Artists saying "No" to Steaming Services

He wants people to buy his Pono player ?

Or use lossless streaming services as they become available... I can't help feeling hoarding vast quantities of plastic and silvered discs feels somewhat archaic and inefficient! even though I do it in vast quantities still. I feel one shouldn't ultimately be constrained commercial models for music with the physicalities of the medium used to privide the musical recording itself.

Simon

Young is staying on message for Pono by banging on about quality.  Quality aside, no one who pays for a streaming service like TIDAL, actually owns a copy of anything. When you stop paying the music stops playing. Hundreds of quid spent over the course of not many years and the day you stop paying, you have precisely nothing. Fine if that’s what you want but not everybody is willing to lay down and let this gravy train run over them. 

Glad some artists are making a stand. I'm happy to pay a reasonable price for material, so the artist makes money too. But lower quality for me, and much reduced income for the artist just does not seem right.

I think it's an old fashioned view. If you compare streaming of music over a high end system and playing a cd on very cheap setups ( people sometimes have very strange setups), then the difference doesn't matter. Some people just don't recognize the difference, but they do enjoy the music of specific artists - even in a bad setup. That being the reality, let artists just relax and enjoy the higher reach of their music. While I of course would hope they get a decent payment back for music played.

Harry,

Precisely right, you have precisely nothing with a subscription. Wait until they start slapping a few ads in there before you can access your music, or pay an additional premium to bypass the ads. Not all that far-fetched; XboxMusic does it now for their non subscription "free music" streaming. Only a matter of time until it trickles up.

Wat,

Me too. If the web or cell phone platform shuts down now my music accessibility will be absolutely unaffected. Have you also noticed that despite vast increases in computer and internet speed, web sites seem to load pages at pretty much the same pace they did a decade ago? Ads and 'internet monitoring'

Bert,

An old fashioned view indeed. Neil Young's generation got the sound quality right in the studio, with the expertise of an engineer and producer. No need to worry about that now; there are apps that can later 'correct' the sound from any laptop.

No one recognize a regime while it's forming and growing; and the current regime is, we own nothing anymore, we only consume.

Not so many years ago I went out on Saturday afternoon, I went to a record store, I bought a disc, I had it, I played it, I enjoyed it. It was my musical library.

Now they want me to just pay, accept ads, suggestions and control, and just listen. They call it conveniency. I call it passivity.

And yes, I know - I am an old fart, and probably a socialist one. But they do exist.

But for how long?

I've noticed that millennials prefer to travel *light*.

I also noticed that aging baby boomers ( 70+) start to down size and many are shedding their material possessions including physical media.

I recall Todd Rundgren talking about the future of music distribution is subscription based over 10 years ago. And I thought he was nuts.

I think it's frequently a case of just not getting it. Low quality playback devices abound. I doubt you'll find a majority of musicians with audiophile systems. Most will listen on portable devices, laptops etc. And brick walled stuff tends to sound comparatively "good" on such devices.

Rush have been often criticized for brick walled pulp instead of music.  They were unhappy about one album (although I think there are a good half dozen they should be ashamed of for sound quality) and went to great lengths to get it remastered to address this. Badly as it turned out. There was much beard stroking, ruminating and critical listening - the latter being done on laptops while on tour! Like I say, some musicians just don't get it to start with.

Let's do a tally.

Which under 40 current musicians actually care about the sound quality of their albums ?

Not just young musicians who don't seem to care about sq, lots of supergroups and stars put out badly produced albums and there are some younger that are decent.  

For me, SQ is only part of the picture - I like having my own music such that even in a more remote location, as long as i have electricity, I can listen to music without having to pay someone for the privilege. If I am suddenly without money, I can still listen to music...which may turn out to be all you have as you get to the very old years.

Nothing wrong with a music subscription, and it can give you access to much that you wouldn't have heard.

But I see it as a part of trying to control every aspect of our lives, and just use us all as monetary "pass-through" agents. I say intercourse them.

And if the whole music buying population slides passively into the subscription paradigm as the only viable way of listening, we'll have to pay to hum a tune next.

Has Neil Young also removed the availability of any lower quality MP3 downloads of his music as well? 

How much music can you get for the Price of the subscription to cd quality services. Most of us have many cds so stopping a subscription would not be that bad, and there would still be radio, youtube and other ways to get music.

If you cannot aford the subscription it would probably be a good time to sell any remaining Naim gear anyway.

And now  the majority goes for streaming it will be a good time to buy used cds!

Claus

Impossible to say with absolute accuracy but fairly easy to ball park.

£20 a month for a streaming subscription versus what you can buy, say CDs and downloads (some at higher than CD resolution) for. It’s going to vary per month. Some box sets and download offers are remarkable value. One month, thanks to a special Qobuz offer I managed 16 albums at 16/44 for around £20.

