
Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer release music only “once every 3-4 years” - jakelazaroff
https://www.thefader.com/2020/07/30/spotify-ceo-daniel-ek-says-working-musicians-can-no-longer-release-music-only-once-every-three-to-four-years
======
shakezula
I used to work in the music industry professionally, on the ground level doing
booking and management. This trend has been happening slowly for nearly a
decade but it’s finally here. Rap and Hip Hop figured out a long time before
most other genres that rapid small releases was a far better way to keep hype
and sales up. Before Spotify was a thing, the shift was happening with YouTube
but it wasn’t as predominant. Now it’s basically assumed you’ll be releasing
singles every month.

The music isn’t your product, the music is your marketing. The shows, the
merch, your influence - that’s your product.

~~~
quacked
> The music isn’t your product, the music is your marketing. The shows, the
> merch, your influence - that’s your product.

Man, that's depressing.

~~~
gwd
>> The music isn’t your product, the music is your marketing. The shows, the
merch, your influence - that’s your product.

> Man, that's depressing.

If the CEO of an open-source company said, "Software isn't our product,
software is our marketing", would you feel the same way?

~~~
singhrac
It's not comparable - music is art.

~~~
oarsinsync
The implication in your comment is that code isn't art, when code absolutely
can be art. Functional things can be artistically beautiful too.

~~~
bmitc
This is a really silly argument.

There is an art to building software, no doubt, in terms of it being a craft.
But I think you've misspoken about functional things being artistically
beautiful. What you really should mean is that functional things can be
aesthetically beautiful, which is true and different.

Art is primarily defined by expression and exploration, particularly revolving
around human emotions. Software products, in the end, do not fit this
category. There is a vast difference.

Edit: I defined it elsewhere a bit smoother. I define art as the exploration
of emotional expression. Art products are the end result of that exploration.
Live acts or art or performances could be viewed as a sort of merger between
the two, either as a reenactment of the exploration or as a new exploration
happening in the moment.

~~~
mpoteat
The statement of saying someone else's view of art is objectively incorrect or
silly is in itself silly. I like your proposed definition of art, but as you
know everyone is free to have their own conceptions.

~~~
bmitc
I can agree with that to a degree. Of course, the gut reaction to any
statement is typically the more emotional one. :)

However, I find that they didn't really make a statement about how they view
art, although elaboration would help. I think people are confusing things
being artistic versus being aesthetic. When people say "code absolutely can be
art", I find it's too generic that it does indeed become a silly statement. It
dilutes what art is and is overly biased to code, especially since it's likely
to be coming from a software developer.

What I really think someone means by "code can be art" is that "code can be
aesthetically pleasing", the latter of which I agree with. There's also a
difference between "<some thing> as an art" as in doing the thing can be an
art or craft and also calling the thing art.

------
whiddershins
The way in which Spotify (and other streaming services) hurts the development
of music isn’t what most people say.

The problem with per-stream plays is that it is based on pop music logic: more
streams equals more money. Fair!

But many recording artists made a modest living by releasing music that you
might not want to listen to over and over and over. This music is often
labeled ‘art’ or ‘experimental’ or whatever, and for the enthusiast, paying
$15 for a record of this stuff was great.

Streaming services have no answer for this problem. It’s up to something like
Patreon, if anything, to fill this gap.

This is all _sorta_ fine, but what grates in me is that it seems none of the
streaming providers have even thought about this. They just don’t seem to be
that in to music, and just think of types of pop music as representing all of
music.

This is where that above quote is just a little irritating.

~~~
swinglock
They could stop paying out flat per listen.

If I pay $10 and listen to 50 tracks, I want $10 (minus the provides fee) to
be split among precisely those 50 tracks.

The difference is if you only listed to 50 tracks your listens are worth more
that someone that diluted their listens over 5000.

Throwing everyone's fees into one big vat and dividing that according to the
total listens, is bullshit. I want my favorite artist to be paid by me and I
don't want to subsidize the worlds most popular artists that I never listen
to.

~~~
abraae
That's your view, but artists likely hold the opposite view. I imagine they
want to be paid more if more people listen to their music.

~~~
StringyBob
Here’s an example of what some artists want:
[https://www.musiciansunion.org.uk/Home/News/2020/Jun/An-
Upda...](https://www.musiciansunion.org.uk/Home/News/2020/Jun/An-Update-on-
the-Fix-Streaming-Campaign)

------
jdoliner
I prefer the Kanye West model in which every 8 months or so you promise to
release an album on a specific date. Then that date comes and you go
completely MIA, and pretend you never even announced the album. Then a few
weeks later once all the hype has turned to dismay you quietly release the
album and the dismay turns back into hype. Maybe that model only works if
you're Kanye though.

~~~
haram_masala
Kanye West is a singular being. He is a human work of art, this generation’s
Warhol. Perhaps even more fascinating than Warhol, if less self-aware. I’m a
huge fan of his brilliant public trajectory, yet I despise his music.

~~~
nabergh
Interesting. I feel the exact opposite. I think he is a great artist, but I
think his persona outside of the actual songs is just noise.

~~~
SparkyMcUnicorn
I used to be on your side of the camp, but now I'm both sides.

The guy just struggles with some mental health issues and isn't that great at
talking to the public outside of his music. I disagree with him on some
things, and he definitely has his issues, but I think he means well for the
most part.

~~~
Niksko
The problem is that if you're a nobody, you can say stupid things but mean
well. If you're a global celebrity, when you say stupid things, there are
consequences.

------
pier25
Obviously the guy knows nothing about creativity and art.

It takes time to grow as a person and cultivate new ideas. It may not be
possible to do that if you don't get in and out of whatever it is you're
doing.

Imagine telling Hemingway he has to release a new blog post every week instead
of a book every couple of years.

~~~
Johnny555
_Obviously the guy knows nothing about creativity and art._

He's not telling bands how to be successful artistically, he's telling them
how to be successful financially in the modern music world.

If the band is only interested in promoting their art, they can do anything
they want. If they want to earn a living too, they need to provide the market
what it wants.

~~~
pier25
You think Spotify cares about artists being financially successful?

~~~
Johnny555
Not in general, but they do have incentive to help them to become more
successful on their own platform.

------
NikolaeVarius
I really wish bandcamp would be bigger. Much prefer their platform. The
spotify monetization cycle is so bad for music

~~~
wldcordeiro
Agreed, not just the monetization scheme but Spotify and others just push the
music listening experience to playlists and singles and have very little room
for albums and collecting a library of music you refer to.

~~~
lotsofpulp
I’m not a music aficionado, and I have no interest in albums. I love the
singles/playlist format, and consume far more music now that I can easily
ignore the 9 out of 10 songs I don’t like in an album (back when CDs were
still a thing).

I also find it easy to have a library of singles that I like.

~~~
Larrikin
Most of an album being bad as a stereotype I believe was just from actual bad
artists when basically anyone could get a deal and possibly go platinum from a
single song. Good artists typically had good albums

~~~
lotsofpulp
Possibly, but I think albums are only significant due to the historical medium
of music requiring grouping songs together on various disks. Once it’s
digital, I don’t see the importance of grouping certain songs together,
outside of certain categories like movie soundtracks.

I guess some albums could tell some story about what the musician was feeling
at some time, but that probably doesn’t apply for a lot of music if not most.
Certainly not the music I listen to, release it one at a time or all together,
makes no difference to me.

~~~
boomlinde
Long suites of thematically consistent music of course predates recorded
music, so I don't think you can chalk it up entirely to the recording medium.

