During a recent Twitter exchange regarding the Taylor Swift/Spotify/streaming debate, I was labeled as having “become a professional problem identifier.” I was exhorted to instead “Be a problem solver.”
@shadesofsolveig @CheckeredOwl @Spotify Solveig love ya, but.. You are becoming a professional problem identifier. Be a problem solver.
— Steve Rennie (@renmanmb) November 12, 2014
Many more knowledgeable and successful than I have certainly already waded into the fray. Even Dave Grohl! Why bother to add my perspective? Because every time I hear the argument that musicians should just “get over it,” or “stop complaining about streaming” I realize that many of us are not on the same page. We don’t even agree what the problem really is. I subscribe to the philosophy that solutions are built on consensus and common understanding, not on forcing a solution that doesn’t fit, or a model that only benefits one or two key players in the industry at the expense of the others.
It seems to me that there are a lot of things that get all confused up in this debate, and the refrain I keep hearing that musicians should just shut up and “focus on making great music” ignores the reality of how screwed up the music industry is and how hard it is – even if you’re a great musician with great material – to make a living at music.
I’m not a famous musician, or a tech entrepreneur, or someone with years of experience managing bands or running a record label. I’m just a musician, an anonymous musician who, like most of the musicians I know, doesn’t make a fulltime living as a recording artist. Oh, and fifteen years ago I was the VP of marketing at a startup whose product was distributed software as a service, bringing Microsoft Office to corporate desktops as, essentially, a streaming product. I do care more about the long term future of musicians and the music industry than going public with my music tech company and cashing out (something I also know a bit about). And I am an engineer by training. I have a sensitive radar for arguments that don’t square with my version of reality.
[Tweet “Public discussion and debate are as valuable as building a software platform to “solve” a problem. “]
For the record, I’m proud to be a problem identifier. I think identifying a problem is the first step to solving it. Public discussion and debate are as valuable as building a software platform to “solve” a problem. In fact, building software to solve a problem without understanding the problem first is generally the best way to waste a bunch of investment capital. Been there, done that.
I think it is precisely via a very public debate and the respectful airing of differences of opinion, that we make steps toward illuminating the broken nature of artist compensation and teasing out a viable solution. It a complex problem.
Conversely, if we allow various sectors of the music industry to continue to successfully obfuscate by pointing fingers at each other, we, the artists, will continue to be marginalized in the discussion and as part of the solution. As my friend, Christine Infanger said on her blog, “No one knows if indie labels are treated the same as majors, is there an equation or structure to any of the numbers involved or is it all ambiguous and variable from artist to artist and label to label? No one knows. Why aren’t artists screaming about THIS?”
Unless we, the artists, contribute to the solution, we will, I believe, eventually disappear as a creative class. I think painting Spotify (or streaming, or digital technology) as the primary problem is a mistake. Spotify is part of the problem, but not all of it by any means. But it is a part of it.
So, in the interest of stimulating more discussion, here is an elaboration on my “problem identification” (keeping in mind that I identify as an artist, not a music industry professional):
- Pay attention to who is making which arguments in this debate. My observation is that those who keep repeating “Streaming is here to stay, musicians should just accept the future” or “The music industry has always screwed musicians” or “Musicians should just focus on making great music and they will rise to the top and be discovered” are generally not musicians. They are people in the music industry who benefit directly from the perpetuation of the existing model and the exploitation of the musician as an underpaid underclass. Or they are musicians who have already made a lot of money and are not looking at their financial future very closely. As Jay Frank pointed out in this Hypebot post in May 2014, it takes longer with streaming to make money and also, today’s pot of money is distributed to more artists than ever before. I’m not sure where Dave Grohl gets his position from, but I think he’s not looking at his revenue projections.
