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Where are the political anthems of today?

How is listening to an artist's music on Spotify or Amazon Music or Apple Music stealing from performers?

Because no one buys the music. The current rate for writing royalties is 9.1 cents/cut.

If an album has ten cuts and sells 500,000 copies, it would create about $450,000 in royalties.

This chart shows just the last ten years of dwindling sales:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/273308/music-album-sales-in-the-us/

In just the past 11 years, due to streaming, sales are down 70%.

A songwriter get a royalty of 9.1 cents per cut. Producers and artists get paid as well.

Today, Spotify pays $.006 - .0084 per stream. This amounts to about $6000-8400/1 million streams. Let's say one song is a hit and is streamed 20 million times. It would create $120,000-170,000 to pay everyone. Remember, before the artist gets paid, the cost of production and many other things are taken out. It's likely the talent won't see a cent.

A song that popular used to lead to 1 album million sales or more. If there are ten songs, it would create $910,000 in royalties JUST for the songwriters. There would be that amount or more for the producer and band.

Although Spotify pays better than Pandora used to, let's give a real world example of how streaming companies rip off writers.

https://www.businessinsider.com/pha...-43-million-plays-of-happy-on-pandora-2014-12

"Despite Pharrell's ubiquity, "Happy" made $2,700 in publisher and songwriter royalties from 43 million Pandora streams in the first quarter of 2014, according to an email from music publisher Sony/ATV CEO Marty Bandier obtained by Digital Music News."

By having such terrible sales, fewer artists get opportunities. With so little payout, you can't take as many chances.

Don't take this to think I am defending the whores that ran the music business ,but the reality is it's much, much. much harder to make a living as a songwriter, band and because of this even sidemen/women are not making a living.
File sharing and streaming are killing the industry and driving incredibly people into other professions.
 
Even if all of what you said is true, that does not prove your original assertion that users are "stealing" from performers and artists by using Spotify or other streaming services. It's just like cord-cutting with TV. Industries change, it's adapt or die. I certainly hope that anyone who wishes to pursue music as a profession has a long career and they can make a decent living off of music. But the digitization of music was always going to make it less and less likely that albums would be bought. Albums were in decline before streaming was a thing. Album sales peaked with the pop/boy band boom of the 90's (shoutout Gen X!) and declined pretty rapidly after that save for a couple bumps in the mid-00's. But as iTunes and other online music database/stores popularized, albums sold less. Streaming was the next logical step.
 
so only executives and other administrative hangers on should only be able to “steal from songwriters and performers?”

There's only so much that can be stolen (and was). If you take a look at the link I posted about sales in the 80s, you'd see there were 100 albums with over 4million sales. You can't hide royalties with the sales known.

Songwriters would often have to sign publishing deals with a label or producer or group which would take up to 50% of the songs' royalties for a certain period. It sucked, but that's the way it was. After some success, good writers would get out of those deals.

The only good thing about megacorporations running the music industry is they had to keep fairly honest records of sales. If they tried to cook the books too much, the feds could get involved very quickly.

As computers become used everywhere from record companies to rack jobbers to sales outlets, rigging the sales became much more difficult.

That's not saying the record companies didn't steal and pad the books for everything from catering to studio rental to putting their idiot brothers and cousins on the payroll.
 
Even if all of what you said is true, that does not prove your original assertion that users are "stealing" from performers and artists by using Spotify or other streaming services. It's just like cord-cutting with TV. Industries change, it's adapt or die. I certainly hope that anyone who wishes to pursue music as a profession has a long career and they can make a decent living off of music. But the digitization of music was always going to make it less and less likely that albums would be bought. Albums were in decline before streaming was a thing. Album sales peaked with the pop/boy band boom of the 90's (shoutout Gen X!) and declined pretty rapidly after that save for a couple bumps in the mid-00's. But as iTunes and other online music database/stores popularized, albums sold less. Streaming was the next logical step.

I've treated you with respect. I've given you multiple, verifiable industry sources. Yet you still can't help throwing passive-aggressive insults. "Even if what I'm saying is true".

There's no excuse for that.

Maybe I'll deal with the rest of your post. Maybe I won't.

I have no need to treat you with anything other than contempt until you act more properly. I've tried to give you a lesson about something you don't have any understanding of or experience with and have done so very politely. But you can't help yourself from your BS, personal insult.

Most likely, you'll brush it off and blame me, but the reality is you went over the line and should take simple, direct responsibility for it and apologize without any excuses.
 
Jesus, RJ, you are a terrible reader.

That's a fucking dependent clause. He's not saying that what you said wasn't true, he's saying regardless of whether or not it's true, you didn't prove your initial assertion!
 
FWIW, those platforms have negotiated streaming deals with labels and independent performers. Music executives seem to be doing all right. Perhaps they negotiated content deals that were exploitative to artists by maintaining their cut but cutting musicians’ cuts?

The streaming deals were sort of done at gunpoint. They didn't have any choice. If they didn't sign, they wouldn't have been able to easily promote their artists.

Here are a couple of articles about pay:

https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6605601/music-industry-top-executive-pay-salaries

https://pocketsense.com/average-salary-music-chief-executive-8659658.html

They aren't holding benefit dinners for the top guys, but it's nothing like the money people like Berry Gordy, Ahmet Ertugen, Chris Blackwell, Clive Davis, David Geffen and others made back in the days before Napster.

Think about this. According to industry numbers total sales of albums went from 505M in 2007 to 141M in 2018. Executives' pay is logically tied to revenues and profits. If you lose 70% of your sales, your profits and compensation will go down.

As sales go down, so does the signing of new groups. You can't take as many chances.

