[rectang]

TuneCore changing its pricing structure a number of years ago is probably the classic example.

An artist can jump ship to another distribution broker, but there are a lot of downsides such as losing play counts and breaking links.

Can any of the distribution brokers be trusted to act in an artist's interest indefinitely? There's just an inherent problem with that.

[neka]

If you retain your ISRCs and UPCs when moving from one distributor to another, links and stream counts will remain as is.

Surely that's an issue solved by the market, if there is a distributor that is reliable & fairly priced then people will move to use and stay with them. I think the current issue is that a lot of the big name distributors are marketers first, distributors second.

[rectang]

Since when are non-profits not part of the market?

No commercial distributor can hold out forever against the temptation expanding into marketing. That's as hopeless as wishing that ISPs would stay as dumb pipes.

There should be more competition: a non-profit which offers fewer features but which you aren't constantly wondering when it will flip and screw you over, versus more featureful and slicker commercial competition.

[neka]

They're not, but I don't see how it being non-profit would make a difference to the problems you're suggesting. You can be for-profit and still have a sustainable, fair and innovative model.

By marketing I mean marketing themselves as a service, not marketing the music they handle.

[rectang]

> a sustainable, fair and innovative model

Until ownership or management changes. Or has a change of heart. Or gets squeezed by an aggressive competitor.

Long term relationships with companies are fraught. Establishing vendor lockin followed by exploitation is a proven-successful business stratagem.

Once it becomes expensive for customers to leave a service, it is perpetually tempting to dial up the cost of the service until just below the point where customers bolt. The more painful you can make it to leave, the more you can wring from them.

Even if the company you're doing business with isn't exploiting you today, you'd be well advised to check back tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that...

Or better, to avoid forming such long term relationships with entities that are perpetually at risk of going bad.

I worked in the music industry for 6 years. There are so many people in that space who want to do the right thing, who attempt to do something "sustainable, fair and innovative" — yet the marketplace sadly and stubbornly resists their efforts, corrupting them or crushing them. Where are all the benevolent record labels that ought to exist, by your logic?

By having this entity be a member-governed cooperative, you take on a different set of problems. (I've served on the board of a large 501(c)(3) so I'm well acquainted with the frustrations.) But at least you avoid the terrible misalignment of incentives that comes from relying on a profit-driven middleman over the long term.

[neka]

A lot of the new players (~past decade) are VC funded and/or starting off in a highly saturated market, needing to landgrab as many artists & labels as possible to establish themselves. So they end up prioritising marketing their service via slick onboarding, PR campaigns, unsustainable offers (see Stem) and cash advances. A couple years down the line they usually fall short of their core model or pivot, as you say, dialling up the cost of the service.

Always enjoy seeing services tout the 'keep 100% of your royalties' when they pipe everything through a third party like CI who take a percentage upfront.

Yes I've seen a handful of services across the years with the "sustainable, fair and innovative" USP, often run by volunteers and withering out after a short time. I'm not too sure on the potential of these as they end up being top heavy, with more artists and labels onboard than paying customers / fans. The only people that seem to have got this balance right is Bandcamp, at the cost of 15% of your revenue.

I've dealt with a distributor who have been around for decades (physical & digital) and sit under the radar, not focussed on growth, soley relying on word of mouth referrals with high profile, revenue generating clients for years. They're not the cheapest on %age, but are reliable, transparent and are well respected for the curation of clients (no open door policy) so as with everything - you get what you pay for. So they do exist, but you won't hear them shouting their own name.

As for labels, I know of plenty who offer a fair deal for artists who end up staying with them in the long term. It's just the bad apples, usually the majors, who have the leverage to offer unscrupulous deals which all comes out in the press when the artists realise how bad the deal was years down the line and they're contracted in for another 10 years.