------
alchemyromcom
I wish more people, especially tech CEOs, could understand the incredible
sacrifice of time, money, and energy it takes to make an album people actually
enjoy. Everything you listen to, unless you are willing to listen to raw
demos, is a miracle. I've worked both as a sound engineer and and a software
developer. It's orders of magnitude easier to make working software than it is
to make a hit record. The way tech companies have abused musicians to get rich
is one of the most shameful things to ever happen. Furthermore, I'm sick of
these guru edicts about how everyone will need to work that much harder in the
"new normal". I got into software to pay the bills, but the way geeks talk
about the industry and people I love drives me right up the wall. Have some
appreciation--even awe--for the art you enjoy. It requires more effort than
you could ever imagine.

~~~
crazygringo
> _It 's orders of magnitude easier to make working software than it is to
> make a hit record._

That's apples-to-oranges. Obviously a "hit" _anything_ is hard in _any_ field,
by definition. A hit app is just as hard (even harder, probably, since there
are a lot less hit apps than hit songs).

But producing a single track? Seriously, it's not _that_ hard. Yes, it takes a
team of people and a lot of creativity and skill, but I don't know what this
"incredible sacrifice" or "miracle" that is "more effort than you could ever
imagine" is that you're talking about. It's a creative project like any other.

But that's not even the point of the article, which is simply to release
tracks piecemeal and regularly rather than in an album only occasionally.
There's nothing about everyone working "that much harder".

It sounds like you had a hard time in the biz, and I'm sorry. But I don't have
any clue who the "geeks" are who "talk about the industry" that seems to
bother you so much, and which doesn't seem to have anything to do with the
article. I know a lot of software engineers who are also really into the indie
music scene in Brooklyn and I think everyone does understand the work bands
put into their music and their touring, and that most of the bands are never
going to make it beyond attracting a few dozen or couple hundred audience
members at any show, but they do it because they love it.

~~~
philmcc
Not touching the whole heft of the argument, I would like to point out that
the original poster didn't compare the difficulty of writing a hit song to a
"hit app", he compared a creating a hit song with creating working software.

I can co-sign on this part of his premise. I worked for a music producer who
has a number of #1 hits (Beyonce, Fergie, John Legend etc). He wrote >1 songs
per day almost every day for over a decade.

His success ratio (hit vs placement vs nothing) was much lower than any
mediocre software engineer trying to make working software over the same
period of time.

It feels safe to say that in a 365 day period, a software developer can
reasonably expect significantly more than one of those days to be used in
'working software' right?

~~~
crazygringo
But working software doesn't mean commercially successful software. It just
means it runs and does something.

"Working software" would be comparable to "listenable music". I'm sure every
song that producer wrote daily was _listenable_.

But even _if_ you mean "working software" as something that goes up on the app
charts, top 100 in a popular category? I mean, then no -- I could easily see a
developer spend an entire year building 1, 10, or even 100 apps and have none
of them gain any traction at all.

~~~
olivejun
The average income indifference between artists and software developers, and
how many of those who make up those communities are able to find any sense of
financial stability, are vastly different, so even under your logic that a
“hit” is a “hit” no matter the industry, is still really misinformed and I’m
sure we are all out here just doing what we are doing for the “love of it”.

Speaking as a producer and developer, they are not the same things in any way
and I love doing what I do deeply, thank you very much.

~~~
korla
You're still off quite a ways in your analogy. I get paid to develop software
that someone else owns and brands and makes all decisions for. For nothing
more than money. It's nothing like my passion projects, which I do not get
paid for at all. Most of the time. Maybe 1 in a 1000 that I will get paid for
them in any meaningful way.

------
egypturnash
As a visual artist who regularly works on multi-year projects, and happily
grabs a new album from bands she's been following for years who only put new
work out once in a blue moon, I would like to cordially invite Mr. Ek to fuck
himself.

While I am handing out invitations to auto-copulation, I would also like to
hand out a large number to every senator and representative who has voted to
defund the arts. Making room for people who have learnt creative skills to
pursue their craft without having to constantly worry about whether or not
this week's piece is gonna make enough money for them to pay their rent is an
important part of society.

Finally, I should express my absolute delight that Patreon continues to exist,
and that I have enough people willing to spare a few bucks per month that I
can pay _my_ rent while continuing to work on my long, slow projects. I keep
on worrying that Patreon will fall apart when it becomes clear that their burn
rate is higher than their profits, but I will enjoy it while I still can. It's
about the closest thing to the NEA I'm likely to experience in my adult life.

~~~
JAlexoid
So you're engaged with your audience enough for them to sponsor you on
Patreon... and you managed to miss that you're literally doing what Ek talks
about? You have auto-copulated right in front of everyone...

~~~
egypturnash
I am, and I am not, there's a huge difference between "I am releasing one page
of my long graphic novel on a regular basis" and "I am regularly producing
stuff designed to stand alone as complete objects" IMHO.

~~~
JAlexoid
That is not the only thing that he said, it was the opposite to make his
previous statement more prominent.

Congratulations on being caught by the title and completely missing the whole
argument.

Imagine if I came out and said: "I'm an atheist and I don't need God to tell
me to treat people well, love freedom, help the needy and be a nice person...
no longer can I justify killing, pillaging and raping using the word of God."

And you put all focus on "I justify killing, pillaging and raping using the
word of God"

------
rdiddly
_" The artists today that are making it realize that it’s about creating a
continuous engagement with their fans. It is about putting the work in, about
the storytelling around the album, and about keeping a continuous dialogue
with your fans."_

Translation: We don't have a marketing department to handle this royal pain-
in-the-ass for you, like a record company would've in the old days. Selling
stuff still requires marketing though, so the people who do well are the ones
who handle that part themselves, along with making the music. If you're not
good at wearing all the hats at once (for example you're amazing at music and
not particularly at marketing) well I guess you don't belong in the new future
landscape.

Corollary: This future landscape tends naturally toward being filled with
mediocre musicians who work at it part-time - almost like a moonlighting side
gig to their marketing jobs.

~~~
JAlexoid
> I guess you don't belong in the new future landscape

There's really nothing unusual in bands losing fans and appeal. If you don't
want to change and loose fans - that's your choice. This isn't even new. Many
artists had to recreate themselves to stay relevant or just retire.

Now - you have much cheaper and much more direct means of engaging with your
audience. If you decide to ignore this - then you probably will not make a
splash, but there's always a need for wedding singers and backup vocals...

~~~
jedimastert
> There's really nothing unusual in bands losing fans and appeal. If you don't
> want to change and loose fans - that's your choice. This isn't even new.
> Many artists had to recreate themselves to stay relevant or just retire.

Pretty hard to lose fans you don't have...and it's really REALLY hard to get
fans

~~~
JAlexoid
But that's work, that needs to happen. That's why Ek is saying that you can't
just "release and forget for the next 4 years".

------
rurp
Ugh, I very much do not want musicians feeling forced to churn out more
content on a set schedule. I don't get how anyone could look at the current
music landscape and think that what we need is more _quantity_ , at the
expense of quality. Pushing for more new content is going to encourage more
derivative low effort songs, and less original ideas.

~~~
anonAndOn
In the words of Mr. Mumble-Mouth, Curtis Jackson, "Yeah.. y'supposed to have a
remix. that's how you make one hit record into two."[0]

[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0VMB1gN6XA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0VMB1gN6XA)

------
ilamont
> Ek claimed that a "narrative fallacy" had been created and caused music fans
> to believe that Spotify doesn't pay musicians enough for streams of their
> music.

Fallacy? Scores of well-known musicians, from Bette Midler to Taylor Swift,
have talked about how little they make through Spotify and other streaming
platforms. IIRC Swift only joined the platform after cutting a special deal.
Not everyone can do this. Quoting the guitarist for Mastodon, which has a much
smaller following ([https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/07/05/mastodon-
guitari...](https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/07/05/mastodon-guitarist-
band-survive/)):

 _I could live a thousand years, and Spotify plays [our music] all day long,
and maybe I’ll just make a couple of thousand dollars._

Ek also said this:

> "Some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this
> future landscape," Ek said, "where you can’t record music once every three
> to four years and think that’s going to be enough.”

This quote reminded me of Joni Mitchell, who would take years-long breaks
earlier in her career to escape from the business, work on songwriting, and
recharge. Many other musicians can't, as Ek puts it, "create a continuous
engagement with their fans" for reasons related to privacy, family life,
finances, or mental health.

It's bad enough Spotify pays artists peanuts. But if Ek is tuning his platform
to benefit only those artists who are willing to jump through Spotify's
algorithmically generated hoops, and sideline everyone else, then the future
of the music industry looks very dim.

~~~
satyrnein
How little they make, compared to what? Streaming has basically saved the
music industry, finally getting revenues to go up after about 15 years of
decline. Spotify pays out 70% of its revenue to labels and artists. I wonder
what percentage would satisfy people.

~~~
KozmoNau7
The _industry_ revenues are up, and all of that is going to the big labels and
a token handful of artists at the very top of the celebrity pile.

