The Regular Friday Post

Rando lyrics: You can never escape You can only move south down the coast

Nov 17, 2023

Last week’s rando lyrics: The lyric, “When you gets up in the morning, When that big bell ring”, is from the well-known song “The Midnight Special”. The version I chose the lyrics from is the version found on “The Authorized Lead Belly Collection”. Many variations of the lyrics to the song have appeared over time. The song is on today’s WIL2 playlist at the bottom of this post.

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“"Midnight Special" is a traditional folk song thought to have originated among prisoners in the American South.[1] The song refers to the passenger train Midnight Special and its "ever-loving light" (sometimes "ever-living light").
The song is historically performed in the country-blues style from the viewpoint of the prisoner and has been performed by many artists…
…Lyrics appearing in the song were first recorded in print by Howard Odum in 1905…
…Only two versions of the song have reached the US Billboard Hot 100. Paul Evans recorded the highest-charting version of "Midnight Special," reaching number 16 in the winter of 1960. Five years later, Johnny Rivers' version reached number 20 in 1965. The Johnny Rivers version was used as the theme for the NBC music program The Midnight Special.”

Credit: Wikipedia Link: Midnight Special

Shameless Self Promotion Section:

My song is out! Link: “Long Road Back” (click on link for streaming options)…

…it’s also on the playlist at the bottom of the page in case I’m not with Spotify for much longer…..see why below!!!

Welcome to The Regular Friday post!

For Today, A Rant! With Links! And differing points of view!

First up is Mr. Tony Van Veen, CEO of Disc Makers, who is kinda fired up. So am I. If you’re an independent artist, going through a publishing admin like CD Baby Pro or Songtrust and then through a distributor like CD Baby or Distrokid or Tunecore, you should be, too.

Definitely watch this YouTube video where Mr. Van Veen explains the situation and uses some bad words (I’m about to as well, just sayin’), and he explains it well. For the record, I agree with his first and second points completely as well as the all-important third point!

Point number one is “ambient noise” tracks - (note this doesn’t refer to LoFi music, which is a thing - and a good thing) - instead it’s recorded monotonous sounds: rain, vacuum cleaners (didn’t know that was a thing….), waves, or maybe industrial noises, etc that are low rumbles or something. Apparently people listen to these types of track to help fall asleep. Which is great.

But, combine that with the fact that streams “monetize” after 30 seconds of play (I’m not sure if it’s unique to Spotify in particular or all streaming services, I suspect it’s industry wide, but I dunno). That means on Spotify anyway, once a stream passes the minimum for a “per stream” payment, that is, 31 continuous seconds of play, the artist “earns payment” for one “stream”. Note: “earns payment” and “gets paid” are two different points in time, and often the gap is substantial - this “time gap” is going to be very important later on in the rant.

One stream earns about 3/1000s of a cent (.003 cents) on Spotify, even if it only lasts 31 seconds.

(Ed. - I know there is evidence that holds that one stream gets some minuscule percentage calculated on all streams and available revenue - or something. To my knowledge, it still pretty much works out to just .003 cents with little variance over time, so….)

So if, in order to get to sleep, you have to listen to about 15 minutes of ambient, white noise, and you put the rainfall or waves or whatever streaming tracks that are only exactly 31 seconds long on repeat, you’ll have to repeat around 30 times, meaning 30 separate royalty paying streams on Spotify. Other streaming services - also called “DSPs”, may pay more per stream, or require a longer play to monetize, or both. So, I’m in total agreement that content which is just ambient, white noise (distinguished from LoFi music, and any other form of actual music that’s created, composed and performed by a human), should have a much longer minimum time than 30 seconds in order to monetize, and four minutes is fine with me.

Before we go further, what’s a DSP? In this context, a DSP is a “Digital Service Provider” - see detailed explanation here: DSPs Explained

Be a bit careful - a “DSP” can also be a “Demand Side Platform” which is a software solution to allow advertisers to place ads within content - if you’re on Twitter (now X), you know exactly what that means…

For our purposes today, a DSP is a service provider that allows music and other content (podcasts, videos) to be streamed, normally on a subscription model. Common examples are Apple, Amazon, Pandora and Spotify - there are lots of others.

