Ted Gioia's open letter to Taylor Swift

[timwat]

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/an-open-letter-to-taylor-swift?fbclid=IwAR2hQqZ2LoDgWF4n7VhlirAL4XOYDZpVHWx5w1nGbH-WoKHZkGCSDdXwOoo

 

I'm a fan of Dana Gioia's poetry (Dana is Ted's brother), and six days ago, Ted, a jazz pianist and noted music historian, published this on his The Honest Broker website. After listing the sundry reasons musicians have to bemoan the state of the industry (known all too well to many of us here), he proposes an artist-founded organization (or cooperative) that will put the music first. With Taylor Swift to found it (or, perhaps, co-found it).

 

What you think?

[Bill Heins]

Good idea but I think we need to get to the root of the problem and find a way to make music important to everyday life. Right now it's a disposable commodity with very little allegiance. We live in an age of loopers, dj's, etc. The artist is an endangered species!

 

Bill

[time4jazz]

6 minutes ago, Bill Heins said:

We live in an age of loopers, dj's, etc. The artist is an endangered species!

And AI is just getting started!

[KuruPrionz]

20 minutes ago, Bill Heins said:

Good idea but I think we need to get to the root of the problem and find a way to make music important to everyday life. Right now it's a disposable commodity with very little allegiance. We live in an age of loopers, dj's, etc. The artist is an endangered species!

 

Bill

Truly, the only way I can think of to make people of the world realize the value of music is to eliminate music altogether until everybody comes to their senses. 

We'll start over primitive, clapping hands and singing because we cannot endure the silence. 

 

It won't happen. At least not until it gets much worse. Rick Nelson had it right...

"But it's all right now
I learned my lesson well
You see, you can't please everyone
So you got to please yourself"

 

In the meantime, I am just going to continue to write and record, enjoying the benefits of modern technology while ignoring the cultural deficit. 

We have a few small clubs in town where people go because they love music. I play those places sometimes, everybody else can go hang. ☠️

[ProfD]

Excellent open letter.

 

Hope it sparks action among the musicians community. 

 

Regardless of the outcome, because the music industry is monolithic and greedy, I believe music will go back to grassroots.

 

Artists, bands and musicians will go back to playing live music. They will have to record, mix and master their own recordings to sell at gigs and build a following too.

 

As I've mentioned before, the jamband scene is a good example of how music can move away from the current profit-driven music industry model.

 

It would be awesome for someone like Taylor Swift to help create a new music industry that is more favorable ro artists/musicians.😎

[miden]

43 minutes ago, ProfD said:

Excellent open letter.

 

Hope it sparks action among the musicians community. 

 

Regardless of the outcome, because the music industry is monolithic and greedy, I believe music will go back to grassroots.

 

Artists, bands and musicians will go back to playing live music. They will have to record, mix and master their own recordings to sell at gigs and build a following too.

 

As I've mentioned before, the jamband scene is a good example of how music can move away from the current profit-driven music industry model.

 

It would be awesome for someone like Taylor Swift to help create a new music industry that is more favorable ro artists/musicians.😎

 

Probably only if they see something in it for themselves....it's funny isn't it, that most of use here (even those with the "arse" out of their pants) would cross the street, or town to help out a fellow muso in need, and usually for nothing.....but these super wealthy successful "artists" don't seem to be able to do anything other than "lip service" when it comes to stuff like this, apart from........re-read the original sentence

[Artomas]

We just need to pass a law - maybe call it the Nostalgia Act, to remind the congress of their roots - that makes it so they can't enforce sex and drug laws, involving adults, within earshot of official live music. A porch jam, or someone practicing, wouldn't count. It would have to be a house party at minimum... or maybe only licensed venues. We'd have to work out the details and exceptions and so on, but I think this could really suddenly increase the demand for live music. Culturally, in the US, it's not really that farfetched from how people already kind of expect things to be... you just codify it, make it into the law of the land, is all.

