# Spotify CEO says working musicians may no longer be able to release music only “once every three to four years”



## michalioz (Aug 1, 2020)

This came out a couple of days ago. It looks like the internet is shaping the music industry boldly. I mostly wanted to share the news with you and I'd love your views on this.


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## MartinH. (Aug 1, 2020)

michalioz said:


> This came out a couple of days ago. It looks like the internet is shaping the music industry boldly. I mostly wanted to share the news with you and I'd love your views on this.



Imho it's not the internet alone. It's also the musicians. Just consider the total number of albums that exist today vs the number of albums in 1990. I don't have any numbers but I bet it's a staggering difference.




poetd said:


> “I feel, really, that the ones that aren’t doing well in streaming are predominantly people who want to release music the way it used to be released,”
> 
> So he wants everyone to fill online libraries with generic low-skill mush so that he can push playlists with almost zero-cost-to-spotify so they keep a bigger share of the revenue?



He said:
“The artists today that are making it realize that it’s about creating a continuous engagement with their fans. It is about putting the work in, about the storytelling around the album, and about keeping a continuous dialogue with your fans.”

That has nothing to do with the quality of the music, it's about marketing. And I don't think he's wrong.
Spotify pays out way too little to indies, but that's a different discussion that of course he'll always try to deflect from. 

Imho the problem is that there are vastly more musicians, than the music market could sustain even under optimal conditions, and on top of that the conditions are the opposite of optimal for them because so much money gets diverted into the pockets of multi billion dollar companies between the sources and the musicians. Only those on top of the mountain can survive and the way to get and stay there is mostly marketing. Perhaps that bitter pill is easier to swallow when the message comes from an actual musician and not some rich CEO:


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## Martin S (Aug 1, 2020)

@MartinH. Spot on !! ...And so sad. But then again, I have a 'built-in' loathe for everything marketing related. I hate it with a vengeance, to be honest. Because ALL marketing can be boiled down to one sentence:

"all we REALLY want is YOUR money"


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## Jimmy Hellfire (Aug 1, 2020)

One day all these goofballs will have to realize that the "self marketing" thing where you're basically selling a character online is a bubble that will eventually burst, and won't be leaving anything of substance behind once every artist has already done their own "what I eat in a day" video.


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## Mornats (Aug 1, 2020)

Martin S said:


> "all we REALLY want is YOUR money"



That's pretty much the reason why every company exists you know.


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## Mornats (Aug 1, 2020)

I'm going to have a good read of the articles above. I adore my Discover Weekly playlist for introducing me to artists I end up loving. I want to know if there is a concern with these that o should be aware of.

Just last week's though, I found an artist via Discover Weekly (Jim Copperthwaite) so I found his album on www.roughtrade.com (my local independent record store in Bristol). Included in the album was a download code for a compilation of tracks from his label which is now on constant rotation on my phone. I see that download code as a Discover Weekly feature from the label and loved it. I'll now be ordering more CDs and maybe some vinyl once I get my Rega out of storage. So my experience with Discover Weekly has been brilliant so it would be disappointing if Spotify were faking these for their own benefit.


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## Martin S (Aug 1, 2020)

@Mornats Of course. But quite a lot of them wouldn't, if people actually started thinking "do I really NEED to spend my money on this". As such I'm not blaming the marketing people. I'm blaming the people who blindly throw their hard earned money at something they don't really need, because they fail to see through the Marketing B.S.


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## Mornats (Aug 1, 2020)

Yeah, you've got a point. Some marketing is quite bad and damaging and all marketing is trying to achieve the same results so can never be too far from that. I actually studied advertising copywriting at university but after a few placements at ad agencies realised just how unethical the whole business could be so I eventually moved into web and UX (which kinda uses my advertising skills but in a more ethical way).

It just raises my eyebrows when I see people say things like "they just want your money" and I think well dur, they're not a charity. But there's ways of doing that that are nice and ways that aren't for sure.


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## Saxer (Aug 1, 2020)

He owes me at least 150$ but payed me 0.00032¢.


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## Mornats (Aug 1, 2020)

Maybe this is a naive question but here goes. I hear most musicians complain about Spotify and their payment model. I don't hear much about Tidal, Apple Music, Deezer etc. So if artists are getting stiffed by Spotify, why not just refuse to put your music on there? Without content, Spotify dies. The industry has then said, this model doesn't work for us. Instead, they feed it, then complain. I love Spotify from a consumer point of view (I'm on a paid account) but would love for it to pay artists well. How does Apple pay them well if Spotify can't or won't?


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## MartinH. (Aug 1, 2020)

Martin S said:


> @MartinH. Spot on !! ...And so sad. But then again, I have a 'built-in' loathe for everything marketing related. I hate it with a vengeance, to be honest. Because ALL marketing can be boiled down to one sentence:
> 
> "all we REALLY want is YOUR money"





Mornats said:


> I actually studied advertising copywriting at university but after a few placements at ad agencies




You might enjoy the movie "99 francs", it's one of my favorites. Not sure though if there is an English dub for it, you might have to watch it with subtitles. In the trailer the protagonist - a creative director in an advertising agency - says "I'm the most influential jerk in the last 2000 years."








99 francs (2007) - IMDb


99 francs: Directed by Jan Kounen. With Jean Dujardin, Jocelyn Quivrin, Patrick Mille, Vahina Giocante. The life of Octave Parango, a flamboyant ad designer, filled with success, satire, misery and love.




www.imdb.com









Jimmy Hellfire said:


> One day all these goofballs will have to realize that the "self marketing" thing where you're basically selling a character online is a bubble that will eventually burst, and won't be leaving anything of substance behind once every artist has already done their own "what I eat in a day" video.



I think "selling a character" is the wrong way of framing it. They are selling "feelings and identity". As the marketvalue of music declines towards zero, the focus inevitably shifts to selling a warm fuzzy feeling of supporting your favorite bands as some "patron of the arts".

What would make it a bubble, what do you think comes after this? Bubble implies there is much more value assumed than actually exists, and when they find out, it'll be a rough awakening... like Bitcoin. How can the feeling of supporting artists not be real? How can the identity aspect of buying merch from artists no longer be real?


I think the bigger problem is (and that might be what you actually meant and I didn't quite get from your post?) that unless any form of marketing manages to redirect money from an entirely different industry, often it just means taking the money out of the pockets of creatives in the same field as yours. You're clawing your way to the top more successfully, at the cost of your peers. Better marketing for musicians will often mean "making sure the money goes to you, instead of other musicians". It would require some new approaches to take funds out of pockets where it doesn't belong in the first place. Like getting a global campaign to go viral about quitting smoking and spending half of what they used to spend on cigarettes on bandcamp instead and sharing their progress and purchases on social media. That'd be perfect: healthy, feels good, positive reinforcement through social-media likes, non-controversial ethically, achors into a goal that many may already have had (how many "want" to quit, but never really follow through with it because the up-side isn't motivating enough), anchors into learned consumerist behavior of buying something = getting a reward, still cheaper than what they did before...


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## Martin S (Aug 1, 2020)

On a somewhat related note :

Danish Music removed from You-Tube as of today, because YT wants to cut 70% off of payments to Danish musicians (in English via Translate):

https://translate.google.dk/transla...anger-ud-efter-youtube-kynisk-og-respektloest


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## AllanH (Aug 1, 2020)

Martin S said:


> On a somewhat related note :
> 
> Danish Music removed from You-Tube as of today, because YT wants to cut 70% off of payments to Danish musicians (in English via Translate):
> 
> https://translate.google.dk/translate?sl=da&tl=en&u=https://www.dr.dk/musik/danske-musikere-langer-ud-efter-youtube-kynisk-og-respektloest



An interesting aspect of this article is that's it's the Danish PRO, known as Koda, that is the unified front of the musician and composers in protecting the royalties.


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## Mornats (Aug 1, 2020)

poetd said:


> __
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Good (or actually not good!) seeing that chart.

I appreciate that Spotify is where the listeners are at bit my point is that's only because the music is on there. The deal is terrible for musicians so why is all that music on there in the first place. As I said, the content made Spotify king so not having content on there would be the solution surely. Someone in the space between Spotify and the musician agreed to those payment terms, thereby supporting the Spotify model and allowing it to grow. 

I think the sad fact is that the music industry didn't react to the internet in time so tech companies did and the result was that the music industry was screwed. Tech was building Spotify whilst the music industry was still suing it's customers who wanted music accessible via the internet. There was literally nothing stopping Sony Music from creating the iTunes of the day and keeping the control in the hands of the music industry but it was Apple who took that control.


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## storyteller (Aug 1, 2020)

Mornats said:


> I'm going to have a good read of the articles above. I adore my Discover Weekly playlist for introducing me to artists I end up loving. I want to know if there is a concern with these that o should be aware of.
> 
> Just last week's though, I found an artist via Discover Weekly (Jim Copperthwaite) so I found his album on www.roughtrade.com (my local independent record store in Bristol). Included in the album was a download code for a compilation of tracks from his label which is now on constant rotation on my phone. I see that download code as a Discover Weekly feature from the label and loved it. I'll now be ordering more CDs and maybe some vinyl once I get my Rega out of storage. So my experience with Discover Weekly has been brilliant so it would be disappointing if Spotify were faking these for their own benefit.


I read an article the other day ... I’ll find it and link it when I can... that was explaining how revenue for songs really kicks in once the discover weekly algorithm finds it. Essentially, this artist paid $1000 to marketing firms to see what would happen. He was just testing the system. In all cases, the money paid did almost nothing, but get him on a few lesser known playlists. Then, after a few weeks had rolled by, he saw a significant jump in plays/revenue due to the discover weekly algorithm kicking in. Overall though, he lost $750 on the $1000. Interesting read about how the discover weekly playlist works. But it was more confirmation hat these “playlist promotion companies” are likely just money pits. Spotify’s CEO has said the same thing about them.


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## dcoscina (Aug 1, 2020)

poetd said:


> “I feel, really, that the ones that aren’t doing well in streaming are predominantly people who want to release music the way it used to be released,”
> 
> So he wants everyone to fill online libraries with generic low-skill mush so that he can push playlists with almost zero-cost-to-spotify so they keep a bigger share of the revenue?
> 
> I like Spotify, I do. But I avoid every playlist except ones created and curated by labels/artists/fans themselves.


It's a race to the bottom so our hard work can line the pockets of the upper 1%... I'd like to say JK but I'm not...


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## Mornats (Aug 1, 2020)

Discover Weekly is insanely good at putting a good playlist together for me. I've had a few weeks where my partner has listened to opera and I've listened to some electronic music and somehow it found music they crossed over both. And with some metal thrown in (the playlist, not the same songs) that bizarrely all fit well in the playlist. 

I'd hope that the power behind Discover Weekly isn't on a paid-for basis and that it will try and fit lesser-known (and lesser-played) artists too. That would make me happy. The label I mentioned in an earlier post seems to be a smaller one so I'm hopeful.


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## Jimmy Hellfire (Aug 1, 2020)

MartinH. said:


> I think "selling a character" is the wrong way of framing it. They are selling "feelings and identity". As the marketvalue of music declines towards zero, the focus inevitably shifts to selling a warm fuzzy feeling of supporting your favorite bands as some "patron of the arts".
> 
> What would make it a bubble, what do you think comes after this? Bubble implies there is much more value assumed than actually exists, and when they find out, it'll be a rough awakening... like Bitcoin. How can the feeling of supporting artists not be real?



Because it's inherently fake. It really comes down to doing all this nonsense, your "art" being just one of them, in order to make yourself the most captivating media personality. WHAT you do is almost secondary. It's more about voyeurism than anything else. "Supporting the artist" to me also sounds a bit like an euphemism. It's more like, paying for your seat in the reality show. And then there's the entitlement. And the short attention span. 

In my eyes, everything about that is just a huge shit show. You said it yourself: the market value of music is declining towards zero. It is what it is. And that for me ends the discussion. Looks like I'm gonna do something else with my time.

I do understand that people are looking for other ways to somehow monetize something to keep things afloat, but I'm not gonna fool myself and act as if this was this new awesome way of connecting with the artist, etc. ... it's scraping up whatever you can by any means available. Selling shirts, running a YouTube channel, selling people career advice BS, doing Patreon, you name it. I can't even make myself care. I used to buy records of artists and go to their shows. That's it. That thing unfortunately has run its course, but what can you do.


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## Mornats (Aug 1, 2020)

poetd said:


> The girlfriend likes to listen to playlists on Spotify a lot.
> 
> She listens to a couple of "New Age/Ambient" playlists, often just as background whilst she does other things.
> 
> ...



I'll try and keep an eye out (ear out?) for that. It's not something I've noticed but maybe I just don't know the range of artists in some genres all that well.

When I've found an artist I like I do tend to create a playlist based on them and then I'm down a rabbit hole of fantastic new music. Plus, with my good experience with Village Green Recordings (the label I mentioned earlier) then I'm going to seek out playlists from labels too.

What I also do is actually buy albums that I really like. This is partly because I want them to be paid for their work and also to use as reference tracks and to play on repeat in the car. And also, it's not that crappy quality that Spotify and MP3s give you so I can put it through a good system and really appreciate it.


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## Jimmy Hellfire (Aug 3, 2020)

On a more straightforward note, what a disrespectful, greedy fuck that Spotify clown is, eh?


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## patrick76 (Aug 3, 2020)

Jimmy Hellfire said:


> On a more straightforward note, what a disrespectful, greedy fuck that Spotify clown is, eh?


What is straightforward is that you have engaged in a “narrative fallacy” and do not have an understanding of today’s “future landscape.” 

Don’t feel bad, I sometimes look at time enhanced landscapes and have issues with narrative phallic executives.

For anyone that is confused, just read the article referenced in the initial post of this thread.


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## classified_the_x (Aug 3, 2020)

Spotify pay isn't that low to be honest. 8 years ago, without Spotify, the situation was worse IMO. But, it's pretty hard to make it at Spotify. Making at an official playlist without a solid fanbase is tough, and then having to connect with Playlist pluggers that are generally money driven and clueless...

If Spotify paid 20k for every 1 million views everyone would became a musician tbh... it's fair pay IMO, specially if you add Youtube and other streaming websites. I didn't make it there tbh, I sort of made it at Soundcloud 8 years ago and didn't get a penny out of it... so, compared to Soundcloud, Spotify is gold. It's a race to the bottom really, but Spotify gave us a chance. A low odd chance, but a chance, like most chances in the music biz


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## Alex Fraser (Aug 4, 2020)

Writing one album every 3 years and expecting it to create a full time income has always been a bit of a head scratcher. I think that's what he's alluding to.

I can only talk from my own experience of musical money making - but if I stop writing and marketing - my income immediately stops stone cold. Unfortunately, the internet has shot the average attention span into pieces and you have to keep shouting, posting and marketing to buy yourself 30 seconds of attention before it's taken by the next person in line.

Is it right? Does it matter? It is want it is. We can't go back. In reality, I think the 3-4 decades of (some) folk making serious money from royalties and music sales was probably an anomaly in the overall history of how human beings have made money from art, not the norm.


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## Greg (Aug 6, 2020)

Algorithms are our new record label bosses. Do what they like or get squashed.


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## classified_the_x (Aug 8, 2020)

sincerely, although I think Spotify gave musicians good revenue opportunities and all... I might cancel my subscription. I just despise what their playlists feature. It's part of dumbing down society in a way. I'm not there to listen to Diplo or Steve Aoki, or some random workout track. That is what they are feeding me. Don't blame the algo, I listen to everything...

I just can't cope with what some Swedish snobs think it's good; with the release schedule they push upon us (most featured artists are Spotify employees, almost). Although I'd love to have my music featured there, I'm not willing to be a customer of that anymore... perhaps.

talking mostly about the in your face playlists. the things they push us on the front page


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## Mornats (Aug 8, 2020)

On my homepage I have twelve rows of playlists/albums. One of those is the editor's pick which I'll never look at and then there's a Black Music Matters and a Classic Rave Albums. The rest are all about my listening history, discover weekly, "jump back in", daily mixes and so on. so 9 rows of highly relevent playlists based on my listening history, one topical one, one random one (the rave one although possibly based on listening history) and just the one editor's pick and it was right near the bottom of my page. I think we have very different homepages! Spotify's playlists have only ever enlightened me to music so (at least on my account) I simply don't see this dumbing down.


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## classified_the_x (Aug 8, 2020)

Mornats said:


> On my homepage I have twelve rows of playlists/albums. One of those is the editor's pick which I'll never look at and then there's a Black Music Matters and a Classic Rave Albums. The rest are all about my listening history, discover weekly, "jump back in", daily mixes and so on. so 9 rows of highly relevent playlists based on my listening history, one topical one, one random one (the rave one although possibly based on listening history) and just the one editor's pick and it was right near the bottom of my page. I think we have very different homepages! Spotify's playlists have only ever enlightened me to music so (at least on my account) I simply don't see this dumbing down.



so you need Spotify to randomize the content you selected yourself, for you to be shuffling around?

I'm also seeing the black music matters playlists, but why do I care tbh? also party music and some podcasts playlists. I never listened to more than 0:02 seconds of a podcast on Spotify, so I can only think they are pushing their agenda on me. If you are seeing the podcasts too, please do agree with me.

they do try. I'm seeing an arab trap playlist and I'm in love with the Hookah Lounge playlist. But my impression is that they see what I'm listening and generalize, and push me towards cheese. You listened to electronic music? Here's some Steve Aoki for you... Local music? here's the most cheesy artist in your town...


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## telecode101 (Aug 8, 2020)

..


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## telecode101 (Aug 8, 2020)

..


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## classified_the_x (Aug 8, 2020)

telecode101 said:


> I will throw in my point of view on this. Why should music be worth something? Why should it be worth a lot? Why should people buy CD's and pay for music?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



still, Spotify is in jeopardy if one eventually realizes Youtube gives better recommendations. there is a whole aesthetic there including the -14 LUFS normalization that I'm seriously not buying into anymore.

