

Deadmau5 Withholding His Latest Album from Spotify - kevingibbon
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2012/120925deadmau5

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batiudrami
I love the idea of Spotify (and I'm a subscriber). I also buy albums
occasionally, and spend many thousands of dollars a year seeing bands play
live.

What's great about Spotify, is that artists get paid per listen, which favours
artists which make great, lasting music, and against those who produce one hit
wonders. If people continue to listen to your music over a period of time, the
artist will continue to get paid, and that's great (and those who produce one
hit wonders get paid a lot at the time, and virtually nothing afterwards).

The problem, of course, is that Spotify doesn't pay very much to artists.
Spotify says this is because artists have shitty deals with labels (and I'm
sure this is true), but independents also complain about the amount passed on.
Spotify, however, last I checked, isn't profitable, so they can't afford to
pass on more money anyway. I would happily pay more, but I use it near-
constantly at work and at home (easily 6+ hours a day on average). I suspect
I'm a minority here.

Ensuring artists get paid enough is a problem we haven't solved yet. I tend to
think it'll go the way of free-or-near-free streaming (a la Spotify or
Youtube), with albums becoming collectibles like Vinyls, and the vast majority
of artist revenue coming from live shows. Unfortunately, this is going to mean
labels are going to have to negotiate a cut of live shows with artists to
cover album production costs (assuming they're not independent, obviously). I
don't mind a one-or-two week delay on streaming sites to give people who
really want a listen to buy it first. Of course, this helps drive piracy back
up, but for artists, their aim shouldn't be minimising piracy, but maximising
the profitability of their work.

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cageface
It's true that artists aren't making any money on Spotify.

But neither is Spotify:
[http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/pandora-
and...](http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/pandora-and-spotify-
rake-in-the-money-and-then-send-it-off-in-royalties/)

Personally I think the Bandcamp model is the way forward.

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chrischen
Isn't the Bandcamp model just the iTunes model... except iTunes's been here
for over 10 years?

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coolnow
Except iTunes don't stream all songs for free and don't give you a variety of
formats to choose from? Then yeah, you could say that.

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chrischen
iTunes has 90 second samples, which is a big chunk of the song. Definitely
enough for you to sample and decide if you want the whole thing.

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cageface
Not for me it isn't. I much prefer to listen to the whole album all the way
through a few times to see if it has any staying power. Previews are better
than nothing but when you're competing with piracy you should strive to give
the user the best experience possible.

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Matsta
The funny thing is, even if Deadmau5 only sells his music on iTunes, Amazon
etc, by the time you deduct Apple's/Amazon's cut and the record label's cut,
he isn't going to make that much, maybe $100k or even $200k Net if he's lucky.

To put that in perspective, I know that Deadmau5 usually gets around $100k per
gig he gets played (for the bigger festivals anyway), so really after 2 gigs
he's going to have made more then his whole album.

And it's the case with most artists now anyway, they make more money from
concerts then they do in song sales.

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tptacek
Lots of midlist artists make below-subsistence on concerts. The payouts from
club appearances are very low. Deadmau5 is anomalous; comparing his take to
that of a typical indie musician is a little like comparing Slint to U2.

It's probably true that most artists make more now from concerts than
recordings, but don't kid yourself: that's just because most artists can't
make anything significant from recording anymore.

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meritt
Spotify should turn this into an opportunity. Situations like this, allow
users to pay-to-unlock albums, otherwise seamlessly integrates with the rest
of Spotify. Virtual Currency and pay-to-win works extremely well for social
gaming/zynga/et al, why not music industry?

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paulsutter
Right, and if they did most artists would make their albums purchase only,
thereby blowing up Spotify's subscription model. After all, are you a premium
artist or not?

By refusing to add this feature, Spotify makes Deadmau5 look like the bad guy
to his fans.

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waterlesscloud
Deadmau5 isn't the first to do this, a lot of artists delay a week or two.
It's no big deal.