 

I mean, if you want to increase the perception of that people have concerning the value of live music, well, there you go. I know it's "all about the music", but it wouldn't hurt to remind people of the sex and the drugs, too. Instead, people are like, "WTH is that blonde woman doing in the video?!" So, it's going to be an uphill fight. It'll be worth it, though. Venues will be begging you to cover Tuesday, Wednesday, whenever you can make it. At least give it some thought. Okay, maybe not every vice law, but that's the point of the negotiation period.

 

What's your backup plan? NFTs?

[Anderton]

4 hours ago, Bill Heins said:

Good idea but I think we need to get to the root of the problem and find a way to make music important to everyday life.

 

That train has already left the station. Music has been devalued to the point where for $11 a month (Spotify subscription), an individual can listen to over 100,000,000 songs online, and download them as well. There are no filters. There are no reviewers to let you know what you might like. There are only the stupid algorithms that encourage people to avoid listening to anything that might differ from what they've heard before.

 

Taylor Swift can't restore value to music in general. The music industry system is broken only because ALL systems are broken. We no longer live in a society, but a collection of tribes that are dedicated either to greed or self-preservation. The music industry is just collateral damage.

 

It will take much more than Taylor Swift to fix it. I doubt that it can be fixed. The quality of music will simply continue to decline, and the general population won't care because out of those 100,000,000 songs, they can find the ones that were recorded when people gave a damn.

 

Make music for yourself and your friends. That's where the real value is anyway

[Adan]

It's the jewish mother approach to social change. "Taylor, you're wonderful, so much money you have, and you deserve it. So many mitzvahs you could do. Look at your poor cousin Music . . . he can barely afford a pair of shoes . . . "

[CyberGene]

The best music in the world has already been recorded in quantities that can satisfy all the needs for music, for the entire humanity, for centuries to come. Why would one believe that they can still make profits selling records of their own music? And pointing the finger at Spotify et al. It’s just trying to blame it on someone else and refusing to accept some simple truths. In the same way TV-sets replaced the piano, as an entertainment hub at home, music is moving on and the dynamics of our lives are not anymore suited to “buying a CD and wearing the player off with it”.

[Sam Mullins]

10 hours ago, Anderton said:

 

That train has already left the station. Music has been devalued to the point where for $11 a month (Spotify subscription), an individual can listen to over 100,000,000 songs online, and download them as well. There are no filters. There are no reviewers to let you know what you might like. There are only the stupid algorithms that encourage people to avoid listening to anything that might differ from what they've heard before.

 

 

Spotify is a business and they want to provide "value" to their customers only to the extent that it keeps them paying the $11 a month.  I wish the artists got a better cut, but at least it is an up front deal.  No one has to put their music on Spotify and there is no deception that I know of (I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.)  Contrast that with the "good old days" of the record industry where artists were regularly screwed by the record companies and frequently by their own management.

 

I agree that there was value to curation and the shear volume of crap out there makes it difficult to find quality.   OTOH, there are are many people who subscribe NOT to get fed a regular diet of bland, artless music (which of course is most of it) BUT because they can listen to anything.  I used to buy say 50 CD's a year.  I would say that the range of music I listened to when I was paying $15 per CD was far narrower than what I listen to on Spotify.  So the good part is I'm listening to that obscure Benny Golson track from the 60's.  The bad part is Benny isn't getting much out of that.   

 

 

10 hours ago, Anderton said:

 

Make music for yourself and your friends. That's where the real value is anyway

 

I'm sympathetic to musicians and their struggle to make a decent living.  I have no solution to that.   I'm lucky that I am approaching retirement and I won't have to deal with the similar devaluation that will happen in my profession (software engineering) with advances in AI.  

 

But we shouldn't pretend that music careers are a pre-ordained right.  The "music profession/industry" is a fairly recent thing in history.  Yes, there were court musicians and the like, but 150 years ago the vast, vast majority of musicians were people playing for their friends and neighbors.  As Craig suggests, we may be returning to that.  

 

 

[ProfD]

41 minutes ago, Sam Mullins said:

But we shouldn't pretend that music careers are a pre-ordained right.  The "music profession/industry" is a fairly recent thing in history. 

QFT.

 

While it has fed a lot of people over many decades, music is still  entertainment. 

