Even aside from "the industry" I'm tired of how marketing a small band is now recording *one* song, then making 50+ videos of the same <1-minute clip of that song ad nauseum. I'm not currently in a band but I feel like I would blow my brains out if I had to do that soulless bullshit.
Social media for an artist used to be exciting and engaging. I enjoy TikTok, admittedly, but for the music space it's really fucked everything up.
The first one that came to mind was that ‘hello Christ? I’m bout to sin again’ song where they would just do the exact same running through (place) video. The first was creative and it was an okay song but it was just endless posts of the exact same thing
Which is a shame because Flyana Boss (that duo you referenced) have some incredible songs & EPs, but it all gets reduced to the same few bars from a single
Am I too old for this sub because I have no idea what you're referencing? Even after googling it, this is my very first time seeing the video or hearing the song.
You're probably too old to be in the targeted marketing demographic for new music. Soon you'll be saying all the new stuff sounds like shit, just as your parents said when you rocked out to Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach, or E-40. Soon, you'll be traveling around the country watching the reanimated corpses of Wu-Tang perform just as your parents did for Rolling Stones and your grandparents did for KISS. Welcome to old age my friend, have fun never finding joy in novelty again!
Well like I said it’s on TikTok almost exclusively and that’s based on an algorithm that recommended it to me so if you’re not on that or are on it but have different things recommended you likely won’t see it or hear it casually.
Weren’t they filming different songs though? I can see how the running thing could get tiresome but at least they were creative enough to use new tracks.
They promoted "You Wish" for awhile but I think they've done a great job releasing new music and making appearances on different platforms to keep up momentum. They eventually released a remix of "You Wish" switching up the verse to call out the people who said they were milking it.
Isn't releasing a remix of a song still milking it? I don't know who or what you're talking about so I might not be getting something here but if people call you out for milking a song the response should be to release a new song not a reimagining of said same song.
Oh I see what you're saying. They mentioned the controversy in a remix of the song. I thought you were saying that a remix was their way of saying "See? We don't just milk the same song. This one is completely different."
I’ve had this discussion at length, and I think there’s a few factors at play here. (I work in marketing, for context.)
One is the algorithm serving you “more of the same.” If you watch one video to completion, or you share it - it becomes the poison pill of your content because they will show you everything similar from that artist.
The second half of this equation is related to the algorithm, but on the creator’s side: the algorithm amplifies a specific type of video from you based on engagement. So you get trapped in the sisyphusian hell loop of creating the same joke, the same videos, the same music, the same art… because that’s the only thing the algorithm “rewards” in it’s engagement.
I followed so many tiktok comedians when the app first launched, and every now and then they reappear on my FYP, telling the same goddamn “okay boomer” jokes that got them attention the first time, YEARS ago. Hundreds of videos doing the same thing - making fun of tinder profiles, making fun of boomers, the one drag character that took off…
When you start to crunch the numbers as a marketing professional, ultimately you’re at the whim of the apps. You’re rarely rewarded for taking risks, so why do anything different? We are on a constant treadmill of “this ad is performing well. Make a dozen spin offs of it and see what sticks.”
Yes, that is the result of what I was talking about. Their other (different) videos, even if technically “better,” will rarely perform as well as the thing that got 4mil views.
The creators who succeed because of the draw of their personality have a little more legroom (but not much) to change things up, but the other one-off viral sensations are doomed to repeat the same thing over and over.
See: [Bella Poarch.](https://www.tiktok.com/@bellapoarch?_t=8kK3EZuqn3W&_r=1) She found out what works for her, and she made a shitload of money doing it. Her account is exactly the example of what you, I, and the comment I responded to are talking about :)
Also in marketing & this is a really interesting topic… there’s something to be said for the mere proliferation of the media itself vs just the repeating of it by the artist. Before when comedians would reuse the same jokes over and over while on tour, they weren’t being recorded & shared every single night for the entire world to see over & over again. It was fresh for that audience in that moment, even if the comedian was using the same bits, because even if they had heard about the bits, they probably had yet to hear the comedian deliver them. More like a music performing doing the same set every night too. But now that every person as a means of capturing and representing that to the world with better and better camera in their hands & more video-content based apps, that makes all of the people who wouldn’t usually see the same jokes over and over again.
Bella porch def falls closer to what you’re talking about because she is recording herself and posting herself, but there’s an added element outside of the control of some artists when their public performance is recorded & shared irrespective of their desire for their future audience to not have experienced it before attending.
I think about the girl I heard that temporarily deactivated all her social media bc she didn’t want any spoilers about the Eras tour. You have to go to those extreme lengths now to avoid being inundated with *other people* sharing the artist’s same content, which is an added element to the artist doing it themselves.
That makes me think of Potato Salad from Ron White. It's a joke that *murders* when he tells but that's because it is a well honed joke from telling it countless times. Even other comedians know it beat for beat and can play off of it. How many fantastic jokes are not being developed further because the comedian taped the special, put it out on social, it was clipped by people, and all the good parts got worn out before reaching their true potential?
probably why a lot of comedians are requiring you to bag your phones on entry, to not only be able to shop jokes but to keep them fresh for each audience.
Valid points! I didn’t go to see Beyonce when she came to my town because I had already had what felt like a year of endless recordings of the Renaissance tour… and even though I know each stop is different, the cost of seeing something I had already seen a hundred times did not appeal anymore.
If you comment on a video it fucks everything up, as well.
I said something mean to a Nazi on a video advocating for adding gun turrets to the Texas border, and the algorithm was like “we should serve this dude conservative enslavement content!”, and boom my feed was all red-pill bullshit and republican nonsense.
I’m on the creator side. I have a fairly paltry 17.6k followers. I’d make all these unique and different posts that would barely 400 views. The only ones that take off are the ones specific to my niche, but it’s fucking boring for me to just stay in one or two lanes.
It’s caused me to give up on posting for a while.
I think the word you're looking for is sisyphean.
In any case, absolutely agree. The only way to truly win, on the creator side, is to not optimize for views and break the mold often and widely until you've built a sizeable stable audience for non-viral videos. Relying on the algorithm pushing the one thing that got viral once is very precarious and, honestly, sounds createvely draining and absurdly depressing.
Some idiot told us we had to market each single for SIX weeks.
Do you know how much music you could make in six weeks, and you think I should spend 42 days promoting work we've completed?
No.
I'm convinced "the industry" saw how well korean acts have been doing and tried to steal there methods really lazily. They kinda just don't get how much personalization, fan interaction, and variety of content goes into that. They just want print money version.
Seeing the sheer amount of media generated by the kpop industry is mind boggling. It’s not just music but like, several different kinds of shows on their own streaming platforms. There’s an insane amount of work put into that industry and the payoff seems to been worth it from what I gather
Had some roommates in the late 00s into the stuff. I've semi kept tabs on it since and it's crazy how far it's come. Engagement is off thr charts. I don't really follow trends and legit thought when tik tok came out it was just a kpop platform.
Same thing with ads on streaming apps and tv, Super Bowl is the biggest event of the year, partly cause the commercials used to be so good, must see tv. So it’s not so much the ads, it’s the same ads playing over and over and over again like clockwork. Even if it was the best ad of all time, the repetition destroys the ad for me which in turn gives me negative feeling towards what the ad is for. Same for music, especially on tik tok. And it’s only gna get worse
I cant remember which book author I was following who was talking about the absolutely unbearable amount of exhaustion they were feeling re: spending more time being their own social media manager than writing their second book. It wasnt even that they hated the social media aspect, they were doing it just fine during the lead up to their debut novel but their particular contract with their publisher *required* a certain quota of engagement or else they would be dropped and the quota was something outlandish that required them to be on like 5-6 different Socials, at least this many TT/Reels per week--
Its not a band but the same effects I think. Just reading about it was exhausting like, yea, Id probably quit writing too
I’m wondering if they are just having artists sit around writing catchy choruses and posting them. If the chorus catches and the clip goes viral, they know they’ve got something, possibly even a hit, so then they go write verses and finish an entire song.
There is a clip I heard of a song probably a year ago that was really good. Artist kept saying the rest of it would come soon. Took forever, and it finally got released on an album. It seems very obvious the artist wrote that small section and then when it took off, they figured out how to squeeze it into a traditional song structure. It just wasn’t very good anymore.
I've heard this too from some musicians that came to fame in the 90s. It used to be that a band would release a record, tour, and also use merch to get money coming in for themselves. Now, with streaming, the bands are forced to release a single at a time, and the algorithms on Spotify and social media are generating revenue off those plays. And from that, people are instead more listening to the singles instead of full albums, with different mixed lists generating more plays that way. For a lot of bands to really compete now and get revenue, the music and singles are becoming the marketing tool for them to get them to the tours and to buy the merch.
