Episode 95: Is Spotify Trying to Kill the Album Cycle?

Episode Transcript

Note: a machine made this, so it’s not perfect, but if you’re hearing impaired and have any questions about what we said, please feel free to ask us in the comments or send us an email with the form below. 

Emily: [00:00:00] welcome to the get offset podcast. My name is Emily

Andrew: [00:00:15] and my name is Andrew

Emily: [00:00:17] coming at you from Seattle Washington ish area.

Andrew: [00:00:21] Where it finally feels like Seattle. Again,

Emily: [00:00:23] I know it’s been so sunny and warm and dry, and now it’s like a little rainy.

Andrew: [00:00:29] It’s a little bit of rainy. It’s a little bit of foggy the forecast for the next week.

Doesn’t get above like 74 degrees. It’s this is, this is why we pay the rent. We do.

Emily: [00:00:39] This is why we live here.

Andrew: [00:00:41] Right?

Emily: [00:00:42] Yes. I mean, I’m going to, I’m excited for like the running thing, because when it was like getting hot, I’m like, Oh, I have to wake up early to run. I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all.

Andrew: [00:00:54] No, I got up a couple of times at like 6:00 AM to go play tennis with my wife. And that was fun. But like, by the time it was like, I about seven, 15, seven, 30 time to get back, shower up real quick and get to the desk for yield day job. And it was all I’m like I’m already sweating buckets. It was not okay.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, not yet. I’m sure everyone else is laughing and it’s like, Oh, what, how hot could it possibly be? I’m like, look, dude, when it’s a high of 85, I melt. All right.

Emily: [00:01:24] Yeah. And also like, people need to keep in mind. We don’t have AC. So when it does get into like 80, it just makes inside house uncomfortable.

Andrew: [00:01:33] Oh yeah. I mean,

Emily: [00:01:36] yes. I have nothing on like new Yorkers in Chicago and to have like their window units and asset and if a window unit breaks and woof.

Andrew: [00:01:44] I mean, here’s my thing with the heat is versus cold is see, I prefer the cold and here’s why you can always put on another jacket when it’s cold. But when it’s hot, there’s only so many layers you can take off before it’s illegal.

Emily: [00:01:58] That’s literally what I say.

Andrew: [00:02:01] Well, they’re happy

Emily: [00:02:02] we are in agreement. How about it podcast over

Andrew: [00:02:05] there we go. A momentous occasion. Now I’ve got a, I’ve got a little portable AC unit on the other side of the office and that poor little sucker. If I turn it on at like 7:00 AM and I get it, like my room down to, uh, like 65.

Now that sounds really luxurious, but the problem is it can’t keep. It can’t keep up. So by two, 3:00 PM in the afternoon, it’s 77 degrees in here with that thing running full blast. It just doesn’t keep up. Cause like I’ve got it like a single story house with a black tar roof and you walk outside and look at the roof and you just see like the heat, like the sizzle where the light refracts funny, like coming off the top of the house.

Yeah. And it just, it’s an oven in here. If I don’t use AC

Emily: [00:02:50] while on the windows.

Andrew: [00:02:53] Uh, I’m pretty sure my landlord has something against that in the lease.

Emily: [00:02:58] Really?

Andrew: [00:02:59] Yeah.

Emily: [00:03:00] I’ve never seen that specifically in a lease.

Andrew: [00:03:03] I’ve seen it a couple of times. Um, but it’s definitely my Lisa. I can’t do that. It’s not even the windows.

Isn’t the issue. Cause we’ve only got like one room with big windows. Like I’m in a room with a couple of windows that are shaded up the entire day with no skylights. It’s just the heat coming from the ceiling is just brutal. So when it gets, if it gets above 80 outside, if I don’t run the AC, it gets a 90, 95 in my room, which is awful for my guitars, which is why I’m happy to have an AC unit that at least keeps under 80.

Emily: [00:03:33] Yeah. No good. Have to worry about that this week, because I’m slowly and it all started Thursday, which was the day. I was a little worried, like the day my band was supposed to play on a roof. Like we wake up in the morning and it’s like, legit raining.

Andrew: [00:03:49] You played a live show. What was that?

Emily: [00:03:52] It was awesome.

So, um, they ended up clearing up and it was a beautiful evening for our live show. So we did a show Sunday crush, where we were on a roof of the Inscape arts building for the grounded video series that they’re doing, that the people who run big building bash are doing it. And, uh, yeah, Lowden was pretty easy.

They seemed really professional set up Wells Mosley. Um, and, uh, we got a couple of rehearsals in, but it’s, I mean, it’s obvious we weren’t as well or Hearst as we were when coven hit, which we were like, okay, Extremely tight. We hit most things. I, at one point lost, it’s a bit of a guitar solo at the end and had a little bit of trouble finding it though.

I did. And so I was kind of annoyed at myself for that, that everyone made like little itty bitty mistakes. Um, the, the, the team was great. Everybody wore masks, um, except the performers while performing. And we put our mass back on and did a little interview. It got a good response. Like we actually got tipped more.

Then, uh, like via Venmo, people had just sent us a little money here and there. We got paid more than we did when we played a ha when we opened for a well known band at, uh, uh, Neumos

Andrew: [00:05:09] nice.

Emily: [00:05:12] I mean, the bar was kind of on the ground there cause they didn’t pay us very well at all. But, uh, yeah, it was, it was that felt, that felt really, really good.

And, um, It just felt so great to, to play the songs again and be around my band again, like. We we have, we have a lot of fun

Andrew: [00:05:30] social in her direction.

I

Emily: [00:05:33] know it’s Oh, good. And then the other band was really great too. So, uh, I’ll, I’ll put a link in the show notes if I can remember, but I’ll definitely put it in the visual thread.

So if you’re listening to this, we have a Facebook group called get off set podcast. You can join it every week. I post, um, just like links and picks of the things that we talk about in the episode. So you can like it’s, uh, it’s a, it’s a more fun way to do show notes. I think.

Andrew: [00:05:59] Yeah, no, those are, that’s a highlight of my Tuesday morning was going through.

And uh, since you do the show notes, I get to contribute nothing and just get a good laugh. It’s awesome.

Emily: [00:06:11] That means mean I still get to say whatever the hell I want.

Andrew: [00:06:13] Well then that’s when I interject. Do you usually, usually every other week I have to jump in and be like, well, actually, no, here here’s photos of this or, yeah,

Emily: [00:06:23] I like it.

When anybody does a listening thread, sometimes our listener and patron Noah does a listening thread, which is always fun.

Andrew: [00:06:29] Yeah. Those are always, no, he’s got like this bombastic sense of humor that just leaves me rolling on the ground sometimes. Literally. It’s great.

Emily: [00:06:42] um, yeah, so that was, that was so. So exciting. So fun. We also officially did, um, have started up preorders for the new album. So I think we sold like 10, 10 copies of that during the live stream, which was amazing. If you’re curious, you can go to Sunday crush it’s Sunday, like the ice cream treat that come, or a donut sounds.com uh, that’s our record label and that’s where we’re doing the prerelease for.

And I forget exactly what. Organization we’re giving to, um, but Jenna and Isaac and the band vetted it. So $10 that’s half the half the sales from our first 100, uh, vinyl sales is going to a really great cause dedicated to black healing. It’s

Andrew: [00:07:29] 500 bucks. That’s not a small potato.

Emily: [00:07:32] That’s a thousand dollars.

Andrew: [00:07:38] I swear. I have a college degree. I somehow

Emily: [00:07:42] I know what you thought you thought I was saying half of $10. No, the vinyl is $20. Uh, so we’re basically going to lose money on the first, like a hundred, but we’re like, we’re donating all of our proceeds from that basically.

Andrew: [00:07:57] Right, right.

Emily: [00:07:59] Yeah. So, uh, with, with the help from jr from donut sounds like he’s, he’s actually the one making it possible for us to, you know, one release our music and to, uh, get to such a good organization.

Yeah.

Andrew: [00:08:11] Yeah. That’s super ed. I saw that live streaming like, Ooh, it’s pretty cool.

