Amazon High Definition Music Streaming Service

[Jud]

On 9/18/2019 at 9:55 AM, charlesphoto said:

 

I still have plenty of friends who are happy with their old Yamaha or Marantz receivers and buying records by the oodles and playing them on their cheap turntables. A lot of them being musicians themselves. They are the ones who are truly keeping it alive.

 

Though the numbers of LPs being sold are on a steep upward trend, the proportion of the business they make up is tiny. Something like 77,000 LPs sold in 2018, I believe?

 

Most musicians make their money these days by playing live, so go see people.

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

 

You know @The Computer Audiophile probably raised his daughter on this album, right?

 

😉

So. 

[rn701]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

 

Though the numbers of LPs being sold are on a steep upward trend, the proportion of the business they make up is tiny. Something like 77,000 LPs sold in 2018, I believe?

 

16.8 million according to Billboard, about 12%.

[Jud]

4 hours ago, rn701 said:

 

16.8 million according to Billboard, about 12%.

 

Wow, don't know how I got so far off. Thanks for the correction.

[firedog]

On 9/18/2019 at 6:00 PM, PAR said:

But they are not "wages" . Earning a living just about anywhere in the arts involves receiving income from multiple sources. In this case  not only streaming. Some sources pay more than others.  Which pay the most or the least can change over time. Currently succesful musical artists make more money from touring than from recordings.  That is the reverse of the situation in the 1970s to 1990s. Go back before then to, say,  the 1930s, 40s and 50s and touring or other live engagements were again the honey pot. 

 

Streaming is only one component making up a musicians' income. Right now , at what is the beginning of this new way of distributing music, the sums may be relatively small compared to other sources. As subscriber numbers grow and  new territories are added ( so far streaming is effectively limited  to Europe and the USA) income will expand. China is just about to start its first streaming service. Imagine how many subscribers that might attract and consequently what potential sums may be generated for internationally popular artists.

 

As an ex-recording industry professional who spent nearly thirty years dealing with this kind of issue I would point out that the reported sums of rate/stream etc. are not very illuminating. The important thing is the formula by which the payments have been calculated and the definitions used to describe its components. And that (or, rather, they) is unknown.

Sorry, it's all blah blah from you. 
The streaming system is setup so that the money accrues to corporations and an exceedingly small part of it goes to writers and performers.
This is not a given, nor some "natural" economic outcome. 

In the era of vinyl and CD the position of the recording artists was better, and the big corporations simply used the new technology and lack of a royalty system that pertained to it, as a wedge to lower relative payments to artists so they could accrue monopoly style rents. 

[firedog]

On 9/18/2019 at 1:26 PM, mansr said:

The problem with artist compensation is that the amount of money people are willing to spend on music isn't enough to support the current number of (would-be) musicians.

Not exactly. "The Market" only works as an efficient system when there are no sellers or buyers in a position to influence the market. The music market is clearly not one without market influence by some of the participants. A truly efficient market would probably reward recording artists and sonwriters with better pay relative to other participants.

[mansr]

2 hours ago, firedog said:

Not exactly. "The Market" only works as an efficient system when there are no sellers or buyers in a position to influence the market. The music market is clearly not one without market influence by some of the participants. A truly efficient market would probably reward recording artists and sonwriters with better pay relative to other participants.

It doesn't matter how you distribute the money. The $10 per month people are willing to pay is simply not enough for all the artists to make a living, even if a handful are getting rich in the current scheme.

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 hours ago, mansr said:

It doesn't matter how you distribute the money. The $10 per month people are willing to pay is simply not enough for all the artists to make a living, even if a handful are getting rich in the current scheme.

Not everyone deserves to make a living from whatever they wish. Some artist produce content with very little commercial value. Compensation should be commensurate with commercial value. 
 

I’d prefer to make a living doing what I love, listening to great music on a great system and talking about it. Oh wait, I do. However, if everyone who starts a website is guaranteed a living from it, no matter the commercial value, that would a bit over the top. 

[mansr]

59 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Not everyone deserves to make a living from whatever they wish.

Of course not, but it doesn't stop them complaining.

[tmtomh]

2 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Not everyone deserves to make a living from whatever they wish. Some artist produce content with very little commercial value. Compensation should be commensurate with commercial value. 
 

I’d prefer to make a living doing what I love, listening to great music on a great system and talking about it. Oh wait, I do. However, if everyone who starts a website is guaranteed a living from it, no matter the commercial value, that would a bit over the top. 

 

At the risk of being pedantic, I would say the entire notion of deserving to make any kind of a living is irrelevant - or, perhaps more accurately, an ideologically loaded fiction - under capitalism. In capitalism, what one deserves is a tautology, and a retroactive one at that: From a market-based perspective, we can claim that Chris "deserves" to make a living from AS only so long as he makes enough profit to sustain a quality of life he/we would deem middle-class/secure (or higher). The moment AS ceases being economically sustainable (and I hope that moment never comes!), then he no longer "deserves" to make a living from it.

 

Again, I am not trying to be pedantic. But this logic of capitalism is so deeply embedded in the culture of capitalist societies that we don't often reflect on it explicitly. And it tends to feed into cultural norms by which the successful feel that some inherent (or cultivated) quality separates them from their less economically successful fellow humans. In some times and places the wealthy deemed themselves more biologically "fit" than the poor. In other contexts it's about superior morality, or industriousness vs laziness, or alleged gender or race or national/ethnic-character differences. (To be 100% clear, I am IN NO WAY claiming or implying that Chris believes any such thing - I'm making a general cultural and historical point here.)

