Perhaps you’ve seen the ad touting Apple’s latest/greatest iPad. As someone who lives on the creative side, I was rather gobsmacked by it, to say the least. In a world in which tech seems to be squeezing the life and profitability out of virtually any art form, Apple appeared to be celebrating that reality.
Oh, I understand what Apple THOUGHT the ad was going to say—that they’ve essentially boiled down the essence of creativity and stuffed it into their new wünder device. It would unleash the inner creative beast in all of us.
Except that the ad sent precisely the opposite message. Especially the last bit, where the tiny yellow ball gets its eyes crushed out of its head (an unintentionally gruesome touch, to be sure).
The unmistakable, albeit unintentional, message sent by the ad was that Big Tech aims to crush the life out of creativity. Apple is about to stifle creative energy and expression and subjugate them to the whims of Big Tech. Henceforth, Big Tech will evaluate any creative endeavor for commercial or artistic viability by filtering them through algorithms that will determine how and/or if they may be monetized.
Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.
- Tor Myhren, Vice President of Marketing Communications at Apple
I’m not overreacting or raising concerns that don’t exist. Any musician trying to gain recognition and support themselves in the age of Spotify knows what I’m referring to. Any writer trying to score a book contract in the age of GoodReads is also familiar with this situation.
Making a living in any artistic endeavor has become exponentially more complex as tech companies have discovered ever more exploitative ways to abuse and rob artists of rewards from their work.
Apple’s ad served as a big “Fuck you!” to those Independent artists and musicians trying to create and keep their heads above water financially.
The problem is twofold. Streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify have been credited with saving the music industry, but those same services are also ruining it.
It’s been the industry’s salvation. Largely because of Spotify and other subscriptions, streaming provided the industry something it never had before: regular monthly revenue.
To oversimplify, the big winners are the streaming services and the large record companies. The losers are the 99 percent of artists who aren’t at Beyoncé’s level of fame. And they’re angry about not sharing in the music industry’s success….
There’s a complicated and opaque formula that determines how the $10 monthly subscription for Spotify or Apple Music makes its way to artists. After those services take their cut, about $7 goes into a pot of money that gets split a bunch of ways — for the record labels, songwriters, music publishers, artists and others.
The problem with this model is that the way the money is apportioned works great for artists like Beyoncé or Taylor Swift, who rake in big bucks no matter what they do. But it doesn’t work nearly as well for emerging acts, who, in some cases, make pennies.
Fortunately, there are other (much smaller) companies trying to work off a different business model, though their impact to date has been minimal.
There’s a smaller music service, Bandcamp, that musicians tend to like. It lets artists limit how often their music is streamed and takes a relatively small commission on sales of song downloads, T-shirts and things like that. It’s proof that Spotify isn’t the only way it can be done.
I’m also interested to see what Square might do with Tidal, the streaming service it bought last month. It’s not going to change the economics of what a streaming song is worth, but Square is deeply integrated with things like merchandise sales. It could come up with new ways to help artists make more money or connect and market to fans.
It’s difficult for lesser-known musical acts to make money from streaming services because of low per-stream payouts, but it can seem as if everyone BUT the artists are making money off their work—because that’s precisely what’s happening.
This system often leaves musicians trying to make their way in the business world feeling like their work benefits others at their expense. It can be difficult to argue that point if you look at the business model of streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music.
Spotify also got bashed for its low payouts per stream. Every month, Spotify takes in a certain amount of money. They divvy up 70% of the money received among all the artists who have been streamed that month.
The amount can vary from artist to artist depending on the kind of deal they have with the service. Spotify claims they pay out between $0.006 and $0.0084 per stream but some indie artists have said they made less than that.
The system in place puts indie labels and artists at a disadvantage. Major record labels own stock in Spotify and can profit from that. Spotify also pays to license the music of major label artists, something they don't do for indies.
One reason the major labels can get by with a lower payout per stream is that they also get paid from the licensing. The indie labels and acts end up with a lower payout rate but without the benefit of licensing on top of it.
Some bands have attempted to take things into their own hands with varying degrees of success. Carbon Leaf, a band from Richmond, VA, asked their audience to bring a thumb drive to shows for years. The band would allow audience members to download the concert onto their drives and share it with anyone they wanted. It was a way for the band to grow their audience and it worked beautifully for them. While not necessarily a well-known band, Carbon Leaf has managed to carve out a niche for itself, with a robust and loyal fan base that has been devoted to them, in some cases, since their founding in 1992.
Some musical acts, like Garth Brooks, still refuse to allow their music to be included in Apple Music because they object to their business model. Currently, there aren’t enough acts taking a similar stand to force Apple or other services to re-examine how they do business, but there are artists who refuse on principle to play ball.
