[HN Gopher] Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by...
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Global music market grew by 18.5% in 2021, driven by paid
subscription streaming
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 97 points
Date : 2022-03-24 19:15 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ifpi.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ifpi.org)
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Art is best when it's unpaid. I don't want you paying me for my
| music and I won't pay for yours. I am tired of corporate rent
| seeking in the art space. Yes this is historical for art of all
| kinds, but I think that was to the detriment of art rather than
| its benefit. The talent of artists has been used to ingratiate
| and inflate the perception of some truly awful people and ideas.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| Based.
|
| Okay, fine, I suppose I should actually respond.
|
| The problem with this view is that truly high quality art
| requires time and attention that few can afford without some
| level of compensation.
|
| If we lived in a non-capitalist society where people didn't
| have to work to survive, I might agree with you. Heck, even a
| basic income could make a life as an artist possible.
|
| But that world doesn't exist.
|
| So your idea would do one thing and one thing only: it would
| relegate the creation of art to the domain of the wealthy. And
| that is not a world I'd want to live in.
| bitwize wrote:
| How do you expect artists to keep doing what they do and put
| food on the table?
| ProAm wrote:
| Like every artist throughout history has?
| bitwize wrote:
| Patronage? I'm sure you can see how that doesn't scale.
| fullshark wrote:
| By getting paid for it?
| aeyes wrote:
| By using music/art as promotional material to sell
| tickets to your live shows.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I am far more than happy to pay artists who create the music
| that I love to continue to create that music.
|
| No one demands a purity of purpose from software developers.
| drpgq wrote:
| "The USA & Canada region grew by 22.0% in 2021, outpacing the
| global growth rate. The USA market alone grew by 22.6% and
| Canadian recorded music revenues grew by 12.6%."
|
| I wonder why the big difference.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| My guess is that performances have _just_ started opening up
| again in Canada.
|
| That's usually a big part of revenues. From what I've seen by
| watching recording performances, there have been many places
| throughout the US to perform live in that time. Varied state-
| by-state even.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| I am having a hell of a time adjusting to a streaming-focused
| music world. On one hand, I love having access to pretty much all
| the music I want, and have discovered a lot of new artists
| (through no help of the apps themselves, however). On the other
| hand, having my library randomly switch on me with songs
| disappearing, album covers swapping out or renamed is driving me
| NUTS.
|
| Not to mention the general buggyness that's on iOS Music. I feel
| like maybe it's just me because people generally enjoy it, but
| the app is a pretty terrible experience overall (Slow, buggy,
| messy). It sometimes refuses to play a song! Maybe I'm just
| getting old.
|
| I'm on a family plan where the cost per person is negligible, so
| I can deal with it most of the time, but I do sometimes miss the
| ipod days.
| 8bitbuddhist wrote:
| This is why I host my own personal streaming service. I'll buy
| music, copy the files to my server, and use Airsonic to stream
| it to my laptop, phone, etc. It's a lot more work, but I'd
| rather have full control than use something like YouTube Music,
| where I can only hope that the songs I like don't get pulled or
| the service itself doesn't get shut down.
| digitalnomad91 wrote:
| You can use youtube-dl-gui to grab mp3's from many different
| platforms.
|
| I also grab mp3's using ymusic and a hacked pandora app on my
| phone. I miss the days of what, waffle, and oink though. Still
| haven't gotten into orpheus yet.
|
| Also op above is right, bandcamp is awesome.
| Adraghast wrote:
| I encourage you to check out an app called Marvis. It's a
| frontend for Apple Music (iOS only) that eliminates a lot of
| the default client's issues. Until recently, I was paying for
| Tidal despite having Apple Music as part of my Apple One
| subscription, but switched back once I discovered Marvis.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Where can you buy (drm free) music these days? After google
| play shut down, I haven't known where to go
| djkoolaide wrote:
| Bandcamp. A lot of artists just sell their stuff directly on
| their Bandcamp page now, and you get the choice of format
| when you download (MP3/WAV/FLAC/etc).