Emily: [00:08:15] Yeah. It’s pretty, pretty pretty vinyl. And then, uh, also fun to be labeled mates with a friendly robot. Cause that’s Mike Adams fan.

Andrew: [00:08:24] Heck yeah.

Emily: [00:08:26] Well, So that’s really fun. And then I’m the lead singer in the band? Bundy. He works at couch straps.

What was fun? Little like industry. Family. Yeah.

Andrew: [00:08:40] And did you say friendly robot?

Emily: [00:08:44] I think that’s the name of the band

Andrew: [00:08:46] fellow.

Emily: [00:08:47] You know what I think I always call it friendly robot and it’s all, and I’m always wrong.

What am I thinking of?

Andrew: [00:08:58] I don’t know. I heard you say that. And I’m just imagining Mike listening to this with a smile on his face. Cause he’s always like the most smiley, happy human I’ve ever met in my life. And just like his, his eyebrows furrowing in his head, tilting just a little bit to the right. Like it just like a 20 degree angles is right.

Like, wait, what. And Oh, no, that’s nothing. And just, and just keep listening. And now that I’ve called it out, he’s like, probably he’s giggling right now. He’s he’s smiling.

Emily: [00:09:27] I don’t, am I thinking, am I just like, thinking about the movie Wally? Like, what am I doing?

Andrew: [00:09:32] I don’t know,

Emily: [00:09:33] but yeah, that’s enough about me.

Tell us how you got here and to your city. What’s new with you.

Andrew: [00:09:39] What’s new with me. Well, so I had a fun experience this week. I got to experience what it’s like to be a modular synth.

Emily: [00:09:47] Ooh, you are the sense. Now

Andrew: [00:09:51] I became a synthesizer of sorts. I got to spend the night in the hospital. It was planned, so no need to freak out, but I did spend the night in the hospital for an overnight sleep study.

And I counted up after the nurse got done, putting all of the patch cables on my head and legs and everywhere else. I counted them up and I had precisely 31 patch leads plus a breathing tube around my nose. Uh, and if I had to get up to use the bathroom, like they unplugged the module, like the patch Bay essentially, and then hung it around my neck.

And so I’ve just like covered in, in like a, just a rainbow of patch cables coming out from every, like under my shirt, over my shirt, down my shorts, I just everywhere. So yeah. It was very strange. And knowing that that was all sending, uh, information to a computer that got logged as being reviewed by a doctor.

Ah,

Emily: [00:10:45] that’s

Andrew: [00:10:45] really weird. Definitely like had a hard time falling asleep, which is partly why it was there. But part of me is like, I wonder like those late night thoughts, it’s like, I wonder if there’s a way to like circuit bends the data that they’re collecting and like have like a long synth drone of my night of sleep.

Emily: [00:11:04] Huh, I’m sure that would not surprise me if there’s a way to do that.

Andrew: [00:11:09] I

Emily: [00:11:09] think it created, it created a new genre

Andrew: [00:11:12] of music, right? Like there you go. That’s my Workday. I buy entire Workday. If I need to get something done, I’m just listening to it and extended synth drone of what my sleep is like and where it just becomes kind of wild round, like hour, six or seven, where I hit full REM.

You know what I’m saying? Not the band REM, but. Random was it random eye movement, rapid eye movement, something like that. Yeah.

Emily: [00:11:39] Pepperdine movement.

Andrew: [00:11:43] So that was fun by fun. I met, I mean, I, uh, didn’t sleep well. I did it.

Emily: [00:11:49] I think that was kind of the point. Wasn’t

it?

Andrew: [00:11:52] It was honestly, it was the best night’s sleep I had the entire week.

So I’m hanging in there right now.

Emily: [00:11:58] Damn dude. I don’t think he should be driving

Andrew: [00:12:03] well, that’s a different conversation that I should probably have with my grandpa, but

Emily: [00:12:08] Oh my gosh,

I’m not going to ask. That’s fine. Um, cool. Uh, do you have any, any, any, any new gear stories?

Andrew: [00:12:20] Um, I don’t have any gear gear stories for personal gear. Uh, just been putting a lot of work into Fox Cairo this week. I’m really looking at what my options are. Shout out to Kevin from Gibbs Sunday. He and I had a really great conversation yesterday talking about some options and he was offering me some friendly advice.

So really appreciate it. Uh, go give, give Sunday in tone, throw in a follow.

Emily: [00:12:44] Was it, was it friendlier advice than me saying, I told you not to use Squarespace.

Andrew: [00:12:50] Was the different realm of business advice. Uh, but yes, he was also friendlier about it than I told you. So

I’m not like I deserved that, but

Emily: [00:13:02] for, for the record, for the, for the listeners, uh, Andrew was building when he was first building the website for Fox Cairo. I was like, I think he should probably just use WordPress. Like I. It’s more flexible. It has all these plugins, yada yada, yada, you can get hosting real cheap.

It’s really not that much custom work. And Andrew just understood Squarespace more like it worked more for him like visually, I guess. And I said, ah, you know, I think you’re going to find it. Um, and sure enough. Were pay more European war, monthly hosting for that, then we’re paying for the get offset site.

Andrew: [00:13:36] That’s true. Uh, there’s a couple of the reasons that went into that in terms of plugging compatibility for, uh, for a model that I built out that I ended up abandoning for how was gonna run the back end of the business. Right. And then since I’ve abandoned it and reworking other parts of that model, uh, and I’m realizing I can’t do what I want to do with it.

So the other part of it is I actually, I, that website was quite the saga to get together. I got to the point where like, I could probably build this myself, but it’s gonna take me a lot of time. I have people that I know who are web devs, let me reach out to them and we can work something out. And I was like, I’ll pay, you let’s do this.

And two web devs on Rolex said, sure, let’s do it. And I made them like, um, get like their guests logins for the website to be able to edit stuff and all of that. And like, after two weeks, just radio silence from two

Emily: [00:14:29] different ones, Squarespace. Um,

Andrew: [00:14:32] but just complete radio silence from both. Like they just straight up, like they didn’t want, he was like, Hey, like I.

I haven’t sent you the check. Do you still want the money or so I got burned twice in a row. It was really awkward. And then finally just did it. I needed to do it myself and I just went for it. So I’m in a better place. Now I’ve learned a lot and I’ve learned enough to know that this is now restrictive and I need to migrate the website.

Emily: [00:14:56] I mean, I will happily help you. I helped Layla from two to tone with her website. It’s really just a WordPress same. Um, so it’s like, that’s just kind of what I. Well, I mean, I’ve done that for, I don’t do that professionally really as much, like I helped with a couple of client websites here and there, and they’re both on WordPress.

Thank God. But, um, I, when I was at, when I was at artist’s home and doing like, uh, they’re kind of like Jack of all trades person for their marketing and digital, um, I managed a couple different websites, foremost on Squarespace and Squarespace. Wasn’t the worst one that I used Wix was I hated Wix so much.

Um, Like Wix had this weird thing where if we could only, ultimately only one human could edit it because, um, if you actually left yourself, logged in and then like, say someone else logged in later and they made a bunch of changes. As soon as you made a single change on top of those, it would revert all of their changes.

So that happened five or six times before we figured out what was going on. It just wasn’t made for multiple people or multiple computers even editing

Andrew: [00:16:06] good gravy.

Emily: [00:16:08] Yeah. But yeah, I’ll help you with that. I mean, I really w I promise you it’s easy.

Andrew: [00:16:13] Yeah. I mean, I would definitely appreciate I, despite how, you know, novice, I, wasn’t actually still really proud of how the website turned out in Squarespace with that build.

I really like the look. I like the aesthetic. I like the layout. Um, so I’d definitely like to retain as much of that as possible, then build from there. Uh, Oh, and other thing in gear news, uh, this is a slightly year news, slightly political, but it is what it is. USP S has been behind on a lot of shipments.

