How the Wolf Will Survive: How Musicians Make a Living in the Streaming Era

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David Byrne thinks musicians are doomed by streaming music.

More music is being made and listened to with greater frequency, diversity and depth than ever before in human history.

But musicians are doomed.

Here are my issues with Byrne’s flimsy refutations of “counter-arguments” to building a business around free access to music:

“1. Recorded music -— and especially the idea of making money from it —- is so 20th century. Suck it up and move on.”

If not by selling access to recorded music, Byrne asks, “what is the alternative model for making a living” for musicians?

First, there’s the assumption that all musicians make money from recordings. Let’s acknowledge the many composers and performers who aren’t recording artists that are already making livings without exploiting their sound recording copyright.

Second, let’s also acknowledge that musicians never have earned 100% of their living from recordings. The bulk? Sure. Performance is an important and fast-growing part of the industry. Bands can and do produce and release successful albums in totality without any “team” helping them.

Third, there’s a complete lack of understanding as to how value is created around free access to music these days. For being such a musical visionary, Byrne doesn’t seem to realize that a new music business is dawning where fans directly patronize artists and fund their works. This is the era of the niche artist supported directly by the fan, the rejection of the hit song economy. It’s time to question corporate-hijacked copyright and government-decreed royalty entitlements as the basis of musician income.

Nobody thinks crowdfunding will “replace” royalties, that’s not the point. The point is that government-decreed, corporate-lobbied copyright exploitation rates are anachronistic in the digital age. We need new models. Byre, Lowery and the pro-copyright pro musician (but not necessarily pro-musician) cabal perpetuate the myth that music career failures are due to external forces (“piracy”) and not their own failure to adapt.

Alarm over the idea that value is shifting from the song to the fan is understood but unwarranted. Think beyond the numbers you see getting smaller on your royalty check. Right now, at this very moment, musicians are thriving. Byrne is the minority. We laugh at complaints about your royalty check, the epitome of a first-world problem. Most musicians never see a royalty check. Not because their music lacks quality or an audience, but because they don’t understand the music business, and the whole thing is set up to exploit them. Literally — copyright exploitation is how the old model derives value.

Thankfully, that will soon be behind us. The new model (well, really the “original” model of music before intellectual property law existed) derives value from the direct relationship between artist and fan. Technology brings us back to that model by allowing for songs to be produced, marketed and shared at costs that continue to diminish. We are all connecting, and the copyright regime is more of an obstacle than a boon to musical creativity and productivity.

Yet despite three labels owning ~70% of the rights to the world’s music (thereby largely dictating the terms that streaming companies do business), musicians aren’t just surviving, we’re thriving. More recordings are being made than ever before.

Again, for such a tech-conscious person, how can Byrne miss the recording studios in every musicians’ basement? How can he miss broadband and mobile? A world of ubiquitous, free flowing music. Each song an opportunity to be heard, and an opportunity to be paid.

Recorded music still has great value. Free or near-free access is not a genie that’s going back in the bottle, nor should it. Free access to music is best for most musicians and all fans. Some pros will get smaller paychecks — particularly those who relied on government-decreed royalty entitlements and lawyer/manager fees for squeezing blood from the stone-cold labels. That paradigm is shifting in a more ethical direction, and we should be championing it by adapting, not wringing our hands in paranoid nostalgia.

“2. The move to streaming services as the principal means of music consumption inevitably does some damage. That’s how the world works and how things progress. Progress is disruptive. One simply has to adapt to the inevitable.”

Well, yeah. Duh. Nothing is ever black and white. There are going to be benefits and drawbacks with any major change like this. Progress is both disruptive and inevitable. We have to look at whether digital music is a net positive or negative, and I continue to be stumped by folks who think music or musicians are at risk in a world of abundant creative production. The only thing being devalued is gatekeeping access to music, and there are numerous other revenue streams that musicians today are tapping into to power their careers.

Byrne makes it sound like all of the sudden, every musician doesn’t know how they’re going to make a living. All he has to do is take a look at the musicians succeeding by straddling the old model and the new, rather than fighting the future, which by definition, is inevitable.

Byrne goes so far as to categorize a group of people as “digital and technological inevitablists”, which won’t pass a spell check.

Some deaths are inevitable: The rotary phone… the fax machine… recorded music “ownership”. I mean, we’re not still using sharpened rocks to cut our meat?

So, obviously, Byrne says, “the content will run out eventually” if sound recording copyright loses its value.

Say what now? More music is being made and heard than ever before. On the whole, most musicians are taking advantage of the changes in the music business. There is a small but vocal minority of Byrnes and Ribots simply aren’t connecting directly with their fans and offering the kind of value that would render these worries of selling access obsolete.