 

As a young person, when I told my parents that I wanted to be a professional musician they encouraged me to pursue a real career.  In their minds, music was great for listening and dancing but they could not see playing music as a career.

 

Since the 1980s, technology has ushered in competing forms of entertainment (video games, cable TV, internet, social media, etc.).

 

Music is still a multibillion industry.  There are many folks who are still getting paid.  Becoming a successful musician requires a lot of effort and luck.😎

[Docbop]

37 minutes ago, Sam Mullins said:

No one has to put their music on Spotify and there is no deception that I know of (I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.)  Contrast that with the "good old days" of the record industry where artists were regularly screwed by the record companies and frequently by their own management.

 

Up and coming artists put their music on Spotify the rest it is the record companies leasing their catalogs putting the music on Spotify and other streaming services. 

 

I would say music (and art) taste in the USA started going down the drain when they started taking music and art classes out of the schools.   The high school I went to had a great music program and turned out a lot of pro musician that went off into be artist and studio musicians and pro musicians many from my time are still making their living in music.    Today the school has zero music programs and programs are going in the school system in general the think by have one high school of performing arts is a substitute for basic music classes at all the school.  Music and art classes teach more than just how to play music they teach creativity and self expression and about looks at the world around us.   We shot ourselves in  the foot letting then schools remove the arts programs. 

[ProfD]

11 minutes ago, Docbop said:

I would say music (and art) taste in the USA started going down the drain when they started taking music and art classes out of the schools. 

As I mentioned above, music and art were not considered gateways to a real career. 

 

It's great that many folks were able to become professional musicians and artists. 

 

Music and arts were not on the career day schedule when I was in school. 🤣😎

[ElmerJFudd]

“We need—and deserve—a trusted organization that nurtures the musical culture, enlists the participation of the best creative artists of our time, and has direct distribution to the fans. Instead of rewarding middleman, it will reallocate cash to showcase and support artistry. The music will come first—instead of last.” 

 

A non-profit music distribution platform?  No fees charged to registered artists that use the platform form to publish their music. Expense of the platform is covered by listener subscription and ad based free subscriptions perhaps.  If you successfully build an audience you start to get a fair cut of the revenue.  Artists maintain ownership of their catalog.  

[ProfD]

4 minutes ago, ElmerJFudd said:

If you successfully build an audience you start to get a fair cut of the revenue.  Artists maintain ownership of their catalog.  

Independent artists/musicians and record companies have been doing that for decades.

 

For example, Phish became highly successful without major label support.😎

[MathOfInsects]

Loopers and DJ's are artists too. 

Until musicians have a union that is as supportive of its apprentices and blue-collar players as other people's unions are, we will continue to be undercut in the market. If our own union doesn't believe in the worth of those in the trenches, why should clubs, venues, promoters, labels, and musicians themselves?



 

[ElmerJFudd]

9 minutes ago, ProfD said:

Independent artists/musicians and record companies have been doing that for decades.

 

For example, Phish became highly successful without major label support.😎

Yes and no.  Phish as the example developed their live audience, revenue from tickets and merch.  I believe the point of the article is the digital audience - the argument is revenue from streaming isn’t fair to the creators. 
 

It will be challenging.  Even if a platform was built, owned and maintained by benevolent people - the app still has to duke it out to get installed onto devices - phones, cars, televisions, home speakers, etc.  There is a lot of competition - Apple Music, Amazon Music, Spotify, TIDAL, Deezer, Pandora, Qobuz, YouTube Music.  But hey, if music creators opted for the benevolent platform and had the guts to pull their music from the services they feel don’t pay enough - well, maybe the artists’ percentage of revenue would improve on all platforms. 🤷‍♂️ 

[MathOfInsects]

13 minutes ago, ElmerJFudd said:

Yes and no.  Phish as the example developed their live audience, revenue from tickets and merch.  I believe the point of the article is the digital audience - the argument is revenue from streaming isn’t fair to the creators. 
 