| warp wrote:
| iTunes still has a store where most music is DRM free, and
| available in a lot of countries (as opposed to Amazon MP3,
| which is only available in a few). If you have a Mac it's
| fairly easy to right-click a purchased, downloaded song in
| Music.app and click "open in finder", so you can copy it (or
| the entire album) to some self-hosted music server/app.
|
| There are sites like bandcamp, boomkat, beatport, bleep,
| 7digital, but they all have smaller collections, so may not
| have what you're looking for.
|
| There's also budget options of questionable legality hosted
| in countries with a more flexible approach to music
| licensing, like e.g. mp3va.com.
| mr_mitm wrote:
| Amazon has MP3 downloads, at least where I live. Last time I
| bought a CD there, the corresponding MP3 download was
| included.
| navbaker wrote:
| I'm still irrationally hanging on to those days. I usually buy
| mp3 albums on Amazon and download them, then transfer to my
| iPhone. Occasionally I run across an album that just will not
| copy over, it just silently fails in iTunes when I try to drag
| and drop. I think the latest is Dave Brubeck's Time Out, I have
| to play that via the Amazon Music app.
| rapsey wrote:
| What is supper weird to me is how billie eilish songs very
| often don't start playing. I can click on anything in my
| library and it is fine. Trying to play billie and the app
| just sits there waiting.
| bredren wrote:
| Simple music discovery has not recovered from just perusing the
| top daily or weekly on oink.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| So stop streaming and start buying. That's still an option.
|
| I use streaming services for taste testing, but if I really
| like something and want to own it, I turn to a DRM-free
| platform (e.g. Bandcamp) to buy from the artists, then use my
| own solution for playing that music on my devices (in my case
| Navidrome).
|
| And as a bonus you'll put a lot more money in the pockets of
| the artists you love.
| bocytron wrote:
| Oh man. Navidrome looks awesome. Never thought about doing
| that. Will start buying from bandcamp tomorrow. Thank you
| tons for the suggestion.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| I've purchased plenty of music, but the problem is that at
| least on iOS, the music app will still swap out
| song/album/info/art, or mismatch them altogether. The app
| itself is optimized for streaming, with everything else being
| an afterthought.
|
| My favorite way to support artists I love is to go to their
| tours and buy their merch, including vinyls that are too
| cumbersome to actually listen to :D.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| > I've purchased plenty of music, but the problem is that
| at least on iOS, the music app will still swap out
| song/album/info/art, or mismatch them altogether.
|
| I wonder if another app might solve your issues? Certainly
| my combo of Navidrome + substreamer (on Android) doesn't
| have any of those issues. My music is tagged and has
| embedded artwork and the app just uses what's there. Then I
| just use MusicBrainz Picard to ensure my tags are clean and
| in good shape.
|
| > My favorite way to support artists I love is to go to
| their tours and buy their merch, including vinyls that are
| too cumbersome to actually listen to :D.
|
| This is the way!
| jjulius wrote:
| So the artists themselves saw some of this growth, too... right?
| [deleted]
| bryans wrote:
| The self-congratulatory nature of the article and quotes actually
| betray a self-reassurance, because in reality, record labels are
| rapidly becoming irrelevant. They're scrambling to figure out how
| they fit into the TikTok era, where artists no longer require
| years of financial incubation to succeed. The music industry is
| growing because independent musicians are finally figuring out
| how to navigate it without any need for those traditional
| industry services. They deserve the credit for (most of) this,
| because they are working their asses off (including bringing new
| streaming users to the fold) and getting no recognition
| whatsoever from industry reporting.
|
| Sometime in the next year or two, we will see the first truly
| independent music superstars achieve household-name status. Once
| that veil is broken, then the jig is up and labels are going to
| be panicking -- if they're not already.
| davtbaum wrote:
| Disagree hard - every major label I follow is embracing TikTok
| and encouraging their artists to leverage the platform for
| growth. Also, labels have so much infrastructure for marketing,
| merch, booking shows etc. The need for this support doesn't
| magically go away with new distribution channels. It just helps
| newer artists get signed quicker :p
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _They 're scrambling to figure out how they fit into the
| TikTok era, where artists no longer require years of financial
| incubation to succeed_
|
| Before this was the Napster era, then the MySpace era, then the
| SoundCloud era, and now the TikTok era. Somehow those damned
| labels keep figuring out.
