
The Internet Saved the Record Labels - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-05/vivendi-may-sell-universal-now-a-music-streaming-behemoth
======
tyingq
Sounds something like "reduce search and purchase friction and people will
stop pirating your stuff".

Seems like the fragmentation for video streaming is heading in the opposite
direction. Too many different providers, and too much unwanted behavior, like
the Netflix autoplay anything you hover over feature.

Is there a "amount of pirate downloading" history chart somewhere?

~~~
ReptileMan
A common story - when we started making bigger money we started buying games.
True among my circle of friends.

~~~
pattisapu
Ditto. I started buying the albums that I used to listen to on YouTube.

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3xblah
Is Bloomberg blocking the Internet Archive?

[http://web.archive.org/web/20190206043030/https://www.bloomb...](http://web.archive.org/web/20190206043030/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-05/vivendi-
may-sell-universal-now-a-music-streaming-behemoth)

~~~
dexen
>We've detected unusual activity from your computer network To continue,
please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot.

Looks more like automated protection against scrapping, or perhaps DDoS-like
access patterns. Bloomberg certainly could, and ought to, add an exception for
Archive.org, but iI wouldn't read any nefarious intent to the current state of
affairs.

On the other hand, Archive.is and similar work just fine [1], given that they
download the website via your computer rather than via centralized servers.

[1] [http://archive.fo/TkpaJ](http://archive.fo/TkpaJ)

~~~
3xblah
It looks like they may be using Perimeterx Bot Defender.

Note Bloomberg is not blocking any access without Javascript or cookies
enabled.

Perimeterx is a service that purports to stop "bots" by using heuristics to
produce a "risk score". The result is that it allows some bots (e.g.
Googlebot) and blocks others (e.g. Archive.org_bot). It gives preferential
treatment to some http clients such as Chrome while blocking others such as
curl or wget. Not only that, as you mention, these blocks are bypassed simply
by using an open redirect.

The page you quoted is telling the user to enable Javascript and cookies,
making it sound like that is the reason for the block. The truth is that
javascript is only needed so the user can solve captchas and send data to
Google. One does not need JS or cookies enabled to read Bloomberg articles.

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teampondobo
Honestly, I did not see the paid streaming model succeeding. But damn did
Spotify and Beats/Apple knock that out of the park. I wonder if the younger
generation even considers illegal downloading or if they just go straight to
the streaming platforms?

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a_imho
Is Spotify even profitable?

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isostatic
I spend more on Spotify than I ever did on buying music, so someone’s winning

~~~
KozmoNau7
Conversely, I used to spend $75-100/month on CDs and downloads before I signed
up for Spotify Premium, so I do save money. People like me are probably
outliers in the grand scope of streaming vs buying, though.

I still buy a lot of music from sites like Bandcamp, to support artists
directly, especially after learning how small of a cut the artists get from
streaming services.

Someone's winning from the average person spending more on a Spotify
subscription than they would on buying music. Unfortunately it's not the
artists, it's the lumbering dinosaur major record labels.

~~~
naivefool
But the spotify model is artists share = total spotify payments * (total
number of this artists plays / total number of listens to all artists)

so if i only listen to 5 artists but they are some of the least listened to
artists then they get basically none of my money and taylor swift, beyonce
etc. get it all... what is worse spofity have been gamin gthe numbers to make
sure even more money goes to a few big players.

Spotify also have a really horrendous set of privacy rules. they are storing
every tie you touched the controls right back to 2008 and selling that crap
like mad.