Sykes: commodification of musician model makes it seem like mere self-expression, deflects from legitimacy of music as labor #HAIKUconf
— Haiku Conference (@haikuconference) September 13, 2014
- Jim Sykes, chair of the music department, at a recent interdisciplinary conference at my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, made an important point that I think has often been missed. In this digital age, music production has been democratized to the extent that the means of production are cheap and widely available. Making music, recording music, is seen as a hobby open to all, not a paying career path. Nothing differentiates the amateur from the professional. One can become a YouTube star practically overnight, and everyone is a winner. Music is everywhere. Every Millenial is encouraged to follow their dream. The result? We are overwhelmed with mediocre and bad music. The law of supply and demand dictates that with the music supply expanding rapidly, the demand (and price) for any individual track is moving asymptotically to zero. “Even musicians who have “made it”… are struggling financially”
Sykes: Even musicians who have "made it" in terms of public recognition and appreciation are struggling financially #HAIKUconference
— Haiku Conference (@haikuconference) September 13, 2014
Dave Kusek called it – music IS now like water – free. Jaron Lanier, musician and technologist, has also raised this issue of the commodification of IP and information, and warns of the monetization and exploitation of the creative classes and of consumers through technology and the control of information by tech platforms such as Facebook and Google. Although I may not understand all of his arguments, I believe Lanier is on to something that describes a very real economic conflict between the creative content producers and tech/business world. It’s being addressed better in perhaps some industries (TV/film/Netflix) than others (music).
- While music production has been democratized by technology, discovery, curation, distribution and compensation have not. The music business is not and has never been a meritocracy. We musicians know that. Social media had made networking easier, but it’s still mostly about who you know, not purely the quality of the music. The advent of the digital age has not made it easier for quality music to quickly rise to the top and be discovered by the public. In fact, you could argue it’s made it harder. The means by which musicians become popular enough to make a living are still controlled by gatekeepers and fueled by advertising investments.
- Yet, we are increasingly understanding more about who controls the money flow in the music industry. As a result of Taylor Swift and Scott Borchetta’s (admittedly self-serving – have you seen the PR Swift had last week? Bloomberg Newseek? Time? CNN? Holy cow, they owned the PR narrative! And are milking it all the way to the bank!) very public spat with Spotify, we’ve already learned a lot about how much in actual dollar payments was made to Swift and her label, and how much was actually received. This has provided some real numbers to talk about, and highlighted the issue of where the money is really going in the music industry. We all know it is not going primarily to artists. It’s becoming clearer that much of the money in the music business continues to flow to labels, or in the case of Swift, to her distributor, UMG. And there it stops. But that is not the only problem with the financial model. The lack of transparency, the fact that a dollar cannot be clearly traced from the consumer to the producer (artist), and the accompanying confusion over copyrights and royalties has only served to blow smoke. I have said it before, metadata is the answer to this problem, and when metadata is standardized and consistently entered, the path of a dollar will get even clearer.
[Tweet “It’s becoming clearer that much of the money in the music business continues to flow to labels”]
- Streaming is not radio, it is advertising (not sales) for established artists, and it is not effective for new artist discovery. Radio was and still is paid (yes, paid) advertising whose goal is to stimulate sales of music and live performances. As a result of two digitally enabled phenomena – the unbundling of the single from the album and the ability to rent (stream) music instead of buying it – streaming is replacing downloads and CD sales in terms of unit sales. However, the net revenue is much lower. Maybe streaming has helped fix piracy, but piracy was a problem created by the digital age, so, I’m sorry, but compensating for piracy is not a net win. Streaming, like radio, is advertising, not sales. Except that it’s not, because, unlike radio promotion, streaming isn’t directly connected back to touring or physical sales, or other forms of revenue generation for the artist, as radio once was. Streaming, like radio, is also a crappy discovery mechanism, too. Maybe Lorde is the poster child for being discovered via Spotify (actually, via Sean Parker’s playlist), but no other artists have stepped forward to laud Spotify as their stepping stone to fame. My kids tell me 8Trax is a better place to discover new music than Spotify, but my generation isn’t on either. We have mostly given up on discovering new music.
- Artists who are complaining about the current situation are neither against technology nor against streaming. Musician Blake Morgan said it best in his interview with CNN: No one is against the internet. Musicians aren’t against streaming, in fact, they are intelligent enough to see the inevitability of streaming as the future model for distributing their music. Musicians just want to be paid more via streaming. It may be an “experiment”, as Swift called it, but we musicians are all too aware that streaming is the future, and it don’t look pretty from a revenue perspective.
