I suppose the OP was too many words, so here it is…
The opinion of one working musician, copied and pasted from his FB (we have a pal in common, so it popped up in my feed). Suitably dull for a mizzly Sunday morning.
“One of the big stories of this year in music has been many people realising that Spotify is a terrible company. The ‘user experience’, at least on the surface, is pretty good, but the economics and the shady behaviour behind it are fundamentally anti-music. If you care about the livelihood of musicians to the point of wanting to actively play a part in their ongoing economic viability, Spotify is not really a viable option.
So what now? Well, coming to the end of the year, we’re in a great place to start thinking about how we resolve this. And I don’t mean ‘what does the music industry do’ – that’s a bigger question and not one that our action or inaction will greatly influence. No, I’m talking about what decisions and behaviours we can do that will impact the lives of musicians.
And weirdly, it’s exactly the same as it always has been, as it is in any creative industry:
‘Buy the product as close to the source as you can.’
Renting access to a streaming service is highly convenient, but the economics will only ever support those with massive audiences. It is a fundamentally anti-niche model, and one where its very easy for the music fan to feel powerless.
But the alternative has been there all along. Two years ago today, I had just finished chemotherapy after a lymphoma diagnosis in the summer of 2022. While I was worried I might not see Christmas, the one thing I didn’t have to worry about during that time was money, because hundreds of you bought music. I didn’t need hudreds of thousands of monthly listeners on a streaming service and I didn’t have to wait 6 months (or more) for a payout, because all my music is on Bandcamp, so you could buy it and have a direct, life-changing impact on my economic situation, in exchange for loads of lovely music!
But we shouldn’t need to have life-threatening illnesses before we get to stop worrying about whether our art will sustain us. GoFundMe is not the model. Even Kickstarter only works for a handful of music careers.
For me, my musical home is still Bandcamp. For others, it’s buying merch, vinyl, CDs, cassettes, either on their website or at a gig.
Resolve this year to support the artists whose music you love. And if you want to start now, and kickstart your new Bandcamp collection with over 100 albums (wait, what?? Yup, 100 albums), you can subscribe to me on Bandcamp. And you OWN that music. It’s yours. You can download it and keep it. If you unsubscribe, it’s still yours, if Bandcamp ceases to exist, it’s still yours, if the Internet shuts down, it’s still yours. Because renting access to songs for fractions of a cent only really works for legacy acts who made all their money in the physical media age.
So, make a choice. If you want to join me, tomorrow is my birthday, so there’s literally no better time. A gift for you and a gift for me, all wrapped up together. Head to the comments for the link xxx
Wishing you a happy festive season, whether your holiday of choice is Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa or the coming of the New Year. We can all agree that tomorrow’s Stevemas celebration is the best of the lot, right? 😉 x
Wishing you a peaceful 2025, and hoping its a year in which we reckon with how the creative economy is managed to promote and sustain the art that sustains us.”
While have never – and probably will never – use either service, always recommend friends who sing the praises of Spotify to switch to Bandcamp for just the reasons outlined above.
Also 100% subscribe to Steve’s ethos of supporting the non-household name acts you love by going to gigs and buying CDs and merch direct from source where possible.
While economic necessity dictates that acts like the late Jackie Leven occasionally slip out less than stellar releases, they’re worth buying so the Jackies of this world know they have the support they need to unleash the classics their fans love them for
According to CEO Ethan Diamond the answer is “No”. Diamond – “I don’t think of this as a streaming service. I consider us a record store and a music community. The primary difference being that we’re a way to directly support the artists that you enjoy listening to. You know, half of the sales on Bandcamp at this point are for physical goods. … Digital has also seen really strong growth. And when you buy digital on Bandcamp, what you’re buying is access. So you can grab a download – you know, there are people who want to grab the high-quality file – but you can also stream through our app, unlimited once you’ve purchased the music. But yeah, I don’t think of us as a streaming service. Definitely.”
There’s no way you could convert from streaming to Bandcamp – the two have little overlap in terms of the artists they cover, particularly amongst the 50+ year old heritage acts this site venerates.
Yeah I think that’s possible, I used to have a few songs from my hard drive that I pushed into Spotify playlists. But you can’t switch from Spotify to Bandcamp in the way that you can from Spotty to Amazon or Apple.
I recently bought a cd off Bandcamp, and I was able to download a low res version while waiting for the cd, included in the price. I’d thought about buying as a high res download, and then making my own cd, but I’ve had issues with music files; I’ve yet to successfully rip a dvd-a.
Yes I think those downloads happen automatically. A few months ago I bought Rhiannon Giddens and Silk Road Ensemble’s new album on Bandcamp. A couple of days later the order was cancelled and the payment refunded because it turned out they don’t ship it to the UK. But later I noticed they’d given me the download at time of purchase and it’s still there…
Further. Don’t mock your friends/family for being analogue, for being old-fashioned, for having a cluttered home, for being out of date, and don’t tolerate others doing it either, just because they have stacks of CDs that they will rarely hear, or books unread. For they are the ones rewarding artistic enterprise.
I have never paid a penny to Spotify. I listen to new stuff on Bandcamp. If I want to listen to it a second time, I buy it from Bandcamp or direct from the artist.
I usually buy cds from artists that Plays in some extra-small venues such as Larry’s corner, to support the artists that won’t get more than 35 spectators and if I can’t imagine getting that extrême feeling that I would get on the live performance (I call this the Kroumata effekt), I buy the tee-shirt.
All that because I want them back bringing that magic.
I’m using Spotify at the moment as I was given three free months because I bought a train ticket. As most of my cds are in storage it’s given me access music I have but can’t listen to as I can’t get to them yet.
I’d a large birthday this month and it was useful to make a playlist for the party, and over the Festering Season I could play obscure Christmas songs. Will I keep it after the three months probably not .
As ever, big business wins largely through a combination of owning the means to production, knowing how the industry works, business practices that take advantage of naivety and a general apathy from consumers.
At risk of being contrary to the general theme (which I support), I do think it is better for musicians now rather than 40 years ago. But not by much. There are more channels – including Bandcamp, and artists can access marketing and sell directly far more easily than before.
For what it’s worth, I canned Spotify – it was getting more expensive and it was trying to add things I don’t need. But I use Apple Music which, I believe, is slightly less mean to artists. I used to have both (kids prefer Spotify but they have got over it now).
Gigs are much more expensive than they were. I probably spend more on music now than I used to.
I use Apple Music constantly now, at least, other than in the kitchen or my old fiesta, which remain cd only zones. However, my search is more often my own library than the whole of Apple Music, one of the reasons I prefer it to spotty, and I use it to play my choices without taking them off the shelf or out their boxes. I occasionally trial something but, more often than not, use Bandcamp for that. I never knew their platform disallows repeated listens as I either skip it to never return, or buy at some later stage, ie the what might otherwise be a second listen.
The primary reason that Spotify* sucks is that the Music Industry sucks and enables, even encourages, it to stitch up musicians. For easy profit with minimum outlay. The transformation of entertainment** from a collection of businesses to an industry is the source of the current problem.
*See also Tidal, Amazon Music, Apple Music etc. They all suck, to varying degrees, as primary sources of music entertainment.
This is not to say that the great record labels of the past were knights in shining armour in the “good” old days. There were always exploiters in “the biz”.
**Music, movies, TV, sport. All corporatized and spoiled.
Bandcamp and the independent music-producing entities that use it are a way to circumvent this corporatization. Though some of the more corporate entities are now using Bandcamp as well as the streaming services. Hedging their bets.
A hell of a lot of independent artists are on the streaming services as well as Bandcamp, because the pittances they get from Spotify etc. are still better than getting nothing at all.
I moved to Apple too. no complaints from me. Pay the artists more. Don’t fill playlists full of copyright free music. Don’t pay millions to Joe Rogan. The specialist radio shows are really good and the DJ’s have a passion for what they are doing.
Im surprised no ones mentioned this but the sound quality of spotify is shockingly bad. Especially when compared to its to rivals. Always amazed to see people spending 100’s on headphones and then listing to Spotify with them.
We’ve had this conversation before and said the same things. That never happens does it? We also said, how many of us sit undisturbed, listening to our hifis in perfect conditions?
And as I’ve always said, nobody listens in a perfect acoustic because it doesn’t exist. I do sit in a dedicated room, and it isn’t acoustically perfect.
But most people listen nowadays via headphones, where room acoustics are not an issue, and where quality differences are more easily revealed, because the sound is being squirted straight into the lugholes without interference.
Even if our old ears are not able to hear to 20kHz, we can still hear the difference between mp3 and lossless, if we care to.
I had confirmation yesterday, if it was needed, that my hearing isn’t what it was. I was chatting to my son and his gf while waiting for my stove top coffee pot and he said “Your coffee’s nearly ready.” Apparently it was just starting to hiss as it got close to boiling and I couldn’t hear it. No great surprise: I’m 60 and I have some tinnitus so maybe the tinnitus was masking the high frequencies of the steam but even so…..
Go for a test – should be able to get one through your GP. After months of prodding from the GLW, and claims that I was “going deaf” I went to get a hearing test. Turns out I’m not remotely deaf but have the “normal” hearing for a 64 year old. Can’t hear anything above around 15khz, mind you.
Begs the question why I apparently can’t hear things the GLW says, although I have my own theory about that.
I think I “just” have some frequency loss although I have to concentrate a bit harder and people facing me helps a bit too. Talkback headsets can be interesting, especially program levels.
On the odd occasion I do sound rather than video, I don’t have any problems.
Oddly enough I’m going for a hearing test as soon as they reopen after Xmas, also prodded into it by the missus. The problem is usually the tv – she claims I must be going deaf because I have it so loud, I claim it’s normal volume and she has abnormally sensitive hearing. It’s certainly true that she lunges for the soundbar remote when ads come on as if she’s in pain, whereas I just feel mildly annoyed that the volume’s increased. She’s also been known to wear her Bose QCs in the cinema…
The only time I feel I have a hearing problem is when there are competing sounds – trying to hear what someone’s saying to me in a crowded pub, for instance, or what Mrs thep’s saying to me when the kettle’s boiling. I can hear a petrol-driven lawnmower a mile away, wherreas she doesn’t seem to, so there’s that…
“she claims I must be going deaf because I have it so loud, I claim it’s normal volume and she has abnormally sensitive hearing” – a conversation oft repeated in my house too.
Competing sounds also an issue – and apparently I’m supposed to be able to hold a conversation with the GLW at the other other end of the house with the kettle on.
Went for a hearing test a few weeks back. “Your hearing is actually not that bad but like almost everyone your age you have problem picking out conversations when it’s noisy, like in a pub. Even very expensive hearing-aids won’t help you there.”
A friend swears by the latest Apple earbuds thingies. You can do your own hearing test and adjust accordingly. As long as you don’t mind looking as though you are permanently on the phone, even at the dinner table, he says they’re brill
“Something something something something.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You didn’t hear any of that, did you?
“Nope. I don’t mind though.”
Or it used to be a frequent conversation. Nowadays I’m totally reliant on a transcription app and subs for films (and am of the opinion that hearing, like memory, is overrated.)
Similar in our household @mikethep but I need the hearing aids (another symptom of my medical problem). However I don’t wear them at home as my wife has the TV on loud enough for me to hear, alas she has it too loud for me and I ask her to turn it down as it’s too loud.
Having invested in some aids that now make it possible to watch TV at a normal volume, I have the problem that others in the house still need it on loud enough to part my hair. Of course, they aren’t going deaf though …. not at all.
