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I've randomly come across several articles recently that stated that one bad thing about the internet is that it has drastically reduced potential income for recording artists, which is going to eventually result in fewer of them going into a music career, etc. etc.

I don't understand how this works. Okay, I get that more artists can now release their music via social media or whatever, but still - won't the really good ones still get picked up by the big labels and paid millions for recording rights, etc.?

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listened to a guy last week who runs a Talent and Tech Investment agency (Troy Carter), started in the business learning from Will Smith, Sean Combs, and others. Lost everything in the mortgage bubble, but has built up a cool business that manages (mostly) urban artists and also invests in several tech businesses now (like Lyft, Uber and several others). I don't know squat about the music industry but his breakdown of how artists can now totally control their business by avoiding large record labels (i.e. the "gatekeepers" to the consumers via traditional radio which was all an artist could once rely on) and create their own fanbase via technology.

He talked about how he signed Lady Gaga, and how (and I'm not sure if she still does this) she would give her music away but they make it up so much more in how they've created her fanbase (Monsters?) who are truly loyal even during the downtimes when she's not making new music, ticket sales for concerts, and merchandise.

Guys like Troy Carter are exactly the types that are destroying the business. To his ilk, music (and specifically songs) are just Cheetos, nothing more than a marketing tool to help sell concert tickets and t-shirts. His mindset is the exact reason why there is so much crap on the radio.

didn't say i like his music or know much else about the guy, just pointed out that he takes a different approach to leveraging technology to change the game. no offense to the musical purists out here.

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Guys like Troy Carter are exactly the types that are destroying the business. To his ilk, music (and specifically songs) are just Cheetos, nothing more than a marketing tool to help sell concert tickets and t-shirts. His mindset is the exact reason why there is so much crap on the radio.

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Hard to blame people for adapting to change in pursuit of profit. The reality is that a lot of fans like music we don't like, and the model you're alluding to gives them more of a say in determining the success of the artists they enjoy.

The consolidation of FM radio was already changing the way people learn about new music long before digital music became mainstream and accessible to the masses.

Record stores and hard copy unit sales were already in decline before digital music became mainstream. This at least partly due to expansion of electronic entertainment choices available to kids.

And as much as it sucks for professional songwriters, few people ever bought an album to hear track #9. They no longer have to pay for track #9 when they want to hear tracks #3 and #6.

Last, unethical music fans like myself were acquiring music through a variety of means long before we had high speed internet access.

When an industry undergoes this much change, there are bound to be some losers. Same as any other industry.

On the plus, it is much, much easier to discover good new music in 2016 than it was when I was a teenager listening to local FM radio. And those good bands that are willing to hit the road have opportunities to build paying fanbases outside of their local region even without any help from the handful of execs who determine what gets played on the radio.

I also dont get your argument entirely. Theoretically, shouldn't a decline in professional songwriters increase the overall quality of music? Because all the big acts that sing other people's songs are pretty garbage.

People still get their music from torrents, etc? That's how i use to get it, but spotify is so cheap, why risk it?

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Because people no longer pay $15 for a cd with one good song and a bunch of filler. They just get the song they want for $1.29.

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It is a pretty a valid point, but I would be curious to know how many people buy the1 or 2 hits off the album as to not buying anything at all. Someone is still getting paid.

The great bands have a lot of great songs in their "filler".

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I also dont get your argument entirely. Theoretically, shouldn't a decline in professional songwriters increase the overall quality of music? Because all the big acts that sing other people's songs are pretty garbage.

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So by your logic, Frank Sinatra is garbage. Elvis Presley is garbage. George Strait, George Jones, garbage. The Temptations, garbage. Elton John without Bernie Taupin would've recorded nothing but instrumentals.

In certain genres, it is factual that the big acts primarily sing their own material. That is absolutely not true across the board. Also, you'd be hard pressed to find many people who believe the quality of music has improved in the past 15 or so years - which is coincidentally the time frame in which the songwriting profession has declined around 85%.

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Guys like Troy Carter are exactly the types that are destroying the business. To his ilk, music (and specifically songs) are just Cheetos, nothing more than a marketing tool to help sell concert tickets and t-shirts. His mindset is the exact reason why there is so much crap on the radio.

