To most judgmental parasites, who haven’t seen one of your many videos (Ill save you the trouble) by explain to there close minded prehistoric brains.. Ben was once a Golden gloves boxer, and an MMA fighter.. The eyebrow is not fashion, it came from taking a hit, that almost ripped his eye out.. All part of the sport 🫶🏻 So, have fun making fun of him in person.. A true wolf in sheep’s clothing 😉🇮🇪
Makes no sense to me how if something is even slightly unique about someone's appearance, some people just can't deal with it and have to ask the person about it or why it's there, no matter how benign it is.
"Solve a problem and you won't have to evangelize blockchain" This, sir, would be the most concise way to sum up my feelings about crypto in general. Thankyou for this!
super appreciate learning about Exportify. Losing my playlists has been one of my biggest obstacles to leaving the platform. Also, I fully support copyright ending at death, but unfortunately most artists don't own their work and major labels rarely "die".
A somehow better alternative IMHO would be for the copyright to end after a far more logical time limit than it is today. 10, maybe 20 years. I don't see why a copyrighted work should provide it's creator income "for life".
@@lindenbasket I just put the songs on a cloud service (some are free if you don't have many songs/use up lots of data space, or you can use multiple email accounts for example for completely free cloud services) and stream from there or I just download the songs to a file and listen from that.
@@djgeorgetsagkadopoulosNo way, that's too short. We musicians want to have kids man! We want to leave assets. Yes, investments, property, etc but ownership of our recorded creative works is also an asset and one very close to our heart.
🙌Thanks for your thoughtful response here. I appreciate what you do! Also the caveats you have to pile on re: shorting, etc. 100% respect your skin in the game here. And admittedly part of my response was based on the me being in the minority of people who Spotify boosts algorithmically, where they're effectively paying me to put my music in front of new listeners. Especially appreciate your take on physical media as not as virtuous as people make out. I've pointed many people to your vinyl video. As an ex-Earth scientist, it hurts to have so many people point at vinyl and shipping things around (and blockchain! and don't @ me proof-of-stake fans). Also appreciate the callout of Audius's scammy, pump-and-dump shaped strategy. Mentioned this elsewhere on the other video -- open source software saw one of the most enormous wealth transfers, from developers to tech giants, in that Amazon, Google, and others built their cloud empires on free and open source software without paying the people who made it (except occasional voluntary contributions back). Those of us who make things that fall under the IP bucket have to be very careful, it's one of the few paths to owning something of value without having to buy it. But it's also the most imaginary form of property, requiring social contracts and behavioral norms for people to get paid. And there are vultures ready to descend if we're not vigilant about protecting it. The most important thing to do right now is exactly what you're doing: starting the conversation then keeping it going. So thank you! We all need to keep this discussion going until we can figure out some place that's better than where we are now and realistic steps we can take to get there.
I came out of the last video in bit of a soul crushing funk. This, like so many other real world problems, just feels so big and complex that I struggle to wrap my head around a solution. I love that you are both a champion for these solutions and a voice of calm reason in a sea of typical binary rage. As someone who has obviously done a lot of work getting informed about the problem and it’s solutions (or potentials) how can I learn more about being part of that solution (in addition to the info from your patreon)?
True, tech in general and the web in particular seems to be moving into ever more exclusive set of companies that get to set the rules. This is in essence a tech problem in addition to IP-law/capitalism problem. With spotify it's very similar to audible, where there's no way to compete with it and anyone who tried would run into the same issues Benn highlighted in his video. I'm not a Spotify hater, I love the convenience and feel absolutely zero guilt from using it. That being said, would I want there to be competition and see creators paid well? Yes, yes I would (also fuck the labels). I've never made enough money to spend on all the music I listen to though, and if there was no Spotify, I would pirate my music like I used to. What I think will happen is that slowly but surely the prices for streaming go up, and piracy goes up as well. I don't see these companies completely failing, just bleeding the industry dry without addressing the underlying problems. I hope someone smarter than me comes up with a way to do all of this open source with a model that pays artists and cuts the middle men while keeping all the functionality and piracy low with low pricing.
There isn't much we can do about anything outside of our local bubble. Change what you can, break what you have to, try to do things that will help you sleep and enjoy your short little amazing blip in time.
Thank you for taking the time to dig into this and taking the time to address the peanut gallery. It matters and it's good content and it's gratefully received.
A great solution for the $ per stream problem would be a setup like this: After Spotify/Apple Music/etc take their 30% cut of the subscription fee the rest gets distributed between the songs a subscriber actually listen to. So if I listen to a indie artist a lot they would get a lot of the subscription fee I’m paying. That way small artist could earn a great living with a relative small fan base. No other solution would be needed.
I was talking same thing some time ago. Spotify (and others) are actually ripping off millions of small artists and their algorithm works in favour of big names. There should be no algorithms but only music library browser by various categories so everyone has a chance of being discovered Btw, I recently quit making music… Costs a lot in time and money for virtually no return…
@@FlatTire Almost 80% of the customer base love those playlist(even though its bad for smaller artists). You can't take away what people love, because the act of promoting only few artists in itself doesn't cause any harm to anyone. So, a proper solution would look like a open sourced algorithm with no bias to anyone or something similar. For the record, I do not believe this would work in any meaningful way too.
You should absolutely do financial pundit work for different platforms about this. It’s really interesting and will help the music industry as a whole. You’ve already elevated the conversation at multiple music companies I know of
Every time i listen to you, I can hear and feel the commonsense oozing from every fiber of your being. Thank you. And I hope without sounding patronizing, keep up the very good work!
I have to say I am so fucking tickled that one of my favourite electronic artists in some of the most formative years of my life puts out content like this.
I think 5 years is also enough for the family to manage their new financial situation. (Move to a more affordable house, adjust the overall lifestyle...)
The internet might have been more tasteful if Tim Berners-Lee had said "I've created the world wide web, but no one is allowed to freely access it until 75 years after I've died".
What’s the reality of Spotify putting in a “tip” system. Seems simple to implement. Tip icon lives next to the Heart icon. Set a flat tip amount. $0.10 or $0.25? Your subscription includes $1.00 into your tip account every month. Also unlike the Heart icon it resets every 30 days so you may re-tip a given song again and again. I know this is only a couple million a month spread out but it is moving towards a balance point between the service and the artist. Again, this seems soooooo easy to implement.
Not in agreement with your assessment of Spotify and streaming, but your breakdown on how much it would cost to return to physical formats was brilliant. Great work there. Thank you.
Hey. UK here. Our economy is fuc*ed. If any of these subscription services start to jack their prices, which they inevitably will, I’m done. Most people in the UK are going to have to start making hard choices about what they can and can’t afford and I’m pretty sure Spotify will be getting the chop in a time where a lot of people in the UK are struggling to feed their children or heat their homes. These streaming services have started to reach their natural, capitalist conclusion. Walled Gardens. Jacked prices. Format Fog. Artists with no leverage or ownership of their work. At this point piracy seems more moral than paying these streaming companies.
to be honest, glad to hear your economy is f'ed... makes great musicians! and you where already my top ranked country for music. greetings and al jokes aside best of luck, your equally efffd dutch neighbor
Non-competitive, monopoly-market, cronyism capitalism isn't the 'natural conclusion' of whatever you think capitalism is. What exists now is corruption, and just as I wouldn't measure the merits of communism against Stalin's or Mao's corrupt and fascist implementations, I wouldn't do the same to this abomination of the free* market we have currently.