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pixie_
That's cool, I'll listen to it on BitTorrent and no one will make any money. I
pirated music for 10 years until the 'business' actually figured out what I
want - all the music, anywhere, anytime, for a flat fee, which has much more
value-add than pirating. I'm not going to be forced into some other contrived
broken business model.

The only simple solution I can think of is another level of Spotify membership
for early access - like $15 a month. Other than that, Spotify is about volume.
Get your name out there, make some money, and make real money by playing shows
and selling merch. Making money by sitting back and collecting royalties for
50 years is waaaay too lucrative. Spotify is fixing that.

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chrischen
What if instead of $10 a month, I think $1 a month is a fair price for
unlimited music? Can I now justify pirating because someone has pulled my
arbitrarily defined "fair" price for unlimited music?

The artist is stating that they would like you to pay for the download, and
just because the streaming service is legal doesn't mean it's fair or works.

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aggftw
Then don't use the $10 a month service and go pirate music by all means. That
gives signals to the actors, which they will take into consideration when
figuring out what their business model should look like.

The fact that services like Spotify have caught on as of late are proof that
many people like the business model. Let musicians see how much more money
they make by delaying the release of their albums in these services.

They will figure it out eventually, I hope. It's all about finding the
distribution of that arbitrary "fair" price in order to maximize earnings.

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chrischen
Yes and what if this signal that consumers want to send–$10, $1, or
$0.01–doesn't work for the musicians???? Musicians can send a signal too. They
can stop producing content. Fewer young people will consider going into the
arts because they don't want to be starving (this is already the case,
actually).

I'd love to pay only $1000 for a brand new car, but that doesn't work for car
manufacturers. There's no reason a $10 a month service is necessarily
sustainable just because that's what people want to pay. Heck, if consumers
can demand what they want to pay they'd most likely just go with $0. Why can't
they send that signal? It's convenient for the consumer to say $10 because
they are comfortable with that. This amount is what labels can squeeze from
consumers (because piracy has left them no options), but that doesn't mean
it's the final and perfect solution.

If music subscription services end up not being much better than piracy, then
all it does is grant a false sense of entitlement to these people who might as
well still be pirating.

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nthitz
Reminds me of how big media companies delay release on Netflix or Amazon to
promote DVD sales. In either case it's available for the pirates before retail
stores.

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skunker
I've tried buying some downloads. I still use Spotify for everything, but some
stuff isn't on there. But when I go to an artists site, and they pretty much
say "buy it on iTunes" it's all over for me. iTunes is horrible and not
exactly "cheap" either, it almost costs me as much as a physical copy, yet the
cost for the label is much lower. I would love to use Amazon MP3, but I am not
american.

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richadams
Seems to be Spotify US only. It's available on Spotify UK.

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ghshephard
I find it fascinating (Ironic?) that iTunes is now seen as the "preferred
platform for artists wishing to make money selling their music" - given both
it's history, as well the complete and utter lack of DRM associated with
iTunes Music.

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jiggy2011
DRM on music is 100% useless. You would have to prevent a DRM free copy from
existing at all.

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ghshephard
DRM is annoying, but it can be effective. There is a DRM free copy of every
popular science fiction novel you can think of up to around 2010 or so (And,
since I haven't checked for about a year, we may have moved into 2011/2012).

But, with the exception of Top 100 novels - it's next to impossible to
find/download these books unless you try really, really hard. I'm sure many of
those people who buy a book on Amazon, would instead download if it were
effortless to. (Though, many would also purchase it, in much the same way many
of us purchase our TV shows and Music.)

DRM on books, so far, has slowed down piracy of books. It's not 100%
effective, but it's certainly not 100% useless.

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jiggy2011
I doubt that this has much to do with DRM.

More likely a lot of this stuff is just less popular so there are going to be
less people seeding it etc. I'm going to guess that piracy has a very long
tail and the majority of piracy traffic happens with a small minority of
files.

There's also the issue that books are generally cheaper.

Books also have some advantage in that it is more difficult to exploit the
analog gap there, you need a way to print it out and rescan it. Or take a
photo of each page and then use OCR.

Music on the other hand can be pirated by plugging the output from your
speaker jack into something else that records it.