There was a piece, probably in Word, maybe 15 or so years ago that said a artist only really needs around 1000 or so committed fans to sustain an ok income as long as that thousand buy music, tickets and merch. Obviously, the more members in an act, the more you need and managing your own affairs such as ticketing and processing merch orders takes time and resources but it can be done. I think a bigger hurdle for new acts is getting known without record company promotion amongst the sea of stuff uploaded to Spotify. Maybe it’s time for a return to flyposting around cities. I always quite liked seeing them.
I use Tidal. I’ve tried virtually all of the alternatives but my primary listening is from CD. Tidal is useful for plugging gaps but I use it mostly for discovering new to me music. If I like it I buy it preferably from the artist’s site or Bandcamp. I don’t do merch tables as I can’t get out to gigs.
After over fifty years of consuming music, books etc I along with I should imagine every person on this site has more than paid my dues. The organised clutter that occupies the bulk of the available space in my little flat attests to this.
For reasons that for the most don’t add up, I’ve never subscribed to Spotify. I occasionally dip in and to my tired old ears it all sounds ok. Not as good as Amazon HD or, especially, Tidal but certainly not crap.
And let’s face it, the genie has long left the bottle. Average Joe on average bought one CD a month. A tenner sometimes well spent, sometimes not. Now Average Joe gets every song, every CD, every artist for the same tenner.
Average Joe looks at music geeks, like what here on this forum, and thinks “Good on them, supporting struggling artists, buying t-shirts and signed photos and all that good stuff”, shrugs his shoulders then dials up Spotify.
The tricky thing about no longer subscribing to streaming services is that you lose their unique selling-point, which is access to a huge choice of what you want to hear right now this instant.
The problem with music radio, which persists with streamed radio stations, was and still is as Steely Dan remarked in “FM”, all too often you get “somebody else’s favourite song”.
Even your absolute favourite DJ is often going to play things you don’t like all that much.
For people who have become committed streamers, that’s a deal-breaker. Bandcamp, for all it’s good points, doesn’t really address that. Yet.
Say you’ve just learned that Joe Schmoe, of whom you’re a big fan, has just released a new album. You could probably, after some Googling, find the lead track on some internet radio station somewhere, but if he’s not put it up on Bandcamp and he doesn’t have his own site, the only way you’ll hear any other tracks on that album is if you go to Apple, Amazon, Spotify or Tidal.
I love Bandcamp – a few listens to a new act, and then a few quid to buy the download, which I can upload to the 58,000 other songs I have uploaded to my version of iBroadcast. There’s car more music in there then I will ever listen to, but random play always brings me some new joy on Radio Sal.
Spotify, because I never got around to subscribing is as much cursed with ad breaks as YouTube, without the sometimes pleasing visuals to go with it.
A new album or two a month on Bandcamp and I’m a happy bunny, even if the reportedly dodgy union politics by its current owner maje it less than squeaky clean.
Its free version is perfectly passable, so there’s no cost to trying it out, Mike. I’m not sure how it works with networks in the UK, but it seems OK in Germany, though to be honest, I tend to use it most when I’m within range of wifi.
The Afterworder who…admitted to only listening to music on Spotify and not to try before buying either. An HE Bateman cartoon without the visuals. Persona non grata thereafter.
I am pretty sure the artists I listen to are financially quite well off, better than I am at least. Spotify isn’t their only income either. Apparently Gen Z are not so fussed about music so where does that leave us?
I recall his comment. Bit of a Heppo special. It’s complicated. The music industry bank rolled many acts who didn’t make money, the big names subsidised them in effect.
There is a noticeable improvement in SQ when streaming lossless flac files from Tidal, Qobuz etc from streaming files from Spotify. It’s not a night and day difference and it takes some investment in audio kit to take full advantage of that uptick in SQ. It depends how much one is prepared or able to invest in the whole shebang. I do know that after recently upgrading my CD front end that CD playback sounds noticeably better than streamed files. Once again it isn’t a night and day difference but it certainly plays recorded music in a more vivid and transparent manner. Music is for me and I guess for the majority of us here a part of life. Mucking about with my kit to bring as much quality as I can from that music is my hobby.
It would be the DAC that could improve things. The CD player is also streaming 1s and 0s to it, just from a disc not from the internet or a FLAC or WAV file on your computer. Data would be the same if source is lossless
Just as a point of order. A CDT doesn’t have a DAC onboard, all the digital to analogue conversion is carried out by a DAC that is situated elsewhere either in a suitably equipped amplifier or as is the case with my rig a dedicated external R2R DAC. All my CDT does is spin the disc to extract the data. The improvement in SQ since I installed it has been very noticeable when compared to my previous CDP connected to the same external DAC and as I have already mentioned to the SQ from my dedicated streamer. Hifi kit is essentially anti-social the more components that one can separate one from the other the better. Less electrical noise, better sound.
Yeah I realise this I was talking about internal DACs in expensive CD players that most have in order to connect directly to an analogue amplifier.
When one spends a lot of money on HiFi then I think sometimes you want to hear a difference even if there isn’t one actually there! And if it sounds better to you then fine.
It’s Dai, FFS! Although to be fair, I think in his own blunt way he was saying “the more you spend on anything, for instance fine wine, the more the temptation is to say “yeah, I can tell the difference. Never subtle,our Dai. Sometimes spot on.
What has it got to do with you? Do you think arrogance and unnecessary rudeness is something that should be defended or even applauded?
As for Dai being spot on in this case he’s talking complete and absolute bollocks.
Dearie me, all I was trying to say in my jocular, homespun way is that Dai is known for his bluntness. Sometimes he is spot on re his opinions, other times he is not. IMHO of course.
My own worthless view is that spending more and more on anything, including hifi, means a law of dismissing returns eg how much better is a £500 bottle of Petrus than a tenner spent on Jacob’s Creek? If you can afford it and more importantly it makes you happy, go for Petrus every time.
Apologise for what? It is a discussion about digital audio. Seems like I hit a nerve. Like I said, if you hear a difference, then that’s all good. I fail to see how that is being arrogant and rude. You saying I am talking complete bollocks clearly falls into that category
My final word(s), from the pdf referenced below:
“A properly engineered outboard converter will sound the same despite changes in CD player, cable type and length and despite changing from electrical to optical input because it accepts only data from the serial signal and regenerates its own clock. Audible differences simply mean the converter is of poor design and should be rejected.”
And this is from a friend of mine. He is a digital audio engineer who was one of the main guys behind the development of the SACD format, so he should know what he is talking about.
“1. the audio sample values are nowhere to be found on a CD
Due to the CIRC coding and EFM modulation techniques, the audio data is encoded as completely different values and those are widely distributed to mitigate against burst errors.
2. any transmission jitter due to the pit/land structure on the CD is removed after data slicing
The decoding circuitry has to decide whether a bit value is a 0 or 1. As soon as it has done that, whether correctly or incorrectly, any transmission jitter associated with the CD pressing is removed, and the values decided are stored in memory.
3. the error correction circuitry is an inherent part of the decoding of CD and is very robust
Remember DTS multi-channel CDs? They would not work if CD decoding was not a solved problem, since you need to pass the DTS signal via SPDIF to an external DTS decoder. If there were errors in the SPDIF signal, you would know it!
4. why are there $30k transports?
Why do people buy Patek-Philippe watches which are no more accurate than a cheap Seiko? Because they can, and because they provide pride of ownership. It is easy to run up the BoM cost on a transport: die-cast, high-price mechanism (VRDS, for example), premium parts, deluxe chassis, etc. Are they necessary? No, not unless the transport mechanism is able to better track problem discs (those with long memories will recall that early CD reviews used to refer to the largest data gap size that could be handled, so differences in performance of CD mechanisms is clearly possible, but usually only in the case of damaged/hard to track discs).”
I shall explain although I shouldn’t have to do so.
Arrogant. The presumption that you know better than I how my kit sounds and how the upgrades I instigate sound.
Rude. Suggesting that I am somehow deluding myself by spending my money on the things I have chosen to spend it on when from your assumed position of superiority that money has been wasted.
Bollocks. By your yardstick the experience of driving a second-hand Ford Fiesta is the same as driving a Ferrari it’s just Ferrari owners fooling themselves.
I couldn’t care less for your opinions about audio,nor am I bothered by it, I trust my experience. I have a lot of it, especially with my kit in my room which is something you have absolutely zero knowledge of. I suppose the difference between you and me Dai is I wouldn’t be arrogant enough to imagine it would be acceptable under any circumstances to insinuate that someone I don’t know and has only ever been respectful towards me is a deluded fool. That is what your assertion boils down too and that is why it is rude. Now as I have already said we’re done.
We don’t yet live in a world of Quantum electronics, so “digital” is not 1s and 0s, but is high-bandwidth analogue. Put a network analyser on a S/PDIF and measure the TDR, and you will see that not all 75 Ohm transmission lines are the same.
I spent years working in professional broadcast equipment, where serial bandwidth varied from 1.4MHz (CD) or 2.3MHz (24-bit 48kHz digital audio) to 270MHz (SD TV) to 1.5GHz (HD TV) and not all 75 serial links are equal.
The most easily-demonstrated was my Arcam Delta CD transport and Black Box 5 DAC. The DAC fed a high-quality sync to the transport, so that the clock did not have to be recovered from the jittery S/PDIF data. The transport had both electrical S/DPIF and optical TOSLINK outputs and the DAC had corresponding coax and optical inputs. So the same transport hardware sync’ed to the same clock, two parallel data paths, into the same DAC hardware.
I love it when you talk all technical.
I have no technical data to support my assertions about differences in SQ, I have to rely on my old ears and a brain stuffed full of experience but I’ll assert til’ the cows come home that those differences are absolutely real. I could make guesses about the quality of seperate linear power supplies or various digital output stages playing a part or maybe where the clocking is done and by what type of clock but they would be guesses.
Maybe you thought they sounded different. The audio stream can be reproduced exactly unless there is a serious issue somewhere. That would result in dropouts and interruptions rather than a decrease in sound quality. If the transports are inputting the same data into the DAC they will sound the same at the other end. And they are designed to do this
Or, perhaps, as the designer/Technical Director of Arcam (and my boss at the time) was trying to prove, it is possible for two data channels with different bandwidths, both carrying the same data, to measure differently.
As cheap plastic TOSLINK opical cables have a much reduced bandwidth compared to a 75 Ohm tranmission line, I would expect them to behave differently. That’s what I took from it, anyway.
John Dawson is a hugely knowledgable chap, and a senior in the AES, and I would not disagree with him.
Careful now, Mr P – you’ll attract the ire of the “Music comes first, last and all the time” lobby – they’ll want you to trade in your immaculate speakers for a tin can and some wet string, to demonstrate that you’re not some kind of (gulp) audiophile!!
Never gonna happen. I am by strict definition an audiophile. I love sound. I’ve been buying and building sound systems for many years, sometimes expensive ones, sometimes less so depending upon what my disposable income will allow. I adore music so to me it only makes sense to put together the best pieces of kit I can afford so I can enjoy the recorded version of it as much as possible. I avoid the silly audiophile arguments that abound although some of the online discussion threads that are posted elsewhere can be most amusing and the level of basic ignorance amongst some on those sites who put themselves forward as being expert in these matters is quite staggering.
My streamer and CDT are connected to the same external DAC. The CDT via a digital coax cable and the streamer via USB. So the same DAC is doing the conversion.
Vinyl for dedicated listening for me, and Apple Music for non-committed background auditioning and other streaming.
