WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.105 --> 00:00:02.688 [upbeat music] 2 00:00:10.270 --> 00:00:13.090 With massive user basis and tiny payout rates 3 00:00:13.090 --> 00:00:16.630 streaming services offer a conundrum for modern music fans. 4 00:00:16.630 --> 00:00:18.300 How to best support musicians 5 00:00:18.300 --> 00:00:20.420 when the easiest way to listen to their recordings 6 00:00:20.420 --> 00:00:22.208 often barely pays them at all. 7 00:00:22.208 --> 00:00:25.720 As of early 2018, Spotify claims some 8 00:00:25.720 --> 00:00:28.010 140 million active users, 9 00:00:28.010 --> 00:00:30.480 70 million of whom are paid subscribers. 10 00:00:30.480 --> 00:00:33.730 But as Damon Krukowski of the bands Galaxie 500 11 00:00:33.730 --> 00:00:35.690 and Damon & Naomi discovered, 12 00:00:35.690 --> 00:00:38.210 Spotify only dollops out less than half a cent 13 00:00:38.210 --> 00:00:39.600 per streamed track. 14 00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:42.840 What's more, as a report by BuzzAngle pointed out, 15 00:00:42.840 --> 00:00:45.360 line:15% the top 10% of most-streamed tracks 16 00:00:45.360 --> 00:00:48.550 line:15% account for more than 99 of all streams. 17 00:00:48.550 --> 00:00:50.530 Which means that the vast majority of music 18 00:00:50.530 --> 00:00:52.850 in Spotify's database is getting listened to 19 00:00:52.850 --> 00:00:55.180 less than 1% of the time. 20 00:00:55.180 --> 00:00:58.510 The digital rising tide is lifting only some ships. 21 00:00:58.510 --> 00:01:00.560 Krukowski has some suggestions for how to be 22 00:01:00.560 --> 00:01:03.273 line:15% a responsible music fan in the age of Spotify. 23 00:01:04.360 --> 00:01:06.030 In part he suggests, 24 00:01:06.030 --> 00:01:08.870 listeners should consider where their dollars are going. 25 00:01:08.870 --> 00:01:10.360 Even with a subscription, 26 00:01:10.360 --> 00:01:12.860 using Spotify to listen to anything more obscure 27 00:01:12.860 --> 00:01:14.740 than those top 10% of songs 28 00:01:14.740 --> 00:01:17.250 won't support the musicians who made them. 29 00:01:17.250 --> 00:01:20.860 Instead, he suggests that looking for musical experiences 30 00:01:20.860 --> 00:01:22.480 with the richest personal impact 31 00:01:22.480 --> 00:01:25.210 is one way to bypass the streaming paradox. 32 00:01:25.210 --> 00:01:28.890 One method for doing this is to adjust one's sense of scale. 33 00:01:28.890 --> 00:01:31.130 Krukowski compares it to the difference between seeing 34 00:01:31.130 --> 00:01:34.220 the same act at a festival versus seeing them at a club. 35 00:01:34.220 --> 00:01:35.950 They might get paid similar rates, 36 00:01:35.950 --> 00:01:39.450 but at a club you're not standing among 10,000 other fans. 37 00:01:39.450 --> 00:01:41.250 You can see the band up close. 38 00:01:41.250 --> 00:01:42.718 They can probably see you. 39 00:01:42.718 --> 00:01:45.110 And your merch table dollars might go directly 40 00:01:45.110 --> 00:01:46.298 toward their next meal. 41 00:01:46.298 --> 00:01:49.630 While you might get less music per dollar in the short term, 42 00:01:49.630 --> 00:01:51.000 your money will go further to power 43 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:54.214 the independent musical ecosystem in the long haul. 44 00:01:54.214 --> 00:01:57.360 Another way to support music, Krukowski suggests, 45 00:01:57.360 --> 00:02:00.020 is to understand and share it's context. 46 00:02:00.020 --> 00:02:02.260 Playlists, the primary engagement point 47 00:02:02.260 --> 00:02:03.709 for many streaming services, 48 00:02:03.709 --> 00:02:06.740 often strip away information about who wrote a song, 49 00:02:06.740 --> 00:02:09.120 played on it, recorded it and issued it. 50 00:02:09.120 --> 00:02:13.250 Instead, the listeners only experiences the playlist itself. 51 00:02:13.250 --> 00:02:15.387 line:15% But as historian Howard Zinn argued, 52 00:02:15.387 --> 00:02:17.970 line:15% "Archiving can be a form of activism." 53 00:02:17.970 --> 00:02:19.810 Can reclaiming music's context, 54 00:02:19.810 --> 00:02:21.400 valuing the labor that goes into it 55 00:02:21.400 --> 00:02:23.070 and sharing information combat 56 00:02:23.070 --> 00:02:26.340 the one size fits all monoliths of Spotify and Apple? 57 00:02:26.340 --> 00:02:28.630 There's always power in information. 58 00:02:28.630 --> 00:02:30.230 Also important is to think about 59 00:02:30.230 --> 00:02:33.390 the alternate distribution systems that already exist. 60 00:02:33.390 --> 00:02:35.320 The masquerade of streaming services 61 00:02:35.320 --> 00:02:37.580 is that they seem like a model of sharing. 62 00:02:37.580 --> 00:02:40.440 And yet these services are run by large corporations 63 00:02:40.440 --> 00:02:42.560 profiting from intellectual property. 64 00:02:42.560 --> 00:02:45.080 The opposite of truly free sharing. 65 00:02:45.080 --> 00:02:46.880 Alternative models like Bandcamp 66 00:02:46.880 --> 00:02:49.330 can earn money for artists without stripping their music 67 00:02:49.330 --> 00:02:52.720 of its context or removing it from the artist's control. 68 00:02:52.720 --> 00:02:55.630 Even the free exchange of live recordings between listeners 69 00:02:55.630 --> 00:02:57.980 can provide a fan driven alternative that restores 70 00:02:57.980 --> 00:02:59.904 some of the music's autonomy. 71 00:02:59.904 --> 00:03:02.900 Perhaps most important is to not only share, 72 00:03:02.900 --> 00:03:04.270 but share deliberately. 73 00:03:04.270 --> 00:03:06.898 Share your money in ways it will have a real effect. 74 00:03:06.898 --> 00:03:10.320 Share the context of what you know both online and off. 75 00:03:10.320 --> 00:03:12.260 Support organizations and websites 76 00:03:12.260 --> 00:03:14.540 that foreground engagement with metadata 77 00:03:14.540 --> 00:03:17.090 and provide opportunities to go deeper into the details 78 00:03:17.090 --> 00:03:19.730 of the music, like the website, Discogs. 79 00:03:19.730 --> 00:03:22.300 And share your loves of the music itself. 80 00:03:22.300 --> 00:03:23.940 It's a powerful action. 81 00:03:23.940 --> 00:03:26.110 Powerful enough that some of the biggest corporations 82 00:03:26.110 --> 00:03:28.020 in the world feel threatened by it. 83 00:03:28.020 --> 00:03:29.020 Let them. 84 00:03:29.020 --> 00:03:30.423 Another world is possible.