I got burned on this because I still have a Fox Cairo customer who is. Did not receive theirs and I’m sending, I’m sending out another one this afternoon or another two this afternoon. Um, first one never showed up. It seems to be lost. And so if it does show up at some point, that’s fine. It’s theirs. Now I’m sending two in two different packages and dropping them from two different locations.

Uh, just hopefully one of them gets there. Uh, w I’m very intent on this customer getting it. I care a lot about doing right by my customers, but for everybody else, uh, the reason why I’m bringing that up. It’s not. So you can take advantage of me as the owner of Fox Cairo and trying to get multiple pedal toppers.

Uh, the point is USBs is behind. It’s not entirely their fault. There’s some political shenanigans should Navigant’s behind that do please. This is my personal plate. Don’t stop shipping through ESPs. We, we still need them around and do everything. Amen. So I will buy one package lost out of like the 30 of sent in the last month.

I’m still going to go for it still sending them. Yeah.

Emily: [00:17:43] It’s honestly not USP S fault except for the postmaster general.

Andrew: [00:17:47] Right? 

Emily: [00:17:51] we need, yeah, we need USBs it’s I think integral to our functioning as a society and as a democracy. And the reason that they’re like quote failing is because they have some weird kind of like.

Rules or regulations that just don’t make sense. Like, I think they have to have like all of their employees, like pensions saved up somewhere instead of like working how most businesses work, where you don’t always have everything in a savings account somewhere. It’s like, that’s my understanding. And there’s some other weird stuff, but yes, shipping, shipping things, it’s taking a little bit longer, more people than ever are relying on deliveries for.

Everything like people aren’t just using like Instacart shoppers to go to the grocery store. They’re buying food on like Amazon or through these meal kit providers, people are buying all of their stuff on it, Amazon ships with a variety of ways. And one of them is USP. S uh, so yeah, let’s just, let’s just practice it a little bit of kindness and understanding that this is a very weird time.

I know that people are buying our shirts and it seems to be like, Those stats seems to be moving faster than it had been, but I’ve been getting some pedals in and I’ve had a couple of instances where like it was supposed to be delivered today and then it just didn’t happen because USP has like banned overtime.

Right. So then the delivery drivers are just getting farther and farther behind.

Andrew: [00:19:17] Right, right. So all that to say, please consider supporting ESPs from a consumer standpoint. If you’ve got a, if someone’s sent a pedal and it just still hasn’t showed up, please don’t shoe out. You’re the small business he ordered from,

Emily: [00:19:32] please, please, please.

Yeah, it’s not my fault.

Andrew: [00:19:35] All the grace you can. Yeah.

Emily: [00:19:37] If you have a tracking number. Please do the thing where you call the USBs.

Andrew: [00:19:43] Yeah.

Emily: [00:19:44] It’s like, I remember shipping things like the reverb, like around Christmas and I had two people would be like, it just says it’s in transit. And like, I like I can call. Yeah.

But I’m going to get literally the same information you’re going to get, which is. We’re just really behind right now. If it says it’s in transit, that means that it’s not lost. Like I got the hostel off from flower pedals that was sitting around and ups for like four days and it’s fine. It’s fine. I didn’t need it.

But, um, it was just like, that’s just an example,

Andrew: [00:20:18] right? I mean, from a business owner perspective, like shipping is one of those things. Like I don’t want to spend any more time than I need to want it because I mean, Why it so well, the way I’ve got my shipping built out is when an order gets, um, when I get an order, their label gets automatically created and printed, and then I’ve got it all tied together.

And the way that my system comes through to where once I make the topper, it, I grabbed the envelope. I, I, the, the longest, the most amount of time I spend in my shipping processes, I always write a handwritten, thank you. Note on the back of the, uh, application instructions sheet. Uh, every single order that has gone out to date has had one of those I haven’t skipped out as far as I’m aware.

Um, and if, if you ordered one for me and you didn’t get a thank you note, uh, yell at me and I’ll send you another one, I believe in that that’s my version of Sweetwater’s candy. So. That’s the most time I spend on it though, that takes me couple minutes to write out. And then from there it’s peel and stick.

I lick the envelope shut metaphorically because of course I’m actually looking them in the realm of COVID. Uh, and then I drop it off, drop off the bunch of them, like, uh, a couple of times a week when I’ve got a bag.

Emily: [00:21:29] Nice.

Andrew: [00:21:31] The reason why I’m sharing that information is not to bore you to death with what my business looks like from a week to week perspective, it’s a.

That that’s about this much time I can spare on that process until I have to start neglecting other parts of the business that are more customer facing. And I don’t want to have to sit on hold with USBs for 48 minutes for each one of like, I love you guys, but. I can’t do that for everybody.

Realistically, I just don’t have the bandwidth. And I know a lot of other business owners feel the same strain as they keep sit in front of the eight rate hours a day

Emily: [00:22:06] also to get literally the same answer. I mean, if something is like truly like a week and a half late, then yeah. It’s probably time to file a claim, but that’s about that.

Andrew: [00:22:18] Well,

yeah,

Emily: [00:22:19] this is the say, like I got some new pedals in. Can I tell you about one? I’m very excited about. Can I, can I, can I, the impres, Zoya is one I got two weeks ago. Yeah. I got Azalea and I’m having a lot of fun, like learning this kind of language. Uh,

Andrew: [00:22:37] it’s an alien language. It’s our modern day pyramids of how is that made aliens must have done it for us.

Emily: [00:22:43] It reminds me a lot of the poly digit, um, which I had done some demos of. So basically like you’re creating your own signal trains, and you can do like stereo mana thing, uh, lots of different effects in there. Um, like the, the digit did have a lot of effects. Um, and for the record, I feel like the poly digit, it looks like it’s undergone some seriously cool software upgrade.

So I’m trying to work with, um, Lucky. They’re lucky to, uh, get his new, his newer, his modulation version of that. The Beebo so I can play with that. Um, yeah, but I know that Loki was on, um, the, the tone mob podcasts. And after that, like I saw like eight ton of people talking about that digit. So I was always, that’s always cool to see, but, um, the D the digit has just like, it’s just a big screen.

And then the Zoya has these little, these little button, so it looks kind of like, One of those little Ableton pad type thing, but I have really just, yeah, I’ve barely scratched the surface of what it can do, but once, once you get past like the understanding, the language and kind of how things work and what button does, what, uh, it starts to feel really intuitive, which is really neat, um, is that it doesn’t stay complicated, but it can get more complicated.

So I’m just trying to run through some tutorials on that. So I can do like a nice thorough, uh, kind of demo because it’s sort of, I think it deserves that and like how to do specific things. So like, I love, I love doing like two different re like or different reverbs each year. That’s something that I really liked doing that I played with on the digit some.

So that’s one of the two panels I’m really excited about this week, but this week was recovery week. I could also have a podcast and the YouTube channel mostly.

Andrew: [00:24:35] Whoo. It was recovery week and, uh, in the fullest sense of the word, because listening to all those sound clips brought me so much life. It was awesome

Emily: [00:24:47] recovery.

Andrew: [00:24:47] Yeah. But I don’t mean that like in a haha, I’m an infomercial. I’ve got one liners. It’s more of like a genuine, honestly they’ve got some really unique sounds. They’re not just pumping out your tube, screamer, variants, uh, one after the other, like. That is full out innovation and some really dreamy sounds.

And I just, my ears were tantalized.

Emily: [00:25:12] Did you have a favorite?

Andrew: [00:25:15] I don’t know. Don’t make me choose maybe the white guy. I don’t.

Emily: [00:25:18] Yeah, I think the white gold was my favorite. I think that was just so fun to play with. And I should say that was my favorite of the pedals that are already. They didn’t production, but they just released their gallows in the morning.

If you go to recovery effects.com, I think that you can still preorder that for like 200 bucks, which is a stellar price. Right. But it’s a dual, uh, it’s just like an overdrive or a distortion. There’s a toggle to kind of choose between like the level of game on one side. And then it’s a reverb that just has like a reverb knob and a clean blend.