As a fellow composer, musician and artist, conversations like these are so vital and frequent in the scenes man; I just hope we can really make it work fairly and justly for all of us, consumers and creatives alike!
As a new artist I'm avoiding streaming and using YT and a web platform called Reward Music which is artist centric. Benn I really appreciate all of your content.
I love your sense of Justice and your ideal of "growing the pie" instead of making it smaller. That's a philosophy I personally stand by. Question: what's your take on being a pessimist? How does this effect your mental health and overall quality of life? I ask because I personally struggle with this at times and then feel the obligation to just ignore all that's at stake and pretend things are gonna be ok 🙄 - like the glass is half full kinda guy..
13:29 love that you say "we" when talking about what future generations wont understand about our intellectual property scheme. Wholesome af. Great video. Always appreciate your educational content, which is actually how i discovered your youtube. Though recently I dove into your discography and its so fucking good I cant begin to describe how much it had elevated my mood the last couple of weeks so thank you so much!
I have a huge streak of natural grey hairs in my hair and i'm a dude with long dark brown hair in my early 20s but we look fucking cool bro, ignore the bad comments Also I love your view on art and especially on the question about ethics on streaming dead musicians music. True artist right here
For me, ur eye brow was a unique identification of ur existence in this universes, hence it was a manifestation of a gifted talent on the usage of ur “right brain” creativity hemisphere, that get reflected on left part of the body, 🤩
Not a complete equivalent to Funkwhale (As it's not free or open source) would be something like Roon. For those of you who want a more smooth transition from streaming to files Roon is great as you can connect it to streaming services temporarily as you try and build up your collection of music that you can listen to for the long term. They also have EQ and other features built in that somewhat justify the price tag. Not trying to sell for them just a big fan of their service.
I recently built a home server, for NAS and some other stuff, you really inspired me to start putting my music collection on there and build my personal streaming platform
side note -- your videos always help me either improve or gain insight into my job as a product manager at a health care startup -- no sarcasm, honestly. and i think you know what i mean. love the content thanks for the quality
Benn, I value your opinion. People can stink. Keeping it clean for RUclips. I would love to hear you talk about your mix/mastering process. I too mix my own music, but pay for mastering. Keep up with the good work.
I'm not sure if you had to think about, whether or not to keep the comments up while you talk about their very topic, but I think it's a great design choice, it kept my ADHD brain concentrated on what you were talking about. The mind is full of mysteries.
Saw the first video based on this video....enjoyed it. Personal opinion: around 97-2000 we had the perfect (not literal) setup. You could buy a cd and play it on your portable cd player. You could buy a cassette and play it on your walkman. As someone who purchased at least 3-5 of both, it's 100% worth it in the long term. Yes, you don't have the convivence of accessing any music from around the world within seconds, but you can make a philosophical (and maybe scientific) argument that maybe we weren't ever meant to. We already have proof that if you look at a food menu with a huge amount of options, humans have a tougher term with that. We aren't designed for that level of options or multi-tasking. Personally, I could care less if any of these streaming services burn and collapse (I'm an LG V series user who always uses local music, for context) considering they don't care about listeners, it's just coincidence that you as a consumer can benefit from their product. Sometimes technology doesn't have to grow further or "innovate". It's the same reason why in 2023 someone who isn't even 25 (I myself am in my mid 30s) will find joy in purchasing a vinyl record when's that's been obsolete for decades now (I love all physical media except 8-track, for context). As a failed musician, the HONEST perspective to being a successful (relative) musician you need to get out the house to perform, you need to get out the house and personally sell your music. It's a double edge sword of expense that also forces you not to create 8 albums within 2 months (like a ton of artists do now a days) to saturate things. I'm super sure people will disagree with me but we've done things one way and we're in a mess now with people too obsessed with the future to admit defeat.
thank you for talking about the "consumer" argument because so many people in the comments were not seeing those points you raised and it frustrated me lol
Ben long time listener first time caller. Just want to say that I love your videos and the breadth of topics that you cover. Your communication skills are outstanding as is the thought and research you put into these videos. Thank you.
same here in italy. originally it was a standalone tax that was tied to the tv you had in the house, but over the past 10-15 years with the decline in popularity of the tv medium more and more people stopped owning a tv altogether, so that tax is now part of the energy bill so that nobody can escape it. gotta love this country
in France govt just cancelled it, it finances public TV and radio networks which are very popular hère (1st morning show is public, one of the tv stations financed prominent french youtubers...)
Same in Austria. The 'tax' part always leads to a bit bloated and entitled orgs (less incentives to be efficient), and politicians always try to influence them, but having said that I still think it's a good approach and I was sad to hear that France ended it. You have to pick your poison somewhere, and the tradeoffs of these public broadcasters work for me at least.
11:05 I'd actually love to see maybe an in-depth explanation or tutorial on something like this. That and if alternatives are better than Plex, because when I went to look it up, there was much discourse over it - I was hearing about stuff like Emby, Kodi, Jellyfin, and I don't even know where to start or what's better for simply organizing and playing my music conveniently on my devices. Would love to hear more about it. EDIT: Actually, that decentralized music streaming thing you mention at the end of the video sounds like one of the things I should learn about first. Either way, thanks for another video with further discussion!
Nice job accepting and learning from critical feedback. This seems like a healthy approach. Especially how you found a way to learn from insulting shitposts.
Had Spotify for a while but I just felt so surveilled by the algorithm and stopped using it. I recently uploaded all my music to dropbox (apx 2000 cds) and stream it to myself using the Evermusic app. Works great except that the play / shuffle options are a bit weird. Downside is not getting “new” music, but honestly there’s so much in my own collection I hear something new every time.
That's so awesome. CDs are great, I have a CD player built into my PC and a discman w/ a case for on the go. The fact you can then export it into an mp3 or flac is just so much bang for buck. I'm so glad it's not as price gouged as vinyls ❤️
I find it quite mad that there are lots of (mostly older) people that never listen to new music (Spotify's own research suggests interest in new music tapers off rapidly for most people in their thirties) and yet they keep paying their monthly subs for the convenience of having access to music they already paid for. It would be crazy to keep paying for the vinyl and books on my shelves, so it seems weird to keep paying Spotify for music I can download.
I only play devil's advocate with people who i'm really comfortable with, and even then i seem to piss them off about half of the time. Kudos for having the balls to do this on a public platform! In all seriousness, i've been crypto-curious since 2012, and i lost most faith in it's original anarchistic goals by the 2017 bubble when it became just another asset for daytraders to get stressed over. Nevertheless i was somewhat enthusiastic about the idea of nft's and it's possible use for authorship and copyright. But the thing i never saw addressed in the whole hype is the fact that you need enforcement. From the get-go every nft holder has this idea that "i own the nft minted for , so i own the rights", but as far as i know not a single legislative institute has accepted nft's as a proof of copyright. I often hear the comparison that buying an nft is like buying the receipt to something, i would argue it's more akin to a receipt of a sale scribbled on a napkin, hoping napkins will one day be the receipt standards legally. And given the amount of useless tokens out there you can mint nft's on, i would argue the napkin is written on in pencil.
