Streaming?

[Tero]

Streaming made up 75% of the music industry's revenue last year. It's so lucrative that music streaming is where one of the fiercest battles against Apple's alleged monopoly is being waged. In March, Spotify announced it had filed an antitrust complaint against Apple with the European Commission. Spotify says the 30% commission on all App Store purchases is unfair because it forces Spotify users to pay more
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/03/72929012 ... usic-today

And Apple slowly disappearing iTunes

[pErvinalia]

What we need is a spotify of movies. With the disappearance of video stores it's impossible to get anything other than current favourites on Netflix and the like.

[Brian Peacock]

Yeah, then film makers can get paid as shoddily as musicians - and if it doesn't exist on Spotify-film then it doesn't exist at all.


iTunes broke the links between the music and the medium and between the listener and the artists. They developed models that kept consumers paying for a product they didn't actually own while avoiding the inconvenience of returning revenues to the artists. They commodified the listeners experience directly, and though the use of data profiling they both bound people to the platform and stopped them from being curious about music and who was making it - after all, iTunes consumers shouldn't be curious about something that iTunes might not be able to provide: there's no profit in that.

#fuckitunes

[pErvinalia]

Yeah, then film makers can get paid as shoddily as musicians

That's better than the zero they get now, now that it's impossible to find non-mainstream stuff. Spotify is great for small artists, as they would never get the exposure they get from Spotify. I follow and listen to heaps of small artists that I would never have heard of if it weren't for Spotify.

[pErvinalia]

I've been keen for years to rewatch a movie I saw once that I really enjoyed. But without video stores there's no way to get it (other than probably buying it outright). It not popular enough for either torrents or netflix et al. It's a fucked situation.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1372686/

[Brian Peacock]

Yeah, then film makers can get paid as shoddily as musicians

That's better than the zero they get now, now that it's impossible to find non-mainstream stuff. Spotify is great for small artists, as they would never get the exposure they get from Spotify. I follow and listen to heaps of small artists that I would never have heard of if it weren't for Spotify.

Yeah, that's right. Musicians should be grateful that then now have to give their music away for free because people doin't think it actually costs anything any more.

[pErvinalia]

They get more now than they would have. I'm talking about small artists. Larger ones get screwed, but they're larger, so they make more anyway.

[Brian Peacock]

Really? How so?

[pErvinalia]

What how so? Small artists? They have a global audience now, instead of a local following of groupies and losers.

[Brian Peacock]

Yeah, a global audience who haven't paid them for their music and who they'll never get to perform in front of. Spotify on the other hand has ads.

[pErvinalia]

Any pay is better than the zero they were getting. And the exposure is way better than what they were getting. I'm not sure how many more ways I can say it.

[Brian Peacock]

You're saying it just fine. But the upshot is that Spotify et al make millions off music through subscriptions and ads while the artists, it seems, only have to be grateful for the 'exposure.' "Yessiree boss. I's grateful boss."

The true success of iTunes and Spotify etc is in convincing consumers that music is basically a free commodity, and then telling artists that they have to conform to that reality in order to progress their 'career'. And then, as you say, when they do become 'successful' (lots of streams) they still get ripped off - but that's OK because they make some money than they didn't make before.

Seems to me that our true and rightful masters have simply programmed us to accept this as a 'natural order' - because we get some stuff which we think of as basically free. In reality it's our attention which is the product, not the music or film etc. iTunes was just the first to really make commodifying the experience of its users a viable prospect. Now that model is pretty much the norm.

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[pErvinalia]

You are missing my original point. The point is that you can get obscure stuff on Spotify, whereas Netflix you can't.

[Brian Peacock]

I didn't miss that point. I just chose to address another one you raised, the idea that,, "Spotify is great for small artists, as they would never get the exposure they get from Spotify."

[pErvinalia]

Which is clearly correct.