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Hard to blame people for adapting to change in pursuit of profit. The reality is that a lot of fans like music we don't like, and the model you're alluding to gives them more of a say in determining the success of the artists they enjoy.

The consolidation of FM radio was already changing the way people learn about new music long before digital music became mainstream and accessible to the masses.

Record stores and hard copy unit sales were already in decline before digital music became mainstream. This at least partly due to expansion of electronic entertainment choices available to kids.

And as much as it sucks for professional songwriters, few people ever bought an album to hear track #9. They no longer have to pay for track #9 when they want to hear tracks #3 and #6.

Last, unethical music fans like myself were acquiring music through a variety of means long before we had high speed internet access.

When an industry undergoes this much change, there are bound to be some losers. Same as any other industry.

On the plus, it is much, much easier to discover good new music in 2016 than it was when I was a teenager listening to local FM radio. And those good bands that are willing to hit the road have opportunities to build paying fanbases outside of their local region even without any help from the handful of execs who determine what gets played on the radio.

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You missed my point entirely. For the sake of civility, I'm going to choose not to address some of your comments but what I was getting at was this. Troy Carter, and those like him, don't CARE if the music is good or not. The quality is irrelevant to them. The artistry is irrelevant to them. In their perception of reality, anything can be marketed, processed and sold. Music isn't any different than a gimmick like Sham-Wow. In their world, there's as much value in a painting of dogs playing poker as there is in the Mona Lisa.

I would have no problem, at all, if nobody wanted to hear or have a copy of songs I've written. No issue whatsoever, if I'm not relevant as a writer, then I need to update my resume. What I have difficulty processing and accepting is that more music is in the marketplace than ever, but because we're tied to a 100+ year old copyright law and a do-nothing-but-get-reelected Congress, the compensation for legal use of our material isn't there.

People like yourself who feel as though you have some moral right to free access to what people like myself create are, quite frankly, no longer the problem. Piracy isn't nearly the issue now that it was. Streaming, bot interactive and non-interactive, are the apparent future of the industry (technology which I embrace, by the way), and they do in fact pay royalties. The problem is because there was no template to use to determine what those royalties should be, we're getting paid micro-pennies to the point that nearly 40 million streams makes you a couple of hundred bucks.

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People like yourself who feel as though you have some moral right to free access to what people like myself create are,

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You know nothing about me, but keep pointing fingers at bogeymen.

Retail music chains were disappearing long before I had any concept of downloading music from fancy-pants computers. The market was already changing. And when remaining music fans have a way to pay for the songs they want without having to subsidize the people responsible for side B, they're gonna take it.

In the midst of your pity party, you may not realize that most people in most industries have faced significant changes over the last decade due to technological shifts and external market forces. None of us are entitled to make a comfortable living doing exactly what we did 10 years ago.

rbtexan

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People like yourself who feel as though you have some moral right to free access to what people like myself create are,

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You know nothing about me, but keep pointing fingers at bogeymen.

Retail music chains were disappearing long before I had any concept of downloading music from fancy-pants computers. The market was already changing. And when remaining music fans have a way to pay for the songs they want without having to subsidize the people responsible for side B, they're gonna take it.

In the midst of your pity party, you may not realize that most people in most industries have faced significant changes over the last decade due to technological shifts and external market forces. None of us are entitled to make a comfortable living doing exactly what we did 10 years ago.

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"Last, unethical music fans like myself were acquiring music through a variety of means long before we had high speed internet access"

Your own words - you called yourself unethical.

And just for the record and for clarification - people are still accessing and enjoying my work - I'm just not being compensated a living wage for my work. I'm reasonably confident that if you took a gigantic pay cut for doing the same quality work you'd always done, with the same success, you wouldn't be happy about it either. It's also incredibly easy to sit there and tell me effectively to get over it and accept it when you aren't the one trying to provide for my family the same way I have for over 30 years.

I'm going to disengage from this conversation since we clearly will have to agree to disagree. Hope you have a successful and profitable week.

