Comment by geden | Hacker News Reader

Comment by geden | Hacker News Reader

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No.

This assumes all artists are alike, which patently they are not. Artists that make amazing music that doesn't stream well, are pretty fucked and their revenue stream from recorded music has basically vanished.

Spotify algorithm filters these artists hard.

I call these artists peak experience artists, they make music you might listen to occasionally, perhaps even just a handful of times, but you don't listen to in the background daily / weekly / monthly.

Whereas' pre streaming to listen to it once you bought a CD for £14.99 and the label got £7 and the artist on an indie got ~£3.50. Now the artist gets <0.01p for that listen.

Huge difference and a chiling effect on the sort of music that can be made.

(I've worked for a big UK indie and currently manage musicians and have seen the trends in music distribution first hand since 1992).

Many artists who happily make Spotify friendly music do handsomely if the algorithm is generous. But many do not and can no longer have a full time career in music.

And no, live shows do not make up the shortfall. Not all artists are comfortable playing live and it's harder for artists to reach critical mass where touring is even possible / profitable.

Unless they are already wealthy, which is why you see again and again the same ilk of rich kids breaking out in music (see Fred Again, Fourtet, etc etc).

Very interesting take I can only agree with.

By any chance, would you have some free time to exchange on the matter?

I'm on the other side of the industry, and I'm trying to gain better knowledge of distribution trends nowadays.

How did these amazing artists that no one really listened to get their CD in the store?

I think there is a lot of hindsight bias here. The internet made shelf space unlimited, and artist that used to toil away in absolute obscurity now have a shot. I don't think we're talking about those who would have had a CD on the local store shelves, we're talking about those playing at random bars in their town.

They were signed by labels who also made money from the sale of those records.

Those labels are now looking for different music.

> Spotify algorithm these artists hard

or people just don’t want to listen to that music as much as you think they do, and would rather listen to Taylor Swift and Drake

Let me try and explain again, because I think you missed something.

I don’t think many people do want to listen to this music. And even fans that do might not listen very frequently.

That music might still be incredible, in the same way that any peak experience is. But by kind of by definition, peak experience is not usually everyday. (see psilocybin etc).

CDs enabled those musicians to make a living. Streams mediated by Spotify, which seems to optimise for background listening, do not.

It is at least a reasonable hypothesis that people bought some CDs they loved but listened to rarely as an experience. Whereas a lot of people including myself much more commonly listen to streaming service playlists as background.

Songs that are incredible but I don't want to listen to it every day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiZVjfjgNyY 6.5m views

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5vSQUyT33qxr1xAX2Tkf3A 3.7m monthly listeners

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_u5iCHi0Jo 16m views

https://open.spotify.com/artist/63MQldklfxkjYDoUE4Tppz 11.5m monthly listeners

> CDs enabled those musicians to make a living.

What you're calling out isn't wrong but what am I supposed to do, subscribe $20/mo of my money to some fringe artist I like on Patreon? What if I like 10 artists? I'm out $200/mo. It's just not realistic. Make music and work a job? I don't know.

Why are you thinking solely in terms of subscription?

Some artists, though not all, (especially older ones who don't want to look like charity cases) allow you to make one off donations, or overpay via Bandcamp for instance. Though Bandcamp and their payment processor take a hefty chunk.

There have always been artists who languished in obscurity. They had no chance of distribution before the internet.

That’s a great take on the background vs focused listening.

We may see the music that demands focus disappear and everything will drown in Taytay et al. loops

> Whereas' pre streaming to listen to it once you bought a CD for £14.99 and the label got £7 and the artist on an indie got ~£3.50.

I doubt any artist ever made 23% on a CD sale. The reason artists are paid peanuts now is because it's the same contracts, giving the label all the money.

Many indies offer a 50/50 net profit split. At volume the costs become quite small with CDs.

Majors usually seek to minimise royalties and have many well documented and some less well documented ways to reduce royalties by either chipping away at the headline rate with deductions or shrinking the base price.

With some indie aggregators that upload your music to Spotify you can get 100% royalties: https://artists.spotify.com/providers (only going by the descriptions)

Indeed. But by using one you are tacitly signalling to the industry you are not a serious player. Typically 10-15% is what you'd pay now an aggregator that caters to recognised artists and labels.

But better than nothing as a place to start.

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