That was the funniest thing I’d heard all day. Just love someone who doesn’t take themselves that serious.
I’ve been with Qobuz for about a year now and tbh I’d be happy going back to my cd rips or buying hi res files. I find these streaming services are becoming more ruthless than the record companies.
Neil Young removed his music from Tidal, so is it the beginning of the end there, or is this just another FUD article?
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Norma you should give all of the streaming services a try, Tidal isn’t the only option and doesn’t offer the best quality available with Naim.
For example, Qobuz pays higher royalty to musicians and a three month free trial is available if you do a quick search.
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Than who? Do you have some evidence you can cite for this assertion?
Qobuz is rarely included in the “streaming service payouts” articles, the only one that I am aware of is this one, with 2018 data, which indeed does show them paying considerably more per stream than even Tidal (which is better than all others), but it is unknown how reliable this number is:
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Thanks @Suedkiez – the problem with Quboz is that most of the distros don’t deal with it for some reason, so artists/managers/labels have to deal with the company directly – an extremely frustrating process. I’ve been trying for three years without success…
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@TheKevster what % of sale of a cd or download does the artist get and how do they calculate when it’s paid. You see lots of stuff that’s been reduced and sitting in discount bins for months, has the artist already been paid for this stock?
For physical sales of CDs or LPs, that very much depends on the individual contract the artist has with their label Pete. Established artists, who have more bargaining power, tend to get more. My artists get 50% of the sale of the sale price once costs have been deducted. But that’s unusual.
Sales royalties are usually paid twice a year, sometimes quarterly.
Very early in their career, Pink Floyd and their manager Steve O’Rourke actually negotiated a lower royalty rate with EMI in return for unlimited studio time at Abbey Road. That was a very canny decision, because the projects from DSOTM onwards that catapulted them into the stratosphere required months in the studio. Of the major heritage acts, only Led Zeppelin – thanks to Peter Grant – got decent royalties on record sales. Even the Beatles didn’t start getting decent royalties until the 1970s. A lot of groups now own their masters, with the labels relegated to manufacturing, marketing and distribution duties, so they get very fair money. Up and coming acts are still ripped off massively.
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Renowned indie producer Steve Albini wrote this article in 1993 during the indie heydays, when majors searched for the next big thing after Nirvana. It is somewhat outdated now, probably (though if it’s worse or better, I cannot say). More recently, Albini has praised internet distribution as being massively better than the situation was back then. In any case, it probably still shows accurately how tough it is for upcoming artists:
https://genius.com/Steve-albini-the-problem-with-music-annotated
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Sorry, what’s D2C?
That’s a crying shame - I really like Qobuz for all its quirks, but sounds as though they are not doing themselves any favours. (Hmm its/they???)
Direct-to-consumer, cutting out the middlemen like Neil Young does. Which requires some investment into an own platform, but that could be a simple website with downloads, and there are the intermediate variants with smaller middlemen like Bandcamp
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Far better for artists.
Is there a platform supporting this which is readily accessible to seasoned and new artists, as that would seem to be the place to be rather than a streaming service paying a pittance? The platform would get a small payment but the artist retains a higher precentage - can’t see what’s not to like about that apart from the fact you’d need multiple subscriptions. Veryt inefficient for individual artists to have to devise their own platforms.
Ideally a single platform could allow you to subscribe to multiple artists with a small fee per play for tracks (perhaps with unlimited plays after so many) split heavily in favour of the artist. Artists get most of the fees per play but platform benefits from hundreds of smaller cuts per individual user. Perhaps I should patent this!
I think you are describing Bandcamp, more or less 
except that they don’t (yet?) have streaming. Of course, Tidal was meant to be a bit similar, though more leaning towards the streaming service model rather than the D2C model.
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They do have streaming @Suedkiez - you have to buy the recording in question first. Which is great.
@Alley_Cat The cut Bandcamp takes isn’t large, and once a month they have “Bandcamp Friday” on which they waive their fees, giving artists and labels a bigger cut. Next one is on Friday 4th February.
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Except I think that most youngsters don’t want to download ‘to own’ unless it’s temporary to ‘play/stream on the go without mobile data usage’.
I haven’t used Bandcamp for many years and they no longer recognise my account credentials 
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Oh OK, but that’s a bit different to what I meant. The cool thing about streaming services is the ability to listen to many different albums and artists with a flat fee. E.g., I always wanted to learn more about Dylan, and not just the big hits, but the sheer number of releases and different styles made it difficult, and I won’t buy 50 albums to figure out which 8 out of those I really like. That’s good for Dylan, but I can’t do this with all the music I am interested in. This option came with streaming, and it was great, and I subsequently purchased those I liked a lot.
Generally, with all the (often deserved) hate for the middlemen from streaming to labels to functions like lawyers, I think we should remember that they all provide valuable services, in principle. Not every artist wants to figure out distribution, merch, and whatnot. The problem starts when the total of fees becomes 95% of the artist’s revenue and they are left with a pittance. Unfortunately, it’s been often like this in all the history of “popular” music, but that’s not new with streaming services.
With Bandcamp you can “try befoore you buy” so there is no risk. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.
Nobody has an objection to middlemen, big labels etc. As you say, they provide a service. What people do object to is the egregious amount they charge artists for this service.
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But that’s on the Bandcamp site with the web UI, no? Well I guess similar in their app, never used that one. It’s not the same as in Roon with Qobuz, for instance. On the website it’s fine for a quick check for music I am familiar with. But with music I am not used to I usually need more time and many plays, and making it part of my life before I figure out what it means to me, or not. The web UI doesn’t lend itself to that.
Sure, I just meant that this sometimes tends to be forgotten