Spotify Shuts Down Direct Music Uploading For Independent Artists (altpress.com) 136
In a blog post on Monday, Spotify announced that it will prohibit individual musicians from directly uploading their songs to the streaming service. The new move requires a third party to be involved in the business of uploads. From a report: The company announced the change on Monday, saying it will close the beta program and stop accepting direct uploads by the end of July. "The most impactful way we can improve the experience of delivering music to Spotify for as many artists and labels as possible is to lean into the great work our distribution partners are already doing to serve the artist community," Spotify said in a statement on its blog. "Over the past year, we've vastly improved our work with distribution partners to ensure metadata quality, protect artists from infringement, provide their users with instant access to Spotify for Artists, and more."
"The best way for us to serve artists and labels is to focus our resources on developing tools in areas where Spotify can uniquely benefit them -- like Spotify for Artists (which more than 300,000 creators use to gain new insight into their audience) and our playlist submission tool (which more than 36,000 artists have used to get playlisted for the very first time since it launched a year ago). We have a lot more planned here in the coming months," the post continued.
"The best way for us to serve artists and labels is to focus our resources on developing tools in areas where Spotify can uniquely benefit them -- like Spotify for Artists (which more than 300,000 creators use to gain new insight into their audience) and our playlist submission tool (which more than 36,000 artists have used to get playlisted for the very first time since it launched a year ago). We have a lot more planned here in the coming months," the post continued.
Most music *produced*. (Score:1)
BY that very "industry" that Spotify now forces you to go through.
There are countless really great musicians out there. Without producers or other leeches to pimp them out. They are just hard to find. You definitely won't find them on the commerce side of things though. They are artists. The polar opposite of businesses.
I myself have not much access to that world anymore since I changed professions, but five to ten years ago, it was people like Beardyman, Lisa Hannigan, Kutiman, Movits, many MP3 radios from
Re:Spotify bows to labels (Score:4, Insightful)
Not privately owned any longer following the IPO so they can't just do what they like. They have to try and maximise shareholder value.
Presumably one of the big rights holders has turned up on their doorstep with a bunch of expensive lawyers and 'suggested' that they change their business model, otherwise their share price could be affected by some legal problems.
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They have to try and maximise shareholder value.
No they don't.
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Re: Spotify bows to labels (Score:3, Informative)
You don't understand business law at all, do you?
Apparently you understand it even less. There is no such requirement.
If there is, I challenge you to provide sections and paragraphs of the legal code, as well as the jurisdiction to which it pertains.
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The link you provided is a bizarre mish-mosh of things and does not remotely represent the consensus view of what Newmark means. A little digging yields this abstract, which I think presents the case in a more balanced form.
The Delaware court’s decision in eBay v. Newmark has
been viewed by many commentators as a decisive affirmation of shareholder wealth maximization as the only legally
permissible objective of a for-profit corporation. The implications of this court case are of particular concern for the
emerging field of social enterprise, in which some organizations, such as, in this case, Craigslist, choose to pursue a
social benefit mission in the for-profit corporate form. The
eBay v. Newmark decision may also threaten companies
that seek to be socially responsible by serving constituencies other than shareholders at the expense of some profit.
This examination of the court decision concludes that a
legal requirement to maximize shareholder value may not
preclude a commitment to social responsibility and may
even permit the pursuit of a social benefit objective, such
as the preservation of the culture developed by Craigslist.
In particular, the court’s decision in eBay v. Newmark
reflects unique features of the case that could have been
avoided by Craigslist and by other similar companies.
I AM a (nonpracticing but still licensed) lawyer who took quite a lot of business law back in school. This case doesn't make any sense unless you understand the Business Judgement Rule - the standard applied to a corporation's leaders about what they can and cannot do i
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oops source linK: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.co... [wiley.com]
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Why? You clearly didn't.
Re:Spotify bows to labels (Score:5, Informative)
Publicly-traded companies must be fiscally-responsible, represent themselves truthfully (i.e. what they do and how they run things), and obey the law. Nowhere is there a requirement for the company to "maximize shareholder value" - there are plenty of publicly-traded companies whose primary goal is conservative (i.e. dependable) growth (just as there are plenty of "get rich quick" companies you can invest in...)
The notion of "maximizing shareholder value" is often attributed to the CEO of GE in the 1980's (Jack Welch)...
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Publicly-traded companies must be fiscally-responsible, represent themselves truthfully (i.e. what they do and how they run things), and obey the law. Nowhere is there a requirement for the company to "maximize shareholder value" - there are plenty of publicly-traded companies whose primary goal is conservative (i.e. dependable) growth (just as there are plenty of "get rich quick" companies you can invest in...)