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Troy Carter, and those like him, don't CARE if the music is good or not. The quality is irrelevant to them. The artistry is irrelevant to them.

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And sadly, the reason guys like that are hugely successful, is that they realized that the majority of music consumers feel exactly the same way.

Similar thoughts from that FGL thread:

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They take the most bland and unremarkable aspects of each genre, write and perform it as bland and unremarkably as possible, and you can attract the most massive music-buying market out there: people who don't really care strongly about music. They realize that 'kids' these days move pretty fluidly between what used to be very well defined and segregated cultures (rock, pop, hip hop, country). If you can target the lowest common denominator across each of those cultures, you win. This music is engineered to include as generic a component as possible from each genre in order to not alienate a particular ambivalent music consumer.

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We all love our access to free/cheap music. I don't think I've bought a CD since I started my Spotify subscription. We're killing the golden goose though. While I may have almost unlimited access to recorded music I recognize that the future music I have access to may be limited by the fact that it may not be created to begin with. The Lennon & McCartney of our generation exist somewhere but they probably have jobs...

The money has always been in touring.

Elijah Wald has an interesting book called "How the Beatles Destroyed Rock and Roll". It covers the history of popular music. Good read.

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I also dont get your argument entirely. Theoretically, shouldn't a decline in professional songwriters increase the overall quality of music? Because all the big acts that sing other people's songs are pretty garbage.

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So by your logic, Frank Sinatra is garbage. Elvis Presley is garbage. George Strait, George Jones, garbage. The Temptations, garbage. Elton John without Bernie Taupin would've recorded nothing but instrumentals.

In certain genres, it is factual that the big acts primarily sing their own material. That is absolutely not true across the board. Also, you'd be hard pressed to find many people who believe the quality of music has improved in the past 15 or so years - which is coincidentally the time frame in which the songwriting profession has declined around 85%.

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I thought were were talking about present day. I also wasn't saying I want the songwriting profession to go away, it's just not a black and white, either issue the way I see it. Dunno.

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We all love our access to free/cheap music. I don't think I've bought a CD since I started my Spotify subscription. We're killing the golden goose though. While I may have almost unlimited access to recorded music I recognize that the future music I have access to may be limited by the fact that it may not be created to begin with. The Lennon & McCartney of our generation exist somewhere but they probably have jobs...

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There currently exists a technology where anyone with an internet connection can publish something that millions of people can see -- instantly.

This idea that there is some undiscovered talent out there that would have been easier to find 50 years ago is silly.

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We all love our access to free/cheap music. I don't think I've bought a CD since I started my Spotify subscription. We're killing the golden goose though. While I may have almost unlimited access to recorded music I recognize that the future music I have access to may be limited by the fact that it may not be created to begin with. The Lennon & McCartney of our generation exist somewhere but they probably have jobs...

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There currently exists a technology where anyone with an internet connection can publish something that millions of people can see -- instantly.

This idea that there is some undiscovered talent out there that would have been easier to find 50 years ago is silly.

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I disagree. There's TOO much music out there since everyone and their mother can upload their "music" to iTunes, BandCamp, or whatever other music sharing sites are out there. I love finding new bands but I don't have time to weed through all the bull**** out there to find the few truly talented artists. And that's not even mentioning the talentless hacks who can only make somewhat listenable music thanks to Autotune.

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The money has always been in touring.

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money is in touring if you are playing big enough shows to support it. a lot of local musicians, even ones that can sell out small and medium sized venues in austin/houston/wherever have a very difficult time being profitable on the road if they leave their general area. This makes it difficult to make more money, b/c they can't just start adding a bunch of additional shows in their "home" city/area b/c they reach saturation all of a sudden and won't sell out the shows and make any more money.

i have many friends in different bands that fit the above description, and I've been on the road with them IN the van. They don't make much touring to new areas, but they have to. And in order to build that fan base, they have to keep coming through those cities, which means multiple tours that they aren't making much and sometimes actually losing money.

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The money has always been in touring.