Bruce took over a year to produce the album Born To Run. The rumor was he spent almost six months on the song Born to Run alone (which was amazing since he had been playing it before then). Neither Greeting from Asbury Park, NJ (still might be my favorite Brice album) nor The Wild, the Innocent and E Street Shuffle sold that well. There's no way any label today would ever allow any modestly successful artist that much freedom today.

With sagging revenues no business would allow this to happen. I wonder how many other great albums couldn't have been produced today.
 
Jesus, RJ, you are a terrible reader.

That's a fucking dependent clause. He's not saying that what you said wasn't true, he's saying regardless of whether or not it's true, you didn't prove your initial assertion!

No, his style is to try to cover his tracks. It's like saying, "I'm not saying you are a moron, but..."

By the way, I did prove my position. But there was nothing I could ever say that would ever convince him.

Napster didn't exist until 1999 and didn't widespread until the early 00s. Thus, sales before that should have been growing as the market was growing worldwide. File sharing didn't catch on until that time and that's when sales started taking a nosedive. So, his post is historically and industry inaccurate.

Without file sharing, streaming as we know it wouldn't exist.
 
My daughter just started her recording journey with her first single coming out on 7/26.

The advice she has been given is to avoid taking the time and money to record an entire album — just keep pumping out singles and keep in peoples Instagram feeds. The industry has shifted away from album sales and stream revenue to make a living. The goal is to generate a fan base to play live venues. Then you push your merch and double your nightly take.

I’ll keep pumping the money into her efforts and see if something comes of it.
 
My daughter just started her recording journey with her first single coming out on 7/26.

The advice she has been given is to avoid taking the time and money to record an entire album — just keep pumping out singles and keep in peoples Instagram feeds. The industry has shifted away from album sales and stream revenue to make a living. The goal is to generate a fan base to play live venues. Then you push your merch and double your nightly take.

I’ll keep pumping the money into her efforts and see if something comes of it.

CONGRATS!!!

Make sure she has a good lawyer.

Make sure she has a good 30-45 minute set in case someone asks her to open for them.

RE: Merch- she'll need someone to trust or lots of it will walk away. Ask the lawyer about protecting her merch images.

I don't where you are, but a lot of venues are now pay-to-play. Make sure she understands how many tickets she'll have to sell to break even. This is also a big change. Years ago, you could make a decent living playing live in small bars and clubs. There was a circuit from NH down to DC.

There are people who specialize in setting up college dates for anything from parties to small venues. They usually pay well. She'll have to make a name, but maybe she could look them up and send some material after the single drops.
 
Thanks for responding above. I'll have to read those articles. In the meantime, what do you mean by this?

No one would have gone to war with the RIAA or record companies before Napster. Sean Parker completely blindsided the world.

It's one thing to let you buddy copy one of your albums on a cassette. It's quite another to make everything you own available to millions of strangers for free. Once that happened, everything changed. One of the biggest changes is creating a generation who thinks they shouldn't have to pay for music. No, paying for streaming isn't paying for music.

Before Napster, people like Chuck D were starting to use the internet as a cheap way to test artists and break the big guy's stranglehold on the business. Independent labels could have really exploded, but without the revenue from sales, this didn't happen the way it could have.
 
My daughter just started her recording journey with her first single coming out on 7/26.

The advice she has been given is to avoid taking the time and money to record an entire album — just keep pumping out singles and keep in peoples Instagram feeds. The industry has shifted away from album sales and stream revenue to make a living. The goal is to generate a fan base to play live venues. Then you push your merch and double your nightly take.

I’ll keep pumping the money into her efforts and see if something comes of it.

Why hasn’t she written a political anthem yet?!?!?
 
Has one benefit of decreasing “sales” been a revival of sorts for live performing as a more important activity to make money?

I don’t really keep up with this but it seems...maybe?
 
CONGRATS!!!

Make sure she has a good lawyer.

Make sure she has a good 30-45 minute set in case someone asks her to open for them.

RE: Merch- she'll need someone to trust or lots of it will walk away. Ask the lawyer about protecting her merch images.

I don't where you are, but a lot of venues are now pay-to-play. Make sure she understands how many tickets she'll have to sell to break even. This is also a big change. Years ago, you could make a decent living playing live in small bars and clubs. There was a circuit from NH down to DC.

There are people who specialize in setting up college dates for anything from parties to small venues. They usually pay well. She'll have to make a name, but maybe she could look them up and send some material after the single drops.

1) Listen to wakephan, that is literally 100% what I was saying
2) You did not probe your assertion because just because artists may make less in the streaming era, that doesn’t mean consumers are “stealing” from artists
 
Don’t know why that was the post quoted, but whatever.
 
No, his style is to try to cover his tracks. It's like saying, "I'm not saying you are a moron, but..."

By the way, I did prove my position. But there was nothing I could ever say that would ever convince him.

if you think everybody else is an asshole, then you are the asshole
 
1) Listen to wakephan, that is literally 100% what I was saying
2) You did not probe your assertion because just because artists may make less in the streaming era, that doesn’t mean consumers are “stealing” from artists

If you are paying a third party for access to the music rather the artist and sales are dramatically down while you have the music you are stealing.
 
This is one of the funniest threads in a long time. So much good shit.
 
Has one benefit of decreasing “sales” been a revival of sorts for live performing as a more important activity to make money?

I don’t really keep up with this but it seems...maybe?

The prices of concerts have gone through the roof for even medium artists because they can't make money other places. In big cities, pay-to-play has become more prevalent because venues realize they have up and coming artists over a barrel.

All of this and more are caused by sales dropping through the floor.
 
I think everything began going to hell with the development of the phonograph.

I mean, before that most music was live/local, yes?

And artists starved and made great music.

Thx Edison.
 
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