Add to that the feeling that their music loses its specialness by its exploitation as a low value/free commodity.
Interesting quote. Is music production being exploited as a low value commodity, or is it in reality a low-value commodity? With the insane amount of music that is available I personally feel like it's the latter, and the reverse exploitation of publishers/distributors has gone on for too long.
The factor that is often missed in this equation is that good music will always have a high value to the people who make it, because they pour their heart and soul into it. This will strongly affect their decisions about selling/marketing it, in ways that will likely appear irrational in the light of cold economic analysis.
Those who manage to understand this "passion" factor and work it correctly into their business models are the ones that will make the post-piracy music industry work for them.
A simple example of this is the sale of super-deluxe limited edition box set versions of albums for $200 which we've been seeing over the last couple of years.
>The factor that is often missed in this equation is that good music will always have a high value to the people who make it, because they pour their heart and soul into it.
Passion doesn't change the economic facts. Painters pour their hearts and souls into their works as well. That doesn't mean that they can realistically sell at a high price. Most painters are broke, and most of the art people own are cheap reproductions from places like Pier 1 or Art.com. And most people still own relatively few reproductions.
The question for musicians should be how can they maximize revenue, not price. Unless they want to live in a world where albums are purchased liked paintings: rarely and only by a small market.
Popular music is on the radio to be listened to for free. Popular music is, by definition, a low value commodity. Progressive (maybe "independent") music can have a higher value, but will have a lower install base. If music is meant to be widely distributed, it IS a commodity. There is rare/special music that people are willing to pay a huge amount for, but not a huge amount of people would do so.
Wide distribution at a low cost, or high cost with a low install base. Those are the options. I think putting a record in Wal-Mart or on the radio causes it to lose its specialness. "Special" is not what popular music is about.
I think that if the music loses any of it's value to the consumer by being on Spotify, it is that a 'good' artist's music is just as available as a 'bad' artist's music, and all at a small flat fee. This is most likely debatable though as it's hard to measure things like this.
Don't get me wrong, I also think that music is a lower $$$ commodity than most people think but that is easily side stepped by bands having a wide variety of cheap products to offer (merch, live shows, dvds of live shows etc.). I think a large part of this is due to the economy of today but I don't have much basis for that.
I have mad respect for Sean Parker, but when he said "I don't think we're ever going to get it completely right, the world is changing so quickly that it's very hard to get anything right for long.", I think he was wrong. Him and Spotify focus too much on changing the whole music industry, and they focus too much on the music listener instead of the actual artist.
Spotify removes a lot of the personal ownership of music (not buying albums and owning them even if it is digitally), and that is an important bonding experience between an artist and their fans.
More importantly Spotify offers terrible royalty, Lady Gaga made $167 off 1m plays of Poker Face. Word on the street (aka indie label gossiping) is that Lady Gaga pulls in more money because she is on a major label. I don't think Spotify can afford to pay more royalty because of the large volume of artists they deal with, and that sets them into a huge bind.
Spotify has preached about how they care about the indie artist/label, but they are really just enforcing the major label and this is pushing against the huge movement with removing the middle man and getting your music out directly to the fans so you get 90% of the album sale instead of 5%.
Companies like Topspin Media, Bandcamp, and more recently TuneCore may become a much bigger player with their recent steps in becoming more appealing for the artist.
These other services are all convenient for the consumer and offer more for the artist then Spotify will ever offer. The reason you focus on the artist more than you focus on the consumer is because the consumer is willing to bend to the will of the artists as long as what they provide has a good price tag and is easy to obtain.
I think that you're right. Given the back catalog of millions of songs, the only music that isn't a low-value commodity is new/emerging stuff that happens to be a sub-genre of it's own.
Even quality independent bands with followings aren't really making money on music -- they are selling performances and swag.
Good music is no longer a scarce commodity. If I was a working musician, I'd be working on honing my live performance, since a really good live show is still by its nature a scarce commodity and hence a source of value.
Interesting quote. Is music production being exploited as a low value commodity, or is it in reality a low-value commodity? With the insane amount of music that is available I personally feel like it's the latter, and the reverse exploitation of publishers/distributors has gone on for too long.