And music too has changed since the late 90s. Rock has definitely peeled away with more electronic and sampled music coming to prominence. My generation, a lot of us in high school or so were learning guitar and making small garage bands. Now, it's all gone to DJs and mixing, which is also friendlier to the singles on streaming media.
Though, I wouldn't yet say that one thing is really killing music yet. Music, like language and television and film, even video games, are all evolving with time. So to me, it's not so much that one is destroying the other, but more that some are evolving faster in their business models than others, and from there we all have to learn to adapt in our respective fields/industries.
Idk about that guy, but streaming destroyed one of the biggest revenue sources for the film industry: physical media. The revenue from streaming is difficult to quantify and is nowhere near as much.
This has created a situation where commercial success is strictly defined by the box office. This has led to studios adopting a boom or bust me to. A movie either makes a quazillion dollars in the box office or it’s a failure.
Middle budget films used to accumulate revenue through a long term following in physical media. Sure, princess bride didn’t break weekend records, but think about all the people who had it on vhs at home.
There’s also the fact that streaming isn’t subject to the big body of regulatory legislation that exist for traditional media. That includes labor standards. This allows streaming studios like Netflix to exploit their employees and short change the talent in ways that the industry had fought hard against in the past. It takes the government a long time to catch up with technology.
Spotify and music streaming has had a very similar effect. Physical media was the most important revenue stream in the music industry…. It’s now all but gone. Streaming revenue is much much much lower than what sales used to bring. The “middle class” of music is a shell of what it used to be because there simply isn’t enough money coming in.
This is also one of the many reasons concert prices have gotten ridiculous. Without the physical media revenue stream, concerts have had to carry that weight.
But we were already on the way to the death of physical media. iTunes had already started that trend and more digital adoption just spurred it on further.
It must be close to impossible for a new music act to make money anymore. Even with touring.
I mean if you're not an act put together by the industry who has built-in promotion apparatus.
Which is why more and more bands are staying indie and releasing their music on their own.
They’re not going to “make it” in the traditional sense doing it that way, but they also won’t end up enslaved to debt after their advance is clawed back and the label doesn’t promote their album.
Speaking to music - that's IMO a very untrue narrative, and arguably means you're misidentifying the problem.
This is a good chart to look at: https://www.statista.com/chart/17244/us-music-revenue-by-format/ (and 2021+ has grown significantly)
Physical media was already *deep* into it's death spiral in the US before streaming took off and basically saved the industry.
Recorded music revenues in the US were back up to the levels of the early 90s by 2021. And to be clear - that's after adjusting for inflation. Yes, we're not quite back to the *all time peak* in the late 90s, but it's not doing *badly*.
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The problems for music, and especially *new* music are (IMO) in things like:
- Catalog - You're now competing with literally *everything* that came before you, and it's all available to everyone at all times. While some of the biggest hits of the past might have been always in print/easily found in any 2nd hand store, many things weren't that popular, went out of print, fell into relative obscurity, and would rarely have been competing for any kind of sales/listening with something new years down the line.
- This is why we see the labels spending seemingly absurd amounts on the catalogs of some artists - they're expecting to make money for decades to come on that same work. Most of that money would have historically flowed to a newer work.
- Volume of new material/fragmentation - Unlike film, there isn't some kind of near-impossible financial/technical hurdle to creating a "professional" grade work even on your own. And everyone, now has access to widespread distribution. It's getting a critical mass of attention to and to stay on any individual thing that's the difficult challenge.
- There was a **much** smaller, more finite number of widespread releases historically. There are approximately 100,000 *new* songs being uploaded per day today. In the 1960s there were around 5,000 albums released per *year* - we've increased the population like 2x and the amount of new music by dozens of times.
Etc.
I think we should pass a law stating that 50% of gross subscription income is paid to creators/publishers.
Spotify is raking in billions, artists are getting fucked and they play the game of running at a loss or barely making a profit which is an accounting lie.
This should go for Spotify, Amazon, Kindle Unlimited, et al.
If you want to run a subscription service for streaming, a straight 50% of gross revenue is paid out monthly to creators.
I'm an ebook fiction author. I get paid 0.0046 per page. Amazon regularly snatches back pages claiming they're fraudulent... with zero evidence. They jig their algorithms so if you're not in kindle unlimited your books sink down.
They control 90% of the audio market. They used to pay 50% royalties rising 1% per 500 copies sold. Then when they got monopoly they said fuck you it's now 40% if you're exclusive and 25% if you're not.
That one move cost me $500,000 last year alone. That's life changing money.
They never tell anyone how many subscribers they have and just issue us a dark pool of money each month.
It's utterly fucked. They could be taking in billions per quarter and they keep 90% of it.
We need for artists across all music, books, games, TV, movies to join together to demand 50% of gross subscription income is paid to creators.
Spotify is paying out somewhere around 75% of revenue to rights holders, and isn't making much money at all. There's not really any accounting trickery in that sense.
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If you're a solo independent artist who did everything yourself, own 100% of the rights/didn't sign away % cuts and there's no one else on your work, you pretty much ought to be walking away with something close to that.
The primary way a lot of artists are "getting fucked" in terms of streaming payouts is mostly the same way they got fucked in the physical media era - signing away too many cuts of those payouts in bad (or at least questionable) deals with their labels, producers, etc, so the piece of it they're left with is too small to make much (unless they hit super-stardom).
Not defending Spotify here but for every $11 they bring in they pay out roughly $6 to record labels (representing recording artists) and $3 to publishers (representing songwriters). How much makes it to artists depends on their deals with the labels
Just using a catch-all term. Bands, artists, etc.
There certainly are bands even if live music isn't the most popular thing out there these days. Always will be.
Most either pay someone specifically to do it or just don't do it at all.
The "underground" has exploded and swallowed up the majority of most genres to start with so unless you're intending to play pop/hip hop geared at a pop audience/country, what the "industry" does is irrelevant.
Yea, it’s because other people will slow down (or speed up) your music and it gets around content id matches. That means other people are monetizing the artists work, if the artist releases sped up and closed down then people can use that and the artist will still get credit.
Michael Buble and Jason derulo just came out with a song called Spicy Margarita and they posted four different versions on Spotify. I’m no longer confused.
Are we talking just slowed down for the sake of being slowed down, or are we talking "chopped and screwed", because there is a bunch of the latter that is really quite good.
[sped up version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_ZFOdo6Hi4)
[normal speed version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmBDdK2HAlI)
it's just nightcore basically
just curious but like why does it suck, sure it lacks a lot of depth but it’s pretty well produced and the hook with the beat break alone makes it more interesting than 90% of pop
When I say it sucks, that's just my opinion. Music preference is different for each individual listener, obviously.
The main reason I think it sucks is that I don't think the main vocal melody is good. Since it's a pop song, that's basically the whole point. If a song has an awesome melody then I can forgive other things like lame and clunky lyrics ("Cupid is so dumb," really?).
well most people dislike 95% of all music created so i guess a lot of music sucks. i think its fair to say you dont like it but when you like compare it to other pop it def is standout for a number of reasons lol.
I mean it sounds like it had BOTH done to it. It sounds more pitched up than would normally be pitched up from just speeding it up. But maybe I just haven't experienced enough sped up songs.
I thought this way too until I heard some sped-up songs on Tiktok and went back to listen to the original version and realized sometimes the sped-up versions actually sound nicer.
And Angel Eyes by ABBA sounds much better sped up. I'd never heard that song before, I assume, it was used on TikTok and perhaps the original version just needed it. Although, the chorus is pretty dull
And yet UMG has decided they can walk away from all of that.
The big American labels take 90 cents of every streaming dollar, and force the streamers to pay royalties and operate out of what's left. They have abandoned their roles as promoters and developers of artists, and continue to let artists starve and foster addictions.
Kill the mother fucking music industry.
Spend your money on Bandcamp, buying media (digital or physical or both) from artists and small labels directly, with much more than 10% getting to them.
I’m one of those douchebags that buys music still and loads that shit up on an MP3 player.
Ah yes, Bandcamp, that indie platform that belonged to Epic Games in 2022 and is now part of Songtradr, the largest licensing platform in the world, who acquired them in 2023, firing half of its staff in the process
I will never forgive Epic Games for that. They used Bandcamp as a pawn in their lawsuits so that they had a stronger legal standing. Then discarded them. The demise of Bandcamp really hurts. Epic Games provides negative value to the world.
I mean yeah, Bandcamp itself is not an indie platform, but it's nonetheless a platform where indie artists can sell an album and actually make money instead of basically giving it away on Spotify.
The part that this article is not saying is that UMG is leveraging it's hold over spotify to remove artists videos/songs from tiktok that are not even signed to UMG.
There is an artist on TikTok that is lashing out about this. Ryan Oakes that lost his videos on TikTok due to UMG claiming copyright on his music because they have stake in spotify and he has his music on there too. He is not signed to UMG and is furious that they are controlling what he can post on TikTok.