| bryans wrote:
| You're giving them far too much credit. They're still very
| much trying to figure out the Napster era, as to this day
| they are suing pirates left and right because they genuinely
| see that 0.01% of the market as a threat to their security.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| What do you mean by pirates? RIAA is suing the distributors
| and creators of pirated content. They are not suing
| individual pirates much at all. You said "to this
| day...left and right" which indicates your average person
| as that was the most know thing they were doing before in
| the 00s.
|
| That's not true any more.[0]
|
| 0. https://jolt.richmond.edu/2018/03/15/has-the-riaa-given-
| up-o...
| Paianni wrote:
| We've lost Polygram, BMG and EMI in the last 30 years, that's
| three out of the six major labels that were current in the
| 90s. The remainder are slowly becoming dinosaurs.
| phphphphp wrote:
| There's lots of independent artists that are successful, you're
| about 5 years late on the "...independent musicians will kill
| labels..." prediction which hasn't been borne out. Musicians
| are actively choosing to sign to labels, even when they don't
| have to... make of that what you will.
| milesward wrote:
| Macklemore did that already.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The dark side to this is that artists are learning that the
| things labels did for them are things _someone_ really does
| have to do, and some hate it. I 've seen a couple artists talk
| about what a pain it is to maintain a social media presence
| (especially on platforms they hate) because the alternative is
| obscurity.
|
| My prediction is that there's a pendulum back-swing in progress
| as people figure out how to offer brand-management-as-a-service
| without just becoming a label.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Until the Ticketmaster monopoly goes away I think independent
| music superstars are gonna be in for a hard time.
| bryans wrote:
| That is a fair point on the touring side of things, but every
| city still has theaters and large clubs which are not
| beholden to Ticketmaster. So, while an independent artist may
| not have access to a Beyonce-level stadium production, they
| can still be extremely successful in literally every other
| capacity.
| IMTDb wrote:
| I think labels are _more_ relevant than ever. In a world where
| it 's easier and easier to create music, and distribute it, how
| do you discover music ? Through curators, podcasts etc. And
| those are managed by - you guessed it - labels.
|
| Thing is that - in order to be relevant, and play that role -
| labels need to actually develop a style and expertise in the
| specific genre/type they want to operate in.
| bryans wrote:
| > In a world where it's easier and easier to create music,
| and distribute it, how do you discover music ? Through
| curators, podcasts etc. And those are managed by - you
| guessed it - labels.
|
| That's simply untrue. The vast majority of curating and
| playlisting is through bloggers or social media personalities
| and not through labels, so I'm not sure where you got that
| from.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > The vast majority of curating and playlisting is through
| bloggers or social media
|
| Not sure about this. Maybe for big music fans, but most
| casual listeners aren't reading music blogs. They're
| throwing on spotify playlists which allow artists to pay to
| get boosted. Guess what, it's the major label artists that
| can afford those payments. They're seeing that their
| favorite tiktoker made a video with some new band. Guess
| what, the tiktoker was paid by a label to use that music.
| bryans wrote:
| You have entirely misunderstood the conversation and how
| playlisting works. We were already literally discussing
| Spotify playlists. The curators (bloggers and social
| media personalities) use their platform to solicit
| submissions, which they filter and then add to their
| Spotify playlist. Nobody said anything about Spotify
| listeners reading blogs to find music.
|
| You're also being very conspiratorial by pretending that
| all playlists and TikTok users are being paid to place
| music. It does exist, but is not even remotely as
| ubiquitous as you're pretending.
| basisword wrote:
| Who has access to those bloggers and social media
| personalities? Labels. Otherwise you're just sending your
| demo to a blog and hoping it might get listened to in the
| same way you would have sent it to a college radio staton
| 30 years ago.
| bryans wrote:
| That's a conspiratorial and untrue claim. The most
| popular curated playlists (i.e. ones that aren't
| algorithmically produced by Spotify under the guise of
| curation) don't actually have label influence. Anyone can
| contact those curators directly, and if presented with
| something palatable, they will most likely put it in
| rotation.
