"Music streamers don’t like creating content (that word, ugh!)." Before I say anything else, let me point out that this is about the 6th time this week that I've seen someone use the word "content" and then immediately bemoan its usage. It's like how people still say "woke (and I hate that term)" or "X, formerly known as Twitter". If you hate the word used in that context, then don't use it. Don't co-opt it and then walk it back. It's "content" when the Spotify execs talk about it, it's "music" when the rest of the world does. OK, onto the real comment...
"The last people standing might just be the musicians" - if one looks really objectively at this, and thinks long-term, there is no "might" about it. Music itself will be with us forever. Precisely which music, and consumed under what model, who knows, but an important distinction here is the difference between music and the music industry. Let's face it, the history of the music industry hasn't exactly been characterized by purity and ethics, the Spotify stuff is just the latest version of it.
Music has always morphed in response to the shenanigans of the music industry. A strike helped kill big bands, electricity made guitars a loud instrument, the constraints of 78's and radio solidified the 3-minute length of songs, etc., etc.
The populace at large is NEVER going back from being able to listen to any piece of music immediately on demand for next to nothing. Despite the prices going up, historically Spotify is still unbelievably cheap for what you get. I'm not defending them at all, but historically, claiming it's outrageous that we can have all the music there is for $17/month instead of $10/month seems rather petty when looked at historically. Same with Amazon and YouTube. Complain all we want, but remember what it used to cost in money and effort and time. These unscrupulous and borderline evil companies are providing their customers with a rather mind-boggling amount of value. Hate them we should for some of their practices, but don't lose sight of the main reasons for their unbridled power.
My own personal prediction is that recorded music as a career will die out mostly. People will still create music for asynchronous consumption, but they won't expect to be paid for it. I myself have earned exactly $180 for my 12 years on Spotify. The way I look at it, it's $180 I wouldn't otherwise have, and I'm pretty certain I would have been making all that music anyway because I love doing it.
If you check, you will see that I only use the word "content" in specific contexts—and never when expressing my own perspective on music. I solely use it when describing the attitude of "content purveryors and aggregators." By using it in this way, I am critiquing them—or even mocking them, you might say.
In other words, I take great care in choosing my words. So I don't think it's fair to say that I describe music (or other creative work) as content. I've never done that, not even once. You can check everything I've written over the last decade, and it will back up this assertion.
Yeah, I kind of realized that after posting my comment. What you (and probably everyone else who does it) is saying is equivalent to saying "so-called 'conent'". I just find it amusing that so many people use the word and then immediately tell the reader how much they dislike the term.
I've never agreed with the point of view that musicians will simply give in to realizing that music is merely a hobby for asynchronous consumption. We are creatives. And as creative people, we will also have creative entrepreneurial ideas as to how to create a new and improved industry that affords a full-time living to the top professionals at our craft.
Look at the prices people now pay for attending live concerts. Before streaming turned the music industry upside down, no one would have believed that fans would pay ticket prices at rates now being paid. Give consumers a quality product to get excited about and they'll consume, even if it isn't "immediately on demand and next to nothing" in cost.
Mass over saturation of product that streaming has created will need to go away. Comparatively, in sports there are a lot of "wannabe" pro athletes that never improve their skills to a level beyond participating in their local rec leagues. Yet the "wannabes" are still able to play sports while we all get to enjoy watching only the top athletes compete in their Division I college and pro leagues.
The music industry needs to get back to that same exclusivity of top talent, as well. Everyone can still create music, there just needs to be a filtering process so that only top talent is offered for mass consumption to the marketplace. We need to stop devaluing music from extreme inundation that the marketplace currently has to endure.
I only hope that creative entrepreneurs figure out a new and more equitable format for promoting and distributing music during the remaining years of my lifetime. Perhaps Ted's wish of record labels forming co-ops to create a better business platform will become a reality?
Regardless, I feel strongly that something will rise from the ashes of where we find ourselves today. Music is bigger than our individual selves. Music is universal and we all need it to fill the empty spaces in our souls, regardless of cost and convenience.
I don’t disagree with you here really. But I keep remembering that the very idea of a music “industry” only really came into being to any significant degree once it became a recordable and ownable thing. Only then was there even such a thing as “mass consumption”. The percentage of the population who ever heard most individual pieces of music before that was very tiny, and only in that brief window in which a performance could be reproduced and packaged for profit - but only by a handful of deep-pocketed companies - did we get mass consumption of any specific piece. And I don’t think people give that unique technological moment nearly enough credit. The 20th century is when the quality of the 3-minute song rose to unimaginable heights, and it’s because of the technology of the day.
Technology has always driven the evolution of music, and streaming libraries are just the latest evolution. There is no “going back”, only going forward. It has become the expected norm to have all of music available instantly. That’s not going away. I am entirely positive that great music will still be created, it’s just going to be found in different places, because we’re no longer listening to the radio and buying records of things we heard there.
(And I don’t think live concerts attended by 50,000 people count. Those audiences already know the music. They are mostly there to see their idols in the flesh. It may be where the money is going, but it’s not where the music is going. )
I couldn’t agree more. It’s ALL organic processes, whether it’s intended to be or not. Like you said, it’s all about what sticks. And no one knows what will stick until it’s stuck.
I wanted my last album to be pressed on vinyl so very badly, but in the end I couldn’t justify the expense knowing the infinitesimal reach those LP’s would ever have. (Hell, I didn’t even spring to press CD’s this time around.) But if I could press just 20 LP’s I’d do so in a heartbeat, (even though my own turntable is not currently even hooked up).
I have been trying my own Lo-fi indie music experiment in which I release a song and video via QR code sent on snail mail postcards to my modest list of subscribers. But I’m thinking of giving it up because, well, it’s not “sticking”! Time for a new idea I guess!
I appreciate the civil exchange of ideas because I'm confident that we are fighting for essentially the same thing: what's best for music and musicians.
I'm pursuing a direction that I'm not sure others are considering. When I read or hear discussions on the future of the music industry, people tend to immediately throw out thoughts and ideas for changes they envision happening on a mass, global scale.
While I understand that for a change of the current status quo to take permanent hold that it will ultimately need to be global in scope, I believe that is the wrong starting point.
I believe that musicians and those wanting to change the current state of the music industry need to start with smaller, manageable ideas and see "what sticks to the wall". Will there be failures? Of course. But debating change on a massive, global scale right off the bat is probably a fools pursuit given the enormity involved.
As you correctly pointed out, the evolution of music and the music industry started on a smaller scale and then evolved to where we are today. I think that same path needs to be followed if we are going to change the current industry.
As an example, I just finished reading an article in the latest issue of "Tape Op" magazine that features entrepreneurs pressing "vinyl" but using alternative materials. These new materials and techniques allow artists to purchase a pressing run as few as 20 albums. Could something like this be the spark that initiates an industry change? Who knows? But, indie artists are flocking to this new technology as are their fans.
What we do know for sure is that the music industry is currently drowning in a state of malaise and none of the big business entities seem to have an answer as to how to rekindle interest and excitement. This is a catalyst ripe for change.
I don't have the ultimate answers but I can say with confidence that there is a growing number of voices demanding something different and better. I would urge everyone to start small with their ideas and see what evolves.
