Get Ready For a Streaming Music Die-Off 370
walterbyrd writes "Streaming services are ailing. Pandora, the giant of its class and the survivor at 13 years old, is waging an ugly war to pay artists and labels less in order to stay afloat. Spotify, in spite of 6 million paid users and 18 million subscribers who humor some ads in their stream, has yet to turn a profit. Rhapsody axed 15% of its workforce right as Apple's iTunes Radio hit the scene. On-demand competitor Rdio just opted for layoffs too, in order to move into a 'scalable business model.' Did no one wonder about that business-model bit in the beginning? Meanwhile, Turntable.fm, a comparatively tiny competitor with what should have been viral DNA, just pulled the plug on its virtual jam sessions this week—and it just might be the canary in the coal mine."
It's a doomed race against time (Score:4, Funny)
The next generation may be the one that grows up without music.
Re:It's a doomed race against time (Score:5, Insightful)
Or maybe just not listening to music every waking moment possible. I like music but I frequently would just as soon not have any playing while I'm focusing on something else.
Re:It's a doomed race against time (Score:5, Insightful)
Conversely, I find it hard to work in silence. Music, radio, (with inane chatter) or even a TV in the background helps me so much more.
I find silence distracting as I instead here little irregular noises here & there (doors slamming in the building, people shouting in the street etc)
Re:It's a doomed race against time (Score:5, Informative)
You know what is one of the traits I like least in a person? When they assume that it's everyone else who is ignorant, rather than check their facts.
Yes, one meaning of converse - apparently the only one you know - is to take part in a conversation. However, there is another meaning which has a similar meaning to inverse and obverse.
converse
adj
(prenominal) reversed; opposite; contrary
n
something that is opposite or contrary
a categorical proposition obtained from another by the transposition of subject and predicate, as no bad man is bald from no bald man is bad
Etymology: 16th Century: from Latin conversus turned around; see
So basically, your post is laden with iron. Very irony in fact. Such disdain. Wow.
Re:It's a doomed race against time (Score:5, Funny)
I saw that too, and wondered, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? IF they know what converse means, then they're being ironic, if they don't then it's ironic that they don't, so no matter what you do, it's ironic, only the irony is directed differently depending. In fact, it becomes tautologically ironic, because he might be ironically posing to not know what it means, and thusly showing his irony in a self conscious way. It's like Goedel's "This sentence is false". Only dumb.
Re:It's a doomed race against time (Score:5, Insightful)
Where as I just have the occasional bad day or I'm emo for some reason.
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Which is perfectly correct. So glrotate is not just a douche, he's a dumb douche.
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Re:It's a doomed race against time (Score:5, Insightful)
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Or maybe just not listening to music every waking moment possible.
There's enough free music on Archive.org to fill 24 hours a day.
Re:Sans lyrics, please (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's a doomed race against time (Score:5, Insightful)
The next generation may be the one that grows up without very expensively produced music.
FTFY.
Humans will have music for as long as we can find something to bang on rhythmically. But, in the future, most production will probably happen in small and home studios, as opposed to the monolithic labels owned by RIAA members.
Re:It's a doomed race against time (Score:5, Insightful)
Making high-quality music used to require investment. Expensive instruments at a minimum - but if you didn't want to sound like Kenny, you'd also need high quality microphones, sound damped recording studio, mixing desk, specialist technician to operate it and several high-end recorders capable of syncronised operation.
That's all changed now. One person working on consumer, affordable equipment can - on a purely technical level - match that quality with comparative ease. It's down to the level where people can and do make music as a hobby, without any expectation of payment.
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Just one Antares VST plugin (Auto-Tune 7), and you sing as well as any modern pro can.
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Just one Antares VST plugin (Auto-Tune 7), and you sing as well as any modern pro can.
Always wanted to play with it, never wanted to spend the money.
Still waiting on a FOSS alternative.
Re:It's a doomed race against time (Score:5, Funny)
The FOSS auto-tune alternative has been around a long time. It's called "practice"
Re:It's a doomed race against time (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, I think you have that backwards.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/talent [merriam-webster.com]
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/skill [merriam-webster.com]
Re:It's a doomed race against time (Score:5, Insightful)
As an amateur singer, I think that MOST people who believe that they "can't sing" - - can very likely develop their voice far beyond what they imagine, with some hard work, dedication, and practice, (and some professional instruction). Many, many common vocal flaws can be overcome with proper training, and practice.
