We know Portishead’s Geoff Barrow isn’t a big fan of streaming economics from his widely-quoted “34,000,000 streams. Income After tax = £1700. Thank U @apple @YouTube @Spotify, especially @UMG_News for selling our music so cheaply” tweet a couple of months ago. In a new interview on the Guardian conducted by fellow musician Stuart Braithwaite (of Mogwai) the pair talk about streaming from another standpoint: its impact on new artists. “You know what it’s like: the bands who come through, it’s about getting an £800 Ford Galaxy so you can drive to your gigs.
Unless you’re trust-funded, most bands struggle like fuck,” says Barrow. “People say, “You have to give [your music] away, then you make a name for yourself, then you can play live to make your money.” But for young bands, it’s impossible to make money from playing live… Maybe in the early 90s you could put out an indie record with a bit of press and sell 5,000 or 10,000 records, which you might see a couple of grand from, but you’re not going to get that now. Today you’ll be lucky if you sell 500.” Braithwaite adds that it’s labels that subsidise “the gap from getting there to selling a few thousand records” and worries that if labels’ appetite for this investment fades “it’s just going to be trust-fund kids who can put music out”. Addressing these criticisms is going to be an important task for Spotify and other streaming services in the months ahead.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools :: We Are Giant
With “fan communities” being on every artist’s team’s mind, we’re fans of the fact that…