I just go straight to band camp, then look for the artists own site, then look
for othre sites hosting flacs, then look for second hand CDs.. then i save the
file myself and just look after it.

all else fails i will just listen on youtube as i see companies like spotify
being a real problem as they sell them selves as the exact opposite of what
they are :(

~~~
KozmoNau7
Yes, they pool all payments, then portion out according to the share of plays
compared to the total number of plays on the platform. That obviously favors
popular artists, but it _is_ a reasonable way of portioning payment, based on
absolute popularity. Exactly as with traditional record sales, highly popular
artists get the lion's share of the total revenue. In that sense, they payment
scheme behind Spotify is absolutely nothing new.

I would absolutely prefer if my subscription payment got portioned out to only
the artists I personally listened to, but I can also see how that would be a
daunting task to portion payment based on the listening profile of every
individual user out of millions. It _would_ be more fair, obviously. I bet
there is/would be a lot of pushback from the big labels, obviously.

All of this mess is why I still buy downloads from my favorite artists,
especially if they're niche bands. I'm not gonna necessarily going to buy the
next Kreator or Judas Priest album, but I'll definitely buy the next release
from Bonehunter or Blackrat, precisely because they get shafted by the
combination of Spotify, big labels and "creative accounting".

~~~
ReptileMan
No. Reasonable is to split each individual sub proportionally to the artists
listened by it. If I listened only to Gojira and Satyricon this month - I want
them to take my mpney and spotify their cut, not Cardi B.

~~~
KozmoNau7
I would prefer that arrangement as well, and I don't know if the reason for
not doing it is technical, or because of contracts with the big labels.

It may be a deal with the devil to let Spotify continue to exist, as the
labels could easily crush them.

And you _can_ already support your favorite artists directly, by going to
their shows, buying their merch and buying their music on Bandcamp. Some
artists even use Patreon now, which is a sort of interesting return to the
days of artists working for wealthy patrons.

~~~
naivefool
I always assumed it was to account for the non-paying listeners (i would
rather this was done through a budget - e.g. 20% of listeners are not paying
so upfront take 20% of my money to pay for them - then do a fair calc on
splitting users revenue by their listens).

I think effectively record labels can say something like this to spotify: hey
70% of music listened to is the charts by non paying members, what are you
doing to protect our investment?

i dont know if its a simple as that but i can imagine there are very
particular shapes to listening behaviours/

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0898
You see record labels promoting new albumns on posters and billboards - with
the call to action being to listen on Spotify. How can that make financial
sense if they're not even getting a penny a stream?

~~~
thaumasiotes
Who said you could only do things that make financial sense?

If you believe it does, then the answer can only be that the costs of the
advertising are covered by revenue from other sources. A simple model is:

1\. Taylor Swift advertises a new album, which everyone listens to for free on
Spotify.

2\. Taylor Swift is beloved by the people, who have all heard her album.

3\. Taylor Swift makes a lot of money selling concert tickets.

It's hard to do step 3 when nobody knows or cares who you are.

~~~
teknopaul
The point of the article is people do pay to listen to Taylor Swift on
Spotify. Now, and more so predicted in the future.

~~~
tremon
I don't think Spotify's revenue model allows for billing per song? FAFAIK
people's listening habits have no impact on their Spotify bill, so it's more
accurate to say that people pay for having _access_ to Taylor Swift's songs.

It's the catalog that drives the revenue, not the listening metrics. I'm sure
the metrics are important for Spotify's market position, as they drive its
licensing fees and negotiating position. But as the parent says, people don't
pay extra for listening to Swift's new album instead of the previous.

~~~
commoner
Spotify does indeed pay artists per song stream. The rate is between $0.004 to
$0.008 per stream, and a "stream" is counted every time someone listens to a
song for at least 30 seconds.

[https://qz.com/1519823/is-spotify-making-songs-
shorter/](https://qz.com/1519823/is-spotify-making-songs-shorter/)

[https://qz.com/quartzy/1438412/the-reason-why-your-
favorite-...](https://qz.com/quartzy/1438412/the-reason-why-your-favorite-pop-
songs-are-getting-shorter/)

Incidentally, this model incentivizes artists to release shorter songs and to
squeeze more songs into albums.

[https://pitchfork.com/features/article/uncovering-how-
stream...](https://pitchfork.com/features/article/uncovering-how-streaming-is-
changing-the-sound-of-pop/)

[https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/are-rap-
albu...](https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/are-rap-albums-
really-getting-longer/)

And an artist's new release isn't just competing with their old releases. It's
also competing with releases from other artists.

