I have my own written SOPs for how I make personal back ups of commercial media I own (purchased licensed instance because you never really own it even after paying for access). In this case I enjoy maintaining a media archive but my choice of words provides a fully legal context.
What I find interesting is the wildly differing approach to piracy between the RIAA and the MPAA. The music industry’s current approach is to make their product as available everywhere as much as possible so that it requires far greater effort to pirate the media than to otherwise consume it. As a result piracy is rarer than it used to be and they are making more money than they used to. The movie industry still acts the way the music industry did in the 90s.
> As a result piracy is rarer than it used to be and they are making more money than they used to. The movie industry still acts the way the music industry did in the 90s.
Exactly this. And not only they do more money with digital content, see how concerts are always full and prices skyrocketed due to the demand!
The movie industry has surely more costs that music one, _but_ they act like children who lost their toys. And the book industry isn't that far away too.. a lot of content is behind stupid DRMs and what happens if the license server disappears one day?
> what happens if the license server disappears one day
Minor nitpick, "when" the license server disappears one day. They have no reason to do right by their customers when they go out of business, break old infrastructure that "only a small percentage of users were using", or just feel like they can get away with it and sell you the same product again on their new platform.
It has happened before and it will happen again, modern video games are notorious for this, while you can still play multiplayer games from the early 00s.
And let's not get started with content being outright ripped from our digital products, such as soundtracks being removed from video games after their opaque licensing deals expire, even though you supposedly "own" them in your digital library. Or old movies & TV episodes being removed because they're politically incorrect in the current age.
Is this true? From what I've read musicians are hardly making anything off of streaming whereas they used to make much more prior to the popularization of Spotify. And AFAIK Spotify has never had a profitable quarter.
Disney sends me someone else's tax forms and information every year to my Gmail address.
There's a couple spreadsheets on their royalties for songs and their streaming revenue broken out by region, then by provider. It's for multiple items that get a couple million listens a year, one song has 7 million in one month in the UK, of which "she" sees 50% revenue. Totally payout for the 7 million month? 54 cents USD.
These are songs for a mid 00s - early 10s animated TV series.
I assume "they" in the parent refers to the labels.
Almost certainly one of the things that allows streaming to be priced in a range that's palatable for consumers is that most artists make less money than ever. At $50/month, it presumably wouldn't fly. As it is, it's probably priced in about the range that a lot of people spent on physical media in pre-Napster days. (And streaming seems not to be a money printing press for at least some of the streaming services either.)
Paid streaming is somewhat lower than peak CD but about the same as peak vinyl (inflation adjusted). There are peaks and valleys but consumer music spend hasn't changed that much over time.
Because streaming in pretty much the distribution channel today. Even if they sell a few CDs at live shows, increasingly younger people don't even have a CD player. And very few people buy MP3s.
When the artists only get a couple hundred dollars per year from their streams, why even bother putting the music on Spotify? If your listeners don't want to buy your mp3s or CDs when that's the only option, then what's the point?
Compare it to any other profession. Let's say a bricklayer decides to go work for a company. He works the entire year and builds houses for many people. Then he's paid a hundred dollars. He'd be an idiot to keep doing it. And he says that if he started his own brick laying business he wouldn't get even a single client. Okay, but why keep doing this?
It’s advertising to drive people to concerts and merch.
Of course, generally people make music because they like making music, and streaming is a way to share it. If it connects with people, and they blow up, great. But if that’s the only drive they’ll probably have a bad time.
The same could be said about GitHub… why would anyone put their code up there for free, or work on these hobby projects, when they aren’t making money from it, or just get $100 in donations per year? It’s fun, the people enjoy it, they want to share the work they’ve done, and for some it’s a way to advertise themselves and what they can do.
Not everything needs to make someone a multimillionaire, especially in the arts.
Okay, but why does the artists have to make Spotify multibillionaires with their art?
I'm talking specifically about the artists that are complaining about getting a raw deal from Spotify. And I agree 0% with your assessment that just because they are not happy with a hundred dollars per year means that they demanded to be multimillionaires. Maybe people just should to get their fair share for their work?
I am friends with some career musicians and I am forced to pirate their music if I want to listen to it, because they refuse to sell their music online and only have it on streaming services. Which gives them almost nothing in return.
> Okay, but why does the artists have to make Spotify multibillionaires with their art?
ghaff already covered why: because Spotify is the distribution channel.
40 years ago, they would've put their music on the radio. Today, they put it on Spotify. Why? Because if they don't, very few people are ever going to even know they exist.
And if you think the fact that Spotify is giving them a terrible deal means they shouldn't engage with them, then I'll point to any of a dozen other examples today of massive corporations profiting excessively off of people who have very little choice but to engage with them. Being able to choose to do otherwise, and remain in the music business, is a very privileged position to be in.
