We all know the music industry isn’t in a good place right now. Sales are down and artist are not happy. So it made me think? Why don’t the Big 3 (Universal, Warner & Sony) just come together and make their own streaming service with all their music, instead of sharing profits with Spotify and Apple Music? I don’t get it.
Film/TV industries have their own dedicated services like Netflix, HBO Max, Disney+, etc. They don’t have a middle man taking a cut like Cable. Obviously, the Big 3 would need to come together to make this happen. Having 1 music service strictly for just 1 of them is a bad idea.
I just think Spotify & Apple are benefitting from this way more than the labels. And with Spotify paying HUGE amounts to the likes of Joe Rogan 😒. It’s kind of a slap in the face of the industry that MADE them this big. Like why is the Talk Tuah podcast getting just as big of bags as the labels & Artist? I know Jay Z tried his own service ran strictly by the artist called Tidal like 10 years ago, but he couldn’t get enough big artist to invest into it long term.
Can someone PLEASE explain to me why the Music Industry allows this?
Actually it the labels who are taking advantages of the streaming services without mentioning profiting from artists they manage. When negotiating deals with streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music, labels often demand large advances. These funds are typically non-recoupable, labels keep this money regardless of how well the music performs on the platform.
All major labels performed very well this year financially. It is really artists themselves who suffers
Ohhh. You know, that makes sense. It felt like a stupid question asking how LABELS would allow themselves to screwed over, but once again, they aren’t the ones getting screwed over.
Fun fact: if you’re an artist on Spotify receiving less than 1000 streams in a year, they won’t even bother paying you. You also need a minimum number of unique listeners. That number is secret.
Spotify is good for those already rich, and bad for those who isn’t.
They also have Joe Rogan and Gwyneth Paltrow on their payroll, and they actively lobby for more relaxed AI legislatiolegislation in the EU.
If you have a subscription, the best thing you van do is to cancel it, get your music from the high seas, and instead donate $12 per month or however much it costs directly to artists you enjoy by buying their music or merch online.
AntennaPod is good for podcasts.
Bandcamp is a good option for directly supporting artists for the time being, especially if you queue up all your purchases for a Bandcamp Friday, where artists/labels receive all the money rather than BC taking their 20% cut.
While that is true, even independent artists who don’t have a label grabbing all the profits still get shafted, earning next to nothing with streams.
IIRC, the music industry was in decline long before Spotify was made. The transition period before Spotify was just illegally downloading everything through Limewire/Kazaa/Napster etc.
Also, the reason podcasts make money is because they can produce something that brings audiences in on a weekly basis. The music industry OTOH has artists that make an album a year or less. It’s not as sustainable and it’s harder to sell ads against.
I don’t think more segmentation is a wanted solution by consumers either. Consumers would much rather use one app for all platforms than have to buy a different streaming service every time they want to listen to a new album.
Yeah the '90s was the big heyday for the music industry when they used to charge us $25 (in 1990s dollars, $48 today) for a CD with 2 good songs and a bunch of filler. That ended quickly as, like you said, Napster and the like came on scene. Then we got the iPod and iTunes and a slew of ‘ringtone companies’ where you could buy songs individually for a dollar or two until streaming took off.
They’ve never recovered to the level they were at back then because there are just too many options now and they don’t control them all.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-revenues-by-format/
Nothing has been as big as CDs but total revenue has been growing since 2015.
What do the scales below and above the timeline represent? There’s no explanation of the data displayed.
Why don’t the Big 3 (Universal, Warner & Sony) just come together and make their own streaming service with all their music,
Careful what you wish for. It’s long been a concern of mine that we’ll see a fragmentation of the music streaming market, with the same results as in TV.
You know how one show you like is on Disney+ and one is on Netflix and two are on Amazon, and one is on Paramount and so on…? Result is you either miss shows or pay a fortune.
Imagine that with your favourite bands, except you need a Warner subscription to listen to one band, a Sony one to listen to another, etc.
It’s bad enough with some things not being on one music service while they are on another one, or with songs being there and then gone and then back again for utterly opaque reasons. If the labels get the idea that they can cut out the middle man and gate off their artists from any service but their own, it’ll be awful.
There were attempts at trying to create a label specific streaming site that failed miserably. If no one was going to sign up for Tidal, they weren’t going to sign up for a Sony site.
there’s a solution to the streaming fragmentation problem: piracy. i don’t watch diz+ and para+ and netflix; i just go to Plex or jellyfin
I noted that in the post. It’s even in the quote. “Come together”. Nobody wants multiple subscriptions lol.
Yeah, I know, but I feel like execs are more likely to want to go it alone and have exclusive artists than have to work out a way to share with each other.
We’ve seen it in movies; we’ve seen it in gaming; we saw it starting in music right around when Apple stepped in with the iTunes music store, and then the music execs saw an uptick they didn’t want to lose. When Apple pivoted to streaming, they no longer had much of a say; ClearChannel/iHeartRadio had already consolidated OTA streaming and they had nowhere left to go.
It’s much easier to prevent the likes of Netflix than to stand up a united opposition to it and succeed — especially with the spectre of monopoly regulation sitting back stage.
They own a big chunk (possibly a majority) of Spotify and extract hefty licensing fees from it. (Spotify moving into podcasting was apparently intended to find a market in which they could keep the profits.) The majors get far better licensing terms than indie labels or small artists would get, because they have the whip hand: Spotify has no choice but to pay up as not to become a platform without Taylor Swift/Ed Sheeran/Baby Shark/etc., which would effectively wipe them out.
Make no mistake, the three major labels (Warner, Sony and Universal) are reaping the vast majority of profits from Spotify.
Oh, thank you for informing me. So it’s actually the labels screwing everyone else over?
The film/TV industry splitting into 5+ services wasn’t a good thing. Advocating for the same system for music could be good for artists but would suck for consumers.