The vast majority of artists are still getting screwed over by the labels.
They're getting a pittance, if anything.

If at all possible, always buy directly from the artists or through sites like
Bandcamp that actually pay out well.

~~~
satyrnein
I'm not sure how Spotify is to blame for bad label deals, which are nothing
new. Artists also have lots of ways to get onto Spotify and other services
without a label if they wish.

Bandcamp takes only a 15% cut, which is better than Spotify's 30%, but the way
people talk about it you would think there's a 10x difference or something.

~~~
thirdsun
> Bandcamp takes only a 15% cut, which is better than Spotify's 30%, but the
> way people talk about it you would think there's a 10x difference or
> something.

It's not about the relative cut of the services, but the absolute value of the
payouts. On one platform you earn fractions of a cent per stream while the
other allows you to collect whatever price you set for your release directly.
I'm sure the latter approach is significantly better for smaller, niche
artists, if not all but the most popular ones.

Or put differently: The number of plays on Spotify required to match the
payout of a handful of album sales on Bandcamp is probably out of reach for
most artists.

~~~
satyrnein
It's difficult to square that idea with the fact that streaming has caused
both industry revenue to increase as well as independent share of the overall
pie to increase.

------
unnamed76ri
Artists to Spotify CEO: musicians can no longer afford to make $0.00174927 per
stream.

~~~
Alupis
Let's be honest. The amount Spotify/Pandora/et al pay the majority of
musicians per stream is far more than they'd make selling CD's. The
overwhelming majority of music is unknown, has few fans, and will never "go
platinum" nor sell out stadiums - ie, most musicians are not Taylor Swift.

For all those artists... access to millions of potential listeners from around
the world is an amazing advancement.

The number of artists I've discovered, personally, through Pandora's
recommendation system is staggering. I'd never know about these artists in a
pre-streaming world.

~~~
BosunoB
This might be true if Spotify's monetization was distributed fairly, but
instead it's basically redistributive to the biggest players. In short,
instead of splitting a person's premium payment equally among all the artists
they listened to, it's split among _all_ artists on the platform. E.g. if Lady
Gaga is 2% of all Spotify plays in a month, they get 2% of the money, even if
you personally didn't listen to Lady Gaga at all.

~~~
majormajor
Does this really work out differently?

It probably gets complicated w/ ads vs premium subs, but if I was 1 subscriber
and there were 100 total subs, and I listened exclusively to 1 artist, but 99
other people listened to a different artist... the artist I listened to gets
the same amount if they get 100% of my fee or 1% of the total fees, right?

I guess users with idle subscriptions is another edge case here.

~~~
skykooler
I wonder how that is influenced by demographics, i.e. if the people who are on
a family plan or a free plan are more likely to listen to certain artists and
less likely to listen to others.

------
bondolo
Based on the Spotify revenue model my favourite artist might make a few
dollars off me over our entire lifetimes. This is not enough to sustain all
but the biggest artists. I am happy to contribute more to smaller artists I
appreciate. Seeing them on tour, buying CDs, buying merch, patreon type models
and even straight up contributions on paypal and venmo. I've been buying a
couple hundred bucks worth every bandcamp Friday since the start of covid. It
is not just Spotify, none of the streaming fremium music subscription services
provide me an effective way to support the artists I like.

Cory Doctorow points the way in _Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free_ talking
about future models for artists to make a living. It might superficially seem
like the Spotify CEO is saying the same things but this is just cover for the
gatekeepers to keep an unconscionable share for themselves.

~~~
coffeefirst
Yep, he’s telling musicians what he wants them to optimize for his platform,
which does not pay viable rates and never will. Which means if you ARE a
musician you should run the other direction.

------
dnprock
I used to hunt for music and movies. I was an enthusiastic movie and music
fan. But these days, I mostly give up. I listen to underground/indie artists
and some classical music. I ignore popular music and movies, especially those
promoted on big platforms like Spotify.

It's sad that many talented artists are brainwashed by these big platforms.
They chase after big money. They don't produce anything original.

I think the same thing is happening to software.

------
2OEH8eoCRo0
I disagree. Musicians can do whatever they want. Not very many musicians spend
their time riding a perpetual wave that they have to continually feed. Spotify
benefits the most from this churn.

~~~
Denvercoder9
> Musicians can do whatever they want.

They can, but only as long as they don't care about money. But musicians also
need to pay rent.

~~~
2OEH8eoCRo0
How much money? Enough for personal private jets or enough to make a living?
If the bar is to simply pay the rent then I still think that musicians can do
what they want.

~~~
lucb1e
I don't think this subthread is any use when you're just speaking of
"musicians" at large being able to pay their rent.

You can't put Rammstein in the same league as my friend who would like to make
a living in music but realizes that it's unlikely he'll ever make pay-the-rent
kind of money from that, simply due to the sheer volume of competition and
luck involved (while their music is as good as any song I've heard in the
genre, it's a combination of reaching the right people and stumbling upon
better ideas than your competition, which both have a significant luck
factor). The former can do what they want and still get that private jet, the
latter has to "spend their time riding a perpetual wave that they have to
continually feed" and likely still couldn't pay the rent. That spectrum is way
too broad to generalize into "musicians".

~~~
alexilliamson
I'd just like to take a second to appreciate that your example of a band with
money is Rammstein. Rock on!

~~~
apocalyptic0n3
Unrelated to the topic at hand, but I've always been curious how much it costs
Rammstein to do their shows. Their most recent tour took ~60 hours per stop to
set up the stage and equipment brought in by a convoy of 18 wheelers. Then
they have a bunch of complicated pyrotechnics, crazy amounts of lights,
costumes, props, gigantic screens, and they perform in the largest venues
available. The amount of resources and people it requires is staggering to me.

------
default-kramer
> The artists today that are making it realize that it’s about creating a
> continuous engagement with their fans. It is about putting the work in,
> about the storytelling around the album, and about keeping a continuous
> dialogue with your fans.

Maybe if you want to be mega-successful, but I have to believe there's room
for other approaches too. My favorite band that I've discovered since joining
Spotify is Darkwater. They have three albums (2007, 2010, and 2019). Right
now, this is the only band I would absolutely make sure to see if they tour
within a couple 100 miles. I have to believe they're paying the bills without
too much trouble.

------
jp57
I'm not sure why this is controversial.

In the vinyl era, when a single LP was about 40 minutes long, it was pretty
normal for artists to release roughly an album a year. (e.g. Led Zeppelin's
eight studio albums were released over a span of 10.5 years, but one was a
double album and they took a long break when Robert Plant's son died. The
first 7 albums were released over 7 years).

It seems like it was only when albums started to be recorded for the longer CD
format (75 min or so) that the time between albums seemed to increase, as if
artists felt they needed to have enough material to fill a substantial
fraction of a CD's capacity before releasing.

Now that we're in the streaming era, there isn't any particular container size
to "fill" to make an album, so there isn't any particular reason for bands to
wait long periods, except for their own creative cycles. The notion of an
"album" isn't really constrained by any physical limits anymore and it's
really just "a bunch of songs released together".

I think the Ek's statements just reflect the fact that it's easier to be
successful if you're prolific, and the the new model actually pays when people
_listen_ (roughly speaking), rather than just when they buy.

[edit: punctuation]

~~~
larrik
I honestly don't think the length of the albums matter. As bands get more
successful, they tour more, and that eats up all of their time. Lots of bands
will tour for 2 full years after an album release, and only then start to work
on another.

Back in the 70's, bands just didn't casually tour the world like now.

~~~
jp57
Bands toured like crazy in the 70's. Led Zeppelin II was written and recorded
on the road. (technically that was the 60s, tho)

I think you have the causality backwards. Because CDs were a longer format,
they enabled bands to take longer tours before having to release another
album.

------
selimnairb
Don’t people write and listen to entire albums anymore? When I listen to
music, I almost always listen to entire albums, not individual songs.

~~~
oblio
Not really. Most people hated getting and paying for whole albums, out of
which most stuff was garbage.

Few artists have whole albums worth listening to.

~~~
NikolaeVarius
I dont know why people listen to artists who can't put out reasonably
consistent music. If only 10% of an artists output is not garbage, are they
any good at all?

Reviews for metal bands will trash albums that only have 1 or 2 good songs.

