Another great article... Eleven months ago I wrote an essay ‘To stream of not to stream’ which discusses this very subject. It was written before the latest horror from Spotify was revealed. We have not distributed our new album to any audio only streaming services and have sold more physical merch and driven fans to Bandcamp (and what do we do about that situation) and YouTube. It’s worked. https://vibes.starlite-campbell.com/p/to-stream-or-not-to-stream
It may be marginally better, but I think the general idea is that none of the current available streaming models are adequate for working musicians. To spend time equivocating between their small differences is to ignore the larger issue, that they are all unscrupulous and run by neo-feudal tech-barons who don't believe in paying artists.
I'd go even one step further. Many simply don't believe in art. It's content to them. This is even more pronounced now with LLMs, as they believe they have mechanised art. The philistinism within that culture is staggering, and differentiates them from most other elites in history who at least acknowledged the power of art.
Brutal, but I think necessary, from Tom Hodgkinson at the Idler on Sam Bankman-Fried...
Perhaps the most awful and dumb thing about him, however, was (or is) his philistinism. Following their investment in him, Sequoia Capital commissioned a financial journalist to produce a hagiographic profile of him for their website (since deleted). In the piece Bankman-Fried makes the following statement:
“I’m very sceptical of books. I don’t want to say that no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close that. I think, if you wrote a book, you fucked up, and it should have been a six paragraph blog post.”
Hear that Peacock, Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Joyce and Woolf: you fucked up.
Another great article... Eleven months ago I wrote an essay ‘To stream of not to stream’ which discusses this very subject. It was written before the latest horror from Spotify was revealed. We have not distributed our new album to any audio only streaming services and have sold more physical merch and driven fans to Bandcamp (and what do we do about that situation) and YouTube. It’s worked. https://vibes.starlite-campbell.com/p/to-stream-or-not-to-stream
So, is You Tube Music better?
Or YouTube which anyone can access and embed.
It may be marginally better, but I think the general idea is that none of the current available streaming models are adequate for working musicians. To spend time equivocating between their small differences is to ignore the larger issue, that they are all unscrupulous and run by neo-feudal tech-barons who don't believe in paying artists.
I'd go even one step further. Many simply don't believe in art. It's content to them. This is even more pronounced now with LLMs, as they believe they have mechanised art. The philistinism within that culture is staggering, and differentiates them from most other elites in history who at least acknowledged the power of art.
Bleak, but rings true, although I don't really know any of these people, so can only judge from their actions...
Brutal, but I think necessary, from Tom Hodgkinson at the Idler on Sam Bankman-Fried...
Perhaps the most awful and dumb thing about him, however, was (or is) his philistinism. Following their investment in him, Sequoia Capital commissioned a financial journalist to produce a hagiographic profile of him for their website (since deleted). In the piece Bankman-Fried makes the following statement:
“I’m very sceptical of books. I don’t want to say that no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close that. I think, if you wrote a book, you fucked up, and it should have been a six paragraph blog post.”
Hear that Peacock, Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Joyce and Woolf: you fucked up.
Apple Music is.
Thanks so much for sharing and clarifying this unbelievably nonsensical situation.
Wow, I’m a bit surprised by the responses to this news on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleMusic/s/ML0DZjQBCa
You write:
"And let me tell you, up in the blue stratosphere it’s not going so great either. Gross earnings from Spotify remain an average $0.003 a stream"
In the blue block it's up to 1B streams (1.000.000.000).
This means: 1.000.000.000 * $0.003 = $3 Million
3 Million US$ is not too bad I think.
Yes the point of the illustration is that those at the very top are doing fine
Yes, but "up in the blue stratosphere it’s not going so great either" sounds like that even at the very top they are NOT doing fine.