I've long wanted a legal framework for licensing for software and media where, upon purchase, you're granted a license that can be moved without cost between licensing services-such that the shutdown of a service (e.g. Walmart and Microsoft's music service, or a software store like Steam or Origin) guarantees the export of a license, which could be transferred or used to prove purchase. Currently, the stores are each individually responsible for payment, distribution, and license tracking, and they provide no integration between them. I'm pushing for a legally-enforced integration of the license tracking so that users wouldn't be beholden to the various walled gardens for IP access, and content producers wouldn't be beholden to the same walled gardens for everything at the 30-50% costs that are currently charged. Ideally, licensing would be tracked at regional, centralized locations run by non-profits and using modern security with things like 2FA. Services could link to the centralized service with OAuth, check with the service for licensing, and, if they're licensed to distribute, provide it to the consumers. If they're not licensed, a 3rd-party hand-off mechanism could be provided to enable content providers to distribute solely from their own servers. Most would probably opt to either distribute through the app stores or through a hosted service. With this, walled-garden app stores are essentially in charge of purchasing (optional) and distribution, which means they need to focus on improving their experience. It would also mean that 3rd party sales, transfers and lending of content would be more permissable - within reason. Honestly, an entire non-profit industry of collective IP could spring up around libraries. This does mean that, since the app is no longer getting 30% of the pie at purchase, they're no longer incentivized to provide free downloads forever for their users' multi-terabyte content, but actual transfer costs would be in the realm of a few dollars per-year, and download counts could carry over with the licensing to new services. You'd have to mandate that a certain percentage of the purchase be earmarked for transfer costs, and that would incentivize stores to keep customers consuming content from their services, because the transfer expenses would remain with the license. It would also force online gaming account banning to transition from the store's user account to the license, which would carry over. In the end, it's still sort of centralized, but I think it's the kind of compromise that everyone would begrudgingly accept.
I randomly found your channel today through a comment that I randomly stumbled upon on LinkedIn. Very glad that I did. Your content is insightful and useful. Keep it coming and thank you!
Whew, that stock shorting hasn't panned out well in the last 6 months. (FWIW, I had Spotify stock that I sold a few months ago because I didn't expect them to do very well either. Oh well.)
I think this video, the Spotify one and the Toxic Vinyl record ones are fantastic essential watching for this generation of musicians. Thanks Brows.. I mean Benn, sorry!
Nobody who creates music full time should have to struggle for survival, but many of us do because these profit motivated companies and governments control what happens to our music. We all see the need for change, but nobody knows what to do or how it occurs. Instead, the music and the people who make it continue to struggle, on a regular basis. It seems like all we ever do is chase untainted mediums until they are corrupted, then move on to another. Good video, great discussion.
Do you think without government or corporations that all of us who want to be musicians could make a living doing it? I don't get your comment. Money doesn't grow on trees.
The same thing has happened with live music too, with investors and corporate ownership group like Live Nation buying up all the venues. Now it's a struggle to make money even from live performance, because someone somewhere has to make billions of dollars by sitting around and doing nothing, collecting rents. That's what capitalism is, gaining control of markets and exploiting them to the max so owners and investors can get rich doing nothing.
The "nationalized" and "non-profit media service" already exists in a way: it's the Library of Congress & our national network of local libraries. You can already borrow not just books, but audio books, movies, music, all often through an app from your couch. If all "copies" of something I want are checked out, I might buy it for faster or unlimited access, or find something else interesting. Popular media often has many many more "copies" available, each of which goes to pay the artists/published. As it stands today, the LoC already makes a fair attempt to catalogue everything of national note, and better local branches do so for local media (music and zines and self published authors and art shows, etc). There is a lot of work to be done to grow & cross-catalogue and serve up all that information to the end-users in order to compete with Spotify et al. ..but being a century old institution with hundreds of physical locations, they might already have a head start!... If only Congress could be convinced it's a wise investment. Like you said, the BBC shows it's not actually that crazy of an idea. Always the most integrous person on music maker tube. Thanks for doing this so I only have to share a link!
I’ve been thinking about a “rent to own/pay per stream” model where you’d get a certain amount of credits with your monthly sub which would be spent each time you listen to a song up until a certain amount of plays where you’ve effectively “bought” the song. I know I would love that personally but i’m the kind of person to listen to a few songs hundreds of times. But this could provide a much higher revenue per stream to artists while allowing users to slowly build a library that they own
One thing to consider in the UK is we get a great podcast service from the BBC. With inflation off the scale here and energy price very high we can cancel most services and still have great TV and podcasts.
I very much believe in the idea that future generations will look back on the way "we" do things now and be utterly confused in so many ways. To me, the world is still very much in its adolescence. The problems that the people of the world face will seem like such backwards ideas that are only there to serve a few and in the process grind down the rest. Thats why I appreciate your video about spotify because it serves as an example as to how these models are truly not in the service of artists, and will inevitably collapse. We need only to start being aware that they will give way to a future much better fit for all.
It's actually incredible how engaging this video was for a simple reading your comments video. There's loads of great information here to think about and digest. Love this channel.
I think a publicly funded archive with streaming features would be good. It does make the freedom of speech on the internet deal much more complex because the 1st amendment would be involved for real.
Canceled apple music after your last video and are now buying vinyls again, feels great. EDIT. Ater having watched the whole video: Oops, that was even worse... Bandcamp it is!
I'd love a streaming service where I pay a sensible amount, 30% of which goes to the service and 70% is distributed, by play count, to the artists I've listened to. For such to exist would require a lot of capital to start, though, since to be sustainable you'd need a critical mass of paying customers, and for that you need content, and to get content you need listeners... getting major labels interested would require, basically, to bribe them into the system to begin with.
12:31 I would be surprised if this person is the only one in the comment section who learned a few buzzwords without understanding the underlying concepts. That is neither good nor bad. It isn’t that shocking either. Not everyone can know everything about everything. But that is what this comment demonstrates
I bought a year of Spotify and frankly don't care who gets what portion of that 100.00 bucks. Best deal in music. I bought one vinyl record for a friend that cost 25 dollars. As a consumer, I am the one who profits the most.
I actually love the eyebrow. A lot of people get eyebrow piercings or do something similar to get a similar effect, so it's cool that it showed up naturally. Also, on the note of Blockchain BS: if you care AT ALL about the environment, then the idea of making every song an NFT is fucking insane. I'm going to do some rough estimate calculations later, but I genuinely don't think the whole planet can produce enough energy to manage the calculations required to make every song an NFT. it's an insanely inefficient system. The whole point of Blockchain is the inefficiency, both in terms of energy and computation. That's how it makes scarcity and therefore value. It's just a new form of oil, but less useful.
There is no more mining on Ethereum. I still think blockchains are very pointless for the vast majority of applications, but at least the biggest one is no longer destroying the environment.
