The boom in digital streaming may generate profits for record labels and
free content for consumers, but it spells disaster for today's artists
across the creative industries.
Awhile ago Thom Yorke and the rest of Radiohead got some attention when they pulled their recent record from Spotify. A number of other artists have also been in the news, publicly complaining about streaming music services (Black Keys, Aimee Mann and David Lowery of Camper van Beethoven and Cracker). Bob Dylan, Metallica and Pink Floyd were longtime Spotify holdouts – until recently. I've pulled as much of my catalogue from Spotify as I can. AC/DC, Garth Brooks and Led Zeppelin have never agreed to be on these services in the first place.
So, what's the deal? What are these services, what do they do and why are these musicians complaining?
There
are a number of ways to stream music online: Pandora is like a radio
station that plays stuff you like but doesn't take requests; YouTube
plays individual songs that folks and corporations have uploaded and
Spotify is a music library that plays whatever you want (if they have
it), whenever you want it. Some of these services only work when you're
online, but some, like Spotify, allow you to download your playlist
songs and carry them around. For many music listeners, the choice is
obvious – why would you ever buy a CD or pay for a download when you can
stream your favourite albums and artists either for free, or for a
nominal monthly charge?
Not surprisingly, streaming looks to be
the future of music consumption – it already is the future in
Scandinavia, where Spotify (the largest streaming service) started, and
in Spain. Other countries are following close behind. Spotify is the
second largest source of digital music revenue for labels in Europe,
according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry
(IFPI). Significantly, that's income for labels, not artists. There
are other streaming services, too – Deezer, Google Play, Apple and Jimmy
Iovine of Interscope has one coming called Daisy – though my guess is
that, as with most web-based businesses, only one will be left standing
in the end. There aren't two Facebooks or Amazons. Domination and
monopoly is the name of the game in the web marketplace.
The
amounts these services pay per stream is miniscule – their idea being
that if enough people use the service those tiny grains of sand will
pile up. Domination and ubiquity are therefore to be encouraged. We
should readjust our values because in the web-based world we are told
that monopoly is good for us. The major record labels usually siphon off
most of this income, and then they dribble about 15-20% of what's left
down to their artists. Indie labels are often a lot fairer – sometimes
sharing the income 50/50. Damon Krukowski (Galaxie 500, Damon &
Naomi) has published abysmal data on payouts from Pandora and Spotify for his song "Tugboat" and Lowery even wrote a piece entitled "My Song Got Played on Pandora 1 Million Times and All I Got Was $16.89, Less Than What I Make from a Single T-shirt Sale!" For a band of four people that makes a 15% royalty from Spotify streams, it would take 236,549,020 streams for each person to earn a minimum wage of $15,080 (£9,435) a year. For perspective, Daft Punk's
song of the summer, "Get Lucky", reached 104,760,000 Spotify streams by
the end of August: the two Daft Punk guys stand to make somewhere
around $13,000 each. Not bad, but remember this is just one song from a
lengthy recording that took a lot of time and money to develop. That
won't pay their bills if it's their principal source of income. And what
happens to the bands who don't have massive international summer hits?
In
future, if artists have to rely almost exclusively on the income from
these services, they'll be out of work within a year. Some of us have
other sources of income, such as live concerts, and some of us have
reached the point where we can play to decent numbers of people because a
record label believed in us at some point in the past. I can't deny
that label-support gave me a leg up – though not every successful artist
needs it. So, yes, I could conceivably survive, as I don't rely on the
pittance that comes my way from music streaming, as could Yorke and some
of the others. But up-and-coming artists don't have that advantage –
some haven't got to the point where they can make a living on live
performances and licensing, so what do they think of these services?
Some
artists and indie musicians see Spotify fairly positively – as a way of
getting noticed, of getting your music out there where folks can hear
it risk free. Daniel Glass, of Glassnote records, who have the very
popular band Mumford & Sons
says: "When you have quality and you're in the sophomore stage of this
band's career, I think the fear of holding it back is worse than letting
it go. Opening up the faucet and letting people hear it, stream it and
all that stuff is definitely very healthy." Cellist Zoë Keating sees it
similarly: Spotify is "awesome as a listening platform. In my opinion
artists should view it as a discovery service rather than a source
of income."
I can understand how having a place where people can
listen to your work when they are told or read about it is helpful, but
surely a lot of places already do that? I manage to check stuff out
without using these services. I'll go directly to an artist's website,
or Bandcamp, or even Amazon – and then, if I like what I hear, there is
often the option to buy. Zoë also seems to assume there will be other
sources of income (from recorded music). If these services fulfil their
mandate, there won't be.
I also don't understand the claim
of discovery that Spotify makes; the actual moment of discovery in most
cases happens at the moment when someone else tells you about an artist
or you read about them – not when you're on the streaming service
listening to what you have read about (though Spotify does indeed have a
"discovery" page that, like Pandora's algorithm, suggests artists you
might like). There is also, I'm told, a way to see what your "friends"
have on their playlists, though I'd be curious to know whether a
significant number of people find new music in this way. I'd be even
more curious if the folks who "discover" music on these services then go
on to purchase it. Why would you click and go elsewhere and pay when
the free version is sitting right in front of you? Am I crazy?
