Is it a Problem that Labels Own Part of Spotify? Mailbag
I dive into another round of reader questions.
I had a ton of fun answering read-submitted questions last month, so I decided to do it again. If you want to submit a question for next month, just click this link. Also, if you are looking for a holiday gift for the music lover in your life, considering buying them a subscription to this newsletter. Paid subscribers get double the monthly posts as free subscribers.
Investing in Artists, Long Titles, and Old Songwriters Mailbag
Former Outkast member Andre 3000 recently put out an instrumental flute album. The 12-minute lead song “I Swear, I Really Wanted to Make a 'Rap' Album but This Is Literally the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time” is now officially the longest song to ever enter the Hot 100. Is that also the longest title to chart on the Hot 100? - Anonymous
That title is 103 characters, which is the exact number of characters as “Jeremiah Peabody's Polyunsaturated Quick-Dissolving Fast-Acting Pleasant-Tasting Green and Purple Pills”, the Ray Stevens’ song typically noted as the Hot 100 hit with the longest title. So, it’s a tie. Sort of.
Both songs lose on a technicality. In the 1980s, a song colloquially known as “Stars on 45” topped the Hot 100. It was a medley of mostly Beatles’ songs over a disco beat. For legal reasons, the official title had to list every song in the medley, making it the longest-titled Hot 100 hit: “Medley: Intro Venus/Sugar Sugar/No Reply/I'll Be Back/Drive My Car/Do You Want to Know a Secret/We Can Work It Out/I Should Have Known Better/Nowhere Man/You're Going to Lose That Girl/Stars on 45”.
Is there a viable way for audiences to be decoupled from platforms without the use of email? So, supposing I quit Instagram, what technology could allow me to take those followers with me so that I can continue to connect with them through other mediums? - Dom
I have over 100k followers on TikTok. In one sense, having that many followers is really cool. In another sense, it’s profoundly overrated because there is no certainty that anything I post will reach them. I could post nearly the same content on two different days and get 300k views one day and 300 the next. So, your question is a good one. I can’t necessarily reach my followers if I post on TikTok, but if I leave the platform, I lose them for good. What options do I have?
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Though you specifically want me to ignore email, I don’t think I can. 4,000 people subscribe to this newsletter. That’s an order of magnitude smaller than my TikTok following, but each time I send out a newsletter, it’s almost guaranteed to reach 4,000 inboxes. That certainty is powerful.
Beyond email, you are probably looking at more old-fashioned means, like letters. Before the internet, fan clubs were largely maintained via the mail. Email is not much different than that, except it’s cheaper. If you eschew collecting any information about your fans, you’re probably just left with touring. Touring is still one of the best ways to build a fan base, but if you want to maintain those fan-performer relationships, you are going to have to be on the road a ton.
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Do record labels still invest major time & money in new bands or performers? Are they promoting as much as they used to or are they just hoping a band takes off virally? - Warren
All three major labels - Sony, Universal, and Warner - are part of publicly traded companies. The latter two specifically break out artist-related costs in their financial filing. In their most recent filings, Warner cited $2.0 billion in artist costs and $1.2 billion production costs. Universal cited €4.7 billion in artist costs and €1.0 billion in production costs. Along with developing talent, artist costs also include royalty payments, but even considering that, it’s undeniable that these companies are investing massive amounts of time and money into their artists.
Your second question about chasing virality is worth parsing out by itself, though. There have been stories floating around for the last few years about how labels are struggling to create new stars. While I am skeptical of this notion to some degree, I don’t think labels have figured out how to break stars in this current climate. For decades, labels had surefire ways to reach people, like terrestrial radio and MTV. As we spoke about in the last question, this era of social media has made fans harder to reach consistently. Because of that, I think some labels are indeed chasing virality. We’re beginning to see that that model is unsustainable.
How much of a conflict of interest is it that all of the major record labels own a sizable chunk of Spotify? How do you think this has affected the recent changes in royalty payments? - Brad
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