And I think that I’m gonna, like, that surprises me. I think I want to put it on my baseboard because if you just have the reverb up all the way, um, and then you have nothing on the clean, it can make your bass sound like a cello. I know that’s like every, I know, I know that’s every river pedal that has a kill dry, but it’s still really fun.

And the re the way it’s built, the reverb stays really pristine. Like everything stays really pristine. Like there’s no muddiness added. I don’t know, like, I, I don’t know if they’re running in series or parallel the reverb and the distortion, but it sounds like they might be running in parallel. I’m probably wrong about that.

We’re going to have them on the show to talk about it. Oh,

Andrew: [00:26:37] absolutely. I’ve got so many questions. Like

Emily: [00:26:43] how, how, how could you say something so brave, so controversial yet? So brave.

Andrew: [00:26:49] Uh, the number one question I have is how there has to be the most beautiful souls on the planet behind these sounds.

Emily: [00:26:57] They are Zara, specially, like, I don’t know Greg as well personally, but like I’ve had talks with her and she is just like a wonderful, wonderful person.

And like, I think it takes a really special person to care for animals the way that she does. And that’s going to sound like, kind of like a weird hippy dippy thing to say,

Andrew: [00:27:16] yeah, man, I just like the way that like, you know, cats and dogs, you know, like, yeah man,

Emily: [00:27:24] Yeah, but,

Andrew: [00:27:25] um,

Emily: [00:27:26] yeah, I know. Wow. I just remember having a really, really lovely several hours with them last summer, getting some drinks at Chuck’s and then just hanging out in their studio and looking at their catio and.

That was fun.

Andrew: [00:27:41] Can I change subjects real quick? Literally in this moment, I have just received tracking from USP S from something that I ordered earlier this week and I’m excited.

Emily: [00:27:55] Oh, is there a musical related? It is.

Andrew: [00:27:59] I ordered something from big year.

I got the hot sauce.

Emily: [00:28:08] Oh, yes. That’s the good stuff, man.

Andrew: [00:28:14] So excited. I was so, but I think last time they had this, they sold out before I’d even like, I heard that it was a thing, so they just had a limited quantity. And by the time, you know, the grapevine reached out to me. I was like, Oh no, they’re out. So this time around, when I saw a Facebook must have known.

Because Facebook, Facebook has sent him put and I saw Karen’s announcement. Hey, we just got some of these in stock. I clicked through. Clicked again, clicked again, clicked again. And it was ordered just like that four clicks, boom. Done. I didn’t even think about it. I just made it happen.

Emily: [00:28:53] You don’t think of a hot sauce.

Okay.

Andrew: [00:28:57] I’m I’m so excited for it to get here. So anyways, that was my brief aside. Do we want to talk.

Emily: [00:29:06] Sponsors

Andrew: [00:29:07] sponsors sponsors.

Emily: [00:29:10] This week’s episode of the get off set podcast is brought to you by a, another Seattle-based pedal companies, spun loud effects who have released fairly recently their blister in peel V too.

It’s a dual, it’s a dual drive slash fuzz pedal, and it’s dope. It’s orange. It’s beautiful. It’s really beautiful. I can’t get over how beautiful that enclosure is.

Andrew: [00:29:35] I’m a fan. Um, I’m gonna spare you guys all from my prophetic. Uh,

Emily: [00:29:41] just stop with the orange, please.

Andrew: [00:29:43] God. And all those things. Well, I’m not saying I was just gonna say I was going to stop with it.

If you, if you haven’t already adhered to it, it’s too late for us.

Emily: [00:29:53] It’s too late. It’s yeah.

Andrew: [00:29:55] Global warming. I mean, at this point it’s too late.

Emily: [00:29:58] It’s 1159.

Andrew: [00:30:00] Yeah. And not enough orange pedals that there in the world.

Emily: [00:30:04] Oh my God. Like, like there aren’t a billion DS ones and twos.

Andrew: [00:30:09] Certainly not a billion. Let’s not be hyperbolic.

Emily: [00:30:13] There’s at least a million.

Andrew: [00:30:15] And now I feel like I’m being pandered to come on,

Emily: [00:30:18] let me see. I’m curious how many

Andrew: [00:30:22] I’m going to guess. 1.4 million have been

Emily: [00:30:27] I’m sorry, how many did you say.

Andrew: [00:30:30] I said 1.4 million. Well, they’re not,

Emily: [00:30:34] they’re not, they’re not, um, tracking their sales.

Andrew: [00:30:39] Maybe not. So let’s look at produced.

Emily: [00:30:41] Oh, no, no, no. They say that, um, more than 10 million boss pedals have been sold.

Andrew: [00:30:48] So how many of those have been the ?

Emily: [00:30:51] I would bet a lot. I would not be surprised if one 10th of their.

Andrew: [00:30:57] And how many of them are on sale as supposedly Kurt Cobain’s, which we all know is not true,

Emily: [00:31:04] at least a thousand.

Andrew: [00:31:06] Cool, cool.

Cool. Well, it is spun loud. If you want a, an orange pedal that does more than one thing on like the , uh, goat. Seriously, go check it out. Uh, it would make me happy. It would make Emily happy. And more importantly, it’ll make you happy because your tone will be happy. All that to say, be happy by spun loud.

Emily: [00:31:30] Yes.

Choice is important.

Andrew: [00:31:33] We need more joy in this world, especially this year.

Emily: [00:31:36] Yeah. Let’s tell you. What’s not bringing me to enjoy.

Andrew: [00:31:41] I’m going to guess. It’s a corporate nonsense.

Emily: [00:31:46] Corporate nonsense does not joy. Uh, so this week, I think we want to talk about, um, what the Spotify CEO Daniel has. I said, and this was a couple of weeks ago, even, but I can’t stop thinking about how boneheaded it was.

He says that, uh, Artists need to work harder basically. Well, let me say,

Andrew: [00:32:13] that’s gotta be a paraphrase. What helped me out here? So I I’ve read

Emily: [00:32:18] the article. Can I read the quote?

Andrew: [00:32:20] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Emily: [00:32:22] Um, even today our marketplace, there’s literally millions and millions of artists. What tends to be reported are the people that are unhappy, but we very rarely see anyone who’s talking about.

And the entire existence of Spotify. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single artist saying, quote, I’m happy with all the money I’m getting from streaming and quotes stating that publicly in private, they had done that many times in public. They have no incentive to do it. But that is to say that they’re happy with the money they’re getting a, but unequivocally from the data, there are more and more artists that are, may be able to live off of streaming income and itself.

There is a narrative fallacy here combined with the fact that obviously Subar is used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough. Whoa, the artists today that are making it realize it’s about continuous engagement with our fans, about putting the work in about the storytelling around the album and about keeping a continuous dialogue with your fans.

I feel really that the ones who aren’t doing well in streaming are predominantly people who want to release the music way. It really used to be a really, and I will say one thing to his credit. About this. Um, there are, are a couple of reasons that artists aren’t making a lot of money via streaming. It’s not just the payouts, some artists with how their label deals and their publishing work are only getting fractions even of that.

So a lot of people have bad publishing deals that are preventing them from getting all of the revenue that they should be getting. That being said, Wow. What a rude thing to say.

Andrew: [00:34:11] I mean, there’s a lot to unpack there.

Emily: [00:34:16] Yeah. Let’s where should we start? I mean, so I think,

Andrew: [00:34:20] can we start with, I’m going to preface something here.

Sure. And it’s something that I haven’t prefaced in a while. Uh, so you’re going to smack me virtually for saying this. I think I’m going to agree with. I think, realistically, I agree with you wholeheartedly on the subject. However, for the next few minutes I am going to against every instinct I have in me, do my best to play devil’s advocate, knowing that I’m going to fall flat on my face because

Emily: [00:34:44] hi, man’s favorite thing.

Andrew: [00:34:47] No, for the sake of posterity, I’ve got to try and poke some holes in this to see how far I can get. I just don’t think I’m going to get very far. So that’s my preference. And let’s see, let’s see how I can. Kind of rephrase and look at this in a different light. I don’t think.

Emily: [00:35:04] Yeah. Yeah. So, um, let’s start with Napster.