Spotify got most of their subscribers IMO due to good playlists and recommendations, but once we add an Ariana Grande or David Guetta song to our favorites we are drawn into a vortex of mainstream and pop overload that simply shuts the less known music. That might draw many like me out of the subscription.

they want to set the trend for the whole music ecosystem and I'm also not buying into that, specially since they are pretty self righteous about their music taste and algos to the point I don't see them fixing it


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## chocobitz825 (Aug 8, 2020)

Mornats said:


> I'm going to have a good read of the articles above. I adore my Discover Weekly playlist for introducing me to artists I end up loving. I want to know if there is a concern with these that o should be aware of.
> 
> Just last week's though, I found an artist via Discover Weekly (Jim Copperthwaite) so I found his album on www.roughtrade.com (my local independent record store in Bristol). Included in the album was a download code for a compilation of tracks from his label which is now on constant rotation on my phone. I see that download code as a Discover Weekly feature from the label and loved it. I'll now be ordering more CDs and maybe some vinyl once I get my Rega out of storage. So my experience with Discover Weekly has been brilliant so it would be disappointing if Spotify were faking these for their own benefit.



I’ve had a similar experience. My training of the algorithm has led to many discoveries of independent unique music...which led to the realization that i really love unpopular music


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## Jimmy Hellfire (Aug 9, 2020)

telecode101 said:


> I will throw in my point of view on this. Why should music be worth something? Why should it be worth a lot? Why should people buy CD's and pay for music?
> 
> Music in a cultural performance art form and a vehicle for emotional expression, to tell stories , sometimes to instill societal and political change.
> 
> ...



I'm not saying that by default, music should have a monetary value. But it makes no sense for me to view the current situation, Spotify etc. as a step back towards the cultural origins of music. In reality, Spotify too tries to sell musicians the idea of "making it", while expecting you to hustle and bust your ass even more. Romanticism aside, trying to be an artist or a band in the streaming and social media based landscape is an incredibly diversified full time hustle with little to no return. And that's just how that Spotify scumbag wants it - he needs streaming assets while having you believe that one of these days, if you exhaust all the different possibilities of self-marketing _while_ churning out material for him to hawk around, you'll _make it_.

So yeah, it's of course a valid philosophical discussion whether one should even expect to make money doing music or view the cultural and artistic practice of music making as something that should yield profit. But isn't it just awfully convenient for profit mongers who nonetheless have ways of earning dough with your cultural contribution?

Most of us will be musicians no matter what. But if _they're_ making money with my stuff, _I_ wanna make money. In reality, it's just part of what's been happening everywhere else for years: the devaluation of labor.


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## Mornats (Aug 9, 2020)

classified_the_x said:


> so you need Spotify to randomize the content you selected yourself, for you to be shuffling around?


That's not my playlist experience at all. There's always a good amount of new music in there. Spotify's playlists and recommendations are brilliant for me. I've thrown random things in there and it's given some odd songs here and there that I'm not keen on but hit the dislike button and it learns and gets back to normal.


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## chocobitz825 (Aug 9, 2020)

Jimmy Hellfire said:


> I'm not saying that by default, music should have a monetary value. But it makes no sense for me to view the current situation, Spotify etc. as a step back towards the cultural origins of music. In reality, Spotify too tries to sell musicians the idea of "making it", while expecting you to hustle and bust your ass even more. Romanticism aside, trying to be an artist or a band in the streaming and social media based landscape is an incredibly diversified full time hustle with little to no return. And that's just how that Spotify scumbag wants it - he needs streaming assets while having you believe that one of these days, if you exhaust all the different possibilities of self-marketing _while_ churning out material for him to hawk around, you'll _make it_.
> 
> So yeah, it's of course a valid philosophical discussion whether one should even expect to make money doing music or view the cultural and artistic practice of music making as something that should yield profit. But isn't it just awfully convenient for profit mongers who nonetheless have ways of earning dough with your cultural contribution?
> 
> Most of us will be musicians no matter what. But if _they're_ making money with my stuff, _I_ wanna make money. In reality, it's just part of what's been happening everywhere else for years: the devaluation of labor.



sad to say it sounds like the problem is with the dreamers who mistakenly think spotify will be the golden ticket to glory. It's like believing if you sold all your CDs at a WalMart in the US you'd be a hit because there are so many of them. Spotify is a platform, and one's success has very little to do with what is done on that platform. You might get some buzz every now and then from some playlists, but for the most part, the most successful people on Spotify are there because the collective efforts of the social media and marketing created interest, and people used those media platforms to consume the artist's content. 

In my experience, Spotify royalties are nothing to write home about. It's less than what an unknown artist would get as a cut of their CD revenues because you're splitting a percent of a percent with more people than you would with physical media. Still, nowadays no ones making money on CDs or streaming unless you can achieve massive results on either. I don't really think of the shift in royalties as a loss, since Spotify is still a place where people can consume your product for the greater good of your brand. Music has always been a hustle, and the most money was always made from touring for musicians. For composers putting up their music, there's not much to expect other than maybe spotify is your online resume that might lead to more profitable work later. 

Really no matter how you shake it, in the biz, CDs and streaming are just promotional materials for something else that would make you more money. That's not spotify's fault. They're not f#cking artists any more than labels are.


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## GtrString (Aug 9, 2020)

Its easy to join a choir of complainers, but its more interesting to actually discuss alternative storylines, eh? 

Nobody, except a small elite, has ever been relying on passive income from recordings, have they? You released a record, from which you should pay musicians, producers ect + the record company owned the recording, the publisher owned the publishing, and sometimes you din't even write the songs so there was no writer's share. You got an advance from the label, that the record sales should cover, not to mention it was very expensive to rent a studio ect. Many artists came out with a big loss, if their records didn't sell at least a million copies.

When you release online, you don't just release to Spotify, there is a whole number of outlets, and the musicians income is from the whole lot combined, isn't it? You have to take everything into account, context is everything. Also a musician, except for these Covid19 times, usually play live to support their records and actually make performance money. Filling out a venue has been the day-to-day work, where you could really haul in some money from the record, and create relationships with fans so they would listen to your next release and show up at your next show or tour.

The home recording boom has empowered millions of musicians to record their own stuff for very little money, and the digitalization of distribution has enabled all to also release music without any gatekeepers or quality control. So there is a lot of musicians now that don't really do much else than put out a self-indulged record, and then wait at home for the passive income money. I don't see how that would ever result in any sustainable career. Then this CEO suggest putting out MORE music, but if everything is done from the sofa, that still won't help. that is just a dead end "penny waiting game".

Destroy any hope that you can have a sustainable career in music based on passive income alone. That has never been the case, and never will be. Musicians hustle, they put out music, they play for others, they teach, they do side gigs ect. They work 360 degrees with many small sources of income, and has always done that. Nothing has really changed, except the Covid19 crisis for live gigs and the new millions of blue eyed musicians wanting to share the passive income stream(s).


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## charlieclouser (Aug 9, 2020)

chocobitz825 said:


> In my experience, Spotify royalties are nothing to write home about. It's less than what an unknown artist would get as a cut of their CD revenues because you're splitting a percent of a percent with more people than you would with physical media. Still, nowadays no ones making money on CDs or streaming unless you can achieve massive results on either. I don't really think of the shift in royalties as a loss, since Spotify is still a place where people can consume your product for the greater good of your brand. Music has always been a hustle, and the most money was always made from touring for musicians. For composers putting up their music, there's not much to expect other than maybe spotify is your online resume that might lead to more profitable work later.
> 
> Really no matter how you shake it, in the biz, CDs and streaming are just promotional materials for something else that would make you more money. That's not spotify's fault. They're not f#cking artists any more than labels are.



Yes, Spotify payouts are a pathetic pittance. I have a lot of music on Spotify for which I own 50% of the master recording rights (and 100% of the writer's side), and I do get a fair few million streams per year on there - but when you translate that into actual dollars it works out that my once-a-week gardener and housekeeper together cost the equivalent of about a million streams a year. For a freshly-minted MacBook jockey that might be great, and for a 20-million-stream trap rapper it might buy half a Lambo, but in terms of grown-up money it's a joke.

Sooooo.... fuck Daniel Ek, fuck the "new streaming economy", and fuck anyone who calls themselves a music fan while evading actually buying the music they supposedly love in return for having an algorithm suggest and shovel "content" at them for $10 per month.

It's thievery on a heinous level.

I had a good couple of decades in the record industry. I'm on hundreds of records, either as an artist, producer, remixer, or programmer, and I did pretty well - but as soon as I saw Napster and LimeWire back around 1999, I knew two things:

1 - Our "fans" would, given the chance, steal anything and everything that wasn't nailed down. They'd sneak into concerts, loot t-shirts off an unguarded merch truck... hell, they'd go through your bags in the dressing room if they could get in there. So stealing the latest album presented zero moral issues for them. Never mind that a dozen people spent a year in a zillion-dollar room to make that record, fifteen dollars was just too much for the punters to pay for the end result. Remember that old chestnut, "You wouldn't download a car, would you?" Hell yes they would. They'd download the gasoline too if they could.

2 - It was over for the record industry that I knew and loved, full stop. It took only an instant for a scenario to form, even in my drug-fogged brain: Record sales would decrease, artist's share of the revenues would crater, and the days of finely-honed Metallica records that took two years to make using an eighteen-wheeler full of vintage snare drums and amps would end swiftly, leaving only three categories of artist: The A-list "legacy" artists who built their careers and fanbase under the "old model" and could subsidize their recording budgets via high ticket prices at 20,000+ seat venues (as long as they could average $30/head or better on merch); the sugar-rush pop confections that the teens quickly fall in love with and just as quickly forget; and the no-budget newcomers who might capture lightning in a bottle in their home studio but would never earn enough to convert that moment into a long-term career, and thus would almost never develop into "serious" artists who could grow their creativity through multiple phases and styles. No more artists like David Byrne, Roger Waters, or Trent Reznor. Plenty of mainstream high-fructose pop like Arianna Grande and Katy Perry (which, whatever, it's fine, not my thing but that stuff has its place), and plenty of no-budget one-off weirdo stuff like Die Antwoord or Bon Iver, but in terms of the labor-intensive, "difficult" music that I liked - it would be all over very soon.

Aaaaaaand look what happened. Exactly that. It all shook out just like Lars Ulrich said it would.

Exit stage left.


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## telecode101 (Aug 9, 2020)

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## chocobitz825 (Aug 9, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> Yes, Spotify payouts are a pathetic pittance. I have a lot of music on Spotify for which I own 50% of the master recording rights (and 100% of the writer's side), and I do get a fair few million streams per year on there - but when you translate that into actual dollars it works out that my once-a-week gardener and housekeeper together cost the equivalent of about a million streams a year. For a freshly-minted MacBook jockey that might be great, and for a 20-million-stream trap rapper it might buy half a Lambo, but in terms of grown-up money it's a joke.
> 
> Sooooo.... fuck Daniel Ek, fuck the "new streaming economy", and fuck anyone who calls themselves a music fan while evading actually buying the music they supposedly love in return for having an algorithm suggest and shovel "content" at them for $10 per month.
> 
> ...




i think the biggest mistake we ever made was assuming there are actual "music fans". if you're looking for fans of music, we're it. The people who love it so much we do it. Problem is, people in the business of making music are poor customers of music. Everyone else are fans of the experience. They were willing to throw down money easily when media like radio and MTV could tell them who was popular and who to like for the cultural experience of being a part of something. Even if you want to count the non-pop fans, most of the people were living through music. Finding themselves and their tribe. 

Reality is, this is the realist its ever been. When given the opportunity to go out into the wild, and have access to all the music in the world, and choose what out there has value, most people said they're fine with the sample plate. With everyone choosing different things to consume, the cultural experience has changed and now we're seeing exactly how few music fans there are out there. We weren't robbed, and nothing died. We're just seeing what art really means to the world once it's easily accessible.


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## telecode101 (Aug 9, 2020)

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## Mornats (Aug 9, 2020)

telecode101 said:


> There has never been an artist I discoverd on Spotify that blew me away that much that I became a huge fan and followed them endlessly.


Different story for me again  I think at least 90% of my CD purchases over the last 5-6 years have been artists I've found through discover weekly or artist playlists.

Something I've been thinking about after reading Charlie's post (which made me think crap, am doing the right thing?) is that the internet surely has given artists a way to sell more directly to fans. Recently I've been wanting more reference tracks to load up into Ozone to compare my mixes against. I want uncompressed hi-res, at least CD quality 16 or 24 bit recordings. This is not all that easy to find sometimes. For example, I wanted Daniel James' album and Thomas Bergersen's Humanity but they're only available via steaming or MP3. Why not sell flac versions in high quality? I remember Two Steps From Hell's Unleashed came with loads of versions, compressed, uncompressed, MP3, flac, without lyrics and I lapped that up.

I guess what I really want is the discoverability and previewability of Spotify but being able to just tap a button and buy a high res version direct from the artist. Having a few nice bonuses (such as the uncompressed and lyric-versions like Unleashed had) would be great too. Or maybe some story behind the music. Something that talks about the heart and soul that went into making it. Or talks about the process of making it. Or maybe that's too niche and would only appeal to the likes of us here on this forum?


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## telecode101 (Aug 9, 2020)

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## charlieclouser (Aug 9, 2020)

telecode101 said:


> Not very many new artists that I follow who I have seen who release an actual full album of 10 songs or, god forbid, a double album. This is just Spotify we are talking about. There are platforms like bandcamp where other types of niche artists operate where they do release an album worth of material every few years and their fans eagerly await those releases.
> 
> I think the problem with the "recommended" Spotify strategy is that a little 3 or 5 (3 to 4 minute per song) EP kind of seems amateurish. It's is not really enough time/space to make a strong artistic statement. It's like constantly creating little paintings vs a large one. There is a huge fucking difference in experience between looking at a miniture vs large art.



Aaaannnnidddd there it is. Exactly the problem with Spotify. That whole economy results in nothing but a zillion bite-sized artists whose entire career could fit in your pocket. Fucking tic-tac sized morsels with less than 1 gram of sugar per serving. Fun-sized halloween candy with no nutritional value.

It's trash.

I want artists that think big, go big, DO BIG:






I want my mind blown, my world rocked, my entire world-view shaken to its foundations. I want to come out of the experience thinking, "Nothing will ever be the same again." (in the case of a Roger Waters concert) - or, at the very least, I want to think, "Holy crap they absolutely KILLED it on stage tonight." (in the case of an AC/DC show):






Or, if they don't change my worldview or rock the house, at least I demand some "high concept art" on display:






THAT is why I buy records, THAT is why I go to concerts, THAT is why I became a musician.

I've been lucky enough to be on both the sending and receiving side of that experience plenty of times, and anything less is a caffeine-free diet version of life - and why should anybody be satisfied with that?






None of the four artists I've pictured here would be where they are if they came up in the streaming age - they all forged their careers, honed their craft, and built their followings in the bosom of the "old model". Even in that "cruel and shallow money trench", that "long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs" they were able to find enough nourishment to survive, to prosper, to conquer.

It takes years, decades, to get to that level. And the current situation, where every artist is expected to run a website, handle a dozen social media threads, interact with individual fans on Twitter DM's, basically to do all the things a record company used to do - that situation doesn't exactly foster creativity. It merely foists off all the busy work onto the artist's plate, creating the illusion of progress when actually it's doing quite the opposite: offloading the work to the poor sod whose energy should be spent developing as an artist, not as a web designer or social media manager.

The streaming economy provides the artist no more nourishment than a handful of sugar-free gummy bears, and requires that the artist first build the kitchen and design the packaging for the very morsels they are to receive. It is madness.

While it might provide a channel to discover more fringe material that would never see the light of day in the "old model", streaming kills *big* music.

I didn't fall in love with music by idly flipping through "recommended for you" feeds on some iPhone app - then, as now, it takes WORK to find the good shit, and I put in that work. Spending my $5 per week allowance on seven-inch 45rpm singles in the early seventies, saving for a month to buy a couple of Bowie or Zeppelin albums in high school, taking the subway to the east village to scour record shops looking for the import-only remix 12-inch in college... I spent thousands trying to find the thrill.

Casuals and civilians can GTFO.

So, I absolutely AM saying that, by default, music SHOULD have a monetary value. It DOES have a monetary value. If you just want to listen to something for free, start whistling. A lungful of air is all you're entitled to for free.

Every busker on the subway puts out the hat for dollar bills, so even at the very bottom of the food chain the "content creator" believes that what he's doing is worth something, even if it's pocket change.

These days, busking probably pays better than Spotify anyway!


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## telecode101 (Aug 9, 2020)

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## Mornats (Aug 9, 2020)

I saw Muse last summer which blew me away. 





That's absolutely an active listening experience. I remember back in my teens in the early 90s listening to the same albums over and over because a) I had little money to buy more and b) they were works of art that were written to be listened to as a whole. That's one of the reasons I seek out artists albums if I really like a song I hear on Spotify.

Charlie's words are still resonating with me. I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread about a good experience with my local record store's online shop. Maybe I need to spend more time in the store. One thing I'll say though. I've heard a single from an album and loved it, bought the album only to find that great song and 9 pieces of filler shit. Happened more times than I liked. That's a very annoying experience.


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## charlieclouser (Aug 9, 2020)

telecode101 said:


> Instead of adjusting to the new realities of the marketplace, they tried to claw and scratch away at maintaining the same revenues they were reaping in during the pre-Internet days when they controlled the taps. The rest is history.



And those revenues were what provided the support for artists to develop and grow without needing to meet Daniel Ek's requirements for a continuous stream of "content". As that model dominates the current landscape, the environment in which the legendary artists of the future can mature becomes ever smaller. The artists I like, the ones who prove their mettle across decades, are like some rare and delicate species that can only mature in the shade of a particular species of rainforest tree - a tree that now only grows in a single valley now that streaming has bulldozed most of the rainforest. 

And the bulldozers are getting closer to that last valley.



telecode101 said:


> What you have now is a music world that is populated by platforms like Spotify that may not be primarily interested in great music and great art. They just want content and lots of it. But the good news is, Spotify is not the only game in town and there are much better avenues for music makers who are focused on creating great music and great art. The landscape is only going to get wider and bigger and more interesting as time moves ahead and new players get access to the technology and enter the landscape. You will probably get platforms that specialize in particular genres and artists, sort of like the old Island and Stiff record labels of a long time ago. Spotify is a great place to stay abeast of new popular music trends.