I was debating with myself whether I should even bother to offer this long comment... but my very last paragraph here, about having much less disposable income, is really all I needed to say (probably needlessly long, but perhaps a form of my own catharsis, but I'm not a professional writer, and not as succinct as the author... whose work, btw, I always find to be excellent, high quality), to offer my perspective here, since what I’m about to write is not really about all the technical aspects of the music/entertainment business, and instead more of just an overview (and which although may seem like it is unrelated to the theme of the article, I feel is perhaps at the center of the article’s main issue), and since I have never previously commented here, and... I am not a musician, don’t play music… just a lover of it… but then I figured… ah, what the hell… I’ll throw in my two cents.
It seems like everything you've described is something that eventually (underlined/bolded) happens in a societal system based solely upon profit. Maybe there are different types of capitalistic societies of which I'm unaware (and I am certainly not an expert in history, by any means), other than our U.S. version of capitalism-on-steroids. But when we have a system that, for example, allows like eight or so people to control as much wealth as the bottom 50% (and getting far worse... as opposed to improving) that just logically seems like an obvious system that will eventually collapse. And our method of music dissemination (to reach others so we can hear and enjoy it) is just another system within that system that is collapsing.
I know it's like the elephant in the room which we all try not to talk about, to ignore, marginalize... but this is the point in history that our system's marginalization and willful ignorance of this huge issue has brought us to. It's really, the Master issue... the issue that controls, directly or indirectly, the lower-tiered issues, the tier-2 / tier-3 issues that we all get frothed up, foaming at the mouth, about). We’re conditioned, here in this country, to treat, and to only ever think of, our system of capitalism as some type of deity-like figure/ideology/creation when, in fact, all it is is just another scientific method for a group of humans to use to test out, experiment with, in an effort to exist (and hopefully progress) on the planet.
From what I can see, democracy and capitalism are not the same thing (even though we are conditioned to think so here in this country), and I've read plenty of articles where many think the two are actually diametrically opposed. In a system that is supposedly considered a "democracy", you would think that there would be constant discussions in public forums about whether "capitalism" is working out, or is the proper system FOR, or TO ACHIEVE, our goal of “democracy" (the term that we all claim that our country is about, and founded upon). Yeah, I know a few people might correct me, and tell me that this country is actually considered a democratic republic or something like that... but when our own power structure and its public figures are ALWAYS using the term “democracy” as their convenient reason for everything, especially for all the horrible stuff, they do to other humans worldwide (the one used incessantly is, of course... "to spread democracy”) whenever it wants to start aggressions to kill other members of our species around the world for their own nefarious agenda/reasons (which it seems to be doing constantly, especially over the last quarter century or more... but even much further back) then… that IS exactly what everyone really "thinks" we are, that this country is… a "democracy" (most of us are not interested in semantics, or word play)... even though, of course, almost ten years ago, after utilizing decades worth of data, the Princeton University study, Gilens et al, pretty much concluded, that we are actually an oligarchy.
But anyway, the whole point is that most people are getting poorer, comparatively, while only a few are getting richer... which is exactly what one, like an outside observer, would expect to see eventually happen (after perhaps a long time) in this version of capitalism, and this reality has to end up affecting almost everyone... “eventually”… and so we end up with your "Squeeze”. People have much less money to spend on music, and will naturally spend their money first on essentials/necessities, and so this greatly affects big music/entertainment corporations' bottom lines, profits, and so their management then needs to figure out creative ways to balancing their “squeezing” act… the fine line between screwing over the customer and/or the musician… without losing the customer completely)…. and it is apparently become an untenable situation, an almost impossible task.
(…and no… I don’t feel any better, or worse, after writing this… LOL)
For not being a professional writer or musician, this is one of the best,well thought out responses to Ted's piece. What I believe you tapped into here is the essence of what's going on in music and the larger economy which Ted has been tapping into for awhile in different ways.
Henry George was an American political economist and journalist, best known for his book "Progress and Poverty" (1879), which became one of the best-selling books of the 19th century.
He became a newspaper editor and writer. His journalistic work focused on economic issues, labor rights, and the plight of the working class. George ran for political office several times, most notably for mayor of New York City in 1886, coming in second place.
George's most famous work, "Progress and Poverty," introduced his theory of land value taxation, arguing that the value of land should be taxed to prevent speculation and to distribute the benefits of societal progress more equitably. He believed this would eliminate poverty and curb economic inequality without stifling productive enterprise.
For our purposes here, land is the creative output of musicians. Same concepts apply.
George did not oppose capitalism but was highly critical of what he saw as its most severe distortion: the private monopoly of land. He argued that land, being a natural resource, should not be subject to private ownership in a way that allows individuals to capture unearned increments in value due to community growth or improvements. This monopoly, he believed, led to poverty and inequality, as it allowed landowners to collect rent without contributing to production. Apple, Spotify own the land but they do not create the production. They collect rent from the musicians and the listener.
Therefore music, like land, is both a natural and national resource. We all benefit from it's production, but it's taxed and with AI, it's eliminated or replaced by technology.
Let's use Hudson Yards on the west side of Manhattan as an analogy. Overnight, they built a new city on top of the old railroad years on the west side of Manhattan. Huge buildings, apartments, high end mall etc.... They collected taxes from the public to build an extension of the current transportation system/subway to the location of the buildings. This is a principle of Henry George, location is the most important business asset. The monopolist enjoy all the benefits, tax benefits, government stipends while the public, the people on other side of town who paid into it gain none of the benefits. The land owners collect rent from the community that drives their business but nothing is given back to the community. Essentially, it is a ghost city inside Manhattan.
"In the digital age, companies generate enormous profits from data collected from individuals worldwide. One need look no further than the litany of lawsuits filed against ChatGPT to see that content creators recognize this truth, but one need not be a published author or famous musician to see your data added to the chimera of knowledge from which big tech makes its profits, the truth is, we’re all in there somewhere whether we like it or not. But unlike the wealth produced by Norway’s natural resources, the unimaginable sums produced by harnessing big data are largely concentrated in the hands of a few tech giants and their shareholders. "
Thus my statement, Ted has tapped into it by identifying the problem within music culture that is happening in the broader land based economy.
The rent (eventually) ALWAYS takes the gains. Some countries have figured out how to manage it, and as a result, their entire population becomes wealthy. Instead of collecting data and creativity from the public in Norway, they passed the wealth foreword. A citizen's dividend.
This is NOT socialism or welfare. It's an equitable form of capitalism where a few do not own the out put that they created off a community.
Here's the fun part. The land cycle is cyclical. The commodity cycle is cyclical. Nikolai Kondratieff, also known as Kondratiev or Kondratieff, was a Russian Soviet economist born on March 4, 1892, and executed on September 17, 1938.
He is best known for his theory of economic cycles, which are now referred to as Kondratieff waves or long waves. These cycles suggest that capitalist economies undergo long-term fluctuations, approximately 50 to 60 years in duration, characterized by periods of economic expansion followed by contraction.
