For years now, the music industry has been in decline. Illegal downloading, torrenting and streaming of tracks has for a long time been commonplace. Such activities are the spiritual succession to recording mix-tapes of tracks directly from the radio. (Gosh, do you remember cassette tapes? I’m getting old.) When home computers became more readily available and the CD boom occurred, burning CDs and sharing between friends was even more popular. But nothing’s left a greater scar upon the music industry than high-speed internet and everything that’s come with it.
I remember cassette tapes recorded from my dad’s car stereo, I remember burning CDs and writing, “For Lucy,” on the blank face of the disk as a gift to the girl I fancied, I remember the veritable feast that was Limewire and allowing my hard-drive to gorge on thousands of tracks I’d never get around to listening to. I remember being a huge part of the problem! But I’m not sorry for having done any of that, nor do I regret it. I was just a kid and, more to the point, I still think the blame lies largely with the music industry itself.
Booming businesses fear change because it poses a risk. The music industry is no different. When technological advancements made each new act of piracy possible, the industry wanted to legislate rather than to embrace the new culture. Instead of developing new ways to deliver content for the information age, laws were passed which threatened to shut law-abiding businesses out of the race to master these new platforms, but which would do nothing to deter piracy.
In a recent TED Talk, musician, Amanda Palmer discusses her own conflicts with her record label and presents a message of loyalty and trust between musician and consumer. “I didn’t make them,” says Palmer of receiving payment from her fans for her music, “I asked them.” Her message is one of letting the consumer pay on their terms, rather than restricting content until a price set by the maker is paid. Very much in line with the ethos that art, once created, no longer belongs to the artist but to the viewer or the listener of it. A certain degree of mutual control is exercised along with a large amount of trust which Palmer admits does seem alien to many.
Spotify very much allows the consumer to pay for music in any way they want to. Listeners can make use of the service for free whilst incurring advertisements and certain restrictions to the amount of times they can listen to content, or they can subscribe to one of two plans which will enable uninterrupted listening and, in the premium model, synchronisation with mobile devices. It’s a novel way of paying for music, and it’s helped to mark the industry’s first rise in over a decade.
“After years of seemingly irreversible decline, it appears the music industry may have found salvation from an unlikely source,” writes Josh Glancy of The Sunday Times, who goes on to describe Sweden’s less than savoury relationship with piracy. Attitudes to intellectual property are very different in the Scandinavian nation which, as well as Spotify, has given the world The Pirate Bay and the Church of Kopimism, a religion founded on the love of file-sharing.
A rise of just 0.3% was measured for 2012 by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. It’s a small number but a very big deal considering the year on year loss since 1999, largely due to illegal downloading. But this notable success isn’t the whole story.
Spotify may be to thank for a small rise in the industry as a whole, but many artists aren’t satisfied at how much revenue is paid out to them through the service. Only 70% of the revenue Spotify receives is paid on to the content owners, a fixed expense which is divvied up based on the popularity of tracks and albums. It may sound like a lot, but that 70% is divided between many individual artists, producers and labels who still aren’t making nearly as much via the subscription model as they might through an equivalent amount of sales.
While artists and distributors argue amongst themselves, some – like Amanda Palmer – are embracing new models of distribution. Spotify may not be the perfect solution, and perhaps there are many who are still too blinded by greed to see other opportunities, but we’re getting somewhere. For the longest time, record labels and lawmakers told us we were in the wrong for wanting our content given to us in a different way. But by embracing digital distribution and the new service models it can provide, they’ve seen their first sign of growth in thirteen years. It isn’t perfect, we all know things need to be improved and deals need to be better negotiated. I just can’t help but to think that we might be a little further ahead had the new age not been resisted for so long.
What are your thoughts? Is Spotify a good thing for the music industry? A bad thing for artists? Is Amanda Palmer crazy to make her content openly available and to expect her fans to pay? What do you think the future holds for the music industry? Add your comments to the discussion below.
We are currently seeking Music contributors on WhatCulture. To find out more about the perks of being a Music contributor, click here.
13 Comments
Two words: Long Tail. I agree fully that spotify as well as other such services are the way to go. Thanks to longtail, people are actually DISCOVERING new music on their own in stead of just aimlessly listening to whatever everyone else is listening to. Often, these are artists with as much merit as the top chart musicians, just harder to find. Also, hats off to Miss Palmer for being the best songwriter i have heard in years.