Sure, it's a great way to discover new music. Mostly trash, but plenty of it.



telecode101 said:


> There is a platform for everyone. Whether you want to become the next DJ Khaled or the next Apex Twin.



Exactly. My previous statement stands.


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## chocobitz825 (Aug 9, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> And those revenues were what provided the support for artists to develop and grow without needing to meet Daniel Ek's requirements for a continuous stream of "content". As that model dominates the current landscape, the environment in which the legendary artists of the future can mature becomes ever smaller. The artists I like, the ones who prove their mettle across decades, are like some rare and delicate species that can only mature in the shade of a particular species of rainforest tree - a tree that now only grows in a single valley now that streaming has bulldozed most of the rainforest.
> 
> And the bulldozers are getting closer to that last valley.
> 
> ...



glass half empty/half full kinda deal here. Spotify has made me feel the glass is half full. I have fallen in love with so many wonderful artists who dream big and do incredible things with their freedom. None of the BS. Just people who had a song they wanted to make and they got it out there.


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## charlieclouser (Aug 9, 2020)

Mornats said:


> I saw Muse last summer which blew me away.



They, of course, got their start under the "old model" - on Maverick Records label in the late 1990's. By that time they already had a few years and tours under their belt, but still.... old model with label support, not DIY Spotify streamer style career-building.

I realize that my music discovery and consumption habits are not typical, and certainly not recommended for casuals. I listen to the same "good" records over and over and over again, for the same reason I've watched "Casino" and "2001:A Space Odyssey" dozens if not hundreds of times. When I find something I like, I attempt grind it into dust under my feet, and if it survives, then it's a rock. And then it's passed my test. And then it's allowed to stay.

So I'm not suggesting that my reasoning for hating on the streaming model applies to everyone. But it has had the very real effect of narrowing the fertile ground in which the artists that I like need to grow.

As in my earlier post, I only want to farm the crops grown in the shade of a particular species of tree, and the streaming bulldozers are coming for that last valley in which that tree still grows. Most people can eat factory-farmed stuff as well as the rainforest delicacies which I crave, and that's fine. And I can even digest a bit of factory-farmed fast-food music once in a while without dying of some exotic allergy.

But I'm talking here about FARMING, not EATING. I can eat lots of different stuff, just like most people.

But when it comes to what I want to FARM, I have no interest in running a Tyson chicken factory.

And that's why I exited the record industry. When I saw the streaming bulldozers coming over the hill, headed for my ever-shrinking valley, I lit out for the territories. And now I can still grow my weird crop that few want to eat, but that I still enjoy growing.

And that's that.


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## chocobitz825 (Aug 9, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> They, of course, got their start under the "old model" - on Maverick Records label in the late 1990's. By that time they already had a few years and tours under their belt, but still.... old model with label support, not DIY Spotify streamer style career-building.



OK, I'm sorry but the "Old Model" is a bit BS. Muse didn't become Muse in a vacuum. They came up as a part of a larger trend of rock bands replacing bubble pop and boy bands. When it was time, there were countless media machines aimed at rock for them to utilize to extend their reach. There were festivals and magazines and tv shows all aimed at not only pushing them but other bands in the genre to milk it all for cash. 

You could say that the age of SoundCloud is doing the same for rappers these days. Quality aside, the proble with the "old model" is that it rests on a bed of marketing that isn't there anymore. There is no centralized musical experience other than the curated playlists of streaming platforms, and that is pretty optional consumtion for most people. It's hard for new artists to be like the old ones because, by the time they're ready to take off, the trends have already changed. That's why they hustle. That's why they're constantly trying to keep attention. Because the machine that used to do all that is gone. still too busy trying to pry pennies out of the hands of consumers. 

It's not a lack of talent or drive. There are some INCREDIBLY talented people out there, whether you've found them or not. Just be honest though. Kids these days are not fighting on the same battleground as some of our favorite artists of yesteryear.


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## Mornats (Aug 9, 2020)

If I may interject what I hope is a little distraction here, I just looked at my summer rewind playlist and it's frighteningly accurate for summer 2020.


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## Mornats (Aug 9, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> I realize that my music discovery and consumption habits are not typical, and certainly not recommended for casuals. I listen to the same "good" records over and over and over again, for the same reason I've watched "Casino" and "2001:A Space Odyssey" dozens if not hundreds of times. When I find something I like, I attempt grind it into dust under my feet, and if it survives, then it's a rock. And then it's allowed to stay.


That's how my music habits started too. I guess what I want now is to broaden by horizons with the same quality music and I hope that technology lets me do that easily, or quickly as I'm post mid 40s and have other things to do too. So far, Spotify is helping but I'm listening to what you're saying about quality and wondering if I'm taking the wrong approach or maybe my taste just isn't great and I'm enjoying what the algorithms are throwing out.

Gotta say though, some of my better listening experiences have been from finding VI-Control members' music on SoundCloud.


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## charlieclouser (Aug 9, 2020)

chocobitz825 said:


> OK, I'm sorry but the "Old Model" is a bit BS. Muse didn't become Muse in a vacuum. They came up as a part of a larger trend of rock bands replacing bubble pop and boy bands. When it was time, there were countless media machines aimed at rock for them to utilize to extend their reach. There were festivals and magazines and tv shows all aimed at not only pushing them but other bands in the genre to milk it all for cash.



Exactly. They had label support. That's what I mean by "old model". They weren't trying to DIY their own website and Facebook page, and moderate the comments thread on their weekly Twitch stream. They were able to devote maximum time and effort to their craft with a minimum of distraction from things like doing a password recovery for the admin dashboard on their WIX site.



chocobitz825 said:


> You could say that the age of SoundCloud is doing the same for rappers these days. Quality aside, the proble with the "old model" is that it rests on a bed of marketing that isn't there anymore. There is no centralized musical experience other than the curated playlists of streaming platforms, and that is pretty optional consumtion for most people. It's hard for new artists to be like the old ones because, by the time they're ready to take off, the trends have already changed. That's why they hustle. That's why they're constantly trying to keep attention. Because the machine that used to do all that is gone. still too busy trying to pry pennies out of the hands of consumers.
> 
> It's not a lack of talent or drive. There are some INCREDIBLY talented people out there, whether you've found them or not. Just be honest though. Kids these days are not fighting on the same battleground as some of our favorite artists of yesteryear.



I agree absolutely. So in this case, I, for one, do NOT welcome our new robot overlords. I liked the old non-robot overlords better!

I admit to being jaded and passing off much new music with a "meh...next." Every once in a while I find something that makes me prick up my ears, and it's often something of dubious "quality" but bold direction like Die Antwoord or something equally silly. But I'm an old fart and am quite happy to play my old Gang Of Four records and go to my Roger Waters concerts with the other graybeards. I don't need a continuous supply of NEW, I just need a steady diet of GOOD - even if the good is the same old good as yesterday.

So I am definitely not the ideal customer for the playlist-model of the new music economy, that's for sure. I'll be the old guy in the wheelchair screaming, "Alexa, play My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts" and hearing the reply, "Did you mean ORDER FIVE FENCE POSTS?"


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## GNP (Aug 9, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> I realize that my music discovery and consumption habits are not typical, and certainly not recommended for casuals. I listen to the same "good" records over and over and over again, for the same reason I've watched "Casino" and "2001:A Space Odyssey" dozens if not hundreds of times. When I find something I like, I attempt grind it into dust under my feet, and if it survives, then it's a rock. And then it's passed my test. And then it's allowed to stay.



Gettin harder and harder to repeat watch and listen to the stuff you love, and retain who you are, under all this surveillance society, ain't it


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## telecode101 (Aug 9, 2020)

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## charlieclouser (Aug 9, 2020)

telecode101 said:


> You sound like maybe my generation. I am a film guy, so will throw this at you: why do you watch and re-watch those films again and again? They were made in a different era and belong to a different world. If you were to make those films today (especially something as abstract as 2001!) it would flop. (see how well Aronofsky's films do in theaters pre-COVID compared to Disney, Pixar and Marvel comic films).
> 
> The modern audience is attracted to serails and bite sized 30 to 45 minute chunks of filmic entertainment. Hence the abundance of serial type films like Umbrella Academy and Dark on Netflix. I think this sort of also extends to music for mass consumption in some ways. Hence the link between singles, and EPs vs full albums and double albums.
> 
> Spotify is a platform that caters to a particular mass audience. You can't judge them as evil because they are letting you know that the modern mold of musician that appeals to young teenage and millennial audiences does not resemble the rock stars of 25 or 50 years ago. It is what it is.



Careful, the phrase "It is what it is" now has a loaded connotation ever since it's been deployed by Dear Leader! But seriously, I watch and re-watch my favorite films, and keep listening to my favorite records because.... I like them. I think they're good. I think they 're better than the alternative. Simple as that. Watching Michael Clayton for the twentieth time on an iPad is still more appealing to me that sitting through Ant Man & The Wasp all the way to the end, even if I had the Cinerama Dome all to myself!

Besides, who cares if Casino or 2001 would flop if they somehow came out last year, in a climate dominated by Marvel churn? Since when does success or popularity bear any relation to quality? Never, that's when. The great unwashed masses love the taste of garbage and buy it by the ton, but that's their problem. Lots of the films, artists, and records that I love were never mainstream successes - hell, most of the films and records I've MADE were never mainstream successes. Doesn't matter. I like what I like, and the punters have shit taste. I wouldn't trust 'em to pick out a couch.

My wife devours series after series on Netflix etc., (she's halfway through "Glitch" right now) and out of solidarity I give 'em the old college try, but I fail to find gravitas, truth, meaning... and my attention wanders. I don't need films or music to entertain me or help pass the time, but if it strikes a chord then I'll wear that sucker out. Around our house it's her saying, "How many times can you watch 'Se7en' anyway?", to which I reply, "Infinity times. How many times can you watch "Game Of Thrones?" Result = deadlock. Tie game.

Something new does not excite or interest me as much as something good.

Except maybe in the case of comedy. I can always handle a new episode of snarky dumb comedy like American Dad or Curb Your Enthusiasm. I could watch infinite episodes of Larry David and JB Smoove acting like assholes, but I admit that they don't taste as good the tenth time around. But Scorsese / Kubrick / Fincher? Just put it on loop and leave me alone.

But it's really no mystery to me why Spotify is a success, or why it's the perfect vehicle for many to discover new music. I don't gel with the algorithm, and that's fine. I only have two points to my opinions about the new streaming economy: the rate of pay is shit, and that inexorably leads to a narrowing of the rainforest in which grows the crops I like to farm and to eat.

The last two decades have borne this out, but it doesn't bother me too much or really even affect me since I exited that valley in favor of greener pastures. I feel bad for the aspiring artists these days, but I'm probably the equivalent of a retired horse-carriage maker feeling sorry for the workers on the Model-T assembly line. Those workers were likely fine with making a low wage right from day one, even with slim chances for advancement, instead of spending a decade or two as an apprentice to a coach-builder in hopes of one day opening their own shop, only to find that the market for horse-drawn carriages had evaporated.

I'm obviously biased because I did reasonably well under the old model, and then managed to see the writing on the wall and grab a chair before the music stopped, so I was spared the pain of any economic hardship as revenues in that sector cratered because I was, by then, merely a disinterested observer watching from the sidelines. But I permit myself some nostalgia for the bygone days of big-budget album production and some of the artists and records that came out of that era.

At the same time, I'm not pining for the fjords by any means. You couldn't convince me to go back to spending a month at The Record Plant chipping away at tracking drums on a dozen songs! I much prefer the weird little niche I managed to find where I can farm my exotic mushrooms undisturbed.


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## Mornats (Aug 9, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> I only have two points to my opinions about the new streaming economy: the rate of pay is shit, and that inexorably leads to a narrowing of the rainforest in which grows the crops I like to farm and to eat.



For the first point, that's why I still go out and buy albums, and as someone mentioned above, will now seek our their bandcamp pages to throw money at. But that's because I'm a bass player and someone who hangs out online chatting to musicians. The second point, man I really hoped that Spotify would help level the playing field and be a place where the unknown acts could sit shoulder to shoulder with the greats and where those quirky weird niche songs and acts could grow and flourish having found the route to the ears of weirdos like me.


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## charlieclouser (Aug 9, 2020)

poetd said:


> (you soundtracked my youth in those rooms).



It sure was fun - at the time. Ah, the fine flower of youth... so much potential, so many new experiences! But nowadays I'd probably be a grumpy gus just itching to push the engineer or ProTools operator out of the way because I thought I could do it faster and/or better. Although I did recently do a massive drum tracking session that took two weeks, and I was quite glad to have an engineer on scene so that I didn't have to listen to every millisecond of audio as it went down, listening for clipping or head rattles or whatever.

I mean, even sitting behind the rig with Reznor and Moulder in the room got to me after a while, because it all moved soooooo slowwwwwly at times, and I'd get itchy and impatient. When I'm working by myself I have nobody to blame for my imagined torture, and so somehow it's like there is no torture at all! I don't get irritated at myself for things moving slowly, it all just merges into a long slog towards the finish line. Nobody to blame but yourself = nobody to blame. Plus, I can stop and watch cartoons or type lengthy posts on this forum as and when I see fit!

But another aspect to that whole era was that each session had to be a step up from the one before - this time we'll record drums to 16 tracks instead of 12, next time we'll try putting d-drum triggers on every drum so we can trigger samples and gates from the triggers instead of the mic signals, next time we're pumping the live mics out through a PA system in the room for more beef, next time we're using live triggered samples AND live drums through the PA, next time we're putting a second PA system in the other room for double-stacked live chambers.... pretty soon you're using 22 tracks on the master reel plus 12 on the slave just for one pass of drums! It got to a point where it was not practical or even possible to think of what more to do. Not that we'd "tried everything", but we'd gone to the moon, we'd driven around the surface in the lunar rover, we'd hit golf balls into craters.... we'd planted the damn flag and now it was time to come back to earth.

But when the records are selling, and it becomes a game of un-upsmanship between the bands and the producers, things can get out of hand. And boy, did they ever. It was refreshing to work with producers like Terry Date (Prong, White Zombie, Pantera, etc.) or mixers like Andy Wallace who resisted the audio arms race and stuck to their tried-and-true methods and gear. Terry Date got absolutely HUGE sounds out of relatively little gear, and never really went for the "eight refrigerators of doom" racks like so many did. So that was a nice change, and definitely made the whole process move more quickly. I never worked with Jack Joseph Puig when he had his insane setup at Ocean Way in the Focusrite room, but just looking at the pictures now gives me a headache!


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## Markus Kohlprath (Aug 9, 2020)

telecode101 said:


> Spotify is a platform that caters to a particular mass audience. You can't judge them as evil because they are letting you know that the modern mold of musician that appeals to young teenage and millennial audiences does not resemble the rock stars of 25 or 50 years ago. It is what it is.


Hm, do they really cater or do they subtly or not so subtly create the demand of the mass audience? I'm not so sure and somehow there seems to be an unhealthy drive in the algorithmic world. Maybe nobody can be blamed for that personally but not following blindly without asking is this really the way to go might be a good idea. Like asking does the rainforest really have to go away for our civilization? Eventually alternative approaches might occur. Don't know. If that makes sense.
I strongly second Charlies point that good music and art in general needs a fertile ground to grow.


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## telecode101 (Aug 9, 2020)

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## charlieclouser (Aug 9, 2020)

Markus Kohlprath said:


> I strongly second Charlies point that good music and art in general needs a fertile ground to grow.



That's the point that Lars Ulrich was trying to make when he first came out against Napster back in the day - and the legions of the unwashed did NOT want to hear any preaching from someone like him. Their point was: how dare some zillionaire douchebag rockstar with an art collection tell them they weren't allowed to steal the latest Metallica album by downloading it from a p2p network? The audacity!

But as much as he was raked over the coals for that stance, it was exactly as valid then as it is now: A Metallica album can't be made on a laptop or home studio - it requires an eighteen-wheeler full of snare drums, a 747 full of amps, a forklift pallet of strings, and half a rainforest's worth of drum sticks. It takes a dozen highly trained professionals a year or more in zillion-dollar rooms to compose, record, mix, and assemble. Stacks and racks and more stacks and racks. Guitar techs. Drum techs. Vocal coaches. Sooooo many drum heads. It's ridiculous. But that's how those sounds are created. There are no shortcuts - not for Metallica anyway. They're not going to just use Steven Slate Drums and a Kemper Profiler and track in a bedroom. If they did, it wouldn't sound like the records that the punters loved - and not just because Slate Drums aren't good (they are), but because something ELSE happens when you're in the big room with the big setup and making the big sounds for the big dollars. Same argument that's in effect when people argue about real orchestra versus an all-samples score.

So he argued that if you force a change in the revenue structure (by stealing / streaming instead of buying the albums), it will by necessity force a change in the recording methodology. Some artists will adapt, some will not or can not. Some styles of music can only be recorded in certain ways - change the methodology and the sound will change. Maybe nobody will notice? But Metallica fans would.

Dang but did Lars take a lot of flack for that one. But I agreed, then and now. I got into it with some NIN fans at a backstage meet-n-greet right around then, and they were not happy with my defense of Lars. I tried to impress upon them how expensive and difficult it was to make the records they loved - I mean, The Fragile took YEARS and cost MILLIONS. No exaggeration. Could it have been done quicker and cheaper? Maybe. But at what cost to the end result? Would it have been the same record if we hadn't had basically unlimited time and money to do the work? For Trent to spend weeks all by himself in a house on a cliff in Big Sur, searching for solitude, trying to find someplace on this planet where the noise and the screaming and the chaos would just fucking STOP and let him THINK for a minute? For us to hire Steve Duda and Keith Hillebrandt to do additional sound design and programming? For me and Danny and Moulder to basically move to New Orleans for an indefinite amount of time? (I was there for SIX YEARS!) For Trent to buy an entire funeral home and a 72-input SSL and build a freaking recording studio from scratch? For us to hire the studio manager from Record Plant and fly in techs from SSL every few months and and and and and.... those records were exhausting and expensive to make, and the current environment gets less and less hospitable to such risky adventures every day.

