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LongBeachArena72

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treaclefingers
I understand spotify measures the number of times a song is streamed, the more the 'bigger' the song.

what isn't measured by anyone is how many times I've listened to my beatles, stones and led zeppelin albums. In the day, I'm sure they were 'listened to' much more than Elvis, Chuck Berry and Frank Sinatra, certainly outsold them by the time we get to the late 60s.

Just because our favourite bands aren't streamed to the same level as "the drake" is doesn't mean we're facing the decline of western civilization...invariably new releases will always outperform catalogue music in streaming (just like in the old days with sales).

I also think that if there happens to be a skewing right now towards a handful of artists, that will change very quickly when the next big thing comes around. Think about how much the Beatles, one band dominated sales in the 60s...music survived.

The big difference now is you'll be able to see swings in musical taste virtually in 'real time'. It's a brave new world.

1) Yes, in the pre-streaming days, sales of physical product & radio play were the only way to determine a record's popularity. How many times a record owner spun his or her discs was never an imaginable metric back in the day.

2) Were Beatles, Stones, and Zeppelin records "listened to" more than the most popular artists earlier in the 20th century? I'm not sure how we would know this. We could tally up every possible sale, of every 45, 78, long player, every 'listen' on every radio station ... but that wouldn't tell us if the Beatles and Stones beat Elvis and Sinatra in terms of "listens." I don't have any idea how to prove whether Elvis buyers were less obsessed about spinning their 45's than Beatles fans were or whether Sinatra fans were less likely to listen over and over again to their man's songs than were Stones fans.

3) There's nothing inherently judgmental about the worth of what we refer to as "classic rock" when we look at Spotify numbers. I think we've all known for a number of years now that music has moved on and there have been several generations of artists that have come (and mostly gone) since our childhood heroes first trod the boards. "Classic rock" will stand the test of time ... or it won't. And none of us will be around to see that. We all think that our own generations have produced the best of everything ... and maybe that's true in the case of those of us who came of age in the 60's and 70's. But I know that I am frequently guilty of cultural myopia when it comes to the importance of things that have happened in my lifetime. I have to constantly remind myself of things like: no, this isn't the most important election in the nation's history, or no, this isn't the worst example of man's inhumanity to man ever in history, etc., etc., etc.

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treaclefingers

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LongBeachArena72

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treaclefingers
I understand spotify measures the number of times a song is streamed, the more the 'bigger' the song.

what isn't measured by anyone is how many times I've listened to my beatles, stones and led zeppelin albums. In the day, I'm sure they were 'listened to' much more than Elvis, Chuck Berry and Frank Sinatra, certainly outsold them by the time we get to the late 60s.

Just because our favourite bands aren't streamed to the same level as "the drake" is doesn't mean we're facing the decline of western civilization...invariably new releases will always outperform catalogue music in streaming (just like in the old days with sales).

I also think that if there happens to be a skewing right now towards a handful of artists, that will change very quickly when the next big thing comes around. Think about how much the Beatles, one band dominated sales in the 60s...music survived.

The big difference now is you'll be able to see swings in musical taste virtually in 'real time'. It's a brave new world.

1) Yes, in the pre-streaming days, sales of physical product & radio play were the only way to determine a record's popularity. How many times a record owner spun his or her discs was never an imaginable metric back in the day.

2) Were Beatles, Stones, and Zeppelin records "listened to" more than the most popular artists earlier in the 20th century? I'm not sure how we would know this. We could tally up every possible sale, of every 45, 78, long player, every 'listen' on every radio station ... but that wouldn't tell us if the Beatles and Stones beat Elvis and Sinatra in terms of "listens." I don't have any idea how to prove whether Elvis buyers were less obsessed about spinning their 45's than Beatles fans were or whether Sinatra fans were less likely to listen over and over again to their man's songs than were Stones fans.

3) There's nothing inherently judgmental about the worth of what we refer to as "classic rock" when we look at Spotify numbers. I think we've all known for a number of years now that music has moved on and there have been several generations of artists that have come (and mostly gone) since our childhood heroes first trod the boards. "Classic rock" will stand the test of time ... or it won't. And none of us will be around to see that. We all think that our own generations have produced the best of everything ... and maybe that's true in the case of those of us who came of age in the 60's and 70's. But I know that I am frequently guilty of cultural myopia when it comes to the importance of things that have happened in my lifetime. I have to constantly remind myself of things like: no, this isn't the most important election in the nation's history, or no, this isn't the worst example of man's inhumanity to man ever in history, etc., etc., etc.

Regarding your point 2., I think I may have not stated my case as clearly as I hoped. What I meant was, that by the late sixties and into the 70s, even though artists like Elvis & Chuck were still around, recording, touring etc., they weren't selling like the 'newer' artists of the day...and that we should expect that. Just like the newer artists now will almost always be bigger than the still touring and recording dinosaur acts. It's just the way it is, and has always been. The fact that Drake has 100 billion streams, or whatever the hell he has, is only significant compared to his contemporaries, as you can't compare that to the acts that previously peaked. I would wager the number of 'listens' the Beatles have had is absolutely staggering, and would blow away the 'Drake streaming metric'.