The main discriminator for me with Apple Music is their hosting of surround mixes. Given that the Revolver Deluxe set didn’t feature a surround mix on Blu-Ray in order to drive people over to Apple Music, I wonder if this type of exclusivity is an area where artists might get more dosh from Apple?
Sidenote: It is worth pausing for a sec to consider that, pre-streaming, artists have always been royally screwed over by the record companies, always the lowest in the food chain. It’s not as if most artists used to be swimming in cash 20 or 30 years ago: back then it was the boss of their label that was growing fat while the artist remained unrecouped. By no means a disagreement with the thread, but artists being shafted (and yes the degree has increased) is hardly a recent development, sadly.
When a record company makes a mistake, the artist pays for it.
When a manager makes a mistake, the artist pays for it.
When the artist makes a mistake, the artist pays for it.
Mr Fripp is correct and it applies to all artists across all the arts with the exception of the chosen few. People have since time immemorial desired what artists create they just don’t like paying for it. The mindset is that the arts and the people who create within them are a luxury, are trivial and ultimately non-essential. People who think that way have been born without a soul. The sciences make life possible, the arts make life worth it.
Isn’t one of today’s problems that there are so many “artists across all the arts”? For instance, virtually anyone it seems, talented or otherwise, can in the privacy of their own bedroom create music and then broadcast it to the world.
One would like to think that real geniuses will always break through but given the sheer volume out there, I’m not too sure that’s the case.
I guess that all a poor boy can do is champion an artist one likes, bung some dosh at Bandcamp or whatever and accept the world is not fair, Spotify is here to stay and streaming sound quality matters to most people not one jot.
I agree with all of that Lodey. I think the dawn of the modern Internet has kicked the doors open in every way and made access to the arts far easier and like most things it touches it’s a two edged sword. It’s opened up opportunities that were not possible prior to it’s existence and given a shop window to many people who previously had none. The end result of that is we get to live with a tyranny of choice. The world has always been awash with talent, now those talents are a lot more visible. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. Sorting through it certainly takes a lot more effort.
That is simply the best thing that ever has appeared on the AfterWord!!!
I shall forever now be known as Lode-a-Stone and Gary is King….for at least a day
@Gary I’ve tried to download it, as I’ve done with some I’ve ‘created’ but you must be only able to download the ones you make.
Is it possible you could delete it as I’d love a copy?
@hubert-rawlinson
Thank you, Hubes, though I had little to do with it apart from copy/pasting.
I’ve no idea how to enable you to download it. If you PM me an email address I can email or dropbox it or something.
Love it. In a very canny move about 30 years ago Iron Maiden released Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter in the first week of January – and secured a number one single ! I’ll be tuning into Bruno Brookes next Tuesday lunchtime to see if our streams have achieved the same feat.
I ‘admit’ to being a Spotify subscriber. I realise that the artists aren’t being paid as much as they would have been if I’d bought all the CDs but
a. I’m not about to do that
b. I don’t know of an equivalent radio station where I could hear the artists I’m introduced to via the selection of playlists I download.
I’m starting to lose count of the number of artists I’ve been to see after hearing them on Spotify.
I do like to have MP3s though so I try to maintain the discipline to buy either CDs or downloads….and, although it’s only £99 a year, some of my Spotify subs do filter through to the artists.
Yep. I was going to make the point that the giant readily available library means I’ve heard loads of artists I wouldn’t have otherwise and it’s frequently the most skint who have been the beneficiaries of my music buying and, alas, infrequent gig going. I don’t have the disposable income of many on this site and I tell myself that I did put in forty years of emptying my pockets into the music industry.
On a side note, I see that the incoming US government has bills ready to defund PBS and NPR. I’ve been enjoying Tiny Desk for years – might be time I coughed up..
If Trump defunds NPR, I too will be sending money to keep the Tiny Desk going.
NPR have fans all over the planet. Imagine if we all made a small contribution! That would be one in the eye for Trump and his cronies.
As both you and @Pencilsquezer have commented, we who are a little older have all spent a fortune over the years on LPs, Merch and concert tickets, so we do not need to feel too guilty a conscience about enjoying the ridiculous wealth of music that Spotify provides.
I’ve subscribed to Spotify for years and find the access to so much music that I would otherwise never get to hear; and the sheer convenience of it, brilliant, As clearly so do millions of others, which is why streaming is never going to go away.
I still buy physical CDs and vinyl, often via Bandcamp if that’s an option, but I’d be lying if I tried to suggest that I buy as much as I used to. I don’t, although certainly there are many records that I never would have bought, if I hadn’t heard it via streaming in the first place.
Hopefully we will see more competition form streamers to improve the deals for artists, but I think what we’re also seeing is artists – for better or worse – adapting their work, their merchandise, their recording and their touring to reflect the reality of the industry as it now is – as,I guess, has always been the case with every technological change.
Well said @Blue_Boy. Spotify has opened my ears to all kinds of wonderful music.
And ensured that I went to a lot of gigs by artists I’d never heard of.
During the autumn, our film club, here at Bio Reflexen in Kärrtorp, showed the Sudanese film, Goodbye Julia, set in Khartoum before the creation of the índependent state of South Sudan.
Here’s a scene from the film.
And here’s the playlist that I was inspired to create:
Eiman Yousif, one of the principal actors in the film now lives in exile in Cairo with her family.
I had great fun copying and pasting in Arabic song titles and discovering more about all those Hitmakers from the Nile!
According to a report cited by the Financial Times a month ago, copyright music revenues have never been higher, at around $45bn, up 25% in 3 years. More than half of this goes to record companies, of which the market is now dominated by UMG, Sony and Warner.
Steve Lawson cites Spotify as “terrible” but makes no mention of the record companies, who in the majority of cases are the people actually paying artists. Spotify didn’t turn a profit until this year, but the big 3 record companies have been doing very nicely for some time – as an example, €1.4bn profit at UMG last year.
As @DanP points out above, the record companies were always the ones making the real money, alongside a tiny number of artists. The numbers suggest, rather than the internet rhetoric, that nothing has changed.
Interesting thread. Almost all the music I listen to at home is on the main stereo in the lounge, and the biggest quality compromise is the shape of the room which means I can’t sit in a good spot. C’est la vie. I do use Spotify though, a bit, to explore music I don’t own and if I love something I’ll buy it. In fact the few things I’ve bought this year were from Bandcamp or the merch table.
I’m currently away for new year and I’m playing Spotify as a convenient way of having some sounds with me. I ought to address this because I haven’t got around to figuring out how to sync my phone to my large collection (probably not that large compared to some here) of music which it sitting on a hard drive. I’ve abandoned the iPod so I need to recreate it with my phone. Musicolet is great but AFAIK can’t easily sync. It’s partly laziness – I must figure it out.
Full disclosure, I think I’d miss the convenience of Spotify, for example the Blue Note playlist someone shared yesterday which I was wallowing in last night.
This reminds me if anyone needs a brand new shrink wrapped iPod Professional I have one I need to move on. PM me.
Not really my area but it sounds to me like your syncing issues could be readily sorted out by checking out Roon (expensive but great) or Plexamp (cheaper but probably exactly what you require).
Roon is a fantastic interface (and bypasses some of the current Sonos app issues) but I can’t really justify it’s cost after my current “3 months for the price of 1” runs out in Feb.
It would sort the phone sync stuff, mind you, as it includes Roon Arc that gives access out and about.
They were sold as folky goth, with connections to Gene Loves Jezebel, The Mission, and latterly the Sisters of Mercy, but I remember them as listless hippies whose songs sucked the energy out of the room (sorry!).
I remember having quite a heated debate – enough to make the locals go quiet and stare at us – with a Fields of the Nephilim fan (who was covered in flour), in a pub in Edale. I was wearing a God’s Own Medicine t-shirt, which is how it all started.
Looking at Wikipedia, this must have been 1987, as All About Eve had not yet released their debut album.
In summary: I quite liked AAE’s indie-released singles, and The Mission, and he really, really, did not.
I don’t think she did. She went off and did various indy type things then did a masters in English and taught things like songwriting. Her voice is still lovely though as the new album attests.
Far more than 74 regions unfortunately. Arabic alone covers more than a few countries.
For the consumer , it’s great. And the artists may benefit by being put on the map. A band is touring in a new country for the first time. Being on Spotify may lead to a few more tickets getting sold. Having the chance to have a listen has certainly led to me buying tickets to see artists I’d never heard of. The Fasching Jazz Club use Spotify for all their acts to create interest. And many of their acts come loaded with merch and are keen for a meet and greet after the show.
So not much money from the streaming, but a chance to earn thanks to the exposure,
I am a Spotify subscriber and also buy CDs and merch. I am also an Amazon user and a supermarket customer, but support local shops when I can. I’m guessing many of us here are somewhat similar – balancing convenience and cost with attempting to also do the ‘right thing’.
Clearly Spotify is great for the mega populat acts, and is also a way for small acts to get their music published and available without record company gatekeepers of old – you almost have to be on Spotify and the like to prove you are real, like having a website or Facebook page. For everyone in between it has little benefit, certainly not financially.
Streaming ain’t going away anytime soon and has become the default for an awful lot of people. Most of those people also listen on crappy little speakers where the fact they are mp3s makes diddly squat difference. For me it is a way of dipping into stuff I will never buy, or maybe giving something a listen before I do decide to buy, but it will never replace playing CDs or records because they do sound so much better through my hifi, even with my 74 year old hearing.
I am not entirely comfortable with the notion that streaming services, particularly in the context of music we don’t already physically own, is OK because we have spent on a lot of money on music in the past. I can’t see that being of much consolation to young artists. I have spent lots of money on builders, plumbers etc in the past, but the current batch don’t seem keen on giving their services for free in recognition of this.
I did some experimenting and Tidal is significantly better quality than Spotify so I’m thinking about canning the Spotify family sub, the boy can make his own mind up, and moving to Tidal.
You’re not really comparing like to like with plumbers and musical artists.
If a pipe bursts, a radiator starts leaking, your lavatory will not flush or your boiler breaks down, you have to get them fixed to live a reasonable life in your home.
Obtaining new music to listen to may be something you really want to do, but it’s not something you absolutely have to do.
A more valid comparison might be streaming movies via Netflix/Amazon Prime/Apple+ versus buying DVDs/Blurays. Or reading music mags via an online catch-all service versus buying them from a newsagent or subscribing.
Some perspective – courtesy of a Prog magazine reader:
This is what platforms pay for a stream:
Qobuz: $0.043
Tidal: $0.013
Apple: $0.01
YouTube: $0.008
Deezer: $0.0064
Amazon: $0.004
Spotify: $0.0032
Pandora: $0.0013
The whole system is just wrong, and anyone using any of these services should know.
I have no idea of the answer but what’s the income difference for an artist who, say, might previously have sold 10,000 cds but today sells the equivalent number but in streams?
I suspect the real difference lies with record advances (which as I understand it have all but vanished) rather than sales income but there’s every chance I’m Wrong.
As ever, it would be nice if the artists saw more of the money. I understand that many albums are unrecouped but I wonder if the likes of Fleetwood Mac get the same pittance for Rumours say? Surely one of the most profitable albums of all time.
Mick sold his rights about 4 years ago to BMG. Nicks sold 80% of hers to Primary Wave, Buckingham flogged his to Hipgnosis, Christine McVie to HarbourView Equity,. They’ve already seen a significant slab of money as a consequence.
The only reason they were able to cash in in advance, instead of waiting for the money to trickle in over time is because of streaming. The risk of ending up unrecouped now sits with those buying up the rights, gambling on healthy future income streams and future interest rates.