|
| > Otherwise you're just sending your demo to a blog and
| hoping it might get listened to in the same way you would
| have sent it to a college radio staton 30 years ago.
|
| What do you think the record label is doing when they
| contact a curator or radio station? It's the exact same
| as if a musician had contact them. It's an email to a
| person, who makes a decision based on the content.
| basisword wrote:
| >> What do you think the record label is doing when they
| contact a curator or radio station? It's the exact same
| as if a musician had contact them. It's an email to a
| person, who makes a decision based on the content.
|
| It's their job to have existing relationships with the
| bloggers, they aren't just sending cold emails. And I'd
| they don't have relationships they can built them thanks
| to the credibility they have naturally compared to Jim
| for some cool indie band sending random emails.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| Maybe, maybe not. There's a larger variety of business model
| behind record labels than what people usually mean when they
| refer to record labels.
|
| They're not all middlemen trying to take a cut out of artists.
| Those exist, and artists have always railed against the
| model... and then start their own label.
|
| Labels are mainly a house for all of the logistics behind an
| artist. No artist wants to spend 90% of their time marketing,
| merchandizing, booking, etc, etc, etc. They want to create and
| perform. The label is supposed to enable that. As long as the
| label does so, then it's worth it. Plus it's a great way to
| work with your less musical friends. Corporate isn't the only
| option.
| shams93 wrote:
| From my experience going back to 1990 everything is actually
| MORE controlled by the majors than ever before. Its so easy
| for google to bury you, all the so called "discovery"
| platforms are a pay to play scheme. Once pay to play became
| the norm in southern california the music scene died and that
| was back in the early 90s even before the internet.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| That's too bad. It's a big world. There are a lot of small-
| mid-sized artists making a living with smaller labels.
|
| Not everybody needs to be the next Lizzo or else its abject
| failure.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| Do you think this could have an effect on copyright in popular
| culture?
| basisword wrote:
| Do you have any evidence of this? People have been saying
| labels are irrelevant for a decade or two at least now. It's
| never true. To succeed you need to get noticed and for that you
| need a marketing budget and the labels provide that. Artists
| can get much further than before but going viral on TikTok is
| not a viable career strategy for most artists.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Tessa Violet is example of an artist who has blown up on
| TikTok and I believe has parlay that into real world success
| in terms of shows, merch, etc.
|
| First 2 Eleven is a YouTube cover band who I believe are
| still fully independent and
|
| On the streaming side, musicians like Danielle Allard are
| killing it, though sometimes in a scenario like this it's
| unclear if it's even the goal of the person to "go
| mainstream" vs just carving out a cozy and sufficiently
| monetized space to achieve financial stability and practice
| their craft.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Tessa Violet is example of an artist who has blown up on
| TikTok and I believe has parlay that into real world
| success in terms of shows, merch, etc._
|
| I've not heard of the others, but Tessa is on a label,
| T[?]G Music, which has a global distribution deal with a
| subsidiary of Sony. She launched her career on the Make
| Music label as well.
| basisword wrote:
| I'm not saying it's impossible, it happens for sure. But
| the death of labels has been predicted for the last 20
| years and somehow they've managed to continue to make
| themselves relevant.
| karmasimida wrote:
| Most artists don't have a career.
|
| How many self sustained artists in the music industry are
| there, comparing against the self-claimed ones?
| xmprt wrote:
| I think that while it's been "technically" possible to have
| an audience without labels for at least a decade, it's been
| incredibly difficult because of all the barriers to entry
| that labels have put on the industry. YouTube has Vevo.
| Labels have deals with companies like Spotify and Apple that
| indie artists can't make.
|
| Your options have either been to fight and more than likely
| fail (or succeed with one viral song and then fail) or give
| in a join them. However recently, the tide has been turning
| because labels haven't figured out how to gatekeep things
| like TikTok (yet).
