I think a key sentence is: “The inevitable result is that, a decade later, most consumers don’t think music is worth much.” This makes me think of the ways in which a baby’s cognitive abilities develop as they physically interact with the world. Crawling leads to math, right? So I’m wondering how much of my allegiance to the music of my youth is related to my relationship with the tangible—with the album, 8-track, cassette, and CD. And how much of my disinterest in most new music is related to the ephemeral nature of Internet streaming. I spend a lot of time in bookstores taking chances on physical books, hoping they’ll be good. And, yes, one great book is worth buying one hundred mediocre ones. I used to make those same gambles in record stores. But I don’t do that anymore.
Well, you really don’t have to gamble much when it comes to buying music these days. Audition and then buy on any number of online stores or, in some cities, Seattle for example, there are still a fair number of good old-fashioned grungy physical spaces - although I will admit that both in quantity and quality such delightful dens have diminished. Possibly you have lost interest in the music of your youth and not found a replacement ‘cos the nature of gambling on books browsed at a physical bookstore is minimal. A page or two of skimming drastically reduces the chance of a bad purchase, much as a few 30-second clips can reveal whether you’re likely to care for an album or not.
I loved the listening stations at Tower Records. Here, in Seattle, they have listening stations at Silver Platters. I love those, too. Perhaps I should add an adjective to this. I don’t take “impulsive” gambles on music anymore. I don’t take the chance that something that doesn’t instantly appeal to me might eventually become essential. I listen to a lot of new stuff on the Internet but I haven’t invested the cash on tangible—the CD or album—that would compel me to invest the time.
You are a writer, which is a reasonable excuse for not being a total music obsessive. I am a total music obsessive, which gets in the way of my writing far too much. In theory at least the world needs us both. I live on Whidbey Island, not far from the wonders of Seattle but I have not been there since 2018, and with no record stores worth the name - yet I am inundated by music, less impulsively purchased than in the past but my main problem is still finding the time to listen to everything I want to hear that I already have. And, still, there are many new must-haves. One thing I have learned is that much music is not of immediate appeal; its merits may be subtle and its charms only become apparent years later. It sounds silly, but I’d claim that music is bigger than the internet. And, as such, more time consuming.
A few of my favourite musical intrigues this week: Jembaa Groove with Susuma, Black Mango with Quicksand, De Kaboul a Bamako from Sowal Diabi, Oumou Sangaré’s new Timbuktu, the Adrian Sherwood production of Horace Andy with Midnight Rocker, The Soul Revivers’ On The Grove. All released in the past month, although whether you’d call any of them “a new band” is debatable. Several are vintage performers or studio projects. Forthcoming and highly anticipated is Pay It All Back Vol 8 from Sherwood’s On.U sound label, always interesting. Several promising rereleases or newly excavated coming up including Idrissa Soumaoro’s legendary Ampsa and the there’s the equally legendary joint Sun Ra/Salah Ragab recording Sun Ra Arkestra Meets Salah Ragab In Egypt – Plus The Cairo Jazz Band. I see I’m wandering far off the new band track! But new releases nonetheless. Leyla MCalla’s forthcoming Breaking The Thermometer seems like it’s going to be real interesting and that’s kind of up to the minute.
But right now I’m listening to Fela Kuti!
And not to get up anyone’s nose, but these can almost all be heard on Spotify some considerable time before being findable physically - even if you lived upstairs from a record shop! Don’t get advance physical product any longer even if you’re a DJ or journalist! That’s how bad this wretched virtual world is!!!
If you can find it (I stumbled on it 40 years ago while browsing the African section at Tower Records in San Diego) check out Fela and Roy Ayers' "Music of Many Colours" from '80 ...
Just for you, Sherman, I’ve read of a powwow singer by the name of Joe Rainey with a new album, Niineta, that reportedly pushes the boundaries of powwow music in interesting new directions. The article was in The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/apr/22/joe-rainey-niineta-review-pushing-powwow-music-into-new-spaces. Sometimes, The Guardian even gets it right about the USA and music, although I never count on it. We expatriates are a picky lot! So, this is not exactly a recommendation - but, dig this, the album is not on Spotify (yet) although a few tracks are up.
I've gone the other way, and have been "gambling" on music quite a bit lately. Often, it's based on 1-to 2 songs I hear on the University station in my town, or a friend's recommendation. This weekend might be my favorite; I pulled a record out of the stack, and as I was looking at it, a stranger told me "that's the best record you're going to buy today."
Strangers have recommended music to me in stores - but without the same happy result. But I do generally approve of gambling on music and have naturally won big on some and lost about $10 on others. Works for me.
ah, Seattle…a city that still sometimes unexpectedly spits out some absolutely great music. My most recent discovery is “High Pulp” - if you don’t know them try their Mutual Attraction EPs! Sorry for off topic though!
Hi Ted, thanks for your piece, excellent as always. One tangent I think is worth exploring is between the tension of Spotify being a "new technology" and your very prescient point here:
> A crappy interface with mediocre audio quality that provides almost no information on musicians will inevitably lead to declining fan loyalty...