Well I am pleased that my streaming service ( Qobuz) pays artists the most, but I don’t feel guilty using this service at all ( you should try it before you decide on Tidal Twang ).
Like Pencilsqueezer I pay significant amounts on physical music and gigs every year.
So no guilt trip here.
I agree on Qobuz. I used them myself for some time and they offer an excellent service though slightly more expensive on a monthly basis than Tidal for the basic package. I’ve stuck with Tidal because I have a slight preference for their app’s UI but Tidal Connect was the deal maker. If Qobuz ever get around to offering up Qobuz Connect I may well take up my subscription with them once again. I’d rather give my cash to a French company than an American* owned one.
*Tidal were originally Norwegian.
That’s good to know, thanks John. I believe it’s easily the most requested upgrade and they have been holding out on it for an age, even longer than the never arriving lossless version of Spotify. Qobuz send me frequent emails but Connect is never mentioned despite my suggestion along with many others that that is the one thing that would entice me back. Fingers crossed, although even when it gets rolled out there will be a wait while the various device manufacturers implement it in their software.
No wonder I spend so much on CDs.
Isn’t it? I don’t bother much with playlists tbh but if I did there are thousands of them available across every streaming platform. On Tidal alone there are playlists for everything imaginable from labels to recording engineers to individual musicians and that’s before going anywhere near the thousands of user lists that appear daily.
Americans. I haven’t got the figures but I’d bet Qobuz doesn’t have a big enough profile in the good ole US of A to be deemed worth bothering about. For Blue Note to consider a French streaming service not to be worthy seems to demonstrate a bit of a disconnect between the French love of Jazz and the music Blue Note has on it’s catalogue.
This is of course entirely speculation on my part. It could be something even more prosaic such as the various licensing deals between territories.
I sometimes just look at those sort of lists and don’t bother listening at the time. I scroll through to see what albums I haven’t yet got or heard and get myself a list to work through.
Obviously, if they’ve playlisted tracks along with the album names and cover art, then the albums will be available to stream.
Before a band had to repay it’s advance out of any royalties , which may have been negligible or non-existent. A kind harsh contract. That’s how I understand it. Spotify saved the music business from piracy meltdown, so there’s that. A digital world required such a solution. You can’t just compare CD income with stream income, what’s the overall income from all sources for an act now compare to a similar act from before? Hard to compare though in a different world. You can accept streaming needs to exist but help acts by buying some new product, if you have a conscience. It’s a complex subject. If only we had an expert. Perhaps Brian Cox can get in touch again via his wife?
It wasn’t just advances that had to be repaid. Bands were charged with pretty much every expense and were always the last in line to get paid. Almost every music bio I’ve ever read talks about how broke bands remained despite having albums in the charts.
Record companies have a long history of rinsing their clients and nothing has changed. They were too fat, dumb and happy to see how digital music would change the market, and illegal downloads nearly killed them. They’ve been thrown a life line by streamers and they are back to making massive profits, no doubt laughing at the size of their bonuses whilst the streamers are vilified.
Well yes. That I know well. I’ve read a lot of those memoirs too. Some have had better experiences than others. Sometimes they don’t even complain but not often. I recall Hepworth countering that acts were fortunate to have the record company support. It’s true that there were many who got to have a career despite not ever making any money for the label. We had Simon Cowell to thank for such benefaction, under the reign of the X-Factor Christmas number 1.
I reckon the vast majority of minor, non-chart artists wouldn’t make any more from vinyl or CD sales if there were no streaming services. In fact less of them would have CDs or vinyl to sell, without the attention that streaming gets them.
Club, chart and heritage acts are the ones streaming is affecting adversely. Some of them can just charge more for live shows to make up the shortfall, but for others the making of music is no longer tenable as a way to make a living. But then of course, most folk or jazz musicians have never been able to make a living solely from their art/craft.
I know a band that busked and played venues in and around Edinburgh. Zero record company interest. Not even replies to emails, or calls. They applied what money they generated into promoting clips of them playing in the street on Insta and Facebook.
That generated followers and they then recorded singles that were placed on Spotify and Amazon etc. On the strength of that they were offered a support slot on 2 US tours and 2 headlining tours of the UK and Ireland. The streaming data showed the towns where they were getting plays, and that helped them pitch for live dates. They used social media to drive interest towards the streaming services, which in turn helped promoters see them as worth booking
I was lucky enough to see them during in one of their last busking gigs in August 2023. They were making just enough money to stay afloat, but they were playing more and more fully paid gigs, had turned fully professional, and had plans for an album, which came out earlier this year.
They work incredibly hard and have made very savvy use of streaming and social media. The traditional model record company model has offered them absolutely nothing.
That’s a remarkable modern success story @fortuneight.
A band who are really savvy about how to use social media and streaming services to build up a fanbase. It’s a lot of hard work but can really pay off.
Is there any reason why you haven’t named the band? If you do name them, that will get them a few more plays on Spotify and raise their profile among a community of keen gig-goers!
I had an interesting insight into the economics of the music business when I was chatting to Phil Beer recently. As Show of Hands with Steve Knightley, they carved out a good sized following over 25 years of recording and gigging. Their recent decision to stop touring as a band (usually with Miranda Sykes) was purely financial – they could fill 500 seater venues, but with costs of touring up somewhere between 30% and 50%, it was just no longer viable. Add to that the reduction in physical music sales and you have the perfect storm. He also said that it costs around £30,000 to make a proper studio album, and if you don’t have a record company then you have to find that yourselves – you have to sell a fair few to even see the costs back.
Add to the above the affect of Covid – he told me that they were in a position in 2020 where they were debt free, a great new album released to positive reviews, a whole load of festivals lined up to promote it…..then whallop.
Different strokes for different folks. Most (regrettably, by a long way, not all) choose how to make a living.
Here’s Gaz Brookfield: a fiercely independent musician, with no record label, no manager, and no agent – just a guitar, a van, and a steadfastly belligerent refusal to give in.
He played in a packed room in Leicester recently where most of the audience clearly knew every lyric. I bought his “splatter” vinyl from his bandcamp page:
Is this perhaps a double edged sword then? IF an artist is content with what they CAN make, financially, then the current times allow that. Previously the “system” meant that was far more difficult?
Lots of “?” in that sentence, I know, but maybe true? (and there’s another one).
I have to admit to having no qualms whatsoever about continuing to use Spotify, even having read all of the above.
Sometimes the market moves away from you. It’s regrettable, but we’re all subject to it. Netflix has had a similar impact in the world of movies and tv, but I still have an account, as I’m sure do most of us.
In an ideal world artists would be paid handsomely. In this world I don’t believe Spotify to be in the dozen worst companies with whom I regularly interact (and I don’t care about sound quality).
I suppose the OP was too many words, so here it is…
The opinion of one working musician, copied and pasted from his FB (we have a pal in common, so it popped up in my feed). Suitably dull for a mizzly Sunday morning.
“One of the big stories of this year in music has been many people realising that Spotify is a terrible company. The ‘user experience’, at least on the surface, is pretty good, but the economics and the shady behaviour behind it are fundamentally anti-music. If you care about the livelihood of musicians to the point of wanting to actively play a part in their ongoing economic viability, Spotify is not really a viable option.
So what now? Well, coming to the end of the year, we’re in a great place to start thinking about how we resolve this. And I don’t mean ‘what does the music industry do’ – that’s a bigger question and not one that our action or inaction will greatly influence. No, I’m talking about what decisions and behaviours we can do that will impact the lives of musicians.
And weirdly, it’s exactly the same as it always has been, as it is in any creative industry:
‘Buy the product as close to the source as you can.’
Renting access to a streaming service is highly convenient, but the economics will only ever support those with massive audiences. It is a fundamentally anti-niche model, and one where its very easy for the music fan to feel powerless.
But the alternative has been there all along. Two years ago today, I had just finished chemotherapy after a lymphoma diagnosis in the summer of 2022. While I was worried I might not see Christmas, the one thing I didn’t have to worry about during that time was money, because hundreds of you bought music. I didn’t need hudreds of thousands of monthly listeners on a streaming service and I didn’t have to wait 6 months (or more) for a payout, because all my music is on Bandcamp, so you could buy it and have a direct, life-changing impact on my economic situation, in exchange for loads of lovely music!
But we shouldn’t need to have life-threatening illnesses before we get to stop worrying about whether our art will sustain us. GoFundMe is not the model. Even Kickstarter only works for a handful of music careers.
For me, my musical home is still Bandcamp. For others, it’s buying merch, vinyl, CDs, cassettes, either on their website or at a gig.
Resolve this year to support the artists whose music you love. And if you want to start now, and kickstart your new Bandcamp collection with over 100 albums (wait, what?? Yup, 100 albums), you can subscribe to me on Bandcamp. And you OWN that music. It’s yours. You can download it and keep it. If you unsubscribe, it’s still yours, if Bandcamp ceases to exist, it’s still yours, if the Internet shuts down, it’s still yours. Because renting access to songs for fractions of a cent only really works for legacy acts who made all their money in the physical media age.
So, make a choice. If you want to join me, tomorrow is my birthday, so there’s literally no better time. A gift for you and a gift for me, all wrapped up together. Head to the comments for the link xxx
Wishing you a happy festive season, whether your holiday of choice is Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa or the coming of the New Year. We can all agree that tomorrow’s Stevemas celebration is the best of the lot, right? 😉 x
Wishing you a peaceful 2025, and hoping its a year in which we reckon with how the creative economy is managed to promote and sustain the art that sustains us.”
Hi Steve. Intrigued to know who this came from.
Ah, the peril of cut ‘n’ paste. It’s bassist Steve Lawson.
https://stevelawson.bandcamp.com/
While have never – and probably will never – use either service, always recommend friends who sing the praises of Spotify to switch to Bandcamp for just the reasons outlined above.
Also 100% subscribe to Steve’s ethos of supporting the non-household name acts you love by going to gigs and buying CDs and merch direct from source where possible.
While economic necessity dictates that acts like the late Jackie Leven occasionally slip out less than stellar releases, they’re worth buying so the Jackies of this world know they have the support they need to unleash the classics their fans love them for
Is Bandcamp a streaming service?
According to CEO Ethan Diamond the answer is “No”. Diamond – “I don’t think of this as a streaming service. I consider us a record store and a music community. The primary difference being that we’re a way to directly support the artists that you enjoy listening to. You know, half of the sales on Bandcamp at this point are for physical goods. … Digital has also seen really strong growth. And when you buy digital on Bandcamp, what you’re buying is access. So you can grab a download – you know, there are people who want to grab the high-quality file – but you can also stream through our app, unlimited once you’ve purchased the music. But yeah, I don’t think of us as a streaming service. Definitely.”
There’s no way you could convert from streaming to Bandcamp – the two have little overlap in terms of the artists they cover, particularly amongst the 50+ year old heritage acts this site venerates.
According to my pal, his Bandcamp purchases appear as streams in his Apple Music library. I don’t use Apple, so I can’t check.
Yeah I think that’s possible, I used to have a few songs from my hard drive that I pushed into Spotify playlists. But you can’t switch from Spotify to Bandcamp in the way that you can from Spotty to Amazon or Apple.
I recently bought a cd off Bandcamp, and I was able to download a low res version while waiting for the cd, included in the price. I’d thought about buying as a high res download, and then making my own cd, but I’ve had issues with music files; I’ve yet to successfully rip a dvd-a.
