Steven Wilson Steven Wilson's thoughts on streaming music

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privateuniverse

2K Club - QQ Super Nova
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Steven Wilson posted this interesting item regarding streaming on his Facebook page today:

5 songs from To the Bone have now each had over 1 million streams on Spotify, with Pariah at over 2 million, while the album has a whole continues to rack up approximately 50,000 song streams every day. By Spotify standards these are actually still quite modest numbers, but they are increasing for me all the time. As someone who believes very much in music presented as a physical art-form I resisted making my albums available on streaming platforms until relatively recently, ...but my feelings have changed somewhat. There are a lot of arguments for and against streaming, but the reality is that for those of us who make and want to share music that we believe in we need to acknowledge that there is now a whole generation of listeners for whom if the music is not on streaming services it simply does not exist.

There's no simple answer to the issue of lost revenue to the musicians, but I believe that people who listen on streaming platforms fall in to roughly 3 categories: Firstly, those who never buy physical product and for whom if the music isn't there they will never hear it at all - as many of these people still presumably go to see live music, discovering a new artist might mean instead they will buy a ticket to see the concert and perhaps a t-shirt while they are there. The second category is the people who use streaming to discover new music but subsequently buy the CD or vinyl if they like it enough (I would fall into this category). Finally there are the people who have bought a physical copy of the album and simply use streaming services as a way to conveniently access the music they already own. In none of these scenarios can I see how revenue is lost to the artist that would otherwise be made, except to say of course that if streaming didn't exist the people who don't buy physical product would have to buy it to hear music. But it does, and it's not going to go away, so there doesn't seem much point dwelling on that.

As a musician working in the current era I feel I have to recognise streaming as a convenient and flexible way for people to find music, because there is a vast amount of it available, more than at any other time in history (some might say too much). And anything that enables listeners to discover the magic of music has to be a positive thing. The brief "golden" era of the second half of the 20th century when a living could be made by selling physical recordings of music appears to be over, the rest will just be mourning that fact and manoeuvring for position while we move into the next era. I think it is important to respond to the undeniable shift towards “on demand” media and to fight against it is to fail to recognise it’s potential and ultimately to be left behind.

I'm sure these thoughts will provoke some hopefully constructive discussion, and I take the opportunity to thank all my listeners for their support no matter how they choose to listen!
 
Wow, thanks for sharing privateuniverse. That's really interesting - it's like Steven Wilson is here posting on QQ!

I agree with the points he's made... Although I'm not a musician and therefore not directly affected by 'the streaming age' I share the same sentiments.

What I would say is that as useful as streaming is for getting your music out there - a simple solution presents itself in my eyes... Ok so you've got some great music and you want it to be heard/bought... We all know here on QQ the benefits of a great hi res multichannel mix. Why not break it up into accessible formats for all the fans? The record companies are not seeing this... :mad:

You could have -

Stream for royalties on Spotify/Apple Music/Amazon/Tidal/Youtube/etc
Physical AAC/MP3 downloads
CD
Vinyl
FLAC 5.1 download - There are no costs in distributing this so you could easily keep the costs to £10/$15
Blu Ray/SACD - All that content and the desired packaging for £20/$25

It seems so obvious to me that I almost want to form my own record company! :phones
 
Wow, thanks for sharing privateuniverse. That's really interesting - it's like Steven Wilson is here posting on QQ!

I agree with the points he's made... Although I'm not a musician and therefore not directly affected by 'the streaming age' I share the same sentiments.

What I would say is that as useful as streaming is for getting your music out there - a simple solution presents itself in my eyes... Ok so you've got some great music and you want it to be heard/bought... We all know here on QQ the benefits of a great hi res multichannel mix. Why not break it up into accessible formats for all the fans? The record companies are not seeing this... :mad:

You could have -

Stream for royalties on Spotify/Apple Music/Amazon/Tidal/Youtube/etc
Physical AAC/MP3 downloads
CD
Vinyl
FLAC 5.1 download - There are no costs in distributing this so you could easily keep the costs to £10/$15
Blu Ray/SACD - All that content and the desired packaging for £20/$25

It seems so obvious to me that I almost want to form my own record company! :phones
Yep, the only word you left out of your list is cannibalization. Remember it before you ever start any music company. It's a mean rotten way to eat your meal....... or I mean be eaten.
 