And it's kind of sad.

Not to say that this is what MUST happen in order for great records to be made, but when you have an ultra-fertile petri dish of unlimited size, and you seed it with some exotic strain of bacteria and leave it completely undisturbed for a few years, you never know what type of organisms will jump out when you finally crack the lid.

But this guy don't wanna hear it. Fair enough, he seems okay with the current state of affairs:


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## classified_the_x (Aug 9, 2020)

Art will not necessarily evolve in terms of complexity in a linear form. Think about the Renaissance. Masters took two years to complete a ceiling for a church sometimes, Da Vinci would spend a lot of time and have workers helping him complete his masterpieces.

Then modern art sometimes is a polygon with some colours, and worth millions, sometimes as much as a Renaissance painting. Or a guy doing Photoshop collages and commissioning people to paint it for him (Jeff Koons).

Now, most of us know that to present ourselves to a library, an album is adequate. Also to a record label. That is the equivalent for us musicians, of an art exhibition, where works are coherent between each other and can be presented as an unified work. Now comes Spotify CEO and tells us to focus on singles, because ppl are addicted to 4s Tik Tok videos and albums are not worth it anymore. We just need to feed the machine more frequently...

It is a destructive statement in the sense that an album is more of a work of art than a bunch of singles with no coherence... But, he knows much much more than me about the industry, maybe the attention span of young ppl is gone beyond relief?

Also, there are Pink Floyd albums, there are Metallica albums, but how many albums you listened in your life where you liked more than 2/3 tracks? Maybe he's got a point there, lol... Albums were just full of crap, and maybe skipping filling an album with half baked tracks will improve general quality. Although works will be less coherent.


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## Mike Fox (Aug 9, 2020)

MartinH. said:


> Imho it's not the internet alone. It's also the musicians. Just consider the total number of albums that exist today vs the number of albums in 1990. I don't have any numbers but I bet it's a staggering difference.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I love Ola! And his guitars for that matter!

He really hits the nail on the head in this video, and he's in the perfect position to say these things, because he has both a successfull band and YouTube channel. It's all around excellent advice.

Unfortunately, it's a sad wake up call for many, because there's a lot of really talented musicians out there who don't know shit about marketing, and they may never get noticed. Will this marketing/youtube bubble burst? Yeah, probably, eventually.

But i think the key is either figuring out what the next trend is or learning how to adapt and take advantage of the current popular trend.

There will always be ways to get noticed.


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## Mornats (Aug 9, 2020)

classified_the_x said:


> but how many albums you listened in your life where you liked more than 2/3 tracks



For me, a lot of the albums I listened to back in the 80s and 90s. Not so much now. RHCP's Blood Sugar Sex Magic, RATM's debut, Metallica's Black Album. For me, not a single filler song in sight and very cohesive albums. If I hear one song from them on a playlist then my mind starts playing the next one from the album automatically as I'm so used to them forming a part of the whole.

Nowadays, even if the whole album is good, it does feel like the artist took 10 of their 50 best songs and put them together in a playlist and called it an album. There's sometimes little cohesion.

I can't remember the artist but one of the big acts refused to put their albums on iTunes (back when iTunes was new) because they didn't want people putting their album on shuffle. Their reasoning was that the album was written as a single entity with each song making up but a part of the whole and listening to them out of context ruined the experience. I tend to agree with that and I miss that about albums these days. I love being taken on an emotional journey through and album.


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## Greg (Aug 9, 2020)

I've irked out a pretty good living with Youtube. My music would have had exactly 0% chance of success under the old model. I would have also completely abandoned it as a serious career path if there wasn't at least a small trickle of income from internet streaming and licensing.

Maybe my career will be a tiny sugar cube compared to Metallicas birthday cake, but I am having a ton of fun enjoying the freedom of the new model and saving up to record a real orchestra someday. 

Yeah streaming $ is doom and gloom for artists that need a choice of 15 snare drums before ultimately mixing it 12 db too loud anyways. But there are also many stories of random people finding success and being able to devote their lives to art via the internet.


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## Thomas Kallweit (Aug 9, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> But as much as he was raked over the coals for that stance, it was exactly as valid then as it is now: A Metallica album can't be made on a laptop or home studio - it requires an eighteen-wheeler full of snare drums, a 747 full of amps, a forklift pallet of strings, and half a rainforest's worth of drum sticks. It takes a dozen highly trained professionals a year or more in zillion-dollar rooms to compose, record, mix, and assemble. Stacks and racks and more stacks and racks. Guitar techs. Drum techs. Vocal coaches. Sooooo many drum heads. It's ridiculous. But that's how those sounds are created. There are no shortcuts - not for Metallica anyway. They're not going to just use Steven Slate Drums and a Kemper Profiler and track in a bedroom. If they did, it wouldn't sound like the records that the punters loved - and not just because Slate Drums aren't good (they are), but because something ELSE happens when you're in the big room with the big setup and making the big sounds for the big dollars. Same argument that's in effect when people argue about real orchestra versus an all-samples score.



Just to chime in and I don't want to upset anyone here as it's an interesting, important discussion!

So, a little off topic... but just when I read about the huge needs for the production of Metallica music (and I get that this was partly written in a satirical manner considering the amounts of money and equipment needed) I had the rememberance of some discussions on loudness war some years ago. Discussed was the album "Death magnetic" from 2008. It was not about the used equipment, but the mastering (where some people really thought is was over the top with the loudness)

Here's one pic:






The image is showing two mixes of a part of the album " The Day That Never Comes " the wave from the top half is the CD-Mix. The complete article can be found here: http://recordinghacks.com/2008/12/20/metallica-wins-the-loudness-wars/

So, sorry, but this came to mind, when you mentioned the battle of material / resources. And I'm no hater, I like some Metallica stuff a lots. Though when I read above all those costy and complex pre-investigations I don't know how all this effort can be heard when everything is squashed like that in end.

I also remember well when Lars Ulrich got lots of hate because of his criticiscm concerning Napster and the dawn of file-sharing. And yes, I could understand his POV well and it still stands.
I guess the discussion will always come up again if it's necessary to use so much hardware stuff or not.

To come on topic here again:

I also have no good feelings about getting more and more recommendations via AI and not by humans any more. And yes, I also discovered some good stuff via realted songs/videos algorithms, but also lots of crap which did not fit in at all.

It can get better or not, but I share the thoughts that companies like spotify are not the good ones. They are not really interested in music! They found a distribution model to make lots of money whereas the musicians get nearly nothing in return. And that's cynical. The consumers seem to not care, as they might always use the most low-thresholded way they get offered to consume.

So - getting back on the article where the ceo said musicians should produce more content more continiously and often... this sounds similar to YouTube. Produce steadily and your ranking might improve. A really unpleasant attitude, may it be contemporary or not... sounds stressful for musicians and I cannot imagine that more quality can come out of this, no.


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## Rasoul Morteza (Aug 9, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


>



Imagine if he had discovered RGB lighting too...


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## chocobitz825 (Aug 9, 2020)

Thomas Kallweit said:


> To come on topic here again:
> 
> I also have no good feelings about getting more and more recommendations via AI and not by humans any more. And yes, I also discovered some good stuff via realted songs/videos algorithms, but also lots of crap which did not fit in at all.



I find this point interesting since previously, writers would tell you their opinions and reviews and suggest what you should like based on subjective sense of good and bad.

An algorithm tries to match you with the things you probably liked based on the things you’re listening to. To discover new things, all you have to do is search for something new and it will show you more that probably fits that taste. I don’t know why a system catered to your individual tastes is worse, unless people are longing for the tribe again and want to be guided to what’s good by public opinion.


I don’t know. I’m not saying Spotify is a saint but it’s an Outlet like any other for distributing music. If it’s big one, it’s focused on profit. If you want distribution from a source with passion for music it’s like going to your local record shop. Sure it’s got more passion, but it probably has less selection and fewer customers. Pick your poison.


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## Thomas Kallweit (Aug 9, 2020)

You're right imo what an algorithm is for and what is work is for. I get that. But: What does the algorithm know about me? And how? And where from? 
Eg. I use YouTube for lots of different sources and searches. And I don't like to be logged in all the time and also dislike that google tries to find out where I am and why I am and what I am doing. Getting rid of the memory of google is nearly impossible. That's a problem. A real problem.

Spotify may use another algorithm. I guess it is also depending on Google and being logged in and browsing there. As other content providers also do. But: Personally I don't like being AI-curated that much. So spotify does the same thing as others, yeah - using content by humans and mash it up with a sucessful wide range. As was said here: You can reach lots of potential listeners, but would they be buyers? Maybe, I don't know. 

And yes, I like it when humans/ experienced people with a passion / authors give out recommendations.
I don't trust AI at all (and I've experienced lots of fails unfortunately) and I know that it can get better the more data it's getting. Really a mixed bag. 

I really would like to get even crap recommended by a human than by AI. The conversation after that could be more fun.


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## charlieclouser (Aug 9, 2020)

classified_the_x said:


> ...but how many albums you listened in your life where you liked more than 2/3 tracks?



John Connor said it best:


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## charlieclouser (Aug 9, 2020)

Thomas Kallweit said:


> So, a little off topic... but just when I read about the huge needs for the production of Metallica music (and I get that this was partly written in a satirical manner considering the amounts of money and equipment needed) I had the rememberance of some discussions on loudness war some years ago. Discussed was the album "Death magnetic" from 2008. It was not about the used equipment, but the mastering (where some people really thought is was over the top with the loudness)



Yeah, the Death Magnetic situation was a pretty major misstep on their part. Maybe the guys' ears were too blown out after decades standing in front of that 747-load of amps, and that's why they approved such a crushed master? 



But I get that Spotify / BandCamp / Youtube / etc. is a great avenue for non-mainstream artists to get their material out there, hopefully find an audience, and maybe even some $$$. Even in the bad old days, there were niche labels, Xeroxed punk 'zines, and a healthy underground scene - although those avenues would have been of little use for many of the styles we're talking about. 

But a band that only managed to put out a couple of singles on some local weirdo label for zero dollars would have had others with a vested interest in helping - the "label honcho" who took a risk and pressed up 1,500 copies of a 7-inch to flog at the local shops was, at least a little bit, a "fan" or "believer" and would have had to expend just a few calories to recoup his investment. So that guy is helping. He's taking some of the load off the artist who, in the modern model, gets next to no help at all. 

Compared to what an algorithm is going to do to further their career, any artist would be way better off if they could convince Rick Rubin to release a 12-inch from his dorm room at NYU, or convince Wax Trax to press up 1,000 copies, send 50 out to college radio and stick 5 in each of the stores they served, and cross their fingers.

But there it is again - back then, even getting that far required the artist to convince SOMEBODY that they had made some music that was worth the trouble. There was still a barrier to entry, which has been largely removed in the streaming model - totally removed in the case of just sticking tracks on Youtube and hoping for the best. So, yes, there were gatekeepers even at the lowest levels. 

I am actually glad that there WAS at least some amount of gatekeeping. It's a good thing that the stumbling first attempts at tracks I was making in my first year at college, which I was convinced could be the next underground hit on Factory Records, were never released into the wild. They would be a source of endless embarrassment to me if the world could pull them up on Youtube now! 

And I don't think that a ton of venomous comments on a Youtube upload would have helped me learn and grow. Just seeing "you suck loser KYS" repeated 200 times would not have really helped, and might have convinced me to stop fooling myself and become an architect as originally planned. 

So I'm not totally convinced that having zero barriers to entry, no gatekeepers or arbiters of taste of any kind standing in your way, is unequivocally a good thing across the board. I always think of progress as if you're claiming a ladder that's slowly sinking into the mud - each time you climb one step higher, the ladder sinks by an equivalent amount and your shoes are constantly mere inches above the mud. In the old gatekeeper days, you needed permission to even step on the ladder, but in the new model you're allowed to jump right on - but the mud is now infinitely deeper and the ladder seems to sink faster.


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## Nova (Aug 9, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> The Fragile took YEARS and cost MILLIONS.



The Fragile is the last time I have called an album a masterpiece and I still call it that. It's literal perfection to me and it was obvious that it came from years of blood, sweat and tears (and drugs).


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## chocobitz825 (Aug 9, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> Yeah, the Death Magnetic situation was a pretty major misstep on their part. Maybe the guys' ears were too blown out after decades standing in front of that 747-load of amps, and that's why they approved such a crushed master?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



but this is the problem with then and now. Back then you would appeal to a label and find people to support you, and those gatekeepers took a measured risk on new talent based on how well they thought they could make it work with their connections and resources.

appealing to a label when you don’t have enough followers means nothing now. Followers are currency and every business has shifted to that model. Commercial value is not in the potential to gain followers, but rather in the reality of already having followers now. The gate is higher than before because you have to be self made and sufficient before many chances will come your way. In the face of all that it’s not like the kids gave up. They’re hustling like the old artists did, but in a way compatible with the current market.

I just think we need to acknowledge the hypocrisy of celebrating art, while also trying to decide who gets to participate. It’s not like this new age is producing more bad music than before. There’s more music accessible, period. Good and bad.

I would encourage anyone who disagrees with Spotify’s methods to work on an alternative. Same way the indies labels were the anti major labels, there’s no sense and complaining about how they do business if we’re not going to try and champion an alternative.


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## charlieclouser (Aug 9, 2020)

Nova said:


> The Fragile is the last time I have called an album a masterpiece and I still call it that. It's literal perfection to me and it was obvious that it came from years of blood, sweat and tears (and drugs).



I'm glad you feel that way.

It was.... not easy. Or quick. Or cheap!


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## Geoff Grace (Aug 9, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> Could it have been done quicker and cheaper? Maybe. But at what cost to the end result? Would it have been the same record if we hadn't had basically unlimited time and money to do the work?


Clearly, it would not.

I've been on a Steely Dan listening jag lately. Talk about a case in point in which an artist clearly benefited from a big budget and lots of studio time!

I was deeply immersed in the studio scene of the 90s (i.e. 80-hour workweeks in one major studio after another), and I can bear witness to the advantages of having a big budget. One such artist I worked for would record a full orchestra, scrap it, hire new arrangers and orchestrators and try again until it was the best it could be. Up to 40 songs would be recorded for an album, but only the best dozen or so would make the final cut. How many people can do that in today's world?

Best,

Geoff


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## charlieclouser (Aug 9, 2020)

chocobitz825 said:


> appealing to a label when you don’t have enough followers means nothing now. Followers are currency and every business has shifted to that model. Commercial value is not in the potential to gain followers, but rather in the reality of already having followers now. The gate is higher than before because you have to be self made and sufficient before many chances will come your way. In the face of all that it’s not like the kids gave up. They’re hustling like the old artists did, but in a way compatible with the current market.



Very good points. I never put my finger on the gate actually being higher than before, but I guess that's what I was getting at (without realizing) with my analogy about the mud now being deeper and the ladder sinking faster. For my personality, the new model is even more terrifying than the old. I don't want to interact with followers - or anybody, really. So convincing three people at some indie label in 1985 would have been bad enough, never mind trying to build a following and interact with listeners one at a time until the numbers hit critical mass. Agony! I would have been quite happy to just make the music I wanted to make in total isolation from the listeners / fans / press, which is why the NIN situation appealed to me as we had pretty massive access control and our process was basically hidden from public view.



chocobitz825 said:


> I just think we need to acknowledge the hypocrisy of celebrating art, while also trying to decide who gets to participate. It’s not like this new age is producing more bad music than before. There’s more music accessible, period. Good and bad.



Well, whether the gatekeepers are old-school label execs, or the number of followers on your feed, they're more of a barrier to actually succeeding, not to merely participating. Anyone can make music even easier than ever before, and they can also get it out there easier, which on the surface are all good developments. So that provides some measure of satisfaction of the creative urge, but with very few hurdles, low risk, and little consequence for missteps or failure. Without one's "record deal" hanging in the balance, it's just a little too easy to pump out the mediocrity. If it gets no up-doots then it might quietly disappear and hopefully you can delete the file so it doesn't come back to haunt you once you make it. And, yes, getting instant feedback on your latest jam in a comment thread can have value - if you want to compose by committee, tailoring your output to "give the people what they want". But that's not the way my favorite artists make my favorite music, and I might argue that it's not the way "great art" is created at all. The music that has the most impact and meaning for me comes like a bolt from the blue, usually defying convention and subverting expectations, and is often very much NOT what "the people want" - at first anyway. Even "The Fragile", although it did debut at number one, dropped like a stone on the charts, confused the fans who were hoping for "The Downward Spiral part II", and took many years to be seen and appreciated for what it is. If we had operated in some sort of listener-feedback loop, and attempted to cater to expectations of either the label execs or the fans, the album would have been very different. Hell, even Danny and I were dumb enough to question the wisdom of Trent's direction at times. Boy, were we ever wrong! It's a good thing we were down in the lower decks shoveling coal and had no access to the bridge, or we might have tried to grab the wheel and shout "hard a-starboard" and thus crashed the ship directly into an iceberg.



chocobitz825 said:


> I would encourage anyone who disagrees with Spotify’s methods to work on an alternative. Same way the indies labels were the anti major labels, there’s no sense and complaining about how they do business if we’re not going to try and champion an alternative.



It seems like, as time goes by, the various streaming sites are kind of settling into different roles, sort of like fresh-squeezed juice stratifying into separate layers of pulp and water. Like, Spotify is for general-public use with playlist sharing and recommendation algorithms (almost like "radio of the future"), while BandCamp seems more "band oriented" and is where smaller artists can find ways to get paid better, while SoundCloud is where viral breakouts build followings at exponential speeds with no hope of payment until the artist opens up other revenue streams. So to some extent there's already different horses for different courses. The trick I guess is mastering the different ways to create and leverage exposure on each one, as they seem very different in that respect.


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## charlieclouser (Aug 9, 2020)

Geoff Grace said:


> I've been on a Steely Dan listening jag lately. Talk about a case in point in which an artist clearly benefited from a big budget and lots of studio time!



