Turns out the biggest music story of the year is actually just a false “swift boat” style attack. And the truth is

Taylor Swift did not pull her back catalogue albums from all streaming services!  She is still available on Beats and other paid subscription services.

With the exception of a few Journalists (notably Stuart Dredge of the Guardian) no one seems to have noticed this very important fact.

Further Dredge is reporting (on MusicAlly.com) that Spotify took the hardline position:

So it’s about whether streaming services are willing to make some albums only available on demand to their paying subscribers, and not to their free users. Spotify is maintaining a hardline policy on this – it won’t take an album unless it’s available to all its users – and that’s the sticking point with Swift, as it has been before with some other artists.

You know there’s not room for all of you to have jobs in Silicon Valley…  Right?…

Besides why would any Silicon Valley company hire the cast off dregs of the record industry?  They have the brightest students from the best universities in the world clamoring to work for them…   Why would they hire someone who thinks that The New York Times of torrenting  (TorrentFreak) is an objective source on piracy?….  You guys really are as dumb as you look.  Hey wait,  aren’t you the guys who got us into this shit anyway? … No,.I don’t know if Deezer is hiring…Yes you probably have to speak french….

Oh sorry.  I didn’t know this thing was on.

If you don’t know by now  The Music Business Organization (Formerly NARM)  just sent it’s members a letter proclaiming that Google has finally begun to demote pirate sites–wait for it— citing a TorrentFreak article!!!!!!  Hahahahahaha!  BTW this “fact” is objectively and demonstrably false.   Next the Music Business Organizaton presented to it’s members some sort of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) scam-er uh “service” to members.   Is MBO run from some call center in the Philippines?  What’s next? Will they be calling telling me my auto repair warranty is almost up?

The Music Business Organization is a clown car.   There are no grownups.  The entire recorded music business is run by morons.

On the bright side none of them will have jobs in 2 years.

 

Dear Cathy TurrYou may have already read about the latest Google anti-piracy report and their commitment to modify the demotion signal to make it more effective. If not, we encourage you to do so that the link below:http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2014/10/continued-progress-on-fighting-piracy.html Preliminary results are in and it looks like the recent changes had a meaningful impact.  Many of the pirate sites that consistently appeared at the top of mp3 and download searches are no longer in the top results.  You can read more at http://torrentfreak.com/googles-new-downranking-hits-pirate-sites-hard-141023/ We are optimistic that Google’s changes in the demotion signal will cause persistent infringers to move down in search. However, this will only be meaningful if legitimate results are there to take their place. Now would be a great time to refocus your efforts on SEO so your licensed offerings appear ahead of new and smaller infringing sites who will be working hard to improve their own rankings. Tips for how your music site or service can do better in terms of Search Engine Optimization can be found in the following two infographics released by Music Biz: Search Engine Optimization for Music Websites SEO For Websites Part II If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to a Music Biz staff member. Thanks!

 

It looks a little better today. We are officially downgrading this from “Sexist Spectacle” to “Widespread Mansplaining.”
 

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Does anyone else find this infuriating?

Three female artistes,  Adele, Beyonce and Taylor Swift have now withheld their music from Streaming services.  We have to assume that this was at least partially a business decision.  As should be all artists right, they have chosen to monetize their music without using the streaming services.

Objectively these three female artists are enormously successful and run profitable businesses.

Yet these money-losing streaming services and their (mostly male) journalist supporters seem to be telling these women they don’t understand business?

It would be funny if it was an Onion article.  It’s not.

 

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This is getting funny now.

Journalists are now reporting the “real reason” that Taylor Swift has opted to “window” her albums on Spotify.  That is, her public statements about “free” devaluing all music and hurting all artists are not good enough.  So the (mostly male) journalists have gone on quest for a male “self-interest” kind of truth.  Because after all Men are certainly making the real decisions here.

Business Insider (which is neither) seems to have first reported the “Real reason” that Ms. Swift chose not to put her albums on Spotify.  According to Business Insider it was Ms Swift’s record label “boss” who  pulled Ms Swift’s music from Spotify  (BTW a label she and her family own),  The article cited an unnamed  “industry source familiar with firsthand knowledge of why and how this happened, and who is most responsible.”   The article goes on to explain without attribution that the label “boss” is trying to sell the record label.  Increasing sales (a tacit admission that Spotify decreases sales) and hence the value of the label was cited as “his” motivation.  Business Insider did not explain why Big Machine’s other artists including megastars  Florida Georgia Line are still on Spotify.

You see it can’t possibly be

1) A female artist making  business decisions or….

2) Action altruistically  motivated by Ms. Swift’s previously stated feelings on the exploitative nature of free music.

Nope these dudes have to take the long way around the verifiable facts, and rest their entire story on anonymous sources and rumors.

Now virtually every major publication is repeating Business Insider’s anonymous unsourced claims.

“Real” indeed.

 

Music Streaming Math, Can It All Add Up?

Who will be the First Fired Label Execs over Spotify Fiasco & Cannibalization?

Streaming Is the Future, Spotify Is Not. Let’s talk Solutions.

