From the shitty payout models at Spotify to the five decade experiment of supply side economics, we must finally learn that a rising tide doesn't lift all boats and the wealth will never trickle down.
IRL streaming is an unprofitable shit-show of bad business models best described as "what we lose per unit we'll make up in volume." that has been the sales pitch to investors from day one, combined with some vague notion that eventually "technology" will "advance" enough that unit costs will come down. So the idea was, at the point it finally becomes profitable per unit, the bigger your platform the more profits you'll reap, and thanks to "the network effect," the biggest platform will grow fastest until it eats the whole market. So the more cash you burn early in the game the more you make later.
Unfortunately exponential technological advancement is not a real thing, and to the extent that it does improve so do customer expectations about quality. So streaming has remained a money pit for a decade longer than VCs expected.
It will never be like broadcast, which is radically more cost effective. Streaming audio will never fit to the business model of radio, and streaming video will never fit the business model of television. Advertising and data mining will never produce enough value to offset the costs. And therefore they'll never be able to pay artists royalty rates comparable to broadcast. If you lobby for that successfully, the result will be bankrupting streaming services. That's not a bad thing, but it still doesn't get artists paid.
If you want to make a living doing art, start by abandoning the notion that someday you'll make it big wage slaving in the in the content mills. Look for other ways to make that happen. Patronage, limited edition physical media sales, and crowdfunding all work marginally better than spotify and youtube. But it may also be the case that some artists are just not good enough, or are too niche, to ever do art as their day jobs.
You hit the 'nine inch nail' on the head! We have a system where pay is monstrously bloated at the top and the disparages between worker and management is absurd. What is music without talent? What is a school without teachers and support staff? What is a service industry without servers? Time for management to understand they need workers to be successful, not the other way around. The problem is we Americans have become completely subservient and complacent. We seem to allow our politicians to ignore and abuse their power as we keep voting for the same old idiots. We seem to be unwilling, even temporarily, to suffer what will be initial "economic backlash" to insist of change from our "slave masters" so we stopped trying. What happened to us that we have allowed the security state and the powerful elites to run our lives? All of us need to ask ourselves that question as we go into the polls next November.
They're keeping the artists' money to save themselves from going bankrupt.
IRL streaming is an unprofitable shit-show of bad business models best described as "what we lose per unit we'll make up in volume." that has been the sales pitch to investors from day one, combined with some vague notion that eventually "technology" will "advance" enough that unit costs will come down. So the idea was, at the point it finally becomes profitable per unit, the bigger your platform the more profits you'll reap, and thanks to "the network effect," the biggest platform will grow fastest until it eats the whole market. So the more cash you burn early in the game the more you make later.
Unfortunately exponential technological advancement is not a real thing, and to the extent that it does improve so do customer expectations about quality. So streaming has remained a money pit for a decade longer than VCs expected.
It will never be like broadcast, which is radically more cost effective. Streaming audio will never fit to the business model of radio, and streaming video will never fit the business model of television. Advertising and data mining will never produce enough value to offset the costs. And therefore they'll never be able to pay artists royalty rates comparable to broadcast. If you lobby for that successfully, the result will be bankrupting streaming services. That's not a bad thing, but it still doesn't get artists paid.
If you want to make a living doing art, start by abandoning the notion that someday you'll make it big wage slaving in the in the content mills. Look for other ways to make that happen. Patronage, limited edition physical media sales, and crowdfunding all work marginally better than spotify and youtube. But it may also be the case that some artists are just not good enough, or are too niche, to ever do art as their day jobs.
You hit the 'nine inch nail' on the head! We have a system where pay is monstrously bloated at the top and the disparages between worker and management is absurd. What is music without talent? What is a school without teachers and support staff? What is a service industry without servers? Time for management to understand they need workers to be successful, not the other way around. The problem is we Americans have become completely subservient and complacent. We seem to allow our politicians to ignore and abuse their power as we keep voting for the same old idiots. We seem to be unwilling, even temporarily, to suffer what will be initial "economic backlash" to insist of change from our "slave masters" so we stopped trying. What happened to us that we have allowed the security state and the powerful elites to run our lives? All of us need to ask ourselves that question as we go into the polls next November.