 

What gets erased from this are the power dynamics that enable corporations and wealthy people - beneficiaries of past profit - to use their economic power to create an uneven playing field in the present and future. Thus the leverage the corporations have over artists, leading to their ability to market streaming music at prices that, for the artists who depend on royalties, are unsustainably low as per @mansr's comment above. The idea that these artists don't earn enough because they're not good enough or not deserving, is absurd. For the most part they lack any economic and political power to set the prices for the fruits of their labor in the marketplace, so with few exceptions they can't make sufficient profits no matter how many streaming instances they get for the songs they've written or performed. The interplay of supply and demand in streaming is between the consumers on the one hand and the streaming services and record labels on the other. The economics of streaming are not a measure of artistic success or worthiness. And that's the problem.

[mansr]

58 minutes ago, tmtomh said:

The interplay of supply and demand in streaming is between the consumers on the one hand and the streaming services and record labels on the other. The economics of streaming are not a measure of artistic success or worthiness. And that's the problem.

It could also be seen as a problem that popularity is heavily skewed towards a handful of artists (and I'm using that term loosely). When a subscriber pays Spotify $10, some of that goes to covering operating costs while the rest is split between Beyonce and Taylor Swift regardless of what the subscriber actually streamed.

[The Computer Audiophile]

Very solid points @tmtomh.

 

I just struggle to support the complaining and bitching by artists who voluntarily jump into the fire at the intersection of art and commerce and scream it’s so hot, someone do something to help us. 
 

Nobody forces an artist to sign a record contract, sign his/her rights away, offer his/her art for streaming, or anything they don’t want to do. 
 

The complaining reminds me of a fictional  engineer working for 3M here in Minnesota. He invents the glue for Post It notes then wants more money and complains to the public that Post It notes are so cheap he can’t make enough money. The reality is he went to work for 3M and knew the rules from day 1. 

 

If artists / engineers want to keep all the money, they need to do everything themselves. It’s the same in any business. 
 

I’m sure this sounds harsh, but I’ve just never seen a good argument against it. If you don’t want to play the major label or streaming game, then don’t. Continue to sell whatever you want for whatever price you want. 

I previously used the word “deserve” for lack of a better word. With respect to success or worthiness, that’s also a completely different ball of wax. Art is subjective and should never be judged worthy or successful by one measure. I hate attaching money to any measure of success or worthiness. 

 

[Ralf11]

 

"very little commercial value" reminds me of Frank Zappa's book "No Commercial Potential"

 

I think we also need to be very careful about arguments of the form "Nobody forces xx sign a ... contract..."

- This brings up a large set of economic coercion examples, from forcing serfs to "run with the land" to the scenes described by Dickens to the abusive ruling by the US S.Ct. in Lochner, regarding 'freedom to contract'...

- Freedom is a variable...

 

nor do I think art is entirely subjective...

[TubeLover]

On 9/20/2019 at 8:37 AM, rn701 said:

 

16.8 million according to Billboard, about 12%.

Of which approximately 16 million were purchased by Millennials playing them on $200.00 or less record players in a box because they simply think it's cool. This means Jud's original quote was pretty accurate!

 

JC

[Leroy Bad]

One draw back with the the Amazon HD is that the Amazon desktop app does not allow you to choose the output device and doesn't support WASAPI or ASIO. So the resolution output is always locked at what ever is set in windows sound properties.

[PAP]

The main part of the money from streaming goes to the publishers not the artist.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

4 minutes ago, PAP said:

The main part of the money from streaming goes to the publishers not the artist.

 

Sure it goes to the rights holders and that's not the artist in the cases where artists have signed away their rights. Artists like Macklemore who never signed a bad record deal are making out pretty well in the streaming days. rather than a single payment from a purchase, he gets paid every time someone listens. it's a great incentive to create good music and to keep the rights to your recordings. 

[PAP]

I have read somewhere that In order for a smaller artist to get on one the streaming sites he or she has to make a publishing deal with one of the big publishers.

Sportify and Tidal does not deal with individual independent artists. ( I'll try to find the article and put the link).

 

[Patrick Cleasby]

46 minutes ago, PAP said:

I have read somewhere that In order for a smaller artist to get on one the streaming sites he or she has to make a publishing deal with one of the big publishers.

Sportify and Tidal does not deal with individual independent artists. ( I'll try to find the article and put the link).

 

 

Not true, I know plenty of young London jazz acts who are on all the services without being signed to a publisher. Own label often too.

[Patrick Cleasby]

The key intermediary now is the digital fulfillment provider (the orchard etc.)

[PAP]

they first have to sign up with a destributor like CD Baby.

Another thing is that if one listens to less than 30 seconds of a song the artist will not get paid his 0.00006 cent.😐

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

5 minutes ago, PAP said:

Another thing is that if one listens to less than 30 seconds of a song the artist will not get paid his 0.00006 cent.😐

I don't get paid if I do 15% of the job :~)

[PAP]

next time at wall mart, take a bite of an apple but don't buy it.

[The Computer Audiophile]

6 minutes ago, PAP said:

next time at wall mart, take a bite of an apple but don't buy it.

But nobody else will eat it, thus the inventory is gone. Music is quite different. 

[Jud]

On 9/21/2019 at 1:17 PM, Ralf11 said:

forcing serfs to "run with the land"

 

Pardon the OT: Though serfs were tied to the land and their status was inherited, the only time I've seen the phrase "run with the land" used was in regard to covenants. Do you have an example referring to serfs?