~~~
JAlexoid
Because music isn't plain engineering.

Some artists have one piece that is great for a wide audience and all of their
other stuff is only for select listeners.(aka one hit wonders)

If you only listened to people who release consistently good music - you'd
listen to 10 artists in total(or something like that).

~~~
3131s
No, only vapid pop music follows that one-hit-wonder blueprint. In almost
every other genre the expectation is that a great album will be consistently
great.

Sorry that you know of only ten decent bands, when there are actually tens of
thousands of artists that never add filler to their albums.

------
tyingq
That's a strange stance. I assume there are a fair number of listeners that
don't care to listen to anything new. Is there some business benefit to
Spotify by artificially forcing churn?

~~~
shakezula
It’s not about listening to something new; it’s about the wave of hype and
promo you do around each release, it keeps you relevant and gives you
something to talk about, keeps you fresh in peoples minds.

~~~
jeffbee
There must be a niche for artists who record so rarely that each of their
albums is accompanied by a 10000-word thinkpiece in the New Yorker.

~~~
shakezula
This is basically Tool, as someone else pointed out in this thread, but it’s
not a reliable or sustainable model for 99.9999% of artists.

------
ses1984
How many artists on Spotify net more than $1k/year? How many net more than
$10k/year?

How many of those artists continuously engage with the community? How many
were famous before Spotify existed?

------
arthurofbabylon
As my musician friend told me -> “In music, you don’t get to update your
songs. Once it’s out, it’s there for the world to see.” (Or something like
that.)

It’s not like software where we can iterate/improve as we learn. In music, you
capture a moment, a sensation, an experience - and you had better capture it
as intended, even if that means an extra month in the studio.

This same musician told me that the increased ubiquity of singles is intended
to speed up iteration/feedback/ship cycles.

~~~
tguedes
It's interesting cause Kanye intentionally or unintentionally experimented
with updating Life of Pablo several times. He changed track order, changed the
production, changed the lyrics a bit. I believe he released 4 different
versions.

It was super interesting at the time and a lot of internet music circles were
talking about the potential of this going forward considering it's only
possible because of the streaming services. But unfortunately it didn't seem
to catch on and I haven't seen any other examples.

------
DoreenMichele
I don't know enough about it to know if they are paying enough or if their
payment rules need to change, but not everyone needs to be Britney Spears.

In fact, having tremendous wealth and fame come with additional costs. You end
up needing a mansion, not for the space per se but for privacy and security.
You end up needing bodyguards. Etc.

One way to make services like Spotify make sense for "average joe" musicians
and other creatives is to address the other half of the equation: The cost of
living for the average joe.

We basically only build upper class housing these days. The average new home
in the 1950s was about 1200 square feet and housed about 3.5 people. These
days, it's more like 2400 square feet (or more) and houses about 2.5 people

We have also torn down a million SROs and we largely have done away with
things like boarding houses, where you rented a room and got breakfast and
dinner as part of the rent and you supplied your own lunch elsewhere. Instead,
we default to expecting young people to share a house or apartment designed
for a nuclear family with a bunch of strangers. Then we make horror movies
about it, like _Single White Female_ , and then fail to go "Huh. Maybe that's
not such a wonderful thing to insist young, single people do."

Health care is another major issue in the US. It costs way too much and many
other developed countries handle that better, so we have many other examples
to draw from. It's not like we need to brilliantly design something that's
never been done before to make this work. We just mostly need the political
will and to take our heads out of our butts in this country.

------
polskibus
That sort of discourages deep work, similar to journalists encouraged to tweet
often instead of releasing larger , more in-depth articles once a month.

------
hootbootscoot
Spotify pays independent artists (that aren't part of large negotiated artist
pools from seriously major labels) poorly.

Indie artists are sinking more into getting their songs promoted on playlists
than they gain in streaming revenue in return. It's literally "pay to be
played"

(Remember "Pay to Play" in Sunset Strip clubs in the 80's? You would literally
front the money for renting the club on a Tuesday or Thursday and then sell
tickets and hope to pay off your "concert" (Friday/Saturday had music the club
actually booked & paid, hence their "reputation" was solid)

Anyway, I severely resent the massive influence these relatively new corporate
overlords have had in reducing the value of music significantly.

BANDCAMP is one suggested remedy, as they take their (relatively small, I
think its' around 10%?) cut from your sales and allow you to have your bands
page and sub-domain "yourband.bandcamp.com" etc... in other words: they treat
you respectfully as humans should treat other humans.

This race to the bottom can only end in more Aututuned Pop, lol...

------
hootbootscoot
Spotify are effectively parasites. They pay poorly. Dominate the market. Force
everyone to accept their poor treatment through their market domination. (Go
watch some Youtube tutorials on paid spotify placement services) And thus,
this youthful tech CEO is speaking from a position of extreme privilege with
an eye towards what is good for HIS business, but bad for musicians. I hope
Spotify goes away, but it probably won't. The consumer side is pretty
good/enticing etc. The musician side is 2-tiered. The vast majority of the
POOLED streaming revenue goes to large labels who manage global pop stars.
Indie artists can just go die under a rock... ermmm "try harder"

I don't really want to read 20 hackernews' argue about how hard it is/isn't to
make a hit album. Quality music takes more effort, training, and skill to make
than low-quality music, and this is not about the production alone. Expert-
level musicians are generally disregarded by Joe Q. Public in favor of Joe Q.
Publics "favorite" musicians, training and knowledge and compositional skill
notwithstanding. The limiting factor is Joe Q. Public's musical listening
skills, which certainly will not improve in a world that is racing to achieve
cheaper mass-produced conformist "music" that likely will be replaced by
algorithmic generation in the near future.

I am hardly a great composer, but even I could describe formulaic "genre
music" in such a manner that a decent music AI could iterate it nonstop.

The subject of people "liking genres" rather than following individual artists
of talent across their works as they explore all genres, etc... that's a
different topic for a different day.

I will also contend that grooming a public to like simplistic rhythms that are
easy to program on 16-note step sequencers is not accidental.

------
anticsapp
Can someone explain why the revenue sharing model is broken on Spotify? A lot
of bluecheck indie bands complain about their meager $28 monthly checks. I
even saw a performative tweet from a label the other day:
[https://twitter.com/DonGiovanniRecs/status/12865225202213847...](https://twitter.com/DonGiovanniRecs/status/1286522520221384704)

Let's say I run a bookstore. 70% of my revenue goes to pay workers. A works 32
hours, B works 5 hours, and C works 3 hours.

Is it not fair to give A 80% of the pay pool, since she worked 80% of the
hours?

Finally, terrestrial pop radio, independent college radio, and ham radioesque
bedroom experimentalists are all on the same platform, the swim lanes have
been erased. Everything is flattened, everything is discoverable, yet the
sobering truth that few people are streaming their work elicits attacks on
Spotify from bands and marginal artists. How is their contempt justified?

~~~
nouveaux
If you're running a brick and mortar book store, payroll would unlikely be
70%. Payroll would be your highest cost but it should be 30% on the high end.