Musicians are not under threat just because the musicians who can’t figure out how to switch from copyright exploitation to something else are blogging a lot about it.

Thousands of established artists have already embraced crowdfunding and taken control of their careers. They stopped wringing their hands and got them dirty taking control of their own careers.

“3. Scale will make the difference. Your concerns and fears are premature because if these services are allowed and encouraged to grow and reach their ultimate potential- they will be 20 times larger than what they are now in North America —- then artists will indeed make a decent living from this music consumption model.”

I don’t think anyone believes musicians will make a living solely from streaming music, or that streaming music will dollar-for-dollar replace CD sales or downloading.

I also think any reasonable person sees streaming music having endemic financial problems, even as it scales to enormous user bases. The record labels are just squeezing too much juice out of the system for tech companies to make a decent profit.

Byrne obviously doesn’t realize what he’s saying here: “Monopoly, however, has not historically been good for consumers or for innovation -— regardless what tech companies say. Power corrupts; it’s a given.”

So… uh… this is awkward, but, you know copyright IS a monopoly, right? The very right you’re defending has historically not been good for consumers or for innovation. So, yeah, thanks for making my point for me.

Byrne ends on a note that we need more transparency, which most people in the tech world agree with and are striving to provide. Meanwhile, ASCAP and BMI have magical secret licensing calculations and the labels hide from their artists everything they’re not legally pressured to show.

“4. The Internet has been good for artists’ independence. They are freer now than ever before -— they can record more cheaply and even control their distribution, if they want to.”

OK, so Byrne knows about the democratization of recording, distribution, marketing, sales, merchandise, instruction, licensing, and publishing.

Obviously a bad thing.

Byrne: “artists can’t really do a homegrown version of the on-demand streaming model.” Actually, they can and are actually doing that right now as we speak. Rabbit Rabbit and Deadmau5 are just two examples. I think it’s the future of all music. Bam! I just gave you the next big business plan in music. That’s how wolves… musicians… whatever… will make money as music streams like tap water. Each one of us will have our own branded “channel” where we directly engage and monetize fan relationships. This is a practical, logical way artistic control can be preserved in the transition from copyright exploitation to direct fan patronage. But it’s much more fun to say the sky is falling!

Oh, another understatement of the decade: “There has been a flowering of creativity and possibility somewhat thanks to the web.”

That’s like saying, “There was a great deal of reading and writing somewhat thanks to the printing press.”

Byrne is missing the point that the web is us. I’m all about respecting my elders but I’m not sure we should be taking cues for the future of music from a 61-year old who stands like a pale, naive foreigner amongst the digital natives.

“5. Streaming services are like broadcast radio, which music folks worried about at first, but eventually decided that it actually helped promote musicians work —- so some fees were waived.”

When broadcast radio came along, it threatened and co-opted labels. RCA bought Victor in 1929. The labels came fighting back, and a decade later we had BMI opening to lure artists away from labels and onto radio-owned properties. The standoff was settled by the government and that’s why we have this ridiculous entitlement system that was always broken and is now crumbling.

Eventually labels used payola to buy out radio and control the music marketplace and were able to get a final leg up on on radio, but not before they dumped a huge portion of their profits into independent promoters who greased the palms of broadcast programmers.

Today, corporate ownership of media and record companies is so consolidated, most negotiations are done behind closed doors with no input from musicians whatsoever.

This is the industry Byrne is defending in his piece.

Suggestion #1: “What if there was no free on-demand streaming (unless the artist is directly controlling that access through their own site or as a publicity endeavor).”

Byrne answered his own question, he just put parenthesis around the answer for some reason?

If you were being serious, then we have a unicorn to sell you. There is no world in which free on-demand streaming of music does not exist. Or rather, there is, and it’s a scary totalitarian dystopia where we’re likely to have bigger problems that stimulating musical productivity and creativity.

Suggestion #2: “Artists should get 50% of the income streaming sites now pay to labels”

Ha ha ha. We have a herd of unicorns to sell you.

Why does a post demonizing the music tech industry pose a solution that points out the real exploiters, the big three labels? Music rights corporations and industry organizations are clearly responsible for low musician wages, not tech companies.

Suggestion #3: “The artist should have approval whether his or her work can be used.”

Again, this is a label problem, not a tech company problem. Independent artists have total control to pick and choose each individual distributor. This is widely known… most musicians are independent. Welcome to the future of the music business: independence. It can be scary for people used to mailbox money, but we like it.

The only way to have total approval over whether your work is used is to not make it. Music is free. One way to create value around it is by controlling access through copyright law. But don’t confuse music with copyright.