It will be challenging.  Even if a platform was built, owned and maintained by benevolent people - the app still has to duke it out to get installed onto devices - phones, cars, televisions, home speakers, etc.  There is a lot of competition - Apple Music, Amazon Music, Spotify, TIDAL, Deezer, Pandora, Qobuz, YouTube Music.  But hey, if music creators opted for the benevolent platform and had the guts to pull their music from the services they feel don’t pay enough - well, maybe the artists’ percentage of revenue would improve on all platforms. 🤷‍♂️ 

While the revenue from streaming is indefensibly low right now, I'm not convinced there is an apples-to-apples comparison to be made with physical media. Certainly it needs to be better than it is now. The current state is a relic from when labels still thought they were "competing" with digital distribution, instead of shifting over to it. They've benefitted from this model, disproportionately and massively, for sure. 

But we also don't consume digital media the same way. People pay a flat fee and can listen to songs a billion times or one time, it doesn't make a difference. If they listen a billion times, how can the artist be paid each time for that? No one paid any extra for it. So it's going to cost....who? the extra money to cover all those streams for the flat fee? Labels? This would mean that labels' most popular artists would be the ones they'd lose the most money on. That's backward. Consumers? They'd just stop streaming the tunes that often. That's backward too.

It's ludicrous right now, but I also think it's ludicrous to compare it to physical copies of something. The entire structure/delivery system is different. Something in the middle has to be the answer. I don't know what that thing is. 

[analogika]

1 hour ago, Sam Mullins said:

 

Spotify is a business and they want to provide "value" to their customers only to the extent that it keeps them paying the $11 a month.  I wish the artists got a better cut, but at least it is an up front deal.  No one has to put their music on Spotify

 

I disagree. Not putting stuff on Spotify guarantees invisibility unless you're an already-established artist. At least here in Europe, where Apple Music is an also-ran. 

 

The other thing is — yeah, Spotify is a business. They were founded in 2006, and they have not had a single profitable year, so far. 2022 was $230 million loss. 

So whatever they're doing is shit, all around, apparently. 

[Tusker]

I fully applaud the letter and the goals behind it. We should value contributions to culture as much as we value ownership of it.  I take some of my inspiration from what ProfD said about the Jamband scene and some from the Gutenberg Parenthesis, which asks:

 

Is our emerging digital culture partly a return to practices and ways of thinking that were central to human societies before the advent of the printing press? 

 

Before records, tapes and mp3s, music was always performed or it was a score. Before scoring systems, music was always performed.  Music was magical and shared, not ubiquitous and owned. The internet is the great reset. It eliminates middlemen ruthlessly. Great publishing houses, established news sources and record labels are failing. Spotify and Apple Music are a dead cat bounce. Music will revert to being a great tide of imperfect human experience, sometimes great, sometimes (as with all human efforts) lousy. We won't know till we listen. Just like a Phish bootleg. 😅

 

We can find and value the contributors to culture, not just the owners of it.

[ProfD]

33 minutes ago, ElmerJFudd said:

Yes and no.  Phish as the example developed their live audience, revenue from tickets and merch.

My point is that's what artists, bands and musicians will have to do in the future.

 

Once they've built an audience/demand/following for their music, they'll be able to sell it digitally as well. They get to keep all profits and publishing too.

 

The days of getting signed to major labels, artist & development deals, pressing & distribution deals, etc.,  have faded in the rearview.😎

[SMcD]

1 hour ago, MathOfInsects said:

Loopers and DJ's are artists too. 

 

 

Glad someone said it. Sure, it doesn't take much artistry to make a wedding playlist (although even this type of thing has its own merit), but look at this and tell me they aren't artists. Turntables are an instrument, by any definition.

 

 

[Docbop]

1 hour ago, ProfD said:

As I mentioned above, music and art were not considered gateways to a real career. 

 

It's great that many folks were able to become professional musicians and artists. 

 

Music and arts were not on the career day schedule when I was in school. 🤣😎

I'm not talking about a music in career I talking about kids getting a complete education in art to appreciate the arts and open their eyes and ears to the arts.    Look at how they study the people of a civilization they study the art of the time because expresses how people viewed things.   Music and art teaches about thinking and creativity and expression. 