Hadn’t ever heard of that term, “Long Tail”, before. I believe you mean this though, the statistical model: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail
Really fascinating read, and probably very relevant to me as someone trying to share my articles on social media… or on any platform for that matter – long tail analysis clearly has a lot of applications.
Sharing cassette tapes and burning CDs for friends was a similar long tail effect. And I didn’t even mention the likelihood that shared music led to friends buying artists’ other albums – a very positive effect of illegal piracy.
In fact, I think it was Neil Gaiman – Palmer’s husband, perhaps coincidentally – who said he’d embraced piracy at one point and actually, surprisingly, seen a subsequent boom in sales!
That’s the sort of thing we’re talking about with ‘long tail’, right? Long term benefits that come from ease of sharing, rather than the short-term boom that comes with first-hand marketing..
I partly agree and disagree with the article. The problem is that I wonder if Spotify will make a big difference. A lot of people download from sites such as the Pirate Bay claiming it to be in the name of freedom, because they think the government, labels etc. are the devil and ripping them off. Yet interestingly you can buy tracks these days for under a pound via services such as Amazon and iTunes and yet people claim they are expensive.
The problem is these people in my opinion use excuses to deny the fact they simply download because it’s free and they are unlikely to get caught. People who just want to listen to music probably will like Spotify but a lot will want to download it, no adverts but no cost.
At the end of the day the music business is a business
Uh-huh, uh-huh. A lot of what you’re seeing is, in one manner, absolutely correct. But simply observing that people download music and saying, oh they just do that and that’s that, isn’t going to help anybody. Those people are worth discussing, it is worth addressing potential solutions and looking at their effects because, as you say, “at the end of the day the music business is a business”.
That’s just half the story, though. Music isn’t a business. It’s a passion. It’s something which has been turned into a commodity, made a business, but you get it for free all of the time. You get it for free on the radio, from buskers on the street, you get it for free from the oversized speakers that obnoxious gentleman has fitted into his undersized car. You can’t avoid experiencing music for free. It is, itself, not a business.
This isn’t about the music business, you see. Not at its broadest. It’s about musicians and fans. The makers and the listeners. One wants to be heard, the other wants to listen. The business is the thing which gets in the way of that. I don’t know if you watched the Amanda Palmer talk but there is the wonderful story in there of her going independent, of her making her music freely available, and of her fans still donating to support the music she and her band make.
That’s not business. That’s trade. And the problem with trade isn’t that people steal. I mean, that’s not the only or even the largest problem. A large part of the problem is the mindset which says, “other people steal this”, “we need to protect this”, “this is our business” – all of the things that you’re saying, sorry Peter. And the reason there’s a problem with that mindset is that it creates a barrier where there should be trust, and that’s what turns trade into a business.
The problem is that passion and business sometimes interlope. I was having a discussion about this on my online station’s twitter a while back with someone who loved making music and had passion but it’s what he wanted to do job wise, and passion on its own doesn’t always pay. The same can be said for films – lots of small independent films are released that show skill and passion but with still the ultimate goal being at least to cover their costs and ideally make profit. I myself also love running the station and bringing new music to people but if I can make money doing it why not.
The funny thing is, I love to buy CD’s still and rarely buy digital. When I do see free tracks and programs that have donate boxes I always ignore them even if I like them because well it’s free and money can be tight. I know not everyone will do that but a majority of people will probably just hit download. I do love these new services don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think it will curb the majority of the pirates.
You haven’t yet suggested anything which you think might help…
Okay, the idea of mutual trust and trade doesn’t appeal to you because you think you’re in a majority of people who will take without giving. That “majority” of people, in fact, think the “majority” of people do it, and they justify being a bit of a prick in that way by modelling their actions against a faceless crowd… but whatever, we’re not here to discuss sociology.
And you don’t think Spotify is curbing music piracy even though it’s helped mark the first rise in revenue in 13 years?
You say people are going to not use Spotify Free because they could download instead and not have to suffer ads that way… Spotify Unlimited is only £5 a month. That’s way less than you’d pay to build a library of tracks which even starts to compare.
There are good people out there, man. People who appreciate a good deal and acknowledge that they need to make a contribution. I know because I’m one of them. Not part of a group who takes without giving because “it’s what the majority do”. And I truly believe that if you didn’t have the majority to hide behind, if we could present data to you that shows most people do pay a contribution, you’d be more ashamed of those actions.
And whether or not such data showing that to be the case exists is irrelevant, I feel, because it isn’t about justifying your actions; it is about being an ethical human being regardless of what everybody else is doing.
