blue note launches spotify app

[CJ Shearn]

Makes sense MG, but with the high level of improvisation on "The Sermon" and "Houseparty", it baffles me that they'd be used as party tracks, "The Sermon" I could see being used for that, but "Au Privave", "JOS" and "Just Friends", I am not sure. I grew up on those records always critically listening. It's sort of like how today most casual jazz fans might put Miles on as background or smooth jazz b/c the other stuff is too challenging. Though yours' and Chuck recollection of the social implications of JOS' music and Blue Note seems consistent with how people in my dad's side of the family used that music to function in their lives.

Edited September 24, 2012 by CJ Shearn

[bluesForBartok]

Thanks to all on this thread who've taken the app for a spin. I really appreciate the kind words & feedback. I'll reiterate, this thing is by no means perfect but it's off to a solid start and the plan is to keep improving on the experience both functionally and w/ content updates.

Any chance of sharing all this without having to enlist at Facebook?

Obviously there are a number of people here (and elsewhere) who do not want to join FB!

Hey brownie,

Is that still a requirement? I thought they had opened that up. I think you can sign up w/ a email acct. here: https://www.spotify.com/au/signup/plain/

I still get:

You need a Facebook account to register for Spotify. If you have an account, just log in below to register. If you don't have a Facebook account, get one by clicking the 'Create an account' link below.

Try scrolling down. In the US at least, there is a link far down the page that says "OR....create an account using my email address". They must have some partnership with Facebook where they are trying to drive new Facebook registrations in exchange for integrating with Facebook so tightly, so they've made the flow for signing up without Facebook not-very-obvious.

Thanks for the info, BfB, much appreciated. If we see more bugs is it OK to report them to you on this thread or would you rather us PM them to you? I've come across a couple of weird UI glitches but am still checking into whether it's the app or some other issue with Spotify causing it.

Keep sending any bugs / glitches you find. If it's UI stuff, try sending a scr shot if possible. You can PM me or just place it all here. Either way.

Thanks!

[GA Russell]

BfB, I didn't see any link on your app for orchestras. I was particularly looking for Maynard Ferguson's Roulette recordings that might be on Spotify. Would your Blue Note app include EMI non-Blue Note labels like Roulette?

When I checked Maynard not using the Blue Note app, I saw the one Roulette that I have, Letter from Birdland, but there are many albums, and no indication (that I saw) of what label they are on. Can anyone point out other Maynard Roulette albums? Thanks!

[alocispepraluger102]

BfB, I didn't see any link on your app for orchestras. I was particularly looking for Maynard Ferguson's Roulette recordings that might be on Spotify. Would your Blue Note app include EMI non-Blue Note labels like Roulette?

When I checked Maynard not using the Blue Note app, I saw the one Roulette that I have, Letter from Birdland, but there are many albums, and no indication (that I saw) of what label they are on. Can anyone point out other Maynard Roulette albums? Thanks!

i find the spotify search mechanism occasionally finicky. i would rephrase the searches, if unsuccessful, in numerous ways.

Edited September 24, 2012 by alocispepraluger102

[Chuck Nessa]

Streaming services are just another way for copyright owners to squeeze a few bucks from their holdings without regard for the composers and performers. Big guys ignoring the folks who made them possible.

Wasn't this the same sentiment when the CD replaced the LP and Cassette? I won't argue that digital music can be a rather cold experience but it's what we're dealing with nowadays and as someone in the digital space, I am doing what I can to help make the experience a more welcoming one.

I would like to hear you provide more detail on your "squeeze a few bucks from their holdings without regard for the composers and performers" statement. Unless you have the documentation to substantiate this, I'm not sure how you can make such a sweeping statement. I'm sorry but it just sounds like sour grapes to me.

Granted, I'm not advocating for the major label system here. We all know it's fraught with issues. I can tell you as someone from the inside, there are passionate people within those walls that care about the composers and performers. In it's own little way, the BN App is a attempt to place all of that disparte content into a centralized experience with the goal of increasing the amount of streams per track / album and in turn generate more revenue for the label and the respective rights holders.

Not the same at all. Please check out the licensing rates for cds, lps, downloads, and finally streaming. Dollars are reduced to fractions of pennies. I am talking about both publishing and artist royalties.

[alocispepraluger102]

as i wrote before: to me, the music sharing system SPOTIFY is an only slightly altered reincarnation of the defunct NAPSTER. SPOTIFY claims 11 million users.

[marcello]

Both Chuck and alocispepraluger102 are correct.