Yes I think those downloads happen automatically. A few months ago I bought Rhiannon Giddens and Silk Road Ensemble’s new album on Bandcamp. A couple of days later the order was cancelled and the payment refunded because it turned out they don’t ship it to the UK. But later I noticed they’d given me the download at time of purchase and it’s still there…
Further. Don’t mock your friends/family for being analogue, for being old-fashioned, for having a cluttered home, for being out of date, and don’t tolerate others doing it either, just because they have stacks of CDs that they will rarely hear, or books unread. For they are the ones rewarding artistic enterprise.
I have never paid a penny to Spotify. I listen to new stuff on Bandcamp. If I want to listen to it a second time, I buy it from Bandcamp or direct from the artist.
*voice from behind stacks of randomly sorted CDs and back issue piles of Mojo & Uncut*
Same here.
Thirded.
I usually buy cds from artists that Plays in some extra-small venues such as Larry’s corner, to support the artists that won’t get more than 35 spectators and if I can’t imagine getting that extrême feeling that I would get on the live performance (I call this the Kroumata effekt), I buy the tee-shirt.
All that because I want them back bringing that magic.
I’m using Spotify at the moment as I was given three free months because I bought a train ticket. As most of my cds are in storage it’s given me access music I have but can’t listen to as I can’t get to them yet.
I’d a large birthday this month and it was useful to make a playlist for the party, and over the Festering Season I could play obscure Christmas songs. Will I keep it after the three months probably not .
As ever, big business wins largely through a combination of owning the means to production, knowing how the industry works, business practices that take advantage of naivety and a general apathy from consumers.
At risk of being contrary to the general theme (which I support), I do think it is better for musicians now rather than 40 years ago. But not by much. There are more channels – including Bandcamp, and artists can access marketing and sell directly far more easily than before.
For what it’s worth, I canned Spotify – it was getting more expensive and it was trying to add things I don’t need. But I use Apple Music which, I believe, is slightly less mean to artists. I used to have both (kids prefer Spotify but they have got over it now).
Gigs are much more expensive than they were. I probably spend more on music now than I used to.
I use Apple Music constantly now, at least, other than in the kitchen or my old fiesta, which remain cd only zones. However, my search is more often my own library than the whole of Apple Music, one of the reasons I prefer it to spotty, and I use it to play my choices without taking them off the shelf or out their boxes. I occasionally trial something but, more often than not, use Bandcamp for that. I never knew their platform disallows repeated listens as I either skip it to never return, or buy at some later stage, ie the what might otherwise be a second listen.
The primary reason that Spotify* sucks is that the Music Industry sucks and enables, even encourages, it to stitch up musicians. For easy profit with minimum outlay. The transformation of entertainment** from a collection of businesses to an industry is the source of the current problem.
*See also Tidal, Amazon Music, Apple Music etc. They all suck, to varying degrees, as primary sources of music entertainment.
This is not to say that the great record labels of the past were knights in shining armour in the “good” old days. There were always exploiters in “the biz”.
**Music, movies, TV, sport. All corporatized and spoiled.
Bandcamp and the independent music-producing entities that use it are a way to circumvent this corporatization. Though some of the more corporate entities are now using Bandcamp as well as the streaming services. Hedging their bets.
A hell of a lot of independent artists are on the streaming services as well as Bandcamp, because the pittances they get from Spotify etc. are still better than getting nothing at all.
I moved to Apple too. no complaints from me. Pay the artists more. Don’t fill playlists full of copyright free music. Don’t pay millions to Joe Rogan. The specialist radio shows are really good and the DJ’s have a passion for what they are doing.
Im surprised no ones mentioned this but the sound quality of spotify is shockingly bad. Especially when compared to its to rivals. Always amazed to see people spending 100’s on headphones and then listing to Spotify with them.
Premium is 320kbps which is pretty close to CD quality or so close that likely most of us can’t hear any difference
As it is the season of goodwill to all men, I’m not going to comment.
You can probably guess what I would have written!
It’s not CD quality but I can’t hear any difference. I suspect that many of us over 50 who have somewhat abused our ears may find the same
Certainly not “shockingly bad”, but the free version is
I have YouTube music, mostly to avoid commercials, mainly listen in my car and it is fine for that
I do still pay for a Spotify subscription because that’s what my daughter uses and she refuses to move her playlists anywhere else
We’ve had this conversation before and said the same things. That never happens does it? We also said, how many of us sit undisturbed, listening to our hifis in perfect conditions?
And as I’ve always said, nobody listens in a perfect acoustic because it doesn’t exist. I do sit in a dedicated room, and it isn’t acoustically perfect.
But most people listen nowadays via headphones, where room acoustics are not an issue, and where quality differences are more easily revealed, because the sound is being squirted straight into the lugholes without interference.
Even if our old ears are not able to hear to 20kHz, we can still hear the difference between mp3 and lossless, if we care to.
Would it have been a bit dull @fentonsteve?
Almost certainly very dull.
Would also have been the only bit of the thread to which I would have given my full attention.
See below for my thoughts on impedance-controlled transmission lines. Have a strong coffee at hand to avoid nodding off.
Huzzah!
Impedance-controlledtransmissionlines is the great lost Sparklehorse album.
Excellent! Have an up!
I had confirmation yesterday, if it was needed, that my hearing isn’t what it was. I was chatting to my son and his gf while waiting for my stove top coffee pot and he said “Your coffee’s nearly ready.” Apparently it was just starting to hiss as it got close to boiling and I couldn’t hear it. No great surprise: I’m 60 and I have some tinnitus so maybe the tinnitus was masking the high frequencies of the steam but even so…..
Go for a test – should be able to get one through your GP. After months of prodding from the GLW, and claims that I was “going deaf” I went to get a hearing test. Turns out I’m not remotely deaf but have the “normal” hearing for a 64 year old. Can’t hear anything above around 15khz, mind you.
Begs the question why I apparently can’t hear things the GLW says, although I have my own theory about that.
I think I “just” have some frequency loss although I have to concentrate a bit harder and people facing me helps a bit too. Talkback headsets can be interesting, especially program levels.
On the odd occasion I do sound rather than video, I don’t have any problems.
Oddly enough I’m going for a hearing test as soon as they reopen after Xmas, also prodded into it by the missus. The problem is usually the tv – she claims I must be going deaf because I have it so loud, I claim it’s normal volume and she has abnormally sensitive hearing. It’s certainly true that she lunges for the soundbar remote when ads come on as if she’s in pain, whereas I just feel mildly annoyed that the volume’s increased. She’s also been known to wear her Bose QCs in the cinema…
The only time I feel I have a hearing problem is when there are competing sounds – trying to hear what someone’s saying to me in a crowded pub, for instance, or what Mrs thep’s saying to me when the kettle’s boiling. I can hear a petrol-driven lawnmower a mile away, wherreas she doesn’t seem to, so there’s that…
“she claims I must be going deaf because I have it so loud, I claim it’s normal volume and she has abnormally sensitive hearing” – a conversation oft repeated in my house too.
Competing sounds also an issue – and apparently I’m supposed to be able to hold a conversation with the GLW at the other other end of the house with the kettle on.
Ha! I’ve given up going and asking her what she said, because she’s either talking to herself, or claims that it’s not important.
Went for a hearing test a few weeks back. “Your hearing is actually not that bad but like almost everyone your age you have problem picking out conversations when it’s noisy, like in a pub. Even very expensive hearing-aids won’t help you there.”
A friend swears by the latest Apple earbuds thingies. You can do your own hearing test and adjust accordingly. As long as you don’t mind looking as though you are permanently on the phone, even at the dinner table, he says they’re brill
A frequent conversation chez moi:
“Something something something something.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You didn’t hear any of that, did you?
“Nope. I don’t mind though.”
Or it used to be a frequent conversation. Nowadays I’m totally reliant on a transcription app and subs for films (and am of the opinion that hearing, like memory, is overrated.)
There is somebody else in your house, Gary? Are you sure you aren’t hallucinating?
You evidently made a false assumption at some point in the duration of our acquaintance.
Similar in our household @mikethep but I need the hearing aids (another symptom of my medical problem). However I don’t wear them at home as my wife has the TV on loud enough for me to hear, alas she has it too loud for me and I ask her to turn it down as it’s too loud.
Will she have a hearing test?
Having invested in some aids that now make it possible to watch TV at a normal volume, I have the problem that others in the house still need it on loud enough to part my hair. Of course, they aren’t going deaf though …. not at all.
IMHO, Bandcamp is not without its woes (see my posts passim) but is probably best of a bad lot, bar buying direct from the merch table at a gig.
There was a piece, probably in Word, maybe 15 or so years ago that said a artist only really needs around 1000 or so committed fans to sustain an ok income as long as that thousand buy music, tickets and merch. Obviously, the more members in an act, the more you need and managing your own affairs such as ticketing and processing merch orders takes time and resources but it can be done. I think a bigger hurdle for new acts is getting known without record company promotion amongst the sea of stuff uploaded to Spotify. Maybe it’s time for a return to flyposting around cities. I always quite liked seeing them.
I use Tidal. I’ve tried virtually all of the alternatives but my primary listening is from CD. Tidal is useful for plugging gaps but I use it mostly for discovering new to me music. If I like it I buy it preferably from the artist’s site or Bandcamp. I don’t do merch tables as I can’t get out to gigs.
After over fifty years of consuming music, books etc I along with I should imagine every person on this site has more than paid my dues. The organised clutter that occupies the bulk of the available space in my little flat attests to this.
Sorry this was very poorly written. I’ve been unwell since Christmas Eve and my cognitive abilities seem to be somewhat impaired.
No sign of cognitive impairment on first reading – you shouldn’t have confessed!
Get well soon, Mr P.
Get well soon Peter.
If you are an artist who hopes to derive some income from streaming, then Spotify certainly sucks.
If on the other hand, you are, for example
a consumer like me with a very small budget and an insatiable curiosity
a festival like Roskilde that is trying to increase awareness of all the acts they’ve booked,
someone holding a party who wants dance music to appeal to a broad range of tastes,
or a new band or artist like my Bagarmossen pal, Anders, who wants to themselves on the map
It’s a very useful tool.
I feel like a real black sheep for expressing enthusiasm about Spotify, but I’d be a terrible hypocrite if I didn’t.
I’ve just spend the morning doing the housework and listening to To DuCool’s Reissues of 2024.
What a delight! To buy all those albums is far beyond my budget. But’s been a joy to give them a listen.
You could do all that on another streaming service that doesn’t sound like crap and pays the artists more.
None of them pay artists what radio play does, or what the music is worth.
Not one.
For reasons that for the most don’t add up, I’ve never subscribed to Spotify. I occasionally dip in and to my tired old ears it all sounds ok. Not as good as Amazon HD or, especially, Tidal but certainly not crap.
And let’s face it, the genie has long left the bottle. Average Joe on average bought one CD a month. A tenner sometimes well spent, sometimes not. Now Average Joe gets every song, every CD, every artist for the same tenner.
Average Joe looks at music geeks, like what here on this forum, and thinks “Good on them, supporting struggling artists, buying t-shirts and signed photos and all that good stuff”, shrugs his shoulders then dials up Spotify.
If you are not a subscriber you are listening to the lowest quality Spotify and not the premium service and yet it sounds OK? Er…
I pay the bog-standard Spotify subscription.
I play it through a small speaker at home or through a stereo at parties and am satisfied with the results.It’s adequate for my needs.
I’ve seen photos of Pencilsqueezer’s magnificent equipment and wouldn’t make any comparison.
One day, my dream it to make a pilgrimage to St Pencil’s Point in North Wales and hear for myself.
Mr P is missing a trick! He should start an OnlyFans page and charge for viewing those photos! Ooo’err!!
(Where’s that Moose?)
