Bono is taking the defense of the big guy? What’s new? According to the Guardian, the famous singer described Spotify as ‘an experimental period’, at the Web Summit conference in Dublin, ‘Let’s experiment. Let’s see what works.’
Let’s see what works? We already know what’s not working, this Pitchfork article by Damon Krukowski (of Galaxie 500 and Damon & Naomi) two years ago had already put all the cards on the table regarding streaming services:
‘Galaxie 500’s ‘Tugboat’, for example, was played 7,800 times on Pandora that quarter, for which its three songwriters were paid a collective total of 21 cents, or seven cents each. Spotify pays better: For the 5,960 times “Tugboat” was played there, Galaxie 500’s songwriters went collectively into triple digits: $1.05 (35 cents each)’. And if you want more of these stupefying data, Daft Punk’s hit, ‘Get Lucky’, reached 104,760,000 Spotify streams by the end of August 2013, but the two Daft Punk guys made around $13,000 each! So $0.00012 per stream….
Nevertheless, Bono doesn’t consider Spotify as the enemy ‘When people pick on Spotify: Spotify are giving up 70 percent of all their revenues to rights owners. It’s just that people don’t know where the money is because the record labels haven’t been transparent.’ He continued later: ‘The music business has historically involved itself in quite considerable deceit,” he said. “But if we change that a bit, and people can actually see how many times [songs are] being played, where they’re being played, get access to information on the people who are listening to them, get paid direct debit…. I think those payments will add up to something, as the world gets more transparent.’
Bono talking about transparency made me choke on my lunch but what’s the hell is he talking about? Aren’t the Daft Punk numbers above speaking by themselves? Very little adds up and almost nothing ends up in the artist’s pocket. Transparency is there already, labels keep a big chunk of the money, Spotify the rest, and artists got pennies.
But Bono’s constant optimism is disarming: ‘I think artists should be paid way more than they are. But the greatest way you serve your songs is to get them heard.’
How could anyone disagree with such a declaration? And how much did he get paid for serving us such obviousness? And then he becomes almost indecent: ‘I’m already paid too much, I’m a spoiled rock star. I’m the wrong spokesperson for this, but I have to tell you: if I were starting a band now, aged 17 or 18, I would be very excited…. Though it is clear that there are some traumas as we move from physical to digital and 20th century to 21st century, and the people paying the highest price for those traumas are songwriters rather than performers, I still think forming a band is so exciting.’
‘I prefer it when we are in charge of our own destiny. What I would like to see is a station where tech companies cross-fertilise with cultural companies, and I think our voices will then be naturally more heard, more understood and therefore more valuable’.
Of course Bono is the wrong person to talk about this, he is super rich and choose to ignore he didn’t get his money from Spotify streams. He was just lucky to be in a pre-internet band. ‘A station where tech companies cross-fertilise with cultural companies’?? His discourse never makes sense to me, people and companies want to make money, any business is pitiless and cruel, but Bono is talking about music business as a Sunday preacher would about the promised land. Bla bla bla. David Byrne once said that his song his song ‘Lazy’, which got number 1 in the UK, brought about $700 to the label through streaming services, then the label gave him about 15% that he had to split with the DJ who created the song with him: he got about $40,… or lunch money as he called it! So allow me to be skeptical about all this.
Once again, Bono is really saying nothing about stuff he knows nothing about or chooses to ignore, he is out of touch with reality because sitting on his big pile of dollars. Bono should just shut up, he is totally irrelevant but his pompous ass can’t realize it and every time he opens his mouth, he gets more enemy…. Starting a band is exciting? Probably but these days, making money in this business is less than exciting because almost impossible.