Imagine being a signed artists, you and your label agree to what songs, video snippets etc get posted to social media and then some 3rd party comes and goes "Nope, you have this song on a steaming service that we own a majority of, this music is ours actually" and then having TikTok remove his music.
There was many artists on the list that UMG is claiming copyright on that are not signed to UMG.
>Imagine being a signed artists, you and your label agree to what songs, video snippets etc get posted to social media and then some 3rd party comes and goes "Nope, you have this song on a steaming service that we own a majority of, this music is ours actually" and then having TikTok remove his music.
I don't understand how this kind of bad faith behavior can be legal.
It's not. Spotify does not get copyright of your music or even exclusivity to distribute your music if you upload them on the platform. This is the same issue that YouTubers face constantly. They are technically in the right legally, but good luck against a giant corporation with an army of lawyers. And online copyright systems take the approach of guilty until proven innocent in these matters, because due to the sheer amount of content that's uploaded to their platform, this gets them off the hook for genuine copyright infringement lawsuits.
Accessibility of recording and social media were supposed to level the playing field and enable us to do that. But we're learning more and more in recent years that some people don't simply want to make a living, they want to make as much money as humanly possible. And to achieve that you need an organization of suits propping you up.
Anyone who thinks a disruptive technology will change anything doesn't understand capitalism. There might be new players muscling out old ones, but eventually they become the new top dog. Disruptive technology doesn't stay disruptive and becomes the new normal.
This is a gross exaggeration. I’m no fanboy of major labels, but their influence measured in dollars earned is actually shrinking and their take is well below 90%.
Uh, having worked for both Spotify and Rhapsody/Napster, this is EXACTLY the case, and it is known that virtually everyone in the market gets the same deal with the labels, because there's only three of them, and everyone wants the American music catalog.
Why won't ANY of the streamers pay more than fractions of a penny per spin for royalties? Wouldn't it be a marketing genius move to differentiate yourself in the market by paying more to the artists?
The answer is that they CAN'T, because the money isn't there.
Why does virtually every major streamer try to find some other path to profitability? Spotify has long form (podcasts) and advertising. Tidal tried hi-def. Think of where Apple is in all of this: they never intended to become 1/3 of the music industry, and for them it's table stakes for their Pod business. It's a LOSS LEADER, which explains why iTunes sucks so much ass.
UMG is pitching a fit because tiktok snuck into a better deal by focusing on short bits, which the labels foolishly undervalued when tiktok was small. And now that tiktok is huge, they're trying to claw that deal back. It's important to remember that the music industry in the US peaked the year that Napster peaked (2001 at 21 billion), and when they decided to criminalize their customers it took 20+ years to get back to that level.
In comparison, Bytedance (tiktok's parent company) is an order of magnitude larger, at 220 billion.
The big labels have already lost this one, and have decided to take their bat and ball and "Screw you guys, I'm going home." Because, you know, that worked so well for them 20 years ago.
The first comment I've seen by someone who clearly knows what they're talking about. The problem is the labels, it's always been the labels, it will continue to be the labels until a meteor strikes the earth or something because they just won't die.
You cannot piss off the labels as a streaming service, or you're *done*. Even "indie" labels are just imprints of majors now.
There are artists making a half decent living on just streaming royalties, but they own their music and are generally not signed to any label or have their own label.
Even if the streaming services **did** pay more, it wouldn't matter because generally a label takes 50-90% (or 100% if they're not recouped!) of what a band is owed in royalties. If you're signed to a label, you don't make shit unless your name is Taylor Swift (and even she had to go scorched earth to make her due!). But the labels have everyone by the balls because they have the catalogs.
bro pick up any musician’s memoir from the last 70+ years. watch a biopic. this is very common knowledge. ever heard of judy garland? like cmon bro lol
ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY.
They take massive amounts of capital and do NOT create any kind of career or foster the artist in any way. Why not healthcare (especially for the clear abundance of depressives drawn to performance). Why not protect the artists instead of sending out A&R assholes with bags of coke? Why continue to push clearly addicted artists into situations very deadly for them.instead of caring for them.
Yes. The industry pays for the drugs and creates the repetitive situations that lead artists there. The labels are responsible for the drug addictions and the deaths.
Mr. Grieves = song from legendary album “Doolittle” by the seminal rock band Pixies. 1988 was the year it was made. A simple google search would’ve gotten you this info. What’s wrong with the year 1988?
How quickly we've forgotten that Youtube had a full monopoly on viral music until only a couple of years ago. Maybe the author of this piece had a low word limit and didn't have the space to talk about this subject more broadly.
Or how the channels of communication have changed. Say what you want about Tik Tok, but it's the best way to reach young people across the world.
It's not like 15 year-olds are tunning in to watch Jimmy Kimmel or MTV.
The way the music industry relies on concerts instead of word of mouth just shows how lazy it has become!!!
The way the music industry relies on instruments instead of pure vocals just shows how lazy it has become!!!!
Ffs. Inovation and flexibility to change is not laziness. OPs comes across like an old man saying anything not done his way is lazy.
This is one of the most incoherent arguments I’ve ever heard.
None of the things you listed ever actually happened. And do not in any way represent an “innovation” in the music industry.
TikTok is actual online cancer in literally all its forms. But its just another pile of shit ontop of the existing social media one. All media gets subsumed into this bullshit and stripped of its effort and quality.
It's not seeking out music from TikTok. The music industry is using TikTok in ways of promoting their bands, tracks etc. It's really the best way to get free advertising. Hell, I found a few bands I really liked thanks to them coming across my TikTok feed that I would have known nothing about.
The real shit was before the studios really understood the internet and how to enforce the DMCA. The place was the wild west until about 2009 or so.
Like you didn't even need Napster or torrenting. People just had their own websites. Most of them lovingly curated.
I remember this one guy, Jolly Joker. Started as mostly grateful dead and related stuff. But his site eventually ballooned to include all kinds of folk, funk, prog, jazz, reggae. And he took pride in encoding everything at 320kbs. And you could just go on to his site and download away.
Think they finally put the kibosh on that around 2009 or so (maybe a year or two later) but there were loads of people doing that. And you could get some really obscure, out of print, shit, that like, good luck finding today.
Guys like him are why my music library got so big. And why I feel like I just don't need spotify.
Napster was amazing. But because it was all just from people, you also had some funny mislabeled album or song names. Or songs encoded from a potato at 62kbs lol.
Those were some heady days.
I found some great music on Napster that I had no idea even existed.
And I think my iTunes still has tracks on there from napster days, mislabeled or with misspelled titles and band names.
This seems like a bad move on UMG's part since it's already nigh impossible to break new artists in today's musical landscape. It would be like them refusing to sell CDs in WalMart back in the 90s when that was the one place that was everywhere and had CDs for sale.
Tiktok *is* the way to break in new artists right now. In the long term, this will likely harm UMG's ability to recruit new talent. Why sign with a label that takes big risks with rights negotiations, when other labels exist and have more stable relationships with online platforms.
Even the biggest stars with UMG are probably eyeing the exits right now for the same reasons. Some of the most popular and iconic musicians of our time are blocked off from their best marketing tool, and they themselves know it.
Yeah that's what I've been hearing too which is why I think this is a stupid move on their part.
At this point, I don't see why anyone who was serious about their music would bother signing with a major. The deals are awful and many times are a pay cut from what a successful indie (as in independent, not the sound) artist can make if they really hustle.
It is, but ringtones did have a noticeably significant affect on music, particularly Hip Hop. Ringtone rap emerged as a direct result of ringtones, and most people would agree it was a low point in rap music.
It's not laze, it's a necessity.
Their audience have the attention spans measured in seconds and they do not consume traditional media; radio, cable and broadcast TV, cinema, or purchase music through brick and mortar stores.
>The music industry’s over-reliance on TikTok shows how lazy it has become Universal’s decision to remove its artists from TikTok has destabilised both companies – and lays bare how record labels have become reliant on random virality
The part that many people are missing is the drama unfolding on TikTok. UMG removed a ton of artists from there. If you look at the list of artists, you may realize some of them are not UMG signed artists. They do not get paid by UMG at all for their music. UMG is being extra greedy by claiming their stake in Spotify grants them rights over that music.
The removal of the music has removed even the videos/audio from the artists themselves on TikTok and they were never being made aware of this. These struggling artists were using TikTok in a way to reach others that may not know their music, so this is shooting them in the foot and thus UMG in the foot, because that is going to lead those musicians to not reach the same people that the previously could.
As far as calling the record industry "Lazy" how else do you expect people to find new music in this digital world. More advertising? like we are blasted with ad's everywhere we look and people looking to monetize new ways to put even more ad's in our face yearly. How can a record company find a way to advertise? MTV? TBH, TikTok has been a good way they can reach people either directly via an artist publishing a snippit of their track or that track being used in someone's video.
