No Stupid Questions

Actually it the labels who are taking advantages of the streaming services without mentioning profiting from artists they manage. When negotiating deals with streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music, labels often demand large advances. These funds are typically non-recoupable, labels keep this money regardless of how well the music performs on the platform.

All major labels performed very well this year financially. It is really artists themselves who suffers

Why don’t the Big 3 (Universal, Warner & Sony) just come together and make their own streaming service with all their music,

Careful what you wish for. It's long been a concern of mine that we'll see a fragmentation of the music streaming market, with the same results as in TV.

You know how one show you like is on Disney+ and one is on Netflix and two are on Amazon, and one is on Paramount and so on...? Result is you either miss shows or pay a fortune.

Imagine that with your favourite bands, except you need a Warner subscription to listen to one band, a Sony one to listen to another, etc.

It's bad enough with some things not being on one music service while they are on another one, or with songs being there and then gone and then back again for utterly opaque reasons. If the labels get the idea that they can cut out the middle man and gate off their artists from any service but their own, it'll be awful.

IIRC, the music industry was in decline long before Spotify was made. The transition period before Spotify was just illegally downloading everything through Limewire/Kazaa/Napster etc.

Also, the reason podcasts make money is because they can produce something that brings audiences in on a weekly basis. The music industry OTOH has artists that make an album a year or less. It's not as sustainable and it's harder to sell ads against.

I don't think more segmentation is a wanted solution by consumers either. Consumers would much rather use one app for all platforms than have to buy a different streaming service every time they want to listen to a new album.

They own a big chunk (possibly a majority) of Spotify and extract hefty licensing fees from it. (Spotify moving into podcasting was apparently intended to find a market in which they could keep the profits.) The majors get far better licensing terms than indie labels or small artists would get, because they have the whip hand: Spotify has no choice but to pay up as not to become a platform without Taylor Swift/Ed Sheeran/Baby Shark/etc., which would effectively wipe them out.

Make no mistake, the three major labels (Warner, Sony and Universal) are reaping the vast majority of profits from Spotify.

The film/TV industry splitting into 5+ services wasn't a good thing. Advocating for the same system for music could be good for artists but would suck for consumers.

The rental economy calls to us and we must go...

i see a lot of comments saying how the current situation is better than if streaming platforms became fragmented like TV, but part of why streaming services for TV became so popular is because TV and movies are things you don't often return to- aside from a few favorites, you might watch a show or a movie only once every five or ten years, whereas you listen to your favorite music over and over and over again. imo if Spotify were to collapse, it's less likely that people would shell out a fortune for WB+ and Sony+ and more likely that they would just go back to buying an album every month or two, which is a win win because it's cheaper for them and way more money going to the artist. hell, even if 98% of people just went back to limewire and 2% started buying music again, that's still ultimately way more money for artists

The graph is comparing two different things.

Because the alternative is trying to stay in a dying physical medium (CDs), a nice physical medium (LPs), or accepting piracy.

Streaming was a compromise to allow record labels to sell access to music at a bulk cost so that they can continue to exist.

I won’t argue with streaming services go fuck themselves but music industry’s not being in a good place also deeply related with there are shit megaton quadrillion musicians spawning everyday now. And most of them are pretty good!

Making music got easier by decade and it’s around 500$ to have all kinds of tech and instruments better than what Radiohead used in Kid A, and learning resources are way more accessible now.

Total music related spending (vinyls, merch, tickets) skyrocketed compared to 80s or 90s as well, but it’s also split between 100 million artists, and not 100.000. Yet the listener headcount only doubled or tripled.

As someone who remembers the time before spotify: people were pirating alot so legal streaming was the way to end this but giving a usable alternative

If the big 3 get together, artists will get less, pure and simple