandcamp has been bought by Epic, so it's unlikely to live long :(
I also find that when I commit to listening to physical media, I’m more likely to listen to the whole thing through, rather than cherry picking songs.
Precisely. The same reason I am wary of digital money. Its just too easy for the powers that be to flip a bit to make it all inaccessible. I do not trust them enough to give them that much power. They can still make things inaccessible, but they would have to put up with some inconveniences.
Mark me old school, but I like the physical cover designs, art work and well done liner notes too.
I have the same conflict with DVDs/BluRay. I want to play by the rules and pay for the media I enjoy, but it's absurd that it's illegal for me to rip the content that I've lawfully purchased for my own consumption.
There's a summary of the context here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc_and_DVD_copy_prot...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/victory-users-libraria...
With DVDs and Blu-Rays, the situation is less clear because there is a specific law against breaking DRM. However, to my knowledge, there has never been a lawsuit against a _user_ of software that lets you rip a DVD or BD, that law has only been used against companies that make or distribute the software itself. Either because of the fair-use right or plausible deniability, it's unclear whether enforcement of this provision against an individual end-user would be permissible.
Title 17 certainly does not say that. The closest it comes to talking about the subject is by saying that copies are only allowed if consented to by the copyright owner. Space shifting and other forms of personal copies are at best a gray area with little case law to work off of.
On the other hand, the DMCA harms me by limiting my right to use content for which I legally hold the appropriate license.
It's totally legal both in the US and the EU (apparently not in the UK though).
Now I do very probably, without knowing it, break some law(s) every single freaking day because "the more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws". And I feel exactly zero guilt about that.
Instead I have about 9000 mp3 files.
I find streaming services frustrating because their recommendation algorithm suck. I tried playing "Swing" and it gave me "Volare" by Dean Martin. (that's not Swing), I pick Prince Radio and it plays rap (Prince has no relation to rap). My mom's into Tuba Skinny so I pick Tuba Skinny radio, every song it choose was nothing like Tuba Skinny (Dixieland Jazz). And on and on. It get music similar to the artists less than 1 out of 6 times.
Sure you can, hdtracks has been around for nearly 15 years now, and even offers the same redbook data you'd find on a CD if you don't trust their FLAC encoding.
2. This presumes 100% of the music collection is on Spotify. Personally speaking, 60%~ of the music I listen to ISN'T on Spotify.
3. This presumes music is only desired to be listened to when an available internet connection is available.
Having to shuffle my media collections around whenever a third party went out of business or pivoted was such a massive headache that it was the inspiration for just managing my own media collections locally.
Artist
Album
Artist
Album
Game OST
Game Name
Film OST
Film Name
With WinAmp's quick jump it was a blast to navigate.
(just checked - my mp3 folder has 6231 files)
I bounce between Spotify and Youtube Music and Apple Music. I recently got into Apple Music library curation but then I got a Tesla which supports Spotify (and Tidal, but...). So I'm back on Spotify. But Apple Music has one really nifty thing -- highlighting major tracks on albums so that album exploration can be enhanced a bit.
But honestly, my appetite for keeping up with and curating albums is waning. I wish there was a nice "cd changer" like interface to one of these services -- load up 6 albums and randomize. Queueing isn't the same.
(I'll repeat a desire I've had a long time -- playlists of albums, not tracks, with album-shuffle. So simple, yet nobody supports it).
I have a few online streaming radio stations I love -- Radio Paradise in particular. Someday I can see chucking all the "streaming service album" management and just going other-peoples-radio.
Slacker (in the Tesla) is also good enough.
If not yet, you're in for a unpleasant surprise.
Prince certainly created some songs that would qualify as rap, and they were some fairly big hits:
My Name is Prince: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0g9Qkrc8nE
Sexy MF, including the rap section here: https://youtu.be/bfHsF6FKgb4?t=324
A compilation of some Prince raps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ez4iEHtAuw
Hard disagree.
I sold my large collection of records recently, for 2 reasons.
1. Because I realized I hadn't listened to effectively any of them in the past 5 years, across 2 house moves. I'm leaving on travel soon and may work abroad in the future, so better to liquidate now than later.