When you sign up with and pay for your music to be distributed through CD Baby, Distrokid or other service, the distributor essentially contracts with the 70 or so DSPs out there on your behalf to make your song or songs “available” to be played by people who are subscribed to one (or more) of the DSPs . When they do play the required minimum time (at least 31 seconds of your song on Spotify - others may have different time requirements before they “monetize”) the DSP agrees they owe you something. “Something” is different for each DSP, and Apple and Amazon pay a bit more per stream than others.

So next (which I’m also in agreement with Mr. Van Veen on) is artists who fraudulently make use of what are essentially “click farms” (I made that up, I don’t know if that’s what they’re called). I assume without knowing that’s where someone who has a song on Spotify (and maybe other DSPs) pays a person or organization to play 31 seconds (or other required minimum time) of their song over and over in order to monetize their song, but not because legitimate audiences find the song popular, and maybe not to “just” to get a tiny payment each time, but also to make their song appear more popular with a larger fan base/audience than it really is. In addition to the meager earnings, a noticeable rise in apparent popularity may attract the attention of a label or other “industry” types - bloggers or “influencers” (whatever that is) and whatnot. Totally in agreement to ban the artist and shut down the click operation if it can be found.

Finally, Mr. Van Veen alleges Spotify is going to simply not pay earnings to artists who don’t have at least 1000 streams in a year, apparently per song. I’m not sure how Spotify thinks they can do this legally, especially if the song is copyrighted by the composer, publisher and owner of the sound recording.

Let me revisit that last part, we’ve talked about it a number of times but I want to distinguish the term “royalty” (which Mr. Van Veen uses) between those owed statutorily to a copyright holder, and those agreed to by a person who consents as a matter of contract to temporarily "sell” the right to stream their song or songs on a DSP. If my songs are streamed, the “royalties” generated are in part what I’ve contracted with DSPs through a distributor to pay me individually per stream or download. The other part is statutory royalties paid as per the contract to the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC), which then pays me. Why the MLC, a nonprofit agency designated by the US Copyright Office and not some other agency, either governmental or private? Because that’s what the Music Modernization Act requires and the beginning date for the arrangement was January 1, 2021, almost 3 years ago now. Here are a couple of links that provide perhaps some clarifying information.

MMA And Royalties

So for a while, Spotify and maybe some other streaming services who follow their model, will - unless they are enjoined or temporarily restrained by court order pending the outcome of inevitable litigation - enjoy some greater revenue by cutting expenses, but, IMHO, that’s going to be a very short term gain as they lose user base in the form of all the artists, like me, that they aren’t paying, and all the customers who want music other than just whatever is left.

Yes, I know this isn’t everyone’s thing. If you’re a consumer, but not a creator, of music in any of the ways it might reach you, this may be sort of esoteric stuff. I’ll make a brief case to the extent that if you enjoy streaming services for the ability to listen to songs (or podcasts for that matter) that are not squarely in the mainstream, and by that I mean not on any of the myriad of charts, not on satellite radio, not on terrestrial radio (does anyone listen to that anymore?), not on YouTube or anywhere else, then you may wish to consider the downstream effects of Spotify’s potential actions.

Why? I’ll list a few reasons that come to mind:

-If you’re an artist like me or you support independent artists like me, who have first:

- copyrighted every aspect of every song that I have or will release with the US Copyright Office, to include my copyrights as a composer, publisher (which I had to create a business entity for - in my case an LLC), and sound recording,

and second:

-has invested a fair amount of money in things that have gotten me to this point to include: guitars, keyboards, computers, monitors, interfaces, microphones, headphones, microphone stands and other stands of various sorts, tables to hold all of that stuff, miles of cables, and a portion of my house that’s acoustically isolated to some extent, and after all that, I now will have exactly $0 to show for it and since I will not have even a statement that I did in fact sell songs (for which I’m no longer being paid) - and well, guess what: I probably lose the tax advantage of depreciating all of that expensive equipment and stuff. But the “bigs” and their record labels will certainly get every tax advantage their highly paid (with some of my money) tax lawyers can find.