I would argue that music streaming applications (but I'll pick on Spotify in particular) are nowhere near their potential, even given existing technology. For instance, Spotify has yet to integrate a label page feature that doesn't involve knowing a hidden, arcane search parameter, even though I regularly see serious music listeners beg for it. The technical effort here is negligible, and would please their core audience immensely. Similarly, for all the supposed bells and whistles that recommendation algorithms offer from the form perspective (for instance, Spotify's music is catalogued by BPM, instrumentation, vocal style, "danciness" and other such parameters that they aggregated via acquisition of Echo Nest's data scientists), there's little to no cultural analysis going on on their end. After all, genre is only a loose proxy for culture or politics—in the algorithm's view of things, these are simply collapsed along aesthetic lines. Similarly, I can't search music by thematic content, which as a curator, is another vital ask. The resulting question is "Who is this platform really for?" and inevitably the answer is not serious music listeners but instead people who require endless, indistinguishable, background music. Assuming we also solve the task of paying artists, I imagine a streaming platform of the future that creates relationships along more than just matters of auditory analysis; including geographic, historical, and cultural axes would turn any application into a part of the music-making-and-understanding ecosystem, instead of a mere spreadsheet.
As a recovering Wall Street technology analyst, I find your analysis spot-on. A couple of observations:
1) Music has become Major League Baseball (except without cableTV money) - a few superstars, a lot of .240 hitters, nobody pitching complete games, and drastically reduced ability by the fans to identify a player/performer with a team/band.
2) The entertainment industry has been plagued forever by parasites leeching off the performers. Lewis Wasserstein at MCA might have been the archetypal case, but hardly alone. United Artists was a great concept, but the problem is always likely to be that creative types are fundamentally Artists, not fundamentally United. For God's sake, if you have a kid or a friend who's in a garage band or going into Conservatory or any other performing effort, insist that they take an accounting course - they need to be inoculated against those who will suck the financial reward out of their efforts.
3) Technology will always be a two-edged sword: it will create enormous markets and it will drive production costs to very low levels. Best of luck trying to ride that bull.
It took 13.73 billion years to get from the Big Bang to the "Bang Bang" video. Much of that amazing video was based on technology that had been developed in the previous 13.73 billion seconds. I don't have the foggiest notion how we as a species stand a fighting chance in contending with that sort of development compression.
Great piece, Ted. I think all the streaming services are missing the boat on capturing listeners that are younger than 18 with their subscription model. I think free streaming services like freegal and hoopla are being used by young people to "borrow" music for two weeks from public libraries. And of course, most just use YouTube to listen to music. Youtube ad free is $4.99/month for students. I think it's important for music aficionados to have a streaming service/purchase option to build a music library, not an algorithm analyzing their music interests and future possible purchases.
I worked for a big entertainment company for a short period of time in the late 90's ... it was basically ground zero for all the bad economic decisions and head-in-the-sand management of the time. But one thing that sticks with me is someone ... I think it might have been David Geffen ... saying at the time, before it all went south, that the music business was the hidden gem financially ... it costs very little to make a record and they generate revenue forever (or something to that effect). At the time it was an insight, at least to me, because I didn't know much about the business of entertainment and it seemed to make sense (at least compared to movies which were a total disaster financially). That was a looooong time ago ...
I am afraid Sherman is right about many consumers and the worth of music. Many people have little regard for the sacred in music. It is a shame for the musicians are the ones who suffer. Then again we all suffer from treating music as merely another form of content. By that I mean the culture as a whole suffers. We live in a plastic throw away consumer culture that is starving like King Midas.
You could say that. However, there is much that is more than fools gold. From Bach to Brubeck to Ellington to Zouk to Semba to those oldies but goodies. I have been fortunate to have been exposed and introduced to music that is soulful, melodic and rhythmic. IMHO some of the best music comes from beleaguered countries that sing and dance their traditions.
Good piece, as always. I have to admit the idea, from a business perspective, that a recurring $10/month fee would be able to provide a better business model for the music industry where previously >$10 per CD/album/'unit' sales dominated always seemed far-fetched, even if Spotify had lower costs of doing business than earlier models. As you note though, operating out of fear or perhaps the delusion of ever-increasing subscription numbers might convince you otherwise, at least temporarily.
In light of this and some of your other writing about streaming economics recently, I'm curious if you have any further thoughts into the recent acquisition of Bandcamp by Epic Games. There have yet to be any major changes to the former by the latter (yet), and of the companies you noted as potentially capable of taking on Spotify, it seems the most likely candidate to do so (at least in my opinion). Or does it remain too early or uncertain to say anything for certain on that?
I am taking a wait-and-see attitude on the Epic acquisition of Bandcamp. Bandcamp has long been a positive force in the music economy, and I am hoping for the best—although there are many ways this acquisition can go bad. We will know more in a year or so.
Jim, God I hope so! I discovered Bandcamp two years ago, for me and my radio show, it is just essential for discovering the best in new bands and music. And outre and ultra-hip music labels.
I'm gobsmacked at how easy you are making it for would-be entrepreneurs to come up with an alternative to the crappy distribution and production of good music that would pay off well even after compensating artists well for their work. So far no one seems to have taken advantage of the wealth of ideas you lay out in this blog. I'm much more of an artist than a business person but surely there must be someone out there with the temperament and talent who could do so.