Will that overcome a deficit of "talent"; maybe not. But I think that probably about 80% of people out there who believe they "can't sing" - have a lot more hidden potential than they know.
In the case of autotune - in my opinion, it's a useful tool to give a voice a certain "sound" but it is in no way a worthwhile substitute for a properly trained voice, or good vocal talent. It can easily be a substitute for "making money" in pop music production. But frankly, who gives a shit about that? Unwashed masses be unwashed masses, and the scammers out there in ANY industry are going to find ways to take advantage of that, and bet money off of them.
Re:It's a doomed race against time (Score:5, Funny)
My problem isn't that I can't sing. It's just a little distracting when everyone keeps throwing rotten fruit at me while I'm singing.
Re:It's a doomed race against time (Score:4, Funny)
My problem isn't that I can't sing. It's just a little distracting when everyone keeps throwing rotten fruit at me while I'm singing.
Have you tried dry humping another person on the stage. I hear that works well for popularity.
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No, that's a link to a video review of Audacity, in which the commenter, at the very end of the clip, claims to have auto-tuned her voice with Audacity.
That's not the same thing as a FOSS plugin that has similar functionality to the Antares plugin. Maybe if you had linked to a video where they actually name the plugin and show its use...
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Just one Antares VST plugin (Auto-Tune 7), and you sing as well as any modern pro can.
Caveat: as well as an modern pro that uses auto-tune.
Also "pro" meaning someone who sings for a living and not necessarily meaning someone who is a good singer.
Someone who is an excellent singer will sound better singing without autotune, as the autotune will translate it into a flat, sterile note within the timbered scale. Vibrato will be removed, a slur will be changed into a horrible electronic sounding glissando.
It should also be noted that harmonies suffer using autotune. A harmony singing a 5th ab
Re:It's a doomed race against time (Score:5, Insightful)
Making high-quality music used to require investment. Expensive instruments at a minimum - but if you didn't want to sound like Kenny, you'd also need high quality microphones, sound damped recording studio, mixing desk, specialist technician to operate it and several high-end recorders capable of syncronised operation.
Actually, that's largely been a myth since the advent of consumer grade, multi-track tape recorders.
For instance, the Sublime album Robbin' The Hood was recorded exclusively on a 4-track tape machine, and it sounds awesome. The problem, however, comes in with mastering the tracks. Not sure how they managed it back in the early 1990's (I'm guessing they went to one of those expensive studios), but the solution today is as simple as downloading a free copy of REAPER [reaper.fm] and learning how to use it. If you don't mind spending a fair amount of cash, there's a plethora of other DAW options out there; I'm a fan of Logic myself.
Hell, I bet dedicated audiophiles could probably come up with studio quality stuff using nothing more complex than Audacity. [sourceforge.net]
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Re:It's a doomed race against time (Score:4, Informative)
Pretty cool stuff out there for free, especially if you're just starting out and are a bit of a geek.
mixdown is no secret (Score:3)
back when two-track was all you had, you recorded what you had on hand for talent, and bounced the two tracks onto one on another recorder. if you needed to add more later, repeat. the whole tape layer was used, and the oversaturation of bass in particular was the original development of "fat bass." it got easy when four-track head stacks were developed.
oh, there is something about knowing what you're doing in there someplace, too, because you had to KNOW where you wanted sounds to end up before you laid
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Plus, we had to walk to the music store uphill, both ways, in the snow, with DAT cases for shoes!
Ah, the good ol' days. Heck, I still keep an old TEAC reel-to-reel on my studio desk, and use it from time to time - nothing like real analog tape delay!
Re:It's a doomed race against time (Score:5, Funny)
Hell, I bet dedicated audiophiles could probably come up with studio quality stuff using nothing more complex than Audacity.
Dedicated musicians could.
Dedicated audiophiles would blow the entire project budget on a 4 foot patch cord.
Re:It's a doomed race against time (Score:4, Insightful)
You're forgetting why bands sign to labels to begin with: Advertising.