Here’s Taylor Swift a few months back in the Wall Street Journal on music:

Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album’s price point is. I hope they don’t underestimate themselves or undervalue their art.

Very eloquent.  Clearly she intended (as she has in the past) on “windowing” her album.  That is withholding her album from Spotify for a period of time.  Just like TV/Movie industry does with Netflix and Hulu.

So Spotify’s response is to treat her like a teenager and make her a mixtape playlist!!!???

Yikes. It is clearly “Bro-land” over at Spotify.

But that’s not the worst of it. Here are the mostly male music industry beat journalists responding to her decision to not release her new album on Spotify.  The very fact they say she “pulled” it from Spotify is in itself loaded.  It was never on Spotify. They don’t even get this basic fact right.

Look we get the jokes, but it’s doubtful that if a male artist had so clearly stated his feelings in regards to streaming and the value of music those comments would have been left out of the stories. Nor would he have been treated like a teenager.

And below is Joshua Brustein  “Mansplaining” that Taylor Swift is wrong when in fact her strategy makes perfect sense.
1) new album not on Spotify = 1.3 million sales.
2) New albums always generates interest in back catalogue.

Therefore also remove back catalogue album to generate additional sales.

Why isn’t bloomberg interviewing Swift for demonstrating such business savvy and showing the boys how to play the game?

On the other hand Brustein makes no sense whatsoever.

Hey Joshua you write for Bloomberg a money magazine.  This is about the money it’s not a “protest.”   Protest.. why the fuck would you assume she’s protesting?  Cause she’s a woman and emotional? Something like that?  Not thinking rationally? Is that what you are getting at?

And Gawker deserves special mention for being too stupid to notice that Spotify is owned by Billionaires. Oh but they are male!  That’s right men can be “rich as fuck” assholes like the SnapChat guy and that’s cool.  Darn I always forget how this works!

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“Streaming has won…”-Lefsetz commenting on Taylor Swift’s  1.3 million first week album sales, an album not released on Spotify or other streaming services. (Photo Christopher Harte CC)

This is just a quick note.  I try not give Bob Lefsetz any oxygen… but has anyone else noticed how much Lefsetz and the rest of the usual pro-streaming suspects have begun to resemble the former Iraqi Information Minister “Baghdad Bob?”   They can’t seem to face up to the obvious fact:

 Taylor Swift’s “windowing” of her album has increased sales and revenue!  First platinum record all year.

And should we be surprised? Windowing leads to increased revenue in the TV and Film business why wouldn’t it work for music?

This is actually a rather boring and mundane observation only made interesting by the current irrationality of the music business.  It’s only interesting because so many music business executives and journalists have completely drank the koolaid and refuse to believe that streaming cannibalizes sales. That streaming as it stands now (everything available for free) is really bad for the music revenue.   Reading the music business headlines in the wake of Swift’s feat is like watching some sort of religious cult have a mass nervous breakdown.

“Oh no  the spaceship did come! It whisked all the true believers away. It was right over there.  You just didn’t see it? That’s  because you didn’t believe!  Why am I still here? uh …”

Here’s Lefsetz in the face of Taylor Swift’s 1.3 million first weeks sales,  a feat not accomplished since Napster was around:

 Selling a million copies a week in a country of 300 million people is a blip on the radar screen, but owning the news cycle, even trumping the World Series, is priceless.

As for Spotify…

Acts come and go, institutions remain.

Hilarious stuff if you consider that Lefsetz declared her career pretty much over with during a well publicized spat he had with her in 2010.   Payback’s a bitch isn’t it Bob?

 

Music Streaming Math, Can It All Add Up?

Who will be the First Fired Label Execs over Spotify Fiasco & Cannibalization?

Streaming Is the Future, Spotify Is Not. Let’s talk Solutions.

 

If streaming is so good for artists  why is it that artists that control their own recordings opt to “opt out” of streaming services?

Black Keys

Thom Yorke

David Byrne

Now Taylor Swift.  This story is blowing up big time.   Expect the streaming services and their record company allies to “activate” their shills against Taylor Swift in the next couple of days. This is what they do every time a prominent artist speaks out.

Watch this space here cause as that happens, this time we are gonna call them out.

The only reason that the major record labels and big indies supported streaming is because THEY ALL GOT EQUITY IN SPOTIFY.   Did other public advocates of streaming also accept monetary compensation?  As noted in previous articles on the Trichordist it is becoming apparent that there are a lot of folks posing as “disinterested” parties that had a financial interest in the success of Spotify.  That is why we can’t wait for the Spotify IPO.  It will reveal who got paid off.   Though it’s doubtful that commercial bribery statutes will apply in most cases, expect some artist lawsuits against their labels. The labels after all took something of monetary value (equity) against artists albums without counting these revenue produced by these albums.

On the bright side.  Maybe the idiots who couldn’t do simple math and got us into this mess will finally lose their jobs.  See article below

Why is $5 a month streaming good for artists?  Because 1/2 the record executives will lose their jobs! Yeah!

 

RELATED:

Music Streaming Math, Can It All Add Up?

Who will be the First Fired Label Execs over Spotify Fiasco & Cannibalization?

Streaming Is the Future, Spotify Is Not. Let’s talk Solutions.