Streaming tears of laughter as Jay-Z (Tidal) waves goodbye to $56m This was a contradictory week for the music industry. It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. On Wednesday, I attended the unveiling of an IEEE Milestone plaque to commemorate the invention of stereo recording in 1931 by the prodigious scientist-engineer Alan Dower Blumlein. The event was hosted by Abbey Road …
Yes, for physical products it almost makes sense since the consumer protection laws on refunds and repairs are so much more stringent and long lasting than in the US and that doesn't come free of charge. But for non-physical items where the consumer protection is almost non-existent, "shipping" charges are identical since it all comes from the same server, only the VAT/Sales Tax should affect the final price. US prices are normally displayed sans tax since that varies by state and city while UK prices usually include the 20% VAT. Is that the case here?
While it is true that there is a wide variety of sales taxes throughout the States, more often than not services are excluded from being taxed. Again, this varies by jurisdiction but it's pretty common to go to the mechanic, for example, and get an invoice that lists the parts and services, with the parts section containing a tax line while seeing none in the services section. So here in the States, I would expect to see a monthly charge on my credit card of $19.99... assuming I ever suffered some kind of traumatic brain injury to left me legally fit to handle my own affairs while being completely bereft of sense.
And paid those likely to be fooled into forking out for this service actually own equipment capable of doing the content justice? Also what of us who like their music radio unfriendly?
Small niche acts who in a couple of songs can demonstrate skill, imagination and talent (plus maybe a deft touch of cynical sarcasm) that pretty all of the big names trying to sell this to us can manage over whole albums of filler material for a single? (I'm reminded of a future of the left song. Shena is tee-shirt salesman "this song is dedicated to the merchandising manufacturers who made it possible, with their hard work, dedication and love of tote bags....")
Like you say Dabbsy, the megastars behind Tidal have done better from streaming than anyone else - they are not in the long tail and have deep back catalogs. So for them, the micro pennies add up.
The "new" record business is even less fair than the "old" one, because the "old" one was basically a socialist model. It used the windfall profits from Jay-Z and Madonna and redistributed them to support the Middle Class and blue collar artists: the "99 per cent". A lot of artists failed to recoup their advance but still enjoyed a lifetime in music. For example David Lowery never recouped but had a twenty year career thanks to a minor hit. That's better than twenty years behind a Tesco checkout desk.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/08/david_lowery_interview/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/04/lowery_on_the_music_business/
Lowery: "I know this is probably really confusing to you civilians. Am I really saying it’s better to be un-recouped as an artist? Yes it is. Quantitative finance geeks will see this as selling a series of juicy “covered calls”. Being un-recouped means you took in more money than you were due by contract. You took in more money than your sales warranted. And there was a sweet spot, being un-recouped but not too un-recouped. For instance I estimate that over my 15 year career at Virgin/EMi we took in advances and royalties equivalent to about 40% of our gross sales. In other words we had an effective royalty rate of 40%, despite the fact that by contract our rate was much lower)."
This is no longer possible for a few reasons, one of which is that the superwealthy (eg Madonna) can break away and sign their own 360 deals, so the windfalls are not redistributed. The megastars backing Tidal say they want a fairer system, with larger payouts for all, and if they make good on their promises to invest in new talent may be they will achieve that. It takes a lot of commitment and I don't know if many of them have that.
But we knock them (rightly) for sitting around and moaning about the unfairness of the world yet doing nothing about it. Then we knock them for trying to do something about it. The buggers can't win.
I'd feel more charitable if the Tidal crowd on that stage made music that I'd want to hear. Why would I want to encourage more of that that garbage? How could I trust these identikit-surgeoned airheads to promote original bands? Even Jack White is a has-been whose interesting work ended the day he recorded that bloody awful theme tune to a James Bond film... with a certain Alicia Keys, wasn't it?
Agreed re: music I'd want to hear. Also, not sure I should be encouraging people who apparently forgot where their everyday clothes were and so turned up in underwear or last year's halloween drag.
Still, apparently they could all find the writey end of the pen, so there's hope.
"I'd feel more charitable if the Tidal crowd on that stage made music that I'd want to hear."