The notion of "maximizing shareholder value" is often attributed to the CEO of GE in the 1980's (Jack Welch)...
I think people confuse maximizing shareholder value with driving the stock price up as fast as possible. You correctly point out some companies are very conservative, and attract shareholders who want a secure investment and perhaps a reliable dividend. Delivering that is maximizing their value, while a startup might need to experience meteoric growth to maximize what their shareholder's value.
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OTOH, a startup could choose the approach of being more cautious. As long as their long term plan could possibly pay off, they have met their duty to shareholders.
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As someone who has run businesses, there is ZERO legal requirement to maximize profits.
Shut up and let the adults speak.
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And yet its not a legal requirement of political officials to maximize the prosperity of a fair and balanced democracy. Instead, the corporate minority boards and owners can use their hordes of money to influence policy makers to enact deregulation in their favor, in spite of the needs of the many.
Obviously, ratifying laws that are designed to delude the majority with implied progressive retu
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No. That's only true within the limits of their corporate charter. If their corporate charter says they want to make a wide selection of music available, then they only have to try to act profitably within that limit.
This whole discussion came up when Red Hat was putting together its IPO. The fact that they've deviated drastically from when Andrew Young was at the head is more due to a change of management than to legal necessity. And they still push GPL software.
So the question is "What is Spotify's co
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You don't understand business law at all, do you? It's legally required for any publically traded corporation to do their best to maximize profits for shareholders.
Please stop repeating this lie and take a fucking business class at the Community College you ignoramus!
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Re: Spotify bows to labels (Score:1)
Re: Spotify bows to labels (Score:2)
Or, big distributor told them to cut it out or distributor will cut them out.
so let me take a shot at what this really says... (Score:5, Insightful)
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>Doesn't stop artists from doing whatever they'd be doing otherwise to promote their music.
except you know, keep the rights to their music and the profits if they want to be on Spotify
Re:so let me take a shot at what this really says. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see why aspiring artist just simply can't start their own little label and upload their work via it.
I do.
If you read the summary it is heavily implied that Spotify won't just accept any third party.
Instead the third party would have to be one of Spotifys distribution partners. (That is, record companies Spotify already have contracts with.)
What is unclear is how willing Spotify will be to make deals with independent record companies.
Either way it is a pretty big hurdle in the way for aspiring artists.
This removes the possibility to just make the music as a hobby and throw it out there. You have to go through all the hassle of starting and registering a company before you can even hope that someone will hear your music on Spotify.
It is pretty clear that this is something the major record companies have forced upon Spotify to remain relevant and it's not like Spotify can say no, they need all that music that is tied up with the big ones.
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I guess starting a company is varying degrees of hassle depending on where you live. Here, setting up a sole proprietor business isn't that much of a problem.
It depends not only on where you live but also on the requirements of the businesses that supply your business. For example, Sony Interactive Entertainment requires video game studios selling their games on PlayStation Store to be "a corporate entity" with an official "Certificate of Incorporation", not a sole proprietorship. (Source: signup form [playstation.com])
I think with this move both Spotify and their "partners" set themselves up for potential trouble, one way or another. Either by inviting Mdme Vestager to have a looksie, or by making space for a competitor. Possibly run as a cooperative run by spurned artists.
I doubt a large fraction of Spotify subscribers will have the disposable income to spend on both a subscription to Spotify and a separately billed subscription to
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I'm unsure if it was forced on Spotify or not. If anyone can upload music, it'll become a dumping ground like the app stores and people will have a difficult time finding anything good. By adding this hurdle, it'll keep the noise level down and stop people abusing the system with things like uploading data as audio.
Spotify's willingness to work with other companies will tell us which is the case. If I had to bet, I'd bet the main reason is because they were paid to ban general uploads.
Re:so let me take a shot at what this really says. (Score:5, Insightful)
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You are very far off. You can use any digital distribution service to put your music on Spotify. Trying to do digital distribution yourself is a pain and any service will do it for you for a small fee. That's why the beta version of this program was not popular and has now been cancelled.
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Difficult to tell. I don't think there have to be evil intentions in play here; there's another angle; just look at SoundCloud and YouTube. They are dumping grounds and have to spend a lot of money on filtering what comes in. Spotify is in a great position to prevent this by only allowing access to parties that actually have something to lose if they upload crap or even copyright violations.
Also, I think Spotify prefers to not even deal with the (smaller) labels at all and instead prefers to deal with "aggr
Re:so let me take a shot at what this really says. (Score:4, Interesting)
Nope, Spotify is in talks with the music industry and guess what? The RIAA companies hate the fact that Spotify allows direct uploads. So they've made the demand - for obvious reasons.