Why not break it up into accessible formats for all the fans? The record companies are not seeing this... :mad:

You could have -

Stream for royalties on Spotify/Apple Music/Amazon/Tidal/Youtube/etc
Physical AAC/MP3 downloads
CD
Vinyl
FLAC 5.1 download - There are no costs in distributing this so you could easily keep the costs to £10/$15
Blu Ray/SACD - All that content and the desired packaging for £20/$25

It seems so obvious to me that I almost want to form my own record company! :phones

when you start this record company, please include some cassettes, quadraphonic 8-tracks and quadraphonic reels!
 
Yep, the only word you left out of your list is cannibalization. Remember it before you ever start any music company. It's a mean rotten way to eat your meal....... or I mean be eaten.

Hmmm... Maybe with a bit of ketchup might not be so bad?!

I mean streaming is ok... But not really a big fan as a substitute for physically having it. If you don't pay every month you lose all your music!
 
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What would make me really happy would be having the capability of streaming from the cloud all my music in 5.1. Unlimited storage capacity, no more needs for backups, no more external disks at home.
I wish current players or receivers would have the capability of connecting to OneDrive, Google Drive or wherever. It does not even have to be real streaming, just mapping these drives in the same way as a USB.
We'll see this in the future, I envision!
 
I think for 1000 streams you would get -

Spotify $4
Apple Music $6
Tidal $28

Clearly bit of a fluctuation there! I'm not sure Spotify has actually posted a profit yet?! And that's the most popular at the mo!
 
I think for 1000 streams you would get -

Spotify $4
Apple Music $6
Tidal $28

Clearly bit of a fluctuation there! I'm not sure Spotify has actually posted a profit yet?! And that's the most popular at the mo!

If this website is accurate, then your figures are about right. (There's also this cool infographic. And this even cooler one.) Those rates ignore a lot of fine print, though--exemptions and special deals that the streaming services often make, especially with bigger labels, with no say-so from artists, whereby the services are allowed a certain number of streams for “free” or reduced rates, for "promotional" purposes, etc.

SW's taxonomy of the types of streaming consumers rings true, too. And obviously he's right: in this day and age, if you ignore streaming, you're ignoring a huge potential audience. But the revenue question isn't just a question of who would or wouldn't otherwise buy your music if streaming weren't an option; it's also a question of fair compensation. Wilson's post treats streaming as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition, where the streaming services unilaterally set the terms of payment. Under that model, the creators of the music have no voice in what they're paid for the use of their creations or their performances. (There's recently been some progress with respect to streaming royalties for songwriters and publishers, but that only came about because of corporate lobbying, I think. Most musicians, even most songwriters, don't own their own publishing rights.)

The other thing left out of the discussion here, though, is where the money really is in this whole business. It's not in selling music; it's in exploiting data. I know several independent musicians, like the jazz bassist & composer Ben Allison, who wouldn't have such a problem with Spotify and their ilk if Spotify would just share detailed data so that musicians could get a "granular" sense of who's interested in their music (by age, geography, etc., etc.)--and maybe even be in a position to build their own databases so that they could contact those fans or potential fans directly. But the services resolutely refuse to do that. In the same way that Facebook and Google and Amazon turn profits--or at least inflate their stock prices--from the gazillions of pieces of data that we all furnish them for free (so that they can then market things to us with ever more pinpoint accuracy), the streaming services' revenue models depend upon their exclusive ownership of the data that they collect from streaming, which they can then analyze, monetize, and refine in an endless loop. The money they collect from paid subscriptions is just gravy. The tiny portion of that money that they pass on to those who make their data-collection possible is a pittance.
 
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Over the last few years it seems to me that we are heading back to the early rip-off times in the 60s/70s (and before, think what happened to the early Blues musicians) where the artists only really earned money playing live, the record companies earned from the record sales, and if the artist saw any money from the record sales then they were lucky. In the early days of Streaming I had thought that they were a bit like radio stations, but they're not, you can pick what you want to hear, so more a kin to a Jukebox. I think a key thing is can the musician earn a decent living from their music by streaming alone? I doubt it.
 
A friend of mine was in an 80s band called Rain Parade, he showed me his Spotify check one time. $5 after many many plays.