- The labels have invested in Spotify because the streaming revenue model is built on the monetization of the back catalog (this is not my argument, but I think it’s a very astute one, bassist Steve Lawson made this point in his blog post, Why The Major Labels Love Spotify). The labels (primary owners of rights to the back catalogs) have essentially fixed the terms and rates for streaming.
[Tweet “This ‘the future is streaming’ nonsense only works if you’re only concerned with the viability of massive record labels”]
So these are all the complaints. But none of it actually matters, because the emperor has no clothes. Here’s why I believe the streaming model will implode in on itself anyway in the long term:
- More and more musicians are becoming aware that signing away their publishing rights means giving away substantial income downstream. The balance of power is shifting. The bigger labels are not going to benefit from the long tail revenue if they don’t own publishing rights, as they do for older artist catalogs today. If Spotify were smart, it would be courting the indie artists and smaller label, because that is where the future volume of music production lies.
- Streaming itself as a business may very well not be a viable economic model at any volume. Spotify has lost $200 million since it was founded. There is little to no economy of scale due to both the licensing terms with the labels and the technical requirements of sustaining a fremium model. Not enough people upgrade and the advertising revenue doesn’t offset costs.
- Streaming could be a viable model if price differentiation were part of it, but neither Spotify nor any other streaming provider shows any leadership in this area. Spotify could be paying artists more for new releases, or high demand releases, or for auxiliary products like HD, artist access or premium experiences (private concerts, limited availability fan merchandise, etc). Per Sjofors, CEO at pricing optimization company Atenga, makes the point in a recent Facebook discussion that Spotify apparently has exhibited no interest in creating a model that differentiates music according to value to the consumer, however. Their interest, and the model they have built their business on, is the commoditization of music.
- What if Spotify took a leadership role in creating an effective discovery process and income stream for indie artists? As this post by Will Burns on Forbes creatively suggests, Spotify could be part of the solution instead of perceived as the problem by using data to create a mechanism for established artists to lift smaller artists out of obscurity.
- “Songwriters have the right to do what they want with their intellectual property. It is the streaming services who must court their creations, not the other way around.” – David Israelite on Wired Magazine. Part of me believes that perhaps through this public debate we will see more artists flex their rights as creators of digital intellectual property and force the platform companies to the table to negotiate more equitable terms. After all, Hachette and Amazon just settled in a similar dispute, with Hachette winning the right to set prices for their ebooks.
[Tweet “Things will shake out, musicians will continue to eke out a living”]
Well, I do agree with Stevie Rennie on at least one thing (and probably quite a few others): time will tell. Things will shake out, musicians will continue to eke out a living, subsisting on the charity of their parents, domestic partners and college friends who support and invest in them sporadically through Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, or Patreon. But without change to the current streaming compensation model, it will never be enough to make a living.
Some musicians will continue to be “discovered,” but even those musicians will find it difficult to sustain a career long term. There is still a seemingly endless supply of new artists to compete for free, at least for a little while, for fan earholes and eyeballs. Who knows if that will last forever, but it may not. Eventually, many of the really talented musicians with great songs will grow up and move on, become computer programmers, English majors, and McDonald’s workers. It will take them a little more time to accept that their music is a hobby and not a professional, now that Obamacare has given us all health insurance, but once they reach a point in their lives where they realize they are no longer young, they want to get married, buy a house, and live in one place, musicians will stop trying to have a career in music, stop uploading their singles to CD Baby and Tunecore, and stop feeding the machine.
In the meanwhile, don’t worry, be happy. You’re a musician. You should accept that making music is its own reward. Being penniless and anonymous is the cross you bear. Because you are a musician.
As always, I welcome comments, rebuttals, and dialog in the comments section below.
25 comments
Awesome, Solveig! I have nothing to add to your post. Your contribution to this conversation definitely comes more in line with my thinking than what I’ve seen on Billboard or the like. (Be sure to check out Steve Lawson’s post if you haven’t already: http://www.stevelawson.net/2014/11/why-the-major-labels-love-spotify/) Most mainstream news (including much of what our friend Christine has posted including your quote in this post) is about acts that are with major labels. That’s a different world than the DIY musicians that I advocate for (including you and me).