The record labels are the ones that can (and do) do the legwork to set up and promote concerts, to help design and create the T-shirts, to get the bands name out there for the masses. When the labels die out, there will be a mess of indie and smaller players, and the signal to noise ratio will get worse and worse. Something similar is happening with the games industry right now, there's only a meager handful of AAA games released each year, and lots of indie games.
Of course, this could also be a great thing. I'd much rather get to the steam-sale level of purchases for albums. Dropping $3-5 on a band? why not, check them out. Spending $20 on someone you've never heard of? not likely
Re:It's a doomed race against time (Score:4, Interesting)
I have wondered if the increasing importance of the music video was in some way a collective response by the majors to keep costs high. They must have realised that their production advantage would lessen as the cost of making music came down. How better to counter that than to popularise the music video, an extra that serves as powerful promotion and still requires a substantial amount of money to do well?
Signaling (Score:3)
I have wondered if the increasing importance of the music video was in some way a collective response by the majors to keep costs high.
I'd believe that, especially given recent developments in understanding evolved handicaps [wikipedia.org] and other forms of economic signaling [wikipedia.org].
How better to counter that than to popularise the music video, an extra that serves as powerful promotion and still requires a substantial amount of money to do well?
Then why not just enlist people from the demoscene to make a video for a particular piece of music?
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It was actually the opposite, a response to the cost of promotion getting too high. The old model had been a band gets a local following, then a record contract and the local experience plus contract gave them a platform. As the music scene became more national it was getting more difficult to cross over from local to national. So record companies had to do a national promotion for the groups they signed. MTV and videos were a cheap national promotion mechanism (comparatively).
Re:It's a doomed race against time (Score:4, Insightful)
You're forgetting why bands sign to labels to begin with: Advertising.
The record labels are the ones that can (and do) do the legwork to set up and promote concerts,
Which is now done by the band themselves on social media.
to help design and create the T-shirts,
Social media + boutique, online print shops (CustomInk, VistaPrint, CafePress, etc.).
I found one site that does custom graphics for kick drums, too.
to get the bands name out there for the masses.
Did I say social media already?
Social media.
When the labels die out, there will be a mess of indie and smaller players, and the signal to noise ratio will get worse and worse.
Only if you operate under the assumption that "major label bands" > "indie bands."
Which is a false assumption to make. For example, look at some of the top acts from the late 1980's and early 1990's - Nirvana's first album, Bleach, was produced by a nobody studio known as SubPop Records; Sublime founded their own label, Skunk Records. These are but two examples of many great, at least moderately successful bands who broke into the industry without first selling out to the major labels.
Personally, I see it the other way: the big labels do nothing but pump out pile of crap after pile of crap, generic poppy garbage that all sounds the same, from talentless hacks who, if there was no such thing as AutoTune, would still be asking SAG card holders if they want fries with that. The Indie scene is were we get modern wonders like Jonathan Coulton, DeadMau5, LudaCris, et. al.
Seriously, the Thing A Week album series? You'd never see anything that progressive coming from an RIAA member.
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Where building a studio takes skill is lowering the noise floor.
Not really a problem with modern music. After the loudness wars music has a typical dynamic range of roughly 0db, so recording in a construction zone with a car alarm going off should be fine. And why do you need an expensive mic when you're just going to auto-tune?
Oh, wait, did you mean good music? Right, I see your point, but who records that these days, outside of jazz bands?
Accidental copyright infringement (Score:4, Informative)
Humans will have music for as long as we can find something to bang on rhythmically.
Until humans get sued for banging on something rhythmically in the same way that someone else happens to already have banged on something rhythmically. See, for example, Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music and Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton.
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Quality music is no longer expensive to produce; the labels are pocketing the savings rather than passing it to the customer. In lots of 2000 a CD cost about a buck, including professional stamping and packaging. That makes it a couple grand to professionally produce a CD. That's far less than musical instruments cost
You're just accounting for pressing and packaging the disk.
Really good mikes cost a lot of money. Five digits USD is not uncommon. Renting a studio is expensive, and so's building one. THen there's mixing, editing and all that. Talented, skilled engineers cost money, and lots of it.