Man, my wife does not, can not, will not understand why, out of the dozen or so Super-Audio CD releases I bought in 5.1 surround, Gaucho is the one I keep listening to. She's like, "What is this yacht-rock crap? I hate it!" and I keep trying to explain that no "true muso" can hate on The Dan, that it represents the absolute pinnacle of perfection in production, arrangement, and playing expertise. You may not like the actual music contained therein (I'm not even sure if I do), but there is no denying the level of quality, skill, and raw talent on display. It's just perfectly executed. Watching the documentary where they go through all the alternate guitar solos and stuff they left out, and detail the dozens of ace session players whose performances got scrapped, is equal parts illuminating and agonizing. It feels like sacrilege to hear an alternate guitar solo get un-muted! 

But, yeah, it would be a hard sell to get a label to okay yet another purchase order for yet another month of lockout at Sigma or The Village Recorder these days. But I'm glad the optimism (and cocaine) were not in short supply back then!




Geoff Grace said:


> I was deeply immersed in the studio scene of the 90s (i.e. 80-hour workweeks in one major studio after another), and I can bear witness to the advantages of having a big budget. One such artist I worked for would record a full orchestra, scrap it, hire new arrangers and orchestrators and try again until it was the best it could be. Up to 40 songs would be recorded for an album, but only the best dozen or so would make the final cut. How many people can do that in today's world?



That's bonkers - but not all that surprising. I think that one of the most valuable skills an artist can develop is the ability to discard material. To say, "It's not good enough, let's do it again." If you actually love what you're doing, why not take another swing at it? You get to do "the fun part" again, and you'll hopefully get a little better with each attempt. That kind of optimism and love of the process is in evidence when HZ is asked, "What is your favorite piece of music of yours?" and he answers, "The one I haven't written yet." (or something like that). I often find myself erasing and re-doing a take not because the next pass is measurably better, but because I just enjoy actually doing it and want to do it again. Not practical on the studio clock of course, but that's why I grew to dislike being in the big room with the big crew. I started to realize that even if I do manage to capture lightning in a bottle on the first pass by some miracle, I enjoy the act itself much more than the result. The high comes more from doing it, and less from listening to it. I guess that's why grinding out weekly tv scores in a massive hurry was just fine by me - lots more of the doing it part, less of the sitting around picking things apart and stroking the chin part.


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## telecode101 (Aug 9, 2020)

..


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## telecode101 (Aug 9, 2020)

..


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## asherpope (Aug 9, 2020)

august80 said:


> but you sir, are toxic af.


That'd be you.


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## chocobitz825 (Aug 9, 2020)

Tough thing is, the business changed drastically over these last ten years. It’s the Wild West out there now. I know some people who have a handle on it in a sort of hybrid old school new school way. What bothers me is how many talented younger artists out there can’t make it work despite their brilliant work. I’m always bothered when they get trashed because of the way the market changed.


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## charlieclouser (Aug 9, 2020)

august80 said:


> @charlieclouser - you seem to ramble on a lot about modern music, and the glory days, and the "state of the industry" and how people should do things, and on and on. But I look at your Spotify, iTunes, etc. catalog and there's virtually nothing. Some anthologies of old Saw music, a few soundtracks from the last 10 years, and then a bunch of music from the 90s. Most of your discography is pre-2005 ffs.



Yup. Lots of old chestnuts from the glory days of over-spending in the studio - that have sold millions of copies and given me more platinum record plaques than I can fit on the walls of my little studio. A few scores to a handful of genre flicks that nobody really cares about, but that I enjoyed scoring - and have racked up more than a billion dollars at the box office. What's not on Spotify is the bulk of what's on my IMDB, and what does the heavy lifting on my BMI statements - about 250 hours of network tv scores.



august80 said:


> Are you really the person that should be sounding off about the modern music industry? You're not really releasing anything. You don't really have much of a following relative to your ego. You seem to spend more time on here than working on music (maybe it's all stored away in a vault somewhere, who knows), primarily bitching about other people in a community that is unlikely to tell you to go f-yourself.



I can sound off about whatever I want - nobody has to read, agree with, or believe what I write on some forum. Talk is cheap, and mine is free. Besides, I'm 57 freaking years old, and I've never done anything other than make music. I don't need any more money, and I don't owe anybody (especially not Daniel Ek!) some constant stream of new releases. I don't "release" music anyway - if there's music of mine on Spotify or wherever it's not because I put it there or give a shit if it does or doesn't get heard. The only reason anything of mine is on Spotify is because I share ownership of the masters and can't really prevent it from being up there - the record labels and film producers who co-own my masters do all that. It's not like I was ever out there "on the grind", promoting myself, or actively trying to do anything other than fiddle around in the studio.

Any thirst I have is entirely quenched right here in this room. 

I don't have anything to prove. Not to you, the general public, or Spotify's algorithm. Like or don't like, listen or don't listen, I don't care. I don't have a website, I don't maintain a social media presence or court followers or listeners, and I'm really only on this forum to read and discuss tech topics mostly. I just... do what I do. If people like my music or hate it that's their problem.

So while I don't have anything to prove, I do have experience. And I'll share that experience, even though it's not typical and probably is not relevant to anybody but me, because... why not? I wish that when I was coming up I could have heard this kind of bullshit straight from the bull's ass. Might have hurt, might have helped, but some information is better than no information. I wish I had known how the sausage got made before I tried to start making it myself.



august80 said:


> I listen to (and know) plenty of modern artists who do exceptional work, tour, collaborate, do publicity, try new things - and most importantly, release music they love to people who want to listen to it. Platforms like Spotify and Youtube and Apple Music have been an enormous part of their financial independence.



Good. Awesome. That's fine. I hope they make house-buying money off their music. I really do. This discussion went a little sideways, but my original points stand: Spotify payouts are shit compared to what traditional royalties used to be, what they currently should be, and what they could be - and Daniel Ek's statements have rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. And this newly-leveled playing field can get a little muddy at times. Not my problem, not my concern, just my observation and opinion.



august80 said:


> It seems that you're bitching about an industry you're not really involved in anymore.



Well, you're right that I'm not really involved in the industry anymore - not the "randomly release new music on Spotify and all other streaming outlets" side of it anyway.

Only thing I'm bitching about is Spotify's business model and payouts - and I'm not alone. I wouldn't even have known what Spotify was if established artists hadn't ben waving the "low streaming pay" flag for a few years already. So I took a look at my statements and was like, "I'm on Spotify? How did that happen? Holy crap, they were right. These per-play payout numbers suck donkey balls!"



august80 said:


> Were you planning on retiring off the Jigsaw soundtrack?



Nobody is going to retire off the money from one Jigsaw soundtrack. But the royalties from my scores for 250 episodes of various prime-time network tv series, that aren't even on Spotify? That's a different story. And looking at the numbers, and doing a little math where I divide down X million prime-time viewers versus Y million Spotify streams divided by Z minutes of running time led me to the conclusion that, yes, Spotify's payouts are low. Heinously low.

So why don't I just walk away? Well, as you say, it looks like I have. I don't release new music just to get it out there - I genuinely don't care if people hear it, like it, hate it, whatever. I'll score a tv series or yet another SAW film if my agents drop one in my lap, but if not, no biggie. Maybe I'll try to learn to surf, maybe I'll just keep shit-posting on here.



august80 said:


> Do you really know what it's like to release a solo album in this environment? Cause 10s of thousands of artists do, and make a living from it - usually with an exceptional amount of hard work. Something I'm sure you're not unfamiliar with...at least at one time. I would prefer to hear from them - especially how they are making this new music environment work - then some angry composer who hasn't released much of anything in 10 years yet seems to have it all figured out.



No, I don't know what it's like to release a solo album in this environment. I only know what it's like to be a part of a stupidly-huge record-company juggernaut from your dad's era. But I do see very detailed printouts and charts of my royalty statements, and that leeeeetle teensy-tiny slice in the pie chart that represents three million streams on Spotify makes me go, "hold on a second, pull up the full statement". And a little back-of-the-envelope math tells me they pay shit per-minute compared to old-school radio, recent-school broadcast tv, or ancient-school record sales. Meh, as Dear Leader™ said, "it is what it is". I'm just glad I'm not trying to buy a house off the back of Spotify payouts.



august80 said:


> Maybe take a break from the internet, write some damn music, make an effort at promoting it and see how you feel afterward.



Hah! Take a break from the internet? I'm under corona lockdown, what the hell else I'm gonna do with all this free time? I'm keeping busy, using my skills and talents to create something new that will be out there sooner or later, and maybe people will like it, maybe they'll shit-can it. Doesn't matter, I'm making it for myself.



august80 said:


> All your rants are just a giant fuck you to the countless hard working musicians and composers out there - famous and unfamous. I'm surprised more people haven't called you out on this. I got complaints about the modern music industry, but you sir, are toxic af.



I'm not trying to rant a big fuck-you to anyone - even if there's plenty of deserving recipients. If the kids can find success in navigating the modern music economy, fan-freaking-tastic. I hope they can build a meaningful, fulfilling career out of it, or at the very least have some fun and satisfy their creative urge. 

But this whole discussion started as a reaction to Daniel Ek's statements, which said something like artists shouldn't expect to succeed if they only released music once over few years - and that's a sucky situation for the kind of artists who don't (or can't) churn out mass quantities of content to feed the beast. So I cited some examples of (okay, dad-rock) artists that came up under the old model (as I did), and built lasting (often legendary) careers, and which I thought would be less likely to develop in the way they did had they been trying to operate under today's model. And I thought that would have been a shame.

I guess Ek's statements are not much different to having a record company threatening to drop an artist unless they finish the album by summer - but it IS very different with respect to the total lack of support and low pay-outs that Spotify provides to artists, so that makes the situation more akin to a record STORE telling the artist to pick up the pace. When the label tells you to hurry up and finish, it's because they're getting tired of throwing cash at you to get the album done, but when Ek tells you to pick up the pace it's because he wants more content that he won't pay for until someone listens to it - and he'll pay even less than you expect or deserve. I guess it's just a case of cutting out the middle-men, but it's going to have a knock-on effect and nobody should be surprised at the push-back from the artist's side.

Even though I don't have a dog in this fight, I'm sure as hell not the only one waving that flag.


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## Geoff Grace (Aug 9, 2020)

Well said, *Charlie*!

But who took down the _Please don't feed the trolls_ sign? I know I saw it around here somewhere. Now where did it go off to?...

Best,

Geoff


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## MartinH. (Aug 10, 2020)

I don't really use spotify anymore, but back when I did, I discovered some new blackmetal bands over it. I listened almost exclusively to such genres and didn't listen to generated playlists, so the recommendations I most often saw were of the "these bands sound similar to the one you're listening to right now" kind. And there were some useful recommendations every now and then. But I agree that youtube works slightly better for that in some cases. A friend recently installed spotify for the first time and was quite happy with the recommendation algorithm after training it for a bit.

To be honest the main thing that drove me away from spotify is that I'm not a daily music listener and I tend to listen to mostly music I know already. There were times where I'd only listen to podcasts for a week straight and I thought I simply don't "need" a music subscription service. Discovery via youtube and buying albums on bandcamp seems like a better deal for everyone.




charlieclouser said:


> I want my mind blown, my world rocked, my entire world-view shaken to its foundations. I want to come out of the experience thinking, "Nothing will ever be the same again." (in the case of a Roger Waters concert) - or, at the very least, I want to think, "Holy crap they absolutely KILLED it on stage tonight." (in the case of an AC/DC show):



You raise a lot of good points with all your posts! There are two more things though that I think may have a big impact, and maybe even bigger than music streaming on spotify and youtube. 

First, the threshold for new music to make a splash has been moved by a lot of factors. I'm too young to have lived through the birth of Metal, but going from no-metal existing to Metallica in their prime, must have been quite mind-blowing. How the hell is anyone supposed to recreate that kind of impact today, in the context of our times and what already is out there? I'm not sure it's possible. How much more extreme can music get to make someone think "wow, _THAT's_ extreme!"? I'm not sure it's a realistic expectation anymore. 

And secondly, if you look at all non-music parts of your day to day life back when you grew up, compared to today, there are just so many more things to keep you occupied and fighting for your attention. I think music simply had a much higher impact on your life back then. Not just a higher _value_, but also a higher _utility_. Streaming and piracy drive down the _market value_, but tons of non-music factors like games, netflix, kindles, podcasts, TV, non-music-youtube, etc. drive down the relative _utility _of music compared to all the other things you have at your disposal. Afaik just chilling and listening to music used to be a fairly common thing for young people 40+ years ago. To many in that same age group today, it's probably excruciatingly boring to do the same without also doing something on their smartphone at the same time. Modern media has eroded the landscape of minds to be much less fertile ground for art to fall onto. And the blame for that can't be pinned on spotify alone imho.




classified_the_x said:


> Also, there are Pink Floyd albums, there are Metallica albums, but how many albums you listened in your life where you liked more than 2/3 tracks? Maybe he's got a point there, lol... Albums were just full of crap, and maybe skipping filling an album with half baked tracks will improve general quality. Although works will be less coherent.



I can't relate at all to that. I've always listened to music as chunks of "full album", so very often I didn't even have a clear idea of what each track was called, even on albums I've listened to dozens of time. They aren't stored in my memory as songs, just as albums. Sometimes some songs stick out, and I remember them, but that's usually not because I think the other ones all suck. If I thought most tracks on an album sucked, I simply wouldn't listen to it at all. Maybe it helps that I mostly like music genres where you could argue "every track on an album sounds the same", but I never could relate to the cherry-picking songs together mentality.





As to solutions... trying to think far outside the box here: cut out all the marketing-related middle men and embrace the lottery aspect of art/music. Make "artist" a government financed profession, gatekeep thoroughly at the entrance, finance it with taxes on those megacorps that profit most from art (google, spotify etc.), divide it up into "leagues" through which artists can rise up, pay em all stable living wages, and use a lottery system to give those "crazy" project budgets that are orders of magnitude higher than their yearly incomes, to some randomly selected artists in the upper leagues. Removes all the pretense around "making it", eliminates much of the need for social media hustle, creates an environment supporting to take creative risks without fear of financial ruin, removes the mechanic of having to aim for lowest common denominators to "make it". I know it sounds crazy if you grew up in a capatilist western country, but if you really think about it, neither the old or current model are less crazy imho, and no model will ever be "fair". Just my 2 cents of course!


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## chocobitz825 (Aug 10, 2020)

poetd said:


> And most of us are extremely glad he does.
> 
> But, rest assured, these brilliant Charlie posts which most of the forum enjoy, are tiny snippets compared to some of the usenet posts I can remember from my days stalking a particular band.
> 
> ...



as a millennial artist, give me that too!

this is what I hate about the context of this conversation. People are acting like current artists demanded this change. I was raised up with the same great music listed here and it inspired me and many others like me to get into music in hopes we’d get to have that career. I’m 15 odd years in the game and somewhere around the early 2010s all that went out the window.

i would love to take years to make an album if any of the new contracts for labels even allowed that. It’d be great to spend all that money on the right studio and takes if labels and agents weren’t blowing half a budget on marketing that doesn’t work. It’d be great if the demand was for full concept albums with brilliant execution if the A&R weren’t demanding every song be a single.

so for the folks who decide they want that freedom to do it like the old days, very few labels will be their home and they have to rough it on streaming and find ways to keep fans engaged.

we didn’t make this market, we’re just trying to survive it. Lucky for me I got my kicks in before the shit really hit the fan. I look at kids trying to make it these last 5 years and it seems almost hopeless.


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## Morning Coffee (Aug 10, 2020)

Imagine if we had a Spotify like platform for all software sample library developers! Where users could just get whatever they want for free or for a small fee. Good for the user, shit for the talented developers.


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## chocobitz825 (Aug 10, 2020)

Morning Coffee said:


> Imagine if we had a Spotify like platform for all software sample developers! Where users could just get whatever they want for free or for a small fee. Good for the user, shit for the talented developers.


To make that situation closer to what it actually is, the market would have to have nearly no other outlets for developers to release their software. The demand for full softwares would decrease and instead of say a full orchestra, people just wanted the choice to sample individual instruments for free or minimal cost. If a developer didn’t keep a steady line of products coming out, customers would move on to the next developer and regaining ground would be a mountain of a task.

I mean, in the end let’s not forget, streaming media was the alternative to open piracy. Copy protected music that pulls in some revenue compared to the shit show that happened when CD existed with P2P softwares. This is not the market we chose..this is the result of far too much change all at once.


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## Morning Coffee (Aug 10, 2020)

chocobitz825 said:


> I mean, in the end let’s not forget, streaming media was the alternative to open piracy. Copy protected music that pulls in some revenue compared to the shit show that happened when CD existed with P2P softwares. This is not the market we chose..this is the result of far too much change all at once.



Fair enough, but by participating in it, are you are not in fact, choosing?


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## chocobitz825 (Aug 10, 2020)

Morning Coffee said:


> Fair enough, but, by participating in it, you are in fact, choosing.



how do we not participate? Based on the flow of this conversation, we’re wrong for playing by the current rules, and wrong if we choose not to play by the rules but can’t replicate the level of success from decades ago.

everyone seems to think they know the better way to do it or if we just followed the old formula it’d all be ok, but no one is acknowledging that nothing about any aspect of this market is the same. The music industry, entertainment, magazines and newspapers, live Venus and social media. It’s all different and that entire network of media that made older artists a success does not exist now. No matter what rules we play by, the game is different. The results will not be the same as the days when media was set and there was an abundance of time and cash for hot artists.


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## Morning Coffee (Aug 10, 2020)

While I agree that the music industry of the past was an expensive industry (not that the average consumer would understand the costs), it was perhaps a lot more expensive than it should have been, especially on the production side. However, paying $20-$30 for a band's CD was pretty fair in my opinion. It seems to me these days that there is this entitlement attitude, like, everything should be for free or almost free. Tell that to your plumber next time your plumbing breaks down.