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money is in touring if you are playing big enough shows to support it. a lot of local musicians, even ones that can sell out small and medium sized venues in austin/houston/wherever have a very difficult time being profitable on the road if they leave their general area. This makes it difficult to make more money, b/c they can't just start adding a bunch of additional shows in their "home" city/area b/c they reach saturation all of a sudden and won't sell out the shows and make any more money.

i have many friends in different bands that fit the above description, and I've been on the road with them IN the van. They don't make much touring to new areas, but they have to. And in order to build that fan base, they have to keep coming through those cities, which means multiple tours that they aren't making much and sometimes actually losing money.

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Which means they weren't good enough to "make it big".

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The money has always been in touring.

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money is in touring if you are playing big enough shows to support it. a lot of local musicians, even ones that can sell out small and medium sized venues in austin/houston/wherever have a very difficult time being profitable on the road if they leave their general area. This makes it difficult to make more money, b/c they can't just start adding a bunch of additional shows in their "home" city/area b/c they reach saturation all of a sudden and won't sell out the shows and make any more money.

i have many friends in different bands that fit the above description, and I've been on the road with them IN the van. They don't make much touring to new areas, but they have to. And in order to build that fan base, they have to keep coming through those cities, which means multiple tours that they aren't making much and sometimes actually losing money.

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Which means they weren't good enough to "make it big".

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If you're of the opinion that making it big is proportional to how talented you are, you're completely, utterly mistaken. Some of the most insanely talented people in the world never "made it big". Luck, timing, business sense, marketing sense - so many things play a roll in success. I would make a pretty strong argument that luck and timing probably have more to do with it than talent - you don't have to go farther than your local airwaves to hear that play out.

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The rates that streaming services are paying are laughable. One of my colleagues had a song that was played over 30 million times on one of the services, and he was paid around $300.

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I know this is a silly question but is 30 million spins on Spotify or youtube alot anymore? (Of course it is but...)

I ask because my wife listens to the Edge or 102.9 in Dallas while in her car and damn near every time I'm in it I've heard that 21 Pilots, Stresses Out track. At this point I've must have heard it 15, maybe 20 times. Assuming there are 30,000 average listeners at any given time, each station would only need to play the song 500 times to have the same number of listens. And that is just for two DFW-based radio stations. For comparison, Stressed Out has 330.69 million Spotify plays as of this post

To ask again in the thread, what are payout structures? Radio can reach so many more listeners at a time but are the costs and/or payouts higher?

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If you're of the opinion that making it big is proportional to how talented you are, you're completely, utterly mistaken. Some of the most insanely talented people in the world never "made it big". Luck, timing, business sense, marketing sense - so many things play a roll in success. I would make a pretty strong argument that luck and timing probably have more to do with it than talent - you don't have to go farther than your local airwaves to hear that play out.

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Generally speaking, in any field, luck and timing have more to do with success than talent. The fact is that the more people that listen to and enjoy your music, the more money you can make while touring. We can sit around and argue about how terrible the music is and how we hate it and how unfair it is, but, when push comes to shove, music comes down to airplay and the amount of fans a person/group has.

It reminds me of how so many people talk about Nickelback and how 'terrible' they are. Regardless of your opinion, they make Top 10 singles and continue selling out their shows. For as bad as everyone says they are, they still sale music.

Evaluation of talent in subjective areas (music, art, cooking) can't be quantified, except by reception of the public.

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The rates that streaming services are paying are laughable. One of my colleagues had a song that was played over 30 million times on one of the services, and he was paid around $300.

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I know this is a silly question but is 30 million spins on Spotify or youtube alot anymore? (Of course it is but...)

I ask because my wife listens to the Edge or 102.9 in Dallas while in her car and damn near every time I'm in it I've heard that 21 Pilots, Stresses Out track. At this point I've must have heard it 15, maybe 20 times. Assuming there are 30,000 average listeners at any given time, each station would only need to play the song 500 times to have the same number of listens. And that is just for two DFW-based radio stations. For comparison, Stressed Out has 330.69 million Spotify plays as of this post

To ask again in the thread, what are payout structures? Radio can reach so many more listeners at a time but are the costs and/or payouts higher?

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There isn't an exact answer. Terrestrial radio payments come from the PROs (BMI, ASCAP and SESAC). No one can get a straight/precise answer from them as to how exactly they amounts are determined - it's based on polling and sampling, random monitoring, etc.