I'm not rooting for the labels, but props where props are due: "The Labels" know / knew what they were doing. Archiv / Deutsche Gramophone, Atlantic, Telarc, RCA, Columbia, Decca all went out of their way to get better sou
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I totally agree with you, but I don't think it will be just drums and chants! Home production of first-class music is now available to almost everybody.
The problem remains distribution and promotion.
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maybe the entertainment cartel is doomed, maybe a generation will rise up and put those and similar parasites under six feet of dirt
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Six feet? Nah, just dust them over. They deserve to have their bones picked at.
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At the fault of no other than the RIAA.
Gotta love the irony: their desire for control/restriction of use is dying out their very method of profit/industry itself.
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Yeah, because if we don't listen to internet radio, we're growing up without music. Ha ha. Frankly said, I find music radio to be almost unbearable, whether delivered over teh interubez or via airwaves. I like buying my music, and exactly the music I want.
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Not as much now as it did when it was new, sure, but I still find stuff I like by using their algorithm.
(Granted, this is Pandora piped through Elpis, so I don't have ads or "are you there" confirmations or anything...)
Grow up without music? (Score:5, Insightful)
Could you please point to a generation that had no music? Cavemen had music, as far as I can determine. Which generation since has done without music?
The problem here is, that people expect to MAKE MONEY off of music.
I don't pay money for music, yet I have music. If the web just dried up, if television and radio stopped broadcasting music, I would still have music. Two of my three sons have learned to play guitars. I used to play the trumpet, I could relearn all that I've forgotten.
Grow up without music? Come on, just try to get in touch with reality.
Big deal, the big corporate honchos may find that they can no longer make mega-bucks from music. It's not like they actually CONTRIBUTE any thing to music. They are frigging parasites. Let them die off. Just starve them. The world won't miss them.
We will still have no-name kids playing music because they love music. And, if they are actually any good at it, people will reward them for playing. People will still be entertained.
Grow up without music. Preposterous.
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I think what he meant was "grow up without free music" (other than FM radio). I grew up when music wasn't free. You had FM radio, you had friends who'd share their CDs and records, trade tapes, maybe see a live show if you could afford it. Having a music collection meant a big investment of money, unless you could make lots of tapes off of other friends collections.
Anyone remember holding the tape recorder up to the radio to record their favorite song?
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The future is full of wonders. Imagine your kid playing around with his guitar in front of a few friends. His mandatory house anti-terrorist (kinect like) system recognizes patented chord sequence.
TV: *BEEP BOOP BAP* RIAAfia has determined that there are sufficient humans to constitute a public performance of patent 539fe34 "Chord sequence C A". Please cease and decist or the appropriate fees will be applied to your SSN credit line.
Kids: Ahh man
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Christ, guys, this is the dumbest thing I've heard all week. Grow up without music? Right, like internet-only streaming music is the only music there is. You dumb kids do realize, don't you, that I was over forty before there was such a thing is internet-streaming music at all? Do you also know that there are these old-fashioned things called "radios" (I'll bet there's one in your car) that you can... GASP! Stream music from? Even record that streaming music?
What's more, unlike when I was a kid when you cou
The article is FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, current generation of services might die off, but as long as there is demand there will be a way to make money off it. Just look at the radio - they found a way to keep music "streaming" and pay the bills for the past 100 years or so. It is just a matter of finding correct monetization strategy.
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You realise you're arguing against something the article never says, while providing a hypothesis which is exactly what the article thinks will happen?
Ultimately, the record labels are still calling the shots. And upstarts like Spotify, Rdio and the rest are learning that lesson the hard way, calling for sympathy while the shot-callers wring them out. In this old game, the dealer always wins. That is, unless you're a company with an excellent poker face and deep pockets to boot—and only Apple, Google
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That's simply not the article's premise. The article's premise is almost exactly what you so smugly proposed should be its premise.
Did you not read it?
Re:The article is FUD (Score:5, Interesting)
The record labels want online streaming to die. I've not followed the pricing too closely, but the cost per stream is something like 10x the price of a terrestrial radio station. That is why Pandora I believe was trying to purchase an FM station somewhere. The rates are lower if you have a terrestrial radio signal that then also streams IIRC.
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> The record labels want online streaming to die.
