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posted by janrinok on Friday June 27 2014, @05:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the slowly-changing dept.

Digital technology, once accused of nearly destroying the music industry, is now being hailed as its saviour.

In the UK, about 7.4 billion tracks were streamed on audio services in 2013, twice the total recorded in 2012, says BPI, the music industry trade body.

While digital accounted for 50% of UK record industry trade revenues last year, streaming brought in 10%, and this figure is rising fast.

As a sign of streaming's maturity, listening data will now be incorporated in the UK's official singles charts for the first time from July, the Official Charts Company announced this week.

Streaming has its critics, not least those artists and labels who believe the service providers do not pay enough in royalties. Despite this, support is growing from within the industry. "There are still a lot of things that need to be worked out around revenue sharing," says Jon Webster, chief executive of Music Managers Forum (MMF), which has about 400 members in the UK representing more than 1,000 artists worldwide. "But any artist has to be on a streaming service now - it's what consumers want," he says. "It's part of the future. And if you're successful, you can still make a considerable about of money from it."

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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @05:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @05:41PM (#60952)

    Streaming is great for the labels because they sell the right to access their catalog for an up-front fee that they do not have to share with any artists because it technically isn't a copy. It's only when a song is played that they have to pass any of the money along to the artists.. It is actually in the labels' interests to make the price per play as low as possible in exchange for maximizing the "flat fee" (to be renegotiated on a regular basis of course) for access to the catalog. Plus, it costs the labels nothing - there are no manufacturing costs and the music recommendation algorithms in the streaming services cover much of the promotional costs too.

    "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss"

    • (Score: 2) by davester666 on Saturday June 28 2014, @05:38AM

      by davester666 (155) on Saturday June 28 2014, @05:38AM (#61263)

      Yeah, they demand shares in the streaming company, so they get a share of the profit of that company, so it is in their best interest to have the lowest fee's payable to the label for each song [as some small percentage of that fee is payable to the artist, but profit payments are 100% the labels].

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by AsteroidMining on Friday June 27 2014, @05:44PM

    by AsteroidMining (3556) on Friday June 27 2014, @05:44PM (#60954)

    I think she's wrong, but that's not what she thinks [phys.org]

    The country star Rosanne Cash warned Wednesday that paltry returns to
    artists in the age of Internet streaming threaten to kill the music
    industry, as US lawmakers work on an overhaul.

    At a crowded congressional hearing, the daughter of legend Johnny Cash said
    that most musicians felt "marginalized and devalued" by meager pay,
    revealing that she earned just $114 for 600,000 online streams of one of
    her songs.

    "I see young musicians give up their dreams every single day because they
    cannot make a living, they cannot survive doing the thing they most love,
    the thing they just might be on the planet to do," she told the House
    Judiciary Committee.

    Recalling that her father once testified to Congress over a website in
    Slovenia illegally selling his classic song "Ring of Fire," Cash said in
    her testimony that online listening has since "morphed into a multinational
    juggernaut that threatens to decimate the livelihoods of all musicians,
    songwriters and performers."

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @06:25PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @06:25PM (#60969)

      "paltry returns to
      artists in the age of Internet streaming threaten to kill the music
      industry"

      The genie is out of the bottle.
      It is already a race to the bottom for any online content creator.

      Independents already make most of their money at gigs selling merch.
      The people that will suffer are those that expect to ride the gravy train
      of previous work forever.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by everdred on Friday June 27 2014, @06:43PM

        by everdred (110) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 27 2014, @06:43PM (#60983) Homepage Journal

        > The people that will suffer are those that expect to ride the gravy train of previous work forever

        That doesn't sound like an unreasonable expectation for an artist to have when you consider that that's exactly what the labels and streaming platforms are doing with the artists' own back catalogues.

        • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @07:19PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @07:19PM (#61010)

          I agree, why would a middleman be more entitled to profits than the actual creator of the content? It all goes way back to the fact that quite a few artists have signed deals that are bad for them in the long run, and I guess the blame is really on the managers that encouraged the artists to sign said deals and if you want to be harsh the artists themselves for trusting their manager and agent.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @06:31PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @06:31PM (#60979)

      "I see young musicians give up their dreams every single day because they
      cannot make a living, they cannot survive doing the thing they most love,
      the thing they just might be on the planet to do,"

      How is this different from a game developer in a sea of other game developers on the Apple Store?

      What happens if the US passes legislation, but China does not? Low-cost content comes from there
      instead.

      Most people haven't been able to make a living as musicians in any genre for a long long time.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by mth on Friday June 27 2014, @08:09PM

        by mth (2848) on Friday June 27 2014, @08:09PM (#61051) Homepage

        In the case of Apple's App Store, the developer sets the selling price and gets 70% of the revenue. Some consider this fair, some do not, but at least it is transparent and there is just one middle man.