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Labels have deals with companies like Spotify and Apple
| that indie artists can 't make._
|
| You don't need a label to distribute your music on major
| music services. https://www.tunecore.com/
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Pretty sure indie artists get paid less by the streaming
| services, but the much bigger deal is getting onto the
| playlists. Spotify sells playlist/discover spots, and the
| only artists who can afford the fees are the ones who are
| backed by labels.
| mjr00 wrote:
| Yep. I'm a verified artist on YouTube, TikTok, Bilibili,
| Spotify, etc. and all it took was a $15/year Distrokid
| subscription.
|
| That being said, the real challenge for independent
| artists is getting "blessed by the algorithm," so to
| speak, where they actually start showing up in Song Radio
| and Discover Weekly algorithmic playlists. I'm not keen
| on the details of the Spotify algorithm, but I imagine
| labels _do_ help with this, and being on the same label
| as a popular artist would increase your chances of
| showing up on that artists ' song radio.
| bryans wrote:
| > That being said, the real challenge for independent
| artists is getting "blessed by the algorithm," so to
| speak, where they actually start showing up in Song Radio
| and Discover Weekly algorithmic playlists.
|
| This mindset is unfortunately why most musicians fail to
| gain traction. Relying on an algorithm for success is
| fallacy, because all of these algorithms are based on
| input, not random chance. If you're not steadily
| supplying new listeners through your own direct efforts,
| then the algorithm isn't going to perceive value and you
| won't get any benefits from it. Playlisting represents
| approximately 1% of the independent music industry
| puzzle.
| nicd wrote:
| You're right that getting music onto DSPs has been
| commoditized.
|
| Parent may have been referring to promotional deals
| (getting onto official Spotify playlists, Discover
| Weekly, etc) or special royalty rates. The major labels
| have tons of leverage, and they definitely cut deals that
| entry-level artists don't have access to.
| bryans wrote:
| Yes, I have tons of evidence for this, and for why all of
| your claims have no foundation. Allow me to provide one
| example of the hundreds that I personally know of or worked
| with (which is a tiny fraction of the numbers finding success
| independently).
|
| In late 2020, a band called Sub-Radio had a couple thousand
| followers on each social media platform and around ~15k
| monthly listeners on Spotify, and this was after many years
| of working extremely hard and even touring the US. Among many
| things, my primary advice to them was to start live
| streaming, particularly on Reddit. By the time 2021 arrived,
| they had more than tripled their social media presence and
| doubled their listener count. The continued to stream on
| Reddit throughout the year before recently switching to
| TikTok, and in the process garnered over 1 million new
| followers, 150k monthly listeners, sold out an entire US tour
| and their music is being licensed left and right.
|
| That's just one example of countless many, and it's the way
| the entire industry is moving. If you're not on board with
| that, then you're behind the times, because you don't need a
| million dollar music video budget to become famous and you
| never did. Financial support has always been a very well-
| understood con by the record labels, as it allows them to
| assume ownership over music rights under the guise of
| "necessary promotional activities."
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| Same with software, books and manga and video games I
| think. The only digitalized industry where indies still
| don't really have a place is tv/movies
| finiteseries wrote:
| Outside narrative driven / sports / blue planet level
| stuff, isn't a huge part of TV just YouTube/Podcasts/etc
| now? Curation and everything built in.
|
| I was led to a oddly human travel show and watched it go
| from a few thousand to millions of subscribers over the
| past couple years, they were recently on the Ukrainian /
| Russian border the day before the invasion talking to
| locals and ended up leaving on a refugee train in
| 1080p60, 3+ million views.
|
| Questionable character I don't want to promote and some
| of the episodes I don't want to be associated with, but
| that's tvesque isn't it?
|
| Repeat for true crime, history, cooking, children,
| educational, political commentary, informercials...
| mikepurvis wrote:
| There are loads of people _making_ indie movies /docs out
| there, I think, it's more a question of exposure--
| there's a long tail of them that get uploaded to Vimeo or
| YouTube and then just die there. There's some limited
| curation going on with aggregator channels (eg https://ww
| w.youtube.com/channel/UC7sDT8jZ76VLV1u__krUutA), but it's
| not mass-market in the way that a Netflix series is.
|
| Which definitely does seem like a missed opportunity for
| the streaming platforms. Maybe one of them needs to step
| up with the equivalent of Stream's Greenlight programme--
| an opportunity to temporarily have your stuff listed
| alongside the AAA content, and if it hits whatever the
| numbers are, they'll buy it from you?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Is it possible this method was doable for them without the
| backing of bigger money because it's sort of novel?