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philip1209
Perhaps each month of Spotify premium should include "early access" credits to
use for immediate access to a particular newly released album. This money goes
to the label, and users can purchase additional credits if they wish.

The other option, if Spotify is looking to play a little more dirty, is that
they can have albums withheld in this manner bypass the "new release" page on
the basis that they are no longer newly released. This would reduce marketing,
play count, and thus payout to the artist.

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iamben
Does anyone know how Spotify royalties compare to radio play royalties on a
per listener basis? I see them as a very similar service (excluding talk
radio, of course), just with spotify being far more convenient and better for
discovering new music.

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FaceKicker
I think the point is that Spotify is so convenient that you essentially own
any music on it, especially if you have premium, potentially making it
pointless to buy the album for many customers. Prior to Spotify and similar
services, if you wanted to listen to music legally (which piracy doesn't give
you) and conveniently/on-demand (which the radio doesn't give you), you had to
buy the album.

(I'm assuming your point was that Spotify probably pays at least as much per
listener as the radio.)

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iamben
Yeah, correct on my point, if that's the case.

I suppose it's much like piracy in a way - would people have bought the album
if it wasn't for spotify? Is every spotify listener a lost sale?

I have absolutely no hard facts to back it up, but I see a lot more people
attending festivals and shows and supporting artists in different ways. I know
a lot of spotify subscribers who use it for work and still buy the MP3s for
their ipod, or the CD for their collection.

I have hundreds and hundreds of CDs, all in storage. I buy them occasionally
at shows but tend to buy vinyl (if I can) to support a band now. I listen to
lots of music on Spotify I would never buy, or never have bought. For a fair
few of those I'd probably go and see the artist/band live, though.

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kevingibbon
I think this is a really smart move for Deadmau5.

During this period its not on spotify, diehard fans will pay for the album
through itunes (or other means). After its released to spotify they will
benefit from spotify distribution.

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iamtyce
The record is definitely available on both Spotify UK and AUS, but as far as I
can tell only half of it can be streamed if you haven't purchased the mp3's
elsewhere.

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iamtyce
For the record, I purchased it via iTunes regardless of the fact that I've
been a Spotify UK subscriber for 3+ years.

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runawaybottle
What monthly price would work for artists?

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batiudrami
The problem, I think, is that artists compare Spotify with CD sales, instead
of Spotify with piracy. It's hard to determine how much Spotify has decreased
both CD sales and piracy, but I'd be putting my bets on it reducing piracy a
lot more. It's just so much more convenient.

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runawaybottle
I don't think they'll ever be able to stretch past $10-$15 a month with a
streaming music service. Companies like Spotify/Hulu/Netflix might be better
off combining their package to charge a solid premium price (Complete fantasy,
I'm aware). It would be like the new cable tv subscription for this
generation.

$90 a month?

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batiudrami
Yeah. My other comment (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4573711>) gives
some thoughts on this. For me personally, a good music service (the Spotify
catalogue is good, but has nothing on iTunes, for instance) would be worth $50
a month alone, whereas I wouldn't pay anything like $90 a month for streaming
TV/movies unless it included live sport. But, I think I may be an edge case.

The problem at the moment for music and artists, is finding a feasible
business model in a world where streaming music is worth nothing (I'd argue
that the Spotify subscription fee pays for convenience, rather than the music
itself for most customers).

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thechut
I had no problem finding it on usenet...

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sprice
It's unavailable on Rdio in Canada

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randall
You can, however, purchase it for $10. I'm glad you can at least purchase it
on Rdio, and hopefully that'll sync to devices too.

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truebecomefalse
If this becomes common won't that kind of kill the utility of Spotify?

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drgath
99.999% of what I listen to on Spotify is older than a few weeks, so for
listeners like me, no.

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EnderMB
I'm the same, but if you look at the most listened to lists they tend to match
the charts pretty closely. There's probably some kind of long-tail effect with
Spotify, but a lot of people use Spotify to listen to what's popular right
now, and I'd probably lump deadmau5 in the "popular" category.