-There will be, in my opinion without doubt, a fairly massive class action lawsuit filed in fairly short order (guess which profession is going to make bank off of that….). Individual artists won’t be able to make a case for royalties of a minimal amount by themselves. No one’s going alone into Federal court for a hundred bucks or less in royalties - and copyright and patent are constitutionally Federal in nature - See United States Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8). A whole bunch of us will be happy to join together to pay lawyers, though, and the other streaming services may just want to sit that one out for a bit and watch to see if Spotify will get their ass kicked - in my opinion only, that’s exactly what will happen. But what do I know? I’m apparently just a “garbage artist” (that won’t make sense if you skipped Mr. Van Veen’s video). We’ll see, Big Ass Music Jerk quoted in the video! I hope Elon buys you and shows up with a sink.

-If you want to decide what you listen to, and not have that decision made for you by someone in Nashville, New York, Los Angeles, and probably a few (very few) other places, you may want a streaming service where relatively (or even completely) unknown artist’s works are available to you, so you get to decide what you like and don’t like. Spotify may not be that service much longer. I suspect the other streaming services will, if not deterred by court action, quickly begin competing for the one thing that Spotify really does have going for it in addition to the large number of available songs, and that’s the ease with which a user can pull together and share a playlist across platforms and applications.

-On the other hand, if Spotify could pull this off, then a lot, if not most or all of the other streaming services are likely going to follow. I get it, everyone has administrative costs, servers and backups and accounting costs, as well as compliance with laws and regulations - and vendors and especially shareholders, at least some of which in Spotify’s case, are music companies (hmm, I want to use that “A” word, but I think I’ll just stick to Japanese: Zaibatsu…). All of that can get to be expensive, because vendors need to be paid, and shareholders expect return on their investments. That said, if Mr. Van Veen’s sources are correct, and I have no reason to believe they aren’t, the ~2/3 of Spotify artists that could be affected by this probably aren’t going to be Spotify subscribers much longer, and if some or many of the other streaming platforms follow suit, they’re going to lose subscribers as well. I know they’ll lose me - I certainly didn’t acquire equipment and pay for all the things required to get a mastered song out the door just to have Spotify decide somebody who has all of that stuff paid for on their behalf by a label needs my money more. I’ll migrate solely to the ones that give me choices and ease of use, and doesn’t treat my music as “garbage”. Meaning that $11.99 a month per user gross income is likely going to have a lot smaller user base to satisfy, but with a lot less user generated gross income to do it with. If folks want to listen to artists other than the “majors” - a euphemism for record label artists - then I and probably “we” will be taking that money to someplace where we can, and somebody else is going to quickly figure out there’s a fairly large base of former Spotify users who want their freedom in music browsing choices back.

Studebakerify may not be just a made up word…..

So, here’s the “other side”, sorta, to this:

Spotify Royalty Model - the title of this is: “A Thousand Streams in Your Pocket: Spotify’s New Royalty Model Explained by an Expert” - go ahead, click the link and read it before I shred it, please…

…except the “expert” is the president of a distribution company, in competition with the “bigs” like CD Baby, Distrokid and Tunecore, and sounds a little desperate. Here’s the “tell”:

“1000 streams in a 12-month period accounts for, at most, $3.00 in earnings. $3.00 is well below the threshold at which almost every distributor allows artists to transfer earnings into their own bank accounts. In other words, this is money that isn’t currently making it to artists in the first place.”

I added the italics to that quote from the article: “…money that isn’t currently making it to artists in the first place.”… because it is, to be charitable, misleading at best, but in my opinion: “Mostly bullshit”.

Here’s why - CD Baby (the distributor I use, so it’s the only one I’m familiar with) doesn’t pay out royalties until they reach a $25.00 minimum. I agreed to that as part of the contract I made with CD Baby to have my songs distributed by them. If I only get 1000 streams per year for one song on Spotify, and zero streams on any other DSP, it will take over 8 years for me to see that sweet, sweet, $25.00 royalty check show up. CD Baby, or maybe CD Baby Pro, the publishing admin associate of CD Baby, will get the interest while my royalties add up to $24.99, at which point they’ll have to start thinking about writin’ that check. Except it won’t even be a check, it’ll be a transfer into the checking account for my publishing entity. They don’t even have to buy an envelope or stamp….

