Spotify to layoff 17%

[RayDunzl]

"Jazz... The music of unemployment." - F.Z.

 

[AdamG]

Artists have quicker, easier and broader access to people than ever before. A large amount of artists wouldn't be artists if it wasn't for Spotify. Or at least they wouldn't be able to get much for their work. They would, back in the days, have had to go to a label and pay a huge amount for printing CD's and transport etc. A lot of money up front. Maybe the amount of CD's you ordered is sold, maybe they won't all sell and you're at a loss. Maybe you could've sold twice as many and you are in risk of being sold out and missing the hype?

Today you can sit and produce a track and upload it to Spotify and if it's good and gets discovered you get paid without further effort. -Easy!

Don't feel sorry for artists. If they are good they will make money. If they are not they won't.

Today good poor artists have a much greater chance of getting success than ever before.

Spotify and Qobuz difference

Thanks for the responses. I can see that if I'm aiming to 'prove' anything I would need to do what staticV3 describes. However all I really need to know is which service I should pay for, so I guess I can at least say that subjectively to me Amazon sounded better in a blind test. I just...

audiosciencereview.com

That is a preposterous statement. The road to musical success has always been littered with the corpses of outstanding bands and musicians who never broke through.

One example: Scott Miller. He was the genius behind the band Game Theory, which later morphed into the outstanding The Loud Family. Critically lauded, and criminally ignored. After years of unbelievably good songs and albums, but criminally ignored by the public, he took his own life in 2013. Read about him on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Miller_(pop_musician).

While, as usual, talentless hacks roll in the dough.

I can't even count the number of phenomenal musicians and bands I've heard, and followed, that crashed and burned way before their time.

Hi jsrheta,

I don’t think you intended to misquote anyone here but @Holdt said more than the small sentence you quoted above. As the rest of his post provided greater context and is considerably less brutal than that quoted sentence comes across alone. In the future please be more mindful of how breaking up a longer post into a short sentence can change what the author intended to say and the message’s full meaning.

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding and have a great night.

 

[Liya]

Why wouldn't that be good? You can to listen to new artists that you have never listened to. Do you want to listen to the same thing all the time?

I guess for some people it's not good. But it's great for me. The more the merrier.

But how do you exactly consume your discoveries. Can you walk us thru the process?

 

[Rednaxela]

Us?

 

[Deleted member 48726]

Us?

Them?

 

[TurtlePaul]

I hate to keep coming back with but but. However, Dr. Dre and Jay-Z aren't just musicians, they are also producers and record label owners.

Dre also sold his headphone brand to a certain fruit company.

 

[CleanSound]

But how do you exactly consume your discoveries. Can you walk us thru the process?

I'd happy to, but first help me understand why would it matter? How would that affect the discovery of new artists and music that one has never heard before? Does the process of discovering new artists changes the appreciation level?

 

[CleanSound]

Dre also sold his headphone brand to a certain fruit company.

Yup, he's also a businessman on top of it. His wealth is not a result of his own music alone.

 

[maverickronin]

'music discovery'.. is this good? Something to be desired? What is the purpose of this discovery? What if you will discover another 20 in the next 10 days? Will you even remember the first 10? And when you say you have discovered them, is that means you have listened to one song? one of their albums in full? or skipping? Do you know how they look like?

But how do you exactly consume your discoveries. Can you walk us thru the process?

This is seriously bizarre. Are you just going to listen to the same 10 albums for the rest of your life or something?

 

[Somafunk]

This is seriously bizarre. Are you just going to listen to the same 10 albums for the rest of your life or something?

Liya sounds like they’d be a fun sponge at a party,

 

[CleanSound]

This is seriously bizarre. Are you just going to listen to the same 10 albums for the rest of your life or something?

Indeed, VERY VERY bizarre question and comment. Why the hell would anyone not want to discover new music and artist when you have access to nearly every track and you are paying a fixed monthly fee? And if one doesn't want to discover new music, then why not just stick to that 10 CD albums instead of paying monthly fee for streaming?

I thought maybe he is leading to a point something like, listening to one track from one artist doesn't help them financially or something like that, who knows. But regardless, that is indeed one bizarre question, but then again the internet is full of weird people.

 

[TurtlePaul]

Regarding music discovery, before the internet you ‘discovered’ bands that record execs had chosen to push on radio and had chosen to sign. Life before Spotify wasn’t great either for a musician.

 

[gabo4au]

Regarding music discovery, before the internet you ‘discovered’ bands that record execs had chosen to push on radio and had chosen to sign. Life before Spotify wasn’t great either for a musician.