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## chocobitz825 (Aug 10, 2020)

Morning Coffee said:


> While I agree that the music industry of the past was an expensive industry (not that the average consumer would understand the costs), it was perhaps a lot more expensive than it should have been, especially on the production side. However, paying $20-$30 for a band's CD was pretty fair in my opinion. It seems to me these days that there is this entitlement attitude, like, everything should be for free or almost free. Tell that to your plumber next time your plumbing breaks down.



my theory is that a large of number of consumes bought the music for the sake of being a part of the experience.Not because they found value in the music, but rather they paid what they needed to in order to be a part of it all. If artists started performing for free, the audience wouldn’t blink an eye or feel a bit of guilt. True fans of art may be different but the average consumer just wants to consume and if they have to pay, they might...but it doesn’t mean they want to. Especially if the music is no longer associated with a larger social experience he they share with their friends and fan commities. That’s why the business shifted to social media. It’s giving the average fan what they really wanted. That’s why an artist can have millions of followers but can’t sell more than a few hundred thousand units.

we’ve been exposed.


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## ashh (Aug 10, 2020)

Hmm. Mr Ek seems to believe that music streaming necessitates new content more often from the artists who use his platform. It sounds a bit like the Youtube model.

I wonder how this will affect Bandcamp and, say, Soundcloud? I wonder what the artists who prefer those platforms will think about this?

The whole industry has changed almost beyond recognition, over the past ten years. Including how artists are paid, who has the power and what that means. Being signed to a record label is not the only way to gain recognition any longer. I think that's a good thing but there will always be humans involved and so there will always be a power struggle.

It's good to know what Mr Ek is thinking, if only so that I can factor it into my plans.


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## Daryl (Aug 10, 2020)

One of the big issues with companies like Spotify is that they use the "old fashioned" way of sorting out splits, whilst not producing any physical product. The other thing is with a physical CD, or even a download, revenue from the music that is "purchased" does actually go to the people who own the rights. With Spotify this just isn't the case. Nor is it the same as a radio broadcast. They have the best of both worlds. The worst of both, for composers.


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## ashh (Aug 10, 2020)

Daryl said:


> One of the big issues with companies like Spotify is that they use the "old fashioned" way of sorting out splits, whilst not producing any physical product. The other thing is with a physical CD, or even a download, revenue from the music that is "purchased" does actually go to the people who own the rights. With Spotify this just isn't the case. Nor is it the same as a radio broadcast. They have the best of both worlds. The worst of both, for composers.



What's their defence of this assertion? Sorry if you don't know, just thought it seems like a very landowner/peasant type deal, so they must see it in a different light.


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## Mornats (Aug 10, 2020)

Geoff Grace said:


> Well said, *Charlie*!
> 
> But who took down the _Please don't feed the trolls_ sign? I know I saw it around here somewhere. Now where did it go off to?...
> 
> ...


Indeed, well said.

One of the things I like about Charlie is that his opinion is sometimes different to mine. But the main difference between where he comes from and where I come from is that he's a pro and I'm far from it. So I listen intently and enjoy his contributions here immensely. (Still can't watch a Saw movie though, sorry I'm just a little too squeamish for them!)


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## CGR (Aug 10, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> Yup. Lots of old chestnuts from the glory days of over-spending in the studio - that have sold millions of copies and given me more platinum record plaques than I can fit on the walls of my little studio. A few scores to a handful of genre flicks that nobody really cares about, but that I enjoyed scoring - and have racked up more than a billion dollars at the box office. What's not on Spotify is the bulk of what's on my IMDB, and what does the heavy lifting on my BMI statements - about 250 hours of network tv scores.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Interesting read. @august80 - your comments in this thread are some of the most arrogant and plain rude statements I've read on this forum for quite some time. Consider that Charlie is a true pro with a depth of experience and knowledge and willingness to share - show some respect.


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## Daryl (Aug 10, 2020)

ashh said:


> What's their defence of this assertion? Sorry if you don't know, just thought it seems like a very landowner/peasant type deal, so they must see it in a different light.


There is no defence. They won't explain themselves. Don't forget it was quite a while before the "fake artists" scandal became public.


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## VivianaSings (Aug 10, 2020)

The thought of a Metallica album being made with those shit sounding cartoony slate drums gave me one of the best laughs I've had in a long time. 

I had a nice string of dance hits I was doing out of Unique back in the 80s and 90s. I don't know if it's that thing the president signed like a year ago about royalties or something but my royalties have virtually tripled the past couple of months. Like since Thanksgiving 2019 my royalties have been fantastic compared to what they've been for the past decade. I have zero idea what it's about and I'm not asking.

There's some of my stuff on spotify but not by my choice. I don't even bother to look at that part of my statement. But I'm still doing pretty good under the old system regardless of how big the reports of its death are. I can't imagine anyone even being inspired to make music if streaming is the dominant way to get music out there.

What Ek doesn't get though is back then we spent the first year recording the album, the second year touring to support the album and promote it and the third year writing the songs for the next album. Rinse and repeat in 3 year cycles. That's how you got quality.

Releasing an endless stream of schlock nonstop while constantly backpedaling and apologizing on social media because you said you like zebra stripe gum or some other insane bullshit people get massively offended over these days and praying no one cancels you is no way to spend a music career.


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## ashh (Aug 10, 2020)

Interesting take by Benn Jordan, aka The Flashbulb, aka Benn and Gear on Youtube.

Sorry for the enormous C&P. Linked in first paragraph.


*As mentioned in the introduction, you have decided to upload for free your album after some retailers start selling it without permission. Unauthorized commercialisation of music seems to be one of the major drawbacks to music digitalisation, was this record project also a way for you to strike against this phenomenon? And therefore, is it why you chose to submit this album in particular?*

_At the time, a large portion of my catalogue was on iTunes, and I wasn’t receiving any royalty from Apple, nor did I submit my music to them. I tried to contact Apple about it for over a year and didn’t get a response until “Artist Pirated By iTunes” made stories in mainstream press. It turns out that a “digital distributor” called IODA (now rebranded as “The Orchard” and purchased by Sony) was submitting the music for a label that no longer existed and collecting the money on the artist’s behalf.
The whole thing was a huge, unnecessary mess, and a lot of it still is. I can send you a file myself, and you can send me money. But people buy music through iTunes or Amazon, who take a 3rd of that money and doesn’t even deal with artists. Independent artists have to pay recurring album fees to a “digital distributor” like Tunecore or CDBaby to put music on those networks.
I’m hardly a mainstream artist, but over the course of my career that money really adds up. We’re talking 6 figures just to make my music accessible, that’s like, my retirement. Meanwhile, “pirates” have an extremely organized system on private trackers that was far superior in both organization and selection to iTunes in 2008. So I uploaded my stuff myself and said “Hey, if you like this and want to support me, here’s my Paypal.”. It’s just simple.
The reason I chose Soundtrack To A Vacant Life was just timing and the fact that it was on my own label. I definitely couldn’t have done that earlier as I was releasing music on record labels that were too busy fighting piracy to see the benefit of understanding the reality of music listeners at the time._


*The development of paying streaming platform (such as Spotify) or the massive raise in vinyl sales these past few years are two proofs that actually more and more listeners are willing to pay to get access to high quality music. As an artist do you also see an improvement in the listener behaviour and more generally in the industry?*

_Spotify has its kinks to work out, but it really is an answer to a big problem that existed between musicians and listeners. $10 a month is entirely reasonable to most people, and their interface is more convenient than downloading torrents for the average listener. They pay quite fairly, and even curate music well. My gripe is that I still have to pay a “digital distributor” like Tunecore to use their service, and I hope that changes in the future.

I hate to say this, and I realize this is the worst possible place to say it, but I personally wish physical mediums like CDs and vinyl become less standard. As long as people want music delivered to them that way, I’m happy to oblige. But I like the idea of moving beyond albums the way we know them. There’s a time limit, and a time minimum, but more importantly, it seems like a tombstone to me. It’s this permanent thing that can never be changed, improved, or revised. The only reason it has to be that way is because of physical medium, and that’s in a society where most people are listening to music digitally. Of course this applies to digital services as well, as they adhere to the format standards set by physical medium and 20th century technology._



> **"The only reason it has to be that way is because of physical medium,and that’s in a society where most people are listening to music digitally."**


_So I think it’s fun, and I certainly appreciate the value of records. But I think I’m too focused on what comes next to be enthusiastic about it myself. But like I said earlier, I will strive to deliver my music in whatever format people want it in. I’m grateful that people want to buy my work. I guess what I’m trying to say, is that I’d like physical medium to be project based and optional, rather than necessary for an album to seem legitimate._


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## charlieclouser (Aug 10, 2020)

VivianaSings said:


> I had a nice string of dance hits I was doing out of Unique back in the 80s and 90s. I don't know if it's that thing the president signed like a year ago about royalties or something but my royalties have virtually tripled the past couple of months. Like since Thanksgiving 2019 my royalties have been fantastic compared to what they've been for the past decade. I have zero idea what it's about and I'm not asking.



Aah yes, Bobby Nathan and MIDI City. Loved that place. A little scungy but they had all the hot gear back then. I only worked there a couple times around 1988 or so but I was in gear heaven.

Now I need to take a closer look at my last couple of BMI statements and see if I caught a bump like you did!


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## telecode101 (Aug 10, 2020)

..


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## chocobitz825 (Aug 10, 2020)

telecode101 said:


> What is it that you think has changed in the last 10 years that is made in the wild west?



Where to start and where to end!?

the rise of social media and the breakneck speed at which the popular apps change. (We’ve gone from MySpace to Facebook to Twitter to Instagram and now TikTok. Only YouTube is a constant but it’s guidelines have chabged

the death of a lot of printed media aimed at music and its various genres.

The smart phone and ease of use with streaming media. Which also includes transition to streaming videos like Netflix and how that’s primed people to consume remotely, and in bulk.

Death of the CD drive for most cars and computers.

The loss of music-aimed television stations and shows that artists.

the sudden decentralization of media that put influencers at the top and turned followers into currency. In the midst of that change, labels and businesses lost their guiding influence in media and now follow the people who have the most followers to help them sell their products.

throw in a few recessions, startup culture and the tendency to overwork, and a generation stuck in debt from college loans, living with their parents and overworked in poorly managed companies.

Then the death of many live houses and recording studios.

Now we have a scenario where the ability to create music for yourself in a home studio is more practical. Without venues to play at to build a following and people struggling to pay their rent much less for indulging in hobbies, you’ve got people trying to make their music work by following the bread crumbs. 

it’s not that it’s impossible to make a hit or a stable career but it takes so much more work and risk. There’s no guidebook and the resources keep dwindling.

Already within 6 months some of the most vital concert halls and live houses have gone under because of covid 19. 
So where do artists get their start now?

I found people don’t even realize that most of these cancelled tours come at the expense of the artists. $100,000s to millions of dollars of loss this year. Even for the small artists they have to pay for tours that aren’t gonna happen.

Simply put. This generation of artists is fucked if we tried to do things the old way. We’re fucked the new way, but at least we get a bit more control to keep the entire thing manageable. At least we can do something even with the industry burning down around us.


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## telecode101 (Aug 10, 2020)

..


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## telecode101 (Aug 10, 2020)

..


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## ashh (Aug 10, 2020)

telecode101 said:


> Yeah. I don't know about the accuracy of that theory. My recollection of history is very different than yours. The main reason why people started pirating in 90s was becuase record companies were really greedy and kept jacking up the price of tapes and CDs during the massive recession. From my recollection, what happened in Canada in the late 80s/early 90s was a major recession. Tons of people lost jobs and every other store was closed and out of business and everywhere you looked things were being discounted 50% to 90%. But the record companies just kept jacking up prices. It went from $7.99 to $18.99 for new releases right in the middle of the bad recession. I still recall going to the big record store and freaking out. How the hell can they justify charging $20 for a new release.



Piracy: I'll be honest, once I knew what it was then my goal was to work out how to do it. My justification was probably what you talk about here. I even worked in music distribution and had access to just about any release in my country and several others, for free. It was more about the immediacy, for me. Learn about an artist, check out their back catalogue a few hours later. Limited editions that you never got a chance to buy? No problem! A couple of bonus tracks, licensed for other territories? Here you go!

The issue with piracy, as it was then, was that it made Spotify seem like a better option. It's never a good idea to get rid of the old dictator before you've checked out the new one.


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## FinGael (Aug 10, 2020)

Navigational notes to self:

_1) Be true to yourself and commit to art

2) Let Spotify and other greedy twats suck their stinky toes

3) Chiseling a statue with patience and love for art and craft is a different thing than making one with a chainsaw (but in the end it doesn't matter, because the activists are going to take it down anyway)

4) Be grateful and do not forget how you fell in love with music - and what it has meant to you

5) Remember to live and take day offs; creative juices need time and air to regenerate and there are people around you, who don't love you because of that nice white studio tan._

"I'm ready for the next adventure."


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## telecode101 (Aug 10, 2020)

..


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## Markus Kohlprath (Aug 10, 2020)

telecode101 said:


> Your work becomes faceless as it becomes just another face in a crowd. What Spotify corp. are dong is encouraging turnover and discouraging longevity.


And why probably is that? Because it's good for their turnover and business model and seemingly their interest in the development of music as an art form is next to nothing. On the other hand creating music for a lot of artists is not driven by economic reasons in the first place. I mean who becomes a musician because he wants to make real good money. Must be an idiot no? Those who come that far are the exception not the rule. 
So there is an inherent conflict of interest and it seems that the platform owners want to win on their behalf and tell the creators with powerful authority: "That's how the new business model works....There's no time anymore for you to be bothered by artistic development. Just crank out as much as you can with all the great, fancy tools you got and that do the work for you anyway. You already know the hit formula. Just do it,do it, do it. So we are feeded with what we need"
This is at least as it appears somehow.
Where do we end up with that. In times of in fact almost endless technical possibilities with numerous new songs that more or less all sound the same and from an artistic point of view nobody needs.
The analogy with the cutdown rainforest in favor of agricultural monocultures is very apparent and maybe linked to a similar mindset.
Would be interesting where the Beatles would stand nowadays in the algorithm ranking if they would start now.


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## chocobitz825 (Aug 10, 2020)

telecode101 said:


> The problem with deviating away from an album type 10+ song format to a collection of 3 to 4 singles on an EP is you are moving away from the format that you can use to capture fans. What the move to steady stream of singles does is it promotes a music environment where the standard and norm is a great mass of those old "Now That's What I Call Music" compilations. You are not going to get hard core fans that read and analyze lyrics and try to get rewarded for repeated listens by that Now compilation format. It's just a compilation of greatest hits. It's not the same experience as a new Radiohead record or what now. You still need an album format to capture an audience that will sustain. You don't need to follow the song ordering of the old LP format where the ballads are the last song on each side, but you need the space to convince a listener you are making the type of music they want to keep coming back to for more to.
> 
> That being said, I think the Spotify guy is full of it and maybe is pandering to casual social media types. The truly great artists in the genre that are at the top of their game and are releasing truly great releases do not keep pumping out singles every 3 months. Madeon (the recent Apple iPhone ad guy) had 4 year gap between releases. Flume also had a 4 year gap. So they are spending quite a lot of time crafting those releases. And their popularity is not being eroded by the gap between the releases. Sure, they do various little remixes and little promo stuff in between, but they are not "NOT" releasing albums and only releasing singles.



They’re going off of data and the data implies that single releases get more plays and better rankings so they must be better for results, right?

i think the music business is slow to the benefits of streaming. We’re no longer constrained to the limits of physical media. You might not get more plays from a 10 minute song, but why not focus on the methods of streaming video? Make a binge-worthy album or playlist. Fill it with however many songs you want, but make sure the person wants to listen to the whole thing.

oddly enough Taylor swift and Beyoncé’s recent albums apparently seems to show that the album is not dead, but it takes a concept and the right execution. Either go the way of the singles, or go the way of the concept album. I would be happy to see more people be daring and creative with their albums.


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## telecode101 (Aug 10, 2020)

..


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## telecode101 (Aug 10, 2020)

..


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## chocobitz825 (Aug 10, 2020)

telecode101 said:


> I think theySpotify are going off the data and they are also trying to directly influence the future of that data so it continues the trend that it is going in. and yes, they seem to encourage the idea that concept albums are reserved for major artists and new artists can't afford that luxury which is not true IMO. A new artist needs a concept album just as much as Beyonce needs Lemonde to stay relevant in a sea of pop tunes.



moral of the story.

be brave.

take a chance.


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## telecode101 (Aug 10, 2020)

..


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## Mike Fox (Aug 10, 2020)

I personally don't understand all the glam and glory of the "old model".

Perhaps it's my understanding (or lack thereof), but the old model consisted of greedy ass record label giants that were all about taking as much money as possible from artists/bands, and then dropping them like a bad habbit when things went south, or when a new genre or trend came a long.

I remember watching a documentary on "hair metal", and a member from one of those bands told a story of how heartbreaking it was to see his band's poster replaced with an Alice in Chains poster at the record label studio. He knew then that it wasn't about honor, or friendship, or loyalty. It was about money, just like how it is with Spotify. The parallels couldn't be any more obvious.

And another thing about the "good ol' fashioned old model" is that it took place during a time when opportunities to discover new music were very limited: the radio, MTV, word of mouth, or at a record store, those were basically the only avenues you had. I'm old enough to remember those days very well, and honestly? I'd much rather take what today has to offer, because the search for great music doesn't take very long, and is an endless rabbit hole of talent. 

Sure, there might be more shit to sift through, but there's also far more opportunity to explore new music now than there ever was.

Yeah, Spotify is a shit show when it comes to payouts, but plenty of artists of the old model will also tell you that they were undercompensated, or misinformed/misled to the point that it financially hurt them or destroyed their careers.

Saying that the "old model" is better seems like a blanket statement to me, and isn't that black and white, because the reality is that the old model also had a very dark side to it.

Pick your poison.


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## method1 (Aug 10, 2020)

Some of the old labels also made huge contributions to music technology.
Money went into acoustic research & developing recording technology in order to deliver the best possible sounding records, the bulk of the techniques used to make a good sounding album were developed under the auspices and patronage of the "old system".

Recording and mixing engineers that came up learning their craft at a label studio got the best training and became experts at the craft, a ton of that knowledge has been and is being lost, which is a shame.
Yes business models have to change and adapt, but why throw the baby with the bathwater?

I don't see Spotify investing in the craft the same way, let alone in artist development.

Also, Daniel Ek is right, just put out 2 or 3 albums a day and watch the $ roll in.


