|
Post by lurleene on Apr 8, 2018 13:56:56 GMT -5
bullfan, I don't know why I can't post to your quote, lol. Yep. SNL is not everything so I was just wishing out loud. And it did not seem to work much for Troye so I guess he is not as cool as Sam. HA!
|
|
Deleted
Posts: 0
Location:
|
Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2018 14:20:14 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by skaschep on Apr 8, 2018 14:45:25 GMT -5
In light of Pattihum's post about the streaming numbers of the #1 album in the US: nprmusic @nprmusic The balance of power between labels and Spotify, now the world's largest music company, is fragile. n.pr/2HdTktz Spotify Is, For Now, The World's Most Valuable Music CompanyFollowing its successful public listing yesterday, the music streaming service Spotify is now worth around $25 billion, making it the largest music company in the world — but when Spotify first débuted, back in 2008, it was reasonable to think it would fail. Headquartered in Sweden, a country whose recording industry had shrunk to a third of its previous size due to piracy, the company was located far from the Silicon Valley sphere of influence. Steve Jobs had called the streaming business model "bankrupt," and Apple was instead promoting the sale of downloadable MP3 files from the iTunes Store. Spotify, trying to exploit an exhausted niche between the pirates and the iPod, seemed a long bet. Ten years later and paid iTunes downloads are shrinking by 25 percent a year. The founders of the Pirate Bay have all been sent to prison, and, for a new generation of listeners, BitTorrent technology is likely as unfamiliar as the fax machine. Despite its pre-eminence, Spotify still hasn't made any money, but it does have 71 million paying subscribers — and the most valuable agglomeration of listener data in the business. And Daniel Ek, its co-founder and CEO, now owns shares worth at least $4 billion (including warrants and options), making him the richest man in the history of music. Compare Ek's holdings to the size of whole companies within music: Vivendi, the French parent company of the world's largest record label, is worth around $27 billion — and is also diversified into European film and television production and distribution; Live Nation, which is so pervasive and dominant in the touring industry that the Department of Justice is reportedly investigating it, is worth around $8 billion; Tencent Music, China's dominant streaming platform, is estimated to be worth $12.5 billion. ... "Look we talk about gatekeepers, and he's saying 'I wanna smash the gatekeepers' — but now, 35 percent of all streamed music is directly from their playlist," Portishead's Geoff Barrow, one of the few artists still willing to criticize Spotify, says. "Hell, you've become a gatekeeper! You might not think you have, but you have." Spotify's playlist content is determined by a staff of editorial tastemakers, in combination with a suite of proprietary machine-learning algorithms, an approach to song selection that Spotify execs describe with the gruesome neologism "algotorial." With the aid of these playlists, the music industry has recovered a bit over the past two years — it's now the same size it was in 2008, when Spotify first débuted. The Recording Industry Association of America still terms this recovery "fragile," but acknowledges that streaming is the only path forward. (Streaming companies pay out over 70 percent of their revenue to various rights holders, and last year those payouts accounted for almost two-thirds of recording industry revenues in the U.S.) From the outside, it looks like Spotify and the labels have settled their differences at the negotiating table, but underneath the two sides are still pointing guns at one another (though the safeties are now on). Spotify's weapon is its subscriber base, without which the labels will die — the labels' are their catalogs, without which Spotify can't justify charging ten bucks a month. In a round of negotiations last year, Spotify signed deals with Warner, Universal and Sony, cementing a temporary truce between the company and the majors. But this balance of power is fragile, and ultimately the two parties have different goals. The labels need Spotify to survive, but if they permit it to grow too big, they'll lose bargaining power. They learned this lesson the hard way, during final years of the last decade, when Apple's iTunes Store dominated the legal market and recording industry revenues declined by thirty percent. In an attempt to keep the marketplace diversified, the labels have in recent years licensed their catalogs to pretty much anyone who asks, in order to spread their bets and prevent any one player from gaining too much clout. Spotify has the opposite objective: they must be the biggest if they are going to survive. (Imagine all three companies had the same number of users: would you bet on Apple, Amazon, or the Swedish startup?) The company has been forthright about this in recent weeks, promising to invest all of the available cash flow from current subscribers — and then some — into acquiring as many new users as they can, running a loss well into the future while aiming for a market corner that won't pay off until the 2020s. This approach might sound reckless, but there are no other options. Apple Music, Spotify's main