Suggestion #4: “Transparent accounting and data sharing.”

Again, the labels are obfuscating. The tech companies are trending more transparent.

Is this whole thing just a Machiavellian scheme by labels to transfer their unethical history of corruption and exploitation onto a tech industry that wants to turn consumers into creators?

What is Byrne thinking? If the musicians that look up to him follow his lead, they’ll be more broke and confused than they were before they started blaming their own fans for destroying their music careers by sharing their songs out of pure love for the music.

Back to reality, folks!


photo credits: wolf by Arran ET; microphone by Paul Waite

Spotify Artist Payment Transparency Challenges Corrupt Music Biz Status Quo

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At last year’s Rethink Music conference, I peppered Spotify CEO Daniel Ek with questions about their failure to be transparent about artist payments. I saw the makings of what would be a PR nightmare for the company in 2013, just as the now-infamous artist payment infographic started making the rounds.

Spotify must be finally listening to public opinion, because it has started an all-out assault on all the negative press it’s been getting. Mainstream artists like Beck and Thom Yorke have been complaining in public about how the streaming music model simply doesn’t work. Documentaries are being made about the so-called “demise of music” (utter rubbish), mostly filled with more complaining artists that provide no solutions, only ire. Spotify is often the voodoo doll in all this streaming music hate, though a special place in hell is reserved for Google and their indexing of file-sharing websites.

The new Spotify for artists website is ground zero for musicians to learn about how Spotify really works (at least, how its PR staff would like us to think it works). I recommend checking it out though, because so much disinformation has been spread about streaming music royalties.

Still, we’re missing the big picture here — not surprising since we’re talking about the music industry. One of the cardinal rules of the people who make the majority of money in music (hint: it’s not the artists) is to obfuscate all the financials.

That’s why Spotify’s move toward greater transparency is pretty amazing. I’m led to believe it’s just beginning, with the company planning on offering automatic audits of royalty payments so artists can see exactly what they’re earning.

Let’s recap how the music industry traditionally worked so we can see how lack of transparency is one of the roots of artist exploitation. This is not the path every artist takes, but it is the status quo:

1. An artist’s music and career shows promise, either by gaining popularity, having the right industry connections, or just being an act that’s profitable to “sell” to the public.

2. Artist signs the rights to their music over to record labels and/or music publishers so they can be exploited. They hire multiple team members to handle various aspects of their business, each taking a cut.

3. The majority of artists never see a dime because they never recoup the cost of producing and marketing their album, which is required before receiving royalty payments from their label. Even then, their payments are a small percentage of total revenue. Publishers take 50% of all licensing revenue. Managers take 10-25% of most revenue. Booking agents take a similar percentage of ticket sales. Other royalties are collected by PROs like ASCAP and BMI, who keep a secret percentage of all revenue to pay their employees, fly them to conferences on exotic islands, and otherwise run the business of collecting and distributing artist revenue.

4. If the artist is in the right place at the right time with the right people, they may be lucky enough to sustain a career, even after all the percentages and cuts are taken out of their revenue stream. At this point, the rights to their music are worth exponentially more than they were when they were signed. Unfortunately, the way the record labels operate — and the way they have lobbied to structure copyright law — means that artist rarely gets to cash in on the true value of their music. The labels, lawyers and businesspeople are the true profiteers of the music industry. Worse, the musicians and their music are treated as mere product to be sold and consumed. This is the true devaluing of music — exploiting artists at a low point in their career while simultaneously reducing music to another consumer packaged good.

The music industry, on the whole, is still unquestionably corrupt. As we all know, transparency is toxic to corruption. Shining a light on secret practices benefits us all.

All the traditional players in the music industry are stained by mostly hidden corruption. There’s a rich history of collusion, price fixing, price gouging, payola and other patently illegal practices that almost always result in settled lawsuits and no admission of wrongdoing. (The same practice has infected virtually every large, modern industry — corporations are really just instruments to gain market favor and profitability.)

Record labels are well-known for stiffing artists on millions in royalties  through backroom accounting, legal loopholes and business-savvy manipulation. Even the PROs — vigilant protectors of artist’s rights to profit from the exploitation of their work — have a totally secret formula (some say no formula at all) for paying artists. We really have no idea what percentage ASCAP or BMI is keeping for itself. Even worse, because the labels and broadcasters and other multinational media conglomerates have the most leverage with PROs,  the average independent artist is gets screwed — in the dark, thanks to the lack of transparency.

A minority of artists hate streaming music largely for two reasons:

1. They see their royalty payments shrinking.

2. They equate this with the “devaluing of music”

At the Future of Music Summit this year, the theme was basically “is music being devalued?” Those artists that saw their royalty payments shrink generally answered “yes”, those who saw them grow (like most musicians) answered “no”.