Holy crap, Navidrome sounds pretty awesome! I commented in the last video about using Madsonic and other Subsonic derivatives. Ive been wanting to switch to something more current and, while I've heard of Navidrome, i never got a chance to try it out. Its apparently compatible with subsonic mobile apps, so fuck yeah. Here goes nothin! I appreciate the conversations here! Stay rad🤙
copyright ends at death is poetic, intelligent, and gorgeous as an idea! That whole citizens whatever thing needs to go though, corporations don't die but IMO shouldn't be able to do a lot of the bs they currently can legally.
The only time I ever made a CD on my own (in 2010), I did all the artwork including a 16 page colour booklet - and a small company produced 100 of them for me, for £3 each - that includes a printed disc, and bear in mind this was a very small batch indeed. Are they really so much more expensive to produce these days? I find it sad. It's such a perfect medium... as a listener, I want music to be something I can buy and then listen to in perpetuity, with no danger of being stopped from doing so. Streaming is abhorrent to me (and I know I'm in a minority). If the death of CDs means Bandcamp downloads etc., then I guess that's fine - but I happen to love CDs and I'll really miss them. Oh... and don't get me started on inter-track dropouts. Grrrrrr!
I think its a brilliant idea, that we have to pay some sort of Tax, and get a Free music streaming site, that actually also pays the artists fairly. and i would love to see a video, where you try to calculate how much that tax would be. because i gotta be honest. i pay right now about 30bucks a month for all my streaming and licensing things for all my music, and honestly, i would be happy to pay close to that as tax, when i then dont have to pay some shady company that takes 80% of that money as profit...
Who says the artists aren't being paid fairly? Without streaming, or the internet, guys like Benn wouldn't even be known. Every musician who's ever recorded music is not entitled to a career in music. There are plenty of artists being compensated quite well on spotify. Your local dive bar band is not meant to make a ton of money selling music just because they can upload to spotify
@@Kevinschart you are just factually wrong. Every artist who does any kind of art is entitled of a fair pay per artwork they made. when i make a song, and i need to sell that song, with the exclusive rights and what not that song is easely worth 3k or more. and i am like a not known arist at all. ben still would be a great, and known musician without the internet, because he put the work in, he was on live stage, he brought his music into the open. infact, i as a artist myself can say, spotify is a useless pieces of garbage, when it comes to spreading your music. i gaines more popularity from one festival performance than i ever did with spotify since is started. spotify is a joke
I laughed out loud at the summary of a potential class action law suit. It reminded me of my father who spent the second half of his engineering career as an expert witness on insurance claims in the civil courts. He descibed the civil court system as a casino.
yes, all media via a central library funded by an internet tax - I suggested this to a research guy at BT many years ago (in those days served via peer-to-peer) but he was not interested. It seems like an obvious idea unless you've been captured by the gatekeepers' dream logic
So many businesses get customers in the door and addicted to their product, then start the annual sub increases. Spotify is one of the best examples. However, they don’t pass on the profits to artists.
About copyright expiring upon death: I agree in principle... but in reality it should still be a lifetime-equivalent of years from the start of the copyright - artist dead or alive. Can you imagine how short your life would be if all it takes is one 'unfortunate accident' for anyone to have free access to sampling all your catalogue, or use your music for adverts and triple-A games???
4:47 WHAAAA?!? I didn't know such a thing exists. They need to make the same thing for RUclips; I see too many videos being silenced left and right (especially the unpopular ones with no trace of it left) and it leaves me in a limbo whether or not I'll ever see/hear that masterpiece again. Everyone has their own creative memorable process, and to see it go to waste like that based on a poor decision controlled by a corporate mindset makes it unfair for everyone involved.
Assuming you mean PRO’s/copyright societies they’re not allowed to for a whole bunch of (obvious) reasons, conflict of interest being a major one. But mainly because the copyright is owned by the songwriter or the publisher/label that represents them. The societies are only there to collect royalties from radio/TV/streaming nationally, and collect them from societies worldwide who do the same for their respective countries.
Regarding the whole non-profit thing, I think it's worth (for us, listeners) remembering that we can quite literally funnel money into all of that to help it become a reality. Sure, it may not be much, and it won't be tomorrow, but if we want it to be sustainable, it probably won't (unless you are, say, a millionaire and can throw that much money at the problem).
OMG, I thought you had totally rad and badass notch thru your eyebrow like somebody cut you in bar fight. IT'S JUST GRAY right there. Now I don't know how I didn't see that before. What else am I missing, what is even real? Anyways you're still too handsome and talented and seem like a cool guy so I still hate/love you.
Your eyebrow is frickin’ awesome! Those haters are just jealous.
pfft lol
honestly i thought it was a shaved in fashion choice lol.
To most judgmental parasites, who haven’t seen one of your many videos (Ill save you the trouble) by explain to there close minded prehistoric brains.. Ben was once a Golden gloves boxer, and an MMA fighter.. The eyebrow is not fashion, it came from taking a hit, that almost ripped his eye out.. All part of the sport 🫶🏻 So, have fun making fun of him in person.. A true wolf in sheep’s clothing 😉🇮🇪
He is a good looking guy despite the eye brow 😉👌
Makes no sense to me how if something is even slightly unique about someone's appearance, some people just can't deal with it and have to ask the person about it or why it's there, no matter how benign it is.
"Solve a problem and you won't have to evangelize blockchain" This, sir, would be the most concise way to sum up my feelings about crypto in general. Thankyou for this!
Right, crypto is for contrarians.
Sounds great but most people don't realize there is a problem with the financial sector, that is at the core of the illusion.
By far the most positive outlook on someone questioning your looks. Positive Benn is best Benn.
He is handsome enough to laugh off mean comments from insecure basement-dwellers.
@@justinwatson1510 why judge people living in a basement? Isn't that kind of like making fun of someone's eyebrow? Just a thought
To the guy that commented the capitalism Space bit, I commend you. It’s a game reference, and a quite good one at that!
Tim Curry is a legend.
SPACE!!
Haha, I got the reference as well and was laughing at how straight-faced Benn took it. :D
Even though I already knew the quite sad answer that space is already corrupted, glad some people found a laugh.
best part of the whole video. 😂👍🏻
super appreciate learning about Exportify. Losing my playlists has been one of my biggest obstacles to leaving the platform. Also, I fully support copyright ending at death, but unfortunately most artists don't own their work and major labels rarely "die".
A somehow better alternative IMHO would be for the copyright to end after a far more logical time limit than it is today. 10, maybe 20 years.
I don't see why a copyrighted work should provide it's creator income "for life".
What's it been like leaving Spotify? I use it daily but also think about dropping it fairly often so curious to hear how you went about it.
@@lindenbasket I just put the songs on a cloud service (some are free if you don't have many songs/use up lots of data space, or you can use multiple email accounts for example for completely free cloud services) and stream from there or I just download the songs to a file and listen from that.
@@CM_CM_ nice, which cloud service?
@@djgeorgetsagkadopoulosNo way, that's too short. We musicians want to have kids man! We want to leave assets. Yes, investments, property, etc but ownership of our recorded creative works is also an asset and one very close to our heart.