I’ll give you one guess how I pay for the kit upgrades. 😉
The tricky thing about no longer subscribing to streaming services is that you lose their unique selling-point, which is access to a huge choice of what you want to hear right now this instant.
The problem with music radio, which persists with streamed radio stations, was and still is as Steely Dan remarked in “FM”, all too often you get “somebody else’s favourite song”.
Even your absolute favourite DJ is often going to play things you don’t like all that much.
For people who have become committed streamers, that’s a deal-breaker. Bandcamp, for all it’s good points, doesn’t really address that. Yet.
Say you’ve just learned that Joe Schmoe, of whom you’re a big fan, has just released a new album. You could probably, after some Googling, find the lead track on some internet radio station somewhere, but if he’s not put it up on Bandcamp and he doesn’t have his own site, the only way you’ll hear any other tracks on that album is if you go to Apple, Amazon, Spotify or Tidal.
I love Bandcamp – a few listens to a new act, and then a few quid to buy the download, which I can upload to the 58,000 other songs I have uploaded to my version of iBroadcast. There’s car more music in there then I will ever listen to, but random play always brings me some new joy on Radio Sal.
Spotify, because I never got around to subscribing is as much cursed with ad breaks as YouTube, without the sometimes pleasing visuals to go with it.
A new album or two a month on Bandcamp and I’m a happy bunny, even if the reportedly dodgy union politics by its current owner maje it less than squeaky clean.
iBroadcast looks very interesting.
I’ve not come across this before.
I wonder how well it would work on UK 5G mobile data…
Its free version is perfectly passable, so there’s no cost to trying it out, Mike. I’m not sure how it works with networks in the UK, but it seems OK in Germany, though to be honest, I tend to use it most when I’m within range of wifi.
The Afterworder who…admitted to only listening to music on Spotify and not to try before buying either. An HE Bateman cartoon without the visuals. Persona non grata thereafter.
I am pretty sure the artists I listen to are financially quite well off, better than I am at least. Spotify isn’t their only income either. Apparently Gen Z are not so fussed about music so where does that leave us?
I think Hepworth said that most musicians are either much better off than you think or much worse off than you’d think. It’s a shit business.
I recall his comment. Bit of a Heppo special. It’s complicated. The music industry bank rolled many acts who didn’t make money, the big names subsidised them in effect.
There is a noticeable improvement in SQ when streaming lossless flac files from Tidal, Qobuz etc from streaming files from Spotify. It’s not a night and day difference and it takes some investment in audio kit to take full advantage of that uptick in SQ. It depends how much one is prepared or able to invest in the whole shebang. I do know that after recently upgrading my CD front end that CD playback sounds noticeably better than streamed files. Once again it isn’t a night and day difference but it certainly plays recorded music in a more vivid and transparent manner. Music is for me and I guess for the majority of us here a part of life. Mucking about with my kit to bring as much quality as I can from that music is my hobby.
It would be the DAC that could improve things. The CD player is also streaming 1s and 0s to it, just from a disc not from the internet or a FLAC or WAV file on your computer. Data would be the same if source is lossless
So that would imply that a £100 CDT would sound the same as a £7000 CDT, providing they were connected to the same DAC?
Well yes, but all the money is in the internal DAC, plus standard of build, reliability etc
Just as a point of order. A CDT doesn’t have a DAC onboard, all the digital to analogue conversion is carried out by a DAC that is situated elsewhere either in a suitably equipped amplifier or as is the case with my rig a dedicated external R2R DAC. All my CDT does is spin the disc to extract the data. The improvement in SQ since I installed it has been very noticeable when compared to my previous CDP connected to the same external DAC and as I have already mentioned to the SQ from my dedicated streamer. Hifi kit is essentially anti-social the more components that one can separate one from the other the better. Less electrical noise, better sound.
Yeah I realise this I was talking about internal DACs in expensive CD players that most have in order to connect directly to an analogue amplifier.
When one spends a lot of money on HiFi then I think sometimes you want to hear a difference even if there isn’t one actually there! And if it sounds better to you then fine.
Wow!
I’ll second that wow and add that if being that unpleasant and arrogant is considered ok then all I can say is no it really isn’t.
It’s Dai, FFS! Although to be fair, I think in his own blunt way he was saying “the more you spend on anything, for instance fine wine, the more the temptation is to say “yeah, I can tell the difference. Never subtle,our Dai. Sometimes spot on.
What has it got to do with you? Do you think arrogance and unnecessary rudeness is something that should be defended or even applauded?
As for Dai being spot on in this case he’s talking complete and absolute bollocks.
Dearie me, all I was trying to say in my jocular, homespun way is that Dai is known for his bluntness. Sometimes he is spot on re his opinions, other times he is not. IMHO of course.
My own worthless view is that spending more and more on anything, including hifi, means a law of dismissing returns eg how much better is a £500 bottle of Petrus than a tenner spent on Jacob’s Creek? If you can afford it and more importantly it makes you happy, go for Petrus every time.
I wasn’t intending to be arrogant and rude, but that is now what you are being
Ok that’s us done. All you needed to do was man up and apologise. Happy New Year to you.
Apologise for what? It is a discussion about digital audio. Seems like I hit a nerve. Like I said, if you hear a difference, then that’s all good. I fail to see how that is being arrogant and rude. You saying I am talking complete bollocks clearly falls into that category
My final word(s), from the pdf referenced below:
“A properly engineered outboard converter will sound the same despite changes in CD player, cable type and length and despite changing from electrical to optical input because it accepts only data from the serial signal and regenerates its own clock. Audible differences simply mean the converter is of poor design and should be rejected.”
And this is from a friend of mine. He is a digital audio engineer who was one of the main guys behind the development of the SACD format, so he should know what he is talking about.
“1. the audio sample values are nowhere to be found on a CD
Due to the CIRC coding and EFM modulation techniques, the audio data is encoded as completely different values and those are widely distributed to mitigate against burst errors.
2. any transmission jitter due to the pit/land structure on the CD is removed after data slicing
The decoding circuitry has to decide whether a bit value is a 0 or 1. As soon as it has done that, whether correctly or incorrectly, any transmission jitter associated with the CD pressing is removed, and the values decided are stored in memory.
3. the error correction circuitry is an inherent part of the decoding of CD and is very robust
Remember DTS multi-channel CDs? They would not work if CD decoding was not a solved problem, since you need to pass the DTS signal via SPDIF to an external DTS decoder. If there were errors in the SPDIF signal, you would know it!
4. why are there $30k transports?
Why do people buy Patek-Philippe watches which are no more accurate than a cheap Seiko? Because they can, and because they provide pride of ownership. It is easy to run up the BoM cost on a transport: die-cast, high-price mechanism (VRDS, for example), premium parts, deluxe chassis, etc. Are they necessary? No, not unless the transport mechanism is able to better track problem discs (those with long memories will recall that early CD reviews used to refer to the largest data gap size that could be handled, so differences in performance of CD mechanisms is clearly possible, but usually only in the case of damaged/hard to track discs).”
I guess that’s all bollocks too
I shall explain although I shouldn’t have to do so.
Arrogant. The presumption that you know better than I how my kit sounds and how the upgrades I instigate sound.
Rude. Suggesting that I am somehow deluding myself by spending my money on the things I have chosen to spend it on when from your assumed position of superiority that money has been wasted.
Bollocks. By your yardstick the experience of driving a second-hand Ford Fiesta is the same as driving a Ferrari it’s just Ferrari owners fooling themselves.
I couldn’t care less for your opinions about audio,nor am I bothered by it, I trust my experience. I have a lot of it, especially with my kit in my room which is something you have absolutely zero knowledge of. I suppose the difference between you and me Dai is I wouldn’t be arrogant enough to imagine it would be acceptable under any circumstances to insinuate that someone I don’t know and has only ever been respectful towards me is a deluded fool. That is what your assertion boils down too and that is why it is rude. Now as I have already said we’re done.
We don’t yet live in a world of Quantum electronics, so “digital” is not 1s and 0s, but is high-bandwidth analogue. Put a network analyser on a S/PDIF and measure the TDR, and you will see that not all 75 Ohm transmission lines are the same.
I spent years working in professional broadcast equipment, where serial bandwidth varied from 1.4MHz (CD) or 2.3MHz (24-bit 48kHz digital audio) to 270MHz (SD TV) to 1.5GHz (HD TV) and not all 75 serial links are equal.
The most easily-demonstrated was my Arcam Delta CD transport and Black Box 5 DAC. The DAC fed a high-quality sync to the transport, so that the clock did not have to be recovered from the jittery S/PDIF data. The transport had both electrical S/DPIF and optical TOSLINK outputs and the DAC had corresponding coax and optical inputs. So the same transport hardware sync’ed to the same clock, two parallel data paths, into the same DAC hardware.
They sounded different.
I love it when you talk all technical.
I have no technical data to support my assertions about differences in SQ, I have to rely on my old ears and a brain stuffed full of experience but I’ll assert til’ the cows come home that those differences are absolutely real. I could make guesses about the quality of seperate linear power supplies or various digital output stages playing a part or maybe where the clocking is done and by what type of clock but they would be guesses.
I was just about to post the same thing. You got it more or less right I think.
Maybe you thought they sounded different. The audio stream can be reproduced exactly unless there is a serious issue somewhere. That would result in dropouts and interruptions rather than a decrease in sound quality. If the transports are inputting the same data into the DAC they will sound the same at the other end. And they are designed to do this
https://redirect.viglink.com/?format=go&jsonp=vglnk_173556707444511&key=098b477826d9c73180a211ac110fa35f&libId=m5b3t7yn010027jz000UL7t0t8va1&loc=https%3A%2F%2Fforums.stevehoffman.tv%2Fthreads%2Fcontemplating-a-dedicated-cd-transport-cambridge-cxc.929758%2Fpage-4%23post-25931150&v=1&out=https%3A%2F%2Fpearl-hifi.com%2F06_Lit_Archive%2F14_Books_Tech_Papers%2FWatkinson_John%2FThe_Art_of_Sound_Reproduction.pdf&ref=https%3A%2F%2Ftheafterword.co.uk%2F&title=(1)%20Contemplating%20a%20dedicated%20CD%20transport%20(Cambridge%20CXC)%20%7C%20Page%204%20%7C%20Steve%20Hoffman%20Music%20Forums&txt=https%3A%2F%2Fpearl-hifi.com%2F06_Lit_Archi…kinson_John%2FThe_Art_of_Sound_Reproduction.pdf
Page 540 in very long pdf above
Or, perhaps, as the designer/Technical Director of Arcam (and my boss at the time) was trying to prove, it is possible for two data channels with different bandwidths, both carrying the same data, to measure differently.
As cheap plastic TOSLINK opical cables have a much reduced bandwidth compared to a 75 Ohm tranmission line, I would expect them to behave differently. That’s what I took from it, anyway.
John Dawson is a hugely knowledgable chap, and a senior in the AES, and I would not disagree with him.
Careful now, Mr P – you’ll attract the ire of the “Music comes first, last and all the time” lobby – they’ll want you to trade in your immaculate speakers for a tin can and some wet string, to demonstrate that you’re not some kind of (gulp) audiophile!!
Never gonna happen. I am by strict definition an audiophile. I love sound. I’ve been buying and building sound systems for many years, sometimes expensive ones, sometimes less so depending upon what my disposable income will allow. I adore music so to me it only makes sense to put together the best pieces of kit I can afford so I can enjoy the recorded version of it as much as possible. I avoid the silly audiophile arguments that abound although some of the online discussion threads that are posted elsewhere can be most amusing and the level of basic ignorance amongst some on those sites who put themselves forward as being expert in these matters is quite staggering.
