Tag: Digital Music News

Dylan Smith: Electronic Artist Skee Mask Removes Music From Spotify, Citing Lack of Respect for Creators and Investments In Defense Technology — Artist Rights Watch

Electronic music producer and artist Skee Mask (full name Bryan Müller) has officially removed “all” his tracks from Spotify over the platform’s perceived lack of respect for creators, in addition to CEO Daniel Ek’s multimillion-dollar investment in AI-powered defense company Helsing. he Germany-based “Rev8617” artist announced his voluntary Spotify exit on social media, and the much-publicized move follows Skee Mask’s May of 2021 decision to release Pool physically and digitally sans a streaming option.

“it’s done, all of my sh-t is gone from Spotify,” Skee Mask said of his music’s just-finalized removal from the Stockholm-headquartered service. “i have nothing against streaming in general, it’s one of many good ways to make music even more accessible!….

“my music will be available there again as soon as this company starts (somehow) becoming honest & respectful towards music makers. if you really don’t have the money to listen to my music in any other way, feel free to digitally steal it anywhere, BUT don’t give you’re [sic] last penny to such a wealthy business that obviously prefers the development of warfare instead of actual progression in the music business. PEACE!” concluded Skee Mask.

Regarding the “100 MILLION €,” “development of warfare,” and “PEACE” components of the statement from Skee Mask, Daniel Ek’s Prima Materia in November provided €100 million (about $113 million at the present exchange rate) in funding to Helsing, “a new type of security and artificial intelligence company.”

Read the post on Digital Music News

by Trichordist Editor

95 Percent of Streaming Music Catalogs Are ‘Irrelevant’ to Consumers, Study Finds | Digital Music News

So about that long tail and digital empowerment for indie artists, hmmmmmm…

So why aren’t those numbers better?

Mulligan feels that a big part of the problem is that the average consumer simply doesn’t care about enormous selections and vast catalogs, and they’re definitely not willing to pay for it. “Most people aren’t interested in all the music in the world and most people aren’t interested in spending $9.99 (or the local market equivalent) a month for music,” Mulligan continued.

“Indeed, just 5% of streaming catalogues is regularly frequented. Most of the rest is irrelevant for most consumers.”

Surprise! Not all music is equal despite how much of it is being made.

Charge a premium for top shelf professional music and let everyone else give their music away if they want to. Stop exploiting professional artiss into free streaming schemes and scams.

As we reported in our post “Streaming Is The Future, Spotify Is Not Let’s Talk Solutions” we suggested consumer based tiered pricing based on value proposition. Glad to see this is starting to get some notice.

READ THE FULL POST AT DIGITAL MUSIC NEWS:
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2015/09/10/95-percent-of-streaming-music-catalogs-are-irrelevant-to-consumers-study-finds/

by Trichordist Editor

The 1 Percent: Income Inequality Has Never Been Worse Among Touring Musicians… | Digital Music News

One of the mantra’s that we always hear about the internet and musicians is that the revenue has shifted from recording sales to live ticket sales. So the great accomplishment of the internet according to Silicon Valley wisdom (and Steven Johnson of the NY Times Mag) is that artists can hit the road. “The dream of the 90s is alive, the 1890s…”

Well, if you’re not an established hit artist, here’s how that is working out in the post-napster era. Oh, and by the way, songwriters don’t tour, record producers don’t tour, recording engineers don’t tour… well, you get the point. Here’s the stat as reported by Digital Music News.

Note that in 1982 almost 40% of the revenue was divided between the “bottom” 95% of artists, while in 2003 they received only 15% of all revenue.

Could it be that these top-grossing artists benefited from launching in an era when artists didn’t have to be in the top 1% to develop a healthy live following over years of touring?

READ THE FULL POST AT DIGITAL MUSIC NEWS:
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2013/07/05/onepct/

by Trichordist Editor

Updated: Recording Sales Declines & Musician Employment, 1999-2011… | Digital Music News

This week there will be a lot of discuss about Steven Johnson’s piece in the NYTimes Magazine. It’s important to note that there are some very serious questions about how Johnson arrived at his conclusions. This piece from Digital Music News from 2013 offers another perspective, and one that is far more consistent with what we see.

There’s more music being created than ever before, but paradoxically, musicians are making less. Which means there are also fewer musicians and music professionals enjoying gainful employment, thanks to a deflated ecosystem once primed by major labels and marked-up CDs.