The rates that are paid by services like these are so ridiculously low (fractions of pennies), it would take forever for a artist to make a buck from their efforts.

[medjuck]

Streaming services are just another way for copyright owners to squeeze a few bucks from their holdings without regard for the composers and performers. Big guys ignoring the folks who made them possible.

Wasn't this the same sentiment when the CD replaced the LP and Cassette? I won't argue that digital music can be a rather cold experience but it's what we're dealing with nowadays and as someone in the digital space, I am doing what I can to help make the experience a more welcoming one.

I would like to hear you provide more detail on your "squeeze a few bucks from their holdings without regard for the composers and performers" statement. Unless you have the documentation to substantiate this, I'm not sure how you can make such a sweeping statement. I'm sorry but it just sounds like sour grapes to me.

Granted, I'm not advocating for the major label system here. We all know it's fraught with issues. I can tell you as someone from the inside, there are passionate people within those walls that care about the composers and performers. In it's own little way, the BN App is a attempt to place all of that disparte content into a centralized experience with the goal of increasing the amount of streams per track / album and in turn generate more revenue for the label and the respective rights holders.

Not the same at all. Please check out the licensing rates for cds, lps, downloads, and finally streaming. Dollars are reduced to fractions of pennies. I am talking about both publishing and artist royalties.

Yes, but when you buy a song either on a cd or via download the artists, composers etc are only paid once no matter how often you play the music. With streaming they're paid every time you listen to it. (Admittedly the rates may be such that you'd have to play something hundreds of times to make up the difference.)

[Chuck Nessa]

Thousands.

[David Ayers]

This is how music will be distributed in the future. Well, it is how music is distributed now, so we may as well get used to it. The music industry never existed to support artists. However it does need to sufficiently incentivise artists so it can't pay them nothing. Recorded music though is not the only product of music-making and has only occasionally been the main source of income for musicians. Payment to musicians is in any case a fetish of this board since copyright laws were deliberately framed to keep the main rights in the hands of composers and not performers. In the case of per-play rates, the composers and performers get their contracted share. It is the model which is different - you have to get listeners and plays to generate revenue. The exposure on Spotify is a huge benefit to any performing artist. Spotify also removes the artificial barrier of the LP/CD days when you mainly had to pay before you heard anything, an all-or-nothing approach. Perhaps many people do not need voluminous access to music as people on this board mainly do. But the archive now is available to anyone who wants it, so in terms of access as well as lifestyle Spotify is a huge move forward. What BfB's app shows is a glimpse of the future, when the archive will be navigable by all sorts of maps and threads. Eventually all sorts of metadata will be linked to the musical material. Video formats will likely be routed the same way. I think we'll never look back and that we'll see the age of limited access and per-album rather than per-play payment as a dark age.

[GA Russell]

Thousands.

Suppose a billionaire said to a jazz artist/group, "I like your music so much, if you want I'll pay to have a promo copy of an album of yours sent to every household in America."

The artist wouldn't get any money out of it. Would he accept the offer? I don't think that it would be irrational for him to do so.

Maybe not his current album. Maybe a backlist album from five years ago. But I can see the appeal of having your music in every household in America.

[A Lark Ascending]

This is how music will be distributed in the future. Well, it is how music is distributed now, so we may as well get used to it. The music industry never existed to support artists. However it does need to sufficiently incentivise artists so it can't pay them nothing. Recorded music though is not the only product of music-making and has only occasionally been the main source of income for musicians. Payment to musicians is in any case a fetish of this board since copyright laws were deliberately framed to keep the main rights in the hands of composers and not performers. In the case of per-play rates, the composers and performers get their contracted share. It is the model which is different - you have to get listeners and plays to generate revenue. The exposure on Spotify is a huge benefit to any performing artist. Spotify also removes the artificial barrier of the LP/CD days when you mainly had to pay before you heard anything, an all-or-nothing approach. Perhaps many people do not need voluminous access to music as people on this board mainly do. But the archive now is available to anyone who wants it, so in terms of access as well as lifestyle Spotify is a huge move forward. What BfB's app shows is a glimpse of the future, when the archive will be navigable by all sorts of maps and threads. Eventually all sorts of metadata will be linked to the musical material. Video formats will likely be routed the same way. I think we'll never look back and that we'll see the age of limited access and per-album rather than per-play payment as a dark age.

I think this is absolutely right.

