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Streaming Services Push Recorded Music Business To Highest Revenue In A Decade


sonnymax

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The recorded music industry in 2018 logged its best year in a decade, generating $9.8 billion in revenue thanks to a big jump in consumer acceptance for subscription streaming music services.

The Recording Industry Association of America, which tracks U.S. music revenue, announced on Thursday that 2018 ended with 50.2 million paid music subscriptions, up from 35.3 million in the prior year — a 42 percent increase.

Streaming now represents 75 percent of all recorded music revenue, a 10 percent increase on the 2017 number, according to the RIAA.

The RIAA also revealed that vinyl sales continue to rise, up 8 percent to $419 million in 2018, while CD sales fell 34 percent to $698 million, the first time CD revenue was below $1 billion since 1986. Vinyl records now account for one-third of music industry revenue from physical formats.

NBC News

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Has "the industry" adjusted their royalty rates paid out from streaming income, or is it like, oh good, more people are listening to the radio now and they're not buying records?

Oh wait, they are buying records, hipster records, a whopping $419,000,000 worth. Wow, that's a lot of money for musicians and writers, everybody's on the road to wealth again!

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4 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Has "the industry" adjusted their royalty rates paid out from streaming income, or is it like, oh good, more people are listening to the radio now and they're not buying records?

Oh wait, they are buying records, hipster records, a whopping $419,000,000 worth. Wow, that's a lot of money for musicians and writers, everybody's on the road to wealth again!

LOL!

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fwiw, I do not now, nor do I ever plan to, pay for a streaming service. I'm happy with ads. I grew up with ads. Ads on the radio are totally natural to me. If I ever need to be "alone" or otherwise intimate with my music, that's a different place for me.

Is it a ritual or something? Of course it is. That's the whole point.

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14 hours ago, JSngry said:

fwiw, I do not now, nor do I ever plan to, pay for a streaming service. I'm happy with ads. I grew up with ads. Ads on the radio are totally natural to me. If I ever need to be "alone" or otherwise intimate with my music, that's a different place for me.

Ditto.  I only stream music on my phone, either with my iPhone built-in speaker (getting ready in the bathroom in the morning), and on my commute to/from work.

Pretty much only use Pandora, which has its limitations, but I'm mostly listening to oddball alternative music on stations with seeds using bands like Interpol, Gang of Four, The Church, The English Beat, The Jam, Joe Jackson, Pete Townshend (solo), Lindsey Buckingham (solo), and the like.  SOME jazz, but that only gets interesting if it give it station seeds that are kinda off the wall, like Dusko Goykovich, or Rabih Abou Khalil.  (Seeding Pandora with anything even remotely "normal" - yields a lot of fairly timid results.)

ANYWAY, despite it's limitations, it's kind of fun trying to "trick" Pandora into serving up stuff that's less than mainstream (or played-out).  And I get about 2 ad-breaks per hour, which is more than tolerable.  Nothing I'm going to pay $60 a year to avoid (perfectly good money I can spend elsewhere).  I *hate* paying for parking, and I *hate* paying for subscriptions to things I really don't need all that much.

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I've really found Pandora's "brick wall" - contemporary (truly) classical, and/or African-American classical composers. Olly Wilson got one hit from one record, and then right away it's off to Khachaturian and stuff, and I'm like, o....k.... William Grant Still gets you almost immediately to Chopinland, and George Walker to....not George Walker. Ulysses Kay does not exist, nor does Arlene Sierra. Roomful of Teeth has a little bit of a presence, but not a lot. Lou Harrison can take you places, but you gotta guide it with the thumbs.

And gottendammerungit, BOTH Hi-Lo's and Singers Unlimited aggressively push the Fucking Four Fucking Freshmen on me, relentlessly, no matter haow many times and how may ways I tell them to just stop that shit, please, please just STOP IT.

OTOH, Gene Ammons left un-thumbed will get you a VERY tasty selection for as long as you leave it on. But, you know, Gene Ammons and Olly wislon, sometimes I want one, sometime I want the other. Pandora does not serve those wants with an equal efficiency.