        In the case of streaming, the streaming service will divide some part of the revenue among the songs streamed, which is then paid to the labels who will forward some of that money to the artists. So there are two middle men and they are pointing to each other when asked why so little money reaches the artists.

        The problem with the App Store is getting noticed: there are hundreds of releases every day and if you don't find a way to stand out in that crowd, you're probably not going to make enough money to live off. If her song got streamed 600,000 times, then she succeeded at getting noticed, but still earned very little money.

        In my opinion the solution is to reverse the role of the labels: instead of them acquiring the rights from the artists, they would do financial and promotional services for the artists. So the artists would be paying the labels instead of the labels paying the artists. In this setup it would be much easier for artists to switch labels if they don't like the service they're getting, which would encourage the labels to provide better value for their artists.

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by kaganar on Friday June 27 2014, @06:38PM

      by kaganar (605) on Friday June 27 2014, @06:38PM (#60982)

      One day before an engineering class the instructor overheard us whining about the price of tuition and books "these days" as we often did. He wrote on the whiteboard the minimum wage when he was a kid, the cost of a comparable college, and the cost of books. He then asked us for the figures of today. The ratios were the same.

      It's not always that easy to draw a reasonable comparison, and that's why whenever I hear this sort of whining I go "where's the data?"

      Before streaming services what was the average amount of money spent per hour of music listened to? What is it now? How much did artists get per hour of music listened to? What do they get now?

      From my understanding the profit for streaming services isn't particularly large, so either publishers/studios are making a lot of money and the artists are getting screwed, there's now an abundant amount of music that makes demand lower per artist, or maybe it's a more level playing field now and highly marketed artists are having to compete with less marketed artists and that's skewing their perception.

      At worst, it seems like the internet could doing what it's done for many other things -- replacing centralized entities with a global community. In which case, yes, it is killing the music "industry," but it is certainly not killing creativity manifesting in music.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @06:43PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @06:43PM (#60984)

      "I see young musicians give up their dreams every single day because they
      cannot make a living, they cannot survive doing the thing they most love,
      the thing they just might be on the planet to do,"

      Most of us in the world cannot make a living and survive merely doing the things we most love, that's why we get jobs or start businesses. Some of us even have to do the dishes and take out the trash too... Boohoo ;).

      Seriously though, go ahead and charge higher for your streams. The "problem" is there are many sources of free music (see youtube- yes many artists are actually putting their stuff onto youtube for free - some hope that people buy their stuff on itunes or similar, but others are happy just to have their stuff "published") AND nowadays there are many more ways for people to entertain themselves, so music's slice of the pie is smaller.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @09:51PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @09:51PM (#61122)

        cannot make a living and survive merely doing the things we most love

        Apparently, what these people like to do is loaf.
        They expect to do a job ONCE and get paid for that ETERNALLY.
        Let them tell that to a bricklayer, cabinetmaker, plumber, or electrician.
        Those guys will just laugh.
        Wanna make money every day? WORK every day. [google.com]

        The 20th Century is over.
        Duplication of media no longer requires expensive gear; distribution no longer requires buying/fueling trucks.
        Expecting giant returns on things with zero marginal cost is delusional.

        You folks who sold yourselves into 7 years of bondage to a media conglomerate are going to have to hustle like everybody else.
        Book a venue and PLAY.
        Once your indenture is over, wise up; hire YOUR OWN web guy, art guy, promo guy, etc.
        You want to keep more of the profits for yourself? Do more of the work.

        Now, where are you going to get sales for those recordings?
        At the places where you are PERFORMING.
        Have other self-branded stuff for sale as well. This was covered above. #60969

        ...and maybe you don't have exception talent and you simply got lucky ONCE. [wikipedia.org]
        Perhaps the world is telling you that an apprenticeship with a plumber is more in line with your abilities.
        I'm in solidarity with workers who continually produce things of value.
        I have no empathy for those who sit on their asses and whine.

        -- gewg_

    • (Score: 3) by Lagg on Friday June 27 2014, @07:45PM

      by Lagg (105) on Friday June 27 2014, @07:45PM (#61031) Homepage Journal

      What an entitled, self-important jackass excuse for a human being. I've seen people give up their dreams in my field too. I'm one of them. But you don't see me going to congress and whining about how I don't get paid enough. Maybe it's a good thing people are replacing music with other media like video games and books and such. People like this deserve to be cluebatted. Her music is crap anyway like most country is and she wishes that she could approach the shadow of her father. So really that's two instances of delusion. 1) Thinking she's special enough to deserve to not have to work hard and 2) Thinking that her stuff is good enough to compare to Johnny's.

