SPOTIFY (and other subscription based platforms)…What Does This Mean?
Since Spotify and other subscription based platforms have arrived to such fan fare reminiscent of a royal visit I have been asked by many “what does this mean?”
It’s no secret I am against Spotify, Rdio, MOG etc but I am NOT against subscription-based music as an idea. It’s a great idea, but it must be geared toward the artist in such a transparent way to justify the extortionately low rates consumers’ pay per stream. I’m not interested in any person who protests how Spotify will save the industry and protect the artists from illegal downloads and piracy. If the artists don’t get paid for their music to continue to create and inspire us there won’t be any music to illegally download! There won’t be any music full stop!
Recording artists only make about three-tenths of a cent every time one of their songs is streamed, and 20 cents for every song sold on iTunes, according to estimates published in Rolling Stone.
Spotify pays record labels when it streams their music, and guess who has a big stake in the business…. record companies. Overseas some big names in music have decided it is not enough to make it worthwhile for them to support the service.
Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney told WGRD radio in the US he thinks Shawn Parker – a board member of Spotify – as, and I quote Mr Carney “an arsehole”.
Carney joins a growing list of artists like Adele and the Beatles who have given Spotify the finger.
“The guy has $2.5 billion he made stealing royalties from artists,” Carney said.
“We can’t make money from it, if it was fair to the artists we would be involved in it, but it’s not.”
But you know what? That’s all well and good if you’re The Beatles!!!! Or Adele (I’m heard everywhere) but what about regular artists, or independent artists. They don’t have the luxury of boycotting such a service let alone get paid (see above table for figures!)
So what’s the solution?? Well, Spotify isn’t going anywhere soon. The end result has to be with the artists and if they are happy, if they receive what they expect or use the service as a promotional tool in hope they will be listened to and discovered by fans.
Doesn’t that sound like the same heartache as putting your music on ITunes? Consolidating music through one portal means we are skimming something off the top, and if that portal is trying to own the catalogues of music around the world then we again will be at the mercy of being spoon-fed.
The Holding Pattern will be launching a subscription based music platform soon that will pay artists what they deserve and ask consumers to pay for the privilege of having independent music available on their handset or desktop accordingly….
- Nick Arnold
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Hey Nick,
Don’t be so hard on them – after the thousands of dollars of my hard-earned pay that I’ve blown on music equipment, recording, printing and promotion, the listens I get on Spotify will almost be enough to pay for a cup of coffee.
That’s what you call giving back to the artist, right?
I know I sound so ANTI Spotify and the rest of them….but if they geared there model more toward the artists and not just making things convenient for users I wouldn’t be asking so many questions about them. After all if we expect to get everything cheaply, than the product that sells everything cheaply ends up selling cheap product!
$2 shop anyone ?? Where everything’s $2…spare me!
I hope you enjoyed coffee mate
I couldn’t agree with you more – I also think that people value the music less when they get it so cheaply…
Absolutely..
Every where I look, platforms and digital distributers are trying to take my hard earned from me. I have no problem with paying a reasonable price for distribution and marketing, but, every platform I have looked at only seems to make money for the owners of the site.
Like many independants, I have to work a day job to support my art, and to eat!! A better, more equitable, easier system is needed.
I hear you Martin, and that’s what were trying to do here. We are an independent self-funded platform run by musicians for musicians…
I can’t really tell about other music “platforms” but I’ve only had bad experience with both Ditto and Spotify. The latest being a sale made on Spotify and my account being credited with… £0.00
– Although Spotify tech/sales support is slightly faster and more effective than Ditto, they’re only interested into solving issues that’d concern THEIR business flow. Other than that, all they do is redirecting you to the aggregator. As to Ditto, it’s probably the worst site and service I’ve seen on line. And a major rip-off, in the end.
Sadly enough, that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Customer service is dead, nowadays. Not only in the music industry. Once they got your payment, you can drop dead right there, they wouldn’t care.
That’s the downside of the internet. Impossible now to go to the front desk and complain directly. And “they” know that. So why would “they” ever care about the service and follow-up? All we can “hope for”, is to feed their account with our money. Period. If you have no leverage to weigh your demand or request, you’re just a spec in their website statistics.
Our best chance, taken we’re neither the Stones nor Oasis, is to look for a human-scaled platform. One where the person answering your mail is using his brain rather than notes in a sales book to solve your problem.
Thanks to the Gods of Cobol, there is a few places like this on the web. And it looks like THP is one of them.
Bravo.
J.
Well said John…and yes ‘Customer Service’ is a non existing medium these days…One which we pride ourselves with.
Nothing worse than waiting weeks for a response, and when you do it’s an auto-mated one!
Appreciate your support, we need all the help we can get from the globalized money hungry platforms out there.
Cheers mate
Nick