Yeah, it's a nuanced, ongoing issue, the role that "used sales" play in a band or musician's trajectory. Would agree that a brick and mortar store will enrich a city/town much more than most corporate websites, if its selection is good, its stock is updated regularly. And maybe if it also becomes a hub for other things (band classifieds, show announcements/local ticket sales, worthwhile merch, a hang-out/meet-up space, etc.).

I know that before the collections on Spotify and YouTube became what they are, in vaguely pre-Bandcamp times, if I couldn't expect to hear/snag a copy of the music I was looking for locally somehow, I would sometimes just test-drive things by typing "[artist name] + [either Megaupload or Mediafire]" and see if there was something available via these routes. Can say with all honesty that doing this resulted in many legitimate sales after the fact, if I took a shine to whatever it was and had a little money. And if I liked something enough, I would usually spread the word about it.

The above is maybe a dry/roundabout way of saying that the once-common-as-dirt model of the listener not being able to hear much or all of a record before buying it has become antiquated.

Anthony Flack wrote: Mon Jan 31, 2022 1:55 am Sounds like the Neil Young thing has been gaining traction and with Joni Mitchell tagging in and non-negligible quantities of punters binning their subscriptions, the old boomers may have compelled Spotify to sup from the big bag of dicks after all. The direction of Spotify's share price certainly seems to be bag of dick flavoured. I see the usual arseholes are screaming cancel culture over it all.

Spotify’s share price has been falling for months. Meanwhile, Neil tweeted out that if you click on his exclusive link you can get four free months of Amazon Music to listen to his catalog there.

Adam P wrote: Mon Jan 31, 2022 1:27 pm

Anthony Flack wrote: Mon Jan 31, 2022 1:55 am Sounds like the Neil Young thing has been gaining traction and with Joni Mitchell tagging in and non-negligible quantities of punters binning their subscriptions, the old boomers may have compelled Spotify to sup from the big bag of dicks after all. The direction of Spotify's share price certainly seems to be bag of dick flavoured. I see the usual arseholes are screaming cancel culture over it all.

Spotify’s share price has been falling for months. Meanwhile, Neil tweeted out that if you click on his exclusive link you can get four free months of Amazon Music to listen to his catalog there.

Amazon, yeah, there's a better option. Fuxache.

IMO an artist-friendly Spotify alternative (if needs to have the breadth and functionality of Spotify) is unlikely to come along anytime soon because it's an incredibly expensive service to operate. and requires big investments from people whose goals are fundamentally different from those of artists. It's like trusting your community discussion to Facebook. Someone's going to pay somehow (via unfair compensation for labor, loss of privacy for customers, enabling fascism, etc.) because investors want their money.

Bandcamp does something different and on a more modest scale. I read somewhere (can't remember where) that they're very cautious with outside investments. That said, I believe that the founders got their start by selling an email startup to Yahoo, so it's not as if they just saved their paper route money. Ideally, they're going to continue to be cautious and smart about growth. I'd like to think that people can do good work and be satisfied with making some of the money ( as opposed to needing all of the money, winning, blah blah blah).

lotharsandwich wrote: Mon Jan 31, 2022 7:21 pm Bandcamp does something different and on a more modest scale. I read somewhere (can't remember where) that they're very cautious with outside investments. That said, I believe that the founders got their start by selling an email startup to Yahoo, so it's not as if they just saved their paper route money. Ideally, they're going to continue to be cautious and smart about growth. I'd like to think that people can do good work and be satisfied with making some of the ,money ( as opposed to needing all of the money, winning, blah blah blah).

No online service is perfect, but I am not sure if there is an online music site that is closer to perfect than Bandcamp.

It seems to me that much like the music industry as a whole, Spotify is incredibly friendly to a tiny fraction of artists and pretty much everyone else gets fucked.