|
| If everyone starts live streaming reddit and tiktok, what
| will make certain groups stand out versus others? I would
| guess there would be an opportunity for paid promotion,
| maybe by Reddit or TikTok themselves.
| bryans wrote:
| That's an argument which could be made for any market or
| industry. There are obviously a finite amount of people
| in the world, and those people have a finite amount of
| time to find and listen to music, so there is always
| competition and certain artists are going to stand out
| among others -- that's the nature of human preference.
| But that doesn't automatically mean a few are successful
| and everyone else fails. It's a spectrum of success
| which, as it turns out, is directly proportional to the
| effort invested toward getting better and producing more
| attractive content.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| If things in life were directly proportional to effort
| and similar things. We'd be living in a meritocracy.
| Society doesn't work that way. There are most certainly
| people who failed while putting in more and better effort
| than others who succeeded.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I think it has more of an effect on markets where the
| marginal cost of an additional sale (or attention) is
| effectively zero, which results in very bimodal winner
| (or top few winners) take all type situations.
|
| Not that there is anything wrong with considering success
| to be whatever you achieve without outside funds trying
| to promote you, it all simply depends on personal goals
| and what you are willing to give up to gain an edge.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| > Financial support has always been a very well-understood
| con by the record labels, as it allows them to assume
| ownership over music rights under the guise of "necessary
| promotional activities."
|
| This. Just look at TLC, one of the biggest R&B groups of
| their time, and yet they were personally broke.
| basisword wrote:
| How long does that work for though and for how many
| artists? If you get on a new platform early you can find
| success, but once the platform becomes swamped with content
| it's impossible to stand out without creativity, luck...and
| funding. Unless you're lucky enough to find the next
| platform.
|
| Additionally - 15k monthly listeners on Spotify is a pretty
| great starting point. Most indie artists, regardless of
| quality, will struggle ever even reach that without a lot
| of outside help (or luck).
| SapporoChris wrote:
| I think I get the point. Advertising has merits, so does
| being a first adopter. It's possible to make it without
| advertising or being a first adopter, it's also possible
| to get swept under the rug.
|
| I think the goal from the artists perspective is to reach
| the most people while reducing advertising costs.
|
| The goal for the consumer is to be able to easily get the
| music they like at low costs. This is getting met, but
| I'd like to see the costs lowered. (consumer bias)
|
| Currently the environment is benefiting early
| entreprenuers of streaming platforms. The costs are
| lowering for artist which is also good.
|
| I'd like to see the balance to continue to shift more to
| the artists, but not to the point where one artist can
| dominate over another.
| bryans wrote:
| I think you're maybe putting too much emphasis on the
| platforms, particularly on them being a single
| opportunity that goes away at some point. Every platform,
| regardless of whether it's a specific function like
| Spotify or a content hub like YouTube, is a separate
| venue representing a series of opportunities, not a
| singular event. If you need evidence of that, you can
| find countless new YouTube channels finding success in
| the same markets which have been "saturated" for years --
| some since the beginning of the platform.
|
| And specifically to your emphasis on needing funding,
| that's just not the case anymore. Everything is cheap.
| You can live stream from your phone in 480p with a $20
| ring light, and fans of the content will still throw
| money at you. It happens all day long on Twitch.
|
| > Additionally - 15k monthly listeners on Spotify is a
| pretty great starting point. Most indie artists,
| regardless of quality, will struggle ever even reach that
| without a lot of outside help (or luck).
|
| Again though, that was after almost a decade of gigs and
| touring and marketing. All it took was opening their eyes
| to those series of opportunities that platforms provide,
| and then applying all of their effort toward those
| instead of pursuing the traditionally prescribed music
| industry path.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| > countless new YouTube channels finding success in the
| same markets
|
| This is seeing the survivors. Even if there are 100 new
| big YouTube channels per year for some saturated niche.
| That number might practically speaking basically mean
| zero if 10 million people every year earnestly try to
| succeed in that niche. The hit rate on this example is 1
| in 100K.
