Jake Friedberg. What do you do when
you’re not making enough money holding down one job? Well, you get another one;
this is exactly what many musicians are doing because of the declining amount
of monetary returns coming back to them. This monetary decline for the
musicians that I am referring to is due to programs such as Pandora, Spotify,
GrooveShark, and many others; all of these programs allow anybody to listen to
their music for free by streaming it through the internet (free-on their most
standard plans); so although you can listen to the songs whenever you want, you
have no ownership of them. The way that programs as such make their money is
all by hosting advertisements, but the profits from allowing ads on your
website or app is extremely lower than the profits from selling music records
or charging for ownership on the download like ITunes does. This led to
renovations in musicians contracts with their record labels, the record labels
showed their true greed and arranged it so that almost all of the money that
comes from these platforms goes to them; leaving musicians high and dry. It is
this situation that has driven lots of musicians to pick up other professions
whether it is acting, producing, getting sponsored, starting a business or
becoming a major shareholder in another.
Don’t get me wrong there are many
musicians who still get paid a huge amount of money, but it’s typically not
from their music. On the 2014 list of highest paid musicians you have people
like Dr. Dre, Justin Bieber, and Beyonce; lets dig a little bit further into
what side projects that they are part of.
To start with Dr. Dre, he is the co-founder of the very popular beats
headphones, you can see somebody wearing them just abut anywhere you go. But
Dr. Dre did something in 2014 to boost beats revenues through the roof, he and
his co-founder sold Beats to Apple for $3 billion racking him $620 million in
2014. Now Justin Beiber is not just a
musician either, he and his business manager go around and invest in start up
companies making them both venture capitalists, they do this through Google
Ventures. Justin Bieber has struck gold not only in music but also his choice
of investments. He has put in a lot of money in companies such as TinyChat, A-Grade,
Stamped, and his big one; Spotify giving him a 2014 return of $80 million. And Finally without including
what her husband Jay-Z made, Beyonce pulled in $115 million in 2014 she did
this partly through her tour in which Pepsi and H&M endorsed her directly
on top of many other companies. But other then getting endorsed, she has
started a vegan food delivery company called 22 Days Nutrition, has created an
HBO documentary called “Life is a Dream” and produced and stared in the movie
“Dream girls.” It is from side projects like these that really make these musicians
the big bucks. You see lots of successes from musicians who start companies and
this is because they already have a loyal fan base and the further help of
other connections that can help them get started in their solo business
endeavors.
The video above is great
explanation of the truth about how much money the typical musician makes from
their music sales. It squashes the misconception that their wealth is generated
from creating music.
There have been many musicians who have been outspoken on
this issue of unfair pay one of the leading spokespeople is Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift has gone far enough to forbid
Spotify from streaming her music, she has said that "Music is art, and art is
important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should
be paid for." 30 days prior to her pulling her music; Spotify reported
that 16 million users played her songs and over 19 million users saved her
music to their playlists. Spotify’s response to her comment was "we hope she’ll change her mind and join us in building a new
music economy that works for everyone. We believe fans should be able to listen
to music wherever and whenever they want, and that artists have an absolute
right to be paid for their work and protected from piracy. That’s why we pay
nearly 70% of our revenue back to the music community." Even though
Spotfiy is justifying their business model in this statement, Taylor Swift is
not alone in her harsh feelings toward the ‘new music economy’ that Spotfy is
creating. Radiohead’s Thom Yorke has complained in depth saying that the
royalty payments from Spotify does not suffice with the substance that these
musicians are giving them. But then
again it is not just Spotify paying musicians poorly. Aloe Blacc wrote an
article critically insulting Pandora for giving him a terribly low royalty
payment for his hard work. His exact words are “Consider
the fact that it takes roughly one million spins on Pandora
for a songwriter to earn just $90.
Avicii’s release “Wake Me Up!” that I co-wrote and sing, for example, was the
most streamed song in Spotify history and the 13th most played song on Pandora
since its release in 2013, with more than 168 million streams in the US. And
yet, that yielded only $12,359 in Pandora domestic royalties— which were then
split among three songwriters and our publishers. In return for co-writing a
major hit song, I’ve earned less than $4,000 domestically from the largest
digital music service.” That is quite a statement. The fact of the matter is
that the perceived glamorous lifestyle of musicians is coming to an end. And being a successful musician no longer
means to actually be good at music; instead it seems it is more about getting
sponsored or doing side-work to grab public attention. Now if musicians do not find
other means of income they can make as less than a schoolteacher.
Works Cited
General/popular
publication article
"Justin
Bieber, Venture Capitalist: The Forbes Cover Story." Forbes.
Forbes Magazine, n.d. Web. 21 Mar. 2015.
Davis
Gaitth. “15 Muscians who Run Buisness Empires” Rolling Stone N.p., 2
Feb. 2014 Web.
“Spotfiy
Explained.” Spotify for Artists Spotify Explained Comments. N.p., n.d.
Web. 12 Mar. 2015
course
readings
"Taylor
Swift Abruptly Pulls Entire Catalog From Spotify." Rolling Stone.
N.p., 03 Nov. 2014. Web. 21 Mar. 2015.
“The
World's Highest-Paid Musicians Of 2014." Forbes. Forbes
Magazine, n.d. Web. 19 Mar. 2015.
media
example
"Record
Contracts from Artifact." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 20 Mar.