We know some of the things that real musicians (you’re right, there’s a ton of bad music out there because of that “democratization”) who are DIY can do for revenue. Not all of it is directly related to making your own music (merchandising, offering workshops, giving lessons, etc.).
Meanwhile, many musicians have forgotten that streaming is advertising — and mostly for the big labels. You are correct that it is not an efficient discovery tool. So, what is going to provide discovery, especially for DIY musicians? I’ll be thinking about this. Maybe you’ve inspired my next post…
Playful blessings,
Stan
You know we think similarly, Stan. I’m glad you like my post. Steve Lawson’s post was the very one I was searching to re-locate – and I’ve added a link to it in the post. Thanks for sharing that blog because I really liked his points. I would LOVE to see one or more of the streaming services really court indie musicians instead of seemingly trying to ignore or get them to agree to the lowest payment terms possible. Fixing discovery in streaming, making it more conducive to finding real new music, would be a big competitive advantage to any service. And would win them artists as allies, not foes.
Yes, we are aligned on many things (though I’m hoping your conclusion is 100% sarcastic — I do NOT accept that making music must be a destitute way of life!). And you’re welcome for the Lawson post. Nicely integrated.
Personally, I do not count on streaming services to be part of the solution. They are in it as a business including offering discovery as a mere facade as part of their market viability. Pandora’s model is even worse than Spotify’s, IMO. Meanwhile, streaming services struggle. You mentioned Spotify’s losses. Pandora continues the slide, too (http://www.forbes.com/sites/markrogowsky/2012/09/10/pandora-finds-little-profit-in-reinventing-radio/).
A few have tried to create streaming or “online radio” that caters to indies. As far as I know, none of those have succeeded (so far) with one possible exception. That may be my angle in my next post, so I won’t give it away yet.
Just like the ways that DIY musicians can make money, I suspect that the external revenues will not be made by sticking with one single entity. We’ll probably need to connect with a few of the best platforms (assuming we don’t have time to publish on all of them) including sales channels to fans (digital, physical, and ticket sales), licensing, and so on. Right now, I do not count streaming as one of the “best platforms” for DIY.
Thanks again for the dialogue!
Ooops. Posted a link from 2012. How about one from this year? http://online.wsj.com/articles/pandora-loss-widens-on-higher-costs-1406234493
This debate rages, but the bottom line is the law. The law permits streaming companies to pay royalties based on THEIR revenues, not a fair price that reflects the cost of the production of the material. Many say this was done to stop piracy, but iTunes was WORKING, both for Apple and the musicians/songwriters. This crappy streaming law has taken a big bite out of iTunes and has made it legal for people to consume music for less that it costs to produce. Try that with farmers (oh, I forgot, Uncle Sam has done that before, and we lost many of them).
Good point, Ed. The convoluted and, some would argue, arcane music royalty laws are another very important part of this complex compensation problem.
I’m actually not really talking about major label artists- I don’t really listen to many major label artists. I don’t know if I listen to any major label artists, and I certainly don’t work with any. There are very well respected indie labels who are just as guilty of the NDA nonsense, and publishers, who pretty much all musicians, label or no label work with, need to up their game and wake up to the digital age. Hell, at this point if they woke up to the AOL age it would be an improvement. I’m not sure why it’s being presented like I’m some major label champion when the artists I work with are self-made and just as DIY and ‘real’ as anyone, but I’m certainly not some corporate label monkey pioneer with a pro-major label ethos. The band I manage don’t have a label, indie or otherwise, and we do everything ourselves…and they’re the biggest indie band in Hong Kong and have been hugely successful. The artists I consult with are wandering lost, many of them don’t even have managers, and I spend my life trying to help them make sure they have as much control as is possible in this climate. I know it’s the new in-thing to hate Spotify but I think it’s a mentality that’s going to ultimately do more harm than good. What good did holding out on MP3 technology do? Did MP3s go away? Did the internet go out of style? Clearly not.