| [deleted]
| conradfr wrote:
| There's great labels still, like Sargent House.
|
| Social platforms and digitalization can helped being truly
| independent but there's still non-music work that a label would
| do for you that you now have to manage.
|
| And even if the stories about the struggling musicians becoming
| rock stars has always been embellished, it seems nowadays most
| of the current ones had financial security before pursuing
| their music career because of the low budgets available to
| develop new artists.
| bryans wrote:
| > Social platforms and digitalization can helped being truly
| independent but there's still non-music work that a label
| would do for you that you now have to manage.
|
| Except that is rapidly becoming untrue, which is the entire
| point. Self-management in the music industry is actually
| quite simple if you have the tools and knowledge, and both of
| those are now widely available to everyone.
| te_chris wrote:
| [citation needed]
|
| You're not wrong, people can do more themselves now...but the
| labels can also do these things, while being globally
| networked. You sound like you know what you're talking about,
| but probably worth spending more time knowing your enemy if you
| really want to destroy them.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Doesn't say how much the actual artists are seeing of this
| growth, and how spread out it is. These streaming services make
| it really hard for smaller artists to stand out, almost everyone
| uses the services "radio" equivalent which seems to play a very
| narrow scope of similar artists (mostly more well known).
|
| Basically it seems like it's easier than ever to become a
| musician with global reach/fans but harder than ever to make a
| decent living off of it.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| That's exactly it. Streaming is the modern radio, it's not the
| entire business.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| Yup. Listen to any smaller artist and they'll tell you
| streaming services are only good for exposure and the real
| money is in ticket sales, swag, and physical and digital sales
| to buying customers.
| LegitShady wrote:
| I feel like this was true before streaming as well. smaller
| artists would say 'the label takes so much of the record
| sales, touring/swag is where I make money'
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| I don't disagree, but streaming services have dramatically
| exacerbated the problem. Any artist that's been around
| before and after streaming will tell you that they make far
| less money, now, than they did when they were selling
| records, even after their labels and publishers and
| distributors took a cut.
| [deleted]
| eikenberry wrote:
| This is still a major win for smaller artists though as
| exposure is the main thing they are missing. Pre-
| streaming/internet they would have only had local scene, fan
| clubs, etc. They always made all their money via fans buying
| things. All performing musicians (as opposed to studio
| musicians) make the majority of their money this way, the
| recording industry was always primarily a way to get
| promoted, it was never a good way to make money.
| Adraghast wrote:
| Yep. Straight from one such smaller artist's mouth:
|
| https://www.nodepression.com/the-wrong-haul-neil-joni-
| have-y...
| oh_sigh wrote:
| This seems like a problem associated with how money is
| apportioned out by the streaming services. As I understand
| it, they basically throw all the user money into a big pot,
| and throw all the streams into a big pot, and then apportion
| it out that way.
|
| However, the problem with that is, if I don't listen to
| Taylor Swift at all, why is a portion of my subscription fee
| going to her? If, say, $10 per month of the money I give to
| Spotify goes to artists, it should just go to who I listen
| to. If I listen exclusively to Obscure Band X, then all of my
| money should go to them. If half my streams are Taylor Swift
| and half OBX, then they should both get $5.
| [deleted]
| zuminator wrote:
| Money is fungible. If you do $5 worth of streaming OBX's
| music, they'll get $5. Whether that gets transferred
| directly from your personal Spotify account into theirs, or
| initially put into a "big pot" and then the same amount is
| given to them, what does it matter? Maybe I'm
| misunderstanding your issue?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Here's the problem. I've got a family spotify
| subscription. For $15 a month we get 4 accounts. Each of
| us listen to around 100,000 minutes of music a year. Lets
| call that 100,000 songs for $180. If every song has the
| same payout then my family is being subsidized by the
| people who spend $10 a month to listen to 30,000 minutes
| of music a year. We're effectively taking other people's
| subscription money to pay the artists we listen to.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > However, the problem with that is, if I don't listen to
| Taylor Swift at all, why is a portion of my subscription
| fee going to her?
|
| Because Spotify needs to pay extra to have the right to
| stream Taylor Swift, or Dua Lipa, not OBX.
