I've been thinking about the problems of Spotify and illegal downloading overnight, and after a bit of early hours brainstorming this is a hypothetical solution that I've come up with, I'm dreaming a bit here, but all this is possible from a technical standpoint.
First of all, I have a feeling that due to the emergence of cloud based technologies, that over time services like Spotify might overtake traditional download services.
If I was going to create a Spotify/iTunes style service myself, this is what I'd do.
To start with, make it monthly subscription only, maybe release a free version later if viable, but monthly subscription only would be preferable.
Charge £10 a month, of which the company would get around £2.50, the rest would be divided between artists. (note I know there are licensing complications here with regards to labels/songwriters and artists)
The service would keep track of every song listened to by the listener, at the end of each month it would calculate a suggested division of money between artists and and display this to the listener.
The listener could then change the balance as they see fit if they think an artist deserves a higher percentage of the proceeds, there would be a minimum percentage limit, so each artist would always get something.
There could also be an e-tip jar, so listeners could tip artists who they think deserve extra.
It could be taken even further, artists could display publicly within the app how much they are due to be paid in royalties each month, with goals listed for how much they need to continue making music, and additional funding goals.
This would give much more power to the listener, at the moment the average person has no clue how much an artist is really paid for each purchase, and I have a feeling a lot of people would be shocked to know how low traditional royalty payments can be.
One possible flaw with this idea, is that by default, the more music artists listened to by a listener, the less would go to each individual artist, but my theory is that it would balance out, for instance, if someone only listens to 4 different artists over the month, the entire £7.50 would be divided between the 4 artists.
Now if you take the Spotify model, this would only relate to streaming, but from a technical standpoint this is rather silly, in digital terms, streaming and downloading send basically the same data to the user, it's just with streaming the application has been told not to save the data.
Maybe a different approach is needed, NOTE: crazy and scary idea coming up…
Why not think of downloads and streaming as the same? Don't charge directly for the download, instead pay the artist a royalty for each track played, no matter it it was streamed or downloaded, think of it as a performance.
This has an interesting side effect, both illegally downloaded music, and maybe even music imported from CD could be included. I suspect some artists/labels would be very excited to think that they could be continued to be paid for each play of a song.
At the same time this would encourage artists to create better albums, if people are still listening to your album 1,5 or 10 years later, you still get a cut.
The service could recommend new music that is similar to your tastes, and the algorithm could be weighted to prioritise new and independent artists.
It could alert you to when artists in your playlist are playing gigs, and gig ticket purchases should as handled from within the service, it should be made a easy as possible to buy tickets.
It should make it just as easy to purchase physical copies of albums you like form within the app too.
Anyway, this is just a hypothetical idea, I'm sure it has plenty of flaws. I welcome any comments.
The original post by 6 Day Riot that got me thinking: http://www.myspace.com/6dayriot/blog/541950902
Saturday, 5 February 2011
Friday, 4 February 2011
Thoughts on The State Of The Music Industry - Written in reply to 6 Day Riot's blog post of 4 Feb 2011
Writter in reply to: http://www.myspace.com/6dayriot/blog/541950902
Sorry, this is going to be a long post, I'm quite tired when writing this, sorry for any typos, will clean up text later.
This is a tricky problem, my opinion is that the major labels let the whole industry down (and especially the artists). Looking at it from my viewpoint, they had countless chances to embrace the Internet as the future of distribution, but at first they pretended it didn't exist, then they sued anyone bold enough to prove what could be done with it. MP3s first appeared on the Internet in 1994, Napster appeared in 1999, the iTunes music store didn't open in the USA until 2003!!! It took a computer company to show everyone how it should be done. Technically an iTunes store style service was possible in 1994.
Then they tried suing the file sharers themselves, I still remember the RIAA debacle of children and grandparents being summonsed to answer claims of illegal file sharing. Not forgetting that Sony put a trojan horse (XCP-Aurora) on a lot of their CDs for a while, and various labels deliberately pressed defective CDs to stop them being read on a computer. The music industry did a great job of alienating their customers. :(
Then there is the perceived value of music, which in part has has been eroded by labels doing deals with newspapers to give away free CDs, it was especially heartbreaking for me personally to see the Mail On Sunday giving away Tubular Bells a few years back (my late father cut the original vinyl master of it).