Here’s the deal: Music is not devalued by streaming technology. First of all, the value of music should not be measured in dollar signs. I know that seems a little kumbaya-ish, but it doesn’t make it untrue. We musicians and fans know that the value of music is in how it shares experiences, creates bonds, provides catharsis, sets a mood, heals our psyche, etc. One cannot equate (as anti-“piracy” advocates often do) the value of music to the value of a consumable good like food or energy. Music is not consumed, it is free. Labels package it and market it for sale, but it is never actually consumed. It is free to share, free to listen to, free to be played.

Over the last 100 years, the music industry has set up barriers to sharing, listening and playing in order to profit. This was done ostensibly to protect musicians’ ability to make money and thus continue playing music, but a quick glance at history shows the utter hypocrisy of this view. Shadowy accounting, non-transparent business practices, litigation and legislation aimed at grabbing a bigger piece of the pie — these are just a few of the corrupt actions that are status quo for those that exploit musicians for profit. This is the real devaluing of music.

Let’s look at the actual market value of music. Surely we can agree that the market value of music is going down?

Absolutely not. The market value for music is actually rising.

What’s devalued — in the sense of the market — is paying for access to music. Copyright creates the barriers that prevent sharing, listening and playing music. Corporations control these barriers through technology, law and the market. The technology is the apparatus of control. The law (such as the perpetual extension of copyright term length) is the framework that prevents technology from getting too far outside their control. The market is what allows them to acquire music rights for next to nothing, and then reap all the benefits (and to be fair, suffer the risks) of inflating and exploiting the value of those rights.

The ‘Wizard of Oz’ pulling the strings on the whole facade is still the record labels — primarily the majors that own ~70% of the rights to all music on the market. Is it not plain to see that the last decade has been about the labels using streaming music to rebuild the industry of exploitation, to stem the bleeding that free access to music inflicted on physical sales and downloads? Is it not totally obvious that artists should be complaining about their onerous contracts, the ones that take all the value out of their rights and leaves them with a small percentage?

The always incredible Billy Bragg is just the latest artist to point out that the artist uproar over Spotify payments is ridiculous, given that the labels are the true culprits of artist exploitation. We need more voices like his.

Here’s why the Yorkes and Becks of the world are upset: they sold out their rights for large royalty checks that are now shrinking. They’re 100% wrong to point the finger at streaming services. Come on, who do you think negotiated those royalty payments in the first place? The reason these stars can’t blame their labels is that they are complicit in the exploitation business. As technology tears down the barriers to share, listen and play, the value of exploiting one’s rights shrinks. This is why big artists are defending their labels, crying that the sky is falling, and using fear and negativity to somehow scare fans into… what… buying CDs again?

This is the core problem of the “music is devalued” camp. They have no solutions! I’ve been debating these folks for years, and the only thing I’ve heard them come up with is “stop piracy”. If that were even possible — which it’s not — all it would do is protect the rights held by record labels. It does nothing to help most artists. It’s purely self-centered around one’s own paycheck. It does nothing to stop the system of exploitation, it only adds fuel to the fire. Regardless, study after study shows free access to music encourages sales.

That’s why Spotify’s move towards transparency is so important. It challenges the industry status quo of anti-artist secrecy and empowers musicians to actually see how their revenue is coming in. This is something that’s simply not possible with labels and PROs, unless you are one of the few artists with the legal or market might to apply pressure for an audit.

Transparency is coming to the music industry, and fans and artists are loving it. It’s actually increasing the value of music. Take another example: crowdfunding. In the past, artists funded their albums by signing their rights over to a label, and in return the label would take the financial risk of paying for its production and marketing. Of course, “risk” is perhaps a strong word, because most labels just let 9 out of 10 bands fail and then put all their money behind the one that showed market traction.

Today, artists are increasingly using crowdfunding to replace the role of the record label, at least from a financing perspective. With digital tools, bands can market themselves with virtually no budget. Distribution is democratized. For independent artists operating on small-business scales, there is less and less need for the exploitation of a label.

What’s best, crowdfunding is completely transparent. In the past, the fan would buy a CD but have no idea how much money got to the artist. Now at least they know that Spotify pays artists 70% of their revenue, comparable to iTunes. But crowdfunding is even better — on most platforms, fans see how much the album will cost to produce, and know that almost 100% of the funds are going to the band (the real figure ranges from 80%-95%, still a great improvement over the ~70% status quo).