Cause I feel like it has to start with Napster because until then

Andrew: [00:35:12] Napster.

Emily: [00:35:13] Well, it does, because before Napster labels would, uh, actually kind of invest money in people and they, they would, they would try, they would like sign a bunch of similar bands, throw them at the wall and see what stuck. So like not every band was like, Successful clearly, this is not how it happens in a lot of things.

Still didn’t make money. I mean, you were lucky. I think that. Michael Jackson only made like $8 for every album he sold. So like, there was never a lot of money being made from albums.

Andrew: [00:35:46] Yes. Cause Michael Jackson is the one we should feel sorry for, with their income from the

Emily: [00:35:49] industry. No, the, this person with, um, all this clout and all this, this ability to like really pull his weight and get better deals that even he was only getting like eight bucks.

For every album. So that’s what I’m saying. Um, so that’s part of it. Um, what, when Napster had the music industry was really kind of on an upswing, it was really a big heyday. There was of labels, tons of music being released, lots of money being put behind, uh, these, these bands who had like, you’d buy their album and they’d have like one good song.

And that was the single, so you’d buy the whole album to get a single. Because like, yeah, CD singles existed, but they kind of sucked. It’s not like this. When there was vinyl, you could just buy the 45 and then you could just have the single and a B side and pay a little bit less and be happy. Um, so there was this, this kind of disconnect.

I think people were really unhappy with us realizing that they had to buy the whole album to get the single, the single was good. The rest of the album sucked. So there were some cases of that happening. The Napster comes along. And people are able to share music, uh, without paying for it. And it just feels free because it’s not a tangible good.

Right. It’s like, you would never like, like it’s not even like a, so if you ha you bought a painting and you made a copy of the pay Tang, it’s not going to be the same quality. So it’s like, yeah, you can’t duplicate it. But when you do music over like, P to P peer to peer sharing. It didn’t lose any of the fidelity really.

So people were sharing music and then also at the same time, and this is arguably arguably kind of a bigger issue. It was borrowed a burn, so people would borrow. So one person will buy a CD. They share it with their friends. They’d all put it on their computer. They’d all have it on their iPhones. I mean, I pause at that time.

And then the music industry was like, how can we stop people from stealing music? Spotify comes along, Spotify really did effectively kill. Streaming of albums like, and that, that develops like that. Like peer-to-peer effectively killed it because now you have this free platform. If you want to pay, if you want to like deal with the ads or this very affordable platform where you can listen to it.

Like every song ever pretty much with some exceptions, obviously. And you know, it was that because how many times is someone who have Cozaar think they were downloading Fiona Apple and actually get K’s choice because they’re both women who sing in a low register, like a lot. Me personally. Uh, so it really did effectively kill PTP.

So Spotify did that,

Andrew: [00:38:36] right? I mean, I haven’t definitely was guilty of being like, Hey, I’ll take the, uh, the album home from the bus and then bring it back in the morning after I burned it and hand it off to the next kid on the bus. Uh, yeah, definitely did that with the Taylor Swift album in college, actually, I think that was 1989.

No, I did that. I did that with red. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think that was the last time I did that because I was starting to get into Spotify and, but one guy at the end of the whole is like, guys, I’ve got like a pirated copy of red. I’m pretty sure I still have that like loaded on my laptop that I haven’t fired up in three years.

But yeah, I mean, I haven’t done it since then. It’s definitely dropped off.

Emily: [00:39:20] Yeah, this also partially because who has a CD rom drive anymore. But I do in one of my computers and I probably going to need to just buy like an external one for other reasons. So now Spotify did that really well. We’ll give them credit for that with, but they always had the promise that artists would still make.

Money. They would still be able to make income from this and it wasn’t free. And I don’t think they’ve delivered on that promise. And they’ve created this kind of, they created this, this, this problem that now they’re complaining. It seems, it feels like this Daniel’s complaining that, uh, artists are complaining about this problem, that his.

Ban brand effectively created it because even though Spotify exists that people aren’t stealing records, the music industry and album sales bills, or item creation, hasn’t improved at all, all. So it used to be back again in this heyday. Yeah. When you have a record deal, the record company only takes money from the records sold.

Then they make all their money on the album. You might get some money back. Your royalties have been paid off like after your advance has been paid off. And a lot of aunts never made it to this point. Even bands that sold a million records like a tribe called quest, like never made a dime from album sales.

But they got to keep all their touring, all of their merge, uh, they’re publishing for the most part, uh, their licensing. They probably had to share that with whoever was doing their publishing. Um, but they, they were able to make money between album cycles and everything that happened between the album cycles is how they need their money.

So, That was how it used to work. After Napster basically record labels were like, we cannot sustain ourselves just on album sales anymore. So they started signing artists what’s called a three 60 deal, which means in theory, the label would help them with merge, touring, licensing, publishing, et cetera. And then they would take a cut in practice.

They maybe weren’t getting as much, they weren’t giving as much support to the artists. As the arts would have liked. The artists have less control over their merge when somebody else was running it like that. Um, so three 60 deals are wildly unpopular with artists, but it was the only way really you could get a major label deal, even some Indies, honestly.

So that’s how the album, that’s how the record label. That’s how the record industry changed a little bit.

Has Spotify nothing. So what’s improved since Spotify

Andrew: [00:42:13] visibility. Visibility

Emily: [00:42:17] less stuffed. I mean, somebody is getting paid for these, for these streams. I self published the Spotify title and all those. So I know what the role numbers are that I get from my streams and people are starting to publish those rates.

Spotify pays toward the least amount, but you still get the most money from them because they’re the most popular plat.

Andrew: [00:42:41] Right?

Emily: [00:42:44] Meanwhile artists owned and black owned title pays significantly more, at least twice as much, but you don’t get as much money from them. Cause not as many people use title.

Andrew: [00:42:54] Right.

Right.

Emily: [00:42:57] So then if you have like a publishing contract, your publisher is taking part of that stream. Part of that money and ended up paying you out like a fraction of this fraction of a penny per stream. Uh, so you would need about 1200. Um, so a 10 song download an album sale. 10 sound download the album equivalent is about 1200 premium audio streams or 3,700 ad supported streams.

Uh, and that’s how you get the, that, that’s what, that’s what, um, actually that’s not right. How much does it take? How many streams does it take to earn a dollar? Let’s look at that.

Andrew: [00:43:46] And while you’re looking at that, I’m kind of, I’m thinking to myself, Spotify as this massive business and where is this money?

Coming where, where is it going? Because the reality is not all of that money is going to the artist. And so my question is, my question is less of how much is each artist getting per stream or realistically, how much are they able to get? My question is how is that variant from. Where versus the, the total cash pool.

So if we look at Spotify as net worth, which admittedly, that’s not a liquid number, so we have to keep that in mind, but it’s worth 21 billion. The CEO of Spotify is worth 4 billion and that’s a. A lot of money and again, not all of that’s liquid, so it’s not like they’ve got four bill, like he’s got 4 billion of cash.

I’m sure a lot of that is in his stake in the company. So, uh,

Emily: [00:44:43] going, where does, where does it go with any other business? It

Andrew: [00:44:47] has the right

Emily: [00:44:49] developers, advertising, marketing pay off to their shareholders.

Andrew: [00:44:56] Exactly. So this is where I started to look at it and go, okay, artists are getting paid less for their work now, but that’s because then the new model now is Spotify in the picture.

There’s more hands in the cookie jar. And so if I think of it from that perspective, does it seem less equitable or does it just seem like this is just how the business has evolved and it’s not necessarily Spotify being greedy,

Emily: [00:45:18] right?

Andrew: [00:45:20] Well, this is my attempt at the devil’s advocate here, by the way.

Emily: [00:45:24] I mean, yes.

So I’ve said this kind of before about reverb. So I don’t really want to like. Be a hypocrite. I’m not going to be a hypocrite. Spotify does deserve a good amount of that money that they take because they put a lot of money into developing a platform and to all these licenses, to get the music and all the work

Andrew: [00:45:43] industry leader, change

Emily: [00:45:46] marketing, getting people to use the platform.

