Radiohead's Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich Are Removing Their Music from Spotify
digitalmusicnews.com
digitalmusicnews.com
On the other end: I don't like the idea of new artists not getting paid (I try to go out of my way and buy tickets for indie musicians I like or, failing that, purchase swag), but as a consumer I like Spotify a lot. It's also hard for me to conflate the ideas that new artists are being trampled by Music 2.0 with success stories like Karmin and Chance the Rapper, who put out free material (via YouTube and a free mixtape, respectively) and the massive coverage launched them into the national spotlight.
You know what would be awesome? A Flattr-esque system for music. You pay $XX/mo, can listen to whatever, and your money gets divvied up to artists based on play count. (if half of my play count in July comes from Blind Pilot, for instance, then they get half my money.)
You hook up your last.fm profile and each week you get to divide an x amount of money between the artists you listened to. I've been using it myself for about a year now.
The only catch is that you need to find the email addresses of artists you want to pay to yourself, so they can be paid with PayPal.
This 'catch' allowed me to use it as single user for a year though so its very usable for me in this stage. Feel free to try it! Let me know what you think!
I know. But I couldn't think of another way to start small.
If usage grows hopefully artists will actively promote their desired 'fund receiving' email address.
The next step would of course be that artists can signup and the whole email address finding step would be dropped
I was also wondering: is there no transfer fees with paypal ? Don't they make small amounts transfer useless ?
And one last thing: is it not weird for bands/artists to suddenly receive money from people without being informed about the site and all that ?
'the way gittip does this': I naively assumed Gittip was sitting on the money until it was claimed, but charging the moment its claimed is probably better. I'll have to look into it!
'transfer fees with paypal': Yes and yes. I'm currently spending about 8-10 dollars a week divided over 5 artists. So the slice Paypal gets is significant but bearable. This of course isn't ideal and I've been thinking about other ways of doing this. Bitcoin maybe?
'receive money (...) without being informed': I've got this covered! When an artist receives money they also receive an email explaining why they receive it and how many times the listener played their songs.
I think you have a phenomenal idea.
I worked in the bitcoin space for a while (cofounded an exchange), and this was a proposal that often came up. so awesome to see someone actually building it. Could I convince you to send me an email: Jordanbirn at gmail.com ?
That gittip suggestion down there is also great. I'm in touch with a bunch of artists who would totally love that.
Please keep building this.
Artists' email addresses aren't shared right now (bc then it would be easy to pollute with wrong addresses). So this also answers your second question (Unless someone listens to two bands with the same name). It remembers for your own account though, so you don't have to fill out the same address twice.
It's hard to argue with th connivence factor. However right now Spotify is destroying an existing model, not paying artists, and losing money hand over fist. It's lose/lose/lose. I'd rather consumers just pirate the music that way they at least know they aren't supporting the artists.
Blind Pilot was half the OP's playlist. They'd get $5. How many artists would kill to get $5/month from their fans?
The real problem is that Blind Pilot might have gotten a whole penny from the OP's month of patronage. That's the part of the system that's broken. The part where fans can choose from all the artists that have ever created is a feature (and a damn good one), not a bug.
I'm starting to think that beyond "not pirating", we have some moral responsibility to make sure that the money we do "pay" for our music actually makes it through to the creator of that music, otherwise we're just buying moral absolution from immoral middle-men along with some (lazy) convenience.
Edit: 'Egbert' is way ahead of me!
I'm sorry, but this is not simply nitpicking. We will change our perception of music history and music itself if we fool ourselves that what these outlets carry is the entire history of music. I'd say around 40% of the music that I have on my HDDs are not available on Spotify. That's just guesstimating, it could be even higher.
Why not? Most people go through a period of their life where they buy lots of albums, then they stop altogether. Flattening that out to be $10/month forever, divvied across artist based on content, would be a net win for everyone.
Admittedly, the incentive to want offline music may continue to diminish over time.
Anyway, my point is that your comment could be interpreted to mean that radio is democratic and it is a democratic way for meritorious music to be elevated.
By democratic I don't mean anything more virtuous than screaming masses, but I don't think commercial radio even rises to that.
Anyway, I have to read more to get an overview of how Spotify and others compensate the talent that makes content, or even cheat them, but I also want to make sure that popular radio isn't treated like something we'd prefer.
Yes, in the old days some companies controlled which music was heard and which not, and those gatekeepers were not as cheap as you thing.
Definitively not 0$/month.
Also, as a commenter below noted, pay-what-you-want is not new at all. Off the top of my head The Crimea shifted about 100,000 free downloads of their second LP after leaving Warners, quite a bit before In Rainbows.[0] As a second aside, I interviewed a pretty big artist a year or so after whose backing band knew Radiohead and, though this is hearsay obviously, they suggested the reason In Rainbows wasn't toured much beyond festivals was lack of tour support capital. I always sort of suspected that they fudged the numbers on sales/profit for that record, so that could be an indicator, who knows.