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georgelicks
Rolling Stones Top 40 Songs on Spotify (Up to June 25, 2017)

1. Paint It Black (154.169,123)


2. Gimme Shelter (111.214,322)


3. Sympathy For The Devil (108.107,537)


4. (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (106.517,411)


5. Start Me Up (87.957,965)


6. Beast Of Burden (66.923,386)


7. Angie (53.335,723)


8. Brown Sugar (50.711,556)


9. Wild Horses (47.460,007)


10. You Can't Always Get What You Want (41.507,645)


11. Honky Tonk Women (30.908,375)


12. Under My Thumb (28.860,559)


13. Jumpin' Jack Flash (27.645,845)


14. Can't You Hear Me Knocking (16.464,622)


15. Miss You (16.334,185)


16. Tumbling Dice (15.528,284)


17. Ruby Tuesday (15.481,719)


18. She's a Rainbow (12.458,585)


19. Street Fighting Man (11.723,305)

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Beast
I'm not sure how much these figures for particular songs can be taken at face value - not just for the Stones but generally. They might be pretty indicative but I don't believe they are truly accurate.

I just took out a Spotify trial (and must say that many advances and improvements have been introduced since the first trial I did some years ago).

So - I played the whole of Let It Bleed. After that, various other songs started playing out of the blue. None of these other songs was chosen by me but by Spotify - obviously based on my choice of Let It Bleed.

So, the songs that came up next were Stairway to Heaven, Hurricane, Bad Moon Rising and then - She's A Rainbow.

I am wholly naive about how these things work, but could this scenario be partly why a song like She's A Rainbow (hardly a warhorse) has over 12 million plays? I wonder how long it would have been before the other songs in the Stones Top 40 were played to me, even though I hadn't chosen them.

At any rate, this scenario perhaps calls into question the accuracy of all Spotify figures because it's not transparent how many times songs were played based on the user's own choice and how many times they might have been played to the user by Spotify on the basis of the user's previous music choices.

FWIW, Spotify tells me that the Stones have 8,950,654 monthly listeners - making them 147th in the world - and, interestingly, that Mexico City is the city with the most monthly listeners (220,001).

But again, anyone with a VPN could choose a server in Mexico City, so how accurate is that statistic really?

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LongBeachArena72

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Beast
I'm not sure how much these figures for particular songs can be taken at face value - not just for the Stones but generally. They might be pretty indicative but I don't believe they are truly accurate.

I just took out a Spotify trial (and must say that many advances and improvements have been introduced since the first trial I did some years ago).

So - I played the whole of Let It Bleed. After that, various other songs started playing out of the blue. None of these other songs was chosen by me but by Spotify - obviously based on my choice of Let It Bleed.

So, the songs that came up next were Stairway to Heaven, Hurricane, Bad Moon Rising and then - She's A Rainbow.

I am wholly naive about how these things work, but could this scenario be partly why a song like She's A Rainbow (hardly a warhorse) has over 12 million plays? I wonder how long it would have been before the other songs in the Stones Top 40 were played to me, even though I hadn't chosen them.

At any rate, this scenario perhaps calls into question the accuracy of all Spotify figures because it's not transparent how many times songs were played based on the user's own choice and how many times they might have been played to the user by Spotify on the basis of the user's previous music choices.

FWIW, Spotify tells me that the Stones have 8,950,654 monthly listeners - making them 147th in the world - and, interestingly, that Mexico City is the city with the most monthly listeners (220,001).

But again, anyone with a VPN could choose a server in Mexico City, so how accurate is that statistic really?

It's a feature called "Autoplay." Go into Settings and toward the bottom of the screen just move the toggle to 'off.' Most people hate this feature and have turned it off in Settings and Spotify will probably discontinue it soon. I've heard estimates that it might account for 5% of total streams at most.

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bart-man
The complete shows from Brixton, L'Olymia and Paradiso are now available on Spotify. Maybe old news but I saw it today for the first time

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Beast
Thanks for the helpful info about the autoplay, LongBeachArena72

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35love

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bart-man
The complete shows from Brixton, L'Olymia and Paradiso are now available on Spotify. Maybe old news but I saw it today for the first time

Well, this may tip me over to getting my own account now (my H has one, he's more techy and a bit younger than me, lol)
I own the hard copies (GOLD) but I need to hear Keith's 'Beast' acoustic outside

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Koen
How much revenue do artists get from Spotify?

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GasLightStreet
I'm going to guess that playing a song on Spotify is no different than watching something on YouTube - if I watch/listen to the entire thing is irrelevant: it counts as a click period.

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Koen
How much revenue do artists get from Spotify?