Spotify to launch in US (really) - Page 2

You need a facebook account to register? Oh well.

 

lefty

I really don't understand the Facebook-thing from two perspectives:

 

1. Why do they have it as a prerequisite? Pressure from fb to be able to integrate with them?

 

2. What's the problem with setting up a single noname account on Facebook? Out of principal, or what?

Pretty much. My lines may be arbitrary but there's one drawn in front of fb.

 

lefty

spotify can eat a bag of dicks.

 

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/

April 2010? They've grown quite a bit since then... 

Not really. From an artist who I follow on twitter: "Got paid £8 for 90,000 plays."

Seems I'm not the only one.

 

http://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/topics/can_you_sign_up_for_spotify_without_facebook

 

lefty

i haven't been using facebook to sign in...

i really like their premium service, but is there a reason why some musicians aren't allowed on there? (ie. coldplay's new album)?

Who cares. The real money is in concerts. I feel a band should consider streaming music as free publicity that drives concert attendance

You don't need to use your FB account to sign up for spotify.

So bounce. And I agree, that is low.

Has anyone tried the SpotON app? I'm on Android and so far it's iOS exclusive, but I hear good things. Supposed to be the final thing needed to be better than Pandora at everything... 

Only for the already big successful bands. I've been a Tour Manager for bands (which includes doing the accounts), so can tell you first hand that it is a loss making exercise most of the time for anything other than the big(ger) acts. I also used to be part owner in a small live venue, so know how the pie gets sliced from that perspective as well. No one earns any real money from it, including the venues.
There are a few bands that have made a living out of it without being famous, but the realities of how they do it for the amount of return (slighly better than subsistence ) are not for anyone but the truly determined. I have friends who are pro jazz musicians, and if they make 25K in a year they are doing well. Virtually all of them have to take on part time teaching positions.

Obviously there comes a break point whereby once you can start selling out larger venues (600 +) whilst controlling costs, real money can be made. The issue is how do you manage before you reach that stage. That is where tour support money from the record labels used to fill the gap, effectively they would subsidise the early part of a bands career in order to reap the rewards later on, in much the same way that VC money will fund the early part of a tech startup.

The reality of that is that the huge bands would subsidise the rest of the roster on the label. Case in point was a band I worked with for three albums that were signed to Island Records. Luckily Island had U2 as the cash cow band, because without them they were losing money hand over fist. The band I worked for were about £1.5M in debt to the label after 3 albums worth of marketing and tour support had failed to secure their big break. Break even sales for each album was around 100,000. The trick was to make sure you didn't clash with any U2 release dates, because the entire priority of the labels staff would automatically switch to their only income source.

If you look at the self publishing book market you'll see that many of the authors who have become successful end up signing with a traditional publisher, rather than keep doing it alone. There's a reason for that...
Edited by Infrasonic - 1/14/12 at 9:38am