[0] http://www.thecrimea.net/products/502351-secrets-of-the-witc...
My opinion is that 10 bucks a month is reasonable because if you charge any more piracy would become a more attractive option.
This is exactly what I would love. ~30% of my monthly fee to Spotify for running the service, the rest divided to the artist I listen to.
But do you think this is up to Spotify? Could Spotify force these terms to the record companies? I always thought this kind of stuff in the contracts that artists make with the big record labels; "We own your music, we pay you as we please".
Those stories are BS though. Sure, a tiny minority might get on the spotlight thusly (a tiny minority is ever on the spotlight anyway, by definition).
That doesn't change the negatives for: those already on the spotlight, those not in the spotlight but with a decent-ish following.
Don't count on it:
http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/4/4054634/musics-pay-what-you...
I have a hunch that, per listener, they get more from Spotify.
So for me, the #yolo application of swag to mean "has his shit together man" derived as a metaphorical application of the literal "has his gear together". And the OP's use to refer to swag as gear a band sells makes sense in the original definition.
With the large stake of Spotify that is owned by the Majors and other large corporate entities such as Coca-Cola, it would be interesting if the 'independent labels' were to come out with some sort of streaming service of their own, whether it be on a label by label basis or on a combined level.
Anyways, let's see what happens with this in the news cycle.
Edit: Found an interesting Thom Yorke quote on his feelings about digital content:
Radiohead have often riffed on the edge of that thoroughly modern disjunction. From their landmark album OK Computer on, the band seemed like evangelists for the revolutionary possibilities of a digital world, self-releasing 2007's In Rainbows on a pay-what-you-want download. Yorke is a bit more sceptical about all that now.
In the days before we meet, he has been watching a box set of Adam Curtis's BBC series, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, about the implications of our digitised future, so the arguments are fresh in his head. "We were so into the net around the time of Kid A," he says. "Really thought it might be an amazing way of connecting and communicating. And then very quickly we started having meetings where people started talking about what we did as 'content'. They would show us letters from big media companies offering us millions in some mobile phone deal or whatever it was, and they would say all they need is some content. I was like, what is this 'content' which you describe? Just a filling of time and space with stuff, emotion, so you can sell it?"
Having thought they were subverting the corporate music industry with In Rainbows, he now fears they were inadvertently playing into the hands of Apple and Google and the rest. "They have to keep commodifying things to keep the share price up, but in doing so they have made all content, including music and newspapers, worthless, in order to make their billions. And this is what we want? I still think it will be undermined in some way. It doesn't make sense to me. Anyway, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. The commodification of human relationships through social networks. Amazing!"[1]
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/feb/23/thom-yorke-radio...
Dear Thom,
I wish you had thought about this after you got very rich but before you decided that that made it a good idea of give away music for free. When lack of access to a reliable revenue model makes it difficult for build an audience for your own projects, the problem is primarily one of low return on your artistic endeavor.
But for those who don't happen to be associated with an existing success such as Radiohead, that low return often means no prospect of making money at all. Whereas you can have the guitar amp of your choice or feel sure of an audience when you announce a gig, the lack of a revenue model for new music means many will never taste the leverage that you enjoy, with corresponding limitations on their musical development.
This isn't all your fault, of course. But it might be good if you could devote some of your energy to finding a model that works for people without name recognition, eg by relying on your great musical talent but operating under a pseudonym while you search for new ways to sell it.
Thom and Nigel seem to be lamenting new bands' inability to bring in money, they're not grieving about how they themselves don't make enough through Spotify.
This strikes me as typical Luddite hysteria. Of course they still have worth, the commodified version is the same as the original, and people are getting the same thing they got when buying a cd. The barrier is just drastically lowered.
I do agree on the commodification of human relationships, it's a fairly disgusting trend that I hope exhausts itself in the current social network form soon.
I'm not sure if this is just a trollish interpretation but it sounds like they are they asking for a return to the system where "this summer's new hits" get played relentlessly until everyone is sick of them and ready for "this year's christmas albums?"
I understand the argument that sales of new music funds new albums getting recorded while new sales of Hotel California don't promote any kind of artistic work. That's a purely producer side perspective though. For a listener, there is a lot of recorded music that exists. Very little of the best stuff was recorded this year (or in any given year).
I think a great analogy is/was the porn industry. Every time a new technology made it big, the industry was turned upside down. Ferraris bought by new guys. Ferraris repossessed for others. Home VCRs created an industry that dwarfed adult cinemas. Selling DVDs over the internet was even better until streaming/download video killed that model. The porn industry collapsed and immediately started trying building a new economy on newer technology. How about interactive and realtime? Can that work? If it can, they'll figure it out pretty quick.
No one takes an indignant pornographer seriously so the industry doesn't spend much energy being indignant. It just grows and shrinks as it can or has to.
Thom and Nigel are great artists. I'm glad they're out there making music. But I'm a little turned off by the tone of their comments (now and at other times) it all rings of a feeling that the world owes them or (more often than not) younger artists a certain business model.