competitor, has grown rapidly since its 2015 launch, to about 40 million paying subscribers. Amazon's Prime Music service is getting bigger too, aided by the success of the Echo. Spotify cannot afford to lose its leadership position to these two companies; it can't even let them get close. The size of their user base remains Spotify's only major advantage. More than just a source of funds, those users generate data — just like Facebook's users — that could be Spotify's most valuable asset. (In becoming a music mogul Ek hasn't made any music, just as Mark Zuckerberg hasn't been required to make any friends.) Playlists analytics capture details about listener demographics, including age, gender, and location. "You look at the geographic data from the streaming market and say, 'That's where you should tour,' " said Daniel Glass, head of Glassnote Records, a prominent independent label. "Then you go back to streaming to see if it works." .... It may be time for the streaming skeptics to face reality: Compact discs, MP3 downloads and even piracy are all dying formats, and vinyl will never be more than the purlieu of hobbyists. In Sweden, where Spotify has been around the longest, the company now has a market share of 64 percent, and is still growing. If he can repeat this trick globally, Ek will transcend being the wealthiest person the music industry has ever seen to also become the mightiest, enjoying automatic, utility-like renewals from customers and total algotorial control over artists while running almost no financial risk. Somehow, from an office in Stockholm, he'll have managed to defeat, in order of increasing fearsomeness, the Pirate Bay, Amazon, Apple, and Taylor Swift, and the labels and musicians will have to do as he says. Someday, he might even turn a profit.
|
|
|
Post by skaschep on Apr 8, 2018 14:52:29 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by nightowl on Apr 8, 2018 15:07:26 GMT -5
I barely stream music. Actually I only did it after TOH came out and when I want to check new songs or find older ones. Then I usually buy them or leave it. I love my CDs and will always buy them. Or even vinyls (I bought my first vinyl and a player 😜 last year. This way I‘m independent from an internet-connection (which I actually didn’t have during my last vacation) AND the artist gets more money from it. The payment for artists through streaming is almost nothing and must change dramatically, if the music industry will survive. Unfortunately many listeners are not willing to pay at all. Plus:Nobody else but me (and my friends and family 😉) knows, what I like to listen to. Here are some industry-numbers from Germany by the way (yes, even we „start to stream“ 😉): 2017: www.billboard.com/articles/business/8223646/germany-music-revenues-2017-bvmi-streaming-physical2016: rainnews.com/germany-streaming-was-a-quarter-of-the-2016-music-market/
|
|
|
Post by skaschep on Apr 8, 2018 15:28:32 GMT -5
I barely stream music. Actually I only did it after TOH came out and when I want to check new songs or find older ones. Then I usually buy them or leave it. I love my CDs and will always buy them. Or even vinyls (I bought my first vinyl and a player 😜 last year. This way I‘m independent from an internet-connection (which I actually didn’t have during my last vacation) AND the artist gets more money from it. The payment for artists through streaming is almost nothing and must change dramatically, if the music industry will survive. Unfortunately many listeners are not willing to pay at all. Plus:Nobody else but me (and my friends and family 😉) knows, what I like to listen to. Here are some industry-numbers from Germany by the way (yes, even we „start to stream“ 😉): 2017: www.billboard.com/articles/business/8223646/germany-music-revenues-2017-bvmi-streaming-physical2016: rainnews.com/germany-streaming-was-a-quarter-of-the-2016-music-market/With Spotify you aren't dependent on your internet connection though. You can stream offline too. When you go back online your streams are added to Adam's tally. Buying the CD gives Adam more money yes, but that is only once. After you bought it you won't give him any extra while listening to it. When you use streaming services he get's money for every stream you do. Yes that isn't much, but it adds up. Listening to your CD will give him nothing. There will be a time when they don't sell any CD's anymore. My car doesn't have a CD player so I listen to my MP3's in the car, but a lot of newer cars can connect to streaming services through your phone already. I'm not judging you or anything. Just informing that a new way of consuming music is happening now already. I have colleagues who never bought a CD in their life. The younger people are streaming their asses off and if we want Adam to have a huge success with his music we must do something with streaming. And yes also buy that CD! As long as those are there. Doing both will give him the most benefits.
|
|
|
Post by LinkinBert on Apr 8, 2018 15:40:01 GMT -5
While I still buy physical CDs from my favorite artists for my collection I haven't actually listened to one in years. Streaming is definitely where it's at now! Only listen via mp3 if it's something not available on Spotify. Helps the artist out a lot more as well; the extra streams are like buying a song multiple times instead of a one time purchase.
