Stöhr, Richard (1874 - 1967) Symphony No.1, Op.18 (1909)

[hyperdanny]

These huge differences in release dates are perplexing, especially since Toccata is British.......I've received the cd more or less 3 weeks ago (musicexport Greece via my local amazon)

[Alan Howe]

I'm disappointed that the whole CD is now on YouTube. Good publicity for the orchestra maybe, but surely bad business for Toccata.

[hyperdanny]

right..I wonder if Toccata knows and/or agrees...

[Ilja]

I'm disappointed that the whole CD is now on YouTube. Good publicity for the orchestra maybe, but surely bad business for Toccata.

Not necessarily. Bad for sales of physical media perhaps, but Toccata's financing model probably doesn't depend on those.

I've been working for two recording companies and have had discussions with a third, which operates on a somewhat different model. I can't look into Toccata's practices, and the following is based on my personal experience from a few years ago. I need to emphasize that this is the situation in Europe; it differs in some ways from how things are done in the USA.  

The most important take-away: most recording projects need to break even well before the recording itself is even released. They're paid for by subsidies, donations (one of the labels I worked for was often paid by the composer's family or an organization supporting their work) and, indirectly, the orchestra and conductor. The recording itself often comes almost for free, as orchestras see a recording mostly as a PR effort. In some countries, orchestras are even obliged by labor agreements to spend part of their time on recording musical heritage. This explains why we sometimes see weird combinations of an unsung work (played to show versatility) with a warhorse (played for demonstration purposes). The venue is often paid for by the orchestra as well. 

The main cost factors for one of these labels are therefore technicians, sometimes the incidental additional piccolo player, and everything tied to the production of the CD: a text writer, cover designer and production of the actual physical product. For any label, inventory of physical media is a risk: their production can be costly, but storing surplus inventory is also, and unpredictable to boot. If CDs run out, you can't do a second run unless you resort to print-on-demand with CD-Rs, which is frowned upon by at least a part of the customer base. But it's difficult to skip physical media altogether since that customer base is fairly conservative and going download-only will impact reach. However, in practice, physical media may in fact introduce additional costs, which are unpredictable to boot. And the margins that labels like Toccata (I assume) operate under are extremely narrow. Even such minimal income streams as YouTube or Spotify generate can be significant for them. This is why I subscribe to Presto's streaming service, which offers a much fairer model to the labels.

A certain well-known German label operates slightly differently because they have unique access to a great number of orchestras and soloists, and their large customer base guarantees adequate sales. This is why they have long continued to focus mostly on physical product - but even they are increasingly turning to downloads and streaming media. 

One final point: every single person I've personally met in any of the eight or so recording projects that I've been involved in was driven firstly by a passion for the music itself. Sure, they were continually despairing about the fate of their industry, but no one was cynical when it came to their product. I've seen people make commercially questionable decisions purely because it would lead to a recording with greater integrity.

[Alan Howe]

I still don't like to see the proliferation of commercial recordings on YouTube. I pays me hard-earned dough to listen while others get the music for free. That's what's unfair...

[Ilja]

That's absolutely a legitimate complaint from a consumer viewpoint. But I'm afraid the industry is moving to a model where physical media are gaining a boutique status, i.e. you pay for the physical object rather than the music that's on it. A bit like the LP market, really.

[Alan Howe]

It's not about a physical product - it's about the principle that, whatever the medium involved, recordings should be paid for by consumers, not simply uploaded somewhere for free. Effectively, those who pay are being cheated.

[Ilja]

It's not for free, though. You still pay, but in a different way: by consuming advertisements. My point is that you are made to pay to consume the product in a specific way. The product is no longer the music, but the medium.

By the way, I'm not saying that's preferable in any way. I just acknowledge that we're dealing with a different commercial model than we did even a decade ago.

Later addendum: I do worry about CDs. Not so much because of the things themselves (I really only use downloaded or streaming media) but because of the documentation. One can easily see how this can fall victim to cost-cutting if there's no longer any physical booklet around needing to be filled. To get back to the recording under discussion, William Melton's excellent, scholarly notes accompanying the Stöhr recordings really offer an added value. An in some cases (not this one, mind) the notes have been far more useful to me than the recording itself ever was.

[Alan Howe]

So, I'm paying, say, £15, for the CD - how much am I contributing by listening on YouTube? And, of course, I can download the recording for free via the multitude of file conversion programs available online. Still seems daft to me...

[Mark Thomas]

I can download the recording for free

You can, but the quality of the recording is substantially degraded from lossless to maybe 128kbps at best. I must say that I agree with Ilja that this is the way things are going but I just don't understand the economics of putting complete recordings, however degraded, on YouTube. My guess is that they don't act as just an advertisement or taster for the CD for many potential buyers who'll happily trade the poorer sound for getting the music free. My poor old ears can't detect much, if any, difference in recording quality anyway. 

[Ilja]

YouTube pays US$ 0.00164 per official artist stream (Sinfonia Varsovia's, in this case). That means that you need around 5,000 streams to generate the same revenue as a regular download. Spotify pays between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream, so you roughly need around 1500 streams to equal the same amount of revenue as a download. I don't know what Presto pays, but I assume it's more than that.

In this case, I rather suspect (but have no way of confirming) that the orchestra has simply bought off the rights of the recording from Toccata, leaving the surplus revenue from downloads and CDs for the label.

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks Ilja, that goes some way towards explaining the economics. If someone uses one of the many YouTube download programs to rip the mp4 or convert it to mp3, as opposed to recording it manually as it streams, does YouTube still regard the download as a stream, and so pays the artist for it? These are rather murky waters, I know...

[Alan Howe]

I mostly listen over headphones these days (not wanting to be antisocial), so as long as the sound isn't seriously degraded my nearly 70 year-old ears just won't notice the difference.

I still feel somewhat cheated - I mean, £15 for a plastic case and the notes? Grrrr......

[Ilja]

Thanks Ilja, that goes some way towards explaining the economics. If someone uses one of the many YouTube download programs to rip the mp4 or convert it to mp3, as opposed to recording it manually as it streams, does YouTube still regard the download as a stream, and so pays the artist for it? These are rather murky waters, I know...

I don't think YouTube will see the difference, so it'll still be a one-time, single stream.

An important addendum: every individual track will count as a separate stream, so for this particular recording with seven tracks (three for the suite, four for the symphony) you may divide my numbers by seven for every listen to the entire thing.

This is not the whole story, however. Revenue can be significantly increased by monetizing a channel (i.e., allowing ads). Furthermore, from what I understand there is a threshold for the number of streams, below which YouTube will not pay out anything. Overall, I'd advise people to listen elsewhere if they can, even on Spotify but preferably Qobuz or Presto.

[eschiss1]

not Amazon Music, though?