If only indignant moralistic artists were appropriately looked at as foolish. We live in a capitalist world, where the things sold are only limited by what they can give the customer. The artist loses the second they allow their music to be stored in a big, copy able file, and lose all value. Convenience is by far what drives my listening habits, so if you aren't on spotify, to me, might as well not exist (unless I pirate it.)
They could also differentiate their plans better and add in higher end ones. I think they would make more money and not impact consumers too badly if they charged for use. e.g. $5 per month for 20 songs per day. $10 per month for 40 songs per day. $20 per month unlimited.
Why don't more artists take the Jay-Z approach? Build an app for your album, make people buy it, or sell it in bulk to a big brand like Samsung. This seems like a way for artists to take back the industry. Pirating music from a Jay-Z app seems much much harder than from a desktop. I think we're on the verge of a total shift back to the world of pre-CD burners where you simply had to pay 10-20 to listen to an album.
What am I missing?
There are already dozens of torrents with thousands of peers on The Pirate Bay. It doesn't really matter how hard it is, as long as a single individual can do it.
I think we're on the verge of a total shift back to the world of pre-CD burners where you simply had to pay 10-20 to listen to an album.
Before CD burners we had tapes. The logo of the music industry campaign against home taping is actually part of The Pirate Bay's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music
...which were subject to generation loss. You had an incentive to buy albums you liked, because taping involved a loss of quality.
I also listen to a lot of Spotify every day at work but I never used to buy albums before. I do buy shirts and concert tickets from my favorite smaller bands (and back them on Kickstarter). So I guess the math comes down to, are there more people like me who used to pay 0$ for albums and now pays 120$ a year or people like you who used to buy lots of albums before.
I usually discover new music through SoundCloud and niche web sites. I buy music directly through services like Bandcamp. I make a conscious effort to find musicians and producers that I like and which have a low play count.
I started making electronic music 15 to 20 years ago. There's no way in hell I'd ever want to do this as a full time job and risk my livelihood on it. I know how time consuming the creation of a song or track can be. That's why I want to support people who have the guts to invest their very hearts and souls into such an endeavor, I'm way too big of a coward to ever do that.
People have such a strong sense of entitlement when it comes to music. They are too unimaginative to fill their own empty lives with meaning and require the imagination of other people to fill this void with 'content', and it better be free. Society is very ungrateful to most of the artists out there.
Spotify treats all songs as if they have equal value, but that's obviously not true from the listener's perspective. For any given person, there are going to be some songs that they're willing to pay a premium to hear, and some that they'll only listen to if it's free. Spotify is a good deal for the latter case, but not if it offers a discounted version of the former to people who could pay for it. Just because Spotify counts every stream as a single interchangeable unit of value doesn't mean that listeners value every stream equally.
You may not be getting paid in buckets and buckets of cash, but what you're getting is really just a freebie. You cannot complain about getting free money.
If enough artists do this, services like Spotify will not offer me enough convenience, and the other option (simply mirroring my 100GB music collection to my work PC) will then be good enough that no artists stands to earn free money for albums I've already paid for.
As far as Thom Yorke's argument goes: That artists are severely underpaid in the streaming-world, I'm not going to debate that or even oppose that. He probably knows better than me.
But we've already established that this was a problem with the album-model as well. You have record companies taking $10 per album and the artist getting paid $1. With a $100,000 "credit" for studio-engineers to repay.
It seems the only truth and rule in the music-industry is that the artist always gets screwed.
I wonder how common that is? At least 90% of the things I listen to on Spotify are things that I have not bought on vinyl, CD, or any non-streaming online format.
This is probably because I have a huge music collection already, and I'm in my 30s and don't like you kids and your darned modern music so much any more. Music was so much better in my day, mumble mumble, get off my lawn etc etc.
If an artist is good, they will probably get viral
Don't be absurd. Justin Bieber is talented, but he's also extremely attractive and happens to be proficient at the sort of music that appeals to teenage girls. That's a bit like expecting J. Random Developer to enjoy the same sort of success as Bill Gates, and concluding that if he doesn't it must be because he's no good as a programmer.
On the topic of pirating as an alternative - it is just sooo nice not having to manage a bunch of MP3s. Playlists are just way more convenient.
Or are Yorke and Godrich's solo arrangements with the labels nonstandard, which makes this possible?
The article states that Radiohead's old stuff is still on Spotify, and that the albums removed were Thom Yorke's solo projects. So I imagine that EMI controls the first 6 albums, and so they are still on Spotify, while newer Radiohead content and Yorke's personal projects are more under his control.
This isn't a typical arrangement for new artists, they only got that because they were a huge superstar band already.
Edit- One of many sources: http://www.factmag.com/2012/03/15/beggars-group-give-50-of-s...
Good on them.
http://musically.com/2013/02/13/streaming-music-screwing-art...
(has info from artists, labels, economists, more.)