      As an aside, most of the really awesome new music I've heard comes from indies that take donations and don't bother with this label racket. Hilariously, from what I can tell some of the most successful ones actually make just about as much as a labeled artist because there's no middleman. Here's [thebitburner.com] one recent example of some good new stuff and I normally don't even like chiptune stuff all that much.

      --
      http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @07:45PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @07:45PM (#61030)

    Whoa! Who said these whiners deserved to get paid for their work? They ought to talk to software developers making $0.99 apps if they want to know what time it is in 2014.

    Look, there's more supply than demand of music. So there's a race to the bottom. Too many people are giving away music for anyone to be able to charge for it. Music is essentially worthless. What value does a song have when anyone with a laptop can record a pro-sounding track?

    The music industry did two things wrong:

    (1) They ignored the Internet and digital music too long, and Apple set the price of a song at $0.99 and streaming services made them free. Notice how book publishers learned from this mistake and use only DRM platforms from Amazon, Apple, etc. They may lose, too, but only after fighting a war to stop the race to the bottom. The music industry didn't fight.

    (2) They made music disposable. Old guys like me bought albums and listened to every song over and over. We had such a strong attachment to these albums that we bought LPs, cassettes, CD, and remastered CDs. Well, now we have all the music we'd ever want, and aren't buying any more. The music industry made disposable, consumable pop songs no one wants to hear a month after they are released. A generation has grown up with no attachment to music. It's just noise they hear for a few months and forget about. It's all the same computerized stuff from the same producers using the same production. It literally does not matter who the artist is, because all the music is the same. So by creating a disposable product, they have destroyed their base of fans who buy albums.

    The music industry made its bed (or grave) and can lie in it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @09:14PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @09:14PM (#61095)

      > It's just noise they hear for a few months and forget about. It's all
      > the same computerized stuff from the same producers using the same
      > production. It literally does not matter who the artist is, because
      > all the music is the same.

      That's nothing new. There is a ton of pop music from 70s,80s,90s that nobody remembers. You might not even recognize it if you heard it. There are still plenty of "important" albums today, but pop music has always been disposable.

      Sounds like you've got more than a touch of old man's disease.

      • (Score: 2) by theluggage on Friday June 27 2014, @10:56PM

        by theluggage (1797) on Friday June 27 2014, @10:56PM (#61164)

        Sounds like you've got more than a touch of old man's disease.

        Except... one problem with modern music is that so much of it *is* pop music from the 60s. 70s, 80s, 90s - be it a cover version being warbled to death by some talent show winner, or a sample being rapped over by some R&B outfit (...not that rap is a cutting edge 21st century invention). As a middle-aged fogey I should be turning on the radio and covering my ears at the sound of some terrible cacophony, and complaining that it is not music... Instead, all I hear is inane, bland and unadventurous. Even if you do stumble across something a bit challenging, it probably just reminds you of some avant-garde record from the 70s that makes it sound like Bing Crosby. I want to hear something that makes me turn off in horror so I can write a "disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" letter to the paper - not something that makes me yawn.

        Mainly Simon Cowell's fault, I guess.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 28 2014, @12:16AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 28 2014, @12:16AM (#61185)

          "I should be turning on the radio and covering my ears at the sound of some terrible cacophony"

          You've never heard KFJC (http://kfjc.org) then.

          • (Score: 2) by theluggage on Sunday July 06 2014, @02:58PM

            by theluggage (1797) on Sunday July 06 2014, @02:58PM (#64869)

            You've never heard KFJC (http://kfjc.org) then.

            (Listens... Electronic noises, cats mewing, long spoken story about cats... thinks it ends with a cat eating someone's face... next track, called "Demonized vomit insurance..." I think...)

            Yeah, pretty much what the likes of Tangerine Dream were doing in the early 70s, except the guys on KFJC probably haven't built their own synths...

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @10:25PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @10:25PM (#61152)

      They ignored the Internet
      Nope. They actively tried to fight the firehose.
      The loser was completely predictable.
      Incumbents do this with every new technology. Rarely do they prevail.

      They made music disposable
      Well, they saw a cheaper way to make recordings (CDs).
      They also saw that they could sell you another copy of the music you had already paid for.
      They also saw that they could charge you for 12 songs when you only wanted 1.

      The thing that wasn't so apparent to them was that digital recordings can be reproduced (copied) infinitely without degradation.
      As long as 1 uncorrupted copy exists in the wild, copies of that can be made without flaws.
      No more need for middlemen.

      The music industry made disposable, consumable pop songs no one wants to hear
      You have just described 99 percent of all human "creativity".
      You should find a pile of your Dad's (Grandpa's?) 78s and see how much is noteworthy.
      MTV (1981) was a notable inflection point for music, where the look was more important than the sound.

      -- gewg_