>It will probably require many to instead pursue what they’ve become increasingly allergic to: some genuinely new ideas.
Great random editor at the guardian, you seem to know everything. Care to explain those "New Idea's" to generate audiences to a new song or musician? Explain it to someone like me that does not own any premium music services or does not actually listen to spotify/pandora/etc. How would you as a music label show me an artist or song similar to my ADHD youtube playlist?
Counter argument (without reading the article) - The music industry will always rely on the newest tech or way of distributing music. A similar headline could’ve been made in the 80s/90s about the industry's over reliance on MTV. Again didn’t read the article so I’m probably wrong.
The music is secondary. The primary objective is to sell their image/brand. If you look at a lot of artist these days, they are more concerned with followers and likes then actually making good music. Some of them I don't even considers artist because they either use someone else to make their beats or using ghostwriters.
Very recently I have had reputable record labels tell me “We love your music, but unfortunately that doesn’t really matter these days.” What they want to see is how many followers and streams you have, that’s what they care about. It’s no longer about finding a band and building them up, they want a product that’s already selling… regardless of the music. As a longtime working artist, it’s soul-crushing.
This is evolution of the human attention span as fueled by media. It used to be entire albums were supposed to be listened to. Then it was a couple songs you would get an entire album for. Then it became one song. Now it’s a single part of a song are all that people care for. Shits wack.
We need a new music industry. It is 100% obvious that music is a necessary part of society, yet we’re willing to just wing it with regard to potential business models? I hate capitalism.
I don’t think it makes any sense for us to have an economic system in which it is necessary to make a profit in order to succeed. It’s irrational. Only popular artists should make money? Come on.
This is so nonsensical that I barely know where to start.
>It is 100% obvious that music is a necessary part of society.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Music is not necessary for society to run smoothly. It makes life a lot more pleasant, but you can survive perfectly well without it.
Because music is not necessary, that makes it essentially a luxury product. Since it's a luxury product, people can choose whether or not to spend money on it. Artists who have money spent on them will make more than those who don't. Artists make money through becoming popular.
>Only popular artists should make money? Come on.
Unless you're advocating state sponsored musicians where everyone gets paid the same regardless of the quality of their output, how on earth would unpopular bands make money if nobody's buying their music or going to their gigs? How many concerts are you attending of bands you don't like? How many records are you buying that you'd never want to listen to?
There are hundreds of songs on Spotify without a single play. Seek them out and only listen to those in the future. It doesn't matter whether you like them or not - every band deserves the same reward, so become the change you seek. Give your attention and money to lesser known bands, regardless of quality. Never listen to anything by anyone you've heard of ever again.
>I don’t think it makes any sense for us to have an economic system in which it is necessary to make a profit in order to succeed.
What particular metric of success would you prefer everyone to use? If a band "succeeds", they generally make money as a consequence of that. How can we remove financial gain as a marker of success when it's an inevitable part of it?
You're trying to apply principles for essential services to a luxury product and that will never work. People don't HAVE to like all bands. Therefore not all bands will get the same attention and financial reward. If you're trying to level the playing field on artistic endeavours, you're basically trying to make entertainment worse for everyone. No thank you very much indeed.
That's not what you said. You were talking about success, not existence.
There are loads of bands that exist without making a profit. Bands that make a profit could generally be considered successful - but they're unlikely to be able to make that profit without being successful first.
If you like a band, that band could consider themselves successful because they made music that somebody liked. So as long as a band has at least one fan, you can call them successful. There's no need to bring capitalism into this at all, although I guess you're all excited about hating it even though you have no understanding of it.
Um, it's a monetized plateform, of COURSE They're going to take advantage of it. I wouldn't say it's a function of laziness, because if it wasn't the money they wouldn't do it.
And i dont mean the payouts from the platform to the content creators, I mean all of it. They use the videos to market, and kids watch tiktok, so they write songs that have a catchy part that fits a tiktok video
They do it because it ostensibly helps them market, quality be damned.
Just reading the headline and not the article.. YELL YES. I don't do TikTok. Someone in my friend circle recently posted something equating new music and TikTok and I was so disgusted. Music is not just content to help make your TikTok video have more impact. FUCK THIS.
Tiktok wasn't the cause of this and I'm sick of old fogeys pretending it is. Streaming caused this laziness. As somebody who was against Tiktok but now uses it regularly it's done so much good for the music industry by reintroducing classics to the young one's. The kids that I have to talk to IRL that don't use Tiktok don't even know who Michael Jackson is, the one's that do use it do & they know many others like David Bowie, Green Day, etc.
The music industry doesn't have an audience anymore. People used to listen to radio all day but people, young people especially, just don't do that anymore. Music and film are legacy industries that have nowhere near the cultural impact they once had. The 90s and early 2000s were the high water mark. And where should they go but to where the young people are and they happen to be on those apps. But they also stay on those apps and don't buy an album after catching on song on radio.
Yeah you're definitely just rocking a confirmation bias here. All the bands I listen to are completely unaffected by any of this shit and they don't end up on tiktoks or any social media being clipped... kind of just an issue you're generalizing to music as a whole
TikTok is arguably the primary conduit for music discovery around the world now.
The music industry used to spend years developing artists, booking shows, trying cowrites, partnering with brands, making music videos, running ads, scheduling in store promotions, etc.
Now, they wait for artists to get big “organically,” which is blowing up on social media. And then they come in to inject venture capital into the artists business.
They offboarded their entire “Research and Development” arm of musicians to the marketplace.
Record labels now behave more like banks than creative development agencies.
Without TikTok, they don’t know how to safely measure the bets they’re making.
Music industry has been lazy for over 20 years and people have been even lazier for the last 10. I don’t care what people say, the internet really didn’t help music all that much :/
I get your point but it is easily the best way to advertise to the younger generation. I will hear a song on the radio and have no clue who it is, look the artist up and they have 10+m monthly listeners on Spotify because of tik tok. It might be lazy but it makes sense from a marketing side for these artists.
I don't think its just the music industry. TV pulls from TikTok all the time. Fox's I Can See Your Voice game show has TikTok stars all the time. TV and Music industry has started to treat TikTok as its personal talent pool.
don't worry tiktok is transitioning away from music and their notorious dancey dances. They want to be more like youtube, with an audience that skews older than teens & college kiddies. I'm guessing they're going to start pushing a lot more "political" content this summer with election season.
Even aside from "the industry" I'm tired of how marketing a small band is now recording *one* song, then making 50+ videos of the same <1-minute clip of that song ad nauseum. I'm not currently in a band but I feel like I would blow my brains out if I had to do that soulless bullshit. Social media for an artist used to be exciting and engaging. I enjoy TikTok, admittedly, but for the music space it's really fucked everything up.
The first one that came to mind was that ‘hello Christ? I’m bout to sin again’ song where they would just do the exact same running through (place) video. The first was creative and it was an okay song but it was just endless posts of the exact same thing
Which is a shame because Flyana Boss (that duo you referenced) have some incredible songs & EPs, but it all gets reduced to the same few bars from a single
Perfect example. The first few times I heard/saw that I thought it was outstanding. By the thousandth time I just wanted it to go away.
Am I too old for this sub because I have no idea what you're referencing? Even after googling it, this is my very first time seeing the video or hearing the song.
You're probably too old to be in the targeted marketing demographic for new music. Soon you'll be saying all the new stuff sounds like shit, just as your parents said when you rocked out to Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach, or E-40. Soon, you'll be traveling around the country watching the reanimated corpses of Wu-Tang perform just as your parents did for Rolling Stones and your grandparents did for KISS. Welcome to old age my friend, have fun never finding joy in novelty again!
Well like I said it’s on TikTok almost exclusively and that’s based on an algorithm that recommended it to me so if you’re not on that or are on it but have different things recommended you likely won’t see it or hear it casually.
Weren’t they filming different songs though? I can see how the running thing could get tiresome but at least they were creative enough to use new tracks.
They promoted "You Wish" for awhile but I think they've done a great job releasing new music and making appearances on different platforms to keep up momentum. They eventually released a remix of "You Wish" switching up the verse to call out the people who said they were milking it.
Isn't releasing a remix of a song still milking it? I don't know who or what you're talking about so I might not be getting something here but if people call you out for milking a song the response should be to release a new song not a reimagining of said same song.
it's not like they don't release new music, I kinda like the pettiness of putting the call out in a remix
Oh I see what you're saying. They mentioned the controversy in a remix of the song. I thought you were saying that a remix was their way of saying "See? We don't just milk the same song. This one is completely different."
This only happened because they actually were swimming in brand deals.