Here’s the real key to this debate: the value of a fan is going up for artists. The value of a fan is going down for labels, because their revenue is based on exploitation and they have less opportunity to gatekeep. For artists now directly connected to their fans, crowdfunding is a viable and transparent way for fans to know their money is going to the artist. And because of that, they give a lot more of it. Nearly all artists who try crowdfunding find that instead of taking a small percentage of an album sale, they can make 10x the profit by taking money directly from a fan. Part of this is that the fan knows the money won’t get caught in the non-transparent, behind-the-scenes corruption of the music industry. But the fan also wants to feel like they are the label, like they are participating in the creation of the artist’s music. Patronage has far superior value to the fan than exploitation, not to mention its ethical superiority.

Spotify is trying to be a meritocracy. They want to take the whole royalty pool and split it up evenly based on plays. That’s why artists are seeing line items for thousandths of a cent. But it adds up. More artists are seeing their streaming revenue grow than shrink, but those who are seeing it shrink have market dominance and a loud voice. The exponential growth of crowdfunding and streaming music payouts is evidence enough. Anecdotally, I’ve seen my band’s streaming revenue double year over year.

Ultimately, I’m no grand champion of Spotify. I am in the camp that thinks they’ll never be profitable so long as the labels scarf up all of their revenue. Long-established streaming music sites like Turntable.fm are already being shut down by the music oligopoly for not scaling to big enough profits. I see access to music gradually approaching free again — the next step is already underway: the bundling of streaming music with consumer electronics. Eventually, music will be a utility like water — paid for by distributing the costs across the total population, and rarely a conscious expenditure. People still buy bottled water and folks will still buy physical product. But make no mistake: While large corporations will fight it with every lawyer they have,  no one can stop the web from bringing music on tap to the people of Earth. With streaming music, we’re already seeing corporations reluctantly embrace freer access, so long as they can still negotiate their onerous terms for artist payment.

Let’s be clear. There are plenty of people at the labels and at the streaming music sites that are fighting the good fight for artists. They realize the system is compromised and corrupt, and they are trying their best to work within that paradigm to eke through positive change. But anyone who’s trying to fight this move toward transparency is anti-artist, period. Spotify may only be doing this to protect its bottom line — if they were true crusaders they would expose the labels as the reason artists see little of their streaming revenue. But the labels keep the lights on, and Spotify still thinks it can be the alternative to “piracy”.

Sharing, listening and playing music ought to be free activities, because they actually increase the value of music. Artists are moving past the point of needing barriers to exploit rights, but labels have no other choice. I expect the transparency wars are just beginning — and I will be there tugging the curtain down with millions of my fellow musicians.

TL;DR: Transparency increases the market value of music — it combats music industry corruption. Ending piracy is not a solution — it perpetuates the corrupt status quo of artist exploitation.

Rock Star Digital Music Freakouts Ignore Benefit to Everyone Else

(CC-BY-SA Jason Lam
David Byrne, the latest rock star to fight the tide of small screens from the Jumbotron. (original photo CC-BY-SA Jason Lam)

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” – Upton Sinclair

It’s the latest fad: rock stars hating digital music. Well, not really — it started with Napster. Back then, a lot of artists held their tongues, realizing that it would be mega-uncool to call their fans thieves just for being fans. Plus, the major labels had screwed them repeatedly, and it was schadenfreude to see them suffer because of their own greed and ineptitude.

Flash forward over a decade, and the labels have figured out how to continue to profit from gatekeeping access to the world’s music. Sure, they’ve seen their market share slip versus the indies, and now only own the rights to around 70% of recorded music. But they’ve once again managed to control the means of mass distribution, this time by dictating the terms of digital music streaming services so that they could not exist without the majors, legal or financially. (I’s also the reason why streaming royalty payouts are so low for most artists — the major labels, as always, take the lion’s share.)

The rock stars realize they’re being screwed again by the majors (what did they expect?) David Byrne is the latest to pile on While many famous musicians point the finger at tech companies ad exploiters du jour, Byrne’s piece rightly acknowledges the majors are culpable for setting the terms of streaming music. Nonetheless, he speaks in concert with many other high profile artists when he blames digital distribution of music for destroying music, saying “The internet will suck all creative content out of the world”. I respect Byrne as a musician and a well-spoken, well-written, thoughtful musical provocateur, but this is too much.

Most of the complaining is just reactionary vitriol, the same way journalists deride blogging, or photographers bellyache about Instagram. There were probably some pretty pissed off monastic scribes when the printing press came out.

The problem with creative professionals complaining about changes brought about by technology is that they’re focusing only on their careers. I don’t blame ’em. Only those with a laser-like career focus can find any long-term success in the creative industries. As it relates specifically to the music industry, I never would have expected vaudeville performers to welcome recorded music, or for Tin Pan Alley to welcome radio, or for the record and radio busiensses to welcome digital.