2. My entire collection had that "vintage" stink, aka mold/mildew/etc. I had mixed old and new records together, which effectively tainted the outer cardboard of the records. This caused me a serious amount of stress and anxiety (which is a separate problem to resolve) to the extent that I rushed selling the records to a record store (which I have minor regrets about, blog write-up to come on this all).
This all to say, while I really do dislike how plastic dependent we've become in society, from everything like fruits and plastic bags, I LOVE that CDs come in jewelcases for 3 distinct reasons
1. The plastic CD case protects the CD, and the inner paper booklet, from damage and other external factors, if stored properly. Also, cardboard cases for CDs often don't include inner booklet notes, which is disappointing. Cardboard CD cases are less resilient to damage as well.
I personally need some plastic archival bags (and if you can recommend some, please do), because I want to avoid my CDs coming to a similar fate as my vinyl. I found a few that caught a bit of a stink recently, and hurriedly cleaned the exterior cases (another benefit).
2. The plastic cases help with management and organization of the physical collection very easily, as every case is effectively the same size. While there are some slimline CD releases, and of course cardboard or double/deluxe CD releases, for single CD releases they all conform to the same size, making require space estimates and stacking very convenient to do.
3. Extremely easy to replace if damaged, dirty, smelly, etc. You can buy new blank CD cases so easily, and if you can't find an exact replacement, similar cases could be found. This is one reason I dislike vinyl cardboard covers: if the cover is damaged or stinky/moldy/etc enough, you're screwed. Throw it out, but good luck finding just a cover replacement. Whereas with a CD, you can get a digital copy of the inner booklet and CD one way or another, and remake a new physical copy if desired. Obviously, that's done for personal consumption only.
By extension of that last note, I want to say I love CDs for the fact that they're robust, reliable, DRM-free (excluding previous cases), high quality, and identical every play.
/end my input /start personal rant
Having the power to own your media physically and digitally is another benefit (by ripping the CD). I also love that many CDs come with the inner booklet which often contains interviews, lyrics, bonus photos, or other fun content that wouldn't be found in a vinyl release. I do admit that vinyl releases are beautiful with the large print 12" covers, but how many records do you realistically prop up on a shelf somewhere?
We moved off VHS tapes to DVD, and Blu-Ray has been around for years now, and yet despite that DVDs are still produced. I don't forsee any kind of death of CD or DVD in the near future, especially as more streaming services pull back or move media in and out of their catalogues; increasing costs don't help either.
Also separate side note, the case for a vinyl record being an involved process I agree with. I would say that limiting CD purchases per month could be viewed in a similar fashion, buying 1-3 a month and listening to each through.
Keep on collecting!
I still use the paper sleeve with window for individual discs. Then bag those + paper inserts. I like those particular bags because they're consistently thin unlike zip-lock style bags so they pack nicely, and they fit most DVD paper inserts/cardboard sleeves except some multi-disc sets.
Library discs are another story. Those are abused to hell and back.
I do exactly like GP: I rip everything to bitperfect (and it's verifiably bitperfect, using online DBs of other people who ripped the same CDs) FLAC files but I still keep my audio CDs.
We do not care if they're unreadable: we've got the bitperfect digital files on our SSDs / servers / USB stick and whatnots.
Now of course it's not convenient if you're always on the road.
But yeah: moved to another country a few weeks ago. My trusty old CDs were in a big cardboard box!
Why exactly do you buy a physical medium?
Because you don't think you are able to store 1000 audio CDs loss less for the rest of your life?
I mean that's not that much of space.
You probably have other similar critical things like pictures or videos so you have to have a backup strategy for that anyway.
And what music would you have which would be so unique that in the worst case scenario you are happy that you still have those 1000 music CDs but no longer your pictures etc?
Nobody even bothered to read the original source report, much less make sense of it, or even gave the article they wrote a minute's thought. They saw the story somewhere else (perhaps got it from a wire service too), and rewrote it just enough to appear as an original article.
They could not care less about the content of the article, or what they were reporting. It's just another thing to post within a day to make the meagre salary they're paid, or to boost one's BS blog.
I worked at a newspaper for about five years, even wrote a weekly column for a couple. Lemme tell you, coming up with something interesting to say every week is really hard.
"CD sales are up a tick? Oh, something to write about, which incidentally is my job, thank god." That's it.