While I loathe the celebrities on display as much as anyone, I don't think that it's fair to let their music be a factor in this particular matter. I am not sure that what they are trying to do (whatever the fuck that might be) by means of this "Tidal" endeavor is dependent on the quality of their music, such as it is. After all, Beethoven could have been up on that stage and it would not make the enterprise any less moronic.
It's also interesting to note that Alicia Keys' husband, "Swizz Beats", was the CEO of MegaUpload. So maybe that's a hint of what the Tidal investors are hoping to accomplish. I wouldn't put anything past them...
"I'd feel more charitable if the Tidal crowd on that stage made music that I'd want to hear. Why would I want to encourage more of that that garbage?"
OK. We get it. But there are two things here, 1) liking/trusting the music that the people involved, and 2) the viability of their proposition that someone can do better than Spotify.
"How could I trust these identikit-surgeoned airheads to promote original bands?"
Because Jay Z has quite a good track record doing so?
... wasn't that one of the reasons Kobalt was set up? An alternative to major labels and the way Sony/Warner/etc shackle artists by holding onto royalties already earned and using 'advances' as leverage for new contracts. I hadn't heard of it until I read this month's WiReD (*ducks for cover behind the Wikipedia users*). There's no need to reinvent the streaming model, but there is a need to reduce the hold that big labels have on the business side and to make sure royalties reach the artist in something like a reasonable time. This Tidal thing might do that, but it sounds more like a pension club for people wanting another yacht.
It sounds backwards, but start with the premise that many artists don't get paid all their royalties, plus the big labels can take upwards of 2 years between sale/play to paying the artists. This article is a few years old but explains something of what is going on.
WiReD has had older news posts about Kobalt, but the article from this month is not yet online. There was an example from Eminem's manager where he tested different payment systems on one of the rapper's songs. Each of the three writers went with a different company for payments, which should have been identical since they were for the same song. Kobalt came in far sooner, and the traditional companies were well over a year to pay. No artist can afford that delay, unless already well-off, so they will go to their company and ask for an advance on sales, maybe not realising their money is already there. The company then uses this advance to maybe secure a new contract with the artist.
It relies on lack of transparency in where the money comes from and where it is in the system. The aricle was more about how Kobalt made use of data to open up that information to artists. I'm not in the music industry so have nothing more to go on than articles and what others say (though my brother-in-law is a singer/songwriter) - it probably doesn't work that way for big names, and there may be many different ways to earn a crust, such as mentioned earlier in this thread. It just seems unfair on the artists, especially anyone trying to start out.
Am I missing something?
Doesn't un-recouped just mean that you royalties have not exceeded your advances?
Conventional wisdom is that you enjoy a lifetime in music not by making royalties on music sales so much as by touring, selling merchandise, etc.
And which "windfall profits" from Jay-Z and Madonna are we talking about? Was there a sudden unexpected surge in sales for these two artists? Or are we talking in general - during the iTunes time when the record execs were whining about only being able to afford to eat beans on toast due to "piracy"?
"Doesn't un-recouped just mean that you royalties have not exceeded your advances?"
Sales royalties, yes. There are other royalties that the record company cannot control.
"Conventional wisdom is that you enjoy a lifetime in music not by making royalties on music sales so much as by touring, selling merchandise, etc."
Conventional wisdom from ... who? People quoting 20-year old Steve Albini and Janis Ian articles on Slashdot? Or from people who have helped destroyed sales, who have absolutely no vested interest at all in telling you that artists should sell more T-shirts?
Sales were once at a level that a sick artist didn't have to go on the road even though they have cancer, like Levon Helm had to:
https://vimeo.com/122361826
"...and some bloke called Fred-rick Nee-chee, who I think once played bass for Cher"
Nietzsche and Blumlein in the same article: well done - a fair chunk of C20th history lies between those two. One worrying thought about all this cloudy interweb stuff was put into words by Nee-Chee himself when writing about his writing-ball: “our writing tools are also working on our thoughts”.
Back to my CD collection before venturing out in the rain.
My first MP3 was don't speak by no doubt. Since then I have stayed with that format because it works well across all my devices. Sure there are better format such as flac etc, but for me, any new format will be ignored.