The Land cycle is roughly every 18.6 years. When this dysfunctional cycle is not addressed, and it is the Elephant in the room nobody see's on the left or right, it must collapse. And then we rebuild from the ashes. He identified long economic cycles with phases of growth, stagnation, and decline, linking these cycles to significant technological innovations.
Here are a couple of links to a youtube channel that teaches about Henry George's economic works.
And here is the proof that this cycle works like clock work. (Unfortunately substack does not allow us to add graphics which in this case is necessary for a reply to demonstrate that everything I've just said is valid based on history. So apologies for the off site link to X https://x.com/geophilos/status/1888433471334265006/photo/1
When should all of this hit based on the cycle? 2026. The Land cycle is the Music Cycle and it's exactly what Ted has been talking about. Just the connection between two seemingly unlike things, music and land, is not easily detectable.
Your response really did nail it. And hopefully Ted brings this to his readers attention because not everyone might scroll down to read the comments. Good job!
David, I was completely UN-aware of Henry George, and now I've just ordered Progress and Poverty from eBay. I am going to review his book first, before I continue on with the youtube links you included above. I also read thru HG's wiki, and doing so made me want to also read some of his lesser known works. Great. I love learning about new stuff like this. Thank you! Bob
Well described Ted, thank you for this intelligent analysis. As a former Internet radio person at Wired Planet and then Listen.com/Rhapsody, I can only say these are sorry times. I have also been a small label owner for 25 years and a music creator and when I was quite young worked at Cotillion Music publishing at Atlantic Records. That music industry never favored small artists and didn’t even treat their own mega stars fairly. As a music consumer I can’t seem to quit Spotify and don’t choose to keep our music releases off of streaming services - we want the music to be heard! We still have success with selling CDs at gigs and having something tangible in hand to share with other artists, and have had some financial successes at SiriusXM radio. It’s a quandary all around. I appreciate your article here I will share with those I care about in the business.
I've seen these posts from Ted (who I admire) before and I'm always taken aback. Specifically, what are you talking about when you say:
"Unless record labels develop exciting new human talent, they will have no response to these initiatives. Musicians and listeners will both suffer from the resulting creative stagnation."
Creative stagnation? Let's look at the Billboard 200 Albums from 2024. Artists like Taylor Swift, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Morgen Wallen, SZA, Future, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, Teddy Swims, Metro Boomin, Travis Scott, Nicki Minaj, 21 Savage, etc. There are literally 50-100 artists that make up this list who are not creatively stagnant. https://www.billboard.com/charts/year-end/top-billboard-200-albums/
This is the music that young people are listening to! These are the artists that are the musical guests on SNL. I go on Apple Music or YouTube music and I see all of these artists in the top played music charts. I mean Kendrick Lamar on the Super Bowl halftime show doesn't make his career, it reflects his ascent in popularity with mainstream audiences. His album was on repeat for most kids for the past 6 months!
Several of the artists you mentioned are performers: they have teams to write their songs, though the industry hides that quite well through marketing.
Also, Kendrick Lamar authored the probably the most famous piece of 2024, a song which centers around Drake being a "certified pedophile" and a deadbeat dad. Is that culture? That's the song people have had on repeat.
I like some of the songs by some of the artists you mentioned, but none of it really speaks to a growth of music as a whole. These artists sound like they did 5, 10, and 15 years ago. Sure, better versions, slicker, maybe. But not that different.
And none of that speaks to what ordinary artists are going through.
Yes love many of those artists and songs. People have had songwriters forever.
Yes a diss track is part of music culture.
I don’t know what you mean when you say these artists “sound like they did 5,10, and 15 years ago.” I hear growth and new ideas in a lot of this music.
I'm an old guy, and I don't subscribe to any music streaming platform because everyone's got me all subscriptioned out. However, what's curious to me is that my attention has been shifting to foreign music, because it seems fresher and has more interesting surprises, especially the Asian stuff. At my age new music just seems like a reformulation of something I'd previously heard, and so many of the lyrics are offensive, so I listen to classical and a lot of Canadian indie and Japanese pop.
I feel the same as you re:offensive lyrics. Imagine my dismay to be eating out in Japan (several times) where the soundtrack is American rap, absolutely full of repulsive lyrics. Somehow only hearing a language you don’t know sharpens your ears for your own language, unfortunately.
As always, Ted, I read your outstanding music industry analyses through the lens of an author. I'm sure the tech companies can't wait to produce written bot-slop that they can sell for pure profit and eliminate those pesky scribes. If ever my books sell enough, I would seriously consider just selling them through my own website and cutting out the middle layer. But if even Stephen King can't make a go of that, then I'll probably be stuck watching KDP and Ingram suck up most of my sales. Hollywood has always held screenwriters in contempt. You know, the people without whom all those producers, directors, and actors/actresses would have no way to make their outlandish paychecks. My theory is they know they are dependent on writers and so hate them as a result. Same for the tech companies. Without creators they have nothing to sell and so despise them because they depend on them (so far). What a screwed up system.
Unfortunately, our creative property has become someone else’s commodity. We could, as songwriters, choke The Beast by simply not putting our creative property on their platform. But alas, we are not solidified like actors or the film industry. Young songwriters blindly hand over their rights to this huge furnace named Spotify and the circle is never ending. We can blame these platform executives all we want, gangsters are going to grift and steal but as Freud once said, “If you think someone is ruing your life, you’re right, it’s you.” Playing live isn’t the answer anymore, I retired because I was making the same money as I was in the ‘70s. Fewer and fewer venues, bloodthirsty club owners and the arena circuit is even worse, that is why I retired. The gangsters have technology on their side and have used streaming like the sword of Damocles. With all this in mind we have to change our approach become more self contained, do our own promotional footwork and get a grassroots following. I would rather have five followers who want to hear my work versus five thousand that don’t give a shit. If you want to know what Spotify is all about, just look at who owns it, giant hedge funds three of the world’s largest music companies. It’s not going to get better.
Instead of a shared streaming platform, I'd prefer to just eliminate streaming altogether. If you like someone's music, you buy it, just like you used to do. Any "all you can eat" program promotes piggery. Music shouldn't be background noise.
Is this unrealistic? Yes. But maybe it indicates a direction.
I think this whole story speaks volumes about the audience. The same people who will enjoy ai music are the same people who enjoy their lives through social media, and think shopping on amazon is the greatest, and cannot fathom life without their phone. This is a growing population, and they all want their everything streamed to them, basically directly into their mfing brains. This is so much bigger than music, but its sad to see its effects on this bastion of the human spirit.
The problem is ofc the streaming services themselves, and deeper still the very idea of data streaming on a personal level. You might as well throw rocks at the death star.
But real music will survive, ive no doubt of that(unless we get to a point where its outlawed and exterminated. Dont laugh, its very possible). Underground, a form of cultural resistance. A sword in the hands of the dissenting revolutionaries. Perhaps im being poetic, but however you want to imagine the future, music has a place. Its like alcohol, itll be with us till the end.
Id like to hear more about this from creators of new music to owners of old songs thing(from the money chart), bc my experience has been to gravitate towards old music. Ive been buying up cds and very few of them have been created in the last 10 years, much less the 2020s. Not that cds sales are affecting the money flow lol, but id like to hear more about the various sided of this trend.
