by tomkwok on 6/4/16, 1:45 PM with 60 comments
by wanderr on 6/4/16, 6:35 PM
Older people, especially those with money, will certainly pay for music either by buying the music or paying for subscription services or both, and I don't see that changing but kids, the ones who I know at least, won't pay for music they can get for free, and they all know how to get it for free. Streaming services try to bring that behavior into the light and at least try to monetize it, but eliminating free streaming is only going to drive them back to the shadows. I really think that efforts to stop people from listening to music for free will be about as effective as prohibition or the war on drugs.
by bambax on 6/4/16, 4:10 PM
What?? Before Napster, we made tapes. I still have tons of them. We exchanged tapes and copied them, and also we recorded the radio.
It was exactly like Napster, only much slower and complicated -- and also, in a way, nicer, because putting a tape together was a form of expression.
I don't think free streaming can go away without being immediately replaced by increased piracy, but we'll see.
by aston on 6/4/16, 3:36 PM
1. How much money should consumers/advertisers
be charged for access or proximity to music?
2. How much money should artists, publishing companies,
record labels and other rightsholders be paid for
that access?
In reality, the actual floor on how much rightsholders get paid is only up for negotiation if the music comes as a result of interactive streaming from music provided by the rightsholders (read: Spotify). If it's internet radio, where the user doesn't choose what they hear (non-interactive, read: Pandora) the rate is set by Congress regardless of the business income or rightsholder desires. And if it's user-generated content subject to the DMCA (read: YouTube) there's no clear need to pay anything to the rightsholders (see Grooveshark). So, there are tons of arguments about #2.
As far as #1 goes, there's never been a music company that got to million-user scale and was long-term profitable, so clearly companies (and their investors) are willing to send more money out the door than they make. Fixed-rate subscriptions have a perverse property that your best users by engagement metrics are your worst users financially--they cost you the most with all that listening. Advertisement-based monetization matches consumption to revenue, which is nice, but as Pandora and Spotify will both attest, the revenue from ads thus far is way short of what they or the rightsholders would like.
So what to do? Talk about it in the press and see if you can get public outcry to force someone to pay your company more?
by zer00eyz on 6/4/16, 7:53 PM
Music as an item you buy is DEAD. It has been dying since Napster, and no amount of copy right law, or services is going to put that genie back in the bottle. The tools available to artist now, make it even easier to "make" music, you don't need a full studio any more. Artists are even starting to think this way, watch Diplo and & Skrillex on Charley Rose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb85hwOotts
How then, does a musiscian make money? Licensing, Concerts, t-shirts and merchandise, an artist is now a brand. Its a brand that has the ability to endorse and enhance other brands. Take a "fan club package", Membership, great seats to a show, meet and greet and photo. All in its going to be between 800-2000 for 3 minutes with a top tier artist, a photo and a hand full of tchotchkes. Heck there are artists that even get paid to show up and have drinks: http://www.gq.com/story/how-celebs-get-paid-for-club-appeara...
Here is the grim irony of all of this, the music industry did it to itself. Long before "digital" was a thing touring and t-shirts was how an artist made real money. A record labels creative accounting practices would likely leave an artist with little to no cash from millions in sales. Now that you don't need a label per-se to get distribution, and it isn't where your going to make money anyway, there is less incentive to go that route at all. How many hip hop acts have become successful off of pushing out mixtape at a steady clip? Google will provide you a rather extensive list from several venues.
by xivzgrev on 6/4/16, 8:49 PM
People have been trained for almost 100 years (since radio) that music is free but ad supported via radio. So thats bunk.
The industry is just pissed people wont buy $20 cds anymore. Suddenly people had another option for on demand music with napster.
Here we are 17 years later and the industry still hasnt gotten over it. I guess why shouldnt they - easiest money ever. But time to put big boy pants back on.
I think ultimately key music services are going to collude or move in lockstep to increase ad frequency. And frankly i think its smart to put the hottest stuff behind a paywall / available only on subscription. Record labels are essentiallly caught in this trap where you can go exclusive and reach a small percent of audience or dont be exclusive and reach everyone. An artist could go exclusive behind everyones paywall, now that would be interesting. Pandora youtube spotify whatever - listen to taylor swift new album now thru subscribing.
by arcanus on 6/4/16, 3:14 PM
Is the Era of free GPS maps coming to an end?
Is the Era of free social networking coming to an end?
...I see no reason music is any different. Nothing is free, but ads and other forms of monetization will win over subscription services.
by Unkechaug on 6/4/16, 3:25 PM
by haywirez on 6/4/16, 5:50 PM
by monkmartinez on 6/4/16, 4:03 PM
However, as long as FM radio is still a thing... "free streaming" music is not going to end.
by davidgerard on 6/4/16, 6:14 PM
by petra on 6/4/16, 8:18 PM
Or does anybody see a piracy based service that compete with spotify on selection, and easy of use ? how would such service look, technically ?
by anexprogrammer on 6/4/16, 5:10 PM
Huh? "Home Taping is Killing Music" Was the slogan on every LP and tape, and played before every film, in the late 70s and 80s. It wasn't and it didn't. We had crappy ghetto blasters with 2x speed twin tape decks from every Japanese manufacturer designed for tape copying (not that anyone in their right mind copied anything at fast speed). We'd record tracks off the Rock Show on the radio and trade tapes in the playground. We'd borrow LPs to tape, regularly. 95% of my music was on copied tape. None of us could afford to buy all the vinyl we wanted.
Then CD burners came along and copying was so much easier - long before Napster. Just don't let the screensaver or print job kick in if you were on a Windows PC as it'd wreck the burn.
2 generations have been used to having free music, despite what the streamers may wish I doubt YT Red etc will make much of a dent. I'd imagine most will go back to torrents, or step up from CD copying and trade libraries with friends. Those likely to pay are those with Sonos or other home streaming hifi. If streaming becomes difficult to access there'll be a YIFY/Popcorn Time type site along any moment.
TL;DR Does the headline end with a question? The answer is no.
by tunesmith on 6/4/16, 6:48 PM
Using a business model that wasn't self-sufficient - whether VC money, or loss-leader money, or similar - meant that easy streaming stoked a demand and a sense of entitlement in the consumer. Then later, that sense of demand was used as justification to say "Welp, I guess the genie is out of the bottle" and then ask for songwriting organizations to agree to shit fees.
Moral hazard - a risky action was took, when the actual risk was borne by those (the songwriters) other than the people taking the action (Spotify etc).
It's unethical. Saying so is not a failure to accept reality, of course it happened, but it doesn't make it any more ethical. It was a cultural failure and there's a huge counterfactual that is out there that people cannot easily accept - the large amounts of quality, life-changing music that went unwritten.
by Animats on 6/4/16, 6:37 PM
What would kill streaming music? A court decision against Google that made them take down all pirated music, or pay vast amounts to the music industry. As long as most music is on Youtube, not much else matters.
by toast0 on 6/4/16, 7:10 PM
by meeper16 on 6/4/16, 7:38 PM
by mrep on 6/4/16, 3:28 PM
I think he is missing the key point of advertised streaming too. It's just plain old price discrimination. If there was no outlet for free advertised streaming, than most people would simply just pirate it. This way, they are at least making some money off of those people.