this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2023
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Man, a lot of people here don't understand how the music industry works. From the perspective of someone who's been loosely following the music industry, what I've learned is that it doesn't matter if Spotify gave up 2/3rds of their revenue, or 100% of it, the artists would still make fuck all.
Why?
The labels love taking their cuts and as a result, artists make very little. Instead of taking the blame for giving artists a <10% cut of the label's revenue from their music (my understanding is that it's pretty common for musicians to get <10%, sometimes <5% if you're on a particularly shitty label), the labels are blaming platforms like Spotify.
Now, I'm not saying that Spotify is blameless, however I think there's a lot of misdirection from the labels going on. I don't remember anyone complaining about pre-spotify services like Pandora Radio for not paying out enough when they were largely ad-supported, which is another reason I'm not totally buying the, "it's cause it's free" argument either.
Fuck, remember Pandora?
Labels are an outdated concept that needs to die. Now that you can find any music from just a quick search artists shouldn't have to rely on them, at least not as heavily, for advertising.
There was a very, very brief moment from about 2005 to 2011 or so where there was money to be made directly by artists on iTunes or the other music stores where the tracks were like 99 cents each.
But people stopped buying as soon as Spotify became popular, and now any artist that wants to release on Spotify without a label still doesn't make much money.
Relatively “large” truly independent bands like KNOWER are starting to give true home recording a base of proof of functionality.
Power to bandcamp.
You've got my heart working overtime. Louis Cole is a monster.
Why isn't there some kind of genre music search for all artists without a label, Foss of course. From what I understand, when you're starting out in music, getting people to hear it is the hardest part.
Artists aren't forced to sign a contract with a label. They do it because they want to.
They do it because the label will often invest a million dollars in the artist upfront before the songs are even available for the public to stream.
Good recording studios are expensive to hire. And if you want a video track to go with it... those are even worse.
Uhhhh, dunno about that one. Pretty sure it's public knowledge labels will go to almost any lengths to ensure artists cannot be independent, especially when they're small. Good recording quality is quite readily available in many large cities, either as a paid service (which sometimes is still outbid by labels), or through a public library. Many of the issues of "labels investing in artists" loop back around to "labels have made it physically impractical or impossible for the artist to invest in themselves".
Ehh, you've got a different but similar problem these days. Before, it was hard to get the word out so even finding new bands was difficult. Now, there are so many artists that you've got to find a way to stand out. Still need marketing. That's what labels provide.
You don't need to give up the rights to your music to a third party for them to do marketing or handling legal matters for you. You just need to pay them for their services. And you should be able to choose from several competitors in the market, based on what they offer and what you want/need/can afford. So yeah, record labels shouldn't exist anymore.
It's not needed, but for some reason artists keep signing, so there is probably something they provide that makes it worth it
It's because it's the only game in town.