{"id":56262,"date":"2021-03-16T01:37:17","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T08:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drduru.com\/onetwentytwo\/?p=56262"},"modified":"2021-03-28T00:54:00","modified_gmt":"2021-03-28T07:54:00","slug":"music-streaming-hard-for-artists-good-for-the-stocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drduru.com\/onetwentytwo\/2021\/03\/16\/music-streaming-hard-for-artists-good-for-the-stocks\/","title":{"rendered":"Music Streaming: Hard for Artists, Good for The Stocks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A month ago I mused about the business of music streaming<\/a> and wondered how music artists make any money from their music. A recent episode of Marketplace provided the simple answer: the transition from buying music by the unit to paying a flat monthly fee has been unprofitable for the vast majority of music artists. From “Can streaming do better by musicians? SoundCloud says it\u2019s willing to try<\/a>“:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“…think of all of Spotify\u2019s streams last year. Every song, by every musician. Imagine all those streams, and the money they make, in one communal pot. Musicians get paid based on their share of all those streams, not the number of their fans who have subscriptions.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The article\/podcast goes on to quote Andrew Leff, an instructor at the University of Southern California\u2019s Thornton School of Music, who called streaming the \u201cinstitutionalization of devaluation” resulting from a culture that insists music should be cheap. I do not blame the current culture because free or cheap music has long been available on the radio or at the bar or club. When recording equipment became widely available, young people created “dubs” or recorded their favorites when aired on the radio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real issue is the new economic model that merged with the devaluing ecosystem of the internet. People generally expect most content on the internet to be free or nearly free. Unlike movies with their theaters (before the pandemic), music no longer has a viable alternate distribution channel for selling music by the unit at scale (when did you last buy a CD?). Accordingly, the pot of money acts like a near fixed source of income. Ad-supported streaming is barely better since ads are not attributed to the artist even though ad volume can scale with platform usage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n