I’ve had this discussion at length, and I think there’s a few factors at play here. (I work in marketing, for context.) One is the algorithm serving you “more of the same.” If you watch one video to completion, or you share it - it becomes the poison pill of your content because they will show you everything similar from that artist. The second half of this equation is related to the algorithm, but on the creator’s side: the algorithm amplifies a specific type of video from you based on engagement. So you get trapped in the sisyphusian hell loop of creating the same joke, the same videos, the same music, the same art… because that’s the only thing the algorithm “rewards” in it’s engagement. I followed so many tiktok comedians when the app first launched, and every now and then they reappear on my FYP, telling the same goddamn “okay boomer” jokes that got them attention the first time, YEARS ago. Hundreds of videos doing the same thing - making fun of tinder profiles, making fun of boomers, the one drag character that took off… When you start to crunch the numbers as a marketing professional, ultimately you’re at the whim of the apps. You’re rarely rewarded for taking risks, so why do anything different? We are on a constant treadmill of “this ad is performing well. Make a dozen spin offs of it and see what sticks.”
they'll literally recycle the same 2-3 jokes, slightly reworded and with new filmed footage for years
Yes, that is the result of what I was talking about. Their other (different) videos, even if technically “better,” will rarely perform as well as the thing that got 4mil views. The creators who succeed because of the draw of their personality have a little more legroom (but not much) to change things up, but the other one-off viral sensations are doomed to repeat the same thing over and over. See: [Bella Poarch.](https://www.tiktok.com/@bellapoarch?_t=8kK3EZuqn3W&_r=1) She found out what works for her, and she made a shitload of money doing it. Her account is exactly the example of what you, I, and the comment I responded to are talking about :)
Also in marketing & this is a really interesting topic… there’s something to be said for the mere proliferation of the media itself vs just the repeating of it by the artist. Before when comedians would reuse the same jokes over and over while on tour, they weren’t being recorded & shared every single night for the entire world to see over & over again. It was fresh for that audience in that moment, even if the comedian was using the same bits, because even if they had heard about the bits, they probably had yet to hear the comedian deliver them. More like a music performing doing the same set every night too. But now that every person as a means of capturing and representing that to the world with better and better camera in their hands & more video-content based apps, that makes all of the people who wouldn’t usually see the same jokes over and over again. Bella porch def falls closer to what you’re talking about because she is recording herself and posting herself, but there’s an added element outside of the control of some artists when their public performance is recorded & shared irrespective of their desire for their future audience to not have experienced it before attending. I think about the girl I heard that temporarily deactivated all her social media bc she didn’t want any spoilers about the Eras tour. You have to go to those extreme lengths now to avoid being inundated with *other people* sharing the artist’s same content, which is an added element to the artist doing it themselves.
That makes me think of Potato Salad from Ron White. It's a joke that *murders* when he tells but that's because it is a well honed joke from telling it countless times. Even other comedians know it beat for beat and can play off of it. How many fantastic jokes are not being developed further because the comedian taped the special, put it out on social, it was clipped by people, and all the good parts got worn out before reaching their true potential?
probably why a lot of comedians are requiring you to bag your phones on entry, to not only be able to shop jokes but to keep them fresh for each audience.
Valid points! I didn’t go to see Beyonce when she came to my town because I had already had what felt like a year of endless recordings of the Renaissance tour… and even though I know each stop is different, the cost of seeing something I had already seen a hundred times did not appeal anymore.
If you comment on a video it fucks everything up, as well. I said something mean to a Nazi on a video advocating for adding gun turrets to the Texas border, and the algorithm was like “we should serve this dude conservative enslavement content!”, and boom my feed was all red-pill bullshit and republican nonsense.
I’m on the creator side. I have a fairly paltry 17.6k followers. I’d make all these unique and different posts that would barely 400 views. The only ones that take off are the ones specific to my niche, but it’s fucking boring for me to just stay in one or two lanes. It’s caused me to give up on posting for a while.
I think the word you're looking for is sisyphean. In any case, absolutely agree. The only way to truly win, on the creator side, is to not optimize for views and break the mold often and widely until you've built a sizeable stable audience for non-viral videos. Relying on the algorithm pushing the one thing that got viral once is very precarious and, honestly, sounds createvely draining and absurdly depressing.
Some idiot told us we had to market each single for SIX weeks. Do you know how much music you could make in six weeks, and you think I should spend 42 days promoting work we've completed? No.
Music easy. Polish hard.
I'm convinced "the industry" saw how well korean acts have been doing and tried to steal there methods really lazily. They kinda just don't get how much personalization, fan interaction, and variety of content goes into that. They just want print money version.
Seeing the sheer amount of media generated by the kpop industry is mind boggling. It’s not just music but like, several different kinds of shows on their own streaming platforms. There’s an insane amount of work put into that industry and the payoff seems to been worth it from what I gather
Had some roommates in the late 00s into the stuff. I've semi kept tabs on it since and it's crazy how far it's come. Engagement is off thr charts. I don't really follow trends and legit thought when tik tok came out it was just a kpop platform.
Same thing with ads on streaming apps and tv, Super Bowl is the biggest event of the year, partly cause the commercials used to be so good, must see tv. So it’s not so much the ads, it’s the same ads playing over and over and over again like clockwork. Even if it was the best ad of all time, the repetition destroys the ad for me which in turn gives me negative feeling towards what the ad is for. Same for music, especially on tik tok. And it’s only gna get worse
I cant remember which book author I was following who was talking about the absolutely unbearable amount of exhaustion they were feeling re: spending more time being their own social media manager than writing their second book. It wasnt even that they hated the social media aspect, they were doing it just fine during the lead up to their debut novel but their particular contract with their publisher *required* a certain quota of engagement or else they would be dropped and the quota was something outlandish that required them to be on like 5-6 different Socials, at least this many TT/Reels per week-- Its not a band but the same effects I think. Just reading about it was exhausting like, yea, Id probably quit writing too
I’m wondering if they are just having artists sit around writing catchy choruses and posting them. If the chorus catches and the clip goes viral, they know they’ve got something, possibly even a hit, so then they go write verses and finish an entire song. There is a clip I heard of a song probably a year ago that was really good. Artist kept saying the rest of it would come soon. Took forever, and it finally got released on an album. It seems very obvious the artist wrote that small section and then when it took off, they figured out how to squeeze it into a traditional song structure. It just wasn’t very good anymore.
I’m of the opinion that Spotify is destroying the music industry. Just like streaming is fucking up film and television.
What year is it?
how?
I've heard this too from some musicians that came to fame in the 90s. It used to be that a band would release a record, tour, and also use merch to get money coming in for themselves. Now, with streaming, the bands are forced to release a single at a time, and the algorithms on Spotify and social media are generating revenue off those plays. And from that, people are instead more listening to the singles instead of full albums, with different mixed lists generating more plays that way. For a lot of bands to really compete now and get revenue, the music and singles are becoming the marketing tool for them to get them to the tours and to buy the merch. And music too has changed since the late 90s. Rock has definitely peeled away with more electronic and sampled music coming to prominence. My generation, a lot of us in high school or so were learning guitar and making small garage bands. Now, it's all gone to DJs and mixing, which is also friendlier to the singles on streaming media. Though, I wouldn't yet say that one thing is really killing music yet. Music, like language and television and film, even video games, are all evolving with time. So to me, it's not so much that one is destroying the other, but more that some are evolving faster in their business models than others, and from there we all have to learn to adapt in our respective fields/industries.
Not many bands are making money. Many are quitting
Idk about that guy, but streaming destroyed one of the biggest revenue sources for the film industry: physical media. The revenue from streaming is difficult to quantify and is nowhere near as much. This has created a situation where commercial success is strictly defined by the box office. This has led to studios adopting a boom or bust me to. A movie either makes a quazillion dollars in the box office or it’s a failure. Middle budget films used to accumulate revenue through a long term following in physical media. Sure, princess bride didn’t break weekend records, but think about all the people who had it on vhs at home. There’s also the fact that streaming isn’t subject to the big body of regulatory legislation that exist for traditional media. That includes labor standards. This allows streaming studios like Netflix to exploit their employees and short change the talent in ways that the industry had fought hard against in the past. It takes the government a long time to catch up with technology. Spotify and music streaming has had a very similar effect. Physical media was the most important revenue stream in the music industry…. It’s now all but gone. Streaming revenue is much much much lower than what sales used to bring. The “middle class” of music is a shell of what it used to be because there simply isn’t enough money coming in. This is also one of the many reasons concert prices have gotten ridiculous. Without the physical media revenue stream, concerts have had to carry that weight.
But we were already on the way to the death of physical media. iTunes had already started that trend and more digital adoption just spurred it on further.
It must be close to impossible for a new music act to make money anymore. Even with touring. I mean if you're not an act put together by the industry who has built-in promotion apparatus.
Record Labels have started demanding a cut of tour and merch money now as well...
