Автор: Елена Юрьевна Баранова

МАОУ «Лицей гуманитарных наук»

г. Саратова

 

 

 

 

Problems of the modern music industry

 

 

 

Проект выполнил

учащийся 10«А» класса

МАОУ «Лицей гуманитарных наук» г. Саратова

Кононов Арсений Денисович.

Руководитель проекта:

Учитель английского языка МАОУ ЛГН

Баранова Е.Ю.

 

 

 

 

 

Саратов

2020

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Chapter 1. Streams, money, labels

·        Streaming platforms problems

·        Labels

 

Chapter2. Art or just Commerce?

·        Lyrics and musical components nowadays

·        No time to wait

 

Chapter3. COVID-19

·        Music events

·        New wave

 

Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

References…………………………………………………………………….

Applications

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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INTRODUCTION

The music industry has radically changed in the last couple of decades. The Internet revolution has transformed the way we create and consume music. With the improvements in the technology, music has been changing along with the methods of its recording and publishing. We are currently living in the era where every person can make their own records and publish it online through different platforms. In fact, things continue to change at a rapid rate, and the music business is still struggling to keep up. People are often seen these days complaining that there is no good music released now. From early issues like illegal downloading and music sharing sites to current problems with music streaming services and revenues, the Internet still seems to be raising more questions than it is answering.

In this project I am going to speak about the biggest obstacles musicians and listeners complain about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Chapter 1. Streams, money, labels

Internet is a great revolution and it brings many businesses to the next level. In 2020, global music sales generated $21.6 billion, but the music industry is still struggling, specifically the independent part of it.

Musicians were paid poorly in all eras. In Mozart’s day, musicians made less than beginners in the professional trades. But let’s see the statistics of how much money musicians make on Spotify[1], the most popular streaming platform. The company pays rights holders a paltry amount per play, something between $0.006 and $0.0084. To earn a decent income, say $1000 in a month, an artist needs roughly 120.000 streams consistently per month, and that is considering he is the only rights holder of the track, which is seldom the case.

Even worse, some major label artists are receiving nothing at all from streaming, even with extremely high play counts.  That is the case for Lady Gaga, whose manager Troy Carter says Universal Music Group paid the singer nothing despite millions and millions of streams on platforms like Spotify.

Spotify is also suspected of over-stating its per-stream payout structure, based on false extremely low rates of artists’ streams. This issue has not been roundly addressed by Spotify, which has created an even lower-trust environment with many artists and independent labels.

 

Labels[2]

The former Spotify executive, Tristan Jehan, squarely blamed record labels for taking most of the money from streaming. Imbalanced artist contracts and huge upfront payments end up dramatically reducing the amount that musicians earn.

“The artists are paid low amounts from music streaming, but the blame is on the labels,” Jehan said. “Today, streaming is a big chunk of global music revenues, and I think the future is positive, and that streaming is going to help artists in the long run. But that model is not reflected today in artists’ contracts.”

From there, Tristan Jehan emphasized the large portion of total revenue that streaming companies pay to record labels: “Companies like Spotify return 75% of the revenue to the industry, but they never pay directly to the artists, but to the labels. The problem is that today, artists still only get 10-15% of the revenue, and the labels keep the rest.”

The music industry is just another example of market dominated by giants. Though we see occasional inspiring examples of artists being accidentally “discovered” by someone in the industry and then skyrocketing to fame, but these are the few exceptions.

Another problem is that labels often kill the competition between signed and independent artists. In the past, major record labels like Sony and Universal have been known to have purchased billions of fake YouTube views, and major artists have been revealed to have bought fake Twitter followers, to the point where it’s almost standard industry practice now. Labels push millions in order to boost their products’, something that independent artists simply cannot afford. This creates an unfair entry barrier for artists to reach a bigger audience.

Record labels typically set the terms and conditions of artist contracts in their favor. In the case of  newly signed artists, record labels can control the type of music they record, which can include everything from the way the music sounds to the song lyrics. They don’t really care about the artists’ originality and feelings. All they want is to make more money from a catchy song

The internet has somewhat democratized the process of entry into the mainstream to a limited extent. Connections within the industry and contacts with labels are still the best ways to reach the masses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Chapter 2. Art or just Commerce?

Music is art, and art is anything that is an honest reflection or interpretation of ones’ self through another medium. Now, of course, there will always be music that is made to be danced to or where the main focus lies on instrumentation rather than lyrics, but it was never this prominent. Lyrics are now overlooked and placed in importance behind the beats. People would rather hear a song with a cool beat than listen to a song where the artist focuses more on the lyrics of the song. Many modern artists are picking style over substance.