While this is certainly true. It's also true that today most people don't actually search very hard for music and instead listen to what the record execs or spotify playlist makers (can you say kickbacks) put together.

I play for a band, we have 5 albums on spotify. We have two recent singles in 2023, so it's not all old music. I have given our band name to many people only to find that no matter how hard they search, they can't find us on any streaming platform! I have to give them a specific link to our songs or our band. Even the ones with few followers that you find typically have some level of marketing or support to push them into more visible spaces.

I would argue (obviously from a flawed perspective) that our music is on par with many popular bands. Yet we have maybe 50 listeners per month and it's virtually impossible to find us. If you don't have someone pushing and marketing your music, it's just not happening.

See if you can find "The Moderns" on your favorite streaming platform? If you search for our band plus a song title you might find it. So try "The Moderns King of Me" or "The Moderns Night City" or "The Moderns No Suffering." There is an old English band called The Moderns that typically comes up, but they've been defunct for many years, and by the way we actually predate them Once you find us, via one of the songs above, notice the way we spell our name, that's the key to making sure it's us.


Edit - And by the way, we now are old guys who are financially ok, so we're not really worried about it all like we once were. We will continue to make music that we love. Our next album is coming out next year and ironically is titled Next!

 

[DLS79]

I would argue (obviously from a flawed perspective) that our music is on par with many popular bands. Yet we have maybe 50 listeners per month and it's virtually impossible to find us. If you don't have someone pushing and marketing your music, it's just not happening.

Even back in the day you had to promote/push yourself into the light.

• people regularly calling a local dj asking them to play a specific song
• bands strait up stalking a dj so they can give then a copy of a single to play

 

[Somafunk]

See if you can find "The Moderns" on your favorite streaming platform?

First result on Apple Music gives 4 bands called The Moderns?

 

[Rednaxela]

On Spotify I get three hits under Artists.

 

[CleanSound]

Regarding music discovery, before the internet you ‘discovered’ bands that record execs had chosen to push on radio and had chosen to sign. Life before Spotify wasn’t great either for a musician.

This starts a related but good discussion, in past conversations with other ASR members, one member said that music today is more "disposable" and the new generation of listeners don't sit down to listen to a full album (as if that is a terrible thing). I argue that is because music distribution has been digitalized.

If anyone here is honest with themselves will admit that not all tracks on an album is good, in fact, I personally argue that if half of the tracks on an album is good, then that's got to be one of the best albums ever. Furthermore, I argue that on average, maybe 30% of the tracks of an album is good and the rest is just space fillers. I believe that is true 70 years ago and all the way to today, of course there are exceptions, I'm just speaking in general and on average.

The difference is that back in the old days, before music distribution was digitalized, you have to go and buy a tape, a record or a CD. You pay, say, $15 for a CD, you bring it home and you are eager and hyped to listen to the entire album, so you pop it in and you listen. First track sucks, you can skip, then the next track sucks, you skip and the next track too sucks. And you realized if you keep skipping to the one track that you like which was played on the radio 24x7, you'll be done with the album in 7 mins of that allocated 60 mins you have planned for the night. And so do you drive to the record store and spend another $15 for another CD for 7 mins?

Instead you decided, F it, let me just listen to the entire album, since I already spent the money on it. Then you listen to the entire album again and again, because it cost you $15 and you don't have time to go to the record store to buy a different album, you end up listening to it for maybe a week or two. After awhile, it's like listening to a pair of sh!tty speakers, you get used to it and it sounds OK or even "good."

Whereas streaming, if that track sucks, you can just skip it, even to discover that there is only one good track in an entire album, because you are streaming and you can just play another album. Is that good or is that bad? For some older folks, they frown upon that, they believe an album must be enjoy in it's entirety in order to be respectful to the artist or to be considered as a true music lover.

For me personally, my time is more precious than having to listen to a track that I don't like. . .so I skip and skip and skip and I am proud of that. Though I will say, sometimes I have a theme night where I do listen to the entire album despite my dislike of 70% of the tracks of an album. . .just afterwards, the tracks that I dislike, I like a bit more.

 

[Rednaxela]

Yes. Music can also grow on you.

 

[DLS79]

Instead you decided, F it, let me just listen to the entire album, since I already spent the money on it. Then you listen to the entire album again and again, because it cost you $15 and you don't have time to go to the record store to buy a different album, you end up listening to it for maybe a week or two.

I made mix tapes/cds with the stuff I liked on them.

 

[DLS79]

I should add I did the same thing when we had digital recordings but no streaming.