Perhaps the way to make money from music is to make music, i.e. live performance. There is one catch - you have to be good to be hired. It's competitive. The ability to play a blues scale does not guarantee a job.
I have been playing live as a semi-pro (because I held a day job) for 45 years. Part of the current problem getting work is I’m not a young person any more and I stopped following mainstream pop after grunge hit. So I work in niche genres like blues, folk, “Americana”, etc. The pay has largely stayed stagnant since the first day I performed for money. There are music clubs I have played at for four decades and they pay all the acts the same amount of money which has not changed at all over time.
My nephew in his late twenties plays in a touring metal band who have been unable to turn a profit after five years of scuffling even though they pack rooms, mainly theaters and some festivals all across the US. He still lives with my sister, his mom, because he can’t afford to rent an apartment. Every penny the band earns is rolled back into promotion, recording and touring expenses, etc.
The pandemic was the last straw for me because over half of the venues I worked at regularly all over New England have shuttered. All the pro friends who I grew up with on the circuit are still scraping by despite touring, releasing recordings and playing in as many different acts as they can.
Since I likely won’t be physically able to play within the next ten years, I can continue performing and cover my expenses. If I didn’t have savings and Social Security, I’d be homeless. I really hope it gets better for the upcoming generations.
I wish there was a bit more nuance to this article. For sure there are greedy and short-sighted executives at Spotify. On the other hand I am a happy consumer of the broad range of music Spotify gives me and my family. I'm also confident that Spotify pays more royalties to artists than Napster did. Not a high bar, but still, things could be worse, and were in fact worse in the early 2000s.
The part of this piece that I find troublesome however is that it seems to assume that record labels and companies were not greedy and did not try to squeeze artists. That assumption is seems ridiculous. Does anyone remember Fugazi's frustration with labels, and grass-roots campaign against corporate labels? Or Kurt Cobain wearing the "corporate rock still sucks" T shirt to his Rolling Stone photo shoot? Or the following articles in the 90s, all deeply critical of the music industry? Steve Albini's article "The Problem with Music"? ( https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music)
Or James Gross's "The High Cost of Free Promotion"?
I understand that the top artists are not getting paid nearly as much as they used to. This does not concern me. I also understand that working musicians are not making enough on Spotify to pay their bills. This does concern me. What isn't clear to me, however, is whether or not things are any worse for those musicians than they were in the 90s or the 2000s. For sure there are hundreds more musicians whom I am aware of and whose shows I go to see now who I can only assume I would not have found thru brick and mortar record stores 20 years ago. Trips to Strawberries back then inevitably had me sifting thru the same 30-odd bands' back catalogs. So little choice, so little innovation. Do we really MISS those days?
Sure, record labels have always been greedy. But let me explain what's different now.
In the days of physical media, everybody in the music business had aligned interests—they wanted to sell as many records as possible. That's how everybody made money—labels, musicians, distributors, retailers, publicists, everybody in the business.
They wanted fans excited about new music. They wanted consumers to buy the the new songs they heard on the radio.
This is no longer true.
Streaming platforms actually make more money from subscribers who listen passively, or hardly listen at all. Meanwhile the major record labels have retreated into publishing, so they don't care about promoting new songs. The profit in creativity has declined so much, that many talented musicians abandon the field and take jobs elsewhere—I've seen that a lot lately.
So you are incorrect in saying that I "assume record labels and companies were not greedy" in the past. I've never said that. My point is very different—namely that the greed was less destructive when labels and musicians had aligned interests.
It's important to be honest about what's happening right now. So I will continue to criticize huge corporations that destroy the music ecosystem by promoting passivity, fake artists, AI slop, squeezing musicians, and abandoning new songs for old ones. I encourage you to join me in this—because the music culture cannot thrive under these conditions.
Ted I am a huge fan of your writing and respect your takes on most everything. I have to say though that Spotify has been on my love hate love list for a while and it’s recently shifted way back into the love side.
Their recommendations have improved dramatically over the last year, and I’m discovering music that’s both interesting and new to me, though often not new, and almost always released outside of the US.
I’m beginning to think of Spotify as a globalization trend and not just a monopolistic trend. Kind of like general globalization inadvertantly hollowed out the US manufacturing industry, but reduced prices for consumer goods in America and made it much much easier for American hardware/physical goods startups to get off the ground, I’m getting way more access to music at an incredibly cheap price, while the industry in America suffers.
I would love for present-day musicians and their new releases to benefit more from this trend but as a consumer who’s admittedly nostalgic for the record store days, I’m happier than in a long time with Spotify.
Good points, thank you for clarifying. I am ready to join any movement that brings artists a greater share of royalties.
Maybe I didn't look closely enough for the proposed solution. Tidal was a real attempt to pay artists more money, w real financial and artist backing. It failed to gain a meaningful market foothold and, as you noted, it was forced to sell out.
Is the propsed solition to lobby record companies to band together into a collective to compete w Spotify? I have my doubts that those people will be willing to bury decades of competition with eachother to do that. And if they did, I am fairly confident they would emulate whatever biz practices have made Spotify (finally) profitable. Which means, if we follow your reasoning, means AI slop and encouraging passive listening.
There is no solution. Really. Theres plenty of fancy ideas, some in this comment section, like musicians need to band(badum ting) together and force a concession, but none of those are based in reality.
The problem is a much deeper cultural change, created by a new technology superseding the old. Theres no way to fix that. Each time you choose to stream music instead of using a physical copy or even a digital download, you hammer the nails in the coffin of the old status quo a little more(though i would argue we're past that stage even). You cant use an addictive drug without it affecting your brains wiring.
You say that Spotify "serves up" old, cheap music, but I constantly find amazing, new, lively, engaging music there. John Zorn just released troves of music on Spotify by an incredible collection of cutting-edge musicians, just as a n example. I have no complaints about the amazing library of new music on streaming services, but I suppose you are referencing people who are not searching, but just asking for music to be put in front of them, who get retreads.
As an old fart making music for fun I am so disgusted by the whole music scene that I don’t even care to copyright or register my songs. It’s a total waste of time and money. I put my songs on Spotify because it’s acts as a library for anyone to find otherwise I’m building out here, on Substack, for anyone who cares and wants discourse. Everything else is pointless. … And no, I don’t play live.
Copyrighting your songs has little to do with the music industry, and anyway, you already legally own the copyright on all your music as long as you can prove you were the creator. I always tell myself "If I ever got into some sort of copyright tangle with one of my songs, it would mean someone thought it good enough to steal, and that sounds like a pretty cool problem to have."
That said, if you did decide you needed to copyright it, it's not at all difficult.
"Music streamers don’t like creating content (that word, ugh!)." Before I say anything else, let me point out that this is about the 6th time this week that I've seen someone use the word "content" and then immediately bemoan its usage. It's like how people still say "woke (and I hate that term)" or "X, formerly known as Twitter". If you hate the word used in that context, then don't use it. Don't co-opt it and then walk it back. It's "content" when the Spotify execs talk about it, it's "music" when the rest of the world does. OK, onto the real comment...
