It’s pretty simple: no music producer, artist can live off music streaming. Music streaming is the worst possible way to get paid for creating music, it’s worse than the past 40 years of labels royalties fuckups.
We soon are going to be left with a couple of choices, all controlled by a few companies: YouTube, SoundCloud, Spotify and the rest (iTunes and Amazon). Just because you’re lazy. Yes music listener, you are part of the equation.
You don’t have nothing with your subscription except when you’re a fan and are willing to pay 45 bucks for a vinyl of your new music crush. Everybody is making more money off music than the musician, when the digital era was supposed to liberate us, creators.
If you love music and don’t have a problem with that, you should.
Thinking that those services are going to be nice and friendly is so ridiculous. Beats/Apple are some of the most ruthless companies in the world, they are not about creating an ecosystem for musicians to grow. Music doesn’t sell, music sells headphones and gadgets. When you see how Beats started, I just don’t believe they are all about connecting artists and you, they’re about selling overpriced stuff for your ears and be at a place where they have control all over us.
YouTube isn’t trustworthy either. SoundCloud plays it cool for now but once they really want to make money, we know what will happen. Here’s an article super confident that things are looking great. They are not if you make music.
The counter argument was that I left out “losers,” and that content producers were at the top of that list. But I’m not convinced that has to be the case with streams. The reason I spoke of opportunities was not that I’m necessarily optimistic, but that I think, faced with an irreversible trend, it’s worth seeking out the light and finding success as the landscape shifts. And many artists are doing just that. There’s a reason artists and labels are so quick to upload their work to SoundCloud and YouTube, even without revenue: there’s some value there, when they have control.
There’s some value but it’s quite ridiculous: we’re giving freebies, that’s sad as hell and not a solution. And soon, we will not have any control once those companies start doing whatever they want. They are smart, you will not see it.
Y’all already hooked on streaming, in two years we’re totally fucked.
Music consumption is at the forefront of entertainment consumption. Because it’s the oldest entertainment. Soon you will have accounts for everything and will not own anything. Convenience is great but what happens if you don’t have the choice you want? What if tomorrow that band that was available on that service is deleted from Spotify databases? It will happen and you will never have an answer.
It’s fucking crazy to me that people don’t react to the pattern of free service that becomes ubiquitous then does whatever the fuck it wants.
We’re losing and I just hate it.