If we want to try and analyze this, we should analyze what music distribution
was like prior to digital. My guess is that for most artist who went through
traditional publishing and distribution, they only received 10-20% per album
sale. That seems high too.

~~~
anticsapp
I should have been clearer, I used 70% of revenue because that is what Spotify
gives to artists. Of course, software can do that as it scale infinitely,
retail cannot. I can't tell if 70% is generous or not -- many independent
artists think it isn't.

------
ricardo81
Sounds like he's trying to redefine the music industry. Seems like most
artists have a 5 year window, likely in their 20s where they'll produce
something resonating with the current generation(s) and after that the younger
clientele will be looking for something to define their own thing as well as
the artist scratching around for some inspiring material. Generally of course.
I take the position that most artists are in that bracket but exceptionally
talented musicians have a longer lifespan.

Of course, a platform wants people to keep strutting out stuff on their own
platform.

As for royalties from Spotify, perhaps an issue of the middlemen required and
not required. I remember chat about the web being a great evener on this front
where independents could strut their stuff and virality would take care of the
rest.

Apparently convenience and one platform, as with so many things on the web
trumps everything else.

------
URSpider94
People are railing at Spotify, when in reality this is responding to the
desire and behavior of customers. All of the platforms are moving to a
$10/month all-you-can-eat model, because customers love it and will pay. What
this does is move the industry from an album model, where people buy bundles
of songs and own them forever whether they listen or not, to a radio model,
where people snack on music in curated playlists. In the album model, artists
are incentivized to put out one or two hit tracks and then backfill with
lesser material, or spend time curating an hour-long story. In the radio
model, artists are incentivized to iterate on and tweak their hits with mash-
ups, remixes, collabs, etc. That's why Lil Nas X put out _FIVE_ versions of
Old Town Road.

------
lucb1e
I don't get the fuzz about this. He can claim whatever he wants but fans will
continue to listen to whatever they want. Artists can cater to it or not and
all of it is outside of this CEO's control. It seems to be meant to discredit
Spotify when I really don't think the alternatives are much better; even if
alternatives currently pay artists better, they don't charge significantly
more, which is the only way to pay artists more in the long run. Someone else
said it somewhere in a subthread: charging subscribers enough to pay all those
artists a livable wage just means they lose subscribers, go bankrupt (they're
already not profitable), and end up paying artists zero in a few years.

------
briga
So many bands lose their creative spark after the first album or two, and it's
exactly because of this mentality. I'd rather have one album of music
carefully curated over 4 years than four albums than have 4 albums rushed out
over a year. The creative process takes time. If you just rush out the next
album you're probably just adding onto the already massive heap of formulaic
uninspired music. I'm not saying you can't have quality AND quantity, but the
number of bands who can crank out both is limited.

~~~
Xenoamorphous
Some famous musician (can’t remember their name) said something along the
lines “you take 10 years to write your first album and they expect you to
write the second in 6 months”.

------
pietrovismara
This moron's statements piss me off so deeply I don't even know where to
start.

The commoditization of Music? The complete lack of understanding of how
creativity works? Telling artists to "work harder" while his net worth is in
the billions, all thanks to the exploitation of said artists?

All this non-sense during a terrible crisis that puts many musicians out of
job since nowadays they have to rely on live performances to make a buck, all
thanks to....platforms like spotify?

Can we please boycott spotify to hell?

------
olivermarks
I have never used Spotify and I never will. For me it's the Clear Channel of
this decade, more interested in monetizing 'content' and having other people
define genres so they can pipe similar music into people's ears for profit. A
giant swathe of the 'music industry' has zero interest or understanding of
creative processes, they just want product that sells easily. These formulaic
eras always bland out and I'm sure Spotify will be no different

------
xvector
> The artists today that are making it realize that it’s about creating a
> continuous engagement with their fans. It is about putting the work in,
> about the storytelling around the album, and about keeping a continuous
> dialogue with your fans

The CEO shows a concerning misunderstanding. Some music is timeless. Some
songs remain landmarks even decades after their release.

I abhor it when people force their own music preferences and beliefs on
others. As other people have said, Mr. Ek can go fuck himself.

------
unabst
As Spotify CEO, we should think he isn't speaking to musicians, but to all the
bigger labels on how to make the most money. Musicians should feel they can do
whatever they want, and should, and probably would, but I reckon they would
eventually hear it from their manager once the instructions trickle down the
chain of command. That is, any musician signed and making money. To everyone
else, the industry itself is largely irrelevant to their craft or their
income.

------
8f2ab37a-ed6c
I'm curious if anybody here has the experience to compare how much harder it
is to make a living in music as an artists vs how hard it is to break into
tech.

I'm biased myself, having spent the last 20 years studying software dev and
then working in software. I feel that while it is a lot of work, the market is
quite hot for any technical talent, and making a decent living is
straightforward. Even a shitty software dev likely makes a comfortable living,
you don't have to be Jeff Dean. In CS you can graduate from MIT and probably
be set for life, but in music you can graduate from Juliard or Berklee and
likely still be living on a futon for decades. Or am I off here?

Whereas as a solo producer/composer (or someone in a band) it seems that
getting anywhere near ramen profitability is really really hard. It's
reminiscent of startups: you have to find your niche, you have to constantly
stay relevant, you have to market yourself incessantly on every medium, and
most likely you'll be drowned into obscurity by someone else who became a
winner-take-all in that space. And while the payoff for founders in small to
medium startups is still pretty decent (and can be life-changing), as an
artist is seems like the polarization between starving and huge is even
greater.

Even in photography you can always "sell out" and shoot weddings in perpetuity
while you're doing more artistic work on the side. And that "main gig" pays
reasonably well, even though it's exhausting. But with music things like
playing gigs will likely not get you anywhere close to sustainability. Maybe
teaching is the "weddings" of music?

~~~
peterlk
I have flirted with the music industry for longer than I've been an engineer,
and the reason I kept getting pulled back into programming is that it is much
easier to make much more money. But I think your question makes a false
dichotomy. Building a band/solo act is like founding a startup, and being a
programmer is more like being a wedding DJ. I think in both cases, you have
better odds in the tech world.

I once had a piano teacher who remarked: "why do musicians make so little
money? For the same reason they do so many drugs. Professional musicians are
paid in dopamine."

There is nothing like a crowd cheering for you.

But you're right, you can make a living being a wedding DJ, or if you can get
gigs at upscale hotels/restaurants playing cello or piano, you can make a
pretty decent living as a musician. But it takes a lot more work than learning
to hook up a bunch of web forms to a database, and usually, it pays a lot less
money. Then there's always teaching; and I believe if you have the ability to
kindly teach music to children, you have attained enlightenment.

If you are striking out on your own, the grind is like founding a startup. If
you build yet another photo-sharing app (or you're a guitar player who sings
about love), you have to be uncommonly talented and lucky to break through.
Similarly, startups come in many genres; maybe high tech startups are like
jazz - often founded by PhDs, and very often failures because no one can wrap
their head around it - even though it is brilliant.

If you can make it work - either startups or music, you get paid in dopamine
and money. If you make it out the other side of that gauntlet, I believe you
have also achieved enlightenment.

If you want to "make a living", it can be done in music. However, you will
generally be more stable and comfortable in the world of tech.

~~~
8f2ab37a-ed6c
> musicians are paid in dopamine

That's a good point, never thought of it that way. As a developer, it's
satisfying to get better at your craft and to get small dopamine boosts from
elegantly written solutions, but it's not like the rollercoaster of being in
front of a bajillion people and sweating bullets and nailing your part,
especially when playing in a band and melting away into something bigger than
you. You can only get so much transcendence from writing login flow #65 and
getting your integration tests to pass.

To be fair, as a startup founded you also don't exactly feel these incredible
peaks of dopamine, but there's a longer sense of satisfaction, confidence and
ownership of being a big part of something successful that puts food on the
table for a bunch of people and solves pain points for even more people.

The way I see it, and I'd be curious to hear what you think, is that trying to
get big the hard and old way in music (aka make a "stale" genre album, release
album, hope you go viral) is kind of like starting yet another pizza shop in
the middle of new york city. You're one of many, you likely don't have
anything so revolutionary to suddenly crush your competition. You're very much
of a commodity. Seems to me that you'd be much better off being at the
beginning of a new fashion or trend in music genres, or using a new music or
distribution technology (e.g. drum machines & synths, or maybe streaming your
music on Twitch, or maybe TikTok) that's suddenly getting people's attention.
Like with a startup, you'd be better off taking advantage of a landscape shift
of sorts rather than making photo sharing app #57365 in 2020. Still won't
guarantee success, but at least will improve it.

------
j1vms
Looking at it in terms of one of the "golden ages" of recording music - back
in the 1960s, think the Beatles - this would mean only returning to what has
already proven possible before. Some artists in those previous eras were able
to deliver remarkable music as much as twice a year over consecutive years.