"The last people standing might just be the musicians" - if one looks really objectively at this, and thinks long-term, there is no "might" about it. Music itself will be with us forever. Precisely which music, and consumed under what model, who knows, but an important distinction here is the difference between music and the music industry. Let's face it, the history of the music industry hasn't exactly been characterized by purity and ethics, the Spotify stuff is just the latest version of it.
Music has always morphed in response to the shenanigans of the music industry. A strike helped kill big bands, electricity made guitars a loud instrument, the constraints of 78's and radio solidified the 3-minute length of songs, etc., etc.
The populace at large is NEVER going back from being able to listen to any piece of music immediately on demand for next to nothing. Despite the prices going up, historically Spotify is still unbelievably cheap for what you get. I'm not defending them at all, but historically, claiming it's outrageous that we can have all the music there is for $17/month instead of $10/month seems rather petty when looked at historically. Same with Amazon and YouTube. Complain all we want, but remember what it used to cost in money and effort and time. These unscrupulous and borderline evil companies are providing their customers with a rather mind-boggling amount of value. Hate them we should for some of their practices, but don't lose sight of the main reasons for their unbridled power.
My own personal prediction is that recorded music as a career will die out mostly. People will still create music for asynchronous consumption, but they won't expect to be paid for it. I myself have earned exactly $180 for my 12 years on Spotify. The way I look at it, it's $180 I wouldn't otherwise have, and I'm pretty certain I would have been making all that music anyway because I love doing it.
If you check, you will see that I only use the word "content" in specific contexts—and never when expressing my own perspective on music. I solely use it when describing the attitude of "content purveryors and aggregators." By using it in this way, I am critiquing them—or even mocking them, you might say.
In other words, I take great care in choosing my words. So I don't think it's fair to say that I describe music (or other creative work) as content. I've never done that, not even once. You can check everything I've written over the last decade, and it will back up this assertion.
Yeah, I kind of realized that after posting my comment. What you (and probably everyone else who does it) is saying is equivalent to saying "so-called 'conent'". I just find it amusing that so many people use the word and then immediately tell the reader how much they dislike the term.
I've never agreed with the point of view that musicians will simply give in to realizing that music is merely a hobby for asynchronous consumption. We are creatives. And as creative people, we will also have creative entrepreneurial ideas as to how to create a new and improved industry that affords a full-time living to the top professionals at our craft.
Look at the prices people now pay for attending live concerts. Before streaming turned the music industry upside down, no one would have believed that fans would pay ticket prices at rates now being paid. Give consumers a quality product to get excited about and they'll consume, even if it isn't "immediately on demand and next to nothing" in cost.
Mass over saturation of product that streaming has created will need to go away. Comparatively, in sports there are a lot of "wannabe" pro athletes that never improve their skills to a level beyond participating in their local rec leagues. Yet the "wannabes" are still able to play sports while we all get to enjoy watching only the top athletes compete in their Division I college and pro leagues.
The music industry needs to get back to that same exclusivity of top talent, as well. Everyone can still create music, there just needs to be a filtering process so that only top talent is offered for mass consumption to the marketplace. We need to stop devaluing music from extreme inundation that the marketplace currently has to endure.
I only hope that creative entrepreneurs figure out a new and more equitable format for promoting and distributing music during the remaining years of my lifetime. Perhaps Ted's wish of record labels forming co-ops to create a better business platform will become a reality?
Regardless, I feel strongly that something will rise from the ashes of where we find ourselves today. Music is bigger than our individual selves. Music is universal and we all need it to fill the empty spaces in our souls, regardless of cost and convenience.
I don’t disagree with you here really. But I keep remembering that the very idea of a music “industry” only really came into being to any significant degree once it became a recordable and ownable thing. Only then was there even such a thing as “mass consumption”. The percentage of the population who ever heard most individual pieces of music before that was very tiny, and only in that brief window in which a performance could be reproduced and packaged for profit - but only by a handful of deep-pocketed companies - did we get mass consumption of any specific piece. And I don’t think people give that unique technological moment nearly enough credit. The 20th century is when the quality of the 3-minute song rose to unimaginable heights, and it’s because of the technology of the day.
Technology has always driven the evolution of music, and streaming libraries are just the latest evolution. There is no “going back”, only going forward. It has become the expected norm to have all of music available instantly. That’s not going away. I am entirely positive that great music will still be created, it’s just going to be found in different places, because we’re no longer listening to the radio and buying records of things we heard there.
(And I don’t think live concerts attended by 50,000 people count. Those audiences already know the music. They are mostly there to see their idols in the flesh. It may be where the money is going, but it’s not where the music is going. )
I couldn’t agree more. It’s ALL organic processes, whether it’s intended to be or not. Like you said, it’s all about what sticks. And no one knows what will stick until it’s stuck.
I wanted my last album to be pressed on vinyl so very badly, but in the end I couldn’t justify the expense knowing the infinitesimal reach those LP’s would ever have. (Hell, I didn’t even spring to press CD’s this time around.) But if I could press just 20 LP’s I’d do so in a heartbeat, (even though my own turntable is not currently even hooked up).
I have been trying my own Lo-fi indie music experiment in which I release a song and video via QR code sent on snail mail postcards to my modest list of subscribers. But I’m thinking of giving it up because, well, it’s not “sticking”! Time for a new idea I guess!
I appreciate the civil exchange of ideas because I'm confident that we are fighting for essentially the same thing: what's best for music and musicians.
I'm pursuing a direction that I'm not sure others are considering. When I read or hear discussions on the future of the music industry, people tend to immediately throw out thoughts and ideas for changes they envision happening on a mass, global scale.
While I understand that for a change of the current status quo to take permanent hold that it will ultimately need to be global in scope, I believe that is the wrong starting point.
I believe that musicians and those wanting to change the current state of the music industry need to start with smaller, manageable ideas and see "what sticks to the wall". Will there be failures? Of course. But debating change on a massive, global scale right off the bat is probably a fools pursuit given the enormity involved.
As you correctly pointed out, the evolution of music and the music industry started on a smaller scale and then evolved to where we are today. I think that same path needs to be followed if we are going to change the current industry.
As an example, I just finished reading an article in the latest issue of "Tape Op" magazine that features entrepreneurs pressing "vinyl" but using alternative materials. These new materials and techniques allow artists to purchase a pressing run as few as 20 albums. Could something like this be the spark that initiates an industry change? Who knows? But, indie artists are flocking to this new technology as are their fans.
What we do know for sure is that the music industry is currently drowning in a state of malaise and none of the big business entities seem to have an answer as to how to rekindle interest and excitement. This is a catalyst ripe for change.
I don't have the ultimate answers but I can say with confidence that there is a growing number of voices demanding something different and better. I would urge everyone to start small with their ideas and see what evolves.
I was debating with myself whether I should even bother to offer this long comment... but my very last paragraph here, about having much less disposable income, is really all I needed to say (probably needlessly long, but perhaps a form of my own catharsis, but I'm not a professional writer, and not as succinct as the author... whose work, btw, I always find to be excellent, high quality), to offer my perspective here, since what I’m about to write is not really about all the technical aspects of the music/entertainment business, and instead more of just an overview (and which although may seem like it is unrelated to the theme of the article, I feel is perhaps at the center of the article’s main issue), and since I have never previously commented here, and... I am not a musician, don’t play music… just a lover of it… but then I figured… ah, what the hell… I’ll throw in my two cents.