Hopefully Spotify offers a deeper catalog. I don't like using them b/c they're not free on Roku, and they require more user input, too un-radio-like.

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22 hours ago, sonnymax said:

 

The RIAA also revealed that vinyl sales continue to rise, up 8 percent to $419 million in 2018, while CD sales fell 34 percent to $698 million, the first time CD revenue was below $1 billion since 1986. Vinyl records now account for one-third of music industry revenue from physical formats.

NBC News

What's the other third? Cassette tapes?

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2 hours ago, JSngry said:

I've really found Pandora's "brick wall" - contemporary (truly) classical, and/or African-American classical composers. Olly Wilson got one hit from one record, and then right away it's off to Khachaturian and stuff, and I'm like, o....k.... William Grant Still gets you almost immediately to Chopinland, and George Walker to....not George Walker. Ulysses Kay does not exist, nor does Arlene Sierra. Roomful of Teeth has a little bit of a presence, but not a lot. Lou Harrison can take you places, but you gotta guide it with the thumbs.

And gottendammerungit, BOTH Hi-Lo's and Singers Unlimited aggressively push the Fucking Four Fucking Freshmen on me, relentlessly, no matter haow many times and how may ways I tell them to just stop that shit, please, please just STOP IT.

OTOH, Gene Ammons left un-thumbed will get you a VERY tasty selection for as long as you leave it on. But, you know, Gene Ammons and Olly wislon, sometimes I want one, sometime I want the other. Pandora does not serve those wants with an equal efficiency.

Hopefully Spotify offers a deeper catalog. I don't like using them b/c they're not free on Roku, and they require more user input, too un-radio-like.

Both Spotify and Apple Music have enormous catalogs. I rarely cannot find something I’m looking for. Their Free Jazz and Free Improvisation offerings are surprisingly stellar.

 

2 hours ago, medjuck said:

I may have missed it but I couldn't figure out who they actually pay. Record companies? Artists?   And do they pay composers? 

Those are artist royalties. Pretty sure they have to pay the recod companies licensing fees. And I don’t have an answer concerning composers. Chuck would likely know the answer, if you can somehow squeeze it out of him. 

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6 hours ago, JSngry said:

I've really found Pandora's "brick wall" - contemporary (truly) classical, and/or African-American classical composers. Olly Wilson got one hit from one record, and then right away it's off to Khachaturian and stuff, and I'm like, o....k.... William Grant Still gets you almost immediately to Chopinland, and George Walker to....not George Walker. Ulysses Kay does not exist, nor does Arlene Sierra. Roomful of Teeth has a little bit of a presence, but not a lot. Lou Harrison can take you places, but you gotta guide it with the thumbs.

And gottendammerungit, BOTH Hi-Lo's and Singers Unlimited aggressively push the Fucking Four Fucking Freshmen on me, relentlessly, no matter haow many times and how may ways I tell them to just stop that shit, please, please just STOP IT.

OTOH, Gene Ammons left un-thumbed will get you a VERY tasty selection for as long as you leave it on. But, you know, Gene Ammons and Olly wislon, sometimes I want one, sometime I want the other. Pandora does not serve those wants with an equal efficiency.

Hopefully Spotify offers a deeper catalog. I don't like using them b/c they're not free on Roku, and they require more user input, too un-radio-like.

I've had all the same kinds of issues with Pandora too -- it's really difficult to get it to play stuff that isn't more pedantic (than what I'm looking for), no matter what I seed it with.  Still, I take it as a challenge to try and force Pandora to serve up more interesting stuff than it wants to, for me.

I've dabbled with Spotify, but I've never played with it enough to see if it really can do what Pandora claims it can do -- which (like you, Jim) -- is be more like an esoteric radio-station.  Spotify might well have a much deeper catalog, but if I have to know (myself) what I'm looking for -- and can't (seem to) get it to mix things up for me (without me having to mix them up myself), then that explains why I've stayed with Pandora (despite all its limitations).

What I really *WANT* is a Pandora where I can check a box that says "Yeah, go ahead and play DEEPER ALBUM CUTS that nobody knows".

