https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-muzak-pelly
Not sure how anyone can conscionably support services of this ilk, no matter how convenient.
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Majority of the Artists donât like Spotify because âfree musicâ with ads. On the other hand, Spotify is by far the highest subscribers in any streaming providers out there. Spotify got huge catalog of music out there.
Tell me why I couldnât replace each âSpotifyâ in the article with âTidalâ and each âChillâ Playlist or Recommendation with âHip Hopâ? In other words, what makes Spotify so infinitely more evil than Tidal?
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Itâs a Brave New World. My antidote is going to see great live independent artists. The talent out there will amaze you and youâll never look back.
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Agreed, albeit the question is how you even get to know of their existence to begin with.
Well, I came across it by a recommendation, no an insistence I go see Eve Selis at a gig near me. This was from an, at the time, unknown person on a Hi Fi Forum. (Thanks Hector)
I couldnât get it, it was full, sold out. Come next month the host said and I did. I saw Eileen Rose as the headline act and was blown away. Iâd never heard of her and I donât think many people have.
Things snowball, I went every month and now volunteer to put these shows on. From here I get recommendations and invites to see more and more great artist. The whole experience has changed my life for the better in many ways.
https://i.imgur.com/ad8DwfV.png
Youâll find great artists on the house concert and small venue circuit. Social media is a great way to keep in touch.
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Hang on now, letâs not single out music genres⌠
all said in good fun of course.
Otherwise I agree, the other streaming companies will be doing the same, if theyâre not already.
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Spot on, Sean (no Spotify pun intended 
)! Although please note that it was not me suggesting that (one or more) streaming companies are evil i.e. âdoing the sameâ, I was merely trying to get an answer as to why Spotify would be more evil â if already so â than others. 
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Noted. Likewise I also never associated âdoing the sameâ with evil 
It was a very interesting read. I do feel for Indie artists but then again I always have, even before the Spotify era started.
Letâs hope contractual arrangements between Indie artists/labels and streaming services change over time, for the better for Indie artists.
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I agree, and before the streaming services the major labels were basically â and still are â doing the same. I hoped that with internet and social media, it would become easier for indie artists/labels to reach existing and new audiences, but although access has become easier, the offer overload isnât exactly making it easier, I find. So better arrangements would be a (partial) solution, however I donât think this will happen any time soon.
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Excellent thought-provoking article. Thanks for sharing!
In this hyperactive world we live in today I donât see how the market will change to be more about engaging with the music than just having sounds in the background to align to or stimulate a mood. The cards are stacked against having the artist front-and-centerâŚ
I also didnât know the revenue per stream is pro-rata meaning the rate actually decreases the more other streams are playing. Wow. This only makes sense if the increase in cost was somehow exponential for the platform provider to deliver more streams and I just donât understand why that would be. Cloud-computing server pricing models suggest otherwise.
It does make sense, because while server SPACE and COMPUTING POWER is cheap - BANDWIDTH, on the other hand, is not only not cheap, but is also not easily scale-able. The IT expenses in streaming companies is always in the bandwidth cost, not the server hosting part.
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Good point. What are some of the scaling difficulties with network bandwidth?
The actual physical network layer is where the bandwidth is limited.
While itâs now absurdly trivial to add another server on the rack in a data centre (in most cases they probably have idle hardware just sitting there and enabling them is just flipping an âonâ switch), upgrading the pipe going in/out of a data centre is nowhere as easy and depends on upgrading a lot of physical infrastructure - including and not limited to upgrading street switches, laying miles and miles more fiber cables etc. Thereâs a reason Google lays their own fiber and digging up dirt in the actual streets or pulling cables across sea beds - they need huge amounts of bandwidth and have the money to do so and simply cannot wait for a telco to upgrade physical layer infrastructure, but other providers are usually not in such positions and have to buy bandwidth from providers, and even those providers have a limit on how much they can sell for preciously the above reasons.
Think of the bandwidth limit like water pipes carrying water over a long distance. Thereâs only so much water that can be carried by one pipe until you need to either replace the old pipe with one which is physically wider in diameter, or lay another one next to the old one to increase the flow and amount of water you can carry over the same distance to meet increase demand at the user end, and whichever path you choose is still a lot of ground work involved (and costs) and isnât something that happens overnight.
Interesting article here on Spotifyâs upcoming IPO with some details on how the streaming business is working, or notâŚ
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Thanks for the explanation; it makes sense. I guess I thought video streaming would have a much larger dent on bandwidth and the marginal increase in bandwidth from extra music streams would not be as costly (in relative terms). Is it coincidence that video streaming and music streaming monthly costs are approximately the same?
Interesting article. I agree with one of the commentersâŚit is suspicious Spotify is choosing a direct listing.
Thanks for the explanation; it makes sense. I guess I thought video streaming would have a much larger dent on bandwidth and the marginal increase in bandwidth from extra music streams would not be as costly (in relative terms). Is it coincidence that video streaming and music streaming monthly costs are approximately the same?
To the bandwidth provider - data is data and they are all carried over the same pipes (which is the reason for net neutrality - but thatâs another can of worms), and video and music services competes for the same bandwidth, which means the water pipe analogy still applies - when you are at 100% capacity, it doesnât matter that you are âonlyâ trying to serve one more block, it still requires upgrading the entire infrastructure or else forcing more capacity over the existing infrastructure means suffers a degrading of services across the entire board. This is why upgrading bandwidth is not a trivial task and isnât something that is easily negotiated between brokers and buyers of bandwidth.
As for pricing - I think that is more of a factor of what consumers are willing to bare on a monthly basis, plus IMO the consuming behaviour of video is completely different to music, so itâs not really an apples to apples comparison either. I think this is pretty much self evident in that despite videos consuming more bandwidth than music, it seems companies serving video is actually much more profitable than those serving music (eg compare Netflix to Spotify)
Says absolutely nothing without knowing any more of the background. Torrents where not invented with the purpose of massively sharing copyrighted content, itâs what the users made of it, not the developers.