Wrong.
They know it's the future, they just haven't figured out how to sustainably eat all its profits and make it grow.
Re:The article is FUD (Score:5, Funny)
Just look at the radio
I don't think that's how radios work.
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Re:The article is FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
The RIAA has set pricing on streaming licenses ridiculously high - hence why no streaming service can reliably make a profit.
The organization trying (and succeeding) at ripping off artists isn't the one actually playing the music...
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Yet again, the 'little' guy is squeezed because the big boys have money to buy laws.
Demand is necessary but not sufficient (Score:4, Insightful)
The article is FUD. Why? Because there is still demand for this service.
The fact that there is a demand for something doesn't mean that demand can be met economically. There is arguably a demand for moon rocks but that doesn't mean that a business can be developed within the current economic constraints that can harvest and deliver moon rocks and make a profit doing so. Maybe someday in the future but right now it isn't feasible. An extreme example maybe but it's not hard to find more terrestrial examples of the same thing. There are lots of things out there for which there is some demand but the technology, economics or regulations in practice make it impossible to form a profitable business.
Maybe streaming services will work as a business or maybe they won't. The fact that there is a demand out there is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a business to be developed that can profitably supply streaming services. The content has to be legally obtainable at a price point lower than the amount customers are willing and able to pay. So far that combination has proven to be difficult for a variety of reasons.
Re:The article is FUD (Score:5, Interesting)
It is just a matter of finding correct monetization strategy.
Just look at the pie charts - Pandora already has the system in place for music discovery, which is the coordination problem that the corporate model provided one solution for. Once bands don't need corporate music middlemen, they can get half of the revenue, or more.
I've heard a bunch of great stuff on Pandora that I'd never heard _of_ before. Apparently there were a bunch of rock bands in the early 70's that achieved very little commercial success but recorded lots of fantastic music. I assume they each got a little piece of each of the thousand times Pandora played me the same blasted ad for an Intel ultrabook (which are overpriced).
Getting new bands into the new system is the challenge. Their odds are low with the A&R man, so going into something like Pandora makes a bunch of sense. Pandora even has the filtering technology in place to detect the turkeys.
Of course a random op-ed on RWW carries more credence than an entire industry, right?
Re:The article is FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Just look at radio
I am looking at radio -- with an accusing eye, that is.
I was 'raised on radio' -- been listening to it all my life, and I appreciate broadcast radio, and think it's sad that it's heyday seems to be over -- but I also like streaming internet radio, and broadcast radio is the reason I see that internet radio is having so many problems. Several years ago the broadcast radio industry threw a hissy-fit over internet radio and royalty fees, which almost immediately drove many internet radio stations out of business, and made the ones that remained in operation have to resort to selling ads. In short broadcast radio forced internet radio to use the same exact business model that they do, regardless of whether or not it applies to internet radio -- which it does not. Of course they knew this, and wanted to see internet radio go away entirely. Well, they may be getting close to their "goal". Of course the irony here is that what's really ripped the guts out of the broadcast radio industry is personal music players, but can they compete with that? No, they can't, so they lash out at whoever they can, desperately grasping at straws, in this case, internet radio.
Fixed costs per territory (Score:4, Informative)
But these countries with sensible data plans also tend to have a smaller population.* In many cases, copyright owners charge a separate fee to license music for each territory. Even when the royalty structure doesn't have a minimum annual payment to deter small-time players, the legal costs of negotiating with a copyright owner's representative in each territory add up. I don't see how serving somewhere like Europe would necessarily scale the way it does in countries with hundreds of millions of people like USA.
* I didn't say density; I said population.
Who cares. (Score:5, Funny)
The musical taste of an peson set at age 14.
So just download the last 20 years of music in about half an hour you have your music for life.
Too many? (Score:5, Insightful)
That is not to say the RIAA is not shooting itself in the foot by pushing for higher royalties then the consumer will bare, but I do wonder if the explosion in sites has lead to more then there is room for.
Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just the beginning of the end for the corporate music industry. This has been going since the Napster days, and is just jumping from format to format. There is no profit left in corporate music (Labels). The number of good music acts is increasing as the wealth that was centralized by Labels becomes decentralized. Will there still be megabands and huge starts? Of course. However, the number of quality musical artists, who are able to reach a much wider audience, will spread out the available dollars to a broader selection of talent.