It seems like everything you've described is something that eventually (underlined/bolded) happens in a societal system based solely upon profit. Maybe there are different types of capitalistic societies of which I'm unaware (and I am certainly not an expert in history, by any means), other than our U.S. version of capitalism-on-steroids. But when we have a system that, for example, allows like eight or so people to control as much wealth as the bottom 50% (and getting far worse... as opposed to improving) that just logically seems like an obvious system that will eventually collapse. And our method of music dissemination (to reach others so we can hear and enjoy it) is just another system within that system that is collapsing.
I know it's like the elephant in the room which we all try not to talk about, to ignore, marginalize... but this is the point in history that our system's marginalization and willful ignorance of this huge issue has brought us to. It's really, the Master issue... the issue that controls, directly or indirectly, the lower-tiered issues, the tier-2 / tier-3 issues that we all get frothed up, foaming at the mouth, about). We’re conditioned, here in this country, to treat, and to only ever think of, our system of capitalism as some type of deity-like figure/ideology/creation when, in fact, all it is is just another scientific method for a group of humans to use to test out, experiment with, in an effort to exist (and hopefully progress) on the planet.
From what I can see, democracy and capitalism are not the same thing (even though we are conditioned to think so here in this country), and I've read plenty of articles where many think the two are actually diametrically opposed. In a system that is supposedly considered a "democracy", you would think that there would be constant discussions in public forums about whether "capitalism" is working out, or is the proper system FOR, or TO ACHIEVE, our goal of “democracy" (the term that we all claim that our country is about, and founded upon). Yeah, I know a few people might correct me, and tell me that this country is actually considered a democratic republic or something like that... but when our own power structure and its public figures are ALWAYS using the term “democracy” as their convenient reason for everything, especially for all the horrible stuff, they do to other humans worldwide (the one used incessantly is, of course... "to spread democracy”) whenever it wants to start aggressions to kill other members of our species around the world for their own nefarious agenda/reasons (which it seems to be doing constantly, especially over the last quarter century or more... but even much further back) then… that IS exactly what everyone really "thinks" we are, that this country is… a "democracy" (most of us are not interested in semantics, or word play)... even though, of course, almost ten years ago, after utilizing decades worth of data, the Princeton University study, Gilens et al, pretty much concluded, that we are actually an oligarchy.
But anyway, the whole point is that most people are getting poorer, comparatively, while only a few are getting richer... which is exactly what one, like an outside observer, would expect to see eventually happen (after perhaps a long time) in this version of capitalism, and this reality has to end up affecting almost everyone... “eventually”… and so we end up with your "Squeeze”. People have much less money to spend on music, and will naturally spend their money first on essentials/necessities, and so this greatly affects big music/entertainment corporations' bottom lines, profits, and so their management then needs to figure out creative ways to balancing their “squeezing” act… the fine line between screwing over the customer and/or the musician… without losing the customer completely)…. and it is apparently become an untenable situation, an almost impossible task.
(…and no… I don’t feel any better, or worse, after writing this… LOL)
For not being a professional writer or musician, this is one of the best,well thought out responses to Ted's piece. What I believe you tapped into here is the essence of what's going on in music and the larger economy which Ted has been tapping into for awhile in different ways.
Henry George was an American political economist and journalist, best known for his book "Progress and Poverty" (1879), which became one of the best-selling books of the 19th century.
He became a newspaper editor and writer. His journalistic work focused on economic issues, labor rights, and the plight of the working class. George ran for political office several times, most notably for mayor of New York City in 1886, coming in second place.
George's most famous work, "Progress and Poverty," introduced his theory of land value taxation, arguing that the value of land should be taxed to prevent speculation and to distribute the benefits of societal progress more equitably. He believed this would eliminate poverty and curb economic inequality without stifling productive enterprise.
For our purposes here, land is the creative output of musicians. Same concepts apply.
George did not oppose capitalism but was highly critical of what he saw as its most severe distortion: the private monopoly of land. He argued that land, being a natural resource, should not be subject to private ownership in a way that allows individuals to capture unearned increments in value due to community growth or improvements. This monopoly, he believed, led to poverty and inequality, as it allowed landowners to collect rent without contributing to production. Apple, Spotify own the land but they do not create the production. They collect rent from the musicians and the listener.
Therefore music, like land, is both a natural and national resource. We all benefit from it's production, but it's taxed and with AI, it's eliminated or replaced by technology.
Let's use Hudson Yards on the west side of Manhattan as an analogy. Overnight, they built a new city on top of the old railroad years on the west side of Manhattan. Huge buildings, apartments, high end mall etc.... They collected taxes from the public to build an extension of the current transportation system/subway to the location of the buildings. This is a principle of Henry George, location is the most important business asset. The monopolist enjoy all the benefits, tax benefits, government stipends while the public, the people on other side of town who paid into it gain none of the benefits. The land owners collect rent from the community that drives their business but nothing is given back to the community. Essentially, it is a ghost city inside Manhattan.
Henry Georges economic has been applied in Norway. https://schalkenbach.org/what-henry-george-and-norway-can-teach-us-about-governing-the-digital-economy/ The natural resources are shared by the entire country.
"In the digital age, companies generate enormous profits from data collected from individuals worldwide. One need look no further than the litany of lawsuits filed against ChatGPT to see that content creators recognize this truth, but one need not be a published author or famous musician to see your data added to the chimera of knowledge from which big tech makes its profits, the truth is, we’re all in there somewhere whether we like it or not. But unlike the wealth produced by Norway’s natural resources, the unimaginable sums produced by harnessing big data are largely concentrated in the hands of a few tech giants and their shareholders. "
Thus my statement, Ted has tapped into it by identifying the problem within music culture that is happening in the broader land based economy.
The rent (eventually) ALWAYS takes the gains. Some countries have figured out how to manage it, and as a result, their entire population becomes wealthy. Instead of collecting data and creativity from the public in Norway, they passed the wealth foreword. A citizen's dividend.
Latest article on Norway from Bloomberg.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-29/norway-1-8-trillion-fund-returns-13-on-gains-in-us-tech-stocks?cmpid=BBD012925_politics&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=250129&utm_campaign=bop
This is NOT socialism or welfare. It's an equitable form of capitalism where a few do not own the out put that they created off a community.
Here's the fun part. The land cycle is cyclical. The commodity cycle is cyclical. Nikolai Kondratieff, also known as Kondratiev or Kondratieff, was a Russian Soviet economist born on March 4, 1892, and executed on September 17, 1938.
He is best known for his theory of economic cycles, which are now referred to as Kondratieff waves or long waves. These cycles suggest that capitalist economies undergo long-term fluctuations, approximately 50 to 60 years in duration, characterized by periods of economic expansion followed by contraction.
The Land cycle is roughly every 18.6 years. When this dysfunctional cycle is not addressed, and it is the Elephant in the room nobody see's on the left or right, it must collapse. And then we rebuild from the ashes. He identified long economic cycles with phases of growth, stagnation, and decline, linking these cycles to significant technological innovations.