🙌Thanks for your thoughtful response here. I appreciate what you do! Also the caveats you have to pile on re: shorting, etc. 100% respect your skin in the game here. And admittedly part of my response was based on the me being in the minority of people who Spotify boosts algorithmically, where they're effectively paying me to put my music in front of new listeners. Especially appreciate your take on physical media as not as virtuous as people make out. I've pointed many people to your vinyl video. As an ex-Earth scientist, it hurts to have so many people point at vinyl and shipping things around (and blockchain! and don't @ me proof-of-stake fans). Also appreciate the callout of Audius's scammy, pump-and-dump shaped strategy.
Mentioned this elsewhere on the other video -- open source software saw one of the most enormous wealth transfers, from developers to tech giants, in that Amazon, Google, and others built their cloud empires on free and open source software without paying the people who made it (except occasional voluntary contributions back). Those of us who make things that fall under the IP bucket have to be very careful, it's one of the few paths to owning something of value without having to buy it. But it's also the most imaginary form of property, requiring social contracts and behavioral norms for people to get paid. And there are vultures ready to descend if we're not vigilant about protecting it.
The most important thing to do right now is exactly what you're doing: starting the conversation then keeping it going. So thank you! We all need to keep this discussion going until we can figure out some place that's better than where we are now and realistic steps we can take to get there.
I came out of the last video in bit of a soul crushing funk. This, like so many other real world problems, just feels so big and complex that I struggle to wrap my head around a solution.
I love that you are both a champion for these solutions and a voice of calm reason in a sea of typical binary rage. As someone who has obviously done a lot of work getting informed about the problem and it’s solutions (or potentials) how can I learn more about being part of that solution (in addition to the info from your patreon)?
True, tech in general and the web in particular seems to be moving into ever more exclusive set of companies that get to set the rules. This is in essence a tech problem in addition to IP-law/capitalism problem. With spotify it's very similar to audible, where there's no way to compete with it and anyone who tried would run into the same issues Benn highlighted in his video.
I'm not a Spotify hater, I love the convenience and feel absolutely zero guilt from using it. That being said, would I want there to be competition and see creators paid well? Yes, yes I would (also fuck the labels). I've never made enough money to spend on all the music I listen to though, and if there was no Spotify, I would pirate my music like I used to.
What I think will happen is that slowly but surely the prices for streaming go up, and piracy goes up as well. I don't see these companies completely failing, just bleeding the industry dry without addressing the underlying problems. I hope someone smarter than me comes up with a way to do all of this open source with a model that pays artists and cuts the middle men while keeping all the functionality and piracy low with low pricing.
There isn't much we can do about anything outside of our local bubble. Change what you can, break what you have to, try to do things that will help you sleep and enjoy your short little amazing blip in time.
"solve a problem and your project will succeed - it's as simple as that" - PERFECTION BEN!
Thank you for taking the time to dig into this and taking the time to address the peanut gallery. It matters and it's good content and it's gratefully received.
I’m just commenting so the algo will maybe serve this to more people.
The “IP Tax” sounds like a public library to me, just based on data in the Internet. I think that’s a great idea
Just wanted to say that I'm interested in a deep dive into this concept from Ben.
Yeah maybe have it as an opt in or out program so anyone wanting old music can stream from the government in original quality
A great solution for the $ per stream problem would be a setup like this: After Spotify/Apple Music/etc take their 30% cut of the subscription fee the rest gets distributed between the songs a subscriber actually listen to. So if I listen to a indie artist a lot they would get a lot of the subscription fee I’m paying. That way small artist could earn a great living with a relative small fan base.
No other solution would be needed.
I was talking same thing some time ago.
Spotify (and others) are actually ripping off millions of small artists and their algorithm works in favour of big names.
There should be no algorithms but only music library browser by various categories so everyone has a chance of being discovered
Btw, I recently quit making music… Costs a lot in time and money for virtually no return…
@@FlatTire Almost 80% of the customer base love those playlist(even though its bad for smaller artists). You can't take away what people love, because the act of promoting only few artists in itself doesn't cause any harm to anyone. So, a proper solution would look like a open sourced algorithm with no bias to anyone or something similar. For the record, I do not believe this would work in any meaningful way too.
You should absolutely do financial pundit work for different platforms about this. It’s really interesting and will help the music industry as a whole. You’ve already elevated the conversation at multiple music companies I know of
Every time i listen to you, I can hear and feel the commonsense oozing from every fiber of your being. Thank you. And I hope without sounding patronizing, keep up the very good work!
Ben for president?
You're the man Benn. Your Spotify fail video changed my whole thinking. Especially as I get ready to put out another release.
I have to say I am so fucking tickled that one of my favourite electronic artists in some of the most formative years of my life puts out content like this.
Lol, he wasn't a formative artist for me but yeah that must be crazy. Mine aren't exactly what I would call "wise and measured thinkers" lol
I think copyright should last like 5 years after death, mainly because I'm scared of untasteful uses of the music just after an artist death.
Eh .... wikipedia: List of countries' copyright lengths
You want to shorten it ??????
I think 5 years is also enough for the family to manage their new financial situation. (Move to a more affordable house, adjust the overall lifestyle...)
The internet might have been more tasteful if Tim Berners-Lee had said "I've created the world wide web, but no one is allowed to freely access it until 75 years after I've died".
What’s the reality of Spotify putting in a “tip” system. Seems simple to implement.
Tip icon lives next to the Heart icon. Set a flat tip amount. $0.10 or $0.25?
Your subscription includes $1.00 into your tip account every month.
Also unlike the Heart icon it resets every 30 days so you may re-tip a given song again and again.
I know this is only a couple million a month spread out but it is moving towards a balance point between the service and the artist.
Again, this seems soooooo easy to implement.
Not in agreement with your assessment of Spotify and streaming, but your breakdown on how much it would cost to return to physical formats was brilliant. Great work there. Thank you.
I come here for the great synth socio-techno-enviro deep dives, and I stay for the Tim Curry Red Alert 3 references
Hey. UK here. Our economy is fuc*ed. If any of these subscription services start to jack their prices, which they inevitably will, I’m done. Most people in the UK are going to have to start making hard choices about what they can and can’t afford and I’m pretty sure Spotify will be getting the chop in a time where a lot of people in the UK are struggling to feed their children or heat their homes.
These streaming services have started to reach their natural, capitalist conclusion. Walled Gardens. Jacked prices. Format Fog. Artists with no leverage or ownership of their work. At this point piracy seems more moral than paying these streaming companies.
I've already given Spotify the chop.
to be honest, glad to hear your economy is f'ed... makes great musicians!
and you where already my top ranked country for music.
greetings and al jokes aside best of luck,
your equally efffd dutch neighbor
@@michel5148 wut...
Non-competitive, monopoly-market, cronyism capitalism isn't the 'natural conclusion' of whatever you think capitalism is. What exists now is corruption, and just as I wouldn't measure the merits of communism against Stalin's or Mao's corrupt and fascist implementations, I wouldn't do the same to this abomination of the free* market we have currently.
As a fellow composer, musician and artist, conversations like these are so vital and frequent in the scenes man; I just hope we can really make it work fairly and justly for all of us, consumers and creatives alike!
one of the smartest, most thoughful, well evidenced and articulate voices on the internet.