I'm not sure that streaming WILL replace music ownership - at least not for the most serious music fans. I want to OWN the albums in my collection - CD, LP, 45, reel to reel (at least the Sinatra!), digital. At work, I listen to a hosted radio station from Tahiti - tiarefm - and when I hear a song I like (they provide artist and song names on their app), I'll buy it from 7digital, a French digital music store with a reputation for fair royalties and DRM-free purchases. For stateside bands, I try the band's website first, then BandCamp, then 7digital.
Ted's readership may not be representative of music fans as a whole - I'd wager most of us here are far more serious about music than most. I have dozens of playlists on iTunes, and when there is a song I want to hear, I want to hear it - not find out that it's no longer on my streaming service.
So I subscribe to zero streaming plans - unless you count the FM radio in my car.
It was available for cars before automobile cassette drives came out. Plus, those big carts were easier to pop in and out of the player while driving than cassettes. It was just a modified radio cart to fit 40 minutes of music on one cart ...
I DO NOT and never will Spotify, Pandora or anything else that takes the place of OWNING a CD. I want to OWN the medium my music plays on. I want to have it on my shelf, catalogue it and appreciate the beautiful artwork of the cover and/or the liner notes. WHY didn't somebody just ASK us consumers what we WANTED? I'm old but I still BUY music but not unless it is on a CD.
Oma, I likewise do not pay for a streaming service. I've noticed that while we are all talking about Bandcamp, no one has said anything about YouTube and subscribers being allowed to listen to seemingly almost anything in the universe. I find it very helpful in making decisions as to music purchases. Or in researching pricey vintage LPs that I am interested in adding to my collection. I suppose my question is whether we should consider YouTube an evil presence as they may not be getting artists the money they deserve for allowing listeners like myself continuous and constant access to their creations.
I think it is a matter of personal choice, as is the initial decision to purchase (or not) a particular piece of music, or view a performance. The choice is still OURS, but I find that more and more our freedom to choose is restricted by some kind of tech algorithm or media device. I think the whole matter requires us all to be more/better informed and free from encumbrances to make choices in our own best interest. TY
I don't think there's anything wrong with asking consumers what they wanted, but I'm not sure how useful the average consumer's opinion would be in attempting to solve the issues with streaming and the modern music economy Ted has identified. Not to get too Business 101, but if you had, say, asked the average consumer in 1900 about what they'd want improved about their day-today transportation, they would say "a better horse", not something as transformational as the personal automobile or commercial flight.
Based on the listening trends Ted has identified, I think the insight gained from the average listener would be disappointing to you and I. 'I just want something pleasant on in the background' and 'I'm fine with yesterday's hit music' seem like they would be common responses. And if they did say they want new music or something different, would that new music be an atonal, durational piece of avant-garde classical music, or a new The Weeknd song with slightly different lyrics/sounds that is, fundamentally, more of the same? By all means ask away, but in order to fix the issues streamed has exacerbated, I suspect the average listener needs their habits challenged by a new paradigm more than accommodated by improvements on the status quo.
I appreciate your thoughtful response. What seems to matter is what people 'choose' to do. I choose to NOT buy a music service, especially when it is controlled by a profit centre in their best interest instead of the consumer's, I can still choose what is in my best interest on both the micro and macro levels. Choice is suffering and threatens to disappear from our lives altogether with systems that surveil our everyday lives and make us all into assets for corporate profit. It isn't your daddy's Oldsmobile anymore.
I have to agree with that, the capacity for choice is important, and one I cherish especially when it comes to music. As one example, I tend to relax more to noisier music and find overly 'chill' ambient music spikes my anxiety, of all things; I wouldn't want to be unable to throw on some noisy post-punk to decompress to when I need it. Ceding more of our choice to algorithms is concerning any way you spin it.
At the same time, as a creature of habit I do see the appeal of ceding choice to something that does a good enough job of curation. Business interests certainly wouldn't spend so much money influencing your desires and habits if it wasn't effective! Tbh I wouldn't mind if algorithmic recommendations on Spotify were better at driving people to whatever would count as significant or good instead of replacement-level playlist Muzak; I think YouTube gets less flak than Spotify despite (if you can believe it) far lower per-stream payouts because it can push people to under appreciated gems. Something closer to an adventurous radio DJ sharing their discoveries or even something as good as last.fm's recommendations would be a major improvement over Spotify's current m.o. If you can't get people to fully choose and think for themselves, at least do a better job at encouraging those practices.
Most of this makes sense, but I think puts too much blame on the record companies for "decisions" they were forced to make. Spotify wasn't competing with $18 CDs. They were competing with $1 iTunes downloads (a price that the record companies tried to fight but basically lost) and, most importantly, $0 mp3s. Legal streaming had to a) have nearly the entire historical music catalog, and b) be really cheap, to survive.
I think these companies probably made the best of a bad set of choices.
There already ARE higher quality streaming services. Tidal and Qobuz spring to mind. Both offer lossless streaming. Qobuz offers 24 bit audio streaming. A fair price is paid per month and artists are paid fairly. Both are doing quite well.
Bandcamp offers lossless streaming as well. I will be highly pissed of the video game company messes with Bandcamp in a negative way. It is too easy to say "Well, people just don't want to pay for music". I pay. Through the nose. Almost 2,000 purchases from Bandcamp alone. Lots of members have bought far more.