When rock stars and professionals make the digital music debate all about their paychecks, they not only pass culpability from the major labels that deserve it to the technology companies that enable freer access to music. Tragically, when music professionals make grandiose statements about how digital is killing music, they measure the decline only in the dollar amount of their paycheck, and they denigrate music in the same way the major labels do. They reduce one of humankind’s greatest evolutionary and expressive triumphs to mere profit, and they fail to ignore the benefit of digital music to everyone else.

Put simply, more music is being made and listened to than ever before. Digital music combines the best of recording (accessibility to high-quality music performances) with the best of radio (free access). It’s the best thing to ever happen for fans — and make no mistake, fans control the music industry, though more often than not they may not realize it.

There is no doubt the professional musician is on the decline, which is bittersweet. Most career musicians are working-class survivors, a group of ~50,000 musicians in the U.S. who have fought their way tooth-and-nail to profitability. Only a fraction enjoy profitable careers lasting more than a few years. A generally non-vocal majority of professional musicians are busy adapting to the changing market, but a handful of very vocal complainers are raising an awful stink about their shrinking paychecks. Again, I don’t blame them for being protective of their livelihoods — but look what good paywalling did for newspapers/journalists. Successful pro photographers found out ways to embrace Instagram, not fight it.

My biggest gripe with the anti-free access to music, professional musician mentality is that what little time it spends focusing on solutions, those solutions belie any understanding of the change that has already taken place, and ignore those who aren’t professional musicians — namely, the tens of millions of music fans that make their paychecks possible.

It’s absurd how many artists, Byrne included, just complain. At least crusaders like David Lowery are trying to articulate solutions, though they often reduce to useless catch phrases like “stop artist exploitation” or “piracy is stealing”. What is all this doing except making professional musicians look like entitled, out-of-touch geezers to their fans?

The other troubling development is that these activist musicians end up bolstering the exploitation-based business built by major labels, by virtue of the fact that major labels control the market. Every dollar musicians fight to earn back by more strictly enforcing copyright law is $99 that goes into the pockets of the labels. Even the labels are finally realizing after 125 years of fighting piracy, that the War on Piracy is like the War on Drugs or the War on Terrorism. To the extent that battles can be won, the cost of doing so — both financial and in the hearts and minds of fans — is unsustainable.

What these money-focused musicians miss is so obvious: it’s not about the money. As Henry Rollins said, “I’d rather be heard than paid.” This is not something that only professional musicians feel. Every musician feels this. Even fans feel this. And I think what every professional musician needs to realize is that their careers are transforming because digital technology awakens the musician in all of us. Music professionals no longer enjoy a monopoly on the title of “musician.”

Free access to music empowers the amateur and the aspiring musician to earn income on scales that were not possible before. It reverses the trend of music without context — instead of digital files floating around in the cloud, creators are now compelled to create imagery, video, and other media around the music, enriching the fan experience.

Free access to music is blurring the line between fan and musician, creating a new culture of creator-consumers, remixing and mashing up several generations of recordings to create a new art form. They curate playlists to become the new DJs. They sample at will to electronically create entirely original compositions with embedded links to music history.

Free access to music rebalances the world of music more toward performances, away from the hegemony of the recording. In a post-scarcity economy, copies of performances lose value, original performances gain value. This rewards the generation of new music without having to rely on messy copyright law. EDM is explosively huge, and so much of it exists outside the copyright exploitation paradigm.

Free access to music allows musicians to focus on what’s really important: their relationship with their fans. Gone are the days when fans were measured in dollar amounts. Success in music is now measured in attention, in engagement.

Free access to music de-emphasizes the ethically compromised business model of copyright exploitation in favor of direct fan patronage. It may not scale to gold records, but the only people that seem to care are the rock stars, and those that still believe in the rock star myth. And if you’re hell-bent on copyright exploitation as your main source of revenue, there are plenty of academic studies showing free access to music increases sales of access to music.

I get that it’s counterintuitive — especially for professional musicians — to see their disappearing careers as a good thing. But it is. You just have to consider that music is bigger than the ~50,000 professional musicians in the U.S. There are fifty times as many musicians creating music right now for no money, and waving it all away as crappy music is a defense mechanism. They are finding their audiences. They are supplementing their income and breaking even. They are being heard even if they aren’t being paid. And if they’re really good composers, performers, recording artists and entrepreneurs, they are getting more chances to be heard, more chances to build a career.