Perhaps it was a less competitive industry at the time, but certainly less
efficient (and relatively more expensive) production tools were available
compared to today.

~~~
smichel17
> Some artists in those previous eras were able to deliver remarkable music as
> much as twice a year over consecutive years.

I'll just leave this here
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Zappa_discography](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Zappa_discography)

~~~
danieldk
I love Zappa. But I think John Zorn wins:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Zorn_discography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Zorn_discography)

------
benzguo
Sharing a concrete example: 4 friends of mine are in a moderately successful
band in LA. They have 1M monthly listeners on Spotify, and their top track has
17M plays. Spotify sends them ~$2k/month, which isn’t enough for 4 to live on
(they live together, and record with their own equipment in a rented house).
To make ends meet, they play live shows and tour (which isn’t an option
anymore). Support your favorite bands by buying merch.

~~~
hedora
Assuming a 90% cut for record stores and labels, I imagine they’d have gotten
about a million collectively back in the 90’s.

1M * $15 * 0.1 = $1.5M

~~~
satyrnein
This implies that every listener would have bought the CD. In reality, many of
these listeners were just letting the playlist roll without thinking about it,
and would not have spent a penny out of their pockets for that particular
song.

------
jonplackett
The problem with Spotify is how they allocate royalties.

If I pay my £10 a month and only listen to whatever 5 indie bands I like, I’d
expect them to get £2 each from my listening.

But they don’t. Lady Gaga will get most of my money despite me never listening
to her music, because all they do is put everyone’s money in a big pile and
divide it up depending on who got the most listens.

They have to do that because otherwise Lady Gaga wasn’t put her music on
Spotify.

------
kebman
I'm a musician. But I will never make music like that. Also I will never use
Daniel Ek's platform, unless I just by pure chance become one of the biggest
out there, which I doubt. But then I don't make music for a living, and nor
would I want to–especially in this day and age–despite a lot of folks telling
me that I probably should.

The question then becomes, when I already know other valuable professions, why
would I want to? Then the income would have to rival the other work I can do.
I mean, I do get more pleasure from making music, but only because I don't
overdo it. Work, on the other hand, is work. If I made music into work, I'm
not sure I'd like it anymore. So then whatever I produce is intermittent.

But, if I wanted to make music a secondary activity, that doesn't need to be
my main source of income, then yeah, I'd probably keep pushing music to places
like Bandcamp. And I guess that's the beauty of it, because now there finally
is a niche for us who don't want to be slaves to the art. Or to Ek's platform.
So while Ek makes these outrageous claims, I'll be doing something completely
different. And when I do decide to make love to my guitar, the music that
comes out of it, will be a love child, and not the work of a mindless slave.

This is why I think "working musicians" never have to become slaves of the
stupid and oppressive ideas of people like Ek. I just don't buy into that
crap. There's a market. And that market has alternatives that also works for
us who "just" want to release stuff intermittently. In fact I don't even use
his platform to listen to music. Why, when there are so many great
alternatives, that are also much more fair to the creators? (I guess an Ek
fanboi downvoted. Hey if you've got something to say, say it, coward!)

------
tomphoolery
I don't see the lie here. :)

Many of us in the music industry have been doing more single-based releases
than album-based, because there really is no point to albums anymore. If you
have a couple of tracks that all fit together, by all means, release them at
once. But music isn't album-driven anymore, it's track-driven, and has been
for a very long time.

~~~
ZoomZoomZoom
>But music isn't album-driven anymore, it's track-driven, and has been for a
very long time.

This is exactly the problem: the technological advances changed the music
consumption and music, unfortunately, follows. So instead of empowering the
artists with more creative freedom it forced everyone to follow the same
route. It's appalling.

~~~
WA
I don’t know. Even back when CDs where still a thing, I never listened/liked
the full album of any band. I think the most was like 50%. Maybe the
technological advancements only make visible what was there before: only a
minority listens to everything by one artist. Most people prefer a song or two
and skip the rest, but they aren’t forced to buy the whole album anymore.

------
newbalance
Honestly, this seems beneficial to the musicians too. No longer worry about
months/years of work going into an album that flops.

Be more iterative, experimental, and user driven by releasing an album's worth
of content over the course of a few years. Seems like this reduces the risk
for musicians publishing music that doesn't have an audience.

~~~
zo7
> Be more iterative, experimental, and user driven

My heart has fallen at the thought of agile software development invading the
creative process

------
partiallypro
The secret to modern music isn't releasing full albums, but to release singles
throughout the year. That is the future. I've even seen some (small-mid size)
musicians simply have Patreon subscriptions to get new music, and then release
the best on Spotify, etc. (I live in Nashville, so I feel like I'm near the
cutting edge)

------
ArmandGrillet
It's probably true and I find it sad. The best musical experiences I had have
been from albums, not single tracks.

No more albums every 3/4 years means no more singles leading to the hype of an
album nor more meaningful shows around one theme. No more albums means no more
ways to put something on for an hour of development and feeling like you're
(re)living something that has a beginning and an end while having consistency.

During this quarantine, After Hours by the Weeknd and The Slow Rush by Tame
Impala have been my best partners. Sure I've listened to playlists, but the
delusion of The Weeknd and the tempo of Tame Impala's album will stay in my
mind as elements of this period, not single tracks. Asking musicians to
constantly release is like removing the concept of books to only satisfy
ourselves with news articles and tweets. Maybe it makes more money, but what a
depressing artistic world.

~~~
btmiller
Huge +1

I really only listen to whole albums. Especially Tame Impala, Father John
Misty, Mac DeMarco, Lana Del Ray, Fleer Foxes, St. Vincent, Sufjan Stevens,
and on. Those type of artists won’t change because of whatever the Spotify CEO
believes. There is still a place for thoughtfully-crafted full albums and
they’ll continue to exist.

------
dade_
Great, but 80% of it is crap either way. Does anyone else have difficulty
finding good music suggestions?

Recommendations from friends for movies and TV shows are usually very good,
but not with music. My opinion of Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music
recommendations is much worse. I find that I am better off randomly picking
music tracks.

~~~
tyrust
There are a lot of good options for finding music. Some take more work than
others. Some things I've done with success:

* go to the wikipedia page for an artist or album you like and look for
    
    
      * reviews and ratings that line up with what you thought: you might find a critic or outlet with similar tastes that can provide new recommendations
    
      * the producer or label: their other works might be similar to what you already like
    
      * (on the artist page) the "associated acts" of the artist: you might like other projects with which the artist is involved
    
      * any influences listed: you might like what the artist liked
    

* find a forum that aligns with your taste
    
    
      * reddit has many music sub-reddits https://www.reddit.com/r/Music/wiki/musicsubreddits
    
      * /mu/ is actually a pretty good 4chan board.  The essentials wiki is a good starting point that doesn't require filtering through trolling: https://4chanmusic.fandom.com/wiki/Essential_Charts
    

Good luck!

------
diebeforei485
"Albums" are an artifact of the LP, cassette, and CD era. It's no longer
necessary to release music as a collection, unless the point is to tell a
larger story (eg. Kendrick Lamar's DAMN).

I think singles and smaller albums (5 tracks or less) are the sweet spot these
days - for consumers and for artists.

------
mnd999
Strange interview. As a Spotify customer this doesn’t give me that warm fuzzy
feeling about supporting artists. It’s more likely to make me think twice
about giving them my money. It’s almost as if he was trying to annoy his
artists and his customers. At best it comes across as pretty arrogant.

------
mnort9
I notice an interesting adaption to this in the metalcore scene. Bands release
shorter EP's (5-6 song mini albums) more frequently. In some cases 2 separate
EP's are re-released after as a combined album plus 1-3 new bonus tracks.

At first I didn't really like this trend b/c I enjoy listening to the full
album through on first listen. But I do understand why they are doing this to
adapt to the streaming age.

Instead of releasing a 12-song album once every two years, they split that
release into 3 every 6 months (5 song EP, 5 song EP, combined album + 2
bonus). As consumers we get the music earlier and more frequently. They get 3
release hype cycles for the same amount of creative work, which is what they
need to be discovered in streaming platforms.

~~~
KozmoNau7
That has been going on in the greater metal scene for a long time. Especially
for smaller artists, they put out a bunch of demos and EPs before putting
together an album. In contrast to what you're mentioning, often the main
tracks of some of the EPs will be on the album, but all of the "b-sides" will
only be available on the EPs, but I've also seen examples of multiple EPs
being re-released together. Not necessarily as an album in the traditional
sense, but as a compilation.

------
zuhayeer
Music release trends are now converging towards software development speed &
iteration cycles haha

------
tehwebguy
Fiona Apple disagrees!

~~~
fotta
Adele too.

------
danielhlockard
Try telling that to Tool.

