Is Adele really ‘dumb and uneducated’ and mean to her fans for keeping her album off Spotify?

Music industry “expert” Bob Lefsetz has long had a bee in his bonnet about Taylor Swift. When she refused to allow her music to be streamed on Spotify, after the company refused to let her “window” her album by only featuring it on the paid-for subscription version of the site, Lefsetz derided her as being either stupid or naive, for not moving with the times, for being selfish — and for not looking after her fans. Recently, Adele got the same treatment, as he lectured her in his blog:

Adele, you could have done good here. You could have driven listeners to streaming services, you could have bumped up subscriptions. Instead, you’re just muddying the water. Keeping people in the past… Do the right thing, don’t selfishly stand up for yourself only.

He even calls her “dumb and uneducated”. Lovely! It’s as if, in his and many other Adele-critics’ minds, Spotify and other streaming services are not businesses at all but, in fact, the music industry’s altruistic Robin Hoods stealing from the pirates and giving to music creators — saving those poor, stupid musicians from themselves.

Lady Gaga’s ex-manager, Troy Carter, who now manages John Legend and Megan Trainor, chimed in, commenting on Swift’s decision to withhold her music from Spotify: “people have to see the future. Because free already exists, it’s a flawed argument when you say ‘I don’t want my music on any service that offers free,’ when free already exists.”

Of course his opinions may be just a little coloured by him being an investor in Spotify.

But perhaps Adele just looked at the economics of the situation and thought: “Last time I withheld my album for a while from Spotify it seemed to work well, so why not do it again?”

And it looks like she was right in doing so, as every week since her album “25” dropped seems to bring more record-breaking: “25” sold almost 2m copies in its first two days of release; her first-day US album sales — 1.49m — were better than the first week sales for any album of the last 15 years ; 30% of all albums sold in the US during the first two weeks were Adele’s 25, and by now the album has already passed 5m sales in the US alone, and more than 1m in the UK.Even her label group boss, Beggars Group chair Martin Mills, said the album has performed well beyond their expectations: “We were just hoping it would do as well as her previous album [21] — but we didn’t even dare expecting that, as it was so successful.”

It appears Adele’s looking after her fans just fine.

XL Recordings left it up to Adele and her management to decide for themselves if the album would go on streaming sites. Though many more artists and songwriters would like to follow her lead, most of them are, however, at the mercy of their publishers, labels and PROs — companies and collecting societies that can afford to take a gamble on streaming, led by decision makers on salaries, unlike artists and songwriters. Likewise, when Spotify doesn’t make a profit, its employees still get paid every month.

This is why the music creators’ wishes may not always tally with their labels, publishers or PROs, but still needs to be respected. Some streaming proponents argue that artists “only” need 100 streams to equal the revenue of a single download (there are differing calculations on this with some claiming it’s more like a couple of hundred). It may not sound like a lot, but taking a look at my iTunes library it’s clear that not even my favourite records have reached that many listens — and I’m an avid listener. And what about Spotify users that don’t pay?

Coldplay also shunned Spotify — which, somehow, wasn’t met with half the derision Taylor and Adele got. The album A Head Full of Dreams was, however, available on non-freemium streaming services such as Apple Music and TIDAL. In other words, they’re not opposed to streaming in itself.

Spotify’s per-stream rate for subscriptions is not much lower than those services — it’s just that the free version, which is used by almost three-quarters of its users (though the Wall Street Journal recently put the number at 20 million subscribers verses 80 million free users), pays songwriters about a tenth of what they get per stream from paying listeners. Think about that for a moment: A TENTH.

So, by my calculations, it actually takes at least 1,000 free listens to equal a download payment.

Sure, Adele’s decision was not a matter of her survival, but other artists and songwriters are seeing their livelihoods decimated by the economics of free streaming.

In the end, it should be up to the artists and songwriters to decide where they want their music to be available. If they find that withholding it from streaming services affects income negatively, I’m sure they would change their tactic. Coldplay’s latest was only withheld from Spotify for a week, unlike their previous two albums, which took months to appear on the streaming service, proving they’re willing to experiment to see what works best.

And what about the fans?

Coming from a generation that had to pay for music, I have a problem accepting the sense of entitlement that pervades a lot of the reporting on the matter — as well as the sense of entitlement for instant gratification. Counting inflation, I paid more than double of what a CD or download costs today when I was growing up. I’d save up for it for weeks. And I never felt deprived or offended that those who made the music charged me for their creations — it made their music feel even more valuable to me.

Spotify has indicated that they might be willing to allow a few select artists to window their records, but not all — fearing that no artist would want to be on its free version. But, if so, isn’t that a sign of a failing business model? I like streaming and, as a consumer, I like Spotify. But if more artists would do what Coldplay have done, windowing their albums by withholding them from Spotify but allowing them onto services that don’t offer an unlimited free option, I would switch to one of those services.

When London Grammar wasn’t on Spotify, I bought the album. Barely any of Peter Gabriel’s records are on there, so I’ve bought the ones I didn’t already own from before. But why should I, as a subscriber, be punished for being on a service that has a free version — a version that doesn’t even pay the artists I love properly? Why should I subsidise free streamers? It could even be argued that windowing rewards real fans.

On Tidal and Apple Music I get rewarded for choosing to pay my £10 a month (or £20 in the case of the better-sounding premium tier of Tidal), by getting exclusives that are not available to users who are too cheap to do so. Yet, those services are criticised for doing exclusives — because, for some reason, when it comes to streaming we should all allow our music to be everywhere, on every service, no matter how little they pay us.

Meanwhile the film industry has always windowed their films, and continue to do so on digital platforms such as Netflix — most movies open exclusively in theatres, followed by pay-per-view, then paid subscription platforms and, finally, network TV. They deal with the same piracy problems as the music industry — they just haven’t succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome.

Barbara Ellen wrote in the Observer:

My problem with the Spotify plan [to allow some windowing] is that it introduces a two-tier art “caste” system — automatically devaluing freemium albums as secondary, relatively unimportant releases, when everyone knows that it’s really just about the biggest artists with the most commercial clout. So much for the brave new world of streaming — cash trumps quality yet again.

That doesn’t even make sense. Surely it means quality is rewarded with cash? Is she saying that people who are at the top of their game should not be rewarded for the hard work it took to get there?

Wanting people to pay for music is not dumb, nor uneducated — and it certainly doesn’t constitute being abusive to one’s fans. A brilliant and sought-after British composer once told me, when discussing piracy: “How can they even call themselves fans of my music if they’re not willing to pay for it? I don’t need fans like that — they can all fuck off.”

Originally published at www.auddly.com.

Follow Helienne on Twitter: @helienne