James Blake posted this a while back.

It's not a trip into negativity; for me, at least, this is a reminder to remember the art, the work, the fun, not the metrics nor the bullshit behind all of it.

Unfortunately, for professional artists, they do need to keep their ear to the grindstone.

While Christie's are auctioning away 'approximately 80 guitars' that Johnny Marr owns, people like Jon Spencer have to grind.

In this podcast episode, Spencer speaks about his latest album, how he runs his own record label, and how he books every single gig. He actually did that most of the time while in Boss Hog, Heavy Trash, and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. That's saying something. Also, that's what Johnny Marr and Morrissey (and Morrissey's mum, if I'm not mistaken) did during their heyday.

Run your own record label and handle your own affairs: complete control and extremely taxing.

Let a record label handle your shit, unless it's a very good record label: get fucking swindled and dumped at the side of the road after your first album.

When you see something like this, you know music's for real. The people are for real. And the world is on fire.

#music #MusicTips #JonSpencer #JamesBlake #MusicBusiness #BrokenRecord

I read an article named Qobuz Is Suddenly One of the Fastest-Growing Streaming Music Platforms. But Why, You Ask?. From the article:

Amidst seemingly endless price hikes and controversies over at the market leader, listeners (and artists) are quietly seeking alternatives. Curiously, Qobuz Managing Director of North America and Northern Europe, Dan Mackta, notes that a surprising number of Spotify users ditched their accounts right after their year-end ‘Wrapped’ campaigns were revealed.

It's not unexpected. People hate Spotify for many, many good reasons, like how they're not only using AI to ditch record labels, how they're actively lobbying against songwriter payouts, how their CEO (Daniel Ek) uses his personal extreme-amount wealth to buy AI warfare bullshit, et cetera.

After extreme backlash, Spotify say they're going to label AI music; I'm not sure what they think 'AI music' is, but rest assured they'll try to fuck over the consumer. Don't forget what Liz Pelly wrote about Spotify; her book is excellent, buy it.

I've written about Qobuz before. I use Qobuz, both for streaming and buying music. From my own garden article:

They are, as far as I know, the only music-streaming and music-purchase platform that openly publish how much they pay per stream.

In terms of average revenue per user (ARPU), Qobuz generated average revenue of  US$121.13 per year, where the market average is US$22.38 per year. This means that Qobuz generates on average five times more revenue per user than the market average, which results in a significant impact on artists' remuneration.

From the article I mentioned at the top:

Without naming names, Qobuz told us their per-stream payouts are ‘four times higher than the nearest competitor.’ According to DMN’s stats, that’s also approximately six times Spotify’s per-stream payouts, a company that, incidentally, entirely downplays the use of per-stream royalty measurements.

Yeah. Buy your music, stream it from a provider that's got good-quality stuff and, most importantly, pay the makers a good amount of money.

Most surveys, over time, show that humans value music the most out of any art form. Consider ancient Greece: philosophers, musicians, writers, etc. were treated very well, because they made what people loved; sure, ancient Greece also thought that keeping slaves was a good idea—Daniel Ek surely loved that part about ancient Greece!—but treasuring what made people happy and didn't hurt animals and the planet was and is good.

#music #MusicStreaming #MusicBusiness #BrokenRecord