I thought, if something fits these two criteria then what exactly is the point in me spending time reading about it? So I no longer read the news.
* It must be lossless and high quality.
* It must work offline.
That sounds like you need to try bandcamp, because they are missing the most popular stuff ;)
[Edit]: And they offer all downloads I've encountered so far in several lossy and lossless formats, including FLAC and WAV
*: Mostly albums, some few are EPs or single tracks
Plus liner notes are often omitted online, and occasionally that, too, is a little bit of a shame, even if the main thing is of course the music itself.
[1] https://wiki.videolan.org/index.php?title=Advanced_Audio_Cod...
Is it? As far as I know, lossless is only offered for the Apple Music streaming service, but not for downloads from the iTunes store, which remain as 256K AAC files.
They both use the same app for playback, so this is a tad confusing.
Whereas the iTunes store downloads are a one time-purchase and have no DRM, so they're yours to keep.
I am also not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that providing files you ripped to someone else ISN'T legal, even if they"ve paid for the album:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.....
Thanks for sharing that.
CDs are pure audio data with error correction.
Every modern copy or backup program ignores it, and it looks like none ever used it.
In forums where people look for such things out of curiosity people mention they existed, but I've not yet found someone that owns one to play with.
And zero of them stopped the analog hole on those old devices.
Now, as to the actual bit(s). There were two bits, one said copyrighted work, one said is this a copy. Almost all CDs shipped with the copyright bit set and the "is a copy" bit set to 0. This meant you can make one copy of the CD (by law). The copy should have the "is a copy" bit set, meaning no more copies of the copied disc.
This means you can actually copy the original CD as many times as you want, since it always looked like an original, hence copyable.
Remember Sony hardware sold an order of magnitude more in value than Sony music :)
Again, a non-issue. To recap:
1. Very few CDs even bothered to set the bits. 2. None (?) set both bits, meaning you can copy any original CD, even with bit respecting hardware. 3. The bit(s) in no way changed the audio. 4. No copy software on PC I have ever heard of even looked at the bit. 5. Very few pieces of hardware respected the bit.
Did I miss anything?
I don't know what the status is in the US, but copies for personal use are legal in the Netherlands. In fact, you actually pay a "private copying levy" for most devices capable of storing media (blank CDs, hard drives, phones, etc.)
Looks like there's something similar in a number of other European countries, but I don't know the details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
The distinction is, that while it's NOT illegal to copy a CD to another format, it IS illegal to make a copy of something that has someone else's copyright on it, be it music, spoken word, written documents, videos or photos etc.
That can't be true.
It would mean doing backups are effectively illegal (can only backup your own files, not programs or the OS or any other files not created by oneself)
Explained in the last paragraph of this section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripping#United_Kingdom
DVDs are more complicated as tools to remove DRM are illegal under the DMCA.
There are 100 different jurisdictions and while the law is different the practical situation is the same. Who is exactly going to police you copying your own cds in your own home? How is bob from bob's records to discover you have copied it? One should have to convince congress to require Operating systems to rat you out to bob then convince users to use such systems.
Doesn't quite make sense, as copyright is tort, but there are police departments devoted to court enforcement. I'd be wary.
Not saying it will happen, but seems easy to catch a lot of people with the draconian powers and laws of UK.
Then they demand that isps all over the country give names and addresses of people all over the UK that broke no law and did no wrong in hopes of conducting a fishing expedition and don't get laughed out of court.
Now they know who pays the bill for each home network but have no idea who actually downloaded the perfectly legal metadata and no way whatsoever to correlate the data of unknown users of the data with potentially unnamed buyers who legally purchased mp3s from multiple channels like Apple but you think a judge is going to let you paw through every computer in someone's home because you think they probably ripped a cd instead of downloading it on itunes 6 years ago on a different computer at a different address.
Does this sound real?
"Wronged" implies that they were harmed in some way. A better term would be "offended". They discovered, indirectly, that someone else was doing something they don't approve of—which otherwise doesn't affect them at all—and they want it stopped by any means necessary, even though this will just make the other person worse off without materially improving their own situation.
Adjacent question: what’s the legally correct way to license music for public use (e.g. DJ set)
Licensing probably depends on your country. In Germany, you need to register with GEMA and pay a fee depending on the size of your audience.
