Spotify a loss for musicians?

Recently a new service has emerged from a swedish company Spotify. They offer a gigantic music library available for streaming, a brilliant idea at first and we at Gramtone got on the bus. Through our distributor Phonofile in Norway, we are avaliable on Spotify since last week. Our three releases The Modesty, Tree full of people and PAN are all available. Our coming releases Ralph and Kallocain wants to be published too.

But when talking about the economy, the terms are not particilarly ok for the musicians. First, the income generally is modest, where enormous amounts of artists will share a fairy small cake of money from ads and some paying for subscriptions. Then Spotify shares it 50/50. After that the distributor get 20% and the rest goes into the record company. Since Gramtone has a philosophy of high percentage to our bands, 80-90% of our income, they will get what they can. But as our distributor explained a bit ironically:
“…which will come down to about 0,000000001 euro per play”.
So if an atist is played about one billion times, the will get one euro from Spotify. A revolution? No, but hopefully a complement.

An other thought: Will streaming services really benefit music in the long term? The huge amounts of small labels and independent bands will be forced to work with the few, huge companies that can afford this kind of technology. Now when web publishing is cheap, one can set up their own webshop and work directly with the audience without middlemen, this kind of service maybe puts a gigantic middleman to separate this direct contact. But I might be wrong. It would be cool to hear about Spotifys strategies. I will call them. I also have a few more subjects to talk with them about.

This article (in swedish though) tells about recent development. As usual, the comments are very interesting:
http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/musik/den-strommande-musikrevolutionen-1.822297

Edit 8/8 2009: Read the post after our first report from our distributor “Spotify money report”:
http://gramtone.wordpress.com/2009/08/08/176/

Doing the musician thingie

One of the main arguments for file sharing is that musicians don’t suffer from it. The assumption is that only middlemen, the record companies, would disappear. In this assumption it is also said that musicians should do what they always have done.

For some reason this means selling everything but their music: Keyrings, fridge magnets, lighters, t-shirts and posters. The musician as an ambulating peddler of merchandise. This argument is very weak. We musicians should concentrate on creating music, and do what we always have done to earn money, but musicians have first and foremost tried to earn money on their music.

Some bands, of course. Like Kiss for instance, has been rich on their business to sell merchandise. But this is reserved for a tiny number of artists in the world. No one wants to buy a small bands thingies just because they exist.

Music should be the musicians source of income.  I can’t see private copying as a threat, but piracy services can hardly be beneficial for anyone trying to make an artistic living.

Music has lost its importance

Swedish trend magazine Bon doesn’t write about music anymore, since music is no longer expressing personal identity. This provoked me a bit, but I can see what they mean. When everything is available for free, a mouseclick away and regarded with a shrug, then music has lost its importance in society.

A couple of decades ago music was deadly serious, and musicians tried to change the world with their music. Some even succeeded. The combination of neverending soundtracks that follow people as life-muzak and the all too easy access from free services has created this inflation.

Yes. Free, available and noone that cares. This is what music has become. Technology, clothing and art are the subjects said to express peoples individuality nowadays according to Bon magazine. Since its expensive and involves a bit of a struggle to get hold of. How is music going to be that important again?

I just saw This land is my land from the Obama installation ceremony (what about having a small ceremony when installing a program by the way?). Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen on stage. This song really made a difference and has become legendary. If it was written today, people would shrug, regard it as hippie nostalgia, download it and forget it.

Ending the era of demos

The renowned Swedish record company Silence Records, which has been the home of such wonderful bands as Bob Hund, Kebnekaise, Fläsket brinner, Philemon Arthur and the dung, Traste Lindéns kvintett and many many others, does not listen to demos anymore. They write on their home page (I translate as good as I can here):
“Hi all merry musicians who drown us in demos! We do not produce any new records anymore, so there is no use sending any demos to us. We will only do some reissues in the future, it feels a bit meaningless to release new records since people don’t seem to like to pay for music. Sad, but that’s the way it is. But the fun part is that so many plays and creates a lot of good music that finds listeners in new arenas, so continue playing!!”

My emotions are mixed. I understand the arguments and I see where music business is heading. Still I don’t like the loss of talented people who has put their soul into releasing wonderful, innovative music that has inspired so many people. This is not a monstrous giant of a record company that is so popular to blame everything on.

I asked Eva, one of these great people, about their policy. A good idea emerged: She would like to see Pirate Bay put their advertisement revenue on new artists to help them develop. This could be a great way for Pirate Bay to take responsibility for the development they are creating. Silence’s view is that record companies are not much needed by artists today, its mostly about distribution. Also, she reminded me that Silence was the first company to put their catalogue freely available for streaming. I remember from some years ago how I found this and listened through some great artists I hadn’t heard of before. Unfortunately this did not work out since there was no systems for micro payments. “We were not large enough to solve the problem on our own and not small enough to give a damn about the rules. We are just some enthusiasts that has slipped between the chairs”.

http://www.silence.se/

I have heard more stories about record companies who don’t care about demos anymore. The most obvious example is the large one that collects a huge box of demos and puts them on fire once a year. By the way… Gramtone still likes to receive demos.