Uh, like that was its own thing because people were suspicious about it. So like all of that investment, like yeah, they deserve to make money. I think Daniel deserves to be a very wealthy man, to be honest, secret, he did create a platform. However, Okay,

Andrew: [00:46:05] well, just to tack onto that, I want to make a very bold claim here for free for a quick moment.

And I would like to say that I think Spotify has made more of a difference in bringing the music industry into the digital age than Apple did in the two thousands. Oh,

Emily: [00:46:20] well, I don’t want to tell Apple like, okay. iTunes literally only exists and is only like the standard, despite it always being a piece of trash as a software, like iTunes was just the one of the first, if not the first, like I, yeah, I hate, I’ve always hated iTunes.

I’ve always had a continuous relationship with iTunes. I hate it. But yeah, they did. They, they will, they made it. They made it, you

can

Andrew: [00:46:48] hate it, but they did have a really big impact for the music industry in terms of changing the format in which music is consumed and making it more accessible to the masses.

For those who could afford iPods and creating the platform of iTunes that exist on hardware that either Apple users or windows users worldwide, already had. So. Right. They made a huge splash. It really, I’m not trying to deny that Apple made a huge difference, but is big as what Apple did in the two thousands.

Now let’s look at Spotify and now it’s, it’s on, you can put this on any mobile device. It’s reaches more platforms now instead of just having iTunes, loader and your computer and listening to it from there, you can access it from anywhere. And so the, the amount of traffic and the advertising, a, I think.

Right. For, for the, whether it’s for the worst or for the best, I think it’s changed the music industry much more and made it more digital than Apple did. That’s what I’m trying

Emily: [00:47:45] to say. I think that’s, I think that’s, that’s fair. I do think that’s fair. Um, but let’s look at the numbers for how many streams it takes to get a dollar,

Andrew: [00:47:56] um, dollar, dollar bills.

Y’all.

Emily: [00:47:59] So YouTube, a thousand about 1500 YouTube doesn’t pay very well. And you should only pay is like, okay, let’s not talk about YouTube anymore. Pandle or 752 Amazon 249. So artists don’t feel bad about kicking your music off of Amazon. They don’t have any users and they pay like trash shocker, a Spotify 229 streams to make a dollar.

Now think about. Think about the artists that you love and how you want to support them. Do you think you’re going to listen to that, that song 229 times. Do you think that, do you, would you pay a dollar to listen to it 229 times? Like, think about that. Just think about that. Think about how little you’re actually supporting the artists that you love when you’re.

When you’re like, come on. This is so great because amount of money?

Andrew: [00:48:57] Well, no. Okay. So I’ll bite on that for a quick moment here. Do I want, do I think that, that I would listen to a single song 229 times? No, there’s very few songs that would do that. However, in, in terms of storage space and not wanting to have to pay for, for cloud storage or just having a larger, like paying another a hundred dollars for a phone with more storage space, uh, or.

Uh, wanting to upload my iTunes folder to my work laptop so I can listen to at work. No, it is. And so the accessibility is white from a user standpoint. That’s where it’d be it’s for me to want to consume music. There’s so much more money. I’d have to sing into it in order to own the physical hard drive space to host that ons.

And since that’s not in the cards for me and the ways that I consume now, it’s a, well, what are my cloud options?

Emily: [00:49:48] Is that really? It is that just, is that it is that the big reason you would not pay a dollar to have a song is because it has like. I don’t know one kilobyte of data. I don’t

Andrew: [00:50:02] well, because yes, honestly, from the perspective, a lot of users, absolutely.

If I’m, if I can get the 16 gig iPhone at host all of the apps that I need on it, versus if I’m going to get an iPhone or like Android users will do this, where they get their externals, uh, the external, uh, Mike, Mike rusty for like, You know, 64 gigabytes and that’s like 80 bucks for the Carter. At least it was at one point in time, let’s say, let’s say even 50 bucks to have that, and now you’re inserting it, but now you have an Android, so, and it becomes game of how much storage space do I have.

On handheld devices, that margin is a lot smaller. You have to pay a lot of money just to have the nicer device that can handle that much data, because it’s not just the one song. No one’s loading. Just one song on their phone. People are trying to load albums. People are try load a catalog of what their preferences are and.

Versus four, no, for very little extra space on my phone, hard drive. I could download Spotify for $10 a month. I can have no ads and it functions the exact same way, but I’ve got access to a much larger database.

Emily: [00:51:07] I mean, from a consumer standpoint, it makes sense, but there are a lot of really nasty things that make sense from a consumer standpoint.

But music, it’s not like it’s not like buying an Apple, like a literal Apple that you consume and it’s gone and you don’t really have to think about like, everything that Apple went through. Like, you don’t have an emotional bond with the food that you eat. You probably don’t have an emotional bond with like the makeup that you buy necessarily.

Or like a lot of other things, an emotional bond to music. I mean, yeah. And this is someone’s livelihood. So. I feel like we’re getting so far away from it and we have not a lot of time, but

Andrew: [00:51:41] right. Well, we’re getting there. We’re getting there. So

Emily: [00:51:46] you need 229 streams on Spotify to give your artists that you love a dollar, you only need 80 streams on title to do that.

How many songs do you listen to 80 times,

Andrew: [00:51:57] Andrew? Um, probably just about a girl by Nirvana when I’m really sad. Or

Emily: [00:52:03] like 80 streams of an artist to listen to an artist. Like that’s like listening to a 10 song album 10 times, eight times.

Andrew: [00:52:12] I mean, I’m sure I’ve done it before, but I mean, honestly, I’ve probably listened to covet at least that many given covet few hundred streams, but I mean,

Emily: [00:52:20] that’s fine different, we’re different, we’re different consumers of music.

Andrew: [00:52:24] That’s definitely not the norm though for the different bands that I consume. That’s not the normal amount of streams that I’m putting into it. So sure. I not giving most of the artists, I care about more than a dollar with my streams.

Emily: [00:52:36] So you don’t buy albums because you don’t listen to albums more than once.

Andrew: [00:52:42] Well, stop, stop asking me directly because I do buy albums. I just buy CDs.

Emily: [00:52:48] Here’s the thing, Andrew. Like, that’s not, that’s not okay. What storage space you’re complaining about storage space, but like, Visual is not the only way that you can buy music. And it’s not the only way I buy music. I buy vinyl records from record stores, like Sonic boom and Ballard. I buy, I buy CDs at shows because it’s the easiest way to listen to music in my car still.

Uh, I buy, I buy tapes when that’s, what is available from the artists, because I do have a way to like, listen to them. Like we can’t just talk about, we can’t just talk about it like this, like. But so let’s get back to what this was. This was what Daniel said,

Andrew: [00:53:29] right? Well, we read the quote.

Emily: [00:53:33] I’m not going to reread the whole quote.

Um, you can’t okay. Combined with the fact that obviously some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape that Spotify has created where you can’t record music once every three to four years and thinks, think it’s going to be enough. So the reason that it used to be there is there’s a few reasons why music used to be recorded every three to four years.

It takes a lot of time to create quality art, to write those songs, to get them recorded, to get them mixed and get them mastered. It takes time to physically print the materials to go through the design process. It takes like six weeks to eight weeks to 10 weeks to get final press right now. Um, eat people needed to tour.

Obviously that’s not a thing right now. It might not be until the end of next year. Um, people needed to go on tour to support the music. So you go on tour to support the album, to sell more copies of the album and also the sell tickets and kind of make a living off of that to sell merge, and like, kind of like you have to milk that creative thing that you, you, you birth.

Do you spent time birthing, um, It’s got a long, uh, just gestation period. Uh, I mean, it’s just like, and then some people have always been prolific. Elvis Costello was always releasing albums every year. So Prince was always releasing albums every year. Not everyone has that prolific. I mean, look at Fiona Apple, she goes six, eight years between album cycles and then she just unleashes this masterpiece on people and it’s worth the wait.

