[nmfisher]

That may be true, but every musician/smaller label I come across is saying that Spotify is killing independent music.

The economics of streaming mean that the long-tail just isn't commercially viable. People no longer buy music outright, so that leaves practically no way to make money selling music.

If you deeply care about music, how can you work for an organization that, according to all musicians, is destroying music?

[tsimionescu]

Music has existed for a few thousand years before the idea of selling recordings of it started existing.

Spotify is doing nothing* to hurt live shows, which have been the primary mode that music was produced, consumed, and made money from for the vast majority of its history.

* well, the existence of easy to consume recordings definitely has an impact on live shows, but I don't think it's that drastic.

Perhaps killing this era of licensed recordings as the main source of income for the music industry is not such a bad thing after all.

[coldtea]

>Music has existed for a few thousand years before the idea of selling recordings of it started existing.

As did society, without the idea of e.g. cooked food.

Still, once we get something, we might find it's good for some reasons, and want to keep having it...

[Cederfjard]

And now we have vast libraries of music streaming on demand immediately and everywhere. We might also want to keep that (I personally have been using Spotify for over a decade now, and I still think it's amazing compared to what we had before).

Rather than trying to put the genie back in bottle (which I don't see happening), perhaps musicians and songwriters can focus their attention on the practices of the major labels that enable them to extract a huge amount of the revenue the music industry generates, as well as experiment with new income streams (and you still have merch, donations, sponsorships and touring (admittedly difficult right now), avenues that aren't all as available to artists working in different mediums).

It's easier and cheaper, more accessible than ever before to record, mix and put out quality music. Is it harder to make a living off it? Maybe. Would that be solely due to streaming removing income from album sales? Maybe there's also more competition over listeners' dollars these days. And at the end of the day, as a society is the goal to maximize the number of people who can live off their music, or do we have other competing objectives as well?

[tsimionescu]

Is music better off now than 100 years ago?

Sure, there is a greater variety of music than probably ever in the history of humanity.

On the other hand, I think a much smaller proportion of humanity is participating and creating music than ver before - the rise of recorded music has made folklore music all but obsolete - there is essentially no new folk music being produced, maybe for the first time in history.

Of course, Spotify is still driving in this same direction, and maybe it will be even worse.

[Semaphor]

> People no longer buy music outright

Bandcamp [0] seems to be doing alright and according to Wikipedia [1] is (barely) in the Alexa top 1000. Not sure how it is for other Genres, but for metal almost every not-big band I find out about is on Bandcamp.

[0]: https://bandcamp.com/

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandcamp

[cageface]

I try to buy a copy of records I really like off Bandcamp but if you look at the supporters list for even fairly popular albums it's pretty short. Do musicians make enough money off sales on Bandcamp to make a difference? I can't imagine anybody could earn a living at those volumes.

[Semaphor]

The long tail is indie music. Before Spotify the vast majority of small bands couldn’t make a living off it either.

If a band outside the mainstream could live off their music, it was concerts and merch, and that was usually already only for bands at decent labels.

I know and love a band that exists since 1997, not even once were they even thinking about giving up their day jobs.

I don’t like Spotify (I usually listen to specific albums of bands I like), but I feel it’s more of a problem for the middle-class of bands, not the small ones.

[coldtea]

>Before Spotify the vast majority of small bands couldn’t make a living off it either.

I'd say tons of small artists that can't make a living today, could make a living by selling 30-50K records back in the CD/Vinyl days.

[Semaphor]

The vinyl and early CD days (when there were far fewer small bands) are a long time from Spotify though.

There was an explosion of small bands brought on by the internet and cheap digital distribution, but I doubt people started buying more at the same percentage as the amount bands increased.

[coldtea]

The Alexa top 1000 just means people visit Bandcamp (where you can listen to anything for free).

Not necessarily buying stuff from Bandcamp...

[longerthoughts]

You’re presuming a few things:

1) they believe your characterization of their impact

2) they believe that your characterization is complete (vs outweighed by some greater good - don’t have anything specific in mind here)

3) good for music = good for musicians = good for the industry

Starting with (1) and (2). Regardless of the merits of your argument it’s hard to talk people out of self-deception that lets them keep their jobs, esteem, etc.

Point (3) is a little more complicated. There’s a lot for reasonable minds to disagree about when defining “good” for musicians, music, or the music industry independently, let alone collectively. There’s a very strong argument that many musicians are currently making less money than they would’ve 20 years ago because of streaming services like Spotify. The argument that Spotify is destroying music itself is significantly weaker and does not necessarily follow from the first. Great music was made long before the modern music industry existed. Great music has been made by people who were not fairly compensated for their work. I want people to be fairly compensated for their work but I can’t definitively tell you it will make music better.