My streamer and CDT are connected to the same external DAC. The CDT via a digital coax cable and the streamer via USB. So the same DAC is doing the conversion.
Vinyl for dedicated listening for me, and Apple Music for non-committed background auditioning and other streaming.
The main discriminator for me with Apple Music is their hosting of surround mixes. Given that the Revolver Deluxe set didn’t feature a surround mix on Blu-Ray in order to drive people over to Apple Music, I wonder if this type of exclusivity is an area where artists might get more dosh from Apple?
Sidenote: It is worth pausing for a sec to consider that, pre-streaming, artists have always been royally screwed over by the record companies, always the lowest in the food chain. It’s not as if most artists used to be swimming in cash 20 or 30 years ago: back then it was the boss of their label that was growing fat while the artist remained unrecouped. By no means a disagreement with the thread, but artists being shafted (and yes the degree has increased) is hardly a recent development, sadly.
As Mr Fripp wrote:
When a record company makes a mistake, the artist pays for it.
When a manager makes a mistake, the artist pays for it.
When the artist makes a mistake, the artist pays for it.
Mr Fripp is correct and it applies to all artists across all the arts with the exception of the chosen few. People have since time immemorial desired what artists create they just don’t like paying for it. The mindset is that the arts and the people who create within them are a luxury, are trivial and ultimately non-essential. People who think that way have been born without a soul. The sciences make life possible, the arts make life worth it.
Isn’t one of today’s problems that there are so many “artists across all the arts”? For instance, virtually anyone it seems, talented or otherwise, can in the privacy of their own bedroom create music and then broadcast it to the world.
One would like to think that real geniuses will always break through but given the sheer volume out there, I’m not too sure that’s the case.
I guess that all a poor boy can do is champion an artist one likes, bung some dosh at Bandcamp or whatever and accept the world is not fair, Spotify is here to stay and streaming sound quality matters to most people not one jot.
I agree with all of that Lodey. I think the dawn of the modern Internet has kicked the doors open in every way and made access to the arts far easier and like most things it touches it’s a two edged sword. It’s opened up opportunities that were not possible prior to it’s existence and given a shop window to many people who previously had none. The end result of that is we get to live with a tyranny of choice. The world has always been awash with talent, now those talents are a lot more visible. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. Sorting through it certainly takes a lot more effort.
I’m framing that first sentence
“virtually anyone it seems, talented or otherwise, can in the privacy of their own bedroom create music and then broadcast it to the world”
I give you: The Afterwordlers
https://ilovesong.ai/share/?id=4098398&uid=cba1cb7f-c4d5-42ab-80a6-ad0d4484bc3b
Lyrics, music and voice by AI. Creative inspiration and all human input by me, just now.
That is simply the best thing that ever has appeared on the AfterWord!!!
I shall forever now be known as Lode-a-Stone and Gary is King….for at least a day
Say it again ..
Be careful what you wish for, Lodey.
I agree. It is truly brilliant. Well done @Gary!
But what happens when it suddenly goes viralissimo and hipsters all over the world are sharing with with their pals?
Whatcha gonna do when Lode-a-Stone is overnight a household name??
The mid-Atlantic accent makes one helluva maul of my name, too.
@Gary I’ve tried to download it, as I’ve done with some I’ve ‘created’ but you must be only able to download the ones you make.
Is it possible you could delete it as I’d love a copy?
Also splendidly done @Gary.
@hubert-rawlinson
Thank you, Hubes, though I had little to do with it apart from copy/pasting.
I’ve no idea how to enable you to download it. If you PM me an email address I can email or dropbox it or something.
I like copied the link then I like pasted it into my downloads thingie and then like it was there. I’m Steve Fenton I am
Love it. In a very canny move about 30 years ago Iron Maiden released Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter in the first week of January – and secured a number one single ! I’ll be tuning into Bruno Brookes next Tuesday lunchtime to see if our streams have achieved the same feat.
I ‘admit’ to being a Spotify subscriber. I realise that the artists aren’t being paid as much as they would have been if I’d bought all the CDs but
a. I’m not about to do that
b. I don’t know of an equivalent radio station where I could hear the artists I’m introduced to via the selection of playlists I download.
I’m starting to lose count of the number of artists I’ve been to see after hearing them on Spotify.
I do like to have MP3s though so I try to maintain the discipline to buy either CDs or downloads….and, although it’s only £99 a year, some of my Spotify subs do filter through to the artists.
Yep. I was going to make the point that the giant readily available library means I’ve heard loads of artists I wouldn’t have otherwise and it’s frequently the most skint who have been the beneficiaries of my music buying and, alas, infrequent gig going. I don’t have the disposable income of many on this site and I tell myself that I did put in forty years of emptying my pockets into the music industry.
On a side note, I see that the incoming US government has bills ready to defund PBS and NPR. I’ve been enjoying Tiny Desk for years – might be time I coughed up..
Some excellent points there, @Sewer Robot!
If Trump defunds NPR, I too will be sending money to keep the Tiny Desk going.
NPR have fans all over the planet. Imagine if we all made a small contribution! That would be one in the eye for Trump and his cronies.
As both you and @Pencilsquezer have commented, we who are a little older have all spent a fortune over the years on LPs, Merch and concert tickets, so we do not need to feel too guilty a conscience about enjoying the ridiculous wealth of music that Spotify provides.
I’ve subscribed to Spotify for years and find the access to so much music that I would otherwise never get to hear; and the sheer convenience of it, brilliant, As clearly so do millions of others, which is why streaming is never going to go away.
I still buy physical CDs and vinyl, often via Bandcamp if that’s an option, but I’d be lying if I tried to suggest that I buy as much as I used to. I don’t, although certainly there are many records that I never would have bought, if I hadn’t heard it via streaming in the first place.
Hopefully we will see more competition form streamers to improve the deals for artists, but I think what we’re also seeing is artists – for better or worse – adapting their work, their merchandise, their recording and their touring to reflect the reality of the industry as it now is – as,I guess, has always been the case with every technological change.
Well said @Blue_Boy. Spotify has opened my ears to all kinds of wonderful music.
And ensured that I went to a lot of gigs by artists I’d never heard of.
During the autumn, our film club, here at Bio Reflexen in Kärrtorp, showed the Sudanese film, Goodbye Julia, set in Khartoum before the creation of the índependent state of South Sudan.
Here’s a scene from the film.
And here’s the playlist that I was inspired to create:
Eiman Yousif, one of the principal actors in the film now lives in exile in Cairo with her family.
I had great fun copying and pasting in Arabic song titles and discovering more about all those Hitmakers from the Nile!
Here’s Abdel Aziz El Mubarak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fkeQ3e_8EY&list=RDEM4Gor_K6Chp8vKQZXoCzTrg&start_radio=1
Give him a listen on Spotify.
To their great credit, Spotify do not limit themselves to our alphabet,
Greek, Korean, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese. Russian, Hebrew, Thai….all manner of delight await you!
The audience are as fascinating as the artist at an Abdel Aziz el Mubarak gig.
So wonderfully joyful!
Enjoy!
Just get digging! There’s lot of fabulous music like this on Spotify,
According to a report cited by the Financial Times a month ago, copyright music revenues have never been higher, at around $45bn, up 25% in 3 years. More than half of this goes to record companies, of which the market is now dominated by UMG, Sony and Warner.
Steve Lawson cites Spotify as “terrible” but makes no mention of the record companies, who in the majority of cases are the people actually paying artists. Spotify didn’t turn a profit until this year, but the big 3 record companies have been doing very nicely for some time – as an example, €1.4bn profit at UMG last year.
As @DanP points out above, the record companies were always the ones making the real money, alongside a tiny number of artists. The numbers suggest, rather than the internet rhetoric, that nothing has changed.
Interesting thread. Almost all the music I listen to at home is on the main stereo in the lounge, and the biggest quality compromise is the shape of the room which means I can’t sit in a good spot. C’est la vie. I do use Spotify though, a bit, to explore music I don’t own and if I love something I’ll buy it. In fact the few things I’ve bought this year were from Bandcamp or the merch table.
I’m currently away for new year and I’m playing Spotify as a convenient way of having some sounds with me. I ought to address this because I haven’t got around to figuring out how to sync my phone to my large collection (probably not that large compared to some here) of music which it sitting on a hard drive. I’ve abandoned the iPod so I need to recreate it with my phone. Musicolet is great but AFAIK can’t easily sync. It’s partly laziness – I must figure it out.
Full disclosure, I think I’d miss the convenience of Spotify, for example the Blue Note playlist someone shared yesterday which I was wallowing in last night.
This reminds me if anyone needs a brand new shrink wrapped iPod Professional I have one I need to move on. PM me.
Not really my area but it sounds to me like your syncing issues could be readily sorted out by checking out Roon (expensive but great) or Plexamp (cheaper but probably exactly what you require).
I think Media Monkey will do it but I haven’t been able to face getting it to work so far.
Roon is a fantastic interface (and bypasses some of the current Sonos app issues) but I can’t really justify it’s cost after my current “3 months for the price of 1” runs out in Feb.
It would sort the phone sync stuff, mind you, as it includes Roon Arc that gives access out and about.
Chastened by this thread I’m currently listening to Julianne Regan / Tim Bricheno on Musicolet, purchased from Bandcamp! 😇
I had no idea who these two were @Twang. But a little googling clarified things.
What a gorgeous song!
Julianne Regan is one of the great voices of ’80s UK pop.
Don’t really know why she wasn’t a big star.
Maybe she didn’t want that.
Possibly it was the infamous TOTP ‘performance’.
They were sold as folky goth, with connections to Gene Loves Jezebel, The Mission, and latterly the Sisters of Mercy, but I remember them as listless hippies whose songs sucked the energy out of the room (sorry!).
I remember having quite a heated debate – enough to make the locals go quiet and stare at us – with a Fields of the Nephilim fan (who was covered in flour), in a pub in Edale. I was wearing a God’s Own Medicine t-shirt, which is how it all started.
Looking at Wikipedia, this must have been 1987, as All About Eve had not yet released their debut album.
In summary: I quite liked AAE’s indie-released singles, and The Mission, and he really, really, did not.
I mean, really, why do I remember this shit?
Just re-read that opening para. There are few corners of the internet where that could exist.
Far from dull, I might add.
Drink had been taken. I was less dull then.
A truly great opening to a novel. I’m tempted to take it from there…
Their first album is fantastic. OOAA.
OALA,EHO
I’m glad they tickle your fancy, Twang – it’d be boring if we all liked the same music.
In the Meadow is a banger!
I do remember them being promoted at the time as Goth, which was just ridiculous.
I don’t think she did. She went off and did various indy type things then did a masters in English and taught things like songwriting. Her voice is still lovely though as the new album attests.
She appeared at Cropredy a few times.
Yes she sang “She moved through the fair” with Fairport one time.
iTunes Match will match or upload everything on your HDD and enable you to play it from your phone.
£26.99 a year IIRC.
Ah I’m Apple free. I have a Mac Mini for recording but that’s going soon though I can’t quite face the migration process.
As you can see from the songs in Arabic that I posted above, Spotify very polyglot.
I checked. It’s available in 74 different languages.
https://newsroom.spotify.com/2023-05-15/spotify-new-languages-arabic-chinese-spanish/#:~:text=Beginning%20today%2C%20Spotify%20will%20be,Spanish%20%E2%80%93%20Argentina
So artists from 74 regions are being ripped off. Does this mean it’s a good thing? 😉
Far more than 74 regions unfortunately. Arabic alone covers more than a few countries.