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## Mike Fox (Aug 10, 2020)

method1 said:


> Some of the old labels also made huge contributions to music technology.
> Money went into acoustic research & developing recording technology in order to deliver the best possible sounding records, the bulk of the techniques used to make a good sounding album were developed under the auspices and patronage of the "old system".
> 
> Recording and mixing engineers that came up learning their craft at a label studio got the best training and became experts at the craft, a ton of that knowledge has been and is being lost, which is a shame.
> ...


Some excellent points here.

I think on some levels we've shot ourselves in the foot when it comes to our engineering skills, because technology has made it so convenient to record.

Just take a look at how far we've come with amp sims. Neural DSP is absolutely killing it right now! All i have to do is plug my guitar into an interface and off i go.

The downside is that there are certain studio skills that could potentially be lost, because the approach now is completely different than it used to be.

If course, one could easily argue that the advancements made in amp sim and modeling technology is something that should be appreciated, because we still are pursuing recording breakthroughs and discovery.


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## telecode101 (Aug 10, 2020)

..


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## Mike Fox (Aug 10, 2020)

telecode101 said:


> I think there are two ways to look at the old model. Yes, record labels were bad and greedy, but some truly great records were made. The reason for it was that you had specialists that had tons and tons of experience with the equipment and working in those recording studios. I am not saying all music was like that. But the truly great music recordings were. Like I was never much of a commercial metal fan, but I give credit where credit is due. Some of those sounds captured on Mutt Lang and Bob Rock records just sound amazing.
> 
> A lot of "modern" releases to me sound really cool, but at the same time, they kind of also sound like they are mixed and mastered badly. Listen to them on the wrong setup and it's really noticeable.


Absolutely! There's pros and cons to both models, which is really what i was trying to point out.

A lot of my favorite albums produced by major record labels sound unique, and it's because of the way they were recorded.

Take HUM's Downward is Heavenward album for example. It has one of the fattest fucking sounds I've ever heard, and I've yet to hear these kinds of dynamics and clarity from home recording techniques.



Then again, some of the shittiest sounding records have been produced under major record labels.


But the i guess the main point is that the major record labels did have the money to hire the best of the best to produce the best of the best.


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## charlieclouser (Aug 10, 2020)

Mike Fox said:


> I personally don't understand all the glam and glory of the "old model".
> 
> Perhaps it's my understanding (or lack thereof), but the old model consisted of greedy ass record label giants that were all about taking as much money as possible from artists/bands, and then dropping them like a bad habbit when things went south, or when a new genre or trend came a long.



Yeah, it sort of was like that to a large degree. And a big downside was that, because it just wasn't possible to make certain styles of albums "on the cheap", if the label pulled the support out from under you, it was game over. For lots of acts there just wasn't a viable avenue to just keep on keeping on, say fuck the label, and keep recording and releasing music. Not when it cost hundreds of thousands to do the deed. 

I was in that position a couple of times - in an interesting band, got signed, make an album with a couple hundred grand fronted to us by the label, released record, toured, sales sucked, boom... game over within two years. Masters owned by the label, can't exploit them further on our own. Failure sucked more back then than it does now, for sure.

Now, of course, if an act self-finances and self-produces, they can own their masters free and clear, a huge advantage that might be worth big $$$ down the road. Certainly an option for Billie Eilish and other in-the-box type of productions (but what isn't these days?), and due to the collapse of big studio infrastructure and day rates, it's increasingly an option for "old-school" bands that can't be done in the box. Harder, but not totally impossible like it used to be. No way could we have made many of the expensive records back in the day without a big pile of fronted cash from the labels. Now that's not the case so much. So, yeah, that is a good thing. 

Just sucks that the the streaming payout model has somehow become established as some sort of baseline, because it will be like moving mountains to change it after the fact.


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## Rory (Aug 10, 2020)

I think it's a good idea to read the full article from which the link in the first post was cribbed: https://musically.com/2020/07/30/spotify-ceo-talks-covid-19-artist-incomes-and-podcasting-interview/

And here is the actual quote from the full article:

“There is a narrative fallacy here, combined with the fact that, obviously, some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape, where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough,” said Ek

“The artists today that are making it realise that it’s about creating a continuous engagement with their fans. It is about putting the work in, about the storytelling around the album, and about keeping a continuous dialogue with your fans.”


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## charlieclouser (Aug 10, 2020)

telecode101 said:


> Like I was never much of a commercial metal fan, but I give credit where credit is due. Some of those sounds captured on Mutt Lang and Bob Rock records just sound amazing.



I agree. I never really got into AC/DC, Def Leppard, etc. back when they were "current", but as I got more into knob-twiddling on heavy music, and started to realize how insanely hard it can be to get things dialed in, my appreciation grew massively, for the same reason I appreciate Steely Dan. I don't particularly like the music contained therein, but the execution and production is so great that it over-rules my dislike of the actual chords they used.

Even though Hysteria is corny stadium hair-metal garbage, the production is INSANE. It's just so utterly beyond what earthlings should be able to do, even now. And of course Back In Black works on so many levels, from the juice on the kick to the lag on the snare fills, it was definitely a case of capturing lightning in a bottle.

A good friend, who became a very successful producer of Rob Zombie, Andrew WK, etc. had previously worked as a programmer with Bob Rock on Metallica's Black Album and Motley Crue's Dr. Feelgood, and the tales he tells of the excruciating level of studio trickery they went to in order to get those sounds were.... ridiculous. But dang the drums on Dr. Feelgood - holy crap. So good.


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## VivianaSings (Aug 10, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> Aah yes, Bobby Nathan and MIDI City. Loved that place. A little scungy but they had all the hot gear back then. I only worked there a couple times around 1988 or so but I was in gear heaven.
> 
> Now I need to take a closer look at my last couple of BMI statements and see if I caught a bump like you did!



I was gonna say in my post, MIDI city was like my second home back then! Jack Hotop was always hanging around. I'll give Bobby a lot of credit in that he was always on the cutting edge of things - he was always willing to spend for the hot gear or always open to new tech. I think Midi city was the first of its kind anywhere like that.

I'm not gonna say that I'm not responsible for my share of schlock but it didn't all come out of one person. I had plenty of moments where we would spit out an entire album in one day. But the budget was there to have the best of everyone working on their specific segment. We'd book a 15 hour block at Unique. We'd have two songwriters. They'd write the tune. The tracking engineer had everything set up, then the session guys and programmers would work out their parts. We'd do like two or three takes. Meanwhile the songwriters are already working on the next song. Then the vocal coach and the girl would go to the B room and track the vocal while the songwriters were finishing the next song and the tracking engineer was tweaking stuff. We'd start the process over again with all the session guys looking it over. By the time we started tracking the next song the vocal coach had finished tracking the vocals and it'd go to the mixing engineer (usually Andy Wallace, CLA, or a pre-Steve Winwood TLA when he was affordable lol). It's like a machine - and in under 15 hours (not counting lunch lol) we'd have an entire album done and ready to be couriered over to Herb Powers at Frankford Wayne. 

It sounds like a grind but it wasn't as bad as you'd think because every job was compartmentalized and had the best of the best working on it. (And we used to joke that even when it's not winter we send out for our own snow! haha) So even though we kind of thought of it as schlock, listening back it's still heads and shoulders above what people are putting out today because there was still quality and skill at every step by specialized people who were great at what they did. I mean, Andy was probably the best mixer I've ever heard. And Herb Powers? There was no one who could master dance like that guy could. So it might have been schlock but it was high quality schlock. 

That's not what's gonna flood spotify once artists are convinced (or brainwashed to believe) they need to release songs nonstop.

Not to mention (and not often talked about) the great relationship we had with a lot of the DJs here in NYC. If we had a song we thought was particularly hot, we'd bring a mix on tape to places like dancerteria - usually right after we wrapped the session. The DJs actually had reel to reels in their booth along with their turntables and they'd play what we brought in and we'd get the chance to judge the crowd's reaction and see if we really had something hot. It was a great relationship - we'd get instant feedback after the session from a dance crowd and the DJs got a great rep for always playing cutting edge new stuff that wasn't released yet.

There's nothing like that, that exists anymore. It was like mini gatekeepers every step of the way that kept you on top of your game. A whole ecosystem. Once the budgets evaporated, so did the ecosystem.


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## charlieclouser (Aug 10, 2020)

Rory said:


> I think it's a good idea to read the full article from which the link in the first post was cribbed: https://musically.com/2020/07/30/spotify-ceo-talks-covid-19-artist-incomes-and-podcasting-interview/
> 
> And here is the actual quote from the full article:
> 
> ...



It's not such a shocking viewpoint, given the artists that are succeeding today - but when you lay it on top of the low payouts it chafes a little.

And his view presupposes that artists or fans WANT some continuous dialog and engagement between the artist and fans. But that's not universally the case. Some of us don't care what the artist's dog's name is, don't want to hear the rough demos filmed on an iPhone, and don't want anything other than the final, finished, perfected product.

For me, a big part of the appeal of many of my favorite artists was that there was a sense of mystery about the whole thing. Like, do Led Zeppelin REALLY live in a castle in the clouds? Were the guys in Kraftwerk really robots built in a factory in Dusseldorf? And where the hell does a band like Killing Joke come from anyway? What about Steely Dan? Trying to find ANY inside info about bands back in the day was impossible - you got the record, maybe a tour, maybe a t-shirt and poster, and that's it. You were free to imagine any insane backstory you wanted as you listened to Animals on headphones for the thousandth time while you re-filled the bong. I liked that.

So when the new model favors artists who do interact with the audience in a different and more exposed manner, that mystery gets stripped away. It feels a bit Instagram-thirsty, almost like People Magazine's "Stars! They're just like us!" pages.


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## Rory (Aug 10, 2020)

@charlieclouser

Ek's actual statement is not controversial to anyone who has a basic understanding of social media and social media marketing.

I can tell you for a fact that what he is saying about engagement is understood beyond music, such as in publishing.

A lot of this thread reads like 1980s and 1990s old home week. Nothing wrong with reminiscing about the old days, but that was a long time ago, and the 1990s were when the public internet was in its infancy.


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## charlieclouser (Aug 10, 2020)

VivianaSings said:


> I was gonna say in my post, MIDI city was like my second home back then! Jack Hotop was always hanging around. I'll give Bobby a lot of credit in that he was always on the cutting edge of things - he was always willing to spend for the hot gear or always open to new tech. I think Midi city was the first of its kind anywhere like that.
> 
> Not to mention (and not often talked about) the great relationship we had with a lot of the DJs here in NYC. If we had a song we thought was particularly hot, we'd bring a mix on tape to places like dancerteria - usually right after we wrapped the session. The DJs actually had reel to reels in their booth along with their turntables and they'd play what we brought in and we'd get the chance to judge the crowd's reaction and see if we really had something hot. It was a great relationship - we'd get instant feedback after the session from a dance crowd and the DJs got a great rep for always playing cutting edge new stuff that wasn't released yet.



I remember going to Danceteria in like, 1983 or so maybe, and Madonna was playing in the downstairs room to a half-empty floor. Just singing over a playback track. We grabbed a drink and were like, "Meh, boring. Let's go upstairs to the big room." 

But then years later I had a room at the studio owned by Dave Frank (of The System) and Shep Pettibone came in to do a razor-blade edit on 1/2" of his remix of Madonna's "Vogue" and it was amazing to watch him chop and assemble it in about an hour. When he was done he said we should come down to Palladium to hear it that night (I think during Jellybean's set maybe?) and we did and holy crap it sounded ridiculous in the big room and the crowd went MENTAL. Around the same time I heard C+C for the first time in that room and those tight, dry drum fills on the big Palladium system were amazing.

You're right about the tight feedback loop between producers / artist and the crowds back then. From the studio to the dance floor, same-day-service. Amazing.


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## Mike Fox (Aug 10, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> Just sucks that the the streaming payout model has somehow become established as some sort of baseline, because it will be like moving mountains to change it after the fact.


Moving mountains? Yeah, possibly, at least for the time being.

But look what the internet did to the record label giants. A simple idea became a sling to the forehead, and I think it's only a matter of time for the same to happen to the current model. But I'm totally with you on that one. The payout is a shitshow at best.

Btw, me being a horror geek, and composer for haunted attractions, I'm a big fan of your work! Any chance of ever making a horror themed album that's not tied to a film?


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## bill5 (Aug 10, 2020)

michalioz said:


> This came out a couple of days ago. It looks like the internet is shaping the music industry boldly.


And not for the better. That is hardly news to many of us.

I think this article (now already 10+ yrs old) by John Cougar Mellencamp is far more telling: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/on-my-mind-the-state-of-t_b_177836


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## charlieclouser (Aug 11, 2020)

Rory said:


> Ek's actual statement is not controversial to anyone who has a basic understanding of social media and social media marketing.
> 
> I can tell you for a fact that what he is saying about engagement is understood beyond music, such as in publishing.



Well, let's say it's not controversial to anyone who endorses / agrees with / participates in social media marketing. It's possible to understand it and still think it's crap, and think that the time and energy spent interacting with followers is time and energy NOT spent on making the music itself. Which, in theory, was the reason we came to the party. If an artist is an expert at self-promotion, getting out there, or whatever you want to call it, that doesn't make the music any better or more interesting, and it won't make me like them more. Maybe the opposite.

But I'm not typical, that's fine. If mastery of social media outreach is a criterion upon which artists are judged, maybe it's not much different than buying Wish You Were Here because of the awesome album cover photo. But that photo was done by Hypgnosis, not Pink Floyd. No doubt they spent less time talking about and approving the album cover art than Cardi B spends posting pics and tweeting. But, whatever, if people feel more of a connection to the artist because they can scroll their 'gram, then I guess that works too.




Rory said:


> A lot of this thread reads like 1980s and 1990s old home week. Nothing wrong with reminiscing about the old days, but that was a long time ago, and the 1990s were when the public internet was in its infancy.



True. I realize I sound like someone's dad, posting pictures of AC/DC concerts and saying, "Well, back in MY day...". But that was an effort to give examples of artists who built careers and followings with no social media or any form of DIY outreach, and often only released albums every three years or so - and who would likely not fit Daniel Ek's recommended model of career-building.

A side effect of maintaining Ek's recommended hectic, in-your-face, always-on mode of maintaining presence is the possibility of fan fatigue. It's natural to get a new album, play the shit out of it, wear it out, put it aside, and listen to the new album by some OTHER artist. Then, a few months / years later, it's like, "Holy shit there's a new Killing Joke record! About time!" and around you go again. You've built up some hunger for the next one, and might be more likely to grab it than you would be had it dropped while you were still listening to the previous one on repeat.

If it's a constant stream of new hurry-up releases, singles, one-offs, collabs, etc. then the fans don't have a chance to get really hungry for the next release. At some point there's a risk of, "Okay, I'm done with that artist now."

So artists' careers now operate in fast-forward. Don't give 'em time to breathe, drop the next one before they forget about me! Boom-boom-boom-boom-DONE.

Which, fine, whatever, get it over with I guess! And on to the next.


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## Mornats (Aug 11, 2020)

Mike Fox said:


> composer for haunted attractions



Still the coolest job title ever.


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## ashh (Aug 11, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> Yeah, it sort of was like that to a large degree. And a big downside was that, because it just wasn't possible to make certain styles of albums "on the cheap", if the label pulled the support out from under you, it was game over. For lots of acts there just wasn't a viable avenue to just keep on keeping on, say fuck the label, and keep recording and releasing music. Not when it cost hundreds of thousands to do the deed.
> 
> I was in that position a couple of times - in an interesting band, got signed, make an album with a couple hundred grand fronted to us by the label, released record, toured, sales sucked, boom... game over within two years. Masters owned by the label, can't exploit them further on our own. Failure sucked more back then than it does now, for sure.
> 
> ...



Love this post.

Especially the final paragraph. Baselines seem to be a bit like the annals of history, the victor gets to decide what they are.

I was watching some Youtube thing about a bloke who made some subs out of a couple of the cardboard rolls that hold the news sheets for printing presses. These subs were ten feet tall. To test them he took them to his house out in a part of Germany that was quite remote. His daughter was half a mile away, down a hill, by the side of a lake. He turned them on and tested them. Ten minutes later, his breathless daughter came to warn him that there had been an earthquake that had moved the surface of the pond. He reassured her that it was just his subs.

A while later he took them into a studio and worked out more about sub bass from their performance there. That studio was one of the great USA studios used for recording orchestras. Parlophone? Sony? Hollywood? Not sure but anyway, it is a massive place that simply will not be equalled today because why would anyone spend that kind of money? The way he talked about it makes me feel sad for the loss.


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## Daryl (Aug 11, 2020)

Mike Fox said:


> Perhaps it's my understanding (or lack thereof), but the old model consisted of greedy ass record label giants that were all about taking as much money as possible from artists/bands, and then dropping them like a bad habbit when things went south, or when a new genre or trend came a long.


Yes and no. The only artists who called the record companies greedy were the hugely successful ones. However, what they often didn't understand was that their success was subsidising hundreds of other artists who were less successful. There are many people who made some sort of a living from this model who wouldn't get anywhere without it. So there was good and there was bad.

However, what rankled more to me was when artists were given huge advances, that wouldn't ever be recouped, but others, who were actually making some money, were told to cut budgets.


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## chocobitz825 (Aug 11, 2020)

I feel like we’re muddying up an important part here. Spotify is not a label. It’s a distributor. The reason a lot of major label artists hurt on streaming is because the cuts between them, label and publishers hurts more with the low payout from Spotify. Thing is the agreements are between Spotify and the labels, unless you put up music to Spotify directly yourself. The rates are what they are and labels aren’t really negotiating better. Hell labels still charge artists with restocking fees on digital...wth?

anyways...if Spotify is anything, it’s a shitty distributor, but it’s not obligated to invest in recording tech like labels because creating music is not their business. I’m not saying this to let them off the hook, but rather to make sure we’re clear about where they are in the food chain.