~~~
shakezula
They’re the exception to the rule. Don’t pretend like they’re a model everyone
should follow. It’s simply not feasible.

------
saul_goodman
I wish I had this much audacity in my own life, lololol.

"We're not making enough money from you lazy idiots we stole from the main
music industry, noses to the grind-stones!!!"

------
n0on3
I wish as a species we were smart enough not to turn everything good we did or
could do into shit in the name of profit by building models that just churn
more. TBH, reading "what is required [by music artists][...] is creating a
continuous engagement with their fans" my arms fell off to the ground.
Seriously, now the requirement for a form of art is engaging with fans? Well
thanks Spotify for the nails to seal the coffin of good music I guess.

------
12xo
Music is a commodity, a very easy to produce and distribute commodity. The
facts are that the market was artificially controlled for the later half of
the 20th century. Musicians, throughout history, have seldom made money. The
later half of the 20th century was the anomaly, not the market of today or of
prior...

As a musician and someone who spent years in the "biz". Its never going to be
like it was in the 70's. Those days are gone.

------
bogomipz
>'"Ek claimed that a "narrative fallacy" had been created and caused music
fans to believe that Spotify doesn't pay musicians enough for streams of their
music. "Some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this
future landscape," Ek said, "where you can’t record music once every three to
four years and think that’s going to be enough.”'

I'm pretty sure that paying a streaming royalty of $00.0038 per stream is an
established fact and not a "narrative fallacy."[1]

Only a small handful of artists in the world have ever been able to afford to
take 4 years off between albums. These are the U2 and Cold Plays. These are
also the touring acts that make a fortune on the road so it's highly unlikely
that these people are complaining. The majority of artists are hard working.
The only way they make money now is by going on the road. It's helps to sell
tickets if you have a new release you are promoting that their fans are
excited about. It takes time to write an album's worth of good material. Once
that's done you have to record, mix and master the record. This can easily
take months. Once the album is in the can its up to the record company to
choose a release date. There's usually some strategy with the date that is
chosen. It takes time to book a tour and tour dates have their own strategy so
it's not uncommon for a record to be done but not release for another few
months. Then the artists goes on the road - they will try to hit the festival
circuit in the US in spring and the European festival circuit in summer and
then a tour in the Fall. All of this take time. A lot of time. Maybe you could
complete this cycle "write, record, tour" cycle every year and certainly band
in the 70's did for a time but that's not sustainable. Certainly not for
anyone but a young person in their early 20's. Even being able to complete the
"write, record, tour" cycle every 18 months is a grind.

Does Daniel Ek really not understand any of the basic realities of being a
musical artist in 2020? Is he that clueless or is he simply promoting his own
"narrative fallacy" of the lazy complaining artist?

[1] [https://help.songtrust.com/knowledge/what-is-the-pay-rate-
fo...](https://help.songtrust.com/knowledge/what-is-the-pay-rate-for-spotify-
streams)

------
ZinniaZirconium
Yup. Musicians are releasing like 20 new tracks per hour to Jango. I know
because I'm on a mission to collect all of it. And like 71% is from
independent artists who will never make it big and nobody will listen to. Not
even me even though I like obscure stuff but even I can't keep up with the
amount of new music that gets released all day every day.

------
Pxtl
Frustrating, but unsurprising. I look at electronic musicians online and you
can see that - 15 years ago they'd drop one album every few years and it would
be wall-to-wall perfection. Now they drop multiple albums per year and it's
mostly... okay.

YouTube did the same thing to video content. The internet drives everything to
the lowest common denominator.

------
dnlbtlr
When it comes to Spotify’s payment model I would rather that my $10 a month be
split between the artists I listen to (based on number of plays) rather than
the artists only getting $0.006 to $0.0084 for every play. I think for the
more niche artists that can’t rack up the plays this model could be more
sustainable. Thoughts?

------
Marazan
The Spotify scam is incredible. Negotiate a 'deal' with the people that own
you. Negotiate with hat deal. In favour of your owners and against the
artists. Justify not paying more to the content creators based on making no
money but the money you are 'losing' is going directly to your owners.

Hollywood accounting at its finest

------
pmlnr
> "The artists today that are making it realize that it’s about creating a
> continuous engagement with their fans. It is about putting the work in,
> about the storytelling around the album, and about keeping a continuous
> dialogue with your fans.”

FU. A musician's job is to create music. Period. It's hard enough on it's own.

------
jacquesm
Yes they can. Spotify fortunately is not the only way in which musicians can
reach and audience and for some musicians it is still an art rather than a
sausage of which they need to produce an extra quota to boost every Spotify
quarterly earnings report.

Quality takes time, especially in music.

I wonder if that CEO has ever made any music themselves?

~~~
JAlexoid
Even the best musicians get left behind.

If you completely ignore your audience and don't work with them - who's going
to buy your stuff?

~~~
jacquesm
That's a good time to ask yourself why you make music in the first place.

~~~
JAlexoid
And that's one of the points Ek was making - work with your fans and keep them
engaged. Frequent releases help a lot with that.

~~~
jacquesm
You are missing my point I think. Musicians do not necessarily make music for
their fans and to 'engage' with people. It is art. It doesn't necessarily have
to please anybody but the person that made it and it is still perfectly valid.
Yes, people have to eat. But plenty of art was made by people without any form
of compensation or interaction with their 'fanbase'. That's just mr. Ek saying
what would help _him_.

------
mlthoughts2018
I don’t think this is true remotely. In the last few years my only music
purchases have been album releases on Bandcamp or independent record label
sites, for musical acts like The Field, Swans and Nation of Language.

They release every 3-4 years and I buy albums. Works great.

I don’t have any streaming music service.

------
coliveira
I think the main issue is that people don't buy albums anymore. They only
buy/listen to singles. So it doesn't make sense to work on a full album and
release it a the same time. Because of the new channels, it makes more sense
to release individual songs at regular intervals.

------
striking
Article links to (based on) [https://musically.com/2020/07/30/spotify-ceo-
talks-covid-19-...](https://musically.com/2020/07/30/spotify-ceo-talks-
covid-19-artist-incomes-and-podcasting-interview/)

------
ignorntashell
Imho allow free streaming and pay for downloads of what i like. Happy to pay
£10-15 direct to artist with 100% going to them. Streaming can be covered by
adverts.

Simples, but apperently so far :(

Otherwise paid performance amd commissions etc are always ways to generate
more revenue.

No time for diatribution companies these days.

------
chiefalchemist
It's interesting he's focused on quantity, and not quality. Maybe it's
Spotify's suggestion algorithm but too much of what I hear sounds disposable.
Not bad. Not a lack of talent. But a lack of ambition and a willingness to
take chances.

Or am I too old for my own good?

------
dakiol
Scrum sprints for musicians. Sad news.

------
bestnameever
I don't see anyone discussing this but I wonder if this also is a consequence
of the platforms making more music available to people.

Artists are now competing in a larger pond. It would make sense (to me), that
people move on from certain music quicker than they used too.

------
tehjoker
Spotify's CEO justifies Spotify business model by deflecting blame to
musicians. News at 11.

------
auiya
Imagine we treated audio production the same way we treated video/movie
production. The whole paradigm between starving musicians and Hollywood film
stars is ridiculous. And to be honest, the two trades are not that much far
removed from each other.

------
Animats
Ok, musicians, you wanna be in a band, get your nose to the grindstone! We
have a lot of streaming time to fill up, so quit goofing off!

The Beatles only produced about 10 hours of unique music in their entire
career. Can't coast like that any more!

------
vemv
How broken must your business model be, such that you _tell artists_ what they
should do?

------
user00012-ab
I think they are confusing musician with "content producer" Musicians make the
music that we end up listening to 20 years later, content producers are the
ones that create crap for us every day so we don't get bored that day.

------
c3534l
I went back and read the original interview and I still don't know what he was
actually trying to say. He stressed that artists need continuous engagement
with their community and the old business model didn't work anymore. But I
really can't tell if he was trying to say staggered, small releases, and do
away with the big promos for albums, or if he really was saying "stop being
lazy and churn out more product." He could easily claim the former for PR
reasons, but the language he uses in the interview is incredibly ambiguous I
honestly just have no idea what he's talking about. The sensationalist
reporting obviously wants to play up the controversy, acting like the least
favorable interpretation is unambiguously the correct one, but that's
precisely why the public no longer trusts news media.

~~~
wyxuan
Ah yes: the fader, a smaller music publication, is just an example of why we
should disregard media as a whole. /s

I don’t think the article is that sensational, I just think that you might
have a predisposed belief that news media is always (or at least most of the
time) sensationalized.

