Spotify: The Good, The Bad

Spotify is a commercial music streaming service that originally launched in Sweden in 2008. They provide their 20 million customers with digital rights management protected content from record labels.  However only a quarter of their consumers actually are subscribed to Spotify, of which pay a monthly fee that is determined by their location. As someone who works in the music industry and who has also become a Spotify convert over the last two years, I am both intrigued and torn in relation to all of the turmoil surrounding the service over the last few weeks.

Similar to Pandora’s current dilemma, the argument is whether the revenue paid to artists is a substantial one or not, especially for small artists. Rock music superstar Thom Yorke of Radiohead and Atoms for Peace, along with AFP collaborator Nigel Godrich, have been leading the crusade from the artist perspective, boycotting the service and pulling AFP records and Yorke’s solo material from their extensive library. They are just two out of a number of artists, however, to have spoken out against the popular music subscription service, “claiming that the ‘freemium’ streaming model simply doesn’t generate the revenue that indie artists are owed.”

SoundCtrl also stated that, “the record labels are really making the money in this new revenue model, not just because of the royalty deals they have in place with Spotify but also simply because they have large catalogues which are heavily streamed.”

The New Yorker recently reported, “… Streaming arrangements, like those made with Spotify, are institutionalizing a marginal role for the recordings that were once major income streams for working musicians.”

From the other end of the spectrum, Music Ally posted, “Streaming music cannibalizes piracy more than it does sales, and while the individual per-stream payouts are much less than for CD or download sales, paying out every time a track is played will add up in the long term.”

And for big name artists, this is true. But what about emerging acts?

Making your music available on Spotify could do wonderful things for your career; although it tends to be a gamble, just like any other marketing endeavor. There is a chance to increase your fans and listenership two-fold, which will inevitably bring in revenue. Increasing reach could bring bigger and better opportunities, especially if streaming services share more data with the artists on their fans. Music Ally reported that potentially the biggest way streaming services can help new artists will be through being a discovery tool that bridges the gap between potential fans/listeners and those bands they might not otherwise hear of.

I agree with this wholeheartedly, as Spotify’s Discover page is the tool I use most often when utilizing the service and I have discovered countless amounts of new music through this. They even partnered with Songkick to alert the customer when a band they’ve been listening to is playing nearby. Continuing to promote artists this way and branching out even further by partnering with other music sites could very well be the kick start needed for a young band’s career. Exposure is ultimately what every artist seeks most.

Either way, this is a debate that is sure to not find resolution anytime soon. Being still such a startup company, Spotify will have to work hard to ultimately figure out a way to make both the artist and consumer as happy with their service as possible. However at this point in the game it will have to be trial and error in order to see what may work and what will not.

Mix CD Etiquette: Just a 'Thanks' or Something More?

Make the Perfect Mix

I read an article from NPR recently that I found to be very thought provoking, as up until right after I graduated high school, I was a “mix” kid; mix tapes and CDs that is. The article asked, “What is mix CD etiquette?” I never actually considered that even though growing up it was one of my favorite past times.

NPR nailed it; it’s “an art form like any other.” CD mixing was a task I did not take lightly and something I spent a large amount of time doing, usually when I should have been focusing on something else. Making mixes for my friends was enjoyable and rewarding. Every time I passed one of my mixes along I couldn’t wait to hear how my friend felt about it. Of course as I painstakingly spent time over each one, oftentimes I’d only get the, “it’s cool” response. This was difficult for me at times as I wanted it considered in the same way that I put it together. Alas, that just wasn’t feasible; I guess that’s a good sign as to why I work in the music industry and the majority of my friends do not.

NPR put it well, “It’s important, with mixes, to remember that you’re giving a gift and not a homework assignment.”

Which is very true. At some point you just have to hope that you give your perfect mix to that one person who will appreciate it the way you do. But if they don’t, they don’t, and there’s nothing you can really do to try to drive up their interest if it’s just not their thing or they honestly just don’t care very much.

However, there is a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel. Because what is even more awesome than giving a mix CD? Receiving one. I had a friend in college that typically made me a mix CD each month. At a time when I’d basically moved onto iPod and streaming playlists, it was exciting to have that feeling of nostalgia again. The physical aspect of having a mix CD really gives a reason to hold on to a piece of the past. Especially because PwC just reported that the CD is most likely dead to it’s sharp decrease and is most likely never coming back.