|
|
|
Post by nightowl on Apr 8, 2018 15:54:25 GMT -5
With Spotify you aren't dependent on your internet connection though. You can stream offline too. When you go back online your streams are added to Adam's tally. Buying the CD gives Adam more money yes, but that is only once. After you bought it you won't give him any extra while listening to it. When you use streaming services he get's money for every stream you do. Yes that isn't much, but it adds up. Listening to your CD will give him nothing. There will be a time when they don't sell any CD's anymore. My car doesn't have a CD player so I listen to my MP3's in the car, but a lot of newer cars can connect to streaming services through your phone already. I'm not judging you or anything. Just informing that a new way of consuming music is happening now already. I have colleagues who never bought a CD in their life. The younger people are streaming their asses off and if we want Adam to have a huge success with his music we must do something with streaming. And yes also buy that CD! As long as those are there. Doing both will give him the most benefits. To stream offline you need to pay😉. And as I said: I try to be a good fan. I bought his CDs, downloaded his songs and whenever I open Spotify on my computer, I listen to a few of Adam’s songs. And when Adam released new songs, I did it more often. But I realised, that these are really almost the only occasions, when I stream music. Only for Adam. He‘s the reason I downloaded the app and made that account. But I only used it once in the last 6 months, I think. As for cars: I never sat in a car without a CD-Player. But maybe that’s Germany? (The „digital dinosaur“ ). At least we were the only (?) country, where the single of „Ghost Town“ was released on CD. 😁 So you can stream, I do it occasionally. And I do need my CDs in my car. I‘m not that sure, that CDs will vanish. Even vinyls never vanished. And digital music needs to find a way to sell. Because the way it is, musicians only make money through touring. Which „kills“ the music IMO in the long sight. Nobody can tour constantly and it destroys creativity and the voice. Adam is very lucky, that he has Queen. Edit: In the article from Billboard (link in my last post) you can see, that in Germany the majority of music is stillpurchased in a physical format. Streaming is growing, but only 34,6%, of which about the half is streaming on YouTube. So for my country, streaming music is still not that common. It’s interesting, that labels must consider all these differences in different markets, where they want to „sell“ their artists.
|
|
|
Post by bamafan on Apr 8, 2018 15:56:22 GMT -5
|
|
mszue
Member
Posts: 4,971
Location:
|
Post by mszue on Apr 8, 2018 16:09:04 GMT -5
I barely stream music. Actually I only did it after TOH came out and when I want to check new songs or find older ones. Then I usually buy them or leave it. I love my CDs and will always buy them. Or even vinyls (I bought my first vinyl and a player 😜 last year. This way I‘m independent from an internet-connection (which I actually didn’t have during my last vacation) AND the artist gets more money from it. The payment for artists through streaming is almost nothing and must change dramatically, if the music industry will survive. Unfortunately many listeners are not willing to pay at all. Plus:Nobody else but me (and my friends and family 😉) knows, what I like to listen to. Here are some industry-numbers from Germany by the way (yes, even we „start to stream“ 😉): 2017: www.billboard.com/articles/business/8223646/germany-music-revenues-2017-bvmi-streaming-physical2016: rainnews.com/germany-streaming-was-a-quarter-of-the-2016-music-market/With Spotify you aren't dependent on your internet connection though. You can stream offline too. When you go back online your streams are added to Adam's tally. Buying the CD gives Adam more money yes, but that is only once. After you bought it you won't give him any extra while listening to it. When you use streaming services he get's money for every stream you do. Yes that isn't much, but it adds up. Listening to your CD will give him nothing. There will be a time when they don't sell any CD's anymore. My car doesn't have a CD player so I listen to my MP3's in the car, but a lot of newer cars can connect to streaming services through your phone already. I'm not judging you or anything. Just informing that a new way of consuming music is happening now already. I have colleagues who never bought a CD in their life. The younger people are streaming their asses off and if we want Adam to have a huge success with his music we must do something with streaming. And yes also buy that CD! As long as those are there. Doing both will give him the most benefits. All this talk of streaming rather than listening to your owned music prompted me to go to spotify to listen to the FYI music....well it played fyi and music again, wywfm and strut then would not move on. When I specifically tried to listen to soaked it told me that was unavailable to me! I guess that would explain why some cuts get more plays than others....and a good reason to just listen to your own music. Very frustrating...
|
|