I find Bandcamp much better than Spotify/Youtube etc. They give 85% of sales to the artists when people buy an album. The artist can decide for themselves how many times a track can be streamed free before you have to pay for it (1, 5, 10 or infinite).
But it's a shame Bandcamp will not support multichannel music; Transfer and hosting fees for big files are not cheap and I guess that's the reason! But mc music has to be offered and that is why I started Surroundmusic.one for streaming of a few tracks and sales of mc music. No money in it for me (besides expenses) but it will help the growth of surround music I believe.
I hope more artist will use Bandcamp (and surroundmusic.one;)) who support the artists a lot more and skip the recordcompanies and Spotify/Youtube etc. Maybe only put a few numbers of an album on Spotify/Youtube and full albums on Bandcamp. That would be a better world, lol
 
I’m starting to consider streaming. Why? I had a hard drive fail last week. This is my second one. Both my hard drives (Desktop) that failed were my backups. I don’t own any more Computers and rely solely on my iOS devices. I have two hard drives left (portable) and don’t know how much longer they will last. I prefer music copies that I can look at and hold in my hands but I purchase very few CD’s anymore including the ones that are package in Deluxe Box Sets. People look at convenience and not having to store music they purchase as the reason for streaming. Times are changing but I don’t want to settle for inferior sounding music either.
 
i totally agree with steven wilson, would only add that even if strams pay little so far, is a much more democratic way to distribute royalties. with physical copies an artist gets paid the same amount no matter if you listen to the record only once or 1000 times, if it’s your favourite record of all time or just a wrong buy you don’t even remember. with streaming i can finally give again royalties, although little, every time i hear my old favourite songs.


i would like to have quality streaming services in hi-res both stereo and multichannel available even if subscription will be higher. i have not been impressed by the hi-res quality of qobuz, tidal and spotify, i hope apple music will enter in the game as so far to my ears they deliver the best quality, probably because they receive better masters and their mp4 file compression is better than others. this is just what i hear on an lg v30 with high impedance rha cl750 headphones after comparing all services.


i have been a music collector for over 35 years, arriving to own over 8000 pop/rock records. i have started to use apple music two years ago, when i actually discovered that was possible to download all selected tracks on my phone hd (have a 400 gb micro-sd), and they would play as long as i am a subscriber which i guess will be forever. last year have started to sell my vinyls and cd collection as was not using it anymore and for other personal reasons, have sold over 4000 so far and i enjoy music even more than before, i have discovered lots of new artists on apple music i would have never found on amy other way and go to more live concerts.
 
... last year have started to sell my vinyls and cd collection as was not using it anymore and for other personal reasons, have sold over 4000 so far and i enjoy music even more than before, i have discovered lots of new artists on apple music i would have never found on amy other way and go to more live concerts.

go figure - You are making way more money off this music than the artists!
 
Sara Hickman posted this on Facebook last week...

"My new earnings notice (Oct-Dec 2017) shows "I Couldn't Help Myself" played 14,789 times (U.S., Italy, Canada, Japan, United Kingdom, United Arab Em., Belgium, etc) and here's what that provided:
$15.98"

As MANY artists, even big name acts, will testify: The REAL money is in touring and make NO mistake: the artists will never be properly remunerated for their music, especially when giant [read: GREEDY] conglomerates are in charge of distributing their music.
 
So I've been an eMusic subscriber pretty much since they started up in 1998. Their downloads are only 320kbps mp3s, but I still discover a lot of good music there without risking a ton of money, and if I find something I really like, then I buy a second copy in a higher-res format, physical or digital, somewhere else.

Today they announced that they were starting a Blockchain-based distribution service in an effort to make streaming more equitable for artists. A lot of it is probably hype and gobbledygook, and I have no idea how artists would feel about the percentages they're proposing, but if what they say is even half true and it pans out, this could be progress...

https://token.emusic.com/assets/pdf/eMusic_Light_Paper.pdf
 
Very interesting but probably do nothing for multichannel hires. It’s horrible to see how little artists receive. It’s an absolute ripoff. I don’t believe emusic’s proposed split is enough for artists either but better than current systems based on emusic’s document.

I think eventually we’ll see most artist sell/distribute directly and emusic’s proposed blockchain supports that model. Hopefully they will get support from both artists and fans. (I’d imagine record companies won’t like this one bit)

For us here on QQ, we need someone to license and distribute oop multichannel releases. Once that’s in place streaming (pay per play) and downloading (purchase) can be handled with the emusic’s blockchain or some other similar system without too much issue by the looks. But how does an entity go about licensing in the first place? Who owns the rights to even begin discussions on licensing for e-distribution?

Not that long ago streaming MCH wasn’t technically possible due to bandwidth; a 5.1 file is around 3 times the size of a stereo. Lossless is way larger than lossy mp3. If Netflix can stream HD video then someone can stream hires MCH. Streaming hardware is pretty inexpensive now too.

But is there any real market for MCH streaming/download anyway? I suspect it would grow if all the oop releases were available. Just about every AVR released over last few years has network/internet support. Many of those with surround systems for movies and TV might start listening to MCH music if it were available.
 
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