Google today announced a new Google Music Store, with partnership of 3 out of the 4 major labels, and lots of indie ones. Additionally, they announced free cloud music service for up to 20,000 songs, and lots of exclusive content, and “social” features like “free streaming for your friends after you buy a song or album”. Read on for a short commentary.
Personally, I prefer to pay $10 a month, and have access to their whole catalog, the same way RDIO/Spotify/MOG work, but I guess that depends on the individual (I usually spend over $1500 a year for music, so I want to cut down on this addiction).
What really rubbed me the wrong way though is their supposedly-new “Artist Hub” feature: for $25 signup fee, “bedroom acts” can sell their albums via Google Music and give up 30% of the sales. The thing is, Bandcamp is doing exactly that for over 2 years now, they have $0 signup fee, and they only take 15% off of sales (plus, most music there is given for free anyway). $25 might not sound like a lot to most people, but having personally worked as a music video director for some of these bands (for free), these acts simply can’t afford this one-time fee of $25. Some of these artists are living in slum conditions (I have real-life examples).
Sure, the Android developers pay the same $25 to get access to Google Market and sell their apps, but Google Market is the only store Android users go to buy their apps (Amazon Store, or iOS ports are rare for most Android developers and their apps). But for music, customers buy music on thousands of little or bigger online or not stores, and each distribution channel requires its own fees from the artist. Quickly, this becomes unmanageable! The artist’s “choice” to not sign up with most stores in this case is only theoretical, to find the reach he/she needs, he must sign up. That’s why an additional $25 for Google Music accumulates more than it would for an app developer.
So, signup for unsigned artists must become free (or at a nominal fee of $1, for legal reasons). If Google wants to embrace indie, then it should go truly indie, and not half-way.
I can google stuff and just listen to it .. I thought that was called Youtube?
I’m not bothered by the “treatment” of independent artists (you have to invest much more than that in your profession, you still have other options, etc). What rubs me the wrong way is:
How completely also-ran and last decade it is! Google seems to have really lost its way on execution and originality since it decided it needs to be everything to everyone.
Well, the vision that Google is your hub for everything digital (music, video, software, ebooks) is hardly new for Google (or for Apple, MS or Amazon etc.) it is just that Google is not really that fast on execution.
I don’t like the prices. A song is not worth more than 50 cent PERIOD That is the price it should have then most piracy would be dead. IMO the artists just need to get rid of the MAFIAA for that to work.
There’s nothing stopping an artist from marketing his or her own work. But they have to pony up money for recording, marketing, distribution, and promotion, themselves.
Well these days, they do have to pay up for recording. Marketing and distribution are solved problems by the omnipresence of the internet.
However promotion might be the issue, that is not easy due to the corporate oligopoly that media is.
And the cost of recording has been reduced to the point that an artist can literally record content in their own home. Many do. Lenny Kravitz, for example, only works that way.
Promotion is expensive. People expect to be paid in order to get a name/sound/image actively in front of millions of eyeballs.
Yes indeed but there are still problems with that approach. I think the major reason “big company” recordings sounds “better” is not primarily because of the technology but the access to professional producers, mixing engineers and mastering engineers. Sure, you can do all of this in your home with good results but you’re unlikely to succeed with this since you don’t have knowledge and experience that a professional do.
Maybe one day big recoding studios will be gone and all the studio pro’s will be freelancing for small/home-based studios.
I second that. Musicians can do nice things at home nowadays, but that doesn’t fully replace trained sound engineers and heavy studio infrastructure (putting the studio on a separate electrical network, working on room acoustics, etc…).
And that is exactly why I am saying that musicians have to pay for that. But there are more and more “independent” producers out there, as equipment becomes more and more powerful.
There is this guy, Kurt Hugo Schneider(http://www.youtube.com/user/KurtHugoSchneider) that does pretty well on recodings and video productions
Sure there probably bands that can’t afford the 25 bucks, but then they probably have bigger problems that should be their priority and signing up to Google Music should not be their first priority.
And sure 30% is a hefty price to pay, but Google offers reach like noone else and that worth something.
And why should Google tread musicians differnetly than app developers? Are they somehow better people and deserve a better cut?
And the fact that I’ve never even heard of Bandcamp says exactly what I think about Bandcamp.
Anyway, this service is basically dead to me. I’ve got Spotify now… I’m never going back to $.99 a song.
If you’re listening to just mainstream pop-rock music, sure, you don’t need Bandcamp. But if you’re into true indie, into new trends, Bandcamp is the place to go.
We can’t all be Indie Rock Pete.
+1 for the Diesel Sweeties reference.
Well, I’m quite the geek who is interested in all types of music, and I’ve never even heard of it. Do you suppose my non-techie friends have? Then again, I don’t watch TV either, so perhaps there’s commercials for it. *shrug*
If not, these artists might end up getting a lot more exposure with Google. Even if these other services offer them better deals, that doesn’t do much good if people don’t know about them.
And as somebody else pointed out, if these people can’t afford the $25 signup fee, they either need to get a day job, or find a different career.
Edited 2011-11-17 01:28 UTC
That is not really a ground breaking initiative by Google. Google is giving increased revenue share and additional promotion for artists to put more original content on YouTube.
…& nearby
Don’t go in the direction of “their music – which, coincidentally, I know better to appreciate – is just too sophisticated for commoners” – that’s not a good excuse for not being able to squeeze some tokens of appreciation out of it.