One Love!
Always forward, never ever backward!!
☀☀☀
💚💛❤
🙏🏿🙏🙏🏼
Always enjoy hearing your takes (and responses to responses on those takes), keep up the great work Benn!
As a new artist I'm avoiding streaming and using YT and a web platform called Reward Music which is artist centric. Benn I really appreciate all of your content.
I love your sense of Justice and your ideal of "growing the pie" instead of making it smaller. That's a philosophy I personally stand by. Question: what's your take on being a pessimist? How does this effect your mental health and overall quality of life? I ask because I personally struggle with this at times and then feel the obligation to just ignore all that's at stake and pretend things are gonna be ok 🙄 - like the glass is half full kinda guy..
thank you so much for this and thank you so much for your sets in Texas recently. you blew us all away 😍
13:29 love that you say "we" when talking about what future generations wont understand about our intellectual property scheme. Wholesome af. Great video. Always appreciate your educational content, which is actually how i discovered your youtube. Though recently I dove into your discography and its so fucking good I cant begin to describe how much it had elevated my mood the last couple of weeks so thank you so much!
That actually confused the crap out of me. Lol… I’ll go get my cane and yell at a cloud now
I have a huge streak of natural grey hairs in my hair and i'm a dude with long dark brown hair in my early 20s but we look fucking cool bro, ignore the bad comments
Also I love your view on art and especially on the question about ethics on streaming dead musicians music. True artist right here
I'm in love with the way you interpret and are amused by negative comments. Sincerely, it's inspiring to me.
Thank you for calling out Audius. Based response.
For me, ur eye brow was a unique identification of ur existence in this universes, hence it was a manifestation of a gifted talent on the usage of ur “right brain” creativity hemisphere, that get reflected on left part of the body, 🤩
Not a complete equivalent to Funkwhale (As it's not free or open source) would be something like Roon. For those of you who want a more smooth transition from streaming to files Roon is great as you can connect it to streaming services temporarily as you try and build up your collection of music that you can listen to for the long term. They also have EQ and other features built in that somewhat justify the price tag.
Not trying to sell for them just a big fan of their service.
I recently built a home server, for NAS and some other stuff, you really inspired me to start putting my music collection on there and build my personal streaming platform
side note -- your videos always help me either improve or gain insight into my job as a product manager at a health care startup -- no sarcasm, honestly. and i think you know what i mean. love the content thanks for the quality
I am 100% with you on when copyright should expire!
I agree with so much here, bit absolutely not about ownership expiring upon the death of an artist.
Benn, I value your opinion. People can stink. Keeping it clean for RUclips. I would love to hear you talk about your mix/mastering process. I too mix my own music, but pay for mastering. Keep up with the good work.
I'm not sure if you had to think about, whether or not to keep the comments up while you talk about their very topic, but I think it's a great design choice, it kept my ADHD brain concentrated on what you were talking about.
The mind is full of mysteries.
Saw the first video based on this video....enjoyed it. Personal opinion: around 97-2000 we had the perfect (not literal) setup. You could buy a cd and play it on your portable cd player. You could buy a cassette and play it on your walkman. As someone who purchased at least 3-5 of both, it's 100% worth it in the long term. Yes, you don't have the convivence of accessing any music from around the world within seconds, but you can make a philosophical (and maybe scientific) argument that maybe we weren't ever meant to. We already have proof that if you look at a food menu with a huge amount of options, humans have a tougher term with that. We aren't designed for that level of options or multi-tasking. Personally, I could care less if any of these streaming services burn and collapse (I'm an LG V series user who always uses local music, for context) considering they don't care about listeners, it's just coincidence that you as a consumer can benefit from their product. Sometimes technology doesn't have to grow further or "innovate". It's the same reason why in 2023 someone who isn't even 25 (I myself am in my mid 30s) will find joy in purchasing a vinyl record when's that's been obsolete for decades now (I love all physical media except 8-track, for context). As a failed musician, the HONEST perspective to being a successful (relative) musician you need to get out the house to perform, you need to get out the house and personally sell your music. It's a double edge sword of expense that also forces you not to create 8 albums within 2 months (like a ton of artists do now a days) to saturate things. I'm super sure people will disagree with me but we've done things one way and we're in a mess now with people too obsessed with the future to admit defeat.
thank you for talking about the "consumer" argument because so many people in the comments were not seeing those points you raised and it frustrated me lol
Ben long time listener first time caller. Just want to say that I love your videos and the breadth of topics that you cover. Your communication skills are outstanding as is the thought and research you put into these videos. Thank you.
Sweden also have this TV tax. Roughly 100 USD per citizen per year is deducted towards it.
same here in italy. originally it was a standalone tax that was tied to the tv you had in the house, but over the past 10-15 years with the decline in popularity of the tv medium more and more people stopped owning a tv altogether, so that tax is now part of the energy bill so that nobody can escape it. gotta love this country
@@crifox16 They did the exact same thing here haha
in France govt just cancelled it, it finances public TV and radio networks which are very popular hère (1st morning show is public, one of the tv stations financed prominent french youtubers...)
Same in Austria. The 'tax' part always leads to a bit bloated and entitled orgs (less incentives to be efficient), and politicians always try to influence them, but having said that I still think it's a good approach and I was sad to hear that France ended it. You have to pick your poison somewhere, and the tradeoffs of these public broadcasters work for me at least.
11:05 I'd actually love to see maybe an in-depth explanation or tutorial on something like this. That and if alternatives are better than Plex, because when I went to look it up, there was much discourse over it - I was hearing about stuff like Emby, Kodi, Jellyfin, and I don't even know where to start or what's better for simply organizing and playing my music conveniently on my devices. Would love to hear more about it.
EDIT: Actually, that decentralized music streaming thing you mention at the end of the video sounds like one of the things I should learn about first. Either way, thanks for another video with further discussion!
Old fan from Chicago. Appreciate the videos. ✌️
Wow that's an awesome idea at 9:26 that I would really want to see explored more.
Nice job accepting and learning from critical feedback. This seems like a healthy approach. Especially how you found a way to learn from insulting shitposts.
Had Spotify for a while but I just felt so surveilled by the algorithm and stopped using it. I recently uploaded all my music to dropbox (apx 2000 cds) and stream it to myself using the Evermusic app. Works great except that the play / shuffle options are a bit weird. Downside is not getting “new” music, but honestly there’s so much in my own collection I hear something new every time.
That's so awesome. CDs are great, I have a CD player built into my PC and a discman w/ a case for on the go. The fact you can then export it into an mp3 or flac is just so much bang for buck. I'm so glad it's not as price gouged as vinyls ❤️
I find it quite mad that there are lots of (mostly older) people that never listen to new music (Spotify's own research suggests interest in new music tapers off rapidly for most people in their thirties) and yet they keep paying their monthly subs for the convenience of having access to music they already paid for. It would be crazy to keep paying for the vinyl and books on my shelves, so it seems weird to keep paying Spotify for music I can download.
I think your eyebrows look cool tbh, one of the reasons I don't skip tabs when watching these videos.
