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Comment by jbgt | Hacker News Reader

Weren't we all complaining 20 y ago that music labels were giving bands pennies on the dollar and the only way they could actually live off of the music was by touring and selling merch?

I think Radiohead then did the groundbreaking selling of mp3s for a pay what you want fee.

Now the baddie is Spotify.

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Worse than that, I remember reading articles about how some artists didn't "make" a single dollar from their first album that sold millions. It all went to the record company and paid for marketing and advances.

Sometimes they didn't begin to see revenue until 2nd or 3rd albums.

Labels did scum stuff like have sublabel go belly up (oops no royalties anymore), not paying royalties, not giving artists royalties when on VA album, and downright piracy, and enforcement of centralization via signing rights away to (equivalent of) RIAA. These are just examples from memory talking to artists.

It wasn't that groundbreaking. Radiohead were already massively popular despite taking the anti-Britpop, anti-commercial rock route in the '90s. The online MP3 thing in 2007 was a bit of a publicity stunt -- the record was still distributed by XL , which retained all the traditional distribution channels.

I believe Smashing Pumpkins actually beat them to it by several years by releasing Machina II for free online in 2000 after the breakup of the band.

It was ground breaking, taking into account that Radiohead released a critically acclaimed album. In Rainbows had a digital release that was pay what you want, not exactly the same as putting something out for free after breaking up.

Sure did

https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/

So their profit is $6.6 million; the band may as well be working at a 7-Eleven.

I feel like the biggest loss from the days of big record companies is that no one is going to front a promising young band enough to go away together and make their 'Dark Side of the Moon' or 'OK Computer'

* I know both bands probably could've self-financed those projects by that point in their careers, but would they have? And would their role as investors have changed their artistic decisions?

What is noteworthy about these albums that the artists would not have made them otherwise?

Pink Floyd’s next album had the cover and best song dedicated to saying how much they hated the record label

I'm not so worried about humanity's loss of peak works like these since I don't think any young band has it in them at the start anyways. What young artists need is an on-ramp and a way to stay in the business long enough to hone their craft and build a following while turning out a couple Pipers at the Gates of Dawn. Works like Dark Side and OKC are developed, not born, and we need that pipeline.

The problem was that the big companies had the good recording studios and the possibility to make records and distribution. This was very expensive.

Today are studios in abundance. And bands that are good are usually good connected and certainly know a good down mix engineer. Then they can distributed via Bandcamp.

Today it’s much better for artists who want to make music. The big record labels were just gatekeepers.

Doesn't Spotify share half its profits too? From my understanding it's still the music labels that are not giving the artists their share.

What profits?

It's actually 70% of REVENUE according to this: https://dittomusic.com/en/blog/how-much-does-spotify-pay-per....

>From my understanding it's still the music labels that are not giving the artists their share.

If that is the case, the artists can easily sue the labels for violating the terms of the contract. But the fair share is just what the two signing parties agreed to.

Which is definitely a fair deal signed between equals, right?

Yes, the music labels have a conflict of interest because they took financial positions (equity) in the streaming services in exchange for giving artists lower rates. So they don't really represent the artists. They instead joined up with the streamers to screw over the artists.

Most hits today are produced by Spotify. Actually they are record company. And they also have a really shitty contract. That at the end the revenue stream, for the artist is coming back to Spotify anyway.

It’s easy. 1. Search talent on TikTok. 2. Let them sign shitty contract. 3. Produce them. 4. Market them on Spotify.

5 . Win win. Win win for Spotify not the artist.

Didn’t Louis C.K sell his standup stuff direct to fans for 5$ for a DRM free downloadable mp3, from his website?

Why don’t more artists do that?

They do. Bandcamp is a thing, and it's pretty much that, minus a fee for the infrastructure.

But it's not a panacea. An old classmate of mine who's a decently successful Jazz artist now (by Jazz artist standard), had scammers upload her album to Bandcamp without her knowledge. They defrauded a lot of money from her actual fans, probably more than she ever made on Spotify.

Ironically part of signing onto a label is providing protection from stuff like this.

It's maybe what it's supposed to do, but her label didn't.

Was your classmate already on Bandcamp?

Yes, through the record company.

* Bandcamp, now owned by Songtradr, that promptly fired half its employees.

As bad as this is...as this thread points out, more of the money needs to go to artists, and supporting fewer employees should let them do this.

As long as it remains a viable platform. Hopefully the cuts weren't a "gut because we want to run this down on life support" move.

Classic Hacker News. “Companies shouldn’t spend money, except if it’s on developers!”

I bought it when he released it. It was good for him but arguably he lowered his worth and took a pay cut, and it also set a bit of a price ceiling base rate for comedy specials at 5$, which if you aren’t the #1 comedian at the time like Louis was you can’t bring in the same sales volume.

Amazing, thanks for mentioning this! I had no idea. He looks to sell everything on there, not just mp3s, and they are well priced! Just bought a couple of videos of his performances, and it does indeed include DRM-free .mp4 downloads. Even includes a .srt file for subtitles!

It was also when CDs were $19.99-25 which I distinctly remember because I was 10 in 1995 when I bought my first CDs (smash, it was written, dookie) and I could rarely afford to buy them.

And then artists still weren't getting paid but an even bigger portion of my income went to them. shrug.

Spotify's always been the baddie, they've just hid it well.

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