Spotify is just a cheapjack outfit streaming mostly mainstream music people have either heard for 50 years or by artists people have hardly heard of. They pay their artists less than a penny per play. That would be enough for me as an artist to drop them entirely and certainly enough for me as a listener to ignore them into oblivion.
Treat both artists and customers with respect and give customers an opportunity to stream lossless. mp3 is a blight on the face of recorded music. It's a swindle and a fraud. It always HAS been. What Spotify streams is less than webcast audio. Give a subscriber the choice between 16 bit and 24 bit streaming options.
I hope Spotify collapses tonight. It can't be soon enough.
“ Spotify is just a cheapjack outfit streaming mostly mainstream music people have either heard for 50 years or by artists people have hardly heard of.”
I won’t comment on the general cheapjack nature of Spotify, but if people are content listening to the mainstream music of the past 50 years or just getting served up unheard artists according to whatever the algorithm decides is the most profitable to Spotify, that’s their problem. I audition albums and artists at my own choice, which saves endless time and money compared to the real world. Occasionally, I’ll let an album play through to its “Album Radio” thing. More often than not, there’ll be an artist or track or two that piques my curiosity enough to check it out more fully. I’d never claim that “Album Radio” has the intelligence or art of a good human DJ - but there’s Mixcloud for that.
I’ve said this several times before, but the sad truth in today’s the world is that music has become background to some lifestyle for many, if not most, people and they simply don’t listen or care in the same way as we holdout obsessives or as claimed for the “glorious” ‘60s and ‘70s. That’s why Spotify is the way it is.
I agree with all of that. My point (I suppose) is that people are content with mediocrity. It shows up in their acceptance of movies with terrible writing, music with little substance and so on.
Spotify is just another symptom of a dumbed down world where we are fed "product" and an artists value is determined by how many "units" are sold. I am always bowled over when I read about an artist I have never even heard of making millions hand over fist. How is that even possible? I can't even fathom how the sad sack Billie Eilish became so popular.
Selling people attitude as well as luke warm, soapy music. I know this will sound terrible, but I am so thankful I have good taste. I know I'm not supposed to judge, but someone has to. LOL!
The RIAA is its own worst enemy. Start by reading Clinton Heylin's book "Bootleg: The Secret History Of The Other Recording Industry". Really takes the RIAA to task. And they should be.
In fairness, music was mostly soundtrack in the 1920s-'50s, too. And before Mr. Edison's recording device, music was what you heard at Sunday worship, the opera, symphony hall, or local pub. Or your family performed it together around the piano or pump organ. (One of Bing Crosby's notable achievements was becoming the first recording artist to issue a record that outsold the sheet music for that song.)
So the '60s / '70s motif you describe of audiophiles obsessing over the stereo is likely an outlier. A fun one I'm glad I lived through, but probably not one that is coming back.
I’m still buying CDs, perhaps three or four most months, sometimes more, occasionally vinyl, but I keep Spotify for auditioning purposes, to avoid rash and impetuous purchase decisions based on glowing reviews that aren’t warranted, to hear music that is not physically available at a reasonable price for one reason or another (lots of that), and because shelf space is now at a premium and I’m not in the mood to ditch any of my collection (although I probably should). So, whatever the shenanigans behind Spotify’s financing, it sounds like a scam from the beginning, I hope it continues in operation without becoming worse. In its way, it rather reminds me of Tower Records back in the ‘70s and ‘80s - everything you could want (with a few exceptions) and more at low, low prices. Yes, I know - look what happened to Tower! One of the real tragedies of the music business.
Frankly, in many ways, Apple Music already looks better than Spotify, but I don’t like its default commingling of my own downloads collected over the years and its streaming service. At the end of the day, whatever the moans of musicians, the looting by music companies, the inadequate online experience, I think it is quite utterly amazing that, if one has the curiosity, one can hear a huge amount of the world’s very varied and mostly uncommercial in American terms music at your request even while walking down the street. Whatever the future holds, I hope we never lose that ability.
Excuse me, I must go and check my Dusty Groove shopping cart - and Amazon. Things are piling up.
It's incorrect to say that Spotify "convinced most fans to give up their physical albums". Spotify competed against downloads. In 2010, when Spotify was getting its stride, physical albums were already deeply in their secular decline. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_sales
Unfortunately the music industry probably just isn't a very profitable one considering all of the entertainment alternatives that exist today. Maybe they should just charge TikTok more for the rights. And maybe there should be fewer middlemen who take a cut.
The NTS radio (based in London) model does not seem very profitable either, but their voluntary subscriber's approach in exchange of a few little advantages encourages people to listen more, discover more and love music more...
I think a key sentence is: “The inevitable result is that, a decade later, most consumers don’t think music is worth much.” This makes me think of the ways in which a baby’s cognitive abilities develop as they physically interact with the world. Crawling leads to math, right? So I’m wondering how much of my allegiance to the music of my youth is related to my relationship with the tangible—with the album, 8-track, cassette, and CD. And how much of my disinterest in most new music is related to the ephemeral nature of Internet streaming. I spend a lot of time in bookstores taking chances on physical books, hoping they’ll be good. And, yes, one great book is worth buying one hundred mediocre ones. I used to make those same gambles in record stores. But I don’t do that anymore.
