The Samsung deal does not sound like the plan of a man who was depending on Spotify for revenue. (The album went on to sell a million traditional, non-Galaxy copies in the first two weeks.) But this is only inference; there have been many explicit complaints about the streaming service. A few days ago, the collaborators Nigel Godrich and Thom Yorke removed a batch of the albums they’ve been involved with from Spotify. Godrich took to Twitter to explain why Atoms For Peace, Ultraísta, and Yorke’s solo album “The Eraser” would no longer be available.This Storify thread condenses tweets from both Godrich and Yorke, who was less vocal, into an adequate summary. (To read every single thing Godrich and Yorke tweeted on this subject, visit their respective Twitter feeds.) The shortest version is that the Spotify model does not favor new artists. The larger grumbling about streaming services in the musician community is that the various services, which are governed by fluid and complex laws that are changing as we speak, favor nobody but the major labels that helped fund and grow some of them.
David Lowery, of the rock band Cracker, recently posted a royalty statement from the “internet-radio” site Pandora and then posted similar statements from satellite and terrestrial radio stations, exposing the extremely low revenues he received from Pandora. Which should probably concern you, at least a little.
On Twitter, Godrich’s main point was that Spotify is geared to reward catalogue recordings (he mentions EMI’s golden pig, Pink Floyd) that have long since recouped any costs and are profitable for labels. The rates for these catalogue streams—though most are unaware of this—are higher than rates offered to smaller, newer acts.
The issue beneath all the complaints about micropayments is fundamental: What are recordings now? Are they an artistic expression that musicians cannot be compensated for but will create simply out of need? Are they promotional tools? What seems clear is that streaming arrangements, like those made with Spotify, are institutionalizing a marginal role for the recordings that were once major income streams for working musicians—which may explain the artist Damon Krukowski’s opinion that music should simply be given away, circumventing this entire system. But first, some words from Godrich, from his Twitter feed, condensed and edited for clarity.
by Sasha Frere-Jones, New Yorker | Read more:
Image: Spotify