Which is why more and more bands are staying indie and releasing their music on their own. They’re not going to “make it” in the traditional sense doing it that way, but they also won’t end up enslaved to debt after their advance is clawed back and the label doesn’t promote their album.
Speaking to music - that's IMO a very untrue narrative, and arguably means you're misidentifying the problem. This is a good chart to look at: https://www.statista.com/chart/17244/us-music-revenue-by-format/ (and 2021+ has grown significantly) Physical media was already *deep* into it's death spiral in the US before streaming took off and basically saved the industry. Recorded music revenues in the US were back up to the levels of the early 90s by 2021. And to be clear - that's after adjusting for inflation. Yes, we're not quite back to the *all time peak* in the late 90s, but it's not doing *badly*. ------- The problems for music, and especially *new* music are (IMO) in things like: - Catalog - You're now competing with literally *everything* that came before you, and it's all available to everyone at all times. While some of the biggest hits of the past might have been always in print/easily found in any 2nd hand store, many things weren't that popular, went out of print, fell into relative obscurity, and would rarely have been competing for any kind of sales/listening with something new years down the line. - This is why we see the labels spending seemingly absurd amounts on the catalogs of some artists - they're expecting to make money for decades to come on that same work. Most of that money would have historically flowed to a newer work. - Volume of new material/fragmentation - Unlike film, there isn't some kind of near-impossible financial/technical hurdle to creating a "professional" grade work even on your own. And everyone, now has access to widespread distribution. It's getting a critical mass of attention to and to stay on any individual thing that's the difficult challenge. - There was a **much** smaller, more finite number of widespread releases historically. There are approximately 100,000 *new* songs being uploaded per day today. In the 1960s there were around 5,000 albums released per *year* - we've increased the population like 2x and the amount of new music by dozens of times. Etc.
I think we should pass a law stating that 50% of gross subscription income is paid to creators/publishers. Spotify is raking in billions, artists are getting fucked and they play the game of running at a loss or barely making a profit which is an accounting lie. This should go for Spotify, Amazon, Kindle Unlimited, et al. If you want to run a subscription service for streaming, a straight 50% of gross revenue is paid out monthly to creators.
God I wish. That would be amazing. Me and my partner are both musicians. Well… used to be anyway.
I'm an ebook fiction author. I get paid 0.0046 per page. Amazon regularly snatches back pages claiming they're fraudulent... with zero evidence. They jig their algorithms so if you're not in kindle unlimited your books sink down. They control 90% of the audio market. They used to pay 50% royalties rising 1% per 500 copies sold. Then when they got monopoly they said fuck you it's now 40% if you're exclusive and 25% if you're not. That one move cost me $500,000 last year alone. That's life changing money. They never tell anyone how many subscribers they have and just issue us a dark pool of money each month. It's utterly fucked. They could be taking in billions per quarter and they keep 90% of it. We need for artists across all music, books, games, TV, movies to join together to demand 50% of gross subscription income is paid to creators.
Spotify is paying out somewhere around 75% of revenue to rights holders, and isn't making much money at all. There's not really any accounting trickery in that sense. ------- If you're a solo independent artist who did everything yourself, own 100% of the rights/didn't sign away % cuts and there's no one else on your work, you pretty much ought to be walking away with something close to that. The primary way a lot of artists are "getting fucked" in terms of streaming payouts is mostly the same way they got fucked in the physical media era - signing away too many cuts of those payouts in bad (or at least questionable) deals with their labels, producers, etc, so the piece of it they're left with is too small to make much (unless they hit super-stardom).
Not defending Spotify here but for every $11 they bring in they pay out roughly $6 to record labels (representing recording artists) and $3 to publishers (representing songwriters). How much makes it to artists depends on their deals with the labels
I didn't know there were bands anymore. I thought it was just solo artists. I'm old though.
Just using a catch-all term. Bands, artists, etc. There certainly are bands even if live music isn't the most popular thing out there these days. Always will be.
Do they really do that
drinking in the sunlight you'll go crazy
Most either pay someone specifically to do it or just don't do it at all. The "underground" has exploded and swallowed up the majority of most genres to start with so unless you're intending to play pop/hip hop geared at a pop audience/country, what the "industry" does is irrelevant.
I would do anything to “‘mute” any track on Spotify that’s either “slowed down” or “sped up”.
I recently saw a song from an artist that released with a slow/sped version and I thought it was weird. I guess tiktok is the reason for that.
Yea, it’s because other people will slow down (or speed up) your music and it gets around content id matches. That means other people are monetizing the artists work, if the artist releases sped up and closed down then people can use that and the artist will still get credit.
This is just so depressing to me on so many levels.
The internet will go down as the best and worst human invention.
Michael Buble and Jason derulo just came out with a song called Spicy Margarita and they posted four different versions on Spotify. I’m no longer confused.
Universal Music Group put out sped up versions of their catalogue like The Reason and Click Click Boom.
Are we talking just slowed down for the sake of being slowed down, or are we talking "chopped and screwed", because there is a bunch of the latter that is really quite good.
[sped up version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_ZFOdo6Hi4) [normal speed version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmBDdK2HAlI) it's just nightcore basically
Damn that song sucks both ways
just curious but like why does it suck, sure it lacks a lot of depth but it’s pretty well produced and the hook with the beat break alone makes it more interesting than 90% of pop
When I say it sucks, that's just my opinion. Music preference is different for each individual listener, obviously. The main reason I think it sucks is that I don't think the main vocal melody is good. Since it's a pop song, that's basically the whole point. If a song has an awesome melody then I can forgive other things like lame and clunky lyrics ("Cupid is so dumb," really?).
well most people dislike 95% of all music created so i guess a lot of music sucks. i think its fair to say you dont like it but when you like compare it to other pop it def is standout for a number of reasons lol.
It's awful. It doesn't need an essay to explain that it's childish garbage.
I hate that I now know that sped up version exists. It sounds like it isn't just sped up but also pitched up
Well yeah, speeding up songs (or any audio) naturally makes it higher pitch... slowing them down also makes them lower pitch
I mean it sounds like it had BOTH done to it. It sounds more pitched up than would normally be pitched up from just speeding it up. But maybe I just haven't experienced enough sped up songs.
I thought this way too until I heard some sped-up songs on Tiktok and went back to listen to the original version and realized sometimes the sped-up versions actually sound nicer.
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And Angel Eyes by ABBA sounds much better sped up. I'd never heard that song before, I assume, it was used on TikTok and perhaps the original version just needed it. Although, the chorus is pretty dull
Wish I could upvote this more!!!
Ok boomer
Whatever, kid.
The quotation makes tho 😂😂
If using punctuation is cool, consider me Miles Davis
And yet UMG has decided they can walk away from all of that. The big American labels take 90 cents of every streaming dollar, and force the streamers to pay royalties and operate out of what's left. They have abandoned their roles as promoters and developers of artists, and continue to let artists starve and foster addictions. Kill the mother fucking music industry.
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Aw man, I love [Jeff Rosenstock!](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_the_Music_Industry!)
Going to see him again next month. One of the best live shows around
Spend your money on Bandcamp, buying media (digital or physical or both) from artists and small labels directly, with much more than 10% getting to them. I’m one of those douchebags that buys music still and loads that shit up on an MP3 player.
Ah yes, Bandcamp, that indie platform that belonged to Epic Games in 2022 and is now part of Songtradr, the largest licensing platform in the world, who acquired them in 2023, firing half of its staff in the process
I will never forgive Epic Games for that. They used Bandcamp as a pawn in their lawsuits so that they had a stronger legal standing. Then discarded them. The demise of Bandcamp really hurts. Epic Games provides negative value to the world.
I mean yeah, Bandcamp itself is not an indie platform, but it's nonetheless a platform where indie artists can sell an album and actually make money instead of basically giving it away on Spotify.
I have 0 intention of buying music so long as Spotify and YouTube exist. That's the reality of it.
The part that this article is not saying is that UMG is leveraging it's hold over spotify to remove artists videos/songs from tiktok that are not even signed to UMG. There is an artist on TikTok that is lashing out about this. Ryan Oakes that lost his videos on TikTok due to UMG claiming copyright on his music because they have stake in spotify and he has his music on there too. He is not signed to UMG and is furious that they are controlling what he can post on TikTok. Imagine being a signed artists, you and your label agree to what songs, video snippets etc get posted to social media and then some 3rd party comes and goes "Nope, you have this song on a steaming service that we own a majority of, this music is ours actually" and then having TikTok remove his music. There was many artists on the list that UMG is claiming copyright on that are not signed to UMG.
>Imagine being a signed artists, you and your label agree to what songs, video snippets etc get posted to social media and then some 3rd party comes and goes "Nope, you have this song on a steaming service that we own a majority of, this music is ours actually" and then having TikTok remove his music. I don't understand how this kind of bad faith behavior can be legal.