2015.
trade
publication article
"Aloe
Blacc: Streaming Services Need to Pay Songwriters Fairly | WIRED."Wired.com.
Conde Nast Digital, n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2015.
My blog will tie together all of this week’s blogs. Streaming music from a seemingly endless library of knowledge is absolutely the future of music consumption. I remember how happy I was freshmen year when I found out that the ABL has greatest hit CD’s of a ton of artist I wanted to try out. I would let them download onto my iTunes as I would do my work. When I went back to my dorm I would check them out. It was a 5 hour process that would have been costly if I didn’t have the library. What was I getting? A bunch of the artists “best” work. I’ve always loved the back wall stuff, as that was the nature of why I listened to music. That’s what Spotify has, all the great songs you never heard about. One of the benefits of internet is an informed public, that’s a metaphor for what Spotify does to a music listener. It is a flat price, and to quote from Spotify’s statement in Jakes blog “you can listen to whatever you want, wherever your want”.
ReplyDeleteThe second impact of streaming services is that people no longer had to deal with downloading and storage of music on their iPods/iPhones. With streaming there is no commitment to a song, it plays as it downloads and you can still make offline playlists just in case. Note that you do have to pay for Spotify Premium and whatever WIFI you used. These are the reasons that “Total video and audio streams jumped from 50 billion in the first half of 2013 to 70 billion this year, an increase of 42 percent, while download sales continue to bust, with albums dropping 15 percent and tracks 13 percent” (Knopper).
There is no doubt that the Spotify model benefits the music fans. Every element contributes to cheaper music, more music and easier music. What makes the model unstable is what it is doing to the artists, music labels and businesses involved with old music infrastructures like MP3 players and record stores. Jake’s topic about artist doing other things to make money serves as a nice solution to the problem for both artists and the larger music companies. With the enhanced music listening experience that Spotify gives to fans, comes a stronger fandom to the band itself. That is to suggest that even though they aren’t making as much money on record sales they could take advantage of their advanced image. You don’t have to be an entrepreneur like Dr. Dre to do this. Live events and merchandise!
We talked about the money making power of live TV events, the same is true of live concerts. “The Eagles, who earned $100 million on the strength of their History Of The Eagles tour. Bon Jovi ranks fourth with $82 million and Bruce Springsteen rounds out the top five with $81 million; both Jersey-born rockers grossed millions per night on successful arena tours”. The DMB/ Grateful Dead model of the live events and T-shirts is another example of this. There is still plenty of money to be made in music without overpriced iTunes songs.
knopper, Steve. "Streaming Is King as Downloads Fade Away." Rolling Stone. 7 July 2014. Web.
"The World's Highest-Paid Musicians of 2014." Forbes. 10 Dec. 2014. Web.
My blog will tie together all of this week’s blogs. Streaming music from a seemingly endless library of knowledge is absolutely the future of music consumption. I remember how happy I was freshmen year when I found out that the ABL has greatest hit CD’s of a ton of artist I wanted to try out. I would let them download onto my iTunes as I would do my work. When I went back to my dorm I would check them out. It was a 5 hour process that would have been costly if I didn’t have the library. What was I getting? A bunch of the artists “best” work. I’ve always loved the back wall stuff, as that was the nature of why I listened to music. That’s what Spotify has, all the great songs you never heard about. One of the benefits of internet is an informed public, that’s a metaphor for what Spotify does to a music listener. It is a flat price, and to quote from Spotify’s statement in Jakes blog “you can listen to whatever you want, wherever your want”.
ReplyDeleteThe second impact of streaming services is that people no longer had to deal with downloading and storage of music on their iPods/iPhones. With streaming there is no commitment to a song, it plays as it downloads and you can still make offline playlists just in case. Note that you do have to pay for Spotify Premium and whatever WIFI you used. These are the reasons that “Total video and audio streams jumped from 50 billion in the first half of 2013 to 70 billion this year, an increase of 42 percent, while download sales continue to bust, with albums dropping 15 percent and tracks 13 percent” (Knopper).
There is no doubt that the Spotify model benefits the music fans. Every element contributes to cheaper music, more music and easier music. What makes the model unstable is what it is doing to the artists, music labels and businesses involved with old music infrastructures like MP3 players and record stores. Jake’s topic about artist doing other things to make money serves as a nice solution to the problem for both artists and the larger music companies. With the enhanced music listening experience that Spotify gives to fans, comes a stronger fandom to the band itself. That is to suggest that even though they aren’t making as much money on record sales they could take advantage of their advanced image. You don’t have to be an entrepreneur like Dr. Dre to do this. Live events and merchandise!
We talked about the money making power of live TV events, the same is true of live concerts. “The Eagles, who earned $100 million on the strength of their History Of The Eagles tour. Bon Jovi ranks fourth with $82 million and Bruce Springsteen rounds out the top five with $81 million; both Jersey-born rockers grossed millions per night on successful arena tours”. The DMB/ Grateful Dead model of the live events and T-shirts is another example of this. There is still plenty of money to be made in music without overpriced iTunes songs.
knopper, Steve. "Streaming Is King as Downloads Fade Away." Rolling Stone. 7 July 2014. Web.
"The World's Highest-Paid Musicians of 2014." Forbes. 10 Dec. 2014. Web.