There is no doubt that free access to music is inevitable — if not here already — and will continue to be the major force in reshaping music. To the detractors and complainers, I’m afraid the question of whether that’s a net benefit to humanity has already been settled. The fans have spoken. They want the music back.

Satellite Predators: My “Sirius XM Sucks” Experience

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If you get one of these in the mail, do what I did. 

I have enjoyed satellite radio for the last three and a half years. There’s nothing quite like genre-sorted, slightly random playlists of singles peppered with a few b-sides.

But here’s the truth: Sirius XM sucks.

You bet Top 40 radio is unlistenable! Who wants to listen to advertisements for music sandwiched between advertisements for products when there are so many other options?

Pandora, iTunes, Spotify, Grooveshark, Turntable.fm… they’re all great on a desktop, workable on mobile, but get most into a car and you’re a slave to cell signal strength.

It’s crazy that a world of digital music still can’t compete with satellite radio for convenience in the car. And it’s all because they followed the business model of the 8-track cassette — build the damn thing directly into the dashboard of every American-made car.

Sirius XM has a market monopoly on delivering music via satellite. I’ll admit it, I hated them even before using the service, and I ended up a customer anyway.

In 2008, the FCC approved the merger of Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio, basically saying it was OK to create a satellite radio monopoly because otherwise the companies would go out of business due to competition from digital.

The merger was a profitable move for both companies. Without the government’s blessing on its monopoly, satellite radio might have gone the way of the 8-track. But the industry elite had deemed satellite radio too big to fail.

The merger was not good for artists or fans, but who cares about them, right?

No, this blog post is not about the obvious ethical bankruptcy of the FCC or of large media conglomerates like Sirius XM. It’s about my personal experience with their predatory billing practices, poor promotional ploys and abysmal customer service that led me to cancel my subscription today.

I ended up with satellite radio as most people do — with a free 6 month trial in a new car. When the six months was up, I was offered a great introductory deal. I forget exactly what the rate was, but it was far less than the $18.99/month default payment plan ($227.88 when billed monthly for a year). I made sure that I was purchasing a single year of service, and made sure Sirius XM knew they did not have my authorization to charge my card after my year was up.

$227.88 per year is waaaaaaay too much for satellite radio. And this is the low end of the cost — if you don’t own the hardware or want to access your Sirius XM online, it’s going to cost you extra. If the FCC’s intent was to ignore the issues of customer price fixing and price gouging in order to maintain satellite radio’s profitability, they did a great job.

But nobody pays $227.88 for their first year of Sirius XM. They sign on for 30%, 40%, 50% off or more. And like any bait-and-switch introductory rate, the fine print says that unless you call to cancel your subscription, you will automatically be billed the full $18.99/month in perpetuity.

After my initial free six months and toward the end of my killer one-year deal, I started getting the expected renewal offers in the mail. There seemed to be a new one every two weeks — even before I could consider the 50% off, they were throwing 60% off at me. 70% off. Finally, I got an offer to get 6 months for $25. The regular price for 6 months of service is $113.94. I took it.

Only now, they wouldn’t accept my terms not to auto-bill my credit card. After much insisting, they finally told me that there was no way to have a subscription without it being automatically renewed and billed. I could pay by check, but the service would auto-renew and a new check would be due unless I called to cancel.

So, like your typical idiot consumer, I made a mental note to cancel my account right before the “six months for $25” deal expired, and I forgot. I spent a year paying the $18.99/month like a chump. Had I only taken 20 minutes out of my day to call Sirius XM and threaten to cancel my account, I could have been paying $4.17/mo. instead of $18.99/mo.

Folks, if you like Sirius XM radio and you’re not paying $4.17/mo., put that 20 minute cancellation call on your calendar right now. You can thank me later for saving you a few hundred bucks a year.

I’m not ashamed to admit I probably would have gone on paying $18.99/mo. like a chump had my debit card not fortuitously expired. This required Sirius XM to call be to update my billing information, and that’s when they began to really lose me.

The customer service nightmare began, as it often does, with an underpaid customer service representative in a foreign country where labor is cheaper.

I gave my updated payment information and then asked to have my subscription taken off of automated billing and renewal. I told them straight up that I wanted to stop auto-renewal because in the past I had received attractive offers to rejoin when I let my account lapse. Again, I was informed this was not possible. Even though satellite radio is a luxury, Sirius XM portrays its company as a utility when explaining why every subscriber is forced to auto-renew. And their policy is not to notify monthly subscribers before their subscription is auto-renewed. The policy glistens with slime any way you look at it.

“If I could not stop auto-renewal,” I told them, “I would like to cancel my account.” That’s when the barrage of offers started coming. 60% off, 70% off, all the way back down to six months for $25.