Especially when – if indeed there’s not enough receptive “locals” who would like some random valuable(?) musical act – the web enables easier access not only to independent labels & netlabels, also to some crowdfunding establishments like Sellaband; going through such should give enough to keep rolling, if the music is any good (in most cases – who of course think of themselves something entirely different – it really isn’t)…
…something which, BTW, one rather good act from my neighbourhood very successfully did. With the attention even revved up by two “traditional”* radio stations – which, as far as I am concerned, are the place for new trends. And it seems I’m not the only one here to whom Bandcamp isn’t the be-all of it.
*”traditional” in a particular way – both essentially relics of previous political system, part of public broadcasting structures, which means they can be worried much less about maximizing ad revenues and such. If your music is worth bothering with, one of those will pick you up – many great artists, some of them legendary (and/or dead) by now, got first recognition from a broadcast on one of them.
Android developers only have to pay for the Google Market, since rarely they have an iOS port, or use the Amazon Store.
Indie artists on the other hand, have to pay for 100 other stores, since their mp3s are compatible with all.
Edited 2011-11-17 01:03 UTC
Wow, this is some backwards reasoning.
That’s a choice they make. The same kind of choice is available to an indie artist.
a) they dont HAVE to pay for all 100 stores. No one is forcing them.
b) if they used a closed format only supported by 1 store they’d only have to pay for one store.
See where this analogy is failing?
Yes, they DO have to go to as many stores as possible. For Android apps, 99% of the users go to Google Market to buy them, it’s an easy “choice” for the app developer. But for music, customers buy or stream their music *all over the place*, so as an artist YOU HAVE to signup with as many services as you can. It’s not a “choice” as you say to not sign up with most of them. It’s only a theoretical “choice”, the market realities of music are different than these of the app ecosystem.
OK, I hadn’t thought about that.
But .. well, there are a few more app stores for Android, it is just that there are one or two that get all the action. I guess once the dust settles there will be only a few big music stores on the internet that have global reach. The internet is still young, at least for the music business .. the music business denied its validity as a platform for distribution for a astonishly long time.
I know professional musicians who don’t sell or distribute their music at all, only play live. I know professional musicians who primarily play live but every few years produce an album that they make and sell themselves. I know professional musicians who record everything and give all of their recordings away for free (on archive.org and/or their own sites). I know professional musicians who give some of their music away for free and sell some of their music on one or more of numerous options (iTunes, CDBaby, BandCamp, Bandzoogle, ReverbNation, MySpace, etc.) and reach far more potential listeners than they would have before. None of these musicians have contracts but all of them make their living solely or primarily as musicians. None of them consider potential (i.e. worthwhile) increases in distributing their music and expanding their audience as financially unfeasible when it amounts to a tank of gas to a worthwhile show.
If you cannot break even from a bar tab’s worth of market entrance fees and yet you feel impoverished by the need to submit your music to EVERY distribution market, you are NOT a musician. You are a poser claiming you are disadvantaged by what you think is the “way” to be a musician.
Edited 2011-11-17 02:17 UTC
So you’re saying that you have to make it live, at a bar or a wedding, before you can sign up with anything beyond your town. Like somehow you have to prove that you’re an artist to bar customers before you can sign up with anything else. Sorry, but this doesn’t work, in many levels. It could be because your music is avant-garde and almost no one would come to see you play (even if your music might be deemed revolutionary 20 years in the future), it could be because you’re a bedroom artist and you write music in your computer, so you never do live performances. It could be because you are not a professional (but still an artist), and just want to give your work for free. Most of the bands I listen to, do NOT play live for some of the reasons listed above. This does not make them “less” artists. Being an artist is not about playing live, that’s a musician, not necessarily an artist. Artist is someone who can communicate feelings and emotions through their music, and many of these bedroom acts do that PERFECTLY, without ever having play live.
If Bandcamp signs up artists for free, why not Google? I want to see Google help true indie artists, and that’s only possible if they remove the $25 fee. There myriads of such artists who just can’t pay that price, but do deserve to be heard.
Edited 2011-11-17 02:38 UTC
No, I’m merely saying that not being able to pay $25 for access to hundreds of millions of audience members doesn’t make you a particularly special musician that needs to be subsidized by Google.
But, yes, it probably suggests that you are a bad “musician” for a series of interrelated reasons not solely due to financial means or whether you perform live or even with skill.
Edited 2011-11-17 02:53 UTC
The $25 fees is probably designed to stop idiot teens from submitting junk. It won’t deter any proper musician.
“it could be because you’re a bedroom artist and you write music in your computer”
and that computer was free as well? or at least cheaper than 25 dollar right?
Seriously, if you can’t find SOME way to pay for this service….just don’t use it. But don’t complain that it is too expensive.
No, they don’t “have to” but perhaps they want to in order to get more exposure than Google/Amazon/Whatever.
It’s no diffrent from the developers though. If they want more exposure than Android they “have to” develop for iphone, iPad, BlackBerry, that-windows-mobile-thing, Bada etc.
In both cases it’s a choice you have to make on where to focus your efforts and how much to spend.
Unless I skimmed over it, this article along with almost every other on the subject avoids mention of this service being USA only. Even most of the releases from Google say “Open to everyone!” and neglect to mention that it’s only available in the united states.
Google Music will sell individual tracks as well as full albums, letting customers store the files in cloud accounts. Customers will be allowed to share music by offering friends one free chance to listen to any purchased track. Its more interesting…http://www.newusanews.com/News-2421702/Media-Decoder-Blog-Google-Op…