It’s a difficult reality to stomach, especially given years of misguided assumptions about digital platforms.  But it’s not really a revolution if it’s not getting people paid.  And according to stats supplied by the US Department of Labor, there are 41 percent fewer paid musicians since 1999.

READ THE FULL STORY AT DIGITAL MUSIC NEWS:
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2012/08/25/recording/

by Trichordist Editor

DMN Says It’s Unlikely Spotify Pays More to Rights Holders Than Apple Does

In the dust up surrounding the Apple Music Launch and the leaked agreement that lead to speculation that Apple was paying indies less than the often heard 70% to rights holders an interesting thing happened.

Industry executives and commenters at Digital Music News reported that Spotify was also paying indies less than 70% and closer to the 58%, or less than Apple.

Update to June 15th, and Apple is not only stating that they are paying 70%, but a more aggressive 71.5% to 73% of revenues depending on territory.

But what makes this that much more interesting is that Spotify has now been outed as NOT paying the commonly accepted 70% of revenues and also has NOT responded to the claims being made at Digital Music News…

So how much is Spotify actually paying? So much for openness and transparency…

RutOh...

by Trichordist Editor

Spotify’s Daniel Ek is Really Bad At Simple Math, “Artists Will Make a Decent Living Off Streaming In Just a Few Years”

The future of music for artist revenue streams seems more uncertain than ever. Digital Music News is reporting a quote from Spotify’s Daniel Ek on CNN Money which appears to show the failure of the companies CEO to perform simple math.

It should be noted that Daniel Ek was also the CEO of uTorrent, “the world’s most popular Bit-Torrent client” which is advertising funded.

Spotify CEO: “Artists Will Make a Decent Living Off Streaming In Just a Few Years” | Digital Music News

CNN: At what point can an artist survive on a Spotify income?

Ek: Well, I mean, the interesting thing here is that we’re just in its infancy when it comes to streaming. And we just last week had an artist announcement where we basically said if there would be 40 million subscribers paying for a service like Spotify, it would be more than anything else in the entire music industry, including iTunes.

We don’t want to say Mr.Ek is lying, but he does appear to be very bad at simple math and to be misinformed about the actual size of the record business and the revenue being generated by Apple’s Itunes.

Is anyone actually capable of doing simple math in a spreadsheet? Here goes. 40m Spotify Subs at $10 a month is only $3.3b in annual revenue to artists and rights holders at paying out 70% of gross. How is $3.3b “more than” the current $15b total annual global revenue or the $7b in domestic revenue in the US?

Here’s the simple math…

40,000,000 * $84 = $3,360,000,000

$84 dollars per subscriber annually is calculated at $10 per month per subscriber paying out 70% to Artists & Rights Holders or, $7 per month. $7 per month, multiplied by 12 months equals $84 per year, per subscriber payable to Artists and Rights Holders.

40m Subscribers x’s $84 per year = $3.3b in annual global revenue to artists and rights holders (assuming they really are paying out 70% of gross).

Simple math.

If you are an artist you might also read these links below:

Music Streaming Math, Can It All Add Up?

Venture Capitalist Admits Artists Can Not Make A Living On Streaming Royalties…

The Internet Empowered Artist? What 1 Million Streams Means To You!

Streaming Price Index : Now with YouTube pay rates!

It appears to us that music streaming can only truly be profitable to those with participating equity in the streaming company itself. Those with equity are leveraging their catalogs of assets against the potential revenue of an IPO (in which the catalog of assets is being leveraged for that equity). Thus far however, it appears that the artists and songwriters who have created those assets as the basis for that equity leverage do not participate in any profit sharing that the equity shares may earn.

So it’s not that music streaming can not be profitable, it’s just that it can not be profitable (or equitable) to artists.

Please tell us which artists are being compensated from the $3b sale of Beats music to Apple? Let’s see a show of hands… Bueller… Bueller… Bueller…

Remember when we were told that in countries where music streaming was the most successful that transactional sales also increased? We’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you too, and cheap. More food for thought below.

Streaming Isn’t Saving the Music Industry After All, Data Shows… | Digital Music News

Album Sales Hit A New Low | Billboard

No Surprise Here: Spotify Streams Soar While Track Sales Fall | Billboard

 

by trichordist

Band “Adapts and Evolves” on Spotify, Get’s the Smackdown… Go Figure.