And it feels like shows such as The X-Factor are treating the public audition process as a modern day freak show for audience entertainment.
So, that brings us to today. In a lot of ways I am more positive about the music industry than ever, artists have more power than ever before, the days of sending demos to every label in the hope of getting signed are pretty much gone, but it's now possible to record,release and distribute an album without having to be signed to a label.
But, as you have shown, this is not without its problems.
Peer to Peer
Illegal file sharing (or copyright infringement if you prefer) is still a major problem, but from my perspective as a former technical manager for an ADSL ISP, I don't think it's stoppable. At best it's a game of whack-a-mole, as you block one peer to peer network, someone creates a new one. Some services you can't feasibly block, BitTorrent is used for a lot of legitimate purposes for instance. Blocking access to illegal files isn't practical either, P2P is a very different animal to HTTP, a cleanfeed style system would be largely ineffective for P2P, the government haven't realised this yet, but I suspect they will soon enough.
Even if you do manage to block it, all someone has to do to get around it is to connect to an anonymous encrypted network such as TOR, then they wouldn't even be traceable.
So, you can't really stop it, so that leaves 5 alternatives as far as I can see.
1. Do nothing and ignore P2P.
2. Make legal music purchases significantly more attractive than illegal downloads.
3. Make people understand how much artists need their support.
4. Mould P2P into a system for promoting new music and artists. (think of it as the new radio, but better)
5. Tax broadband connections to reimburse artists, maybe handled in a similar way to royalty payments for radio play are handled.
My feeling is that a combination of the last 4 options could work - as much as we want it to, it looks like P2P isn't going away.
Spotify
I think Spotify is a great service, I've even used it a few times to introduce people to new artists, but the big problem is that the royalty payment for independent artists is terrible. :( I could be mistaken, but I've read that the major labels get much better rates for each play and even get an advance. This needs to be addressed soon, independent artists should receive the same treatment as major label artists.
For independent artists it's barely better than P2P at the moment.
Live
This should be where the majority of the money comes from, but as you've proven, it doesn't always work that way. It seems like a lot of artists are getting a raw deal, we need better promoters, venues and much fairer payouts for artists. It doesn't help that so many live music venues and pubs have closed down.
There needs to be a new bread of live music venues. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that someone needs to create an "Apple Retail Store" style chain of combined music stores and live music venues. It's getting hard to buy music on the high street now, HMV are next to useless and the supermarkets only stock chart stuff. I'd love to see a music store that sells the best in new music, gives priority to independent artists and puts on live music every evening. Rough Trade East would probably be the nearest equivalent at the moment.
In a related point, sometimes people will pay a premium for unique gig experiences, for instance, your album pre-launch intimate acoustic gig was really special. I'd happy pay extra for special gigs of that calibre.
Promotion
This is one of the biggest problems that I can see an independent artist having, although social media has made things easier, It's still difficult for independent bands to find new fans.
Myspace isn't much use anymore, Facebook and Twitter are still useful, but they're better for keeping in touch with existing fans.
There is very little music on mainstream TV these days, Jools Holland is one of the few programmes, but even that seems to have lost its way a bit recently. I'd love to see someone create a web based new independent music show with very high production values, maybe like Top Of The Pops crossed with Later.
The question is,how can artists, how can WE (I guess the fans are just as much a part of this equation as the artists) solve these problems, or looking at this on a smaller scale... How can artists and fans get the word out and make sure their favourite artists are supported so they can continue to make amazing music?
Sorry, this is going to be a long post, I'm quite tired when writing this, sorry for any typos, will clean up text later.
This is a tricky problem, my opinion is that the major labels let the whole industry down (and especially the artists). Looking at it from my viewpoint, they had countless chances to embrace the Internet as the future of distribution, but at first they pretended it didn't exist, then they sued anyone bold enough to prove what could be done with it. MP3s first appeared on the Internet in 1994, Napster appeared in 1999, the iTunes music store didn't open in the USA until 2003!!! It took a computer company to show everyone how it should be done. Technically an iTunes store style service was possible in 1994.