What I can tell you is, for example, a top 5 terrestrial radio hit in the country market would pay anywhere between $200k-$500k, depending on a lot of variables...how big the artist is, how long the song stays in the top 5, how long it is on the charts going up and then going down, how long it stays in the "recurrent playlist" on stations, etc.
The money paid on the streaming side, for the same song, is in the hundreds of dollars.

I think we're agreeing. What I was saying was that having the position that if someone doesn't make it big they must not be good enough is a gross oversimplification of what goes into success. So I believe we're saying the same thing from different angles.

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There isn't an exact answer. Terrestrial radio payments come from the PROs (BMI, ASCAP and SESAC). No one can get a straight/precise answer from them as to how exactly they amounts are determined - it's based on polling and sampling, random monitoring, etc.

What I can tell you is, for example, a top 5 terrestrial radio hit in the country market would pay anywhere between $200k-$500k, depending on a lot of variables...how big the artist is, how long the song stays in the top 5, how long it is on the charts going up and then going down, how long it stays in the "recurrent playlist" on stations, etc. The money paid on the streaming side, for the same song, is in the hundreds of dollars.

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Given we dont know the formulas used under the PROs payout structure, it seems possible, in fact likely, that some artists were underpaid relative to their peers on a per-play basis? I'm not sure that's fair either. Does 21 Pilots get the same payout for Stressed Out a 5PM on Thursday as will that damn Tonic If She Can See Me Now song gets or Drive by Incubus will receive? Do stations purposefully play "cheap" songs (i.e. old, minor hits) to offset the "expensive" (i.e. new popular hits) ones?

At least with Spotify and YouTube, the artists and the listener know the formula, though you have to trust their streaming figures.

No, that's not how it works. In the first place, the royalties paid for terrestrial radio are writer specific - there is no royalty for the artist (the U.S. is one of the VERY few countries in the world where this is the case). The money paid is a "best guess" of how many times a given record is played, and on what stations, and in what markets. Who the artist/writer is, that's completely irrelevant and is not a factor in the determination.

Secondly, radio stations pay a blanket license fee, not a per-play fee. So there is no such thing as an older song being "worth less" than a current song, other than the current song is probably played more often. The payments are based on volume of plays, not who the artist is or isn't.

The blanket fee is paid by the terrestrial station to the writer or to the the PRO for usage? If its a blanket fee for all uses of a group of songs one could easily work out what songs had more airtime and which were given higher priority by the station (played during rush hours for instance). Once that's worked out you could determine which songs the station actually played versus which the they could play and assign a value. This would be a pay-per-play cost to the station.

Of course I could be completely misunderstanding the pay structure

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The blanket fee is paid by the terrestrial station to the writer or to the the PRO for usage? If its a blanket fee for all uses of a group of songs one could easily work out what songs had more airtime and which were given higher priority by the station (played during rush hours for instance). Once that's worked out you could determine which songs the station actually played versus which the they could play and assign a value. This would be a pay-per-play cost to the station.

Of course I could be completely misunderstanding the pay structure

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The blanket fee is paid to the PROs, which are the collectors for the songwriters. The problem with what you're trying to do is that comparing streaming and terrestrial is the ultimate apples/oranges comparison and can't really be done. In streaming, an individual clicks on a button and it is a point to point transaction. There is no earthly way for a radio station, say in Houston, to know how many people are listening to a given song at a given time. It's simply impossible to do. The best they can do is make a guess, which is pretty much what happens. There's just no way to come up with an accurate "pay per play" comparison between the two, because they are completely different in their delivery method..

As I said before, all I can tell you is that on a given song terrestrial pays significantly more than streaming. And with the business trending not only away from physical product but terrestrial radio as well, the money that is being paid to creators simply isn't sustainable. On a recent statement I got, there were literally 3 pages of royalties collected that amounted to around $1.25. It's micropennies.

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The money has always been in touring.