We’ve loved this story from the start of how a band creatively managed to raise money on Spotify by having their fans stream a silent album, overnight, as they slept. It appears that the Spotify is none to amused when artists are actually great innovators in developing new solutions to actually get paid…

After $20,000 Is Raised, Spotify Rips Down the ‘Sleepify’ Album…

Last month, Vulfpek released a completely silent album on Spotify to finance a free tour for fans. That was laughed off by Spotify at first, until Vulfpek earned more than $20,000 on the idea. That prompted a big response: according to the band, Spotify’s lawyers first asked nicely, then started ripping it down

READ THE FULL STORY AT DIGITAL MUSIC NEWS:
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/04/24/spotifyripsdownsleepifyalbum

RELATED:

 

#SXSW REWIND : Venture Capitalist Admits Artists Can Not Make A Living On Streaming Royalties…

 

Music Streaming Math, Can It All Add Up?

 

What YouTube Really Pays… Makes Spotify Look Good! #sxsw

by trichordist

Google Receives Its 100 Millionth Piracy Notice. Nothing Changes… | Digital Music News

“After 100 million piracy notices, it’s time for Google to take meaningful action to help curb online copyright infringement.

Google, with its market capitalisation of more than US$370 billion, is directing internet users to illegal sources of music.

This is not only harming a recording industry whose revenues have fallen by 40 percent in the last decade to US$16.5 billion, but it is also harming the more than 500 licensed digital music services worldwide that offer up to 30 million tracks to internet users.”

READ THE FULL STORY AT DIGITAL MUSIC NEWS:
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/01/14/googlereceives

RELATED:

Google, Advertising, Money and Piracy. A History of Wrongdoing Exposed.

 

Lou Reed and Dead Kennedys Go Public Against Ad Funded Piracy with Facebook Posts


How to DMCA : Google Web Search, De-Listing Infringing Links

 

 

by Trichordist Editor

No, Streaming is not more profitable than Transactional Sales… Not Today, Maybe Not Ever…

There’s a recent report from the Wall Street Journal that is being grossly misinterpreted from this line,

“Data reviewed by The Wall Street Journal showed that one major record company makes more per year, on average, from paying customers of streaming services like Spotify or Rdio than it does from the average customer who buys downloads, CDs or both.”

This does NOT mean that streaming will be more profitable than transaction sales anytime soon. It seems to suggest that streaming could possibly, possibly become more profitable than transactional sales, but that is seemingly unlikely due to simple math which will review below.

What that sentence says is that a premium paid subscriber spends approximately $120 per year on music purchasing, whereas an average music consumer spends less in total over the course of a year. This does not take into account the non-average music consumer who spends much more than $120 a year, nor does it take into account that the number of “average music consumers” is hundreds if not thousands of times larger than the number of premium paid subscribers.

What would be truly interesting and important to the conversation is to see how much total revenue is being generated by streaming in the aggregate against transactional sales. As we’ve reported before, using a simple spreadsheet, streaming services would need at least 90 million subscribers to be competitive as a viable option to replace transactional sales.

By most estimates there are few people who think Spotify can scale up to and maintain 30 Million paid subscribers in the US. So this begs the question…

If streaming is the future how does $2.5b in revenue from a massively successful Spotify replace the loss of $8.3b in annual earnings?

Complicating discussions around the streaming revenue issues are also the risks of cannibalization. As the early year end numbers come in for 2013 we’re already seeing transactional download numbers starting to flatten and decline.

As Music Downloads Decline, Expect More Anti-Spotify Anxiety | FastCoLabs

It’s official: We’re buying less digital music. Just like vinyl, cassettes, and CDs before it, the digital download may have reached it peak, with total sales dropping 4% from last year. The culprit? It’s complicated, but expect the already-raging debate over Spotify, streaming, and the future of music distribution to heat up.

Here’s a breakdown. In the first half of this year, U.S. music fans paid for 25-30 million digital tracks per week, according to Billboard. In October and November, that number dipped below 20 million. Billboard blames “a web of interrelated stories that show new technologies affecting consumer behavior” for the decline, with the most obvious culprit being that little green and black icon on your home screen.

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304020704579276123352482930

by Trichordist Editor