…oops…
i’ve seen the whole music business dying three times already…
and since the world streams, rules what might be clever and what not in the endless game of grabbing attention are constantly changing in faster and faster speed…
all i know, i’d more like to see my money go to swedish headquarters than to the beyond the whole world faceless spook of alphabet…
…o…ok…so thanx for letting me not know…and i better won’t ask again…trust ur trust…
Does anyone want to play a game? so from which adds are these words:
“and even if you don´t know about music theory at all, this …”
“where is a Question there is an answer”
So some years ago Youtube increased the minimum viewing hours to start monetize your channel. You have to have minimium 4.000 hours in the last 365 days. And since that change I can tell you from my label channel the views per video also decreased, meaning we got more and more follows but also lesser views per video. As most Videos are just artwork covers + sound maybe more and more listeners switched to Spotify anyway. But also with the official Music Videos we getting lesser attention then 5 or 10 years ago. Sometimes more likes on an 30sec insta clip then on a full music video on youtube.
To sum strange things up: with more and more videos, more youtube followers, we still have around 1.500 hours total viewing time in the last 365 days. same as 5 years ago.
No person who calls themselves a fan of music should be using Spotify.
but nor Youtube either 
Yeah, I’ve also made a conscious decision not to purchase anything pushed to me through obnoxious ads…
I understand the idea of monetising a service, and I was ok with ads at the start of a video, preferably skippable ones, but I can’t bear those mid video ads. It’s intolerable.
yea its a mine field.
or at least if one does use streaming services maybe still try and buy music u like direct from the artists on Bandcamp or whatever. so they get the few Bob. 
Bit judgy.
I use Spotify. But I also buy quite a lot of music, be it through Bandcamp, bleep.com or on vinyl from my local record shop.
I basically use Spotify as a mobile record collection. I rarely listen to music on it that I either don’t already own or end up buying after listening. The same goes for YouTube.
In fact, using steaming platforms this way actually gives more money to the artist, as they’re making money out of me twice.
that’s the way I do it.
buy direct but listen on streamers cause its handier.
That’s the thing in today’s business world. People in charge didn’t work their way up in their respective field but more often than not they are not even related to the business they’re managing at all. They only see numbers and are creative in finding ways to squeeze out some more money out of an already heavily exploited market.
The reason why products in the past were built to last is because actual engineers were running the company and not some buffoon in a suit that read books about economy theory.
I don’t understand advertising because virtually anyone I have ever met or talked with hates ad’s. If we could go through an ad free life I think everybody would… and yet advertising ‘works’…?
Regarding 2020 figures for streaming services…
source : https://soundcharts.com/blog/music-streaming-rates-payouts
I am ashamed to say I use Apple Music and I think it’s pretty shit.
At least I don’t use Spotify. As a musician I agree Spotify really scrapes the barrel but YouTube…
Nuff said.
Here is another link
Buying music you like is bare minimum.
Aside from dirty corporate ethos, Spotify pays less and is lower quality stream. Streaming itself concentrates their users attention to the fewest big name artists.
I use Tidal. I will take a closer look at Napster. But Tidal Masters sound so damn good.
Personally I can’t stand streaming music services, but I’m pretty old school, I like physical media best, then downloads, if I want to listen to music in a radio style way I listen to online stations or podcasts, then if I like a track I’ll seek it out and buy it.
But whatever floats your boat, I realise that not everyone wants tapes, vinyl and CDs, so streaming caters to that market I suppose, I do think they take advantage of the artists though.
Overall I’m not a fan of cloud shite or “as a service” models, I like ownership of things I buy, not rental, but again I’m pretty old school in this and many other ways. I do however understand that there are pros and cons to whichever side of the line you are.
I agree with the general sentiment here, streaming services are not paying artists enough, but the problem is that enough artists and consumers have accepted the way things are that getting it to change is basically impossible.
We do have to be careful though that we don’t get all rosy about “the good old days” when record execs ran everything and labels devoted their lives to squeezing every penny out of artists possible. It is so much easier to do it yourself these days, but admittedly more difficult to make a career out of it in a saturated market.
It is exactly that ease of access provided by YouTube, SoundCloud etc that makes it so easy for us to share tracks and ideas on here. I think the moral of the story is that streaming services are great for artists to share their art, as long as they don’t expect to make any money out of it.
Having worked for SOS as a freelancer (and Computer Music/MusicRadar as a sub editor), I can assure you that they don’t get paid to review things. They make money through selling magazines and advertising, end of. Of course, companies would sometimes pop by the office or invite staff over to show off new or upcoming stuff behind the scenes, which is a way of currying favour, but no money changes hands. The best the staff get is an NFR (Not for Resale) bit of software or a small discount on hardware on occasion.
I too love physical objects and in this day in age of ephemeral clouds they have taken on an almost sacred place for me. Big, glorious art and an effort to use the thing.
But that video going around on the toxicity of vinyl has thrown me for a loop. I guess used vinyl is ok?
But buying direct and/or merch (esp in quaratine) is the truest thing a fan could do.
It’s not impossible if consumers chose not to use it, right? I mean the only reason it happens is because consumers give their implicit approval by using the thing…
And that’s my point. Consumers have chosen to use it, along with most artists.
Right. But my point was that it is not, as you say, “impossible” to change things. Chose for yourself alternatives, raise awareness, Yada Yada Yada…
…bandcamp is still outstanding in concept and karma…
but the world uses streaming farms…nothing to do about this…
and that diagram shows pay per stream…it does’nt reflect on market usage and spread…
and says nothing about how many seconds it takes once streaming really counts as clicked…
differs everywhere…really bad karma suckers like napster for example, who were the big player when listening to music was all just ripping it for free, might only count click once ur streaming the whole track…on spotify the click counts for real once ur in longer than half a minute…
and one click just can’t pay off in comparison to an actually purchased, dedicated recording…
of course not…
all this was my job already when a tour was promting an album…back in the days…
but now we’re livin’ in a world where any recording is the promo for some kind of live appearance…
u can only make a living from all this, if ur tracks can be easily accessed out there…
the easier, the better…simple as that…spread more, get more…to become ur own brand…
don’t like that either…but that’s where it’s at…
the whole thing is running on empty…sooner than later…
but for now, i can tell, once u reached over 50thousand monthly listeners on spotify alone,
u can, indeed, start to make a small living from ur music…
not such a bad thing if u keep in mind that back in the days only a small percentage of those who were priviledged or lucky enough to call a record deal their own, were actually able to make a living from it…otherwise and most cases u found urself in deeper and deeper growing debts to some label…