Then they tried suing the file sharers themselves, I still remember the RIAA debacle of children and grandparents being summonsed to answer claims of illegal file sharing. Not forgetting that Sony put a trojan horse (XCP-Aurora) on a lot of their CDs for a while, and various labels deliberately pressed defective CDs to stop them being read on a computer. The music industry did a great job of alienating their customers. :(
Then there is the perceived value of music, which in part has has been eroded by labels doing deals with newspapers to give away free CDs, it was especially heartbreaking for me personally to see the Mail On Sunday giving away Tubular Bells a few years back (my late father cut the original vinyl master of it).
And it feels like shows such as The X-Factor are treating the public audition process as a modern day freak show for audience entertainment.
So, that brings us to today. In a lot of ways I am more positive about the music industry than ever, artists have more power than ever before, the days of sending demos to every label in the hope of getting signed are pretty much gone, but it's now possible to record,release and distribute an album without having to be signed to a label.
But, as you have shown, this is not without its problems.
Peer to Peer
Illegal file sharing (or copyright infringement if you prefer) is still a major problem, but from my perspective as a former technical manager for an ADSL ISP, I don't think it's stoppable. At best it's a game of whack-a-mole, as you block one peer to peer network, someone creates a new one. Some services you can't feasibly block, BitTorrent is used for a lot of legitimate purposes for instance. Blocking access to illegal files isn't practical either, P2P is a very different animal to HTTP, a cleanfeed style system would be largely ineffective for P2P, the government haven't realised this yet, but I suspect they will soon enough.
Even if you do manage to block it, all someone has to do to get around it is to connect to an anonymous encrypted network such as TOR, then they wouldn't even be traceable.
So, you can't really stop it, so that leaves 5 alternatives as far as I can see.
1. Do nothing and ignore P2P.
2. Make legal music purchases significantly more attractive than illegal downloads.
3. Make people understand how much artists need their support.
4. Mould P2P into a system for promoting new music and artists. (think of it as the new radio, but better)
5. Tax broadband connections to reimburse artists, maybe handled in a similar way to royalty payments for radio play are handled.
My feeling is that a combination of the last 4 options could work - as much as we want it to, it looks like P2P isn't going away.
Spotify
I think Spotify is a great service, I've even used it a few times to introduce people to new artists, but the big problem is that the royalty payment for independent artists is terrible. :( I could be mistaken, but I've read that the major labels get much better rates for each play and even get an advance. This needs to be addressed soon, independent artists should receive the same treatment as major label artists.
For independent artists it's barely better than P2P at the moment.
Live
This should be where the majority of the money comes from, but as you've proven, it doesn't always work that way. It seems like a lot of artists are getting a raw deal, we need better promoters, venues and much fairer payouts for artists. It doesn't help that so many live music venues and pubs have closed down.
There needs to be a new bread of live music venues. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that someone needs to create an "Apple Retail Store" style chain of combined music stores and live music venues. It's getting hard to buy music on the high street now, HMV are next to useless and the supermarkets only stock chart stuff. I'd love to see a music store that sells the best in new music, gives priority to independent artists and puts on live music every evening. Rough Trade East would probably be the nearest equivalent at the moment.
In a related point, sometimes people will pay a premium for unique gig experiences, for instance, your album pre-launch intimate acoustic gig was really special. I'd happy pay extra for special gigs of that calibre.
Promotion
This is one of the biggest problems that I can see an independent artist having, although social media has made things easier, It's still difficult for independent bands to find new fans.
Myspace isn't much use anymore, Facebook and Twitter are still useful, but they're better for keeping in touch with existing fans.
There is very little music on mainstream TV these days, Jools Holland is one of the few programmes, but even that seems to have lost its way a bit recently. I'd love to see someone create a web based new independent music show with very high production values, maybe like Top Of The Pops crossed with Later.
The question is,
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