To answer NPR’s question, “When you make someone a mix, what do they owe you?” In my opinion, really nothing but a thank you… And hopefully to listen to it. It’s unlikely that the receiver will ever have the exact passion you had for the mix as you were putting it together. But if you’re lucky, they’ll appreciate not only the mix itself, but also the time and effort you took to put into it.

Twitter: A Potential Platform for Music Distribution?

At the end of April social media platform Twitter began offering a new service called #music which utilizes tweets and artist accounts to assist users in discovering new music. They did this in partnership with iTunes, which delivers the few second preview of a song and a link to purchase it. Twitter also paired up with streaming sites Spotify and Rdio so users can listen to the full track before purchasing it via iTunes. There is also a free Twitter #music iPhone app.

For nearly two months now the #music service has been available to users in the US, UK, Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Tech junkies and avid Twitter users had high hopes for the new service, but unfortunately thus far it hasn’t been so successful.

According to Cyber PR, #music falls short in two major areas:

“The first is that its charts fail to offer anything unique by way of popular music or emerging music. Artists show up on these charts by being the most talked about on Twitter… In essence, Twitter is shining the spotlight on the cool kids table.”

“The second is that even though the platform has an ‘emerging’ tab, it still does absolutely nothing to better the marketing opportunities for the majority of independent musicians. This chart is an automated platform that doesn’t actually function as a tool for musicians to utilize. It just exists.”

Thus, it seems as though Twitter will have to work to readjust their service so that it can cater not only to the Billboard giants, but also more importantly to artists who could truly benefit from this form of marketing and distribution. We all know the name of the game with Twitter: the more popular you are, the more followers you have. But how can this social media king aid indie musicians the way other sites such as Facebook and MySpace have? It is most likely an attainable feat, but as with most emerging technologies, the kinks will need to be worked out first.

Interview: Music Publishing & Distribution

Recently I was introduced to Travis McFetridge, the CEO and President of Great South Bay Music Group, Inc., an independent music publishing and royalty collection company located in Patchogue, New York. McFetridge was kind enough to allow me to interview him on the wonderful world of media publishing and distribution. He started GSB in October 2010 after working almost six years as Senior Director of A&R at Ultra International Music Publishing in New York. He felt that after signing many Grammy award winning and Platinum-selling artists, songwriters and producers to publishing deals at Ultra, it was time to expand on his own and develop his own catalog and roster.

McFetridge graduated from Fordham University, Lincoln Center in New York with a Bachelor’s degree in Communications. While in school he utilized their internship program to do work for major labels including A&M Records, Capitol Records, Epic Records, Warner Bros, and Virgin Records. Through the relationships he built he was able to get his first job as a Coordinator of Publicity at Elektra Records during his last semester in college. He said it wasn’t until six years later when he was working in artist management that he began to gain hands on experience with music publishing

I asked McFetridge to explain music publishing and what agencies like GSB do in his own words for those individuals who may not be as well-versed on the subject.

“Music publishers protect and exploit musical compositions of songwriters. It is a music publisher’s role to license songwriters compositions with record companies who are releasing masters containing music compositions of songwriters in order to collect mechanical royalties for songwriters. It is a music publisher’s role to register compositions with ASCAP, BMI and SESAC so the writer can receive performance royalty income. It is a music publisher’s role to pitch compositions of songwriters to recording artists for inclusion on recording artist albums, and to pitch compositions to music supervisors at film companies, video game companies, television production companies for synchronization placements in film, TV shows, video games, ad campaigns, etc. It is the role of a music publisher to protect songwriters’ compositions from copyright infringement and to copyright songwriters compositions with the U.S. Library of Congress.”

We then discussed his passion for music publishing and I questioned what the most rewarding part of his line of work is.

“Being directly responsible for getting a song by one of my songwriters placed with a major artist on their album and seeing the album released with the song embodied on it and hearing it on the radio. To know you were responsible for placing a song for your client and knowing that song saw the light of day due to your efforts,” he said.

I then wondered, in McFetridge’s mind, just how important it is for artists, producers and songwriters to enlist the services and assistance from a firm such as GSB while building their career.

“[I believe it to be] extremely important. GSB offers songwriters the chance to get their songs heard by major label A&Rs, major recording artists and their managers, music supervisors at film, video game, and television companies. Most importantly GSB Music protects publishing rights for songwriters and ensures they will receive the proper publishing rights in all deals that materialize. All too often songwriters sign bogus contracts without the guidance of a music publisher like GSB and end up loosing their publishing rights. This can result in huge financial losses of a song becomes a Billboard Hot 100 top ten hit. GSB makes sure situations like that will never arise for its clients.”