From the ECM website:
Over the past week we have begun the process of entering the world of streaming, and from November 17, the full ECM catalogue will be available to subscribers to services including Apple Music, Amazon, Spotify, Deezer, Tidal, Qobuz and Idagio. This simultaneous launch across the platforms – facilitated by a new digital distribution agreement with Universal Music – invites listeners to explore the wide range of music recorded by our artists in the course of nearly five decades of independent production.
Although ECM’s preferred mediums remain the CD and LP, the first priority is that the music should be heard. The physical catalogue and the original authorship are the crucial references for us: the complete ECM album with its artistic signature, best possible sound quality, sequence and dramaturgy intact, telling its story from beginning to end.
In recent years, ECM and the musicians have had to face unauthorized streaming of recordings via video web-sharing sites, plus piracy, bootlegs, and a proliferation of illegal download sites. It was important to make the catalogue accessible within a framework where copyrights are respected.
ECM Press Office
Munich, November 14, 2017
I have many thoughts about this and have expressed them on the FB ECM listener page, a passionate group that posts music and has lively discussions of all things ECM. This is a very divisive subject and a heated discussion is going on there right now. Here are a couple things I wrote:
I doubt the artists will see much in the way of revenues. I suppose they will be told it’s good exposure and I guess it could be argued that this venture will attract a wider audience. But I doubt most of these new listeners will buy anything if they can stream it. For most listeners today, streaming quality is acceptable to them: i.e. this IS the way they listen to music. For me however, I will get to audition things before I buy, by which I will be able to make more informed choices. I will still buy hard copies.
I was staying at an Airbnb not long ago and and my 30 something host listened to music on his iPhone. He placed it in a plastic coffee mug for what he considered to be „high fidelity“ sound. Either that or listened over his laptop speakers. He is not poor – it’s a choice. This is how many millennials listen to music.
… and this:
Maybe this is just succumbing to the inevitable; ECM was one of the last holdouts.
I do think we’re reaching the end of an era and it concerns me for several reasons. The irony is, while there’s never been an easier time for a middle-income person to own an audiophile (or at least near-audiophile system) most folks settle for way worse sound quality through compressed files and listening thru earbuds or shitty laptop speakers etc. Some of this is due to being low income (which is perfectly understandable), some ignorance, some convenience, and some of it is just simply being of a mindset of simply not caring.
That being said, most people, when given the opportunity to hear quality recordings over a decent system usually have a positive reaction, and are amazed to discover what they’ve been missing.
I do have a concern that eventually CDs will go out of production completely or will become such a niche thing that they will become cost prohibitive. There will of course be HD downloads, but as many passionate collectors know, downloads have zero collectible value, nor do they have any appeal as the „magical objects“ that CDs and LPs, with the artwork and the booklets, possess. I have dabbled in downloading hi def music, but the majority of my purchases are still CDs. As CDs go out of print, there will be a collectors market that will drive the price of out of print CDs even higher than it already is.
Of course there is the whole issue of artists getting paid for their work. As far as I’m concerned the $0.006 to $0.0084 cents an artist gets paid per stream is a total joke. I have friends, such as composer / performance artist Amy X Neuberg who actually get respectable plays, but even after some 43,000 plays she received a check for $1.27 or something like that (she posted the stats on FB). Yes, it’s all about touring these days, but setting up a tour is expensive and here in the states we only get to see most European artists once a decade, if we’re lucky.
Of course, it is better to post say, Spotify links, where the artist gets „something“ instead of YouTube links where the artist isn’t compensated, not even minutely. And there is also the revenue an artist gets when someone actually attends a concert by an artist they were exposed to on a streaming site. So there’s that …
I would love to hear any thoughts my fellow Manafonistas have on this controversial subject.