I only play devil's advocate with people who i'm really comfortable with, and even then i seem to piss them off about half of the time. Kudos for having the balls to do this on a public platform!
In all seriousness, i've been crypto-curious since 2012, and i lost most faith in it's original anarchistic goals by the 2017 bubble when it became just another asset for daytraders to get stressed over. Nevertheless i was somewhat enthusiastic about the idea of nft's and it's possible use for authorship and copyright. But the thing i never saw addressed in the whole hype is the fact that you need enforcement. From the get-go every nft holder has this idea that "i own the nft minted for , so i own the rights", but as far as i know not a single legislative institute has accepted nft's as a proof of copyright. I often hear the comparison that buying an nft is like buying the receipt to something, i would argue it's more akin to a receipt of a sale scribbled on a napkin, hoping napkins will one day be the receipt standards legally. And given the amount of useless tokens out there you can mint nft's on, i would argue the napkin is written on in pencil.
if you were crypto curious since 2012, by 2017 you should have learned it was all horseshit for dumb gambling addicts
What do you believe by anachronistic goals?
Also if you want more info, Folding Ideas did a deep dive on NFT's.
I've long wanted a legal framework for licensing for software and media where, upon purchase, you're granted a license that can be moved without cost between licensing services-such that the shutdown of a service (e.g. Walmart and Microsoft's music service, or a software store like Steam or Origin) guarantees the export of a license, which could be transferred or used to prove purchase.
Currently, the stores are each individually responsible for payment, distribution, and license tracking, and they provide no integration between them. I'm pushing for a legally-enforced integration of the license tracking so that users wouldn't be beholden to the various walled gardens for IP access, and content producers wouldn't be beholden to the same walled gardens for everything at the 30-50% costs that are currently charged. Ideally, licensing would be tracked at regional, centralized locations run by non-profits and using modern security with things like 2FA. Services could link to the centralized service with OAuth, check with the service for licensing, and, if they're licensed to distribute, provide it to the consumers. If they're not licensed, a 3rd-party hand-off mechanism could be provided to enable content providers to distribute solely from their own servers. Most would probably opt to either distribute through the app stores or through a hosted service.
With this, walled-garden app stores are essentially in charge of purchasing (optional) and distribution, which means they need to focus on improving their experience. It would also mean that 3rd party sales, transfers and lending of content would be more permissable - within reason. Honestly, an entire non-profit industry of collective IP could spring up around libraries.
This does mean that, since the app is no longer getting 30% of the pie at purchase, they're no longer incentivized to provide free downloads forever for their users' multi-terabyte content, but actual transfer costs would be in the realm of a few dollars per-year, and download counts could carry over with the licensing to new services. You'd have to mandate that a certain percentage of the purchase be earmarked for transfer costs, and that would incentivize stores to keep customers consuming content from their services, because the transfer expenses would remain with the license. It would also force online gaming account banning to transition from the store's user account to the license, which would carry over.
In the end, it's still sort of centralized, but I think it's the kind of compromise that everyone would begrudgingly accept.
I randomly found your channel today through a comment that I randomly stumbled upon on LinkedIn. Very glad that I did. Your content is insightful and useful. Keep it coming and thank you!
That nationalized archive idea is the only good idea I've heard regarding this problem yet.
Great video as always, Benn. Always enjoy hearing your insights
Benn, I just wanted you to know - Floating Vacuum is the best ambient track ever made.
Whew, that stock shorting hasn't panned out well in the last 6 months. (FWIW, I had Spotify stock that I sold a few months ago because I didn't expect them to do very well either. Oh well.)
new here, watching all your stuff now, you’re great and should have at least a million subscribers
Nice move to give yourself the voice, instead of giving a journalist something to edit towards their narrative. Salute!
I think this video, the Spotify one and the Toxic Vinyl record ones are fantastic essential watching for this generation of musicians.
Thanks Brows.. I mean Benn, sorry!
Nobody who creates music full time should have to struggle for survival, but many of us do because these profit motivated companies and governments control what happens to our music. We all see the need for change, but nobody knows what to do or how it occurs. Instead, the music and the people who make it continue to struggle, on a regular basis. It seems like all we ever do is chase untainted mediums until they are corrupted, then move on to another. Good video, great discussion.
Do you think without government or corporations that all of us who want to be musicians could make a living doing it? I don't get your comment. Money doesn't grow on trees.
@@lightfeather9953 No. I think that governments and corporations, making more profit from the music than the actual artist, is wrong.
@@lightfeather9953 That's it, we need to move on to a post scarcity and monetary based society....it can happen, but not for a long while.
The same thing has happened with live music too, with investors and corporate ownership group like Live Nation buying up all the venues. Now it's a struggle to make money even from live performance, because someone somewhere has to make billions of dollars by sitting around and doing nothing, collecting rents. That's what capitalism is, gaining control of markets and exploiting them to the max so owners and investors can get rich doing nothing.
Criminalizing sharing will indeed be seen as a weird anomaly for a social animal to do...
Ben you're a wit and funny human being, thank You👍❤️🙏🏻
The "nationalized" and "non-profit media service" already exists in a way: it's the Library of Congress & our national network of local libraries. You can already borrow not just books, but audio books, movies, music, all often through an app from your couch. If all "copies" of something I want are checked out, I might buy it for faster or unlimited access, or find something else interesting. Popular media often has many many more "copies" available, each of which goes to pay the artists/published. As it stands today, the LoC already makes a fair attempt to catalogue everything of national note, and better local branches do so for local media (music and zines and self published authors and art shows, etc). There is a lot of work to be done to grow & cross-catalogue and serve up all that information to the end-users in order to compete with Spotify et al. ..but being a century old institution with hundreds of physical locations, they might already have a head start!... If only Congress could be convinced it's a wise investment. Like you said, the BBC shows it's not actually that crazy of an idea.
Always the most integrous person on music maker tube. Thanks for doing this so I only have to share a link!
I actually _really_ like your eyebrow thing. It's stylish
I’ve been thinking about a “rent to own/pay per stream” model where you’d get a certain amount of credits with your monthly sub which would be spent each time you listen to a song up until a certain amount of plays where you’ve effectively “bought” the song. I know I would love that personally but i’m the kind of person to listen to a few songs hundreds of times. But this could provide a much higher revenue per stream to artists while allowing users to slowly build a library that they own
One thing to consider in the UK is we get a great podcast service from the BBC. With inflation off the scale here and energy price very high we can cancel most services and still have great TV and podcasts.
I very much believe in the idea that future generations will look back on the way "we" do things now and be utterly confused in so many ways. To me, the world is still very much in its adolescence. The problems that the people of the world face will seem like such backwards ideas that are only there to serve a few and in the process grind down the rest. Thats why I appreciate your video about spotify because it serves as an example as to how these models are truly not in the service of artists, and will inevitably collapse. We need only to start being aware that they will give way to a future much better fit for all.
found you on the original spotify vid. great stuff
It's actually incredible how engaging this video was for a simple reading your comments video. There's loads of great information here to think about and digest. Love this channel.
I think a publicly funded archive with streaming features would be good. It does make the freedom of speech on the internet deal much more complex because the 1st amendment would be involved for real.