Here are a couple of links to a youtube channel that teaches about Henry George's economic works.
https://youtu.be/fetik31kULo?si=V5jLor7DZNKXcb54
https://youtu.be/5diMAY9hu-c?si=LicMsyiwhIBKX8CR
And here is the proof that this cycle works like clock work. (Unfortunately substack does not allow us to add graphics which in this case is necessary for a reply to demonstrate that everything I've just said is valid based on history. So apologies for the off site link to X https://x.com/geophilos/status/1888433471334265006/photo/1
When should all of this hit based on the cycle? 2026. The Land cycle is the Music Cycle and it's exactly what Ted has been talking about. Just the connection between two seemingly unlike things, music and land, is not easily detectable.
Your response really did nail it. And hopefully Ted brings this to his readers attention because not everyone might scroll down to read the comments. Good job!
David, I was completely UN-aware of Henry George, and now I've just ordered Progress and Poverty from eBay. I am going to review his book first, before I continue on with the youtube links you included above. I also read thru HG's wiki, and doing so made me want to also read some of his lesser known works. Great. I love learning about new stuff like this. Thank you! Bob
Well described Ted, thank you for this intelligent analysis. As a former Internet radio person at Wired Planet and then Listen.com/Rhapsody, I can only say these are sorry times. I have also been a small label owner for 25 years and a music creator and when I was quite young worked at Cotillion Music publishing at Atlantic Records. That music industry never favored small artists and didn’t even treat their own mega stars fairly. As a music consumer I can’t seem to quit Spotify and don’t choose to keep our music releases off of streaming services - we want the music to be heard! We still have success with selling CDs at gigs and having something tangible in hand to share with other artists, and have had some financial successes at SiriusXM radio. It’s a quandary all around. I appreciate your article here I will share with those I care about in the business.
I've seen these posts from Ted (who I admire) before and I'm always taken aback. Specifically, what are you talking about when you say:
"Unless record labels develop exciting new human talent, they will have no response to these initiatives. Musicians and listeners will both suffer from the resulting creative stagnation."
Creative stagnation? Let's look at the Billboard 200 Albums from 2024. Artists like Taylor Swift, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Morgen Wallen, SZA, Future, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, Teddy Swims, Metro Boomin, Travis Scott, Nicki Minaj, 21 Savage, etc. There are literally 50-100 artists that make up this list who are not creatively stagnant. https://www.billboard.com/charts/year-end/top-billboard-200-albums/
This is the music that young people are listening to! These are the artists that are the musical guests on SNL. I go on Apple Music or YouTube music and I see all of these artists in the top played music charts. I mean Kendrick Lamar on the Super Bowl halftime show doesn't make his career, it reflects his ascent in popularity with mainstream audiences. His album was on repeat for most kids for the past 6 months!
Yes, people *like* that music, but do you?
Several of the artists you mentioned are performers: they have teams to write their songs, though the industry hides that quite well through marketing.
Also, Kendrick Lamar authored the probably the most famous piece of 2024, a song which centers around Drake being a "certified pedophile" and a deadbeat dad. Is that culture? That's the song people have had on repeat.
I like some of the songs by some of the artists you mentioned, but none of it really speaks to a growth of music as a whole. These artists sound like they did 5, 10, and 15 years ago. Sure, better versions, slicker, maybe. But not that different.
And none of that speaks to what ordinary artists are going through.
Yes love many of those artists and songs. People have had songwriters forever.
Yes a diss track is part of music culture.
I don’t know what you mean when you say these artists “sound like they did 5,10, and 15 years ago.” I hear growth and new ideas in a lot of this music.
I'm an old guy, and I don't subscribe to any music streaming platform because everyone's got me all subscriptioned out. However, what's curious to me is that my attention has been shifting to foreign music, because it seems fresher and has more interesting surprises, especially the Asian stuff. At my age new music just seems like a reformulation of something I'd previously heard, and so many of the lyrics are offensive, so I listen to classical and a lot of Canadian indie and Japanese pop.
I feel the same as you re:offensive lyrics. Imagine my dismay to be eating out in Japan (several times) where the soundtrack is American rap, absolutely full of repulsive lyrics. Somehow only hearing a language you don’t know sharpens your ears for your own language, unfortunately.
As always, Ted, I read your outstanding music industry analyses through the lens of an author. I'm sure the tech companies can't wait to produce written bot-slop that they can sell for pure profit and eliminate those pesky scribes. If ever my books sell enough, I would seriously consider just selling them through my own website and cutting out the middle layer. But if even Stephen King can't make a go of that, then I'll probably be stuck watching KDP and Ingram suck up most of my sales. Hollywood has always held screenwriters in contempt. You know, the people without whom all those producers, directors, and actors/actresses would have no way to make their outlandish paychecks. My theory is they know they are dependent on writers and so hate them as a result. Same for the tech companies. Without creators they have nothing to sell and so despise them because they depend on them (so far). What a screwed up system.
I like the way you put that—“they know they are dependent t…so hate them as a result.” Seems accurate that the envy would breed resentment.
Maybe it’s time Atlas shrugged.
Thank you so much for this…truth. Everyone can help if we start with truth.
Unfortunately, our creative property has become someone else’s commodity. We could, as songwriters, choke The Beast by simply not putting our creative property on their platform. But alas, we are not solidified like actors or the film industry. Young songwriters blindly hand over their rights to this huge furnace named Spotify and the circle is never ending. We can blame these platform executives all we want, gangsters are going to grift and steal but as Freud once said, “If you think someone is ruing your life, you’re right, it’s you.” Playing live isn’t the answer anymore, I retired because I was making the same money as I was in the ‘70s. Fewer and fewer venues, bloodthirsty club owners and the arena circuit is even worse, that is why I retired. The gangsters have technology on their side and have used streaming like the sword of Damocles. With all this in mind we have to change our approach become more self contained, do our own promotional footwork and get a grassroots following. I would rather have five followers who want to hear my work versus five thousand that don’t give a shit. If you want to know what Spotify is all about, just look at who owns it, giant hedge funds three of the world’s largest music companies. It’s not going to get better.
Good article as always.
Instead of a shared streaming platform, I'd prefer to just eliminate streaming altogether. If you like someone's music, you buy it, just like you used to do. Any "all you can eat" program promotes piggery. Music shouldn't be background noise.
Is this unrealistic? Yes. But maybe it indicates a direction.
I think this whole story speaks volumes about the audience. The same people who will enjoy ai music are the same people who enjoy their lives through social media, and think shopping on amazon is the greatest, and cannot fathom life without their phone. This is a growing population, and they all want their everything streamed to them, basically directly into their mfing brains. This is so much bigger than music, but its sad to see its effects on this bastion of the human spirit.
The problem is ofc the streaming services themselves, and deeper still the very idea of data streaming on a personal level. You might as well throw rocks at the death star.
But real music will survive, ive no doubt of that(unless we get to a point where its outlawed and exterminated. Dont laugh, its very possible). Underground, a form of cultural resistance. A sword in the hands of the dissenting revolutionaries. Perhaps im being poetic, but however you want to imagine the future, music has a place. Its like alcohol, itll be with us till the end.