Christine – I hear what you are saying. But I think we are still in agreement more than disagreement. It’s not the technology that is the problem. I’m not against the idea of streaming as a viable and, in truth, inevitable move toward the more convenient and efficient music consumption model of distributed data and cloud services (of which streaming is one). My issue with Spotify (and every other streaming platform except perhaps for Apple, which sells both hardware and music as a service) is their business model. The current model is, in my opinion, neither sustainable for artists nor sustainable for the service providers. Rights holders are not being paid for business and technical reasons, which, if addressed, would make streaming a much better distribution model for just about everyone in the supply ad consumption chain. Consumers would have more variety and choice, artists and songwriters would be compensated, and tech investors would make money from their investment and create a real and sustainable business. I just don’t see any of those things currently happening now.
Oh dear. I was only referring to what I’ve seen you share about music business news on social media, Christine! Not where your heart or professional services are. I get that you search out indie acts and represent one (or more based on what I think I hear you saying here) as well. And as I’ve tried to indicate with my interactions on your blog, I appreciate what you offer to this conversation.
As you’ll see in my post tomorrow, I really don’t care one way or the other about Spotify. Or Rdio. Or Pandora. On the one hand, I have a bone to pick with each of them. On the other hand, I just want people to be able to sift through the poorly recorded, ineffectively performed music to the professional and beautiful music available from a myriad of artists that you and I have still never heard of. And that is still way too much for any one person to sort out.
As you probably know, I deeply love live music. That’s literally where music “lives” for me. So no matter how essential recordings may be, I will always keep going out to a local gig. (I was at concerts in churches, pubs, theatres, and concert halls last weekend and enjoyed each gig for what it was.)
And, I still wish MP3’s would go away. But that’s for another time. 🙂
PS~ Thanks for the nod, Solvieg 🙂
Thank you for sharing this thought-provoking article Solveig. I have been doing a lot of thinking on this subject as a music lover, musician, and as someone who is about to make a new record available. I had a discussion the other day with a musician / manager/ booker friend about this very topic and I am anxious to share this post with her and continuing the dialog.
Yay! Dialog is good. These are not simple issues to tease out. What is amazing to me is that a young woman, a musician just like us, has chosen to take a public stand. How much easier would it have been for her to just go along with the majority. Hopefully some better solutions or changes to the existing models will emerge.
Brilliant blog, thank you. The music industry was never fair! Even in Beethoven’s day! He needed more than just pure talent. He needed connections. Things are much the same today really.
I agree 100% with your article until the conclusion. I will not accept that music is a hobby, no longer a career, and neither should any other truly-talented artist. The struggle to repair the career path of musician may seem more important to those of us who are fully invested, and not really good at anything else, such as writing blogs & articles or raising families. So I will continue to walk my own path. Great article otherwise.
Exactly! For the record, I don’t agree with my conclusion either 🙂 Keep on making music!
This article is depressing and encouraging at the same time. While I was lucky enough to make a living at music for 35 years I no longer look at making music as a viable way to make a living. One the one hand, I would like to see steaming go away, on the other I have people all around the world listening to my music. Twenty years ago that was true also but then it was record companies screwing me (they screwed us all). That has been the artistic model since music promotion came into existence.
Do we all just stop making music? Do we only play locally? Who knows. Making music has always been a struggle. While that will never change, hopefully the musician will someday be compensated fairly for that struggle.
Thank you for your comment, Frank. Good questions, I think tine will tell, and maybe we can work together to make change.
Good work. Here are some additional insights:
After building a small fan base at Radio Airplay I pulled my material and waited. No one bought any units. If you can listen to whatever, whenever, wherever and virtually free, why buy. That’s tough competition, and considering American society has been conditioned to sub-standard wages (if you calculate the ratio of executive compensation vs. the minimum wage starting back to 1980, today’s minimum wage should be approximately $22.50/hr or $45,000/yr), consumers are more selective in what they purchase (monthly mega-data packages vs. CDs). For us composers/songwriters, our cake should be from unit sales with performance royalties as icing and licensing as a big bonus.
With the proliferation of the desktop recording studio the musical landscape has been littered with garbage making it difficult to find the good stuff. But in time the no-musical –talent opportunists will fade away when the excitement is gone and they can no longer afford to keep up with the technology. I try, I recently upgraded to Pro Tools 11.2.1 and Sibelius 7.5.1.
