No Streaming for Kisses On The Bottom

By Michael Lavorgna • Posted: Feb 8, 2012

Sir Paul McCartney has joined Adele, The Black Keys, and Tom Waits by blocking his new album Kisses On The Bottom from being played on any of the streaming services like MOG, last.fm or Rhapsody. The Black Keys have been the most vocal about the reason behind this decision—from an interview with VH1:

"For a band that makes a living selling music, it's not at a point yet to be feasible for us," drummer Patrick Carney said.

You can see a graphic representation of this issue here which is one more piece of the new digital music business paradigm puzzle that doesn't yet fit for all involved.

Comments

Innocently, he asked,

Submitted by deckeda on February 8, 2012 - 6:27pm.

Are such artists acting on data that shows music available on streaming services usurpes sales of higher margins elsewhere?

I'm assuming that's the feeling. Otherwise, the artist would view it as additional, incremental income, right?

Not sure what (if any) the connection is (label?) but all four artists allowed a free, pre-release stream of their current full album. Sir Paul also has a free, live performance of the songs Thursday night.

Timed control is the name of the game. Just don't tell Adele that the NPR Music app on my iPhone somewhow cached the stream for "21" and 2 other artist's titles from February though about November. I thought it was odd, too.

Something I didn't notice last week in my earlier comments about the new McCartney release is that there's a 24/96 download available for $16.

The digital versions also include a free video (a copy of tomorrow's performace perhaps?) wheras vinyl buyers apparently don't have computers and so wouldn't want the video. :/

I got a C in Marketing 101 and was lucky to achieve that much, so bizarre the practice seemed. But how quaint it is to compartmentalize buyers! I understand offering easy to understand packages, but one day an artist is going to say, "Hey, for $15 you can have any format you want, or all of them. And for buying from my site here's an extra exclusive freebie." Is this rocket surgery? Brain science?

Instead of adding value by taking some money, they'd rather have the choice of none (pirated copies) or all of it (buying at full price for each iteration.) I guess it's working so well they'll continue to all go broke waiting for each sale to come in. But yeah, it was a gentleman's C, what the hell do I know.

You can listen to every track for free

Submitted by Michael Lavorgna on February 9, 2012 - 5:07am.

on NPR. I missed the full streaming version.

The reason(s) for snubbing streaming services would appear to have something to do with dissatisfaction regarding the business arrangement since these same artists offer their music for free elsewhere.

From this chart – Artist income from Spotify = $0.00029/play. Now that’s incremental!

There's a difference, however.

Submitted by deckeda on February 9, 2012 - 7:08am.

And I think it's what these artists are worried about.

The NPR and other streams (whether full or by-song) are temporary. They go offline in 30 days or less, and that window has been shrinking during the last year, from my observation. Spotify et all are available "forever."

Good point

Submitted by Michael Lavorgna on February 9, 2012 - 7:53am.

But I’m not so sure I’d attribute this to worry as opposed to an issue concerning the business model. Or perhaps both.

For example, Spotify does not pay a standard royalty fee to every artist/label. Rather it is a negotiated rate and essentially the more popular you are, the more leverage you have so the more money you make per play. By withholding music from streaming services, we may be seeing some failed negotiations.

Of course I’m speculating but there are plenty of instances out there, especially among smaller indie labels, of dissatisfaction with the terms offered by streaming services.