For the consumer , it’s great. And the artists may benefit by being put on the map. A band is touring in a new country for the first time. Being on Spotify may lead to a few more tickets getting sold. Having the chance to have a listen has certainly led to me buying tickets to see artists I’d never heard of. The Fasching Jazz Club use Spotify for all their acts to create interest. And many of their acts come loaded with merch and are keen for a meet and greet after the show.
So not much money from the streaming, but a chance to earn thanks to the exposure,
I am a Spotify subscriber and also buy CDs and merch. I am also an Amazon user and a supermarket customer, but support local shops when I can. I’m guessing many of us here are somewhat similar – balancing convenience and cost with attempting to also do the ‘right thing’.
Clearly Spotify is great for the mega populat acts, and is also a way for small acts to get their music published and available without record company gatekeepers of old – you almost have to be on Spotify and the like to prove you are real, like having a website or Facebook page. For everyone in between it has little benefit, certainly not financially.
Streaming ain’t going away anytime soon and has become the default for an awful lot of people. Most of those people also listen on crappy little speakers where the fact they are mp3s makes diddly squat difference. For me it is a way of dipping into stuff I will never buy, or maybe giving something a listen before I do decide to buy, but it will never replace playing CDs or records because they do sound so much better through my hifi, even with my 74 year old hearing.
I am not entirely comfortable with the notion that streaming services, particularly in the context of music we don’t already physically own, is OK because we have spent on a lot of money on music in the past. I can’t see that being of much consolation to young artists. I have spent lots of money on builders, plumbers etc in the past, but the current batch don’t seem keen on giving their services for free in recognition of this.
Last month I spent in excess of £600 on CDs. I refuse to be guilt tripped about paying for a Tidal subscription.
Well, you’re at least supporting the owners of Tidal, who surely need it.
😉
I did some experimenting and Tidal is significantly better quality than Spotify so I’m thinking about canning the Spotify family sub, the boy can make his own mind up, and moving to Tidal.
You’re not really comparing like to like with plumbers and musical artists.
If a pipe bursts, a radiator starts leaking, your lavatory will not flush or your boiler breaks down, you have to get them fixed to live a reasonable life in your home.
Obtaining new music to listen to may be something you really want to do, but it’s not something you absolutely have to do.
Speak for yourself! 🙂
A more valid comparison might be streaming movies via Netflix/Amazon Prime/Apple+ versus buying DVDs/Blurays. Or reading music mags via an online catch-all service versus buying them from a newsagent or subscribing.
Some perspective – courtesy of a Prog magazine reader:
This is what platforms pay for a stream:
Qobuz: $0.043
Tidal: $0.013
Apple: $0.01
YouTube: $0.008
Deezer: $0.0064
Amazon: $0.004
Spotify: $0.0032
Pandora: $0.0013
The whole system is just wrong, and anyone using any of these services should know.
I have no idea of the answer but what’s the income difference for an artist who, say, might previously have sold 10,000 cds but today sells the equivalent number but in streams?
I suspect the real difference lies with record advances (which as I understand it have all but vanished) rather than sales income but there’s every chance I’m Wrong.
Spare me the guilt tripping. If it’s so wrong why do rights owners license their music to streamers? It’s not compulsory.
As ever, it would be nice if the artists saw more of the money. I understand that many albums are unrecouped but I wonder if the likes of Fleetwood Mac get the same pittance for Rumours say? Surely one of the most profitable albums of all time.
Mick sold his rights about 4 years ago to BMG. Nicks sold 80% of hers to Primary Wave, Buckingham flogged his to Hipgnosis, Christine McVie to HarbourView Equity,. They’ve already seen a significant slab of money as a consequence.
The only reason they were able to cash in in advance, instead of waiting for the money to trickle in over time is because of streaming. The risk of ending up unrecouped now sits with those buying up the rights, gambling on healthy future income streams and future interest rates.
Well I am pleased that my streaming service ( Qobuz) pays artists the most, but I don’t feel guilty using this service at all ( you should try it before you decide on Tidal Twang ).
Like Pencilsqueezer I pay significant amounts on physical music and gigs every year.
So no guilt trip here.
I agree on Qobuz. I used them myself for some time and they offer an excellent service though slightly more expensive on a monthly basis than Tidal for the basic package. I’ve stuck with Tidal because I have a slight preference for their app’s UI but Tidal Connect was the deal maker. If Qobuz ever get around to offering up Qobuz Connect I may well take up my subscription with them once again. I’d rather give my cash to a French company than an American* owned one.
*Tidal were originally Norwegian.
Qobuz Connect is imminent although they have been saying this since last Spring. There is a beta version out there I think.
That’s good to know, thanks John. I believe it’s easily the most requested upgrade and they have been holding out on it for an age, even longer than the never arriving lossless version of Spotify. Qobuz send me frequent emails but Connect is never mentioned despite my suggestion along with many others that that is the one thing that would entice me back. Fingers crossed, although even when it gets rolled out there will be a wait while the various device manufacturers implement it in their software.
No wonder I spend so much on CDs.
@pencilsqueezer @John-Walters
That blue note playlist Mike H alerted us to is not available on Qobuz.
Just sayin’
Isn’t it? I don’t bother much with playlists tbh but if I did there are thousands of them available across every streaming platform. On Tidal alone there are playlists for everything imaginable from labels to recording engineers to individual musicians and that’s before going anywhere near the thousands of user lists that appear daily.
My point was more that Qobuz , at least as far as Blue Note was concerned, seems to be less important for reach than the others.
Americans. I haven’t got the figures but I’d bet Qobuz doesn’t have a big enough profile in the good ole US of A to be deemed worth bothering about. For Blue Note to consider a French streaming service not to be worthy seems to demonstrate a bit of a disconnect between the French love of Jazz and the music Blue Note has on it’s catalogue.
This is of course entirely speculation on my part. It could be something even more prosaic such as the various licensing deals between territories.
I sometimes just look at those sort of lists and don’t bother listening at the time. I scroll through to see what albums I haven’t yet got or heard and get myself a list to work through.
Obviously, if they’ve playlisted tracks along with the album names and cover art, then the albums will be available to stream.
Before a band had to repay it’s advance out of any royalties , which may have been negligible or non-existent. A kind harsh contract. That’s how I understand it. Spotify saved the music business from piracy meltdown, so there’s that. A digital world required such a solution. You can’t just compare CD income with stream income, what’s the overall income from all sources for an act now compare to a similar act from before? Hard to compare though in a different world. You can accept streaming needs to exist but help acts by buying some new product, if you have a conscience. It’s a complex subject. If only we had an expert. Perhaps Brian Cox can get in touch again via his wife?
It wasn’t just advances that had to be repaid. Bands were charged with pretty much every expense and were always the last in line to get paid. Almost every music bio I’ve ever read talks about how broke bands remained despite having albums in the charts.
Record companies have a long history of rinsing their clients and nothing has changed. They were too fat, dumb and happy to see how digital music would change the market, and illegal downloads nearly killed them. They’ve been thrown a life line by streamers and they are back to making massive profits, no doubt laughing at the size of their bonuses whilst the streamers are vilified.
I’m 99.27% certain that the real villains are not the Streamers but, as ever, the Record Companies.
And, yes, spare me the guilt tripping.
Well yes. That I know well. I’ve read a lot of those memoirs too. Some have had better experiences than others. Sometimes they don’t even complain but not often. I recall Hepworth countering that acts were fortunate to have the record company support. It’s true that there were many who got to have a career despite not ever making any money for the label. We had Simon Cowell to thank for such benefaction, under the reign of the X-Factor Christmas number 1.
I reckon the vast majority of minor, non-chart artists wouldn’t make any more from vinyl or CD sales if there were no streaming services. In fact less of them would have CDs or vinyl to sell, without the attention that streaming gets them.
Club, chart and heritage acts are the ones streaming is affecting adversely. Some of them can just charge more for live shows to make up the shortfall, but for others the making of music is no longer tenable as a way to make a living. But then of course, most folk or jazz musicians have never been able to make a living solely from their art/craft.
I know a band that busked and played venues in and around Edinburgh. Zero record company interest. Not even replies to emails, or calls. They applied what money they generated into promoting clips of them playing in the street on Insta and Facebook.
That generated followers and they then recorded singles that were placed on Spotify and Amazon etc. On the strength of that they were offered a support slot on 2 US tours and 2 headlining tours of the UK and Ireland. The streaming data showed the towns where they were getting plays, and that helped them pitch for live dates. They used social media to drive interest towards the streaming services, which in turn helped promoters see them as worth booking
I was lucky enough to see them during in one of their last busking gigs in August 2023. They were making just enough money to stay afloat, but they were playing more and more fully paid gigs, had turned fully professional, and had plans for an album, which came out earlier this year.
They work incredibly hard and have made very savvy use of streaming and social media. The traditional model record company model has offered them absolutely nothing.
That’s a remarkable modern success story @fortuneight.
A band who are really savvy about how to use social media and streaming services to build up a fanbase. It’s a lot of hard work but can really pay off.
Is there any reason why you haven’t named the band? If you do name them, that will get them a few more plays on Spotify and raise their profile among a community of keen gig-goers!
High Fade. Putting the F in funk
Thanks a lot @fortuneight.Just added them to my new playlist and started following them on Insta. They are superb..
I can’t understand how people can just walk past! But the wee bairns really get it! That little chap in red was loving the music.
Good luck to them!
I have seen several of their videos – always been impressed. Thank you for reminding me and pointing out they have an album out.
Mike H’s comments are the best summation of what is actually happening out there in the real world on this here thread .
I had an interesting insight into the economics of the music business when I was chatting to Phil Beer recently. As Show of Hands with Steve Knightley, they carved out a good sized following over 25 years of recording and gigging. Their recent decision to stop touring as a band (usually with Miranda Sykes) was purely financial – they could fill 500 seater venues, but with costs of touring up somewhere between 30% and 50%, it was just no longer viable. Add to that the reduction in physical music sales and you have the perfect storm. He also said that it costs around £30,000 to make a proper studio album, and if you don’t have a record company then you have to find that yourselves – you have to sell a fair few to even see the costs back.
Add to the above the affect of Covid – he told me that they were in a position in 2020 where they were debt free, a great new album released to positive reviews, a whole load of festivals lined up to promote it…..then whallop.
Different strokes for different folks. Most (regrettably, by a long way, not all) choose how to make a living.
Here’s Gaz Brookfield: a fiercely independent musician, with no record label, no manager, and no agent – just a guitar, a van, and a steadfastly belligerent refusal to give in.
https://gazbrookfield.com/
He played in a packed room in Leicester recently where most of the audience clearly knew every lyric. I bought his “splatter” vinyl from his bandcamp page:
https://gazbrookfieldmusic.bandcamp.com/album/morning-walking-club
I found him via my subscription to Spotify.
Is this perhaps a double edged sword then? IF an artist is content with what they CAN make, financially, then the current times allow that. Previously the “system” meant that was far more difficult?
Lots of “?” in that sentence, I know, but maybe true? (and there’s another one).
?
I have to admit to having no qualms whatsoever about continuing to use Spotify, even having read all of the above.
Sometimes the market moves away from you. It’s regrettable, but we’re all subject to it. Netflix has had a similar impact in the world of movies and tv, but I still have an account, as I’m sure do most of us.
In an ideal world artists would be paid handsomely. In this world I don’t believe Spotify to be in the dozen worst companies with whom I regularly interact (and I don’t care about sound quality).