Cuepoint

Well, as a musician myself, I often feel a bit conflicted reading statements like these. After all, as uncomfortable as it may be, it is <insert big pop artist> that brings _most_ people to a platform, not the indies, typically. That's because a small number of streaming services monopolized the market. In the old days, the mid-sized city I live in used to have like 15 mainstream music stores and 3 that carried mostly indie music and they were well-visited. Streaming could be fair if they cut up the royalties by subscribes: https://medium.com/cuepoint/streaming-music-is-ripping-you-off-61dc501… But the labels with major pop acts simply will not let that happen, because it'll drastically lower their revenue.

The other issue that has been raised a number of times is that I believe the revenue is still divided up based on overall listens across the platform, which means it's dominated by artists who feature heavily in popular playlists and automation-driver radio/recommendations. These listens are often passive and should not be considered as valuable as those of someone listens only a few hours a month, but spends all of that time listening to specific artists (indie or otherwise). Basically the argument is that if I spend $9.99 on a Spotify sub, the entirety of that cash (minus Spotify's cut) should be directed to the actual artists I listened to. Here's an articulation of this perspective from 2014: https://medium.com/cuepoint/how-to-make-streaming-royalties-fair-er-8b…

Anybody who still has doubts about the prodigious musical genius that was Freddie should take the time to grab a cup of their favourite beverage and sit down to watch & read: Inside the Rhapsody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v15oIktGJOo A roadie's story about working with Queen: https://medium.com/cuepoint/being-queen-s-roadie-was-one-intense-rewar…

>"So...anyone listening to music is "propping up that corrupt system"?" That's a total strawman and not at all what I said. I would gladly pay artists more than .001 cents a stream if I could but I can't. There is no option to do that. I actually believe that music is worth more than $9.99 a month. And in case you hadn't noticed there's not many record store left so the ability to buy hard product that offers artists a better royalty rate is getting harder. My only other options are to support those artists is by paying to see them live which is the only way most of them are able to make money now. And I pay to see live music all the time. I also visit their merch booth and generally buy something there like a piece of vinyl where all the money goes in their pockets. The Spotify model is not the only model. Artists largely don't need record labels any more but there is no way alternative where artists can deal with Spotify directly. Why is that? Because if Spotify announced that they were doing to allow artists to deal directly with them the records companies wouldn't renew their licensing when it came due. So yes they are very much propping up that system. You might want to look into how how the Spotify model actually works to see why this claim of "we pay out 70% of everything we make" argument falls flat: https://medium.com/cuepoint/how-to-make-streaming-royalties-fair-er-8b… So no, I created no "piles" or "nifty moral frameworks"

This debate has been going on in music biz circles for at least 5 years or more[0], with zero results. I've also heard the comical excuse of calculating the proceeds this way as being "too difficult" in terms of data processing... 0: https://medium.com/cuepoint/how-to-make-streaming-royalties-fair-er-8b…

Related from a few years back: https://medium.com/cuepoint/how-to-make-streaming-royalties-fair-er-8b…

Incidentally, Tower Records didn't 'go away', it's still doing roaring business in Japan, specifically because Japanese like the tactile feel of CDs, and because Japan's anti-crime culture generally meant that file-sharing never became a thing [https://medium.com/cuepoint/the-tower-records-stuck-in-time-43ff2b58c8… A lot of the time when a product or service appears to have 'gone away' it's actually moved on to serving a different audience with different needs.

Gil Scott-Heron's message wasn't that you wouldn't see pictures on pages, or screens, from a revolution. The events he witnessed and lived through in the 1960s certainly were broadcast. It's that you cannot see into the minds of those who are doing what it is they're doing, think what they're thinking, or feel what they're feeling. Pictures capture only the barest essence of the full reality. A brief interview, late in his life, and much the worse for several drug addictions, explaining that point: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ4_JYI7_e8 More backstory on GSH: https://medium.com/cuepoint/why-gil-scott-heron-wrote-the-revolution-w…

While the article is primarily about piracy, the existing pay models are fairing no better. Here is one musicians take: https://medium.com/cuepoint/streaming-music-is-ripping-you-off-61dc501…

You might want to read this before you get too far into it. https://medium.com/cuepoint/the-music-startup-meltdown-cd2f7a38e939#.3…

A concise summary of just about everything wrong with the mainstream music industry. This excerpt is particularly nice: "You want them to turn on the radio and hear Rihanna, turn on BET and see Rihanna, walk down the street and see a poster of Rihanna, look on Billboard, the iTunes chart, I want you to see Rihanna first." Another relevant article: https://medium.com/cuepoint/why-do-all-records-sound-the-same-830ba863… A horrific excerpt: "Two or three times a year, a company like L.A.-based Music Research Consultants Inc arrive in town, hire a hotel ballroom or lecture theatre and recruit 50 to 100 people, carefully screened for demographic relevance (they might all be white suburban housewives aged 26–40). They’re each given $65 and a perception analyzer—a little black box with one red knob and an LED display. Then, they’re played 700 seven-second clips of songs. If they turn the knob up, the song gets played. If they turn it down, it doesn’t." Why is it so hard for indie artists these days? The world may never know. Damned Spotify.