Nothing about "small labels" or such.
And yes, Spotify has practically zero choice in the matter simply because the vast majority of their customers want the RIAA music.
It's all about the license renewals.
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The best way to ensure the quality of your product is to have someone else handle it. Everyone knows you're too stupid and incompetent to do it yourself!
Makes about as much sense as Certificate Authorities.
Right back (Score:5, Insightful)
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In three letters: IPO
having to guess (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a shame that they haven't provided more information on this.
I can imagine that keeping track of tens of thousands of independent artists, verifying payment details, making payments and also validating that their uploads are original work that actually belongs to them is a tremendous burden on Spotify.
Far easier to offload all of that work to others, and manage only a few dozen commercial agreements that include various indemnities.
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It's a shame that they haven't provided more information on this.
I can imagine that keeping track of tens of thousands of independent artists, verifying payment details, making payments and also validating that their uploads are original work that actually belongs to them is a tremendous burden on Spotify.
Far easier to offload all of that work to others, and manage only a few dozen commercial agreements that include various indemnities.
How is it that hard? Relatively speaking I mean. Surely they have the ability to track how many times a certain track has been streamed, and with that how much royalty whatever artist is owed per stream. Plays X Royalty = Payment. Sure they would have to do that a lot of times, I wouldn't even want to guess how many tracks spotify has but that's what computers are good at.
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Tracking plays is easy and mapping those to the registered agent is easy. When there are many thousand agents (i.e. individual artists representing themselves) you encounter data quality issues and those become expensive.
You also clash with economies of scale. A payment for a few thousand dollars (or more) to Bandcamp every month is well worth the trivial transaction fee. A payment to 'Cederic Plays Popular Sea Shanties By Farting on a Cat' as an independent artist is going to be around 0.03 cents a quarter
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Really?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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http://www.classical-music.com... [classical-music.com]
If only
https://www.artofmanliness.com... [artofmanliness.com]
there were
https://www.historic-uk.com/Cu... [historic-uk.com]
other sources
https://shanty.rendance.org/ly... [rendance.org]
available.
https://www.ranker.com/list/be... [ranker.com]
Oh, wait. Stop trolling you clown.
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What are you on about? Sea shanties are a kind of folk song performed by sailors. Those guys who, when you aren't sucking their cocks for a buck, work on the sea.
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In what country do you live that a transaction fee is $3?
In Europe transactions are free, unless you run a business and do thousands of them. And then again it is in a the low cents range and not in the dollar range.
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computers are really good at remembering small dollar values for years and years.
Royalties unpaid due to not reaching the threshold still have to be declared as a liability on the company's books.
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ACH fees are nowhere near that, but it doesn't matter. Simply set a minimum payout. When I was blogging a decade ago, google ads wouldn't payout until I accumulated $100. Cashbacks sites like fatwallet and Ebates wouldn't mail a check until I had accumulated $10. It's not a difficult problem to solve, and luckily computers are really good at remembering small dollar values for years and years.
Even redbubble does that. They used to pay out every so often but now they wait til there's some minimum amount as well.
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Tracking plays is easy and mapping those to the registered agent is easy. When there are many thousand agents (i.e. individual artists representing themselves) you encounter data quality issues and those become expensive.
You're just waving your hands and saying "data quality" for no reason. Why would "many thousands of records" have an effect on data quality? Does it create too much pressure and the electrons leak out, or what?
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Clearly you've never had to work with members of the public, especially when you also need to do tax reporting relating to them.
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>"I can imagine that keeping track of tens of thousands of independent artists, verifying payment details, making payments and also validating that their uploads are original work that actually belongs to them is a tremendous burden on Spotify."
That was my thought for the reason also. If so, I don't know why they couldn't just say that. Although I might not like it, it is perfectly understandable. There might also be some liability issues, too. For example, in cases where individuals violate copyrigh
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If only there were some form of machine that could in some way automate that stuff. They could call it a "computron" or something.
There is a solution (Score:2)
I can imagine that keeping track of tens of thousands of independent artists, verifying payment details, making payments and also validating that their uploads are original work that actually belongs to them is a tremendous burden on Spotify.
That certainly is a hard task. If only we had some sort of magical machine that could do all of this for us... In the meantime though they could just employ some of Amazon's elves who handle millions of such transactions everyday.
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I can imagine that keeping track of tens of thousands of independent artists, verifying payment details, making payments and also validating that their uploads are original work that actually belongs to them is a tremendous burden on Spotify.