I'd say streaming is the distribution channel. Apple (especially because their bundles) and maybe Amazon probably have opinions about Spotify specifically being the distribution channel. But that's probably being pedantic because the deals are almost certainly similar.
If you're not getting paid, you're not doing "business".
Yes, there are many other examples of companies having exploratory practices the same way as Spotify. That still does not explain very well why people put up with it.
If a farmer exploits a migrant worker, the migrant worker gets paid enough for shelter and food. He is depending on that job for surviving. When artists are exploited by Spotify, the money they usually receive is nowhere close to paying for shelter or food, so they have to survive by other means anyway. Keeping their music on Spotify or removing it from Spotify doesn't make any difference for their livelihood.
Because the other thing Spotify gets them is exposure. Whether or not it's worth what they have to deal with from Spotify, I have no idea—but I can absolutely see many artists putting up with it in hopes that being heard on Spotify will get people to buy their merch, come to their concerts, etc.
Musicians/DJs/etc. also often do corporate gigs to eat. I'm sure they'd often much rather be playing for passionate fans in a bar than playing at some event where half the time the attendees are largely ignoring them except to wish they would turn down the volume so they could have a conversation.
Somewhat different situation than the Spotify case which is arguably mostly an advertising channel while corporate gigs actually pay directly. But creatives of all stripes doing things they'd rather not do so they can live, do what they want to do, and have a sliver of a sliver of a chance to breakout is extremely common.
Discovery is one important reason. Not that that's guaranteed to work. You probably need to do your own marketing--including playing at local bars etc. for pennies and tips. Of course, the same things is mostly true these days for writers with a publishing contract.
People pursue creative pursuits for a lot of different reasons, including personal fulfillment. But you pretty much have to win the lottery to make a decent full-time living off of it. People may somewhat enjoy laying bricks--but it's a job they expect to make a living at. If they can't, they'll try to do something else.
I get it, but I just think it's strange. Like it would be wrong for a brick layer to let himself be taken totally advantage of, even if he enjoys laying bricks.
If it's for personal fulfilment, artists can be happy with the sales they can make on their own, even if the numbers are small. Or even give their music away for free, if they want to get as many listeners as possible. But what is the sense in letting a billion dollar company exploit you and make bank on your work, while paying you almost nothing in return?
Imagine if other professions were like that? "Just keep laying the bricks for free for my company, and maybe one day you'll be a famous bricklayer and I'll pay you millions".
You keep returning to bricklayers and that's a really odd way to analogise it. The bricklayer is tangibly giving away the results of his labour - once he's finished building a house, he doesn't have it any more. Musicians are not giving Spotify their music! They're not sitting there slaving away at an album, handing it over to Spotify, and being left with nothing. It's still their album.
If musicians were actually left without their music, like the bricklayer, I'd agree with you and I think so would most people. But conversely, if a bricklayer really loved building houses, spent a great deal of time building houses, owned all of them himself and they were empty and he was doing nothing with them, and a company came up to him and said "hey, we like your houses, we have a business letting people go on tours through houses and we make money off it, would you let us run tours through your houses in exchange for a cut of the profits, which will probably be very small but could be large?" then I don't think you can be too scandalised by him taking the deal and making at least some money off these houses that he'd already built and was doing nothing with! Even if you think selling photos of the houses directly to customers is a better model! Especially since he can still do that!
Recorded music of any kind has, for musicians, been nothing more than a way of basically advertising for quite some time now. The money is in concert tickets, which is why they go on tour so much. The record labels keep almost all the profit from streaming or CD sales, but the musicians keep a significant chunk of the money from concert tickets and merchandise sales.
> The music industry’s current approach is to make their product as available everywhere as much as possible so that it requires far greater effort to pirate the media than to otherwise consume it.
You consume it by going to youtube and playing the video.
You "pirate" it by saving the youtube video.
Passing the -x flag to youtube-dl will ignore the video and save just the audio.
The difference is that music labels and artists are making up the difference with other streams of revenue, like live show ticket sales, merch, and sync licensing, all of which have gone up as recorded music revenue has flatlined or gone down.
Movies are not doing well with any alternate revenue streams yet. Ticket sales and merch are way down.
Far from me to defend DRM (which ought to be illegal), but a major reason why it's more prevalent in movies and books compared to songs and video games is likely because for the first ones they are typically only enjoyed once.
What I find interesting is the wildly differing approach to piracy between the RIAA and the MPAA. The music industry’s current approach is to make their product as available everywhere as much as possible so that it requires far greater effort to pirate the media than to otherwise consume it. As a result piracy is rarer than it used to be and they are making more money than they used to. The movie industry still acts the way the music industry did in the 90s.