Well, you really don’t have to gamble much when it comes to buying music these days. Audition and then buy on any number of online stores or, in some cities, Seattle for example, there are still a fair number of good old-fashioned grungy physical spaces - although I will admit that both in quantity and quality such delightful dens have diminished. Possibly you have lost interest in the music of your youth and not found a replacement ‘cos the nature of gambling on books browsed at a physical bookstore is minimal. A page or two of skimming drastically reduces the chance of a bad purchase, much as a few 30-second clips can reveal whether you’re likely to care for an album or not.
I loved the listening stations at Tower Records. Here, in Seattle, they have listening stations at Silver Platters. I love those, too. Perhaps I should add an adjective to this. I don’t take “impulsive” gambles on music anymore. I don’t take the chance that something that doesn’t instantly appeal to me might eventually become essential. I listen to a lot of new stuff on the Internet but I haven’t invested the cash on tangible—the CD or album—that would compel me to invest the time.
You are a writer, which is a reasonable excuse for not being a total music obsessive. I am a total music obsessive, which gets in the way of my writing far too much. In theory at least the world needs us both. I live on Whidbey Island, not far from the wonders of Seattle but I have not been there since 2018, and with no record stores worth the name - yet I am inundated by music, less impulsively purchased than in the past but my main problem is still finding the time to listen to everything I want to hear that I already have. And, still, there are many new must-haves. One thing I have learned is that much music is not of immediate appeal; its merits may be subtle and its charms only become apparent years later. It sounds silly, but I’d claim that music is bigger than the internet. And, as such, more time consuming.
Maybe you can recommend a new band I should be listening to?
A few of my favourite musical intrigues this week: Jembaa Groove with Susuma, Black Mango with Quicksand, De Kaboul a Bamako from Sowal Diabi, Oumou Sangaré’s new Timbuktu, the Adrian Sherwood production of Horace Andy with Midnight Rocker, The Soul Revivers’ On The Grove. All released in the past month, although whether you’d call any of them “a new band” is debatable. Several are vintage performers or studio projects. Forthcoming and highly anticipated is Pay It All Back Vol 8 from Sherwood’s On.U sound label, always interesting. Several promising rereleases or newly excavated coming up including Idrissa Soumaoro’s legendary Ampsa and the there’s the equally legendary joint Sun Ra/Salah Ragab recording Sun Ra Arkestra Meets Salah Ragab In Egypt – Plus The Cairo Jazz Band. I see I’m wandering far off the new band track! But new releases nonetheless. Leyla MCalla’s forthcoming Breaking The Thermometer seems like it’s going to be real interesting and that’s kind of up to the minute.
But right now I’m listening to Fela Kuti!
And not to get up anyone’s nose, but these can almost all be heard on Spotify some considerable time before being findable physically - even if you lived upstairs from a record shop! Don’t get advance physical product any longer even if you’re a DJ or journalist! That’s how bad this wretched virtual world is!!!
If you can find it (I stumbled on it 40 years ago while browsing the African section at Tower Records in San Diego) check out Fela and Roy Ayers' "Music of Many Colours" from '80 ...
Thanks for the recommendations. I know some of those folks but others are new to me.
Check out Dawg Yawp from Cincinnati - Seals & Crofts meets Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee ...
And if you like Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, you simply must check out the new Taj Mahal/Ry Cooder release, Get On Board.
They look more like straight old Seals & Crofts than Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee!
That’s a great comparison!
Just for you, Sherman, I’ve read of a powwow singer by the name of Joe Rainey with a new album, Niineta, that reportedly pushes the boundaries of powwow music in interesting new directions. The article was in The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/apr/22/joe-rainey-niineta-review-pushing-powwow-music-into-new-spaces. Sometimes, The Guardian even gets it right about the USA and music, although I never count on it. We expatriates are a picky lot! So, this is not exactly a recommendation - but, dig this, the album is not on Spotify (yet) although a few tracks are up.
Very new, very from Seattle and very great: High Pulp, try their Mutual Attraction EPs…
Thanks, I’ll give them a listen.
I've gone the other way, and have been "gambling" on music quite a bit lately. Often, it's based on 1-to 2 songs I hear on the University station in my town, or a friend's recommendation. This weekend might be my favorite; I pulled a record out of the stack, and as I was looking at it, a stranger told me "that's the best record you're going to buy today."
So I bought it.
And he was right.
Strangers have recommended music to me in stores - but without the same happy result. But I do generally approve of gambling on music and have naturally won big on some and lost about $10 on others. Works for me.
Oh, that’s great!
ah, Seattle…a city that still sometimes unexpectedly spits out some absolutely great music. My most recent discovery is “High Pulp” - if you don’t know them try their Mutual Attraction EPs! Sorry for off topic though!
Hi Ted, thanks for your piece, excellent as always. One tangent I think is worth exploring is between the tension of Spotify being a "new technology" and your very prescient point here:
> A crappy interface with mediocre audio quality that provides almost no information on musicians will inevitably lead to declining fan loyalty...