Sometimes, sometimes artists worth the wait and you cannot tell artists to create more music more quickly than they can. Cause it’s not like printing widgets. It’s not, that’s literally not what it is. It’s not like. Taking mattresses off an assembly line. It’s like telling people they need to like create a completely new product from scratch every single year and or some artists, it doesn’t work for others, but to tell people that they need to do that, that, or they can’t expect to make a living in Spotify land is, is trash because he just wants more content that he can promote to people and make them listen to it.

Andrew: [00:56:03] So here’s where, where do I begin trying to poke holes in this? Um, alright, so

Emily: [00:56:17] basically, can I just say he’s telling artists, you need to do the least lucrative part of your art. Very frequently, even if it screws up the most lucrative part of what you do.

Andrew: [00:56:30] Okay. So I’m not sure if that’s what he’s saying and let, let me, so here’s what I’m seeing the perspective from his, I think he’s speaking specific.

If I’m going to be charitable here, I think he’s speaking to the perspective of just streaming income. And so looking at it from a boomer smile, where if like you, when you release the album, you get a ton of streams. You are booming, you’re making a ton of money and that it’s going to slowly taper off.

And now you’re at a bus level. And that just with the ecosystem of streaming, that’s what you’re looking at. And so I think he’s saying, if you want to be able to live off of streaming year after year alone, this is what it takes to make you got it. You’ve got to perpetually have releases in order to perpetually have these spikes.

So that’s, if I’m reading into what he’s saying, he didn’t make that very clear. And I am admitting that I’m being incredibly charitable by giving that analysis. And so. From that perspective. Sure. As far as the rest of what artists are doing outside of that, in terms of touring, merge and album sales, I think that’s

Emily: [00:57:27] a different,

Andrew: [00:57:29] right.

I think that’s a different world. And I don’t think mr. X honestly is in that world. That’s not his ball game. Uh they’ve they’ve played a little bit, it was streaming. Uh, so, so that since he’s had a little bit of, of skin in that game, but that’s not really the world he’s in, he’s in the world of streaming.

So keeping the conversation, correct textualize too. That makes sense now where this is where I start to kick back a little bit and step out of my devils. Yeah. To get is I’d like to bring up this, come back to the notion of boomer bust and the idea of boom or bust is, uh, I think. The term goes back to like  or whatever the idea is like you, you strike gold, you make a ton of money and then either you, if you blow it all, once you’re really kind of screwed when it comes to when things dwindle down.

Now, the difference being is I don’t. I think with Spotify as model right now, it’s a boomer bust. I think it’s say get by and then bus model. No, one’s truly booming. Uh, or at least most people aren’t booming when they released a record. They’re not the, the amount that it pays out. Doesn’t allow someone to truly boom.

And so looking at it from the perspective, it was like, okay, he’s saying boom or bust. And you just want, if he’s seeing people that are complaining, that people are able to boom on a regular basis, what I’m seeing as an artist is from artist’s perspective is no, like. We’re only making just enough money to get by every time we release an album and then it quickly tapers off and it’s not enough after that point, we want, we need a bigger piece of the pie.

And so I’m looking at this as seeing this very much feels like a corporate rebuttal to the, to the proletariat saying, Hey, we need a bigger piece of the pie if this is going to work for everybody. And I think it’s, he’s phrased it really sneakily in this point, more or less stepping out of it. Uh, Even with just the contextualization of it being focused in the streaming world.

I’m not sure that holds the weight it needs to unless, and this is where I have to have a level of resignation, unless it, Spotify truly has that much control over the industry where they’ve permanently redefined, what that looks like. And they’re at this point, arguing about that as a moot point. And it’s now time to adapt and move on.

Whether or not we’re at that point, I think different people will agree on, but I mean the same way that the film industry is slowly moving the same direction, where it’s quantity over quality and trying to crank out material in smaller chunks with lower quality. Now you’ve got queasy. Queasy is trashed television, but it’s that constant stream that media consumption corporates looking at going great.

This, this works for us really well. We can, we can forecast this a lot easier. Uh we’ve I mean, from a corporate mindset that sure. That makes a lot of sense, but from a consumer standpoint, you’re suffering on quality. And from the artist standpoint, you’re suffering in terms of that just completely changed the game and no one likes the new game.

Emily: [01:00:30] Nope. Well, I can tell you who does like the new game. And I think I vaguely know who he is talking about because like, if you do the math, you get a million streams. That’s a lot of streams. That’s, that’s like a lot of equivalent album sales. You get $3,000, that’s it. So who is making money and who probably is happy with this?

Are these people called them like, Fake bands or fake artists. And it’s like these artists who don’t really exist, they have a bunch of different names, but it’s all like the same couple people churning them out. And then they create these playlists, like music to fall asleep too. And just like a bunch of kind of ambient like quiet stuff.

And that’s not, I’m not saying anything about the quality of it. I haven’t even listened to this kind of stuff, but people. Put it on when they fall asleep or they study, it’s like background noise and it’s just cause they’re creating these playlists and they’re advertising and promoting these playlists that are.

Background noise. Sure.

Andrew: [01:01:30] That’s fine.

Emily: [01:01:32] Yeah. That’s exactly what the, that’s exactly what they’re doing. And they’re doing a little bit to make just as good your money. Um, and then like on mass and have like a lot of this and kind of trucking it’s it’s like the same kind of idea as creating a website, that’s designed to get views and not designed to provide like, Excellent information, but it’s maybe vaguely helpful.

And then the way they make their money is through ad revenue and affiliate sales, and they don’t exist to actually sell you anything. They exist to get those commissions and that incremental passive revenue. So those are probably the people who are happy with it because it’s passive revenue.

Andrew: [01:02:12] Sure. I mean, I don’t, I don’t honestly have a problem with that.

That those are not the people that I’m looking at and finding myself upset with because the game changed playing the new game. So where my head space starts to go with this. And again, I’ve, I’ve left the world of devil’s Ivy. You get to this point, is it. Looking at the bigger picture and going, okay. So the game is changing to a degree there’s only so much to be done about this because at this point you have to comply with Spotify to, to, from a marketing and an income perspective to, to, to a degree, to be a large successful artist.

Taylor Swift is only able to keep her music off a Spotify for a couple of years before putting it back on. I mean,

Emily: [01:02:57] well, and to be fair, like she also pulls her weight around like artist’s rights a lot, like she did for Apple music. Well, music was just like literally going to use people’s art for free, like,

Andrew: [01:03:07] right.

So my thought here is I want to appreciate what Spotify has done with it. I think what they’ve done is really great. I think in terms of the value they’ve provided for consumer accessibility and allowing people to get drawn into the wider world of music and not just the same eight albums that their dad had on the shelf as a kid, or whatever’s on the radio, I think.

I think there’s a lot of really positive merit in that my question isn’t trying to like, say Spotify is completely evil, cause I’m not sure that’s the case either. My question is how do we continue to work the system where everybody, everybody wins? Because what I’m seeing is Spotify is looking at saying, we.

Spotify corporate needs to win. And in order for them to win, they have to make the customers when it’s not as contingent to make the artists win in order for their business model to succeed. And this is something I’m on a mic. I’ve really tried to wrap my head around with the, for the business model for Fox Cairo and the way that I’ve been building out the artist collaboration program, making sure that independent artists are getting paid for their custom work for the, um, for, for the toppers that they’ve been designing.

And making sure that they’re getting, and I grant that that has been a really strange process for me to work and realize that it’s really difficult to make everybody winning. But yeah, I don’t, it accompany their size. I really think that they’ve got it for everybody to win. We’ve got to find a way to say, Hey mr.

X, I get it. You’ve everybody’s got a win. If this is gonna work long term. Before you before you’re going to start seeing some sort of another major shift. Yeah.

Emily: [01:04:49] But by and large artists, artists aren’t winning and when your entire business model is built on this art and the artists aren’t winning, it’s just, it’s exploitative.

Right.