|
| > If I listen exclusively to Obscure Band X, then all of my
| money should go to them
|
| Well, that's the thing, some of your money will always go
| to Taylor Swift or whatever label she is on, regardless of
| whether you're listening Taylor Swift or not.
|
| As an musician myself I'm NOT on Spotify and actively
| prevent my music to be on that platform. "Exposure" is
| meaningless. I make 1000 times more money slapping ads on
| my music on Youtube than these streaming services.
| wwweston wrote:
| > driven by paid subscription streaming
|
| If you look at the RIAA's revenue figures over time:
|
| https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/
|
| The story they sure seem to tell is that revenues in the music
| markets over the last 40-50 years are driven as much (or more) by
| favorable macroeconomic trends than any particular format.
|
| Hence the huge rise in CD sales in the irrational exuberance of
| the 90s. Was there anything about CDs in particular? Maybe the
| quality got people to pay more and boost revenues, but that
| probably wouldn't have happened w/o increased disposable income.
| CDs prominent heights in that chart are as much a function of
| _when_ they were introduced (during boom time) as much as
| anything else. They didn 't "drive" revenues themselves.
|
| Streaming is probably pretty similar. There's some particular
| features: streaming increases convenience when it comes to
| management/access and dramatically slashes the consumer cost (and
| artist revenue). But I'm not going to bet it's driving revenue
| over macroeconomic trends. In fact, I'd be willing to bet it has
| actually hobbled revenue at some level, since it cannibalized
| digital retail that was growing pretty handily even during the
| last recession _and_ piracy options.
|
| Guess we'll need a recession like 2007 to find out. Streaming
| might be stickier than other formats since cost is capped, but I
| wouldn't rule out that paid subscriptions suffer.
| browningstreet wrote:
| I pay for Youtube Premium (Music) and Apple Music.
|
| I don't really _want_ to, but I listen to a variety of music, but
| a lot of sleep sounds & ambient music, and I keep that on
| Youtube. I listen to everything else on Apple Music, otherwise
| all my recommendations become Ambient heavy. My "ambient" moods
| and my "anything else" moods don't really overlap.
| vikingerik wrote:
| Keep this in mind: For every headline like this about economic
| numbers from 2021, remember that the apparent "gain" is over the
| artificially suppressed baseline of 2020.
| gen220 wrote:
| Looking for pointers on a music industry question.
|
| For an up and coming musician (e.g. Billie Eilish in December
| 2015, after it was clear she had potential and after she had
| signed with an A&R in January 2016, but well before she signed
| with Interscope Records in August 2016),
|
| What is the primary motivation to sign to a record label?
|
| Assuming they have a solid understanding of the financial and
| copyright aspects of the transaction (which I'm sure Eilish had
| through her brother/producer, who had worked in the industry for
| years), what are the primary factors that influence the decision?
|
| The ones that occur to me are marketing/PR/general exposure,
| access to artistic collaborators (visual, musical, etc.), and in
| the case of "advances" on future albums, an insurance/put option
| against the unpredictability of their future career.
|
| But I have never worked in the industry, so I'm seeking wisdom
| from the HN crowd!
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| Labels often have established logistics for merchandizing
| (including design, QC, fulfillment, etc etc), websites, digital
| distribution through the higher-end channels, _physical_
| distribution deals (that one is even more work to get set up),
| connections to producers, mixing engineers, mastering houses,
| studios and so on.
|
| There are a lot of resources in the industry that are not
| available to the public. You have to build those connections
| over years, in some cases decades.
|
| When promoters are doing things like trying to pay you in
| stolen blue jeans (love you, T.O.) it can help to have more
| people in your corner.
|
| The music industry is segmented, and man some parts are the
| Wild West. Total fun, but you will struggle to make enough for
| cab fare at times without support.
| cloutchaser wrote:
| I wonder how many of these X market grew by X% last year will
| take account of inflation? My hunch is not many, because it
| sounds better without it, and these numbers need to sounds good.
|
| But looking at year to year dollar growth at 8-10% inflation is
| not accurate. This headline is probably only an 8-10% grow rate
| in real terms.
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