It's taking some of us a lot of time to adapt. I might have forsaken the physical disc/vinyl/packaging/liner notes etc obsession but I still feel a need for something that is 'mine' - be it files stored on an external hard disc or burnt CD-Rs. But I suspect that time will show this to be unnecessary. At present there's still that feeling of 'O.K., it's on Spotify or some Cloud now but what if they go bust?' In time we'll probably get past that.

Interesting that Amazon UK has just changed the way it downloads. Everything is now cloud stored - you download from there if you want. In theory everything is available to play from anywhere you can access the cloud. I've not tried it yet but if you could reliably play in that way without losing a signal, the day of the iPod would be numbered. Why carry a little box with a finite number of tracks when your whole collection can be on a cloud to be accessed anywhere? Why have a collection when you can access from somewhere like Spotify?

Ten years from now we'll be accessing music in ways that we haven't even dreamed of yet (and someone will be bemoaning the death of the download with it's infinitely superior sound quality when compared to whatever the new format is).

Edited September 25, 2012 by A Lark Ascending

[WD45]

This is how music will be distributed in the future. Well, it is how music is distributed now, so we may as well get used to it. The music industry never existed to support artists. However it does need to sufficiently incentivise artists so it can't pay them nothing. Recorded music though is not the only product of music-making and has only occasionally been the main source of income for musicians. Payment to musicians is in any case a fetish of this board since copyright laws were deliberately framed to keep the main rights in the hands of composers and not performers. In the case of per-play rates, the composers and performers get their contracted share. It is the model which is different - you have to get listeners and plays to generate revenue. The exposure on Spotify is a huge benefit to any performing artist. Spotify also removes the artificial barrier of the LP/CD days when you mainly had to pay before you heard anything, an all-or-nothing approach. Perhaps many people do not need voluminous access to music as people on this board mainly do. But the archive now is available to anyone who wants it, so in terms of access as well as lifestyle Spotify is a huge move forward. What BfB's app shows is a glimpse of the future, when the archive will be navigable by all sorts of maps and threads. Eventually all sorts of metadata will be linked to the musical material. Video formats will likely be routed the same way. I think we'll never look back and that we'll see the age of limited access and per-album rather than per-play payment as a dark age.

This sums up my thoughts on this quite nicely.

Technology is hastening the demise of the pay-once-for-the-object model. It's clearly a disruptive innovation. And one that will alter the very act of consuming music. (It already has.) The cat is out of the bag, so-to-speak.

[alocispepraluger102]

link to nyt article from today's NYT

'Willing buyer, willing seller. Those four words would seem innocuous, but in the world of Internet radio nothing is more contentious.

They are part of a federal judicial standard that is the basis of how royalty rates are set for Internet radio services like Pandora Media. For years, however, online services have complained that the standard is unfair, and results in burdensome rates that are much higher than those paid by satellite radio.

The battle flared up again on Friday with a new Congressional bill, the Internet Radio Fairness Act. Introduced in the House by Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, and Jared Polis, Democrat of Colorado, the bill would move so-called noninteractive online radio services like Pandora and Clear Channel Communications’ iHeartRadio app from the “willing buyer, willing seller” standard to the one used to determine rates for Sirius XM Radio.

That model would let the panel of federal judges that set the rates consider evidence both on the value of the music and on the effect the royalty rate would have on the industry over all. Pandora and its supporters believe that standard would yield lower rates.

On the other side of the issue are record labels and artists, who believe that the existing rates are fair and accuse Pandora and others of wanting to deprive copyright holders of the income they deserve.

Pandora pays a fraction of a cent each time a user listens to a song, and the total must be a minimum of 25 percent of its annual revenue; last year it paid about half its revenue to labels and performers. Sirius’s current rate is 8 percent. (Both kinds of services also pay separate royalties to songwriters and publishers.)"

Edited September 25, 2012 by alocispepraluger102

[GA Russell]

Interesting that Sirius pays 8%.

Does a broadcast radio station pay less? Anything?

[Pete C]

A 'Blue Note for Parties' would be a nice selection.

MG

For my parties I want tracks from Tony Williams' Spring, Cecil Taylor's Conquistador, and Jackie McLean's Destination Out.

I still feel a need for something that is 'mine'

Shed the materialism, man.

[Chuck Nessa]

I guess I will quit. I am getting old and the idea of giving money to musicians for the creation of something and then being able to attempt (successfully or not) marketing the music is old hat.

All the best. I have a couple of projects to issue on cd so do not ridicule me for saying I am stopping. My upcoming issues are completely to feed my ego.

[JSngry]

Feed you ego, Chuck. Go ahead on!