Andrew: [01:05:01] And a lot of capitalism is, and that’s my fear is that we’re headed that direction. There’s going to be no turning back. We are

Emily: [01:05:07] sorry. Passed it. I think personally, but like you see people like Joey, Joey from, uh, , uh, who we had on the show. He started in new he’s part of a new like musicians union, and they’re trying to like negotiate.

Better payout rates for streaming. So that’s something I’ll also drop a link to. Um, cause I think it’s important. I also like if you’re not a musician, like I think it’s important to show support. I mean, listen, there are ways that Daniel could say like, Oh, like this is, and this has been like musicians from the beginning of time.

There’s always someone who comes in. Swoops in takes your revenue streams, and then tells you how to make the money again, like how to make that money back. Like people are coming in swooping in and being like all of your albums sales, but you know, you should get a Patrion. You know,

Andrew: [01:05:56] right. I mean, it’s

Emily: [01:05:58] like you can’t screw artists and then blame them for not making their own money.

And this is exactly what it says. It’s what it sounds like he’s saying. It said he’s blaming artists for not abiding by this, this, this problem that he created. Maybe he does have a little setup. Maybe it’s a solution that churn out music every year, even if it’s not good.

Andrew: [01:06:21] Well, eh, well, he’s not saying even if it’s not good, because of course he’s not going to suggest that he wants it to be the same quality year over year, but

consistent engagement with fans is important and Spotify is not the only place to do that. And for the, what I’m seeing is what he’s saying makes sense. If streaming is the only is the only revenue stream. Uh, and so to a degree, I, I see what he’s saying and contextualizing to just Spotify alone. I don’t think he’s necessarily wrong.

Sure. It’s a little harsh, but I think that’s the subtext of that is how the game has changed. What that the implications are. I’m not sure. I like, I’m not sure I’m okay with longterm. So it less an issue of what his direct statement is and more of what’s sitting underneath it. Yeah.

Emily: [01:07:13] I mean, I agree. It’s just it again, I’ve said this a couple of times, he, yeah.

In a way he created the problem. He solves one problem created another

Andrew: [01:07:23] and I just try and solve it themselves. Yeah.

Emily: [01:07:26] Yeah. And exactly. And I feel like he’s, he made a promise and I feel like that promise hasn’t been really met that. Okay. People aren’t going to steal your music anymore, but guess what? Now nobody’s buying your music.

At all because people

start

Andrew: [01:07:41] right.

Emily: [01:07:43] Vinyl, digital sales are dropping. They have been for years. I think vinyl sales are going up a little bit, but that’s still like, A niche product. CD sales are tanked. Tape sales are kind of up, but again, a niche product.

Andrew: [01:07:55] So here’s where I, before we, I don’t want to talk in circles too much, but looking ahead to the future, here’s what I’m seeing is Spotify has become the standard.

So last decade we had iTunes. This decade, we’ve had Spotify and now we’re getting to this. The same circle has the same cycle of circling back and now artists are upset again. And they’re trying to figure out. Well, we don’t like this. What now? And I think it’s just a matter of time. If Spotify doesn’t change to be more equitable before someone else figures out a way to disrupt the industry again.

Yeah. And leave Spotify in the desk the same way the Spotify has less left iTunes and the desk the same way the iTunes has let Napster. And so on like this, the cycle has gone over, turned over the last couple of decades, like clockwork. We’re reaching that point again. Are we going to see another industry disruptor or are we going to see Spotify say, Hey, we don’t want to make the same mistake.

The last guys did, let’s adjust at the end of the cycle and try to prevent this from happening again. So that’s all that. And that’s what I’d like to close on. As far as Spotify goes.

Emily: [01:09:00] All right. Well, I, I do want to want to say like, so there’s this idea that, um, art, this should be consistently and constantly releasing music, and that does work for some artists.

Like, I feel like that’s a big thing with SoundCloud rappers to release singles instead of albums. Um, but. I feel like I’ve done this with, with a couple of artists. Uh, there was one person I worked with in Nashville and I was like, I think you should do like an AC besides club for 12 months. And then you can release an album from all of those singles.

And it would be like his fans would be getting consistent music. Um, But the truth of the matter is releasing constant singles. Doesn’t hype anybody as much as releasing an entire album does because if you’re sitting at that single email, that’s like every month, it’s like, Oh, here’s another, here’s another email from this person’s publicist or.

It’s just, it doesn’t hype up fans as much and still like, it really needs to be like album cycles to get a lot of publicity, to get a lot of reporters to, to cover, to cover your music. It can’t always be just singles. Like singles are a way to break through, but albums have to be hyped and it just like. I just really still think that he is missing out on the fact that it takes money.

Like the soccer mommy album that was just released. She finished that late last year and it came out like two months ago. So that’s six months just from like, when she’s done recording to it, getting released. So if you’re releasing an album every year, that means essentially you have to like record every, every six months almost.

Andrew: [01:10:36] I think you’re correct. Assuming that the model hasn’t changed and I think Spotify is changing the model. So to a degree,

Emily: [01:10:45] I, I mean, I’m still the one who’s in a, his, like in that little space and the music industry space.

Andrew: [01:10:54] Right? My, I guess I did say I wanted to end on that, but my caution is. To you looking at it from the, my perspective is if the, if the industry really is changing, you can’t say this is the way it’s always been.

This is the way it works best and expect that only goes so far in resisting change versus adapting with the change. And I think that’s the part of what. Eric is saying that resonates from me, from someone who works in the tech world, where you’ve got to constantly adapt and overcome to stay relevant. So I don’t know,

Emily: [01:11:28] but it’s like, it’s

Andrew: [01:11:28] not how hard that is.

I’m not saying that you’re wrong and I’m not saying that that hasn’t worked really well for artists in the past.

Emily: [01:11:36] It’s not adapting to change Andrew. It’s like someone’s coming in and stealing, like the way you make money. And then they’re telling you that you need to change their processes like that.

You need to solve the problem that they created. It’s like someone spills a glass of milk in front of you. It says like, I suppose your glass of milk and says, you need to clean that up. That’s what it feels like,

Andrew: [01:11:57] know, and I’m not discounting that I don’t, I don’t disagree. I just, at a certain point you can’t stop the person from spilling the glass of milk.

And that’s where I say this, what I said before. There’s a degree of resignation that comes behind that, and it depends on whether or not you’re willing to just resign and move on. Um, I mean, you can really terrible place to be put in.

Emily: [01:12:17] You can resign to it, or you can do what Joey is doing and like get some collective action going and change it because it, I think that it can be changed and I don’t think we need to resign ourselves.

So this is just the way things are now. I think we can look at it and say, this used to be lucrative. We can make it lucrative again. And I’m not saying lucrative, like being a millionaire, I’m saying lucrative, like. Make a fair amount of money for the work district

Andrew: [01:12:47] and the groceries.

Emily: [01:12:49] Yeah. People are responding to your music and listening to your music.

You should be able to like, like get money from doing that. Like, I’m not saying again, I’m not even saying like, it’s like your only job necessarily, but it should be fair. It should be fair compensation for the work. It shouldn’t be other people making a ton of money off of your work and then telling you like, How to get around that because then eventually record labels are going to be like, we want some of that Patrion money, even though they killed fan clubs 10 years ago.

Like it’s just, it’s, it’s how it is.

Andrew: [01:13:24] It’s a very frustrating power dynamic. I fully grant you that, and I’m not arguing that. And I think we’re starting to talk in circles again. So

Emily: [01:13:32] I don’t know. I don’t know. I just, I just wanna, I just want that point to land, I guess. That I think that we should, as musicians have more collective bargaining weight than we do.

Andrew: [01:13:48] Well, I think I need to go take a shower and rinse off the devils devil’s advocate, sticky, ooey, gooey that I now feel, because that didn’t feel great, but, um, Thank you for listening and thank you for understanding, uh, joined the conversation in the Facebook group. I think this is going to be one that we need to flesh out a little bit more in the comments there.

So join let’s have that conversation this week and, uh,

Emily: [01:14:11] yeah. Well, I and Emily,

Andrew: [01:14:15] I’m Andrew.

Emily: [01:14:16] Goodbye.