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## ashh (Aug 11, 2020)

chocobitz825 said:


> I feel like we’re muddying up an important part here. Spotify is not a label. It’s a distributor. The reason a lot of major label artists hurt on streaming is because the cuts between them, label and publishers hurts more with the low payout from Spotify. Thing is the agreements are between Spotify and the labels, unless you put up music to Spotify directly yourself. The rates are what they are and labels aren’t really negotiating better. Hell labels still charge artists with restocking fees on digital...wth?
> 
> anyways...if Spotify is anything, it’s a shitty distributor, but it’s not obligated to invest in recording tech like labels because creating music is not their business. I’m not saying this to let them off the hook, but rather to make sure we’re clear about where they are in the food chain.



Thanks for the clarifications. 

I still believe that Spotify holds a lot more power than distribution networks used to. I mean 20 years ago, you'd never have the CEO of, say, Sony Distribution expounding on the future of music and the music industry listening intently. 

The music business has changed because of the way the power structures work now. Can labels call the odds to a distributor like they used to? I'm not sure.


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## Daryl (Aug 11, 2020)

ashh said:


> Thanks for the clarifications.
> 
> I still believe that Spotify holds a lot more power than distribution networks used to. I mean 20 years ago, you'd never have the CEO of, say, Sony Distribution expounding on the future of music and the music industry listening intently.
> 
> The music business has changed because of the way the power structures work now. Can labels call the odds to a distributor like they used to? I'm not sure.


However, as two major labels own shares in Spotify, you can bet your bottom dollar that the record labels will be prioritised over the composers.


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## SupremeFist (Aug 11, 2020)

Rory said:


> @charlieclouser
> 
> I can tell you for a fact that what he is saying about engagement is understood beyond music, such as in publishing.


Oh yes, and (perhaps not coincidentally) writers are the ones getting screwed in publishing too.


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## chocobitz825 (Aug 11, 2020)

ashh said:


> Thanks for the clarifications.
> 
> I still believe that Spotify holds a lot more power than distribution networks used to. I mean 20 years ago, you'd never have the CEO of, say, Sony Distribution expounding on the future of music and the music industry listening intently.
> 
> The music business has changed because of the way the power structures work now. Can labels call the odds to a distributor like they used to? I'm not sure.



my impression is that labels stopped caring about the long game. I think they just got used to having expendable music as the norm.


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## Rory (Aug 11, 2020)

SupremeFist said:


> Oh yes, and (perhaps not coincidentally) writers are the ones getting screwed in publishing too.



Telling the writers that you publish that regularly engaging with their readers will help sales is not screwing anybody. It is common sense. The point about the internet, and social media in particular, is that it makes engaging significantly easier.

I don’t know why the original post linked to a cribbed version of Ek’s comments, but the result is that this whole discussion is based on seizing on a single sentence of what Ek said and missing the message.

Whether Spotify is good or bad as a distributor is a different question.


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## SupremeFist (Aug 11, 2020)

Rory said:


> Telling the writers that you publish that regularly engaging with their readers will help sales is not screwing anybody. It is common sense.


Man, if only Pynchon had had some of that common sense, he coulda been a contender. 



> The point about the internet, and social media in particular, is that it makes engaging significantly easier.


What it makes it is quasi-obligatory extra labour for the writer, just as for the musician etc, on top of actually creating the work.


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## Rory (Aug 11, 2020)

SupremeFist said:


> Man, if only Pynchon had had some of that common sense, he coulda been a contender.
> 
> 
> What it makes it is quasi-obligatory extra labour for the writer, just as for the musician etc, on top of actually creating the work.





SupremeFist said:


> Man, if only Pynchon had had some of that common sense, he coulda been a contender.
> 
> 
> What it makes it is quasi-obligatory extra labour for the writer, just as for the musician etc, on top of actually creating the work.



Right, because back in the good old days publications like Rolling Stone, which before the internet and social media were the gatekeepers between musicians and their followers, had trouble finding musicians who wanted to take time from being “creative” to appear in their pages.

I doubt that one in ten thousand people knows who Thomas Pynchon is, let alone read him. We’re talking about popular entertainment, not college campus art lit. Personally, I don’t put Thomas Àdes and Metallica in the same box.


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## chocobitz825 (Aug 11, 2020)

SupremeFist said:


> Man, if only Pynchon had had some of that common sense, he coulda been a contender.
> 
> 
> What it makes it is quasi-obligatory extra labour for the writer, just as for the musician etc, on top of actually creating the work.



the most successful people pay someone to do the “quasi-obligatory extra labor” on their behalf. People who analyze the data and find the best times to put up the right content for the right audience...

influencers might do it themselves, but the most successful artists don’t bother. Unless they want to make a tweet to ruin their careers that is....


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## Rory (Aug 11, 2020)

chocobitz825 said:


> the most successful people pay someone to do the “quasi-obligatory extra labor” on their behalf. People who analyze the data and find the best times to put up the right content for the right audience...
> 
> influencers might do it themselves, but the most successful artists don’t bother. Unless they want to make a tweet to ruin their careers that is....



And before they were successful enough to hire someone they did it themselves.

How do people think that certain musicians developed large audiences on YouTube and went on to become household names? They sure didn’t do it by uploading videos once every few years. Rule number one on YouTube: be consistent and publish regularly.


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## charlieclouser (Aug 11, 2020)

Rory said:


> Right, because back in the good old days publications like Rolling Stone, which before social media were the gatekeepers between musicians and their followers, had trouble finding musicians who wanted to take time from being “creative” to appear in their pages.



Yeah, but that kind of press event was scheduled. Controlled. It's something you could plan for, with people who are professionals and are vetted and it happens at a place and time of your choosing. It's still a freaking ordeal, but it's a world away from some rando sliding into the DMs on your official Twitter and then tweeting to the world that you're an uptight dick because nobody replied.


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## Rory (Aug 11, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> Yeah, but that kind of press event was scheduled. Controlled. It's something you could plan for, with people who are professionals and are vetted and it happens at a place and time of your choosing. It's still a freaking ordeal, but it's a world away from some rando sliding into the DMs on your official Twitter and then tweeting to the world that you're an uptight dick because nobody replied.



So now the complaint isn’t that musicians are too busy being creative to take time for the media that promotes them, the complaint is that they have less control over the message.

Tough. It’s called democratization of communications and it’s a fact of life. At least musicians aren’t at the mercy of the journalists and music critics on a small number of gatekeeper publications, although a lot of those writers admittedly were and are in the pockets of the musicians they write about 

Step back and what Ek is talking about is the PR machine. It isn’t surprising that some people don’t like how the internet disrupted that machine, but that battle is over and has been for a long time.


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## chocobitz825 (Aug 11, 2020)

Rory said:


> So now the complaint isn’t that musicians are too busy being creative to take time for the media that promotes them, the complaint is that they have less control over the message.
> 
> Tough. It’s called democratization of communications and it’s a fact of life. At least musicians aren’t at the mercy of the journalists and music critics on a small number of gatekeeper publications, although a lot of those writers admittedly were and are in the pockets of the musicians they write about
> 
> Step back and what Ek is talking about is the PR machine. It isn’t surprising that some people don’t like how the internet disrupted that machine, but that battle is over and has been for a long time.



Social Media is the new PR. I can't think of many businesses that don't base their efforts off of social influence these days. People may or may not like it, but it is the way things are now. Even if Spotify went under tomorrow, the model would still be used by almost every other business.


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## charlieclouser (Aug 11, 2020)

Rory said:


> So now the complaint isn’t that musicians are too busy being creative to take time for the media that promotes them, the complaint is that they have less control over the message.



Well, I was trying to say almost the opposite: Now the artist is sort of forced to be in full control of, and devote time and energy to the maintenance of, all outgoing communication. If you're basically doing your own press via social media, then you have to worry less about an interviewer taking what you say out of context, or cherry-picking and editing lines from an interview to fulfill some personal or editorial vendetta. So that's a plus I guess, but we never really had issues with that - maybe because we were putting conditions on any interviews that were granted which allowed us to approve the full text and photos of whatever was going to end up in anything from Rolling Stone to a local 'zine. That might not have been the case for everyone for sure though.

Of course, we always employed a PR firm that had relationships with the kind of press outlets we wanted to court, and would strategize the whole process, so that made everything much easier on our end because we trusted them. They were close friends who were from our world and only dealt with bands we liked, not some big Hollywood PR firm that would take anybody's money.

And, sure, today's established artists are still doing basically the same thing, but with the addition of a social media team to manage those new channels. So maybe it's not so different for them than it was for us.

But for us it was never a constant, day-by-day process. You could disappear into the studio and not think about the outside world at all, until there would be a three-day brick of "press crap" to deal with, where you'd go and do a few photo shoots, a handful of interviews, and then get back to the studio. You could go months at a time with your head down, with no daily checking of feeds or uploading of content, which let us just concentrate on the part that mattered to us (and hopefully to the fans) - the music. The fans didn't feel short-changed if you didn't post daily on the fan forums, because there were no fan forums. (Well, okay, there were, but it was fans talking to each other, and if one of us dropped in a post it might crash the server!) So they grabbed the new copy of whatever magazine finally had an interview after X months, and they probably had to go down to the record store to pick it up, so maybe they'll buy the new Manson or Rammstein CD while they're at the shop. Win-win for everyone - us, the magazines, the shop, and other bands too. Now that there are no record shops and no magazines, the whole ecosystem has fewer elements with a vested interest in getting the word out. It's all on the artist to either do it themselves (or pay to have it done).

When out on the road there was lots of press crap to be dealt with in almost every city, but again, it was coordinated and scheduled and required nothing more than, "From 1pm until 3pm we've got press in suite 800 at the hotel, all hands on deck, then at 4pm we leave for the venue." It didn't nag at you all day long, there was no iPhone vibrating in your pocket with alerts, just a solid brick and then forget about it until the next one. So you could gather your thoughts, prepare, and do it in shifts if needed. And it was all planned, scheduled, and strategized and you could deal with as an organized, coordinated attack. Not like today's scattershot, always-on mode. No continuous checking to see how many likes you'd gotten since five minutes ago.

There is no question in my mind that trying to maintain a daily social media presence in the manner that today's artists are expected to would have affected the mental state, feeling of creative solitude, and resulting quality of the records we made in that era - probably not for the better.

But none of this is relevant to the up-and-coming artist of today. They likely love the interaction and instant feedback they get from their SM channels, and it probably provides the same kind of tiny dopamine rush that getting up-doots on a meme posted on Reddit would give. So it's feedback and encouragement and a caffeine hit and a sugar rush all in one!


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## charlieclouser (Aug 11, 2020)

poetd said:


> Indeed.
> 
> Its very telling though that he chose to talk about that in response to questions about why Spotify payouts are so low.
> 
> ...



Well said. I guess that was sort of what I was trying to say, until I got side tracked with telling war stories and uploading pictures of Kraftwerk concerts. 

Why are your payouts so low?
"Because you don't release a song every six weeks!"

Why are your payouts so low?
"Because your social media chops suck!"

Fuck you, pay me.


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## Mike Fox (Aug 11, 2020)

Mornats said:


> Still the coolest job title ever.


Haha! You're too kind!


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## telecode101 (Aug 11, 2020)

..


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## Mike Fox (Aug 11, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> It's still a freaking ordeal, but it's a world away from some rando sliding into the DMs on your official Twitter and then tweeting to the world that you're an uptight dick because nobody replied.



Funny you bring that up. A few months back I sent you a PM here on VI asking you to critique a track i wrote (ya know, being a fan of your work and all), but I figured the track either sucked donkey balls, or you were too busy, or just didn't care, because you didn't respond.

Either way, it didn't matter, and i didn't take it personally, because i understood you had zero obligation to respond.

Then i started thinking, "Damn. Why the fuck did i even hit this guy up? He probably gets messages all the time from random schmucks asking to do the same thing".

So, screw those people who get their feelings hurt and then announce to the world that you're an "uptight dick" because you didn't respond. They obviously weren't worth your time to begin with, and i wouldn't blame you if you're just at the point now where every request that comes your way you just automatically ignore.


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## charlieclouser (Aug 11, 2020)

Mike Fox said:


> Funny you bring that up. A few months back I sent you a PM here on VI asking you to critique a track i wrote (ya know, being a fan of your work and all), but I figured the track either sucked donkey balls, or you were too busy, or just didn't care, because you didn't respond.
> 
> Either way, it didn't matter, and i didn't take it personally, because i understood you had zero obligation to respond.
> 
> ...



Oh shit dude, that one got buried in my inbox. I gave it a listen and PM'd you a reply.

But yeah, in general I'm a little leery of listening to "unsolicited submissions" because back in the day we were under very strict instructions from management, labels, and publishers to never open a package containing a demo tape, and to forward it to management's offices so they could put it inside a second envelope and return it to the sender UN-OPENED. This was because of the risk that someone would later say our one-note straight-sixteenth-note bass sequence had been ripped off from their demo tape or something, and we need postmarked, certified-mail proof that it had NOT been listened to.

Of course, there is no such thing as a demo tape anymore, but I guess if a lawsuit came down they could maybe subpoena the logs from SoundCloud so we could prove we never clicked on that link or whatever. But back in the day it was like opening a can of worms - if you said hi to a fan that was lurking outside the studio with his book of poems, next thing you know he thinks he's co-writing the album!

So my brain is still stuck in mid-nineties paranoia mode I guess. But I PM'd you.


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## telecode101 (Aug 11, 2020)

..


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## Mike Fox (Aug 11, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> Oh shit dude, that one got buried in my inbox. I gave it a listen and PM'd you a reply.
> 
> But yeah, in general I'm a little leery of listening to "unsolicited submissions" because back in the day we were under very strict instructions from management, labels, and publishers to never open a package containing a demo tape, and to forward it to management's offices so they could put it inside a second envelope and return it to the sender UN-OPENED. This was because of the risk that someone would later say our one-note straight-sixteenth-note bass sequence had been ripped off from their demo tape or something, and we need postmarked, certified-mail proof that it had NOT been listened to.
> 
> ...


Haha! Dude, you're awesome! Seriously thanks so much for responding. That made my day!


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## SupremeFist (Aug 11, 2020)

charlieclouser said:


> But yeah, in general I'm a little leery of listening to "unsolicited submissions" because back in the day we were under very strict instructions from management, labels, and publishers to never open a package containing a demo tape, and to forward it to management's offices so they could put it inside a second envelope and return it to the sender UN-OPENED. This was because of the risk that someone would later say our one-note straight-sixteenth-note bass sequence had been ripped off from their demo tape or something, and we need postmarked, certified-mail proof that it had NOT been listened to.
> 
> Of course, there is no such thing as a demo tape anymore, but I guess if a lawsuit came down they could maybe subpoena the logs from SoundCloud so we could prove we never clicked on that link or whatever. But back in the day it was like opening a can of worms - if you said hi to a fan that was lurking outside the studio with his book of poems, next thing you know he thinks he's co-writing the album!
> 
> So my brain is still stuck in mid-nineties paranoia mode I guess. But I PM'd you.


Yep, this is exactly why I don't read unsolicited manuscripts, though I get asked to frequently. (I write books.) Plus, that shit takes _time. _


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## Rory (Aug 11, 2020)

poetd said:


> Indeed.
> 
> Its very telling though that he chose to talk about that in response to questions about why Spotify payouts are so low.
> 
> ... it amazes me that people are still willing to defend this man-choad.




What Ek says about PR and marketing of popular music in 2020 is true regardless of whether Spotify is taking advantage of musicians or not.

On the latter question, and your clever crack, I stopped subscribing to Spotify years ago because I don't like its business model. Right now, I don't even have a streaming subscription (last one was Qobuz), and almost all of the music that I listen to is from paid-for album downloads at CD quality and above.

However, I'm not prepared to dismiss the substance of what Ek says, and wax nostalgic about pre-internet days a quarter century ago, just because I don't like his company.

I'll take the opportunity to recommend this new recording:


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## robgb (Aug 11, 2020)

michalioz said:


> This came out a couple of days ago. It looks like the internet is shaping the music industry boldly. I mostly wanted to share the news with you and I'd love your views on this.


Artists NEVER get paid enough, so let's dispel that myth right there. Even if an artist is making a fortune, the middle men are making even more, so the balance is way off. This guy's statement strikes me as a giant bullshit justification for not paying musicians more for their music.


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## Geoff Grace (Aug 11, 2020)

I'm going to veer slightly off topic. It occurred to me while YouTube surfing that jazz music production is probably the least affected genre by the current state of affairs because recording jazz albums really hasn't changed that much in fifty years.

Look at how fast Larmell Lewis gets ready to track a song he's never heard before. He may be young, but he caught the old Chick Corea "Spain" quote while listening to the track.



Best,

Geoff


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## ProfoundSilence (Aug 12, 2020)

robgb said:


> Artists NEVER get paid enough, so let's dispel that myth right there. Even if an artist is making a fortune, the middle men are making even more, so the balance is way off. This guy's statement strikes me as a giant bullshit justification for not paying musicians more for their music.


Funny thing really... if only musicians were as good as negotiating contracts as athletes. I remember talking to some of my favorite musicians when I was getting out of highschool, seeing how much they were making, even touring - from the merch table... and it was clear that if I like a band, there are a handful of ways to support them, none of them involve streaming their music.


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## Arbee (Aug 12, 2020)

Unfortunately the athlete analogy is particularly frustrating. If I'm an athlete, I can prove my ability/value by beating other athletes, that simple. To prove my ability in a creative field however.....?


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## ProfoundSilence (Aug 12, 2020)

Arbee said:


> Unfortunately the athlete analogy is particularly frustrating. If I'm an athlete, I can prove my ability/value by beating other athletes, that simple. To prove my ability in a creative field however.....?


it can actually less competitive for musicians - because you're not competing for any strict sense of exclusivity. Someone could get you on spotify and decide to buy some merch. Getting a job composing for something is a different thing, and that's kind of in line with actors ect/a lot of it is rolling the dice, working on your chops, and trying to get in the door. 

But either way, the reason the anology is important, is not because athletes are like musicians in a bunch of ways - it's because athletes get paid to do something they like, and they demand to get paid well for their entertainment. Look at the MMA/boxing/ect athletes... people like rousey/mcgregor will tell you - they make the most because they bring in the most money. It's business. Want me in a ring? Well you better pay me good.

musicians are tripping over themselves to undercut each other/do it free.


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## telecode101 (Aug 12, 2020)

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