Comment by AnthonyMouse | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AnthonyMouse | Hacker News Reader

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> The only way to achieve the "thousands times as many artists making many thousands" is to have separate communities of music markets that do not overlap.

This is not true. All you need is to have multiple buyers with different tastes and a functioning discovery system that allows each individual to find what they like.

The latter is the opposite of what the industry provides. They promote what's popular, regardless of whether you'll like it.

And then they make it difficult for anyone else to do otherwise, because artists who want to be The Rolling Stones sign the record contract thinking they'll get promoted, and then they don't get promoted but the record company owns their songs and charges prohibitively high fees for streaming so independents can't afford to play it and let listeners discover it.

This is how they destroyed internet radio, for example. Before the industry lobbied to change the law law, there was a vibrant set of internet radio stations. Then the Kill Internet Radio Act passed and set the fees higher than most of the independent stations could afford without taking payola, and now "internet radio" is dominated by iHeart Radio, AKA Clear Channel, the same company that owns all the terrestrial radio stations that play the Top 40 on loop.

So you want new artists to be promoted and you're willing for those artists to be paid less to make it happen? Spotify Discovery Mode seems to fit the bill. Artists agree to take a lower rate, and Spotify is incentivized to include their music more often in their algorithmic playlists and radio, so they can be discovered. Of course, this was not exactly uncontroversial!

The premise of "artist get paid less" is that they get a higher percentage to make up for the fact that with better discovery the consumer's budget will be spread across a larger number of artists.

"Discovery Mode" is a transparent attempt to pit artists against each other. The one that gives the middle man a bigger cut gets more sales. The flaw here is the lack of alternative means for new artists to get discovered without signing a one-sided deal, i.e. we don't have enough competition for distribution. This is mostly because of laws lobbied for by the industry.

Sorry, I'm not following, how is getting paid less the same as getting a higher percentage?

Artists have always been in competition with each other for the same consumer attention/dollars. Indie artists often undercut prices of popular artists on CDs or downloads to try to incentivize discovery. In the streaming era, the marginal cost to the consumer is zero (which is great for discovery!), but Discovery Mode is bringing back pricing as a means of competition on the supplier side, for better or worse.

> Sorry, I'm not following, how is getting paid less the same as getting a higher percentage?

The premise is that we want more artists, so the combined way we get this is that a) the artists get the savings from digital distribution, instead of the labels, creating a larger pool of money for the artists, and b) we have fewer superstars, so that pool of money allows more artists to exist, instead of just allowing the same number of superstars to pad their coffers even more.

The result is that the average artist gets less, because there are more of them. But less than Taylor Swift is still more than enough to make a living.

> Indie artists often undercut prices of popular artists on CDs or downloads to try to incentivize discovery.

This is fine if they lower the price to the consumer, because then the consumer's finite number of dollars allows them to buy more music from other artists, and thereby supports the viability of other artists. Or, from an individual perspective, getting a million sales at $0.05 is just as good as getting half a million sales at $0.10 -- or better, because more people discover your work and may then go to live shows or buy the next release.

The problem with Discovery Mode is that it lowers the price to Spotify, which is still going to charge the market-clearing price to the customer, and then they use the money to line their own coffers and shrink the pie for the artists.

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