Yep. In the US, it’s the venue that is responsible for the license. Technically, even playing a radio station in a public space requires that license, which is why most stores that have background music pay for Muzak or some similar service which bundles all the licensing costs along with the music stream itself. The license covers not just pre-recorded music but live music. I remember reading an account of a cover band which switched to playing originals because their venue didn’t have the licensing for them to play covers.
Programmes like iTunes appear to be unlawful as they enable and encourage this infringement.
UK copyright law isn't fit for it's alleged purpose.
This is true of copyright law everywhere.
A decent proxy to know that this is true is that at those bitrates, a FLAC file is often smaller than the AAC one. Yes, this makes you wonder why you'd want to use an lossy format instead of the lossless one if you have the choice ... but the point is that you'll probably have just as good an experience with a high-bitrate lossy-encoded file.
It's not.
Server storage is relatively cheap, mobile storage is a different kettle of fish, and even with a lot of storage, if you have a large music collection it's much easier to blow way past with FLAC as it's at least an order of magnitude larger than even high-quality lossy tracks. I can't put my entire collection on my phone even after having converted it to a lossy format, putting the lossless masters is plain not an option.
And since conversion is easy to do, and to automate, really the only reason to put lossless tracks on a device other than the storage server where they live is sheer laziness.
That's irrelevant, FLAC is an archival format. If you rip a CD, it makes perfect sense to rip it to flac in order to have no data loss whatsoever, and be able to fork it off to whatever lossy format is de rigueur for your new device. If you rip to a lossy format, then each copies will accumulate approximations from the different codec's perceptual models, especially if you keep deleting the previous copy and only keep the new one.
I don't put FLAC files on my phone, it takes way too much space, and the phone doesn't support it anyway. The phone gets AAC conversions of the "master" FLAC files.
Besides, the quality of 256 VBR won't be the same as 256 CBR, but with FLAC, there's only different compression sizes.
The revival we need, urgently, is of recorded music income
I think this understanding is crucially necessary for musicians hopping on this "trend". Like they could make action figures or mood rings or whatever. What the fans want are buying is a tangible thing, a keepsake.
So first they need an actual fan-base that may be interested in a keepsake, and the keepsake should be worthwhile, feel luxurious. Like it doesn't need to actually be expensive, but it shouldn't feel cheap.
I think a similar trend has happened with books. Certainly, e-readers are awesome. But for some things, you really want to have a physical copy. And in that case, a hardback is way better than a paperback. It is a long term keepsake and looks nice on your shelf.
I think for many people, their collection of music, books, or other items allows them to show off their personality to their guests. When I go to someone's house, if they have a large bookshelf, I love to look through it to get an idea of their interests. It can be great conversation starters. You can't do that with purely digital media.
But it is undeniably the coolest way to listen to music. It takes effort, it is an event, a ritual executed with great care.
0 - https://www.techdirt.com/2010/07/13/riaa-accounting-why-even...
Which brings to mind, I always wonder how pop artists are reaching platinum sales today, because their physical media has zero prestige to most collectors. Is it from radio stations and DJs or something? The figures just don't make sense to me. Pop music fans use Spotify or the radio, by and large.
Unless you happen to be amongst the absolute minority of people having a hit single on your hand or a popular back catalogue, you can't expect to make a lot of money from online streams. Several sources [2][3] report that Spotify pays around 0.003 USD per stream on average. Supposedly your musics share of everything streamed in a given month will also impact the actual payout.
[1] - https://gloriousnoise.com/2022/data-2021-total-music-sales-a... [2] - https://subjekt.no/2020/08/09/som-musiker-er-det-nesten-umul... (Norwegian) [3] - https://www.orpheusaudioacademy.com/spotify-pay/
It started before covid, so I think live events won’t be much of a revenue source in the future, except for a select few artists who will attract those still enjoying the crowd experience.
I kinda hope memberships programs and other direct artist/fan settings come to fill that gap at a larger scale.
There is a big difference between a musician and a performer. The bands that are both certainly have the biggest advantage, but we shouldn't discredit people who are just making music.
Yes!! This is how it's supposed to be. The music itself is not scarce, it's the artists who are scarce. Society doesn't need this copyright rent seeking system. If artists want to make money, they should need to actually perform.
