Spotify - Rock and Metal Perspective?

Motley Crue

So I'm checking out Spotify these past two weeks, probably a little late to the party, but since I have a crap Mobile I had to depend on my Laptop to my main outlet for the programme.

In a clear case of "if you can't beat them, join them" I think Spotify is brilliant. I mean, it doesn't eradicate the problem of illegal downloading, but it does combat it in the best way possible - by streaming the songs online for anyone to find, so why bother with downloading the songs illegally....if the average casual music listener wants to hear the song, they don't hit up a file sharing network or whatever, they simply play it from Spotify with a decent Broadband connection on Laptop/Phone - except unlike YouTube it's easier to access (especially from portable devices) and works in a simple way

The problem I have with Spotify though, is their lack of a back catalog for a lot of Metal artists, artists like The Black Dahlia Murder have just one song listed on the entire site, while Alestorm have none. Just two examples of bands who have nothing listed, although there are quite a few more, and I wonder whether this is something that Metal bands and labels are responsible for or whether Spotify is just not concerned with their music. Presumably Spotify would have to pay something to the artists or labels to stream their music, or themselves pay a fairly large PRS license...so is it Spotify choosing to ignore these artists or the artists themselves taking a stand against Spotify's charges to the artists?

Mr. CooL ICE

I find it grand. The occasional ads are a little annoying and when I have it playing while doing something else, I sometimes lose focus on the window, but that's probably easily fixed.

Motley Crue wrote: »

The problem I have with Spotify though, is their lack of a back catalog for a lot of Metal artists, artists like The Black Dahlia Murder have just one song listed on the entire site, while Alestorm have none. Just two examples of bands who have nothing listed, although there are quite a few more, and I wonder whether this is something that Metal bands and labels are responsible for or whether Spotify is just not concerned with their music. Presumably Spotify would have to pay something to the artists or labels to stream their music, or themselves pay a fairly large PRS license...so is it Spotify choosing to ignore these artists or the artists themselves taking a stand against Spotify's charges to the artists?

But that could be an issue, legal or otherwise, with those band's labels not putting them up. Hell, even my band were on Spotify before I realised it, but that was down to our label doing it on our behalf.

devildriver

Motley Crue wrote: »

so is it Spotify choosing to ignore these artists or the artists themselves taking a stand against Spotify's charges to the artists?

I love Spotify. I've been using it for about a year and a half now - obviously via nefarious means before it was officially launched in Ireland.

AFAIK Spotify the company deals specifically with labels rather than with individual bands. And over the last couple of years there have been big spats between some of the labels and Spotify as they don't feel they are getting decent revenue from the streaming costs - thats a whole other argument well documented elsewhere.

One big player in the metal world, Century Media, originally gave Spotiy the big finger but eventually changed their minds:

http://www.centurymedia.com/newsdetailed.aspx?IdNews=11728&IdCompany=3

So I don't think Spotify deliberately exclude certain bands or albums. There are cases where some albums are released by different labels so a bands discography on Spotify has large holes in it because the label or rights-holder has decided not to allow it on Spotify.

In most cases it's the labels who make these decisions whether or not to put their catalogue on Spotify. There are some notable exceptions, huge entities like Metallica can decide not to be on Spotify because they have the clout although interestingly they appeared on Spotify after gaining full rights to all their catalogue and effectively becoming their own label. The Beatles are still holding out.

Mushy

A good case would be Metallica. They weren't on it till soon after the Irish launch, as soon as Blackened records was started, was all on spotify. So it is a record company thing. Rammstein and ac/dc arent even on it.

Overall, its fantastic. I dont like downloading illegaly, so does the job for me. Although I can download playlists and listen offline haha. I pay each month so have it in full on mobile, best app I have.

Cill94

At the moment rock and metal artists make very very little from it. I think for every stream, the band gets something like 0.1 cents (and then that can be split 3 or 4 ways!). But if Spotify is embraced as the future of the music industry (and I think it will be) then maybe there will be enough streaming happening for artists to be able to make a living out of it.

Lightbulb Sun

Cill94 wrote: »

At the moment rock and metal artists make very very little from it. I think for every stream, the band gets something like 0.1 cents (and then that can be split 3 or 4 ways!). But if Spotify is embraced as the future of the music industry (and I think it will be) then maybe there will be enough streaming happening for artists to be able to make a living out of it.

Anyone know Galaxie 500? Cult indie band from the 90's I think. Had an album called On Fire that's a well thought of album.

The band are defunct now but one of the guys in the band recently wrote a blog post about how he makes feck all from Spotify. He liked it from the aspect that it allowed people to discover his back catalogue but he gets a pathetic royalty check from it. 8 dollars for the whole year. Like you said, it's not even a cent per stream. I think he ended the post saying he's putting a lot of his stuff on his own website for free.

http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/8993-the-cloud/ Article with actual figures there.

I really like Spotify myself. You can add in your own library and then you have your own stuff and a huge database of streamable music. And unlike youtube it has never froze on me. The buffering on youtube drives me mad. Spotify runs well on a modest connection. It also seems to have the best bits of last.fm incorporated.

devildriver

Lightbulb Sun wrote: »

The band are defunct now but one of the guys in the band recently wrote a blog post about how he makes feck all from Spotify. He liked it from the aspect that it allowed people to discover his back catalogue but he gets a pathetic royalty check from it. 8 dollars for the whole year. Like you said, it's not even a cent per stream. I think he ended the post saying he's putting a lot of his stuff on his own website for free.

http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/8993-the-cloud/ Article with actual figures there.

There was a good response to that guy's Spotify-bashing posted here:

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2012/11/clearing-up-spotify-payment-confusion.html

Banjo

I'd be interested to see how Spotify works out for more established artists. These are the views of a relative unknown from an obsure band from 15-20 years ago. If he's talking about 8000 or so streams, how many actual people are listening to his work? If I buy an album, I'll listen to it 3 or four times in the first week and then probably in relatively heavy rotation over the next few months, gradually fading as the year wears on and new music comes my way. So I might listen to that new album maybe 10-15 times in the course of the first year. Assuming most people listen to music in a similar way, it suggests that world wide f-all people are listening to his music. 600-800 people maybe. Or 8000 people who all thought "no, this is not for me". And he's not earning much. There's a shocker.

Alternatively he's generating most of his interest through touring and performance and is not particularly pushing his Spotify presence so he's probably getting most of his ear-time via media he's selling at gigs or what have you. Maybe he's the most popular indy artist in the world. I'm not really up on these things and am not in a position to judge.

I know a guy wrote a song that got picked up by a popular folk artist, he gets cheques like this for his karaoke revenue every couple of years (he earns little enough that they can't cut cheques small enough to pay him yearly!), he's under no illusions that the Karaoke industry is rigged or that Celine Dion is making the same ****ty money he is

I've only really trialled Spotify on my phone over a weekend. I loved the service, it gave me a chance to try a bunch of bands I'd heard of ; but it's not one I'd pay for 'cause I wouldn't get the use out of it to justify the expense (either of the service or the inevitable data over-usage charge!) I did go out and buy a CD because of it though

Lightbulb Sun

Well even if an artist had a dozen times more plays than that guy did they would still be earning feck all, hence the pitiful amount gained from just 1 stream.

That was his most famous project so now he is just a musician like anyone else out there. The average person wouldn't know his ex-band never mind his name.