Music @lemmy.world floofloof @lemmy.ca 7mo ago

How are musicians supposed to survive on $0.00173 per stream?

www.theguardian.com How are musicians supposed to survive on $0.00173 per stream? | Damon Krukowski

The way musicians are compensated is highly unfair. A new bill in the US Congress could fix that – and it’s about time

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Having a musical idea, and recording it, expressing it the way that you thought it... That required a lot of effort, from a lot of engineers, at a studio, with a lot of expensive equipment... As recently as the mid 90s.

Now we've got Jacob Collier, winning Grammys from his bedroom.

To assume you can live off streams today would be like a journalist thinking they could survive off of tweets 3 years ago. Getting well edited thoughts out to the masses via the press required a lot of effort from a lot of engineers, at a studio using lots of expensive equipment.
- This is a moot argument. You're saying the system doesn't support artists and that artists shouldn't expect it to. Why not? Why can't the system be changed? Streams should not be equivalent to tweets and it's dumb to think they should be.
  
  It’s not entirely moot because it means competition is increased many fold.
  
  It doesn’t mitigate how Spotify behaves, but the market dynamic was changed by tech putting a serviceable studio is everyone’s bedroom.
  
  and shit tons more people probably listen to music now im guessing.
  
  Ask the nearly completely dead newspaper industry or the dying book publishing industry. History repeats itself.
  
  This artistic medium has met its proverbial printing press. The way to get paid for music is not by streams. They're worthless. I could get more streams than your favorite local Indy band using just white noise. Streams are worthless. About as valuable as getting eyes on any comment in any thread. Music is commoditized.
  
  Just as writing was.
- sure, but why platforms get to be rich and the actual artists dont?
  
  Because they have all the customers.
  
  If you don't like the rate the current major platforms give, you could choose to use one of the many alternatives that (presumably) exist.
  
  And if they really don't, I could build you one in a couple of weekends with all the open source resources and federation protocols available today.
  
  But none of that matters because all the paying customers are on those major platforms. And until you convince users to move off those platforms, you're basically their bitch. They'll pay you whatever they happen to feel like paying you.
  
  Actually while typing that out I thought more about the technical architecture of such distributed alternative streaming service that pays artists fairly, and it does sound like it could be fun to build.
  
  But everyone in the fediverse already knows how difficult/impossible it is to get the average person to switch to open source software. It would most likely be a waste of time.
  
  Here's a person who knows way more about the music industry than all of us in this thread out together. And he's thought a lot about this, too
  
  Not so much the fediverse side of it, but the legal, and financial/jobs side of things.
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  
  Here's
  
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
  
  I don't think you can get people to agree on what's "fair" but it's always fun to think about. What would your fair payment scheme look like?
- You are right.
  
  You get paid jack shit for streaming. You also got paid jack shit for radio play. The flip side to all this is It has never been easier for an artist to manage their own career.
  
  Not that long ago if you didnt sign onto the multi-billion dollar a year label who took an obscene amount of the money (google a 360 deal if you want to get real mad) nobody heard your shit ever. But you can also form your own label, make your own merch, do your own socials, promo yourself and keep 100% of what you make.
- i mean, TBF, you could just rent studio time, so it's not like it would've been a significant thing in the way of your goal.
  
  Studio time is not expensive today.
  
  It was cost prohibitive in the 69s, 70s, 80s, early 90s.
  
  i mean, how cost prohibitive though. Instruments cost money, people still produce music with instruments these days.
  
  Shit costs money. That's just the name of the game.
  
  Paper costs money, pens cost money
  
  You're thinking with yesterday's figures.
  
  i mean you're speaking in absolutes here, im assuming you have data to back it up.
  
  Try Google. Not going to entertain this with my time because it's on a level of dumb that ---
  
  Try Google homie.
  
  i mean i could. I'm not the one making the claim that it was prohibitive though.
  
  And blocked.
  
  ok

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