Ego is not a bad word, and it's good to see one in the service of actually making new furniture instead of just rearranging the old stuff, which, by the way, keeps getting more worn every time somebody uses it.

At some point, it will have to be replaced, but by then, the only people who will know how to build new furniture instead of rearranging the old will be making stuff that the people who have worn out the old stuff won't want to use, so...onto the floor with their sorry tired asses, and careful not to step on them...or not!

[marcello]

Interesting that Sirius pays 8%.

Does a broadcast radio station pay less? Anything?

Somewhere I have all of the information, but in general:

The satellite stations like Sirius, Music Choice, Disc Network etc, pay the higher rate. Muzak also.

NPR, non profit, and college stations play a fraction, that is if they record their plays and send them in to be counted. Not all do.

At any rate they pay virtually nothing and are going kicking and screaming down the road to pay a small yearly fee to Sound Exchange.

Internet station pay a fraction of a fraction, by the way.

Streaming is a the very bottom of the scale.

Commercial stations, which there a very few that play any kind of non- commercial music, pay the regular rate.

The best place for artist to receive royalties in overseas and the satellite station by a large margin.

Thousands.

Suppose a billionaire said to a jazz artist/group, "I like your music so much, if you want I'll pay to have a promo copy of an album of yours sent to every household in America."

The artist wouldn't get any money out of it. Would he accept the offer? I don't think that it would be irrational for him to do so.

Maybe not his current album. Maybe a backlist album from five years ago. But I can see the appeal of having your music in every household in America.

In all due respect, that's not a even comparison.

One physical cd in your hands is not the same a millions of songs to choose from out in the either.

What Chuck, and I, are talking about (in part) are royalties. Which should be the fruit that keeps on dropping from the tree you planted. Not the seeds.

[GA Russell]

It also occurs to me that one needn't have one's entire album on Spotify. I have seen albums that were less than complete.

So if an artist would like the public to hear a little of his latest album, he can do that without giving away the store.

[JSngry]

Royalties don't matter any more because musicians don't matter any more. The product is out there and it is owned, so now it's on to maintaining ownership of both product and market, both of which are analog in nature.

And that is all about convincing people that "digital music" and "digital product" are the same thing.

I find it amusing, albeit sadly comic, that many people who are embracing this "digital technology" would run screaming from a room where actual digital music, music that reflects a people whose basic cores have been altered to think in terms of a multi-planed simultaniosity was being played (hell, Cecil Taylor was ALL about that, so it's not the "product" that's at issue, because a lot of people still want to run screaming from the room when HE plays, but enough time has passed where they'll just leave at the first convenient opportunity). People want to say, hey, it's a reduction to 1s & 0s, but, ok, that's analog thinking right there. The reality is that it's about "there" or "not there", yin-yang, complmentary opposites, can't ahve one without the other, blahblahblah. That's digital, not all this 1 & 0 techno"logical" stuff.

But hey, it's ok, let me hear Sidewinder (or Point of Departure or whatever) on my computer for free without having the clutter of CDs and stuff, and hey, wow, look at me, I'm living in the DIGITAL AGE!

REALLY!!

WOW!!!!

[Soulstation1]

Nessa said the same thing when 33 1/3 came out

Edited September 26, 2012 by Soulstation1

[JSngry]

Nessa is also concerned with getting new music made and heard, not just with getting new ways for everybody to hear old music.

Nessa also helped midwife a musical revolution that was felt pretty much across the entire planet.

Given all that, I'll indulge Nessa some grumpiness, and will not think that a sleeping giant doesn't know what it means to be awake.

Hell, I've been known to throw a shoe at somebody trying to wake me up at the wrong time, and I ain't done nothing like any of that. But the shoe don't know that after it gets thrown.

Just sayin'.

[.:.impossible]

All I really have to add to this conversation is that I listened to four alto saxophones perform Nonaah today on the Nessa reissue. That experience was worth at least $300.00. It sure as hell is worth WAY more than $0.004, or $30.00 for that matter. No way I could quantify it. Absolutely awe-inspiring music.

[Chuck Nessa]

Were some of these same things discussed when Edison's machine made recordings of musicians available to the masses?

Or when radio broadcasts of live (or recorded) musicians allowed for the entertainment of people in their homes, rather than in the dance halls? Or concert halls? Or back porches?

I'd love to listen to the Nessa catalog on Rdio. I don't buy CDs anymore, so unless I buy used LPs* (which no longer benefit the artists/composers), then I don't have access. I want access. I'd love to hear the music. I'm not alone, either.

and there you go.................