Shall we say between three and six albums per month? 

So in a year that is between 36 and 72 albums. In five years it’s 180 to 360, a very good album collection by most people’s standards. Or pay TIDAL and you will have nothing past memory.

As for radio, youtube and “other ways to get music”, these are valid and free. So what advantage over these does a subscription service offer?  

I am a happy Qobuz subscriber and agree that I could have bought say 60 to 100 cds over the last 18 months with the same money.

However I have listened to many great albums I would never have risked a punt on and avoided wasting money on some dogs. I really love being able to properly check out a band who catches my ear when listening to Radio Paradise or that I catch at a festival. Of course it's not 100% coverage but it's infinitely better than any collection I could aspire to. As for Neil Young, I've got pretty much all his stuff anyway.

If you go to a live concert you are only "renting" the band for a couple of hours...

What slightly surprises me and it's the next big change I expect is a new size / type of collection. everythiing streamed is based on singles or albums, ways of organising music that are both over 60 years old. I expect a streaming EP size type when artists (and labels) see that 30% of their albums make 95% of stream money hits. 

All of us here will find it very strange in 10 years time when no one is releasing  album sized chunks of music for streaming. The LP revival may alleviate this. It was rather heartwarming today to see a 16 year old girl leaving Freebird Records within LP size bag under her arm, smiling widely, however everyone else in there was my age (50+) except from one ridiculously looking twentysomething dressed as Donovan circa 1965 which also made me smile. Whether this can sustain chunks of music that you can fit 2 of on one C90 is debatable. 

as for Neil - everybod knows this is nowhere.

SJB

I think he's right. Quality aside it's a bad business model for most artists. If you like art support the artist, i.e. their albums. Getting everything on the cheap in XXL super sized meals is a bad trend killing off slowly the very thing people don't want to do without. 

Another opinion Quincy Jones regarding the state of music industry: 

He certain paints a very bleak picture of current status. 

FORTUNE: Is the music industry better or worse than it was 50 years ago?

Jones: Honey, we have no music industry. There’s 90% piracy everywhere in the world. They take everything. At the recent South by Southwest [an annual music festival in Austin], they had over 1,900 musicians, but fans didn’t know where to go. You can’t get an album out because nobody buys an album anymore....

FORTUNE:What about some of the newer, online distribution models. Doesn’t that give artists more ways to get music to fans?

Jones:That doesn’t mean anything. They sell 4.5 million albums and they think it’s a hit record. It’s a joke. We used to do that [sell 4.5 million records] every weekend in the 80s. Today, you don’t get paid...

Read the rest of the interview here:

Sadly we live in a consumerist society, buy and throw away. Sad because it's bad for the pocket, and bad for the environment (where physical things are involved).

in general personally I expect anything most things I buy to last at least 10 years without significant fault, and many things 2 or 3 times as long, so for me one of the primary considerations, second only to quality, is reliability. That is so true with hifi, where for me apart from limited longevity of CD players the only reason ever for change has been to attain higher quality, minimising purchases through leapfrogging of components as I upgraded (otherwise I'd never have afforded the system I have).

In terms of music, with popular music we also seem to be in a throw-away society - I suppose it has always been so for the pop music of the day (which apart from the odd surprise gem has never had any appeal for me) - some of us however find music we like is enduring, and wish to hear it again and again! not at extra cost each time, and not relying on the availability of websites and online connections, Maybe as a generalisation those who are merely focussed on the transient hit of the day have less interest in the quality of the playing, and so fuel or follow the constant drive for quick access, short retention and low cost, and are often quite content with MP3 on iPhone with earbuds and online streaming. but certainly not me!

it is, however, very depressing how poor some recordings are, chich to me shows contemptible lack of respect on the part of the record business for the music buying public, (I have to say the worst I've ever heard was the original vinyl release of King Crimson's Earthbound, a live album that sounded as if it was recorded on a pocket cassette player hidden inside a biscuit tin in someone's pocket - if it had been a bootleg I'd have understood, but it wasnt!

Isn't the real reason artists don't like their music being streamed simply down to the fact they consider they are not getting a big enough slice-of-the-cake. The public consume differently now to that of the 80's but the Labels still operate the same as always, the ones in the middle, the artists are the ones that get squeezed. Could it be that's why they prefer now to do Live Concerts that enables them to have more control regarding revenue?

Si.

Well, if they aren't embarrassed by the wrinkles in their clothes then they can take this position.  However, for home use you can purchase a good steamer for $200 to $300 but you have to do the work yourself.  Artists should spend their time on making art and not steaming their clothes, in my opinion and so they should really say "yes" to steaming services.

(Apologies - I really didn't want to post this but I left my computer on and someone else must have slipped in and did this.  I would never normally do something like this.  The devil made me do it  .  In any case, don't take me seriously and please carry on...