Canceled apple music after your last video and are now buying vinyls again, feels great. EDIT. Ater having watched the whole video: Oops, that was even worse... Bandcamp it is!
Your eyebrows are cool man, they speak of hardship and experience.
But Benn. Keep it up. Really appreciating your voice.
I'd love a streaming service where I pay a sensible amount, 30% of which goes to the service and 70% is distributed, by play count, to the artists I've listened to. For such to exist would require a lot of capital to start, though, since to be sustainable you'd need a critical mass of paying customers, and for that you need content, and to get content you need listeners... getting major labels interested would require, basically, to bribe them into the system to begin with.
And to clarify: distribution based on MY play count, not a global one, so if I happen to listen to a Madonna song once not all of my money goes there.
12:31
I would be surprised if this person is the only one in the comment section who learned a few buzzwords without understanding the underlying concepts. That is neither good nor bad. It isn’t that shocking either. Not everyone can know everything about everything. But that is what this comment demonstrates
I bought a year of Spotify and frankly don't care who gets what portion of that 100.00 bucks. Best deal in music. I bought one vinyl record for a friend that cost 25 dollars. As a consumer, I am the one who profits the most.
I actually love the eyebrow. A lot of people get eyebrow piercings or do something similar to get a similar effect, so it's cool that it showed up naturally.
Also, on the note of Blockchain BS: if you care AT ALL about the environment, then the idea of making every song an NFT is fucking insane. I'm going to do some rough estimate calculations later, but I genuinely don't think the whole planet can produce enough energy to manage the calculations required to make every song an NFT. it's an insanely inefficient system. The whole point of Blockchain is the inefficiency, both in terms of energy and computation. That's how it makes scarcity and therefore value. It's just a new form of oil, but less useful.
There is no more mining on Ethereum. I still think blockchains are very pointless for the vast majority of applications, but at least the biggest one is no longer destroying the environment.
I love that you want to control your own narrative.
Holy crap, Navidrome sounds pretty awesome! I commented in the last video about using Madsonic and other Subsonic derivatives. Ive been wanting to switch to something more current and, while I've heard of Navidrome, i never got a chance to try it out. Its apparently compatible with subsonic mobile apps, so fuck yeah. Here goes nothin!
I appreciate the conversations here! Stay rad🤙
copyright ends at death is poetic, intelligent, and gorgeous as an idea! That whole citizens whatever thing needs to go though, corporations don't die but IMO shouldn't be able to do a lot of the bs they currently can legally.
The only time I ever made a CD on my own (in 2010), I did all the artwork including a 16 page colour booklet - and a small company produced 100 of them for me, for £3 each - that includes a printed disc, and bear in mind this was a very small batch indeed. Are they really so much more expensive to produce these days? I find it sad. It's such a perfect medium... as a listener, I want music to be something I can buy and then listen to in perpetuity, with no danger of being stopped from doing so. Streaming is abhorrent to me (and I know I'm in a minority). If the death of CDs means Bandcamp downloads etc., then I guess that's fine - but I happen to love CDs and I'll really miss them.
Oh... and don't get me started on inter-track dropouts. Grrrrrr!
Loved the guy that quoted tim curry in C&C.
I think its a brilliant idea, that we have to pay some sort of Tax, and get a Free music streaming site, that actually also pays the artists fairly. and i would love to see a video, where you try to calculate how much that tax would be.
because i gotta be honest.
i pay right now about 30bucks a month for all my streaming and licensing things for all my music, and honestly, i would be happy to pay close to that as tax, when i then dont have to pay some shady company that takes 80% of that money as profit...
Who says the artists aren't being paid fairly? Without streaming, or the internet, guys like Benn wouldn't even be known. Every musician who's ever recorded music is not entitled to a career in music. There are plenty of artists being compensated quite well on spotify. Your local dive bar band is not meant to make a ton of money selling music just because they can upload to spotify
@@Kevinschart you are just factually wrong.
Every artist who does any kind of art is entitled of a fair pay per artwork they made.
when i make a song, and i need to sell that song, with the exclusive rights and what not that song is easely worth 3k or more. and i am like a not known arist at all.
ben still would be a great, and known musician without the internet, because he put the work in, he was on live stage, he brought his music into the open.
infact, i as a artist myself can say, spotify is a useless pieces of garbage, when it comes to spreading your music.
i gaines more popularity from one festival performance than i ever did with spotify since is started. spotify is a joke
I like ur eyebrow btw, it is signature and looks good
I laughed out loud at the summary of a potential class action law suit. It reminded me of my father who spent the second half of his engineering career as an expert witness on insurance claims in the civil courts. He descibed the civil court system as a casino.
yes, all media via a central library funded by an internet tax - I suggested this to a research guy at BT many years ago (in those days served via peer-to-peer) but he was not interested. It seems like an obvious idea unless you've been captured by the gatekeepers' dream logic
an interesting counter-point is whether/how such a setup would work to generate funds (and allocate them) for making new content
So many businesses get customers in the door and addicted to their product, then start the annual sub increases. Spotify is one of the best examples. However, they don’t pass on the profits to artists.
Preach Brother Jordan!
Benn, Bloomberg had a solid article SPOT and how they can't turn a profit. Title: Spotify Needs to Profit From a Music Revolution: Lionel Laurent
About copyright expiring upon death: I agree in principle... but in reality it should still be a lifetime-equivalent of years from the start of the copyright - artist dead or alive. Can you imagine how short your life would be if all it takes is one 'unfortunate accident' for anyone to have free access to sampling all your catalogue, or use your music for adverts and triple-A games???
4:47 WHAAAA?!? I didn't know such a thing exists. They need to make the same thing for RUclips; I see too many videos being silenced left and right (especially the unpopular ones with no trace of it left) and it leaves me in a limbo whether or not I'll ever see/hear that masterpiece again. Everyone has their own creative memorable process, and to see it go to waste like that based on a poor decision controlled by a corporate mindset makes it unfair for everyone involved.
A variation to the nationalization idea is if worldwide music unions would get together to create an international streaming platform.
Assuming you mean PRO’s/copyright societies they’re not allowed to for a whole bunch of (obvious) reasons, conflict of interest being a major one. But mainly because the copyright is owned by the songwriter or the publisher/label that represents them. The societies are only there to collect royalties from radio/TV/streaming nationally, and collect them from societies worldwide who do the same for their respective countries.
FYI to Tobias and co. Rolex is a non-profit. That status of company means little in practice.
There was no single Clap SFX W/ verb at the end of the video! Aaaahhhhh
Regarding the whole non-profit thing, I think it's worth (for us, listeners) remembering that we can quite literally funnel money into all of that to help it become a reality. Sure, it may not be much, and it won't be tomorrow, but if we want it to be sustainable, it probably won't (unless you are, say, a millionaire and can throw that much money at the problem).
wow good job, thanks so much!
this video made me look up to you as a role model
OMG, I thought you had totally rad and badass notch thru your eyebrow like somebody cut you in bar fight. IT'S JUST GRAY right there. Now I don't know how I didn't see that before. What else am I missing, what is even real? Anyways you're still too handsome and talented and seem like a cool guy so I still hate/love you.
I m gladly following and watching you making music.