The real money will be made playing music live for fans to enjoy. Here's to hoping for the death of the "boy bands" and talentless whores who take off their clothes and call it a musical act.
Re:Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
The number of good music acts is increasing as the wealth that was centralized by Labels becomes decentralized.
Huh? No, technology has advanced such that good musicians/songwriters/performers can become good acts without a middleman. That's all. The Labels are not becoming decentralized, they are becoming deprecated.
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The value of your insight is severely compromised by your idea that you can quantitatively measure "good music acts" and "quality musical artists".
The quality of the act and the music they play is almost entirely a matter of opinion. It cannot be measured without being influenced by your taste in music. Therefore you cannot demonstrate in any meaningful way that they are increasing in number.
Fact is, the "boy bands" and "talentless whores" you describe will continue to make money because people are willin
Re:Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets just put "There is no quality music anymore" to the same group of sentences which have accompagned humanity since the first conversation about 1.7 mio years ago, like "They don't make things to last, like they used to" and "Those children of today! When I was young, we never...".
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I'm hoping you are right. Recently, one of the biggest changes in mainstream music was that the big labels stopped signing bands and started building bands. This difference doesn't sound big, but it means that instead of having an album from a group that has its own sound, stage presence, and lyrics, it means one is getting a singer who is especially chosen because he/she can follow orders, lyrics specifically chosen to appeal to a certain market segment by the MBA types, and then form a band around that.
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The real money will be made playing music live for fans to enjoy.
Point of fact, that's how the real money is made right now. What most people still don't realize is that a recording contract with a major studio is not a payday, it's a loan; all of that studio time and promotion is something the artist has to pay back through album sales. Where the artist really makes bank is in touring and merchandise sales while on tour.
Is there money to be made from a recording contract? Absolutely, but just like in TV and Hollywood, not much for most of the people who sign one. Big
Bitches and hoes (Score:5, Funny)
pay artists??? don't the labels take a big cut of (Score:2)
pay artists??? don't the labels take a big cut of that so they only get like $0.02 a play and only after they pay off there fees?
Re:pay artists??? don't the labels take a big cut (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, if you are playing label music. There's plenty of good music out there that's not attached to the RIAA. [magnatune.com]
Grooveshark (Score:2, Interesting)
And somehow Grooveshark manages to stay afloat. With an ad blocker installed, it offers a massive library of on-demand songs with no advertisement whatsoever. Anyone care to explain exactly how that works?
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It won't, if everyone using it is blocking the advertisements.
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And somehow Grooveshark manages to stay afloat. With an ad blocker installed, it offers a massive library of on-demand songs with no advertisement whatsoever. Anyone care to explain exactly how that works?
and this is why websites hate adbockers you are using their service but not paying or veiwing ads.
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Grooveshark stays afloat because they don't bother with all of the pesky license agreements that the other services require.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooveshark#Lawsuits_and_Controversies [wikipedia.org]
I enjoyed using Grooveshark, but switched to Spotify since Grooveshark typically doesn't pay the artists that I listen to. Spotify might not pay them much, but at least they pay them. It was also irritating to create a playlist with Grooveshark and then open it again several months later and find out that half the son
Oh snap! (Score:5, Insightful)
Back to downloading music for free and setting up playlists then!
Alternate business model (Score:4, Insightful)
Or all these services could embrace the google business model which is to supplement services paid or unpaid with heavy data mining and profiling of people. The real prize is being able to target an individual with information that has a high likely hood to cause that individual to spend more money. It really doesn't matter who or what they spend the money on. If the individual spends more as a result, then the original company that data mined and profiled the individual can monetize the entire process in their favor.
1. Give individual service for reduced cost
2. Profile individual
3. Sell or use profile
4. Profit
The only other option is to offer a service at the true non-competitive cost, which the majority of people are not willing to pay.