Part of the problem, of course, is the something-for-nothing attitude of American society. We live in a culture that consumes more creative content than ever and yet displays less desire to pay for it. Few understand what goes into creating the content they consume; they only know that they enjoy it, want more, and think it should be free.
You can call it the “Napster Effect,” but whatever name you choose, the story’s the same. Napster allowed users to collect vast amounts of music for free, and I was as guilty of it as anyone. At the time, it seemed too good to be true, and in the end, it was. It’s difficult to say that the business model that replaced Napster was much of a step forward because it morphed and evolved into what exists today—streaming services that exist to enrich everyone but artists.
That is unless you are a massive name like Beyoncé or Taylor Swift.
As a writer, I at least have Substack, which offers the hope of fair compensation. While I may never be the most popular newsletter on the block, if I can make a few bucks and keep growing this thing, I may eventually be able to make Substack my bitch. It’s not much, but it keeps me out of trouble.
If you’re a musician, though, which I might have been at a younger age, that’s a much more challenging way to make a living. I can understand why bands spend their lives touring because, in some cases, there’s no other way to make a living. Given how streaming services compensate musical acts, it seems everyone makes money off music except those who create it. Some bands will tour constantly because it’s the only way they can make a living.
Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, quickly apologized for the company’s iPad launch ad, and the company confirmed that the ad would not run on television. It’s odd that a company known for such cutting-edge advertising (see the “1984” ad above) could miss so badly. One can certainly understand the idea behind the ad, if not the message the execution of it sends. It’s odd, though, that no one in Apple’s hierarchy recognized that the ad wasn’t saying what everyone thought it was.
And didn’t anyone stop to think that the gratuitous destruction of creative tools wouldn’t sit right with some who viewed the ad?
I suppose sometimes you really can be too smart for your own good.
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I'm hardly the first to mention this, but folks might want to read "The Death of the Artist" by William Deresiewicz. One of the things I'd like to figure out is how to get Spotify to present a list of songs in reverse order of popularity. I want to start listening to those tunes that have zero listens, and then work up from there.
I read your excellwnt piece before watching the ad. Even so conditioned, when I watched the ad I had a deep visceral reaction - a bad one. As an amateur musician (acoustic guitar before arthritis claimed my finger flexibility, now drums), the sight of musical instruments being crushed as a happy song plays amid the destruction was such a visual/aural mismatch that I still feel the discomfort (and I am no snowflake). You and others have written about the substantial social disconnection reflected in the behavioral tendencies (I hesitate to call them philosophies or even principles) among "tech bros" in many ways - from proposing literal islands of anarchy, to financial instrument "panaceas" that are really only mechanisms to avoid SEC, IRS, and law enforcement oversight, to political positions that reflect more of Ayn Rand than George Washington, and others. Most of us - with notable exceptions like Paul Ryan - left any intellectual and emotional fascination with the antisocial, might-makes-right, economically simplistic, naive, and essentially anarchic musings - also not actually philosophy - of Ayn Rand and her ilk at the high school door, as we encountered the realities of living in a diverse and challenging society. The commodification of people at the heart of all of these tendencies, and the redirection of reward flow from the true source of that value (the creator) to the gatekeeper (the financiers and distributors), comes through with (possibly) unintended clarity in this brutal visual claim regarding the relative value and importance of artists versus distributors. (The tools that are important are not those used to make music or other artistic pursuits but the tools that help make it available to you 24/7.)
The problem, as I see it (and you noted), is not that financiers and distributors want to be compensated fairly for their contribution to the overall effort, but that they significantly overstate the value of their effort and use their market positions to squeeze much more out of the transactions than they deserve, going beyond earning a reasonable profit to demanding rent (in the economic sense). This rent-seeking behavior is evident throughout our system, as finance has replaced most of our truly value-producing enterprises, resulting in the phenomenon that making money using other people's money, obtained at bargain basement "prices", is now one of the largest markets in the country, and keeping that skimmed money safe from taxation is the primary political pursuit of the tech bros and other self-proclaimed masters of the universe. Actually, there is a valid, experiential basis for that growing feeling of nostalgia as we grow older, but not for the reasons the R's claim. The economic system, where CEOs earned maybe 20 times what their employees earned and paid realistically set tax rates, is long gone. Many (not all) CEOs make 300 or so times the earnings of their employees and yet pay taxes at a marginal tax rate that is lower than their secretary / admin asst. As Warren Buffett admitted years ago, "There actually is a class war in the US - and our class, the wealthy, has been winning it." The culture wars provide the distraction necessary to keep that winning streak going. They'll never "get tired of so much winning."