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Comment by EC1 | Hacker News Reader

It's not a matter of perspective. The numbers you would need to be pulling on Spotify are huge to sustain yourself on a decent level. By that point, you're already big enough where you wouldn't need Spotify's income because you're big enough to have other sources.

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Okay, I'll give you one more response after you "moved the goalposts" so quickly: The only perspective that Spotify or iTunes is an avenue to make a living is straight up delusional. Getting a hit song on the radio, on iTunes, or Spotify is about opening up opportunities where there is a demand for the commodity - the music - and gives the artist a better bargaining position. Making a living in music is about having other sources as a fundamental rule of the industry. One good contract for a license to a commercial on broadcast television likely would dwarf the income one would receive from an entire year of streaming income. Selling t-shirts will make more than streaming income.

I've made more money busking with an acoustic guitar on a busy corner in 2 hours than I've made from streaming. This is how I use Spotify - it's a street corner that pays in pennies. However, I can't afford to travel the world to get in front of people. Thus, while it's very close to the "exposure" concept of compensation, at least there's an exchange of monies as a matter of principle.

As a music purchaser who doesn't torrent music, I like that Spotify lets me try new music in a convenient & legal way. It's a step in the purchasing process, not the final destination.

There's a German metal/rock band called Unheilig that I heard about in 2013. After seeing a YouTube clip [1], Spotify / Rdio let me try more of their songs & add them to my playlists. That hooked me enough to add the album to my Spotify offline downloads so I can listen on the train.

At that point, I'm a committed fan who doesn't want to lose the album... so that's when I buy the CD. Two years later, I've bought all their albums, 2 limited Super Deluxe editions, t-shirts & hats & merch, and been to two of their concerts. Unheilig probably got nearly nothing from me via Spotify, but it was an important step in getting me hooked & ultimately spending hundreds of dollars.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl-mvbxAf-k

Just wanted to say thank you for sharing this personal story, as I really think there are a lot of "music consumers" who think - and act - like you. The funny thing about music is that it, well, has no "inherent value" as soon as it's created. It's a matter of finding an audience that values the music enough to want more. I feel culinary art is sort of similar - there's no "perfect recipe" for a successful restaurant. If there's an audience, there's demand, and just because, in theory, somebody could make the same dish at home (i.e. download a pirate / clone recipe) doesn't mean the original loses all its merit.

I'll admit that Napster, to me, was an avenue to find things that I couldn't get my hands on otherwise. My favorite search term was "remix" and I got unreleased / international tracks that I still love to this day. I'm a consistent Beatport Pro customer, about $20 a month, and I buy physical CDs for artists to both help their traditional sales metrics and simply for nostalgia. I can't tell you how happy I was to buy the last Columbia release by Weird Al and be a part of giving him his first #1 album release of his career. Yeah, it's kind of hokey, but that's what's so fun about music - from cradle to grave, there's no shame in loving what we love.

Yes we are agreeing with one another here. I was strictly talking about sustainability.

Nah, I think sustainability is a non-sequitur when talking about recorded material, whether physical, digital, or streaming revenue. Would I like for it to be different? Sure! But going back to the Bards who had to go from town to town, singing their songs for food and shelter, it's unreasonable to expect the synthetic protection of copyright to put more than peanuts on the table.

It's either make something, embrace the income potential, and keep creating, or whine with whisky an die in the gutter, figuratively speaking.

How much is Spotify even helping in this case? Is the "exposure" worth more than what you could get as a minstrel or a court bard?

Until one can identify the markets for which there may be demand, e.g. foreign countries out of reach otherwise, then being a minstrel or court bard means being anchored to one location.

Look, my perspective is that music is supposed to be made for two reasons: 1. the personal compulsion to create something that reflects the individual, and 2. sharing those products with a limited expectation of fiscal reward. This is not to downplay the desire to make a living from art, but an informed historical perspective doesn't infer that technology and modern business has changed the nature of the relationship between artists and consumers very much.

You know, artists have to pay radio for the exposure. Spotify gets them the same thing, not only for free, but paying the artists.

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