I don't know. This seems to me to be something that you can use a computer for. If anything, Spotify can compare a musical element against it's entire catalog to see if it's original. Better than any agent can.
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Probably the new EU copyright direct (Score:2, Interesting)
This is probably related to the new copyright directive.
The copyright directive makes websites and services responsible for copyright infringements by their users.
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You're pretty stupid, as Copyright was also a French thing. You know, those francs in EUROPE?
Down with this cancerous service (Score:4, Insightful)
and long live BandCamp!
Re: Down with this cancerous service (Score:2, Informative)
Basically this. I don't understand why people are still using Spotify when better sites like this exist. On Bandcamp, you can usually listen to whatever you want without buying it, not some limited access that you need an account for like Spotify. If you buy, you can stream or download the tracks forever. You can buy band merch. Independent labels and artists run the show. You can often pay what you want. The UI is actually really nice. There's a way better selection of music.
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Sorry, wanted to mod informative but glitched and picked Funny, posting to undo mod. Plus they give their artists a much bigger cut of proceeds.
A crowed funding project ... (Score:2)
When the www started many people believed it would change the way we read and listen, and write and produce.
Obviously the consumers and more so the artists both get ripped of by the middle men.
Would it not be a perfect crowd funding project?
What do you need? A cloud to store the songs and to stream from. A upload and "rights management system" that is aware what is streamed and how often. And a billing system/payment system.
Some people who are interested in such things should step up, lets say 5? Get a crow
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When the www started many people believed it would change the way we read and listen, and write and produce. .. but if you need an app for that then add $200k. ... no idea how many artists. Actually: they could start a streaming business.
Obviously the consumers and more so the artists both get ripped of by the middle men.
Would it not be a perfect crowd funding project?
What do you need? A cloud to store the songs and to stream from. A upload and "rights management system" that is aware what is streamed and how often. And a billing system/payment system.
Some people who are interested in such things should step up, lets say 5? Get a crowd funding campaign for $500k - $1M and there you go. Well, I would stream via web
Looking at soundcloud, we see they have about 150M tracks
It would be prudent to double your budget for lawyers, hookers and blow.
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A upload and "rights management system" that is aware what is streamed and how often.
How would this system ensure that music uploaded by an artist isn't unauthorized cover version of someone else's composition?
Looking at soundcloud, we see they have about 150M tracks ... no idea how many artists. Actually: they could start a streaming business.
I seem to remember SoundCloud having tried that. I guess not enough users are willing to pay for both a $10/mo subscription to artists on major labels and a separately billed $5/mo subscription to those artists that use SoundCloud.
Comment removed (Score:3)
At least some non-streaming alternatives exist.. (Score:1)
Grrrrr.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well... back before I was in IT, I had hair down to my ass and played guitar for a living. That was a long time ago.
Changes in the industry like this have some really bad impacts on artists.
First, it's difficult for a artist to make a living off of record sales today. You make your money playing live and on associated merchandise. Sales of recorded music don't do it.
Second, if artist are forced to seek a relationship with a label they will be forced into a "360 deal". These deals allow the label to handle everything, take a cut of the merch, and take a cut of the live purse- and essentially pay the artist a pittance compared to their true market value.
Some "Famous Artists" essentially get a salary. With all the trappings of "fame" like limos, homes, cars, all provided by the label. And all gone when the contract is broken or sales go down.
Independent music outlets allow unsigned bands to make a living. It creates an audience. Even an original band that plays 3 shows on a weekend in a decent bar can make a living assuming they can get their music to interested listeners..
When something like this happens it takes food out of artist's mouths.
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"First, it's difficult for a artist to make a living off of record sales today."
It's ALWAYS been difficult for an artist to make a living off record sales. The one in 100,000 who do are just that - 1 in 100,000
The vast majority of even moderately successful recording artists end their working careers in debt to the record label - and the system is designed this way - as OMD's members put it "When we started, we were getting £50/week and living in bedrooms at our mums places. 10 years, 3 top ten albums
Where have we seen this before? (Score:2)
Let's face it, it wouldn't really be the music industry if artists weren't taking it up the ass.
MIght be trying to reduce fraud... (Score:2)
Spotify had issues with people scamming the playlist system to get paid. Forcing people through a 3rd party would reduce that a bit.
Someone ... (Score:2)
Probably related to this settlement (Score:2)
And remove your audience from yourself (Score:2)
Most people want to hear the artists who are heavily publicized by the big labels. As long as the big labels and their huge back catalogues are on there, Spotify's listeners will stay, and independent artists just wont be heard.