The most dominant, Spotify, tells investors it plans to leverage its listeners into a massive digital ad play that would make it a market leader behind only Google and Facebook. Just as the music industry is organized to let labels and publishers scoop up much of the value of music, the streaming platforms, as they become more powerful, are positioning themselves to do the same. Now, however, the recorded music market is again taking on its former hourglass shape, this time with the streaming platforms at the center. Although it was an economically disastrous time for many of them, the democratization brought by digital technologies and the internet also finally forced record labels to reform abuses they’d carried off for decades. Immediately before the streaming era began, we experienced one of the rare moments in the history of recorded music when power flowed in the direction of artists. Ignoring that luck element illustrates how difficult it is for musicians to support themselves via streaming revenues-and how many hard working, talented people will be unable ever to do so. Spotify wants you to believe the rags to riches transformation is due to hard work and talent when it actually requires a huge amount of luck. But, like almost all successes in music, it’s a Horatio Alger story. Thanks to this exposure he’s now making around $200,000 a year, mostly in royalties from streaming. His first playlisting shot him from a few thousand streams a day to 20,000, and later, as his music landed more and more spots, to hundreds of thousands. If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission.
0 kommentar(er)