[Reezekeys]

1 hour ago, ProfD said:

As I mentioned above, music and art were not considered gateways to a real career. 

 

I didn't set out to have a "music career" - the career (such as it is) found me! I find the notion of a music career not being a "real" one a little distasteful to be honest. If I can do something somebody is willing to pay me a living wage for, and continue to do it over a decent amount of time, well there's the possibility it can be a career! 🙂 Whether one wants to deal with the ups & downs of making music a career is up to the individual of course – can't say there aren't downsides! I've done OK, not great. One thing I can claim is that I haven't had to drive to a 5-days-a-week job since my late teens, and I'm about to apply for my social security benefits. At this point I consider myself lucky I'm not younger and having to navigate the current landscape - it's not looking great for those wanting to support themselves (and maybe a family) the way musicians are getting paid these days.

[ProfD]

4 minutes ago, Reezekeys said:

 

I didn't set out to have a "music career" - the career (such as it is) found me! I find the notion of a music career not being a "real" one a little distasteful to be honest.

It wasn't meant to be a knock or negative.  I was just relaying the thought process of folks from previous generations in terms of traditional careers. 

 

It is awesome that many folks like yourself have been able to feed themselves and their families as musicians and artists. 😎

[AROIOS]

18 hours ago, timwat said:

...he proposes an artist-founded organization (or cooperative) that will put the music first. With Taylor Swift to found it (or, perhaps, co-found it).

 

What you think?

1) A few politically correct folks here will correct him about the "state of the industry". In their eyes (ears?), everything is fine and will be fine, he's just stuck in the past.
 

2) A circle jerk organization won't solve the problem for Ted. The average listener's taste is much more a result of "nurture" than "nature" (let's see how fast someone jumps on this with their statistically insignificant anecdotal rebuttal). To "nurture" a generation of paying listeners, you need to control the gatekeepers and channels. Too late, they've all been consolidated.
 

3) Technology has enabled anyone earning minimum wage to create amazing music. If people like him are not after fame and money, why not make money elsewhere and just enjoy making great music (that no one hears or enjoys, I know, I know...🤣)
 

4) Taylor Swift IS part of the problem he's bemoaning, why on earth would he beg the problem to solve itself?

[Anderton]

3 hours ago, CyberGene said:

And pointing the finger at Spotify et al. It’s just trying to blame it on someone else and refusing to accept some simple truths.

 

I don't think anyone "blames" Spotify, Apple Music, etc. They're giving people what they want - unlimited amounts of music, dirt cheap. What I don't understand is how the music streaming platforms haven't figured out that the most successful video streaming platforms offer original content. 

 

I don't pay to subscribe to Apple Music or Spotify. But if Apple dedicated 1% of the budget they have for exclusive Apple TV content as seed money for mind-blowing Atmos projects, that could generate new, fresh, original music created from the ground up for the immersive experience. It would be exclusive to Apple Music. I would definitely pay for that.

 

But none of the audio streaming companies are doing ANYTHING other than serving as distributors who take their cut. Record companies used to seek out talent and give it a platform. Music streaming services are happy to benefit from the work of musicians, but do nothing to foster a steady flow of exciting, creative music in the future. 

[AROIOS]

2 hours ago, Docbop said:

...I would say music (and art) taste in the USA started going down the drain when ...

Let's see how long it takes til a few politically correct folks jump out to deny your observation of declining music taste, and to try gaslight you into believing that everything is fine and you're simply stuck in the past. 😃

[ElmerJFudd]

1 hour ago, ProfD said:

My point is that's what artists, bands and musicians will have to do in the future.

 

Once they've built an audience/demand/following for their music, they'll be able to sell it digitally as well. They get to keep all profits and publishing too.

 

The days of getting signed to major labels, artist & development deals, pressing & distribution deals, etc.,  have faded in the rearview.😎

The argument in the article is that live performance income has dwindled since Covid for most with Taylor being an exception - a resoundingly international phenomenon type exception.  Also pointing out that all employed by her tour are benefiting in a fair way all the way down to bonuses for the drivers.