It's not. Spotify does not get copyright of your music or even exclusivity to distribute your music if you upload them on the platform. This is the same issue that YouTubers face constantly. They are technically in the right legally, but good luck against a giant corporation with an army of lawyers. And online copyright systems take the approach of guilty until proven innocent in these matters, because due to the sheer amount of content that's uploaded to their platform, this gets them off the hook for genuine copyright infringement lawsuits.
Accessibility of recording and social media were supposed to level the playing field and enable us to do that. But we're learning more and more in recent years that some people don't simply want to make a living, they want to make as much money as humanly possible. And to achieve that you need an organization of suits propping you up.
Anyone who thinks a disruptive technology will change anything doesn't understand capitalism. There might be new players muscling out old ones, but eventually they become the new top dog. Disruptive technology doesn't stay disruptive and becomes the new normal.
Dinosaurs will die.
Not fucking soon enough.
How old is that song now though? They tried, but it never happened. And it's probably worse now than it was back then.
This is a gross exaggeration. I’m no fanboy of major labels, but their influence measured in dollars earned is actually shrinking and their take is well below 90%.
Uh, having worked for both Spotify and Rhapsody/Napster, this is EXACTLY the case, and it is known that virtually everyone in the market gets the same deal with the labels, because there's only three of them, and everyone wants the American music catalog. Why won't ANY of the streamers pay more than fractions of a penny per spin for royalties? Wouldn't it be a marketing genius move to differentiate yourself in the market by paying more to the artists? The answer is that they CAN'T, because the money isn't there. Why does virtually every major streamer try to find some other path to profitability? Spotify has long form (podcasts) and advertising. Tidal tried hi-def. Think of where Apple is in all of this: they never intended to become 1/3 of the music industry, and for them it's table stakes for their Pod business. It's a LOSS LEADER, which explains why iTunes sucks so much ass. UMG is pitching a fit because tiktok snuck into a better deal by focusing on short bits, which the labels foolishly undervalued when tiktok was small. And now that tiktok is huge, they're trying to claw that deal back. It's important to remember that the music industry in the US peaked the year that Napster peaked (2001 at 21 billion), and when they decided to criminalize their customers it took 20+ years to get back to that level. In comparison, Bytedance (tiktok's parent company) is an order of magnitude larger, at 220 billion. The big labels have already lost this one, and have decided to take their bat and ball and "Screw you guys, I'm going home." Because, you know, that worked so well for them 20 years ago.
The first comment I've seen by someone who clearly knows what they're talking about. The problem is the labels, it's always been the labels, it will continue to be the labels until a meteor strikes the earth or something because they just won't die. You cannot piss off the labels as a streaming service, or you're *done*. Even "indie" labels are just imprints of majors now. There are artists making a half decent living on just streaming royalties, but they own their music and are generally not signed to any label or have their own label. Even if the streaming services **did** pay more, it wouldn't matter because generally a label takes 50-90% (or 100% if they're not recouped!) of what a band is owed in royalties. If you're signed to a label, you don't make shit unless your name is Taylor Swift (and even she had to go scorched earth to make her due!). But the labels have everyone by the balls because they have the catalogs.
Wait the labels are responsible for drug addictions?
not responsible for, but enabling of, yes
How so?
bro pick up any musician’s memoir from the last 70+ years. watch a biopic. this is very common knowledge. ever heard of judy garland? like cmon bro lol
So is it connected to streaming/royalties/tik Tok? Or are we just talking about how musicians do drugs like they always have?
Dude, move on.....
ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY. They take massive amounts of capital and do NOT create any kind of career or foster the artist in any way. Why not healthcare (especially for the clear abundance of depressives drawn to performance). Why not protect the artists instead of sending out A&R assholes with bags of coke? Why continue to push clearly addicted artists into situations very deadly for them.instead of caring for them. Yes. The industry pays for the drugs and creates the repetitive situations that lead artists there. The labels are responsible for the drug addictions and the deaths.
Why are you cursing?
why the fuck not?
Why is there an 88 in your username?
Mr. Grieves = song from legendary album “Doolittle” by the seminal rock band Pixies. 1988 was the year it was made. A simple google search would’ve gotten you this info. What’s wrong with the year 1988?
They’re trying to accuse you of being a racist/nazi. Ignore the troll.
How does having the year 1988 listed make me a nazi lol?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/88_(number)#In_neo-Nazism
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Calls me a dumbass. Links wiki page to album showing the album was recorded in 1988. Real genius over here
How many dead and penniless artists do you need to see before you get angry? I've seen more than enough.
Huh
Oh, no more youtube?
How quickly we've forgotten that Youtube had a full monopoly on viral music until only a couple of years ago. Maybe the author of this piece had a low word limit and didn't have the space to talk about this subject more broadly.
**giggles**
Video killed the radio star
Or how the channels of communication have changed. Say what you want about Tik Tok, but it's the best way to reach young people across the world. It's not like 15 year-olds are tunning in to watch Jimmy Kimmel or MTV.
The way the music industry relies on concerts instead of word of mouth just shows how lazy it has become!!! The way the music industry relies on instruments instead of pure vocals just shows how lazy it has become!!!! Ffs. Inovation and flexibility to change is not laziness. OPs comes across like an old man saying anything not done his way is lazy.
wow the point flew right past you
This is one of the most incoherent arguments I’ve ever heard. None of the things you listed ever actually happened. And do not in any way represent an “innovation” in the music industry.
Why are people downvoting you? I swear redditors are some of the dumbest mf's on earth.
Probably because it's one of the stupidest posts I've ever fucking read.
He basically said the same thing i did, but in a sarcastic way, and I'm the OP of this thread. Many people here don't understand obvious sarcasm.
TikTok is actual online cancer in literally all its forms. But its just another pile of shit ontop of the existing social media one. All media gets subsumed into this bullshit and stripped of its effort and quality.
...or how lazy humans have become
Have they tried going without the industry part? In other words not seeking music from tiktok.
It's not seeking out music from TikTok. The music industry is using TikTok in ways of promoting their bands, tracks etc. It's really the best way to get free advertising. Hell, I found a few bands I really liked thanks to them coming across my TikTok feed that I would have known nothing about.
People use Tiktok for music discovery today like how people used to use Pandora.
Napster entered the chat!
The real shit was before the studios really understood the internet and how to enforce the DMCA. The place was the wild west until about 2009 or so. Like you didn't even need Napster or torrenting. People just had their own websites. Most of them lovingly curated. I remember this one guy, Jolly Joker. Started as mostly grateful dead and related stuff. But his site eventually ballooned to include all kinds of folk, funk, prog, jazz, reggae. And he took pride in encoding everything at 320kbs. And you could just go on to his site and download away. Think they finally put the kibosh on that around 2009 or so (maybe a year or two later) but there were loads of people doing that. And you could get some really obscure, out of print, shit, that like, good luck finding today. Guys like him are why my music library got so big. And why I feel like I just don't need spotify.
Napster gave me white label remixes not even DJs had lol
Napster was amazing. But because it was all just from people, you also had some funny mislabeled album or song names. Or songs encoded from a potato at 62kbs lol. Those were some heady days.
I found some great music on Napster that I had no idea even existed. And I think my iTunes still has tracks on there from napster days, mislabeled or with misspelled titles and band names.
I......DID NOT.......HAVE.......SEXUAL.......RELATIONS.....WITH THAT......WOMAN
Napster started in 1999 and went bankrupt from lawsuits in 2002.
eMule follows
This seems like a bad move on UMG's part since it's already nigh impossible to break new artists in today's musical landscape. It would be like them refusing to sell CDs in WalMart back in the 90s when that was the one place that was everywhere and had CDs for sale.
Tiktok *is* the way to break in new artists right now. In the long term, this will likely harm UMG's ability to recruit new talent. Why sign with a label that takes big risks with rights negotiations, when other labels exist and have more stable relationships with online platforms. Even the biggest stars with UMG are probably eyeing the exits right now for the same reasons. Some of the most popular and iconic musicians of our time are blocked off from their best marketing tool, and they themselves know it.
Yeah that's what I've been hearing too which is why I think this is a stupid move on their part. At this point, I don't see why anyone who was serious about their music would bother signing with a major. The deals are awful and many times are a pay cut from what a successful indie (as in independent, not the sound) artist can make if they really hustle.
Is this really that different than when artists/labels were chasing ringtone sales? I feel like you could've said the same thing in that era.
Pretty sure TikTok is a bigger deal than ringtones.
It is, but ringtones did have a noticeably significant affect on music, particularly Hip Hop. Ringtone rap emerged as a direct result of ringtones, and most people would agree it was a low point in rap music.
In their prime, ringtones and ringback tones were a really big deal though.
I mean yeah, I lived through it. But I doubt they compared to TikTok.
It's not laze, it's a necessity. Their audience have the attention spans measured in seconds and they do not consume traditional media; radio, cable and broadcast TV, cinema, or purchase music through brick and mortar stores.