I listen to a lot of underground music (namely black metal, hip-hop, and the like), and not only are CD's selling out regularly, so are cassettes. Once they've sold out, they hit Discogs and Ebay at severe markups that people are happy to pay. Several CD's that I've bought in the past few years have compounded many times over in value, as the supply can be very limited but the demand isn't diminishing. The spread on my collection per Discogs ranges from $800-$2500. That lower bound has been continuous, but I saw the upper bound increase by $1000 in just the past two years.
It's also not uncommon for me to go hunting for CD's that originally sold in the 80/90/00's, so as to get around "re-masters" that undo the lo-fi sound underground music fans enjoy so much. I doubt my copy of The Cramps' first compilation* is going to reflect in last year's CD sales.
I'm aware that this is a niche interest, but it's a growing niche. There are a few subreddits that I've followed in the past (/r/CDCollectors and /r/CDKvlt), and in my time there, I saw those groups grow considerably.
There IS a CD Revival, if you look in the right place.
No one is happy to pay a scalper.
Yeah, because the articles that it's commenting on are about the supposed "increase in sales" of CDs this past year. Which only includes releases in 2021.
I'm into pop and rock, but it's not uncommon for me to go hunting for CD's that originally sold before 1996 or so to get around "re-masters" that compress the life out of the music and undo the hi-fi sound that I enjoy so much.
1. The "music industry" which is a carefully controlled mafia of an elite few, yet which consumes as much oxygen as possible in popular media.
2. Every other musician and artist.
The best thing you can do is go around the corner and hear a local band. Go to their merch table at the show and buy the cassette or vinyl they have for sale.
I might be off-base, but as far as I can tell, basically no laptop computer and rather few desktops come with any type of optical media drives these days. Haven't shopped for a car in a while, but I don't think I've seen one with a CD player either. Most music seems to be consumed on phones and tablets, where it's basically impossible to have a CD drive. I would expect you can still buy standalone home theater-style CD players, but I bet the sales of them are pretty low these days.
The only reason I have a optical media reader at all is that I homebuild my PC. I bought an optical drive for I think like $20 or something like a decade ago on my first build, and just kept the drive and case through multiple upgrades. If I did a new build from scratch tomorrow, I'm not sure I'd bother. My current drive, the door doesn't open half the time, and I haven't bothered to try and fix or replace it, since I basically never use it.
They're still somehow around (don't know for how long). A friend of mine bought a MY2020 BMW and the original owner specc'ed a CD player.
My car also still has one (MY2013).
I care about my physical CD collection but I don't care about actually putting them in a CD player: as long as I can rip them to FLAC, I'm happy. Virtually any el cheapo ($20 USD or so) desktop DVD reader/writer will work to rip CDs. And these are still selling everywhere.
Indeed, get into an accident or hit a rare bump and now your CD is scratched.
Not sure if this would still happen in 2022, but at the least back in the day an entire music collection of original CDs was worth stealing in a car break in.
Only put easily replacable copies in your car.
> Earlier this year, there was a growing movement among some musicians (lead by Neil Young) to remove music from Spotify as a protest against Joe Rogan. But frustration at the streaming music giant goes back a lot further than that. And it has to do with how royalties are paid, and the lack of transparency about how music gets discovered on the service. On this episode of Odd Lots, Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal speak with Damon Krukowsky, the former drummer of the indie rock band Galaxie 500, and one half of the duo Damon and Naomi. He gives us his perception of industry economics, and explains his frustration as an independent musician with how the service works.
* https://play.acast.com/s/oddlots/ee1d1ad6-b109-11ec-b00b-0f6...
To me, CDs were always a burden. We’ve just been fortunate enough to have larger bandwidths and more storage to do away with them.
I get the appeal of box art, photos, and lyric sheets, but who wants to put up with changing discs and physical conditions like scratches and finger prints?
>They can’t take ‘em away from me!
Same applies to local storage
Aside from the cracks and pops, it's because it's mastered that way because of limitations of vinyl. But I agree that vinyl makes sense as the last physical medium because the playback technology is so simple and the covers make them large enough to be statement pieces.
Thus, it's LP's for music in my case. The cover art alone is worth it.
For movies and TV, I have the cream of the crop on physical Bluray or DVD, the ones that I want to see even if there is a license pissing contest between streaming services and rights holders going on.