I would argue that music streaming applications (but I'll pick on Spotify in particular) are nowhere near their potential, even given existing technology. For instance, Spotify has yet to integrate a label page feature that doesn't involve knowing a hidden, arcane search parameter, even though I regularly see serious music listeners beg for it. The technical effort here is negligible, and would please their core audience immensely. Similarly, for all the supposed bells and whistles that recommendation algorithms offer from the form perspective (for instance, Spotify's music is catalogued by BPM, instrumentation, vocal style, "danciness" and other such parameters that they aggregated via acquisition of Echo Nest's data scientists), there's little to no cultural analysis going on on their end. After all, genre is only a loose proxy for culture or politics—in the algorithm's view of things, these are simply collapsed along aesthetic lines. Similarly, I can't search music by thematic content, which as a curator, is another vital ask. The resulting question is "Who is this platform really for?" and inevitably the answer is not serious music listeners but instead people who require endless, indistinguishable, background music. Assuming we also solve the task of paying artists, I imagine a streaming platform of the future that creates relationships along more than just matters of auditory analysis; including geographic, historical, and cultural axes would turn any application into a part of the music-making-and-understanding ecosystem, instead of a mere spreadsheet.
As a recovering Wall Street technology analyst, I find your analysis spot-on. A couple of observations:
1) Music has become Major League Baseball (except without cableTV money) - a few superstars, a lot of .240 hitters, nobody pitching complete games, and drastically reduced ability by the fans to identify a player/performer with a team/band.
2) The entertainment industry has been plagued forever by parasites leeching off the performers. Lewis Wasserstein at MCA might have been the archetypal case, but hardly alone. United Artists was a great concept, but the problem is always likely to be that creative types are fundamentally Artists, not fundamentally United. For God's sake, if you have a kid or a friend who's in a garage band or going into Conservatory or any other performing effort, insist that they take an accounting course - they need to be inoculated against those who will suck the financial reward out of their efforts.
3) Technology will always be a two-edged sword: it will create enormous markets and it will drive production costs to very low levels. Best of luck trying to ride that bull.
It took 13.73 billion years to get from the Big Bang to the "Bang Bang" video. Much of that amazing video was based on technology that had been developed in the previous 13.73 billion seconds. I don't have the foggiest notion how we as a species stand a fighting chance in contending with that sort of development compression.
Your baseball comparison is dead-on accurate and depressing all at once.
Great piece, Ted. I think all the streaming services are missing the boat on capturing listeners that are younger than 18 with their subscription model. I think free streaming services like freegal and hoopla are being used by young people to "borrow" music for two weeks from public libraries. And of course, most just use YouTube to listen to music. Youtube ad free is $4.99/month for students. I think it's important for music aficionados to have a streaming service/purchase option to build a music library, not an algorithm analyzing their music interests and future possible purchases.
I worked for a big entertainment company for a short period of time in the late 90's ... it was basically ground zero for all the bad economic decisions and head-in-the-sand management of the time. But one thing that sticks with me is someone ... I think it might have been David Geffen ... saying at the time, before it all went south, that the music business was the hidden gem financially ... it costs very little to make a record and they generate revenue forever (or something to that effect). At the time it was an insight, at least to me, because I didn't know much about the business of entertainment and it seemed to make sense (at least compared to movies which were a total disaster financially). That was a looooong time ago ...
I am afraid Sherman is right about many consumers and the worth of music. Many people have little regard for the sacred in music. It is a shame for the musicians are the ones who suffer. Then again we all suffer from treating music as merely another form of content. By that I mean the culture as a whole suffers. We live in a plastic throw away consumer culture that is starving like King Midas.
Ironically, because not all music is gold.
You could say that. However, there is much that is more than fools gold. From Bach to Brubeck to Ellington to Zouk to Semba to those oldies but goodies. I have been fortunate to have been exposed and introduced to music that is soulful, melodic and rhythmic. IMHO some of the best music comes from beleaguered countries that sing and dance their traditions.
Just wanted to share the link for Seattle Sacred Music and Art, https://www.seattlesacredmusic.com/ .
Thanks I will check this out soon.
Good piece, as always. I have to admit the idea, from a business perspective, that a recurring $10/month fee would be able to provide a better business model for the music industry where previously >$10 per CD/album/'unit' sales dominated always seemed far-fetched, even if Spotify had lower costs of doing business than earlier models. As you note though, operating out of fear or perhaps the delusion of ever-increasing subscription numbers might convince you otherwise, at least temporarily.
In light of this and some of your other writing about streaming economics recently, I'm curious if you have any further thoughts into the recent acquisition of Bandcamp by Epic Games. There have yet to be any major changes to the former by the latter (yet), and of the companies you noted as potentially capable of taking on Spotify, it seems the most likely candidate to do so (at least in my opinion). Or does it remain too early or uncertain to say anything for certain on that?
I am taking a wait-and-see attitude on the Epic acquisition of Bandcamp. Bandcamp has long been a positive force in the music economy, and I am hoping for the best—although there are many ways this acquisition can go bad. We will know more in a year or so.
Bandcamp has replaced CD Baby as the best option for independent bands - I hope Epic is smart enough to leave it alone.
Jim, God I hope so! I discovered Bandcamp two years ago, for me and my radio show, it is just essential for discovering the best in new bands and music. And outre and ultra-hip music labels.
I like Bandcamp. That looks like a great alternative for musicians.