I insisted that unless there was a better offer, I would like to cancel my account and see if I can get a better offer after canceling.

The rep then asked if I would like to finish out my current plan. I said sure, seeing as there were only a few months left and assuming I had already been billed the annual fee. What I didn’t realize was that I was still being billed monthly, this monthly billing was part of a year-long block of billing time. So with a few confusing words, the rep convinced me of finishing out the year with Sirius XM (my “current plan”) and then having my service cancelled. I settled last month’s fee, agreed to pay out the remaining four months of my plan, and then my account would be cancelled.

It occurred to me that I had just accomplished what I was told was impossible — to continue to get Sirius XM service without my subscription being auto-renewed! Success!

Then I got a call on Friday that would be the beginning of the end.

You know it’s one of those calls when you get the awkward 2-second pause between saying “Hello” and hearing the rep saying his or her call script. When I heard the rep was from Sirius XM I couldn’t believe it. Here I had already cancelled my service, and they were calling me to renew. I didn’t mind that I had already received a couple of letters in the mail from Sirius XM offering me the $25 for 6 months deal. But calling me on the phone, direct telemarketing, was just over the top.

I told the rep that it wasn’t a good time and to call back later, but I had my mind made up. Finishing out my plan was not worth it if I was going to be harassed by customer service. I would answer their call and cancel.

They called once in the morning and once at night for four straight days. I admit, I didn’t pick up because I wanted to see how long they’d go for. Finally, this morning, I picked up and got yet another surprise.

Even though I had updated my billing information the previous month, Sirius XM was calling me to update my billing info because the card they had on file was expired. This despite taking and successfully processing new billing info last month. And what happened to the “plan” that I was finishing up? If I was being billed monthly, what the hell was the “plan” the last rep was referring to in any case?

At this point I couldn’t tell the difference between their mistakes and their scams. All I knew was that I wanted out. I updated my billing info (for the second time) and was transferred once again to the cancellation department.

I understand the game. When you call to cancel your service contract, you run the gauntlet of incredible deals meant to coerce you into doing anything but cancel. It starts with the magic question: “May I ask why you are canceling?” From there, your conversation branches off in one of two directions. Say you can’t afford it and they will offer you discounts until you can (at least for the next six months, after which you’ll be auto-renewed at the unaffordable rate). Say you have a problem and they’ll throw the same deals at you, and maybe add on a month or two of free service for your grievances.

I explained that my problem was that I found it unethical that Sirius XM was bait-and-switching its customers, auto-renewing subscriptions for premium fees after getting cards on file at introductory rates. I thought they were being predatory by not clearly disclosing that their business model was to sign you up for $4.17/mo. and then begin billing you $18.99/mo. six months later with no notification. I told the rep that I understand the need for promotional deals, but the sheer number of different proposals, and the universal nature of their deceit, had finally gotten to me. Finally, I told the rep that I knew Sirius XM didn’t care and probably wouldn’t listen to my concerns but maybe, just maybe, she could talk to her boss and relay my concern that Sirius XM’s predatory billing practices are unsustainable.

In most situations, there is nothing you can do to change a corporation other than to not patronize it. Luckily, I can do something more than just cancel my support for the satellite radio monopoly. This blog gives me the platform to let others know: Sirius XM needs to change its billing practices, because more customers each day are realizing they’re complicit in unethical business practices. We see the switch behind the bait. We see through the false empathy of the customer service training. We understand your business exists solely to make a profit and has long since parted with any intention of fostering the greater good of musicians and their fans.

We understand that Sirius XM fights against musicians to pay a lower royalty rate on the music they exploit. We understand that digital devices and connectivity would have killed the satellite radio business model already if not for the enormous (and potentially flagging) support Sirius XM buys from automakers.

Today I cancelled my Sirius XM subscription. I will miss the occasional discovery of a new artist. I will miss the ability to turn on CNN to hear up-to-the-minute descriptions the latest thing to be blown up and/or engulfed in flames. I will miss it on long drives when I most need musical surprises to break up the monotony.

I won’t miss relinquishing control over the terms on which a company takes my money. I won’t miss the incessant attempts to bait-and-switch me back as a customer. I won’t miss feeling complicit in the exploitation of all the artists on the station, whom Sirius XM lobbies against paying. I won’t miss the customer service hold time, or the feeling of having my concerns ignored.

Today, and for as long as people Google “Sirius XM sucks”, this blog will be there to remind the Sirius XM corporation and its employees: The legitimate value of your service is being undermined by the exploitation of your customers and those who made the music that gives your service value. You will profit in the short term, but the business will be unsustainable in the long term. Tomorrow’s headlines are “Sirius XM Goes Way of 8-Track”.