Re:Alternate business model (Score:4, Insightful)
That model would work so much better for music services too. In the services I use, I straight up tell them exactly what I like and don't like. They don't even have to guess. There are little "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" buttons that I press that do all of that work for them. They could easily make a deal to send out a notice to everyone who expressed a like for a particular band that a new album has been released, with a deal for their users if they buy today or something like that. They could even do a query expansion type of search for that. If band A releases an album, and I like bands B, C, and D, and most people who like band A also like bands B, C, and D, then they send me a notice of the new album (unless I specifically indicated that I don't like band A).
All of the data mining is already done by the users. Streaming services are the way I find new music now, generally not the radio. If the record companies figured that out and started treating the streaming services like radio on steroids (direct connection to the listeners - how novel!) then they might actually discover the future of their industry.
Did someone forget YouTube? (Score:5, Insightful)
Its doing quite nicely thank you - admittedly thanks to googles large bank balance - and its what pretty much everyone I know uses to listen to music on now. If you want to download music of course thats a different matter , but to just listen to ad-hoc music in the background while doing something else YouTube is as good as any.
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"Doing quite nicely thanks to Google's large bank balance" is actually what the article expects to happen.
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No one I know uses their computer to listen to music anymore. It's always on their phone or tablet.
Data caps? (Score:2)
Blame the artists and record companies... (Score:2, Insightful)
FM radio stations all get to play music for free and in some cases they get paid to play it. Yet on the internet BMI and ASCAP turn into vampires sucking dry anything that is different.
The blame is The labels, BMI, and ASCAP. Those are the ones that deserve all your anger, ire, and hatered.
These streaming services should blame themselves (Score:5, Interesting)
Fairness in Music Licensing Act of 1998 (Score:5, Informative)
Some law states the max square footage you are allowed to play a radio?
Yes, at least in Slashdot's home country. The bill [wikipedia.org] was enacted as a rider to the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998.
Just think... (Score:4, Insightful)
The big problem used to be the media companies paying the radio stations to play their artists music...
Availability of streaming (Score:3)
I work for #LARGE CORPORATION# that doesn't want bandwidth eaten up by streaming. Hence, most streaming is blocked. Work is where I have the most time to listen to music.
I suspect a lot of other employed people have this situation. And since employed people are generally the target market for ads or they are the ones who pay for streaming services, that cuts down on a huge revenue source.
And like many, I hate most of the usual mainstream pap, so I find and download interesting new (and old) stuff. I'm not a hipster, I'm just old and cranky. Most lesser-known bands happily give away their music(so you'll come to their shows) or they sell CDs/MP3s cheaply. Result: NAS full of music at work for everyone in the dept.
A large factor in this mess (Score:4, Interesting)
When Riaa made a fuss, they agreed to pay the same as radios pay. After all, it's basically the same thing, but over the net instead of the air.
Riaa wouldn't agree to that and threw lots of lawyers at everyone.
In the end, the streamers had to pay SIGNIFICANTLY MORE than radio stations.
Most of the streamers died or quit very quickly after that.
This entire mess has been well documented. Now it looks like we get to document the last days of the few survivors of the slaughter.
Congratulations Riaa, you killed your godchildren.
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Interestingly enough, it *is* fairly easy to duplicate vinyl using fairly basic equipment. Yes, it involves wax and metal casting, but in principle everything you need to make a few dozen copies of a vinyl LP could be sold as a $200 kit, with much cheaper refills for subsequent duplications.
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It's working pretty damn good, actually. [magnatune.com]
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Given that inordinate amount of bandwidth is already taken up by streaming video, and there's not even a single extra inordinateness left since video is more than 50% of traffic nowadays, I'd tend to say that internet radio at 128kbit/s is but a drop in a bucket. Certainly not inordinate by any stretch of imagination.
Gershwin's music is under perpetual copyright (Score:5, Informative)
If the cited trend in this article is true, perhaps young listeners might learn of the majesty of Beethoven, the emotion of Tchaikovsky, the joy of Gershwin.
Ludwig van Beethoven and Piotr Tchaikovsky yes, George Gershwin no. Along with The Walt Disney Company, Gershwin's estate was one of the biggest lobbying forces behind the Copyright Term Extension of 1998, the statute that initiated what some believe to be Congress's policy of "perpetual copyright on the installment plan". Gershwin's piece Rhapsody in Blue, first published in 1924, is perhaps the oldest famous piece of instrumental music still under copyright in the United States.