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MerlinW
Ruined by internet, saved by internet :)

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niftich
The article goes into this, but it's more accurate to say that the aggregator
subscription business model saved record labels -- paying a flat but recurring
fee to access a diverse (but ever-changing) library sourced from various
rightsholders.

This is the same model as Netflix, which licensed all sorts of content when
studios were glad anyone was offering, but as they realized they can launch
their own streaming services, Netflix found it prudent to produce more and
more original content to ward against people who might cancel after waves of
popular shows are pulled and put elsewhere.

There's not much stopping record labels from pulling a Hulu, except for the
fact they already did with Vevo, which was recently killed. Vevo fizzled
because it was never clear what value it offered, and its content was also
available on YouTube by their own making, in a desperate and bizarre truce
against the realities of content discovery. It's like newspapers and their
eternal frenemies Facebook and Google, but with more money on the line.

The value proposition of aggregators depends on the content they aggregate,
but also on matching the content to a receptive audience. Labels may be
looking at Spotify and wondering if they can't short-circuit them instead, but
when content rightsholders wall themselves off from an aggregator, they must
find this receptive audience themselves. And that audience may not be willing
to pay the same way: the same content is available through other sources, even
if it's just YouTube, or CDs, or digital downloads of the handful of albums
they'd miss, not to mention the wide selection of other music from other
labels they might warm up to instead. Movies and, in particular, episodic
shows are less affordable through legal means, so it's far easier to withdraw
them from aggregators and make them exclusives. And unlike music, motion
picture is typically consumed once or just a few times, while music is
consumed over and over again.

Conversely, Spotify might court artists to sidestep record labels, but that
only helps for new content. Yet there's other destinations now for emerging
artists and future fans thereof, and better platforms for discovery. With
subscription business models, retention is always key, so enough palatable
content has to be present and no competitor must be overwhelmingly more
appealing such that subscribers are driven to cancel. And I don't think the
Netflix pivot works nearly as well with music: the whole point of Spotify is
to never have to worry about the costs and logistics of acquiring -- legally
or illegally -- a personal music library ever again, and to remove the
friction and mental gymnastics about picking some music you're in the mood for
to play now. The reliance on back catalogs, of nostalgia and emotion of
repeated consumption (vs. discovering something new) is too great. If labels
start to withdraw, that utility will plummet.

~~~
KozmoNau7
>"Spotify might court artists to sidestep record labels, but that only helps
for new content. Yet there's other destinations now for emerging artists and
future fans thereof, and better platforms for discovery."

For niche genre enthusiasts, Spotify is more of a convenience than an
essential service. We've always been good at promoting stuff through word-of-
mouth and genre-focused zines/websites, and we're generally very avid concert-
goers with a tendency to buy physical merch at the shows.

I _could_ get the majority of my music from Bandcamp, and I do buy a lot of
downloads from bands I enjoy, in order to support them directly. Spotify does
have an edge in the size (width _and_ depth) of their library, which is
extremely handy when you want to play something that you occasionally enjoy,
or quickly look up something a friend mentioned. Lately Youtube has been
extremely good at adding music to their library however, obviously because of
Youtube Music.

I also find the trend in Spotify's recommendations to be very "safe", which
does make sense. After all, they build their recommendations on what most
people listen to, not niche bands with <10K plays for their most popular song.

When I first signed up for Spotify Premium, I thought I wouldn't ever need my
local collection anymore, because why would I? Spotify had/has the biggest
library, right? I'm glad I kept my local collection, because Spotify does get
a little weird about removing albums because of rightsholder nonsense, and
I've seen new albums just never get added, despite earlier releases being
available from the same artists.

I still enjoy having millions and millions of tracks available, and their
recommendations are decent, if not amazing. But my own curated collection is
irreplaceable.

But I'm an enthusiast. For more casual listeners, Spotify (or Google Play
Music or Apple Music) would cover all their needs for new music and popular
classics. And I think Spotify could easily woo artists into direct releases
and promote them through their platform.

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benj111
If I shoot you in the chest then drive you to hospital did I 'save' you?

Revenues are still down from their heyday, so the internet is still a net
negative for the record companies. It is an interesting case study in adapting
to a rapidly changing market though.