Doing quick math without knowing the exact per stream payout he's receiving, The Weeknd's most streamed song has generated roughly 13 million dollars in Spotify payouts. That's one song off of one album. He has plenty of other huge ones and even his deep cuts get millions and millions of streams and make tons of money. I have no idea what kind of record deal he has and how much of that money he actually sees but Spotify definitely pays out to him big time. Guns N' Roses, Dr. Dre, Janet Jackson, Neil Young (until last week), etc... are also generating huge piles of money as massively popular legacy artists getting hundreds of millions of streams. Conversely, and again, I'm doing quick imprecise math here, the most streamed song on the Martha's Vineyard Ferries album we put out last year has made roughly $40 from Spotify. The entire album has generated south of $200.

So yeah, huge new acts and large legacy acts are getting piles of money from Spotify. Everyone else, not so much. It's not about charging a little more for the service or having the exec's take a pay cut. It's about valuing music not in absolute terms of total plays. Maybe pay smaller artists a larger percentage per stream, Maybe make it so once you hit a million streams, your rate goes down etc....which will never happen because the major labels own all of the acts that get the most streams and aren't about to take a pay cut and because this is America and we hate commies.

lotharsandwich wrote: Mon Jan 31, 2022 7:21 pm IMO an artist-friendly Spotify alternative (if needs to have the breadth and functionality of Spotify) is unlikely to come along anytime soon because it's an incredibly expensive service to operate. and requires big investments from people whose goals are fundamentally different from those of artists. It's like trusting your community discussion to Facebook. Someone's going to pay somehow (via unfair compensation for labor, loss of privacy for customers, enabling fascism, etc.) because investors want their money.

Yep, and even with all that major label investment Spotify wasn't profitable for several years.

The bar is now set where anyone can pull out their phone and have access to endless (mostly "free") content, and any alternative will be "too much work" for most people. Maybe if more major artists shift to Bandcamp they can lift that boat a little, but these recent boycotts have little to do with fair compensation as those artists will get paid either way by Spotify/Apple/Amazon, etc.

Among the major streaming options, Spotify has the lowest payout to artists (w the exception of megastars), yeah? Apple, Tidal, and Amazon pay out more but get less traffic? And they have smaller music catalogs from what I hear?

Anyone who's used more than one platform have thoughts on how they compare?

I buy albums on Bandcamp monthly, but I've come to use Spotify a lot, unfortunately. And the truth is I barely touch many of the albums in my Bandcamp library. I do a lot less full album listening than I used to. Not proud of that but it's where I've ended up (along with most people it seems).

Oh yeah, was going to post this Baffler piece I came across today on the economics of streaming platforms and their arrangements with major labels, etc.

“AIN’T SINGIN’ FOR PEPSI / Ain’t singin’ for Coke / I don’t sing for nobody / Makes me look like a joke.” So goes the first verse of Neil Young’s 1988 hit “This Note’s for You.” In the second verse, this shitlist expands to cover Miller, Bud, politicians, and Spuds, the latter referring, of course, to Bud Light’s late-eighties canine mascot Spuds MacKenzie, rather than the humble and blameless potato. I suppose I’d always interpreted these lines as a sample of the wide range of stuff Neil Young is unwilling to sing for, implying a more general indictment of pop music’s increasingly shameless integration with advertising and corporate branding. I never presumed there was a corresponding list of business interests he would sing for, but what do you know? There is, and it includes Morgan Stanley, Brewin Dolphin, BNY Mellon, and the investment arm of the Church of England.

https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/the-ma ... ou-woodall

Andrew wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 3:38 pmApple, Tidal, and Amazon...

Anyone who's used more than one platform have thoughts on how they compare?

I had Amazon Music for about a Year about 3 years ago because I got it for free with Amazon Prime. It was fine. Had almost everything I ever searched for on it. I ended up canceling after the free year because People are constantly sending me Spotify playlists for work and I was forced to buy it and use it instead. Apple has and has always had the worst interface of any music player/streaming platform I've ever used and I refuse to use it again. Is Tidal even a thing anymore? I've never known a single person that used it.

I wish Bandcamp would make a player that took bands you liked, and linked you to other bands that people that liked those bands liked. Just a play, pause, back and advance button with the ability to add those bands to your list if you like them. Kinda like old Pandora, but Bandcamp. Bandoramp. and totally driven from users proliferation of saying "Thimbs Up!"