As the digital downloads, etc, yep, brought a couple of albums in the past but are no longer accessible since the email address has long since gone (so has the ISP). Nope, for me, I will buy CDs as and when, in fact I recently realised I had a gaping hole in my collection and brought ELO greatest hits v1 &2 off ebay. Cost a tad under £2, unmarked. Now ripped to the server, wifes ipod, mobile and memory stick for the car.
Stop reinventing the wheel and look at why people try and get around your protection.
> Now ripped to the server, wifes ipod, mobile and memory stick for the car.
If you are going to rip the CD for use by multiple people and also place it on a server (presumably not as a backup, a CD suffices, especially when unused otherwise) then why pay for it in the first place?
Always reminds me of the article I read where Elton John bought eight copies of every CD he bought, one for each of the locations he required it - so easy to be honest when you are stinking rich.
Some-one else has stopped listening to what is laughably called popular music also ? Given how utterly dull, unoriginal and just plain noisy mass moosic now flogged to the insufficiently sceptical, I am surprised there is a music industry left to have these events. Given that in Oz ads now take up 30% of airtime, older multimedia are being ignored. Am I a pioneer, developing more refined tastes or just another grumpy old b*d ? No, don't answer that.
Dabbsy, good write up of events. Appreciated the honest dislike.
Is as nonsensical as the rest of the concept. Apparently, parts of music is "left out" to make an MP3 smaller. Weird.
We live in a world where people buy crap headphones because of the name, so people don't particularly care about audio fidelity. The only people who really care about it are those who spend a fortune on their HiFi systems - and they aren't really the sort to buy streaming media. They look for AAD CDs and, quite frankly, vinyl. Not a large enough market, I don't think, to sustain an entire streaming company.
That said, if they can really sell the "Jay Z" or whoever, names attached to it (like the crap headphones) then they may get the "idiot market" too...
On a train yesterday that sat in a tunnel outside of New St Station (Birmingham) for the best part of 20 mins.
It was interesting to watch the younger travellers in the carriage get more and more irate due to the failure of their music streaming service in that famed mobile 'not-spot'.
By the end there were just two pairs of earphones/headphones working. These were being worn by people who'd populated their phones/mp2 players with music rather than relying on Streaming services.
Being a skinflint I can't understand why 1) you want to pay to stream the stuff you probably have as an mp3[*] already and 2) you want to pay your carrier for data that you are streaming.
It just don't make sense. Ok, I know about playlists but is it that hard to create your own. You have a brain don't you or has that over amplified bass killed it dead?
[*] or can 'borrow' from a friend that does have it.
It never ceases to amaze me how backward car entertainment systems are when it comes to dealing with music over You Ess Bee. MP3 players had it all sorted out over 10 years ago and computer software over 20.
Mine doesn't sort files and directories alphabetically or numerically, it sorts in the order in which they were copied to the storage device!
Mine too! but there is some sub menu to change the default, but then you're sorting by another criteria, and changing it again requires drilling into a sub menu of one of the really small buttons next to the volume...
On the other hand, my system also supports ithingy integration, and it just plays what is shoved at it...
Yeah, My car ignores my playlist order, it plays everything in alphabetical order by song title.
My Fiat has a USB music system powered by Microsoft. I can access an album by name or artist (because I file a separate directory/subdirectory for each album) and it will play the album in the correct order.
Hooray.
At the end of the album, does it stop? No. Does it find the next album by the same artist, or the next artist alphabetically? No. It plays the bloody thing again... which tall-brained idiot that that one up?
(Also, I occasionally have to switch things off and on again to make it talk to me, but I kind of expect that. At least I can leave the windows open.)
>> the original vinyl album's track order changed for CD
I'd forgotten about how they used to do this in the early days of CD. The worst offender for me was Thomas Dolby's Golden Age of Wireless. Even now, if I choose to listen to this album, I play it via a custom playlist that puts all the tracks back into their original LP order. Shame that the continuous joins and cross fades are impossible to recreate this way, but there you go: a perfect album ruined.
I use streaming almost exclusively as my source of music. However, I pay for it and I can pre-populate music to mobile devices for travel purposes. There's no need to be using mobile bandwidth for music!
It isn't an age thing - its a "thinking things through" thing.
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