I'm gobsmacked at how easy you are making it for would-be entrepreneurs to come up with an alternative to the crappy distribution and production of good music that would pay off well even after compensating artists well for their work. So far no one seems to have taken advantage of the wealth of ideas you lay out in this blog. I'm much more of an artist than a business person but surely there must be someone out there with the temperament and talent who could do so.
I'm not sure that streaming WILL replace music ownership - at least not for the most serious music fans. I want to OWN the albums in my collection - CD, LP, 45, reel to reel (at least the Sinatra!), digital. At work, I listen to a hosted radio station from Tahiti - tiarefm - and when I hear a song I like (they provide artist and song names on their app), I'll buy it from 7digital, a French digital music store with a reputation for fair royalties and DRM-free purchases. For stateside bands, I try the band's website first, then BandCamp, then 7digital.
Ted's readership may not be representative of music fans as a whole - I'd wager most of us here are far more serious about music than most. I have dozens of playlists on iTunes, and when there is a song I want to hear, I want to hear it - not find out that it's no longer on my streaming service.
So I subscribe to zero streaming plans - unless you count the FM radio in my car.
May I stick with cassettes in the truck?
Only if you're already given up on 8 Track ...
Why anyone ever took 8-track seriously is beyond me. But I love my cassettes for real.
It was available for cars before automobile cassette drives came out. Plus, those big carts were easier to pop in and out of the player while driving than cassettes. It was just a modified radio cart to fit 40 minutes of music on one cart ...
I DO NOT and never will Spotify, Pandora or anything else that takes the place of OWNING a CD. I want to OWN the medium my music plays on. I want to have it on my shelf, catalogue it and appreciate the beautiful artwork of the cover and/or the liner notes. WHY didn't somebody just ASK us consumers what we WANTED? I'm old but I still BUY music but not unless it is on a CD.
If consumers had been asked in advance we’d probably all still be with sheet music and the parlour piano.
Oma, I likewise do not pay for a streaming service. I've noticed that while we are all talking about Bandcamp, no one has said anything about YouTube and subscribers being allowed to listen to seemingly almost anything in the universe. I find it very helpful in making decisions as to music purchases. Or in researching pricey vintage LPs that I am interested in adding to my collection. I suppose my question is whether we should consider YouTube an evil presence as they may not be getting artists the money they deserve for allowing listeners like myself continuous and constant access to their creations.
I think it is a matter of personal choice, as is the initial decision to purchase (or not) a particular piece of music, or view a performance. The choice is still OURS, but I find that more and more our freedom to choose is restricted by some kind of tech algorithm or media device. I think the whole matter requires us all to be more/better informed and free from encumbrances to make choices in our own best interest. TY
I don't think there's anything wrong with asking consumers what they wanted, but I'm not sure how useful the average consumer's opinion would be in attempting to solve the issues with streaming and the modern music economy Ted has identified. Not to get too Business 101, but if you had, say, asked the average consumer in 1900 about what they'd want improved about their day-today transportation, they would say "a better horse", not something as transformational as the personal automobile or commercial flight.
Based on the listening trends Ted has identified, I think the insight gained from the average listener would be disappointing to you and I. 'I just want something pleasant on in the background' and 'I'm fine with yesterday's hit music' seem like they would be common responses. And if they did say they want new music or something different, would that new music be an atonal, durational piece of avant-garde classical music, or a new The Weeknd song with slightly different lyrics/sounds that is, fundamentally, more of the same? By all means ask away, but in order to fix the issues streamed has exacerbated, I suspect the average listener needs their habits challenged by a new paradigm more than accommodated by improvements on the status quo.
I appreciate your thoughtful response. What seems to matter is what people 'choose' to do. I choose to NOT buy a music service, especially when it is controlled by a profit centre in their best interest instead of the consumer's, I can still choose what is in my best interest on both the micro and macro levels. Choice is suffering and threatens to disappear from our lives altogether with systems that surveil our everyday lives and make us all into assets for corporate profit. It isn't your daddy's Oldsmobile anymore.
I have to agree with that, the capacity for choice is important, and one I cherish especially when it comes to music. As one example, I tend to relax more to noisier music and find overly 'chill' ambient music spikes my anxiety, of all things; I wouldn't want to be unable to throw on some noisy post-punk to decompress to when I need it. Ceding more of our choice to algorithms is concerning any way you spin it.
At the same time, as a creature of habit I do see the appeal of ceding choice to something that does a good enough job of curation. Business interests certainly wouldn't spend so much money influencing your desires and habits if it wasn't effective! Tbh I wouldn't mind if algorithmic recommendations on Spotify were better at driving people to whatever would count as significant or good instead of replacement-level playlist Muzak; I think YouTube gets less flak than Spotify despite (if you can believe it) far lower per-stream payouts because it can push people to under appreciated gems. Something closer to an adventurous radio DJ sharing their discoveries or even something as good as last.fm's recommendations would be a major improvement over Spotify's current m.o. If you can't get people to fully choose and think for themselves, at least do a better job at encouraging those practices.
Most of this makes sense, but I think puts too much blame on the record companies for "decisions" they were forced to make. Spotify wasn't competing with $18 CDs. They were competing with $1 iTunes downloads (a price that the record companies tried to fight but basically lost) and, most importantly, $0 mp3s. Legal streaming had to a) have nearly the entire historical music catalog, and b) be really cheap, to survive.