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money is in touring if you are playing big enough shows to support it. a lot of local musicians, even ones that can sell out small and medium sized venues in austin/houston/wherever have a very difficult time being profitable on the road if they leave their general area. This makes it difficult to make more money, b/c they can't just start adding a bunch of additional shows in their "home" city/area b/c they reach saturation all of a sudden and won't sell out the shows and make any more money.

i have many friends in different bands that fit the above description, and I've been on the road with them IN the van. They don't make much touring to new areas, but they have to. And in order to build that fan base, they have to keep coming through those cities, which means multiple tours that they aren't making much and sometimes actually losing money.

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Which means they weren't good enough to "make it big".

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If you're of the opinion that making it big is proportional to how talented you are, you're completely, utterly mistaken. Some of the most insanely talented people in the world never "made it big". Luck, timing, business sense, marketing sense - so many things play a roll in success. I would make a pretty strong argument that luck and timing probably have more to do with it than talent - you don't have to go farther than your local airwaves to hear that play out.

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Talent in a certain area does not necessarily mean you will be successful to make it big.

I have no doubt that your friends driving around the country in a van are talented musicians. But they either A) Have not marketed themselves to the right people to open up the proper exposure channels or B) They simply do not have wide enough appeal to make it big.

It's like a great slugger banging around in the minor leagues for years because the scouts see a hole in his swing. He's good... but some part of his game isn't good enough for the big leagues.

This also isn't the 80's where your band has to make a mixtape and hope it gets passed around and picked up by the right person.

A 10-year-old with a guitar can post a song on Youtube and have it viewed instantly by THE WORLD. If artists don't have the exposure they want, it's either because they aligned themselves with the wrong distribution channels, or they simply weren't good enough.

I'm not the one with friends driving around in bands. I'm the one with 30+ years in the music industry, and I can tell you unequivocally that talent does not equal success. There's a certain degree of talent that is mandatory - beyond that, it becomes a matter of luck, hard work, and timing. For some it happens, for others it doesn't. It's not remotely like a slugger in the minor leagues with a hole in his swing. I've worked with amazingly talented people who had everything going for them but luck. I've seen talentless hacks make it huge. It's not a linear process, and if it were as simple as "talent + marketing = success", then it wouldn't be true that 90% of the acts signed to major labels never make it, and sometimes the most random, unconnected event can stop a promising career in its tracks. Billy Joe Royal (Down In The Boondocks) was having a huge comeback in the 80s, and had a record flying up the charts called "Burned Like A Rocket". Then the space shuttle blew up, and the record was gone, off the charts, in one week and the comeback was over. The Dixie Chicks were the hottest thing going until they decided to get stupid political, and they've been virtually invisible ever since. If that can happen to successful acts, imagine the stuff that can happen to up and comers. It's a crazy business, and success just isn't as black and white as you're trying to make it.

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I'm not the one with friends driving around in bands. I'm the one with 30+ years in the music industry, and I can tell you unequivocally that talent does not equal success. There's a certain degree of talent that is mandatory - beyond that, it becomes a matter of luck, hard work, and timing. For some it happens, for others it doesn't. It's not remotely like a slugger in the minor leagues with a hole in his swing. I've worked with amazingly talented people who had everything going for them but luck. I've seen talentless hacks make it huge. It's not a linear process, and if it were as simple as "talent + marketing = success", then it wouldn't be true that 90% of the acts signed to major labels never make it, and sometimes the most random, unconnected event can stop a promising career in its tracks. Billy Joe Royal (Down In The Boondocks) was having a huge comeback in the 80s, and had a record flying up the charts called "Burned Like A Rocket". Then the space shuttle blew up, and the record was gone, off the charts, in one week and the comeback was over. The Dixie Chicks were the hottest thing going until they decided to get stupid political, and they've been virtually invisible ever since. If that can happen to successful acts, imagine the stuff that can happen to up and comers. It's a crazy business, and success just isn't as black and white as you're trying to make it.

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I'm just making it as black and white in the broad sense that you're describing things that happen in almost every industry. Very talented people don't always catch the breaks. That doesn't mean the industry is flawed like no other, that's just the way the world works.

As a previous poster pointed out -- someone is out there purchasing those Nickelback albums. The demand is there for that music and obviously wasn't for the amazingly talented music you were around.