Or maybe I should trying to seed single stations with conflicting tunes (in the same station) -- Gang of Four + Hindemith + Mulatu Astatke (aka the Éthiopiques vol 4 guy) -- and then also (somehow) figure out what's similar about all of those seemingly disparate kinds of music -- and then reach out to god-knows-what-else that also has that same "it" factor that's common to Gang of Four, and Hindemith, and Mulatu Astatke.

That's what I want.

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My issue with streaming services like Pandora etc is the sound quality, more so than the selection. They compress the sound so much that for me personally it would make it useless as a preferred way of enjoying music. For background it's very convenient..and it's free. And I don't mind Snoop pushing some hair-restoration dreck every 20 minutes.  Don't meet me there...beat me there.

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1 hour ago, Rooster_Ties said:

Or maybe I should trying to seed single stations with conflicting tunes (in the same station) -- Gang of Four + Hindemith + Mulatu Astatke (aka the Éthiopiques vol 4 guy) -- and then also (somehow) figure out what's similar about all of those seemingly disparate kinds of music -- and then reach out to god-knows-what-else that also has that same "it" factor that's common to Gang of Four, and Hindemith, and Mulatu Astatke.

That's what I want.

And see, this is where we run up against the cold, hard fact that ultimately this is all algorithms(plural?), somebodies' breakdowns of what "is" is for different musics. You can't get it to think anything other than what it's been programmed to know. Maybe as AI moves on, some adaptive learning will get programmed in and we'll be able to flirt with it, gain it's confidence, and then see what happens, but right now, it's pretty much a music robot, a slave to its code.

Now in a more perfect world, there would be all kinds of R&D going on in a mad race to be the first on the market to have a streaming service that could pick on on subtle hints, and give you something back that catches you off guard in the very best of ways and makes you want to come closer, let's explore this thing together, my dear, don't stop now. But this is all about market share, and is that a reasonable expectation? Or is it more reasonable to expect that the marketplace doesn't want love, it just wants its immediate needs serviced with a minimum of thought and/or hesitation?

I think we both know the answer, and would be more than a little delighted to be proven wrong.

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11 hours ago, Dmitry said:

My issue with streaming services like Pandora etc is the sound quality, more so than the selection. They compress the sound so much that for me personally it would make it useless as a preferred way of enjoying music. For background it's very convenient..and it's free. And I don't mind Snoop pushing some hair-restoration dreck every 20 minutes.  Don't meet me there...beat me there.

There is no “etc.”. Pandora is the only streaming service I’m aware of that has incredibly low sound quality. Their highest quality setting is an embarrassing 192kbps mp3. That’s 90’s Napster-like quality. 

Conversely, Apple Music is 256kbps AAC VBR, Spotify (with subscription) is 320kbps Ogg Vorbis, Google Music is 320kbps up to ALAC, and Tidal is 320kbps AAC up to FLAC/ALAC as well. These will all sound no different than CD. 

So please do not assume that Pandora is an example of all streaming services. It is most definitely not. 

11 hours ago, JSngry said:

And see, this is where we run up against the cold, hard fact that ultimately this is all algorithms(plural?), somebodies' breakdowns of what "is" is for different musics. You can't get it to think anything other than what it's been programmed to know. Maybe as AI moves on, some adaptive learning will get programmed in and we'll be able to flirt with it, gain it's confidence, and then see what happens, but right now, it's pretty much a music robot, a slave to its code.

Now in a more perfect world, there would be all kinds of R&D going on in a mad race to be the first on the market to have a streaming service that could pick on on subtle hints, and give you something back that catches you off guard in the very best of ways and makes you want to come closer, let's explore this thing together, my dear, don't stop now. But this is all about market share, and is that a reasonable expectation? Or is it more reasonable to expect that the marketplace doesn't want love, it just wants its immediate needs serviced with a minimum of thought and/or hesitation?

I think we both know the answer, and would be more than a little delighted to be proven wrong.

Hmmm...

If you and RT are looking more for a radio style experience, have you tried things like Live 365 or Slacker? 

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