The rest I just either stream or buy digitally. 3.99€ for a digital movie is worth it for me so I don't have to drive to my storage unit and dig through 20 boxes of old DVDs to find my copy of Stardust to show my kids =)
This is what I like about it really. It's quite a deliberate focussed thing. For most of my music listening when I just want noise in the background I stream it because it doesn't matter. But sometimes when you just want to sit down and enjoy something special, the ceremony seems to add something.
They're the ones you can listen from start to beginning in order every time. The ones you never get bored of and if you do, you have a need to listen to them again pretty soon.
The chance of me grabbing an LP off the shelf and listening to 6 Underground by the Sneaker Pimps from their Becoming X album is exactly is zero. It's a banger yes, but the rest of the album is decidedly not worthy of the ceremony.
I also think listening to one side of an LP and then switching to a different one isn't that much more work than flipping it over, so it's OK if only one side is flawless. I will listen to Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" anytime, even though the songs on the other side are not as iconic/necessary.
Finally, I think you may not know ahead of time which albums become beloved and worthy of the ceremony upon repeated listening. I bought my partner "songs" by Adrianne Lenker (of Big Thief) because she loved "anything" from that album, and now that double album is one of our favorite albums that we're currently wearing out. I think it's worth taking a risk sometimes, and if you don't love it, you could sell it to a used record shop for someone else to love.
LPs have the "something else", which is gorgeous cover art and the ritual of listening - for me at least.
There are literally only 5 tracks from my entire collection that weren’t on Apple Music in the end and more than one member of my family can listen to the same CD at the same time. That’s a pretty big admin and versatility win.
There is now far more music variety available than ever before, and I'm sure it's more and more difficult to stand out.
What has probably been lost is some word of mouth for music, the algorithms have taken much of that over for better or worse.
It is, in fact, zero sum. Spotify puts the money for music streaming into a pot and payouts out proportionally to how much time a particular artists is listened to. Given there (a) a finite amount of money in the pot, and (b) a finite amount of time that people can listen to Spotify (per person, and cumulatively), it stands to reasons there's only so much 'pie' that can be sliced. Listening more to one artist means listening less to another, thus one artist gets paid more than another
Add to this that Spotify is creating/contracting music itself, such that is is both distributor and "artist", thus paying money out of the pot to itself.[1] Further Spotify controls the recommendation system, so it can send people to its own music, thus increasing the money it pays itself.
[1] https://variety.com/2017/biz/news/spotify-denies-creating-fa...
The author of the linked HN article, Damon Krukowski, recently did an interesting interview on Bloomberg's Odd Lots about streaming music services and basically how they screw over small time musicians:
> Earlier this year, there was a growing movement among some musicians (lead by Neil Young) to remove music from Spotify as a protest against Joe Rogan. But frustration at the streaming music giant goes back a lot further than that. And it has to do with how royalties are paid, and the lack of transparency about how music gets discovered on the service. On this episode of Odd Lots, Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal speak with Damon Krukowsky, the former drummer of the indie rock band Galaxie 500, and one half of the duo Damon and Naomi. He gives us his perception of industry economics, and explains his frustration as an independent musician with how the service works.
* https://play.acast.com/s/oddlots/ee1d1ad6-b109-11ec-b00b-0f6...
It is not a zero sum game.
The amount of time people can spend listening is finite. But the amount of time that people do spend listening is decidedly elastic.
I hazard that more people are making money from music than ever before, maybe not mainstream but it's there.
I typically buy an album every two weeks, so I've been buying 26 or so albums per year. I'm old-school - I still like to own my music. I used to have a large CD collection but now that's all been ripped and imported into my digital music library.
I typically use my iPhone for playback. I've now taken to playing back through BT speakers at home, BT headphones while mowing, and my BT sound system in my car. It's highly convenient and I've been listening to more music than ever.
I don't understand the infatuation with physical media, or analog for that matter, but if the medium helps you better connect to the music then that's cool. Different people enjoy music in different ways.
I grew up with vinyl but I really enjoy going to my uncle's house and listening to his reel-to-reel tapes of classic 70's rock. I really wish those clamoring for analog skipped vinyl and created a resurgence in reel-to-reel. They sound better than anything. BUT - I can't really listen to a reel-to-reel while mowing the lawn, can I? But boy it'd be nice to have for a few special albums!