I don’t download illegally but like most I have done in the past. Because I have worked in a sense partly in the industry and I wouldn’t want people downloading my films unless I’d allowed it- I realise the work that’s gone into it, commitment etc.
The problem is a lot of people just don’t care. Spotify helps some people yeah, but the illegal downloaders that don’t care, nothing will help prevent them unless you bring out laws (they do keep trying although usually they are flawed). £5 a month for unlimited streaming is great and I may actually consider buying it soon myself but the problem for some is that £5 is a lot more than free.
I’m not trying to say piracy isn’t becoming less of a problem, I’m merely trying to state that it will never completely subside if people can simply do it without any consequences. It would be great if we could simply trust and rely on everyone to be good and give something back to the artists, and like yourself, some will. However there will always be those who won’t.
I would never say, “always”. Another phenomenon of the sociological being is to model itself on the projections made for it. In other words, if you say a group of people are going to do something – particularly something like piracy – then people will always model themselves such that it does occur, because you’ve given them that out. Simply saying, “well it happens,” encourages it to happen.
We shouldn’t say, therefore, that there will “always be those who won’t”. That statement creates its own reality. ‘There will always be those who won’t..? If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.’
We ought to say that it happens now and that we hope it doesn’t in the future. That we hope to reduce it more and more and ultimately create a better society.
This subject is one which is argued in the field of law enforcement/crime & punishment quite a lot. Should our focus be to punish, or should it be to rehabilitate? I’ve always taken the side of rehabilitation for precisely these reasons. We need to educate, not subjugate. To work together, not separate ourselves into the righteous and the villains.
And it is only by suggesting that such a world is possible that we are capable of working towards it. Piracy will naturally only always happen, if we allow ourselves and others to think that that is the case. It needn’t be, and if we would focus on cooperation rather than on control, we might open up the dialogue which moves us towards reducing it even further.
Spotify is still a ways away from Amanda Palmer’s model isn’t it? And part of the reason for the declining profits in the music industry is that they pay a huge amount for a large manufacturing and distribution network that just isn’t necessary any more. So, unfortunately, the industry has to shrink. There just isn’t so much place for music brokers in the modern world.
A ways away indeed. And I’ll wager a part of the problem is the consumers. I know I’m guilty of saying I really love to own the CD, or the record. Love to own ‘em, but I end up listening to the digital copy I make or that I buy separately. I’m contributing to wasted resources just to hold a physical artefact in my hand one time before I rip the content and put it on a shelf.
So I’m trying to embrace digital more. But there’s no denying it’s a slow progression. And perhaps rise in revenue, though it was only a small increase, is a signal that the slow progression is picking up momentum – no matter how little.
But we are definitely a way off. And certainly the music business’ hay-day is in the past. I’m hoping, though, that that doesn’t mean we can’t make things better for artists trying to make a living independently.
As a consumer I find that Spotify is excellent, but it feels almost too good to be sustainable.
As a former heavy downloader of music back in the day using the likes of winMX, napster, Kazaa and pirate bay, spotify immediately removed the urge/need to download music illegally. I couldn’t afford to legally purchase and consume the amount of music I was listening to, but could afford a spotify premium membership. Their mobile/tablet platform and offline playback are fantastic IMO. I can have a full collection of music with me wherever I go, and on whatever device I desire.
As a way to reduce piracy, streaming services are excellent. As a way to boost income for artists directly, I don’t think it does anything, and therefore contributes little to the industry as a whole. I understand Spotify itself is even struggling to turn a profit. It does look to be the future though, with the likes of Google and Apple lurking in the shadows.
As a consumer on a budget though, I couldn’t be happier.
The artists definitely are getting a bum deal. Hopefully the next generation of app/software developers will improve on the model.
The way I see it art is about the artist and the people who enjoy their art- screw the middleman. If you download a band’s collection and enjoy it go see one of their shows or two and buy a $30-$40 t-shirt, you’ll almost definitely make them more money than you would have buying their albums. It took awhile for both the artists and consumers to catch up with the technology (and the industry still really hasn’t and I hope they don’t) but today listeners can use resources (youtube, facebook) to seek out 1000′s of up-and-coming, unsigned, and indie performers who actually WANT you to listen to their music for free- that’s all they care about- that their art reaches and touches people- what massive acts (many of them anyways) that have “made it” have forgotten about: it’s about the music, then the fans, then the band, and “suits” should be last in line… Do yourself, your bands, and art in general a favor- GO SEE IT! That’s how you get the best art- not the best “product”