The Trichordist

David Lowery has a history of doing stuff like this. I love his music, but he's become a bit of a troll on this issue in recent years. (See his blog The Trichordist: http://thetrichordist.com/) His most recent post does a pretty good job of pointing out where he stands on this issue: http://thetrichordist.com/2015/12/24/the-mother-of-all-friday-news-dum… Personally, I want to see Lowery make a few more bucks off of "Eurotrash Girl" and "Take the Skinheads Bowling," but his approach to the issue seems to have a take-no-prisoners vibe to it, which is too bad because it sort of undercuts a lot of the fairly valid points he might have. He's not afraid of going after listeners, which is a bummer because the listeners are probably less at fault in this case than the labels are. (He also looks like an older Chuck Johnson these days, which doesn't help matters on that front.) No matter the complaints about tone or anything like that, we definitely need guys like Lowery making the case for artists. But he might win more support if he were to take some style tips from Taylor Swift [1] on the issue. Swift has done more on this whole issue than Lowery has and she hasn't once had to resort to making fun of an intern who doesn't buy CDs.[2] [1] http://www.techtimes.com/articles/75173/20150813/taylor-swift-attacks-… [2] http://www.stereogum.com/1069672/david-lowery-on-file-sharing/news/

Exactly. Based on data from Spotify[1] and taking an average payment[2] of $.0052, I calculated Spotify would be storing about 20 BILLION accounting records PER MONTH. Showing my work: 15m paying subscribers = ~150m per month, ~105m paid to artists @ .0052 per song = 20.154 million songs in a month. [1]https://press.spotify.com/us/information/ [2]http://thetrichordist.com/2014/11/12/the-streaming-price-bible-spotify…

Worth a repost here: http://thetrichordist.com/2012/04/15/meet-the-new-boss-worse-than-the-… So far I haven't heard a good answer as to how artists, musicians, and other creators will get paid in this new world. Usually people just toss out buzzwords like "micropayments," which are "magic happens here" answers, or are ignorant of the economics of the industry. That talk explains it well.

Sure, here's a blog post that cites BLS statistics showing a 45% decline in the number of working musicians in the US just between 2002 and 2012: https://thetrichordist.com/2013/05/21/45-fewer-professional-working-mu…

Is it? There's no shortage of posts arguing that for most artists, live performances are not really all they're cracked up to be [1]. [1]: e.g., like this one from David Lowery of Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven: https://thetrichordist.com/2016/02/16/the-reality-of-touring-revenue-f…

The website was created by fightforthefuture.org, an astroturf advocacy organization. Their tax filings show their backers are largely venture capital firms and tech companies. It's no surprise that big tech companies don't want increased liability. See https://thetrichordist.com/2016/05/12/list-of-corporations-and-foundat…

Streaming was very controversial when it was introduced. For example: http://thetrichordist.com/2013/06/24/my-song-got-played-on-pandora-1-m…

Their explanation is here: https://thetrichordist.com/2018/01/08/the-slippery-slope-of-censorship…

So? Spotify pays $5,210 per million streams [1]. It would take an individual artist about 8 million streams to make a mere $40,000. A band of 5 artists would require 40 million streams for each person in the band to make a $40,000 salary. That's jack shit. It's not enough to be a meaningful revenue stream for any artist at any level. It's not enough to help, support, or incubate indies. It's not enough be a drop in the bucket for a mega star. [1] http://thetrichordist.com/2014/11/12/the-streaming-price-bible-spotify…

There is a related post from David Lowery (2013), sorry if someone already mentionned this (link is from his own blog): http://thetrichordist.com/2013/06/24/my-song-got-played-on-pandora-1-m… His songs seem to have a little bit more exposure than in the discussed article.