Artists often find this discovery argument seductive, but only up to
a point. Patrick Carney of Black Keys said in 2011: "For unknown bands
and smaller bands, it's a really good thing to get yourself out there.
But for a band that makes a living selling music," streaming royalties
are "not at a point yet to be feasible for us". How do you make the
transition from "I'll give away anything to get noticed" to "Sorry, now
you have to pay for my music"? Carney's implied point is important – the
core issue is about sustainability; how can artists survive in the long
term beyond that initial surge of interest?
Are these services
evil? Are they simply a legalised version of file-sharing sites such as
Napster and Pirate Bay – with the difference being that with streaming
services the big labels now get hefty advances? The debate as to
whether those pirate sites cannibalise possible sales goes on. Some say
freeloaders wouldn't have paid for music anyway, so there's no real
loss; others say freeloaders are mainly super-fans who end up paying
artists in other ways, buying concert tickets and T-shirts, for example.
Though, as author Chris Ruen points out in his book Freeloading,
if you yourself didn't pay for any of the music by your favourite
bands, then don't be surprised if they eventually call it quits for lack
of funds.
Musicians are increasingly suspicious of the money and
equity changing hands between these services and record labels – both
money and equity has been exchanged based on content and assets that
artists produced but seem to have no say over. Spotify gave $500m in
advances to major labels in the US for the right to license their
catalogues. That was an "advance" against income – so theoretically
it's not the labels' money to pocket. Another chunk of change is soon to
follow. The labels also got equity; so they are now partners and
shareholders in Spotify, which is valued at around $3bn. That income
from equity, when and if the service goes public, does not have to be
shared with the artists. It seems obvious that some people are making
a lot of money on this deal, while the artists have been left with
meagre scraps.
The major labels are happy, the consumer is happy
and the CEOs of the web services are happy. All good, except no one is
left to speak for those who actually make the stuff. In response to this
lack of representation, some artists – of all types, not just musicians
– are forming an organisation called the Content Creators Coalition, an entity that speaks out on artists' behalf.
Is
there a fair solution? And does it matter? Historically, musicians who
weren't among the top pop stars were never well-paid – isn't that just
the way it goes if you decide to make music your calling? Like writers
and fine artists, most of them will never make a living doing
exclusively what they love doing? Is this griping equivalent to
Metallica's complaint about Napster – viewed by many as the moaning of
a bunch of fat cats who were out of touch? Were recording artists simply
spoiled for a few decades and now those days are gone? Even Wagner
was always in debt and slept with rich women to get funding – so
nothing's new, right? I know quite a few fine artists who teach –
presumably to make ends meet and to allow them the freedom to do what
they want. But I don't see hordes of band-members getting comfy spots
in universities anytime soon.
The larger question is that if free
or cheap streaming becomes the way we consume all (recorded) music and
indeed a huge percentage of other creative content – TV, movies, games,
art, porn – then perhaps we might stop for a moment and consider
the effect these services and this technology will have, before "selling
off" all our cultural assets the way the big record companies did. If,
for instance, the future of the movie business comes to rely on the
income from Netflix's $8-a-month-streaming-service as a way to fund all
films and TV production, then things will change very quickly. As with
music, that model doesn't seem sustainable if it becomes the dominant
form of consumption. Musicians might, for now, challenge the major
labels and get a fairer deal than 15% of a pittance, but it seems to me
that the whole model is unsustainable as a means of supporting creative
work of any kind. Not just music. The inevitable result would seem to be
that the internet
will suck the creative content out of the whole world until nothing is
left. Writers, for example, can't rely on making money from live
performances – what are they supposed to do? Write ad copy?
As
Lowery has pointed out, there's no reason artists should simply accept
the terms and join up with whatever new technology comes along. Now I'm
starting to sound like a real Luddite, but taking a minute to think
about the consequences before diving in seems like a pretty good idea in
general. You shouldn't have to give up your privacy, or allow all sorts
of information about yourself to be used, whenever you go online, for
example.
I don't have an answer. I wish I could propose something
besides what we've heard before: "Make money on live shows." Or, "Get
corporate support and sell your music to advertisers."
What's at
stake is not so much the survival of artists like me, but that
of emerging artists and those who have only a few records under their
belts (such as St Vincent,
my current touring partner, who is not exactly an unknown). Many
musicians like her, who seem to be well established, well known and very
talented, will eventually have to find employment elsewhere or change
what they do to make more money. Without new artists coming up, our
future as a musical culture looks grim. A culture of blockbusters is
sad, and ultimately it's bad for business. That's not the world that
inspired me when I was younger. Many a fan (myself included) has said
that "music saved my life", so there must be some incentive to keep that
lifesaver available for future generations.
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