~~~
c3534l
My point was of course they're going to go with one interpretation. I myself
can't figure out what the hell he actually meant to say.

------
uberdru
Musicians should be getting closer and closer to 100% royalties as the
infrastructure gets cheaper and cheaper. But, tech CEOs all like crappy music.
Which is why they should never be in control of the livelihoods of creatives.

~~~
raindeer3
The reason there are any royalties to distribute at all is that Spotify has
managed to create a distribution service that ppl are willing to pay for. You
can get free distribution for your music easily. Just put it on any torrent
site...

------
thereare5lights
This is a such a clickbait title. Here I thought Spotify was requiring
musicians to require more frequently, when all he meant was that if you
release once every 3-4 years you're not going to see good results.

------
lostgame
I publish one five-track mixtape as a solo artist once a year; and whatever
singles I end up just naturally doing, as well. It’s a nice method that has
successfully netted me some actual revenue, shockingly.

------
BurningFrog
I think Ek said this as a factual analysis of how the world works now.

The Angry People here seem to read it as him _ordering_ musicians what to do
to have a place in his world.

It's all about what tone you read the quote in.

------
alexilliamson
You hear that, Sufjan? Let's see the rest of the 50 state albums

~~~
sicher
Incidentally, he just released "America"...
[https://sufjanstevens.bandcamp.com/album/america](https://sufjanstevens.bandcamp.com/album/america)

~~~
alexilliamson
Lol I guess that's one way to cover all 50 states? I guess he doesn't owe us
anything. It would just be so great to get like, an Alaska album.

------
agumonkey
Seems a bit weird not to have time to find deep creativity again.

------
kin
I'd be curious to see the data behind these claims. There has to be artists
that are successful from timeless music/instant classics.

------
osigurdson
Buckethead should do very well in this new reality.

------
ComputerGuru
Tomorrow Github announces developers pushing releases (or commits) with less
than a certain cadence will be unlisted.

What a time to be alive.

------
deltron3030
People who produce for playlists aren't artists, they're designers. Check out
Bandcamp or your record store for art.

------
Marazan
#brokenrecord

Is the hashtag for explication about what a crock of utter shit this is and
the unbelievably bent deal that is streaming revenue.

------
mensetmanusman
Every new song is competing with every previous song in existence now. Data
acquisition destroyed music economics.

------
chucke
Another distribution middleman telling content providers what to do. The value
chain is so fundamentally messed up.

------
srmatto
Time immemorial: Man who builds a service on the backs of creative people then
dictates what they do.

------
fallingfrog
Imagine being in charge of a major media company and knowing this little about
the product you sell!

------
k__
I guess, that's why the best music I found was made by people who didnt do it
as work.

~~~
lucb1e
Same for software. Sometimes I dream of basic income and everyone having time
to do just what they really believe others and they themselves will like to
use/listen to/watch/experience, but it probably won't play out like that in my
lifetime.

------
sova
Shameless plug: we recently released an album. Features trombones, vocal
harmony, keys, drums, positive lyrics, strings.
[https://open.spotify.com/album/5x7xJwg3ZkohX8sLcPHe9x](https://open.spotify.com/album/5x7xJwg3ZkohX8sLcPHe9x)

------
kmeisthax
"Man who pays people less says they should work more, film at 11"

------
waffletower
It takes enormous hubris to build a business as a parasite of music and its
creators, and subsequently whip them for more productivity. I don't think I am
the only person that associates the name "Daniel Elk" with the word "douche-
bag" in my head.

------
_jal
Commodity sales outfit wants more predictable suppliers, film at 11

------
pacifika
No single platform shouldn’t dictate how an art form operates

------
merrvk
Shows spotify doesn’t give a fuck about the actual musicians.

------
Gatsky
This is a MITM attack on one of our highest forms of art.

------
scoot_718
Meh. The music I listen to is mostly a decade old.

------
jeffbee
COVID-19 is going to completely wreck the music business and the spotify guy
is right: only endless social media campaigns with procedurally-generated
soundtracks will survive in the future.

~~~
agumonkey
people enjoy music for various reasons but there are a few deep ones: beauty
and live

no system can replace a good live concert, it's a high grade experience
(sometimes religious even)

if the music industry goes toward absurdism, the "customers" will just find
the real drug elsewhere

~~~
2OEH8eoCRo0
Gorillaz used to do their shows almost entirely hidden from the audience and
the characters would be projected onto screens. If we get to the point where
we can generate actual good music we can do it in a live setting with avatars.

~~~
agumonkey
it's not what I meant, not seeing the band is not 'not being live'

~~~
2OEH8eoCRo0
Ah, apologies. I had algorithm artists on my mind for whatever reason. Yes,
that would still be a live concert and as someone who loves concerts I agree
that there is no substitute.

~~~
agumonkey
Personnaly some of the weirdest and deepest hours of my life were live music.
It catchs your soul and also bonds people together. No spotify playlist can do
this I believe.

------
kaelig
Daft Punk might be an exception to the rule, then.

------
stuaxo
Definitely an "oh, fuck off" headline.

------
aphextron
Someone should really tell that to Daft Punk.

------
som88
Beeping Prick !

------
moonbug
multibillion dollar company tells its digital sharecroppers to work harder for
their pennies.

------
swrobel
Try telling that to Daft Punk

------
sergiotapia
Title makes it seem like Spotify will ban an artist if they don't release
content regularly. Article says different.

------
exabrial
Tool disagrees with Spotify CEO

------
diogenescynic
Tool just laughs mercilessly.

------
oxymoran
I hate Spotify. So much.

------
hurxnid
Uninstalling Spotify.

------
mproud
Title is misleading.

------
amw-zero
Tell this to Tool.

------
modzu
shopify business man confuses pop for music

------
rewgs
You know that feeling you get when you see, say, CSI "building a GUI interface
in Visual Basic to track the killers?" That's how I feel whenever a post about
music hits the front page of HN.

Save for a few genuinely educated and empathetic comments (thankfully towards
the top for once), these comments (such is tradition) are a sea of Dunning-
Kruger effects in full swing.

I'd like to respond to a few confident-and-wrong assertions I'm seeing rear
their heads again:

No, "most musicians" don't make most of their money from gigs. That one band
you know is not indicative of an entire diverse industry, nor is it a proper
sample size. Those are amateur musicians, not pros. A pro musician who makes
the bulk of their cash from gigs is doing it wrong. And not all musicians are
instrumentalists: some are primarily writers, some are producers, or audio
engineers, or synthesists, or whatever. There's so much diversity in this
world that you're not aware of. If your idea of a "musician" is "someone
carrying an instrument," that's a good sign that you know as much about this
world as your family member who says "you're a software developer, why can't
you fix my TV" as if knowing about computers means you know about hardware and
electronics -- it just betrays a huge amount of ignorance on your part.

No, streaming does not pay people better than album sales. This is just...I
don't even know where to start with how wrong this is, so if you believe this
just know that you're dead wrong and I'll leave it at that. Look into my
previous comments for more info if you'd like.

No, streaming is not supposed to be "exposure." It is a replacement of _both_
album sales and radio plays. Artists and musicians constantly have to defend
against the moving of goalposts -- first it was album sales nearly going away,
then gigs becoming "exposure" for their albums, then their album sales
becoming "exposure" for their gigs, then album sales became totally replaced
by streaming and still being seen as "exposure" for their gigs/merch. It's a
constant chipping away of previously-decent-income-streams that we're then
told to be grateful for because they can apparently "expose" us for better
payment. Which takes the form of...what? The only truly reliable thing left is
licensing/royalties, which is also very heavily under attack.

Just -- people, please understand that you just probably don't understand very
much about the complexities of a market with which you have zero experience.
Your armchair analysis that makes sense only within the context of near-total
ignorance isn't helping. HN tends to be full of smarter-than-usual people, so
at least be smart enough to know when you don't know what you're talking
about, and try approaching these topics with more empathy and humility.