And there are many more royalty dollars destined (perhaps) eventually for artists like me sitting in interest bearing accounts for distributions that haven’t made the minimum for distribution yet (and possibly never will because other artists essentially abandoned their song and/or dream). So CD Baby, Distrokid, and Tunecore (or perhaps their associated publishing admins) are happily enjoying the benefits of the miracle of compound interest to come while I (we) wait.

In my humble opinion, our “expert”, the prez of some also-ran distribution company is pissed her company isn’t one of the “bigs” so she can have some extra helpings of that sweet, sweet compound interest, and Spotify is pissed they’re not in the sweet compound interest game at all and would like to give my money to people who haven’t earned my money, but do make a lot of money for Spotify off of a tremendous number of .003 cent each clicks.

So, who loses? Good question, because somebody has to lose in order for all of these rich folks to make mo’ money. And really, we already know the answer - it’s the little folk like us who paid money to some company who doesn’t think they’re rich enough even though they’ve figured out how to shaft the streaming services who really, really don’t think they’re rich enough.

So, moving on from the wrathful, fire breathing, straight razor totin’ rant for now - I think the major issues here are demonetizing legitimate artists who are just starting out and may want to build an audience over time with songs released over a period of months, even years, and artists who can lawfully claim depreciation on their investments in equipment and facilities for tax purposes, and/or singer-songwriters that want to attract co-writers or collaborators, especially ones that are already known in the business.

And beyond those sort of reasonable considerations, even artists that are in reality little more than hobbyists, are still entitled to and therefore rightfully demand that lawfully earned royalties not be stolen from them under the sham “it’s (somehow) better for everyone” rubric. Past all of those reasons is probably “the real” real issue: Who’s getting the money? In this case “the money” is pretty clearly the interest on deferred payment of royalties, which are not being stolen, but held under a contractually agreed upon requirement to meet a minimum amount in order to qualify for distribution.

Your mileage may vary.

Thus endeth the rant and I have cat pictures and links I didn’t even get to last week to do. Thanks for letting me vent (again)!!

Other Voices

Chris Dalla Riva writes the Substack “Can’t Get Much Higher” and has a different take on the Spotify issue:

Why Is Everyone Mad At Spotify?

Mr. Dalla Riva is one of the smart, good guys on Substack - informative and well-reasoned newsletters distinguish his writing. I think we may not completely agree on the Spotify issue, at least at this moment, and it may very well be one of those issues that works itself out for everyone. This is a good, balanced look, well worth the read and he’s a great Substack writer to subscribe to.

Some Links for today:

"Slash" chords - no, not that “Slash”! These are chords like G/B or D/F# - read as “G over B”, or “D over F#”. They’re cool and add a cool dimension to playing and songwriting, this is a video on a Rumble channel that’s devoted to guitar playing and specialized lessons.

From Carvin Audio:

Bass Mixing Tricks

A bunch from the Disc Makers blog:

How To Write A Song….simple as….

Dynamics In Music - Musicians constantly need to be thinking about this - it’s one of the most important concepts in interesting performances

Music Promotion On Instagram - Interesting….

Build A Melody - it’s not as easy as it sounds - good stuff here, with a healthy but easily understood bit of music theory - pretty basic, but good instruction

Streaming vs CDs - Streaming’s cheap, CDs last a long time

Several from Songtown:

Don't Lose Songwriting Innocence - LOL, these guys are assuming I had any to begin with - pretty funny!

5 Reasons To Keep Writing - Good advice, difficult to follow….sigh…

Songwriter Interview - I always enjoy reading stuff with folks who do it so well.

Constant Inspiration Yes…but…

From Acoustic Guitar Magazine:

Getting Started With Home Recording - I think this is a good primer - lots to unpack, and I wouldn’t take those gear choices to heart without doing a lot of comparison shopping. Always check Excellent and Mint used gear on Reverb before getting too far into gear mania… just sayin’…

This Substack is free, I receive no compensation of any kind from companies or products I mention. Some linked or quoted material may be copyrighted by others, and I credit them. I rely on the “Fair Use” doctrine for educational purposes (Link: Fair Use). I do not use AI, things I link to might though. -Michael Acoustic