Comedian Bo Burnham explained perfectly the issue with artists today: “if you are writing honestly, that is art . . . the problem with a lot of modern music is that it is not honest, it is the exact opposite of honest. Where instead of people actually telling their stories, you’ve got a bunch of millionaires who have never done a hard day’s work in their lives. But they’ve figured out the words and phrases they could use to attract their audiences and every song raking in millions of dollars from actual working class people.”

The situation with melodies, rhythms and vocals of songs isn’t much better. Since the 1960s, songs sounded similar to one another, with many modern pop songs using the exact same sequence of notes in a given key: from the 5th note to the 3rd and back to the 5th. Music has become less harmonically complex. Why? Because this is a familiar musical sequence that music listeners are comfortable with.

One thing to note is that art music can also be commercially successful, and even sound popular. There are plenty of successful artists whose music is artsy. Classic examples include The Clash, The Talking Heads and Pink Floyd. More modern examples include Radiohead and Billie Eilish.

 

No time to wait

Another big problem is that in the past, high-potential artists had far more time to grow, experiment, and even fail before coming up with something great. Today the industry demands a finished product.

 New young stars, sometimes even teenagers, rise almost daily, offering some perfectly polished tracks that cost them thousands of dollars. They have no time to work on themselves and their music, to hit the road and make some life experiences to feed their art: they need to start making money quickly to return on the investment initially made.

 

 

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Chapter 3. COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the music industry, mirroring its impacts across all arts sectors. The global music industry is worth over $50 billion, with two major income streams. The first, live music, makes up over 50% of total revenues and is derived mainly from sales of tickets to live performances. The second, recorded music, combines revenue from streaming, digital downloads, physical sales. And the first sphere suffered heavy losses.

For those who make a living from live music — artists, technicians, roadies, agents, bartenders and so on — times are incredibly hard right now. Numerous music events, including music festivals, concert tours and award shows have been cancelled or postponed. While some musicians and composers were able to use the time to create new works, there were a lot of people who relied on performances and its income. Several album releases have been delayed as well. Pollstar[3] estimated the total lost revenue for the live music industry in 2020 at more than $30 billion.

 

New wave

New artists who wanted to break out in 2020 had basically one option: Go viral. The pandemic forced people to socially distance at home and seriously hindered radio’s discovery power. TikTok[4], which undeniably seized popular culture this year, was an obvious solution. People were bored and restless, and an easy-to-use platform with strong video-editing capabilities and an extensive music library was literally at their fingertips. It seems great at first glance, but with its 10-15 second limits, it popularized the need for cramming as much attention-grabbing content as possible within the first minute of a song. Musicians have been relegated to content creators, who must churn out catchy material continuously to stay relevant.

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

But everything is not so bad. While the Internet has made music more accessible to the public it also happens to be an incredible tool that enables independent musicians to find a global audience without the help and backing of a major label. In short, the Internet has changed the music industry in both positive and negative ways. Music isn’t dying, and neither is the art of sound and audio engineering.  It is simply evolving and allowing for the creation of music in new and exciting ways. The sooner everyone in the music industry embraces this, the more empowered they will feel to create something that has never been heard before ‒ and that will be something to be proud of. Eventually the current issues will work themselves out. Time may soon reveal that the Internet has been more friend than foe to the music business.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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References

 

Internet resources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_COVID-19_pandemic_on_the_music_industry

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/07/22/music-industry-99-problems-2/

https://medium.com/@austinreese35/the-problem-with-the-todays-music-industry-72638cd4f539

https://show4me.medium.com/challenges-faced-in-the-music-industry-by-music-labels-and-managers-163d0f853e6d

https://www.musicianwave.com/biggest-problems-with-the-music-industry/

https://www.thebalancecareers.com/problems-of-new-music-industry-2460307

https://www.thebalancecareers.com/common-music-industry-problems-2460792

https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/features/music-business-changes-transformations-2020-1107373/

https://www.obscuresound.com/2020/07/how-music-has-become-more-influenced-with-money-and-material-things/

https://stereomonosunday.com/2019/03/23/why-modern-music-is-so-awful/

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/this-is-how-covid-19-is-affecting-the-music-industry/

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/technology/how-streaming-is-changing-the-music-industry.html

https://www.insider.com/how-music-industry-changed-2010s-decade-2019-12

 

 

 

 

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Books:

Patrik Wikström. The Music Industry: Music in the Cloud. 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2013.

Donald S. Passman. All You Need to Know About the Music Business: 10th Edition. Simon and Schuster, 2019 г

Michael D. Smith and Rahul Telang. Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Applications

The statistics of streaming platforms’ payouts per play

 

 

Revenues from streaming

 

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