Radiohead's Thom Yorke Pulls Albums From Spotify In Protest of Low Royalties 301
First time accepted submitter rpopescu writes "Thom Yorke of Radiohead fame has pulled his solo album 'Eraser' (as well as music made as Atoms for Peace) from the music streaming service Spotify, as a protest at how much it pays the artists. Quote: '"Make no mistake. These are all the same old industry bods trying to get a stranglehold on the delivery system."'"
Massive sense of entitlement & missing perspec (Score:5, Interesting)
Technically I think that's pretty good, isn't it? Write some songs, receive residual income whilst you do nothing else for the rest of the delivery platforms life. Win win.
What none of these reports seem to show is any perspective on how much the delivery service (Pandora/Spotify) is making. (Raising IPO capital isn't exactly making a profit..)
If (without creative accounting) they're breaking even, then the artists are getting paid too much.
If they're running at a loss, then the artists are definitely getting paid too much.
If they're reaping in huge profits then the artists aren't getting paid enough.
That kind of transparency isn't available (or I haven't seen it).
Either way I'd quite like $5000 for work I did last year.
Re:Nice graph (Score:5, Interesting)
Spotify pays up. It's the labels that aren't sharing.
Internet streaming services shouldn't be expected to pay any more per head than any other form of "broadcast" out there. If you put all of this stuff out of business, you will have NO ONE to help promote the talent.
You'll be trapped in a vaccuum where no one can here you b*tch and moan and whine.
Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers (Score:4, Interesting)
By "less than $5000" they don't mean "most make about $5000." A handful make $5000, a bunch make $500, the rest make $5 to $50. So enjoy the juicy hamburger you just bought with your earnings from last year.
Re:Reward the artist (Score:5, Interesting)
I will say no to that for 2 reasons.
First, there is music that I want to listen to that does not travel well. Sometimes the original artist is dead. Sometimes, like “Einstein on the Beach” – is a 5 hour beast which requires symphony, singers, narrator, choir, and dances. It’s done about once every 10 years or so. I worked with the tour manager. Kind of fascinating on how much work it took for a performance.
Back to the point. Some things travel better than other. It is easier to tour with a girl and a guitar then to tour with a four piece band, which is easier to tour then something that has a brass section.
Second I live in fly over land so shows are far and few between. And when I want to spend my money I want to spend it on music – not another t-shirt – I have too many already.
The problem is that the internet has shifted more power to the consumers and away from the producers – be they artists or record companies. Complaining that the record companies are taking a too large slice of the pie does not address the issue of the shrinking pie.
Re:Just Listen on Youtube (Score:5, Interesting)
Spotify's "basic" quality is Q5 Vorbis, which is roughly equivalent to VBR mp3 in the 192kbps range (only with better handling of edge cases than mp3). i.e. virtually transparent to most listeners on most equipment. Spotify's premium quality is Q9 vorbis, which is, well, complete overkill. Even more pointless than 320kbps cbr mp3.
Youtube's "basic" quality is shit. Youtube's premium quality is... is there even such a thing?
Don't misunderstand me, I find out about songs often though youtube, but then I go load the tune up on spotify to actually enjoy the music.
Re:Reward the artist (Score:2, Interesting)
The reality is that the free market has set a value for recorded music. It may not be enough to support all the inefficiencies it once did, but the value is set. I heard a radio interview with this guy where he somehow felt entitled to a certain amount of money. That is not how it works. In my lifetime I have found my skills to be worth different values at different time, and if I were still doing the same thing I was doing 30 years ago I would be broke.
Everything has really changed over the past 20 years or so. I recall one duo, 25 years ago, who did shows for free and sold t-shirts to fund an album. The album then paid expenses. Now they perform and don't realy put out albums. They sell t-shirts. I was at a show a while back and was told just go to iTunes.
I wish more big recording people would get off Spotify. This might encourage spotify to do more local stuff, where local performers could get some exposure. People would then go out and see the shows, and we have a better music scene like when I was young, where you just went out to hear some cool music, not to be part of a crowd.
Re:Misinformed, a shame (Score:4, Interesting)
Unlike Spotify, radio didn't displace album sales; radio doesn't let me cue up whatever track I want, on demand.
radio also paid a lot to a small circle. a circle he was part of, but now nobody gives a shit so he is trying to be all "new artist"... it ends up being the natural progression that more artists are paid - but each is paid less and he is seemingly arguing this is unfair to new artists, while the only thing unfair to new artists in this new system is the labels and they were unfair to new artists before as well... if anything he should be promoting that you don't need a label. this only affects few people on the top though at all.. like 0.1% of performing artists are actually affected("ug" is _huge_ compared to top 40).
Re:This is what you get when you mess with us (Score:5, Interesting)
From memory Radiohead and NIN have both offered albums, available online where you can pay what you want for them, and both walked away with over $1million.
Unless there's some crazy contract shenanigans going on, I really don't see why some of the bigger artists don't pull a Valve and create their own content delivery platform that is fair for the artist, fair for the consumer and criticism free.
Re:Reward the artist (Score:4, Interesting)
"The market" - or at least the free market - doesn't really apply to music. First, the government creates a new kind of property and then gives a person (or corporation) monopoly rights to it. If you could still call it a free market at that point, then the government legislates prices for certain kinds of "performances", like radio or internet radio play (which for some reason have different rates). Once that happens, the supplier is totally written out of the equation. Spotify is still a little bit markety, in that they are not a "radio station" and are instead playing stuff on-demand so they still have to negotiate with the rights holders. So your comment has some truth to it, but Spotify has to compete against Pandora (and regular radio, for that matter), who pay the government-mandated rate. That is going to seriously distort Spotify's ability to arrive at a true "market" price for recorded music, which even with government support is very close to zero.
My artist friend hates Spotify. He'd rather get zero dollars from them than $5000, because he deems the deal to be "unfair". Um, OK. I'd take the "free" $5000, myself. It's not like Spotify is terribly profitable, laughing it's way to the bank.
Re:Reward the artist (Score:5, Interesting)
Reward the artist by going to see a show and buying some merch. Nothing else really gets back to them in any significant amounts.
This.
I read an interview with Mick Jagger on the BBC website a few years ago and the BBC interviewer asked him about MP3 and digital downloads, figuring that Mick would likely be a stuffy old guy who would rail about how MP3s were killing music and so. Was the interviewer ever mistaken! Mick stated that for the majority of his career the Stones had actually not made all that much money from recordings. He said that there were exceptions in the late 80s into the 90s when labels actually were paying the artists a lot of money, but from his perspective MP3s hadn't changed anything and the Stones made their real money off touring. He said he had no problem with digital downloads. In fact, the Stones long ago got on iTunes and they offer special downloads of selected old concerts on a website they run. Sadly, it's somewhat younger artists like U2 who just do not get it at all and continue to bitch about how things are not what they once were.
Re:Reward the artist (Score:4, Interesting)
The record companies are setting the price. They hold an 18% share [guardian.co.uk] in Spotify. Still, Spotify is the only legal way for me to listen to music without buying shitloads of even more expensive albums each month. If artists want money from me directly, they need to skip the middle man.
Re:This is what you get when you mess with us (Score:5, Interesting)
Like United Artists Corporation [wikipedia.org], now part of MGM.
By which I mean to say that endeavors that start like this wind up being "captured" over time by industry managers anyway. To keep that from happening you'd need some kind of clever artist-ownership arrangement, maybe a bit like the Vanguard Group or TIAA-CREF.