On Spotify, artist payments, and supporting the music you love so that it survives
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has opined about today’s music industry. It’s an interesting read. In short, he more or less says artists must adapt or die. There are some choice quotes, such as:
[O]bviously, some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape, where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough
And:
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single artist saying ‘I’m happy with all the money I’m getting from streaming
Ek is right in that we are living in a different era, but his words also feel tone deaf when you bear in mind how little streaming services pay artists. However, some in the media are seemingly behind Ek’s words—at least to some degree. I saw one magazine editor state he’s now writing several stories before breakfast when he used to be part of a team working on just a few stories per week.
In journalism, the newer model (more; faster) can work. But music as rapid churn seems unlikely to. Even the best bands/artists aren’t going to be releasing multiple albums per year (and even if they did there’s no guarantee that’d make a great deal of difference in terms of streaming income). It’d be noise as noise. But mostly, there’s a time consideration—music is extremely time-intensive. I can often write a typical magazine feature in a day, if I already have the research done; if not, a couple of days might be enough. It’s unlikely I could write, record, mix and master even one three-minute song in a day. And even if I could, I’d need to be pretty famous already for that to be commercially viable.
It should therefore come as no surprise many musicians are responding to Ek by saying release frequency has slowed primarily because money pressures result in music becoming more a hobby than a career. And although of course no-one is owed anything from anyone—people cannot take it for granted that they should earn a living of any kind with what they do—I find it sad we are rapidly heading back in time to an age where creativity is being squeezed from education through to adulthood.
If you’re already really famous, none of this will matter too much. If you’ve legacy fame—one of those bands endlessly touring a greatest hits package—you probably have a decent shot again once COVID’s under control and you can do gigs. Beyond that, Ek appears to be saying “it’s your fault you’re not doing well” when streaming payments are bloody awful. But also, it’s hard to know what the solution is, if anything. We’ve trained an entire generation to think creative output is without worth—or at most should be all-you-can-eat for a pittance. “I do my bit because I have a Spotify sub” isn’t a great help to most artists.
As ever, this all comes down to the same thing: support what you love and you’re more likely to get more of it. Don’t support what you love and it might disappear. With music, that means directly supporting artists, beyond your 10 bucks a month to a streaming service. So if you really like an artist, buy their album direct. You might be one of a dwindling number doing so, but it all counts.
It’s interesting, I had the opposite reaction. I think music can work without any income from the actual music itself. I’m pretty sure that’s how younger artists have already set up their economics; they make money from featuring products on social media, from brand deals, from having their own branded products for sale, or from similar channels. There’s now a whole industry of white-label middle men companies whose sole job it is to take generic products and brand them for an “influencer”, thus allowing them to pretend that they have designed their own product line.
The actual music is just a way of gaining popularity, and opening other income sources, not a direct income source.
But that’s not going to work for journalists. You’re not going to finance six months of investigative research by selling lipstick with your name on it.
I guess it depends on the music. My worry is we’re heading away from that indie explosion and back towards a kind of heavily pop stance again. You’ll need a benefactor or a finance partnership of some kind, if it’s to be a career. If that’s how things go, so be it, but I’m not sure that benefits the music. (As for journalism/selling lipstick: darn. And there was me getting all pouty.)
I think the way it works for most artists now is that they put tracks on a platform like SoundCloud as a side hustle or as a hobby, and once they get enough followers, it turns into a business. There are a lot of micro-influencers with followers in the low tens of thousands who seem to be doing okay. That’s the new indie musician.
In some way, it’s probably easier now to be a small indie musician and find a following that’s large enough to be a significant source of income than it used to be in the past. Subjectively at least, it feels to me like there’s more music around than any time in the past, and more people making at least some amount of money with music than there used to be. None of the musicians I knew when I was a kid made a living off their music; they were all teaching guitar lessons to children, or doing something else to make ends meet.
I think it’s better (and probably also easier) to have 10,000 followers on Instagram today than to try to sell 500 cassette tapes while doing local concerts in the 80s.
And I’d buy your lipstick in a heartbeat, of course.