> Wait, are you saying that artists rely just on Spotify for income? That would be foolhardy.
Well, yes. Since the entire premise of Spotify seems to be that we should pay broadcast royalty rates for a service that replaces recordings entirely, it would indeed be pretty foolish to rely on that.
And in fact, some artists think it's so foolish they've realized its to their advantage not to participate.
> I would think that Spotify would be just one small chunk in a wide portfolio of distribution channels.
The problem being that once something's available on Spotify (or something like it), the structure of the service eliminates any access-incentive to look for it anywhere else.
> Also, artists have generally never been very richly paid on music sales. Touring and merch are where the money's always been.
This is pretty different from the history I'm familiar with -- touring supported/drove album sales for a long time, except for certain acts (huge like the Stones, jam-oriented like the Dead or Phish, or nostalgia focused). And people made a ton of money from recordings (though it wasn't always the artists because of gatekeepers).
The reverse is often true now mostly because we entered a transition to a new format with the uptake getting waaay out ahead of the vendors and legit recording sales collapsed (and then, right as we started to see vendors come on board, we had the biggest economic contraction since the great depression).
This isn't an inevitable trend, and revenue from recording sales this year is increasing again this year based largely digital sales increasing faster than physical sales are falling. And total revenue from recordings sales, while much smaller than what it was at its peak around 2000, is actually 50% more than it was at the beginning of the 1990s.
We could yet see another golden age of recorded music. This time better in that digital albums are cheaper and, with a shorter distribution chain, people who make the music are often keeping more.
At least, that's the potential. Unless we decide to go with buffet-streaming services that remove incentives to buy it.
But maybe that's the next step for our culture: if art can't be supported by t-shirts and tchotchkes, it's not art that we should be economically encouraging, right?
