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Spotify to let artists post music without labels:
In a move with the power to shake up the music industry, Spotify said Thursday that it will allow select artists to upload songs directly without record labels or distributors.
Spotify, by far the biggest player in the fast-growing format of streaming, said that the feature for now is only in the test phase for select US-based independent artists who have secured their own copyrights.
But the feature, if eventually put to scale, could in the long run drastically change the business decisions for artists who would not need to go through a label or one of the batch of new companies, such as TuneCore, that provide uploading services for independent artists.
Spotify said artists would simply upload their songs to the platform, first seeing a preview of how it will look, with the Swedish company automatically sending royalties each month.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Friday September 21 2018, @02:04PM (8 children)
From what I've read on TechDirt in years past, the real money is from touring and selling merchandise.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by RS3 on Friday September 21 2018, @03:34PM (4 children)
Yes, that's been the trend since so many artists signed away too many rights to their own work and the label / distribution companies make the profits. Of course artists have been self recording, producing, distributing for many years, but only a few get much attention. Without the big labels' marketing, advertising, and promotion, independents don't have much chance, so some still sign away their rights.
Hopefully this move by Spotify will help open up the markets and loosen the stranglehold the big labels have, so that artists can make $ from their recordings as well as live performance.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday September 21 2018, @05:17PM (3 children)
Agree that the biggest thing that needs to happen is to break the stranglehold of the RIAA and their labels.
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(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday September 21 2018, @06:43PM (2 children)
Not to steal mostcynical's thunder, but my fear now is that Spotify will become the big green monster... but not likely, since it's too easy to compete... I think and hope.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday September 21 2018, @07:51PM
They kind of have been in some ways.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JCuEiis8Hw [youtube.com]
Although Spotify faces an intense challenge from Apple Music, there are only a handful of major players and it will be hard for upstarts to compete with services that have 50+ million paying subscribers. See also the long, bumpy road that Tidal [wikipedia.org] has taken in trying to challenge Spotify.
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(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday September 21 2018, @10:04PM
While hosting is less of an issue these days, and a web site and an app are relatively easy things to set up, exposure and content are still massive barriers. Why would an artist use your service, rather than spotify or soundcloud, or even myspace or tumblr, or whatever, if all they want is exposure (and eventually, money)?
What can your "platform" offer?
How to you get the artist more exposure and sales than someone else?
How do you keep the content secure?
How to you organise payment?
While hosting and payment models exist, they also all take a cut. Margins are already thin.
Oh, and with the new compulsory copyright filtering / automated take down crap, you also open yourself up to a world of pain if you don't have all that filtering .. whoch youtube and spotify and the like have been "perfecting" for years.
(Note: "perfecting" the business model of being the gatekeeper and keeping the "labels" happy, not actually doing the best for the artists or consumers)
Tl;dr: while tastes are fickle, and the distribution channel may look different, whatever you get will be controlled by the "labels" for a while yet. Also, people are lazy, and apple and spotify are "easy".
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by Tara Li on Friday September 21 2018, @05:00PM
I've seen that as well - and in part, that's because the labels rip them over. I'm not sure it's so true among the unsigned artists/groups, unless you count CD/MP3 sales as merchandise.
(Score: 2) by Apparition on Friday September 21 2018, @08:12PM (1 child)
That's a shame, because concerts are awful. Between spending $$$ per ticket, then having every nearly every asshat in the audience stand up and hold his or her smartphone above his or her head the entire time to record the concert (like they'll actually go back to watch it), I stopped going to concerts years ago.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday September 24 2018, @05:23PM
At least at a movie theater you can also get to enjoy people's cell phones going off.
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