I don’t think there is a possible solution of all this until we First stop with the “illusion” of all music on the Net: (streaming, Facebook, Youtube, Pandora, etc, etc… and even pirate file sharing downloading) is all free. Because unless you have a neighbor with a “No Password” Wifi Network You are religiously monthly paying for all that and none of that money is going to any of the content creators. That is the Real Problem. Internet providers are swallowing tons of money without paying anyone for the content they are selling. The only healthy scenario I see for this issue is if Internet would be like Cable TV and Air TV. A basic navigation zone at a basic price or even “Free” for everyone Where content creators can advertise or show whatever they want everyone to access without paying. And then Different Internet Packages depending on each consumer interests. Email, News, Sports, Limited or Unlimited Movies, Music, Porn, whatever… Different bundles of the service depending on what goes trough that little internet fiber that your company makes available in your house. A while ago I’ve been on an ASCAP meeting where they were discussing the Pandora issue and I expose my idea. Every songwriter agrees with me on this, I can not understand how all those brilliant lawyers and business people can not see this that is pretty simple. The same money people use to spend on a book, movie, Cd or magazine is going to the internet provider this days.
Good points, Danny. I think there is a struggle for the control of the compensation process between the digital distribution platforms (Amazon, Google, Apple, Spotify, and others) and the content creators. As I mentioned in my post, Amazon and Hachette had a very public battle over compensation, which was only recently settled. There are definitely larger dynamics at play. The internet will continue to evolve and we can hope that content providers – writers, artists, photographers, and of course musicians – will come together to effect change.
I have the perfect solution. Streaming isn’t the future… it’s been done and therefore it’s the past!
I’m holding the future in my hand in the form of a working prototype that can completely circumvent the internet by distributing digital content (music) directly to the listener. AND, with my device, the “album experience” is back! Wait and see…
Keep us updated, Don! I think Neil Young has some ideas in that area, too 🙂
I really enjoyed your article. I agree with you about meta-data. Listeners need to have a way to find new music that isn’t terrible and doesn’t give them the impression that there’s nothing good out there. Songwriters and performers need to find a way to make a living. I had my best two years of my career these last two years. I had two songs in movies and one song cut by an artist on Curb Records and released as a single. For the sync fees for both movie placements, my ASCAP Payments and my payment from Curb, I made less than $3000.
This was my BIG year.
I have made more money over the years doing jingles. I have made more money in one weekend playing a wedding… To earn a living I travel coast-to-coast playing cover songs as a dueling piano player. I have released 11 CDs over the years. I have a great studio in my home, A talented crew of Nashville musicians and I have the gear and the space to record anything here. My last project was a 29 track concept CD and even though I recorded it at my studio, did all the engineering and mixed the majority of the songs and I still spent $10,000 on the CD. That’s because I believe that if you’re going to record something and release it that it should be of high quality.
Some of the money went to pay players, most of them are good friends of mine but I don’t think people should work for free. I also paid for some mixes and for mastering. I got the friends and family rate, but it still cost a lot of money. I also made a deal with the publicist in New York City to do a part-time promotional campaign on the cheap.
This does not count the expense in free goods and postage and posters and the expense of playing live and paying the band making virtually nothing at the door.
People tell me “how lucky” I am that I get to play music for a living. I guess that’s true, I am, technically, making a living playing music. Other people’s music.
People tell me that I am “way ahead of the game” with my cuts and movie placements. I don’t know what game they are talking about. The game I came here to play was “let’s make a living as a songwriter.” If that’s the game, I am losing…
I don’t have a desire to be a millionaire, I don’t need to live in a mansion, fly a private jet, own my own tour bus… I would be happy to eek out a modest living playing my own songs. I would even settle for breaking even on any CD that I create. I’m not talking about getting paid for my time, I’m talking about not having to pay out of my own pocket to play at a venue or to release a CD.
Unfortunately, as Gillian Welch said, “everything is free now…”
Dean, I hear you. I think many artists (myself included), share your frustration. Many, many of my musician friends say the same thing: “I don’t want to be a millionaire – I just want to make a decent living.” I don’t have answers, by any means, but I am encouraged to finally hear artist voices expressing all kinds of different sentiments and describing different experiences. I hope we can make some change (in both senses of the word!)