But CD's? What's the point?
The fundamental problem is that streaming income is distributed as a percentage of total (worldwide) plays, instead of being normalized as a percentage of plays per listener.
Let's say that Olivia Rodrigo accounts for 2% of all plays on Spotify this month. Even though I have never heard one of her songs, she's going to get 2% of whatever percentage of my subscription goes to royalties (75% I think, or $7.50). So even though I have never heard her music, she's getting my money. By the same logic, even if I spent 100% of my time play Obscure Band, they are getting basically nothing.
Instead, Spotify should pay artists as a percent of plays per listener. So if 10 indie artists this month account for most of my streams, they would each get ~0.75 each. Which is starting to look reasonable.
99 are pop fans and listen entirely to top 20. 1 is an outlier and listens entirely to jazz.
Royalty payments are $10/mo per user. ie every month there's $1,000 to be split between artists.
Under Spotify's current scheme, top 20 artists receive ($1,000 * (999/1000)) = $999 dollars. Jazz artists get $1.
Under my proposed scheme, top 20 artists would receive 99*10 = $990, while jazz artists would receive $10.
In other words, multiplying the income of "smaller" artists by 10x. Artists shouldn't get money from people that don't listen to them.
There are 1000 plays per day (total) and 990 of those are pop—not 999. Pop artists receive ($1,000 * (990/1000)) = $990 dollars. Jazz artists get ($1,000 * (10/1000)) = $10. Which is the same as your proposed scheme, because everyone listens to the same amount of music.
If the jazz fan listened to five songs per day, all else being equal, then the current scheme would allocate ($1,000 * (5/995)) = $5.025 to jazz and ($1,000 * (990/995)) = $994.975 to pop. Which is clearly a bit unfair since the service is being paid $10 for the jazz and $990 for the pop.
However, if the jazz fan listened to 20 songs per day then under the current scheme jazz would get ($1,000 * (20/1010)) = $19.80 and pop would get ($1,000 * (990/1010)) = $980.20. Which is also a bit unfair, but in the other direction. The current scheme isn't necessarily biased against small artists, but rather against subscribers who don't listen to much music, and the artists they prefer.
This is where your math seems wrong, how come there are 999 plays of pop songs from 99 fans? should be 990, right?
However, if the pop fans listen to 10 songs per day, and jazz fan only listens to 1 or 2, then yes, some of jazz fan's money would go to pop artits.
The discrepancy is in the fact that those who listen to less music on a flat-rate plan pay more per track, which is not accounted for in the "percentage of worldwide plays" metric. If there are, say, an average of 100 tracks played per subscriber per month, and you play 1000 tracks from your favorite indie artist (even non-exclusively), they're actually doing better with this "worldwide plays" metric than they would otherwise—each play is worth about 7.5¢ ($7.50 for 100 plays), so they'd get $75 based on your activity. You contribute more plays but not more money compared to other subscribers, which means other subscribers are subsidizing your music preferences. However, if you only listen to 10 tracks per month, even if they're all from the same artist, the situation is more like what you described, with most of your subscription going to support artists you don't listen to. In this case they'd only get 75¢ of your $7.50.
So to optimize the royalties to your favorite artists, the real question is: Do you (and other fans of indie music) listen to more music than the average subscriber, or less?
I own a copy of the music, and can put it in any device I own capable of reproducing it.
The crazy part of my brain, every time I add a cloud album to my Apple Music library wants to set away $15 for when this all comes crashing down and I have to actually buy it.
This is especially true for musicians. I want to be able to slow the music down or manipulate it which cannot be done with online music.
So for me CDs are a better choice and getting better.
For centuries before recording, regular musicians made income without it. And even when regular musicians made money recording, only a few survived solely on recording.
I think we need to dispell the presumption that musicians must make money recording.
Yeah but today there's no live music income without recorded music though. Try putting a tour together without anything released. Try telling people, "We only play live."
The only time that works is if you're playing covers. Which works because the music is circulating in recorded format.
I just want to listen to an album and not fuck with playlists on my phone.
I want to hear what message an artist has to actually say not just slap corporate approved pop hits on the way home.
I don't want my listening to be a point in some dataset to be later sold.