I think these companies probably made the best of a bad set of choices.
There already ARE higher quality streaming services. Tidal and Qobuz spring to mind. Both offer lossless streaming. Qobuz offers 24 bit audio streaming. A fair price is paid per month and artists are paid fairly. Both are doing quite well.
Bandcamp offers lossless streaming as well. I will be highly pissed of the video game company messes with Bandcamp in a negative way. It is too easy to say "Well, people just don't want to pay for music". I pay. Through the nose. Almost 2,000 purchases from Bandcamp alone. Lots of members have bought far more.
Spotify is just a cheapjack outfit streaming mostly mainstream music people have either heard for 50 years or by artists people have hardly heard of. They pay their artists less than a penny per play. That would be enough for me as an artist to drop them entirely and certainly enough for me as a listener to ignore them into oblivion.
Treat both artists and customers with respect and give customers an opportunity to stream lossless. mp3 is a blight on the face of recorded music. It's a swindle and a fraud. It always HAS been. What Spotify streams is less than webcast audio. Give a subscriber the choice between 16 bit and 24 bit streaming options.
I hope Spotify collapses tonight. It can't be soon enough.
“ Spotify is just a cheapjack outfit streaming mostly mainstream music people have either heard for 50 years or by artists people have hardly heard of.”
I won’t comment on the general cheapjack nature of Spotify, but if people are content listening to the mainstream music of the past 50 years or just getting served up unheard artists according to whatever the algorithm decides is the most profitable to Spotify, that’s their problem. I audition albums and artists at my own choice, which saves endless time and money compared to the real world. Occasionally, I’ll let an album play through to its “Album Radio” thing. More often than not, there’ll be an artist or track or two that piques my curiosity enough to check it out more fully. I’d never claim that “Album Radio” has the intelligence or art of a good human DJ - but there’s Mixcloud for that.
I’ve said this several times before, but the sad truth in today’s the world is that music has become background to some lifestyle for many, if not most, people and they simply don’t listen or care in the same way as we holdout obsessives or as claimed for the “glorious” ‘60s and ‘70s. That’s why Spotify is the way it is.
I agree with all of that. My point (I suppose) is that people are content with mediocrity. It shows up in their acceptance of movies with terrible writing, music with little substance and so on.
Spotify is just another symptom of a dumbed down world where we are fed "product" and an artists value is determined by how many "units" are sold. I am always bowled over when I read about an artist I have never even heard of making millions hand over fist. How is that even possible? I can't even fathom how the sad sack Billie Eilish became so popular.
Selling people attitude as well as luke warm, soapy music. I know this will sound terrible, but I am so thankful I have good taste. I know I'm not supposed to judge, but someone has to. LOL!
The RIAA is its own worst enemy. Start by reading Clinton Heylin's book "Bootleg: The Secret History Of The Other Recording Industry". Really takes the RIAA to task. And they should be.
In fairness, music was mostly soundtrack in the 1920s-'50s, too. And before Mr. Edison's recording device, music was what you heard at Sunday worship, the opera, symphony hall, or local pub. Or your family performed it together around the piano or pump organ. (One of Bing Crosby's notable achievements was becoming the first recording artist to issue a record that outsold the sheet music for that song.)
So the '60s / '70s motif you describe of audiophiles obsessing over the stereo is likely an outlier. A fun one I'm glad I lived through, but probably not one that is coming back.
I’m still buying CDs, perhaps three or four most months, sometimes more, occasionally vinyl, but I keep Spotify for auditioning purposes, to avoid rash and impetuous purchase decisions based on glowing reviews that aren’t warranted, to hear music that is not physically available at a reasonable price for one reason or another (lots of that), and because shelf space is now at a premium and I’m not in the mood to ditch any of my collection (although I probably should). So, whatever the shenanigans behind Spotify’s financing, it sounds like a scam from the beginning, I hope it continues in operation without becoming worse. In its way, it rather reminds me of Tower Records back in the ‘70s and ‘80s - everything you could want (with a few exceptions) and more at low, low prices. Yes, I know - look what happened to Tower! One of the real tragedies of the music business.
Frankly, in many ways, Apple Music already looks better than Spotify, but I don’t like its default commingling of my own downloads collected over the years and its streaming service. At the end of the day, whatever the moans of musicians, the looting by music companies, the inadequate online experience, I think it is quite utterly amazing that, if one has the curiosity, one can hear a huge amount of the world’s very varied and mostly uncommercial in American terms music at your request even while walking down the street. Whatever the future holds, I hope we never lose that ability.
Excuse me, I must go and check my Dusty Groove shopping cart - and Amazon. Things are piling up.
It's incorrect to say that Spotify "convinced most fans to give up their physical albums". Spotify competed against downloads. In 2010, when Spotify was getting its stride, physical albums were already deeply in their secular decline. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_sales
Unfortunately the music industry probably just isn't a very profitable one considering all of the entertainment alternatives that exist today. Maybe they should just charge TikTok more for the rights. And maybe there should be fewer middlemen who take a cut.
The NTS radio (based in London) model does not seem very profitable either, but their voluntary subscriber's approach in exchange of a few little advantages encourages people to listen more, discover more and love music more...