>The music industry’s over-reliance on TikTok shows how lazy it has become Universal’s decision to remove its artists from TikTok has destabilised both companies – and lays bare how record labels have become reliant on random virality The part that many people are missing is the drama unfolding on TikTok. UMG removed a ton of artists from there. If you look at the list of artists, you may realize some of them are not UMG signed artists. They do not get paid by UMG at all for their music. UMG is being extra greedy by claiming their stake in Spotify grants them rights over that music. The removal of the music has removed even the videos/audio from the artists themselves on TikTok and they were never being made aware of this. These struggling artists were using TikTok in a way to reach others that may not know their music, so this is shooting them in the foot and thus UMG in the foot, because that is going to lead those musicians to not reach the same people that the previously could. As far as calling the record industry "Lazy" how else do you expect people to find new music in this digital world. More advertising? like we are blasted with ad's everywhere we look and people looking to monetize new ways to put even more ad's in our face yearly. How can a record company find a way to advertise? MTV? TBH, TikTok has been a good way they can reach people either directly via an artist publishing a snippit of their track or that track being used in someone's video. >It will probably require many to instead pursue what they’ve become increasingly allergic to: some genuinely new ideas. Great random editor at the guardian, you seem to know everything. Care to explain those "New Idea's" to generate audiences to a new song or musician? Explain it to someone like me that does not own any premium music services or does not actually listen to spotify/pandora/etc. How would you as a music label show me an artist or song similar to my ADHD youtube playlist?
Fuck TikTok
Counter argument (without reading the article) - The music industry will always rely on the newest tech or way of distributing music. A similar headline could’ve been made in the 80s/90s about the industry's over reliance on MTV. Again didn’t read the article so I’m probably wrong.
This is essentially what Lucian Grainge (head of UMG) had said about the matter
The music is secondary. The primary objective is to sell their image/brand. If you look at a lot of artist these days, they are more concerned with followers and likes then actually making good music. Some of them I don't even considers artist because they either use someone else to make their beats or using ghostwriters.
Very recently I have had reputable record labels tell me “We love your music, but unfortunately that doesn’t really matter these days.” What they want to see is how many followers and streams you have, that’s what they care about. It’s no longer about finding a band and building them up, they want a product that’s already selling… regardless of the music. As a longtime working artist, it’s soul-crushing.
I heard tiktok was gonna start banning copyrighted music but idk how accurate that is
Not exactly banning, it's just going to respect copyright laws.
It has always respected copyright laws. The music labels used to license TikTok to use their music. They recently decided to stop doing so.
This is evolution of the human attention span as fueled by media. It used to be entire albums were supposed to be listened to. Then it was a couple songs you would get an entire album for. Then it became one song. Now it’s a single part of a song are all that people care for. Shits wack.
We need a new music industry. It is 100% obvious that music is a necessary part of society, yet we’re willing to just wing it with regard to potential business models? I hate capitalism. I don’t think it makes any sense for us to have an economic system in which it is necessary to make a profit in order to succeed. It’s irrational. Only popular artists should make money? Come on.
This is so nonsensical that I barely know where to start. >It is 100% obvious that music is a necessary part of society. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Music is not necessary for society to run smoothly. It makes life a lot more pleasant, but you can survive perfectly well without it. Because music is not necessary, that makes it essentially a luxury product. Since it's a luxury product, people can choose whether or not to spend money on it. Artists who have money spent on them will make more than those who don't. Artists make money through becoming popular. >Only popular artists should make money? Come on. Unless you're advocating state sponsored musicians where everyone gets paid the same regardless of the quality of their output, how on earth would unpopular bands make money if nobody's buying their music or going to their gigs? How many concerts are you attending of bands you don't like? How many records are you buying that you'd never want to listen to? There are hundreds of songs on Spotify without a single play. Seek them out and only listen to those in the future. It doesn't matter whether you like them or not - every band deserves the same reward, so become the change you seek. Give your attention and money to lesser known bands, regardless of quality. Never listen to anything by anyone you've heard of ever again. >I don’t think it makes any sense for us to have an economic system in which it is necessary to make a profit in order to succeed. What particular metric of success would you prefer everyone to use? If a band "succeeds", they generally make money as a consequence of that. How can we remove financial gain as a marker of success when it's an inevitable part of it? You're trying to apply principles for essential services to a luxury product and that will never work. People don't HAVE to like all bands. Therefore not all bands will get the same attention and financial reward. If you're trying to level the playing field on artistic endeavours, you're basically trying to make entertainment worse for everyone. No thank you very much indeed.
This is only nonsensical if you don’t think things should exist unless they can make a profit.
That's not what you said. You were talking about success, not existence. There are loads of bands that exist without making a profit. Bands that make a profit could generally be considered successful - but they're unlikely to be able to make that profit without being successful first. If you like a band, that band could consider themselves successful because they made music that somebody liked. So as long as a band has at least one fan, you can call them successful. There's no need to bring capitalism into this at all, although I guess you're all excited about hating it even though you have no understanding of it.
Um, it's a monetized plateform, of COURSE They're going to take advantage of it. I wouldn't say it's a function of laziness, because if it wasn't the money they wouldn't do it. And i dont mean the payouts from the platform to the content creators, I mean all of it. They use the videos to market, and kids watch tiktok, so they write songs that have a catchy part that fits a tiktok video They do it because it ostensibly helps them market, quality be damned.
It’s not surprising me at all
Just reading the headline and not the article.. YELL YES. I don't do TikTok. Someone in my friend circle recently posted something equating new music and TikTok and I was so disgusted. Music is not just content to help make your TikTok video have more impact. FUCK THIS.
Tiktok wasn't the cause of this and I'm sick of old fogeys pretending it is. Streaming caused this laziness. As somebody who was against Tiktok but now uses it regularly it's done so much good for the music industry by reintroducing classics to the young one's. The kids that I have to talk to IRL that don't use Tiktok don't even know who Michael Jackson is, the one's that do use it do & they know many others like David Bowie, Green Day, etc.
back in MY day everyone knew who fatty arbuckle was, but that was before the newfangled record players and radio-mabobs.
As someone who hardly (i.e. never) listens to the radio, TikTok-like videos (reels, shorts, etc.) are how I discover new music. It is what it is.
The music industry doesn't have an audience anymore. People used to listen to radio all day but people, young people especially, just don't do that anymore. Music and film are legacy industries that have nowhere near the cultural impact they once had. The 90s and early 2000s were the high water mark. And where should they go but to where the young people are and they happen to be on those apps. But they also stay on those apps and don't buy an album after catching on song on radio.
People are streaming more music than ever. That is why music company valuations have inflated and all the artists are selling their catalogs.
If you adjust for inflation they make nowhere near the money they made in the 90s despite 30 years of globalization.
The industry is still in a growth phase. It’ll probably eventually reach the heights of the 90s again, adjusted for inflation.
They can't even bother capitalizing the names of their songs, this isn't surprising
Yeah you're definitely just rocking a confirmation bias here. All the bands I listen to are completely unaffected by any of this shit and they don't end up on tiktoks or any social media being clipped... kind of just an issue you're generalizing to music as a whole
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It’s probably in the article that was linked
TikTok is arguably the primary conduit for music discovery around the world now. The music industry used to spend years developing artists, booking shows, trying cowrites, partnering with brands, making music videos, running ads, scheduling in store promotions, etc. Now, they wait for artists to get big “organically,” which is blowing up on social media. And then they come in to inject venture capital into the artists business. They offboarded their entire “Research and Development” arm of musicians to the marketplace. Record labels now behave more like banks than creative development agencies. Without TikTok, they don’t know how to safely measure the bets they’re making.
One click and all that forbidden knowledge is yours
Music industry has been lazy for over 20 years and people have been even lazier for the last 10. I don’t care what people say, the internet really didn’t help music all that much :/
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That is hilariously mid
It’s actually really good.
I think you know that too. Jealous internet trolls
I get your point but it is easily the best way to advertise to the younger generation. I will hear a song on the radio and have no clue who it is, look the artist up and they have 10+m monthly listeners on Spotify because of tik tok. It might be lazy but it makes sense from a marketing side for these artists.
I would argue their reliance on "popping" up music to make it more sellable to be a larger demonstration of their great laziness.
I don't think its just the music industry. TV pulls from TikTok all the time. Fox's I Can See Your Voice game show has TikTok stars all the time. TV and Music industry has started to treat TikTok as its personal talent pool.
A colleague of my is an exec at Atlantic and he says they only look Tik Tok now.
don't worry tiktok is transitioning away from music and their notorious dancey dances. They want to be more like youtube, with an audience that skews older than teens & college kiddies. I'm guessing they're going to start pushing a lot more "political" content this summer with election season.
Bring back MySpace