Id like to hear more about this from creators of new music to owners of old songs thing(from the money chart), bc my experience has been to gravitate towards old music. Ive been buying up cds and very few of them have been created in the last 10 years, much less the 2020s. Not that cds sales are affecting the money flow lol, but id like to hear more about the various sided of this trend.
Perhaps the way to make money from music is to make music, i.e. live performance. There is one catch - you have to be good to be hired. It's competitive. The ability to play a blues scale does not guarantee a job.
Herb, you are right about the catch.
I have been playing live as a semi-pro (because I held a day job) for 45 years. Part of the current problem getting work is I’m not a young person any more and I stopped following mainstream pop after grunge hit. So I work in niche genres like blues, folk, “Americana”, etc. The pay has largely stayed stagnant since the first day I performed for money. There are music clubs I have played at for four decades and they pay all the acts the same amount of money which has not changed at all over time.
My nephew in his late twenties plays in a touring metal band who have been unable to turn a profit after five years of scuffling even though they pack rooms, mainly theaters and some festivals all across the US. He still lives with my sister, his mom, because he can’t afford to rent an apartment. Every penny the band earns is rolled back into promotion, recording and touring expenses, etc.
The pandemic was the last straw for me because over half of the venues I worked at regularly all over New England have shuttered. All the pro friends who I grew up with on the circuit are still scraping by despite touring, releasing recordings and playing in as many different acts as they can.
Since I likely won’t be physically able to play within the next ten years, I can continue performing and cover my expenses. If I didn’t have savings and Social Security, I’d be homeless. I really hope it gets better for the upcoming generations.
"If a parasite attached to your body gets bigger and bigger, that doesn’t mean you’re healthy. It’s thriving by destroying you" - Bingo
I wish there was a bit more nuance to this article. For sure there are greedy and short-sighted executives at Spotify. On the other hand I am a happy consumer of the broad range of music Spotify gives me and my family. I'm also confident that Spotify pays more royalties to artists than Napster did. Not a high bar, but still, things could be worse, and were in fact worse in the early 2000s.
The part of this piece that I find troublesome however is that it seems to assume that record labels and companies were not greedy and did not try to squeeze artists. That assumption is seems ridiculous. Does anyone remember Fugazi's frustration with labels, and grass-roots campaign against corporate labels? Or Kurt Cobain wearing the "corporate rock still sucks" T shirt to his Rolling Stone photo shoot? Or the following articles in the 90s, all deeply critical of the music industry? Steve Albini's article "The Problem with Music"? ( https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music)
Or James Gross's "The High Cost of Free Promotion"?
I understand that the top artists are not getting paid nearly as much as they used to. This does not concern me. I also understand that working musicians are not making enough on Spotify to pay their bills. This does concern me. What isn't clear to me, however, is whether or not things are any worse for those musicians than they were in the 90s or the 2000s. For sure there are hundreds more musicians whom I am aware of and whose shows I go to see now who I can only assume I would not have found thru brick and mortar record stores 20 years ago. Trips to Strawberries back then inevitably had me sifting thru the same 30-odd bands' back catalogs. So little choice, so little innovation. Do we really MISS those days?
Sure, record labels have always been greedy. But let me explain what's different now.
In the days of physical media, everybody in the music business had aligned interests—they wanted to sell as many records as possible. That's how everybody made money—labels, musicians, distributors, retailers, publicists, everybody in the business.
They wanted fans excited about new music. They wanted consumers to buy the the new songs they heard on the radio.
This is no longer true.
Streaming platforms actually make more money from subscribers who listen passively, or hardly listen at all. Meanwhile the major record labels have retreated into publishing, so they don't care about promoting new songs. The profit in creativity has declined so much, that many talented musicians abandon the field and take jobs elsewhere—I've seen that a lot lately.
So you are incorrect in saying that I "assume record labels and companies were not greedy" in the past. I've never said that. My point is very different—namely that the greed was less destructive when labels and musicians had aligned interests.
It's important to be honest about what's happening right now. So I will continue to criticize huge corporations that destroy the music ecosystem by promoting passivity, fake artists, AI slop, squeezing musicians, and abandoning new songs for old ones. I encourage you to join me in this—because the music culture cannot thrive under these conditions.
Ted I am a huge fan of your writing and respect your takes on most everything. I have to say though that Spotify has been on my love hate love list for a while and it’s recently shifted way back into the love side.
Their recommendations have improved dramatically over the last year, and I’m discovering music that’s both interesting and new to me, though often not new, and almost always released outside of the US.
I’m beginning to think of Spotify as a globalization trend and not just a monopolistic trend. Kind of like general globalization inadvertantly hollowed out the US manufacturing industry, but reduced prices for consumer goods in America and made it much much easier for American hardware/physical goods startups to get off the ground, I’m getting way more access to music at an incredibly cheap price, while the industry in America suffers.
I would love for present-day musicians and their new releases to benefit more from this trend but as a consumer who’s admittedly nostalgic for the record store days, I’m happier than in a long time with Spotify.
Good points, thank you for clarifying. I am ready to join any movement that brings artists a greater share of royalties.
Maybe I didn't look closely enough for the proposed solution. Tidal was a real attempt to pay artists more money, w real financial and artist backing. It failed to gain a meaningful market foothold and, as you noted, it was forced to sell out.
Is the propsed solition to lobby record companies to band together into a collective to compete w Spotify? I have my doubts that those people will be willing to bury decades of competition with eachother to do that. And if they did, I am fairly confident they would emulate whatever biz practices have made Spotify (finally) profitable. Which means, if we follow your reasoning, means AI slop and encouraging passive listening.
There is no solution. Really. Theres plenty of fancy ideas, some in this comment section, like musicians need to band(badum ting) together and force a concession, but none of those are based in reality.
The problem is a much deeper cultural change, created by a new technology superseding the old. Theres no way to fix that. Each time you choose to stream music instead of using a physical copy or even a digital download, you hammer the nails in the coffin of the old status quo a little more(though i would argue we're past that stage even). You cant use an addictive drug without it affecting your brains wiring.
You say that Spotify "serves up" old, cheap music, but I constantly find amazing, new, lively, engaging music there. John Zorn just released troves of music on Spotify by an incredible collection of cutting-edge musicians, just as a n example. I have no complaints about the amazing library of new music on streaming services, but I suppose you are referencing people who are not searching, but just asking for music to be put in front of them, who get retreads.
A hot take - for musicians, more profitable and less of a gamble to join a good cover band than to try to be a recording artist
As an old fart making music for fun I am so disgusted by the whole music scene that I don’t even care to copyright or register my songs. It’s a total waste of time and money. I put my songs on Spotify because it’s acts as a library for anyone to find otherwise I’m building out here, on Substack, for anyone who cares and wants discourse. Everything else is pointless. … And no, I don’t play live.
Copyrighting your songs has little to do with the music industry, and anyway, you already legally own the copyright on all your music as long as you can prove you were the creator. I always tell myself "If I ever got into some sort of copyright tangle with one of my songs, it would mean someone thought it good enough to steal, and that sounds like a pretty cool problem to have."
That said, if you did decide you needed to copyright it, it's not at all difficult.