Complete absence of ECM recordings unacceptable

[akira]

I am a paying subscriber and am on the whole very pleased with the offering in most genres (clasical, country, folk, pop) and the quality is pretty good too. But as the header saysI am very unhappy with thecomplete absence of the ECM label. That just will not do. Please do something about this!

[Mixy]

if you do "label:ecm" , you will see the ECM artists that have albums with other labels

In other words, you won't see the ECM albums. Only the ones with the non-ECM labels

[user-removed]

Did you all know that the ECM backcatalogue is indeed available on Google Play?

Except for the most recent releases of course

cheers

peter

[Mixy]

Thanks Peter. 

I did not know . Best  news in a long time!

I have just started the 30 days google play trial, and you are right, the ECM content is there. Amazing news!

[user-removed]

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@akira wrote:

I am a paying subscriber and am on the whole very pleased with the offering in most genres (clasical, country, folk, pop) and the quality is pretty good too. But as the header saysI am very unhappy with thecomplete absence of the ECM label. That just will not do. Please do something about this!

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Hey there.

Great nickname. By the way Akira is dance music artist, check  it out and play louder. 🙂

Let the bass kick!

Pimp your life with dance music!

[philark]

My free month is up in a couple of days. As far as I'm concerned the lack of access to the ECM catalog is a deal-breaker. Particularly the constellation of artists in the Ralph Towner/Oregon genre, many of whom have recorded for ECM, is an enduring musical attraction to me. Also Pat Metheny recorded some wonderful albums for ECM, and Spotify provides no access to them. On the other hand Pandora seems to have access to the full ECM catalog, jazz and classical. It's an apples/oranges comparison between Pandora and Spotify, and all things being equal I would give Spotify a higher rating. However without ECM all things are not equal. Thus I won't go forward with a paid subscrption to Spotify, and will press my search elsewhere.

[gubimann]

Here you will find hundreds of ECM Artists and many of their works, on Spotify:

http://playlists.net/ecm-records-jazz-artists-on-spotify

It has been quite some work. If you want to be informed about other of my playlists, just follow my Spotify profile. 

Enjoy!

[John_Farrow]

Brilliant!

Thanks a lot for all your hard work.

Greetings from Sweden.

John Farrow

[MasterPinguin]

at least a part of the catalogue is there: check http://www.highresaudio.com/

[fullrun]

The ECM situation is very frustrating as well as confusiong.  I was a subscriber to MOG prior to their sell-out to BEATS and they had an outstanding ECM collection.  I'm an audiophile I was extremely impressed with how complete their library was even with current releases. They had ECM recording by Towner, Gustavsen, Kuhn... and Spotify's small showing of Keith Jarrett's work....  is a real surprise and very disappointing.  I don't get why MOG would have an understanding with ECM and not Spotify...  As a music collector you look for libraries and providers that reflect your taste and interest... and have strong reservations of becoming a paid subscriber to Spotify.

Why didn't I transfer over to BEATS?  Their primary platform is dedicated to smart phones and iPads... they eliminate the subscription to those of us who wanted to use it solely for our laptops or our desktops... I found it to be very user unfriendly towards that end.  So I am now in search of a provider who has a real depth to their ECM library.

Frustrating, it is...

[lyricons]

I am an indie jazz musician, and I run a small record label. From my own experience I can very well understand why ECM, among more and more of my colleagues and small label owners (including people like Thom Yorke and David Byrne) are pulling their catalogues from Spotify. The reason is that because of streaming services like Spotify, artists have seen their income from recordings plummet, and are seeing it increasingly impossible to make records, if the income from it does not cover their expenses anymore. Streaming services are killing the recording business, at least for indie artists.

I very well understand how extremely great and convenient Spotify is from a user perspective. It's like walking in the biggest grocery store on earth, and being able to grab everything you want for a monthly fee of $10 (or even free if you don't mind looking at some ads). However, that simply doesn't work for the suppliers of that store! But somehow we're led to think that with music it's ok, and people won't spend $12 on an album anymore, whereas they have no problem buying 3 lattes at starbucks.

As artists we are told that "it's good for exposure", and that many spotify users will sample an album on Spotify, and then buy it later, as some well meaning people on this forum have mentioned. The statistics show however that it's not working. Recording sales are down, not up.

So If you love ECM, buy the record directly, or buy the digital download in stead of streaming, only then you can be sure that Manfred Eicher can keep producing great music!

http://www.salon.com/2014/07/20/its_not_just_david_byrne_and_radiohead_spotify_pandora_and_how_strea...

[fullrun]

My only frustration is how do I listen to an ECM recording or other to decide whether to purchase it or not.  I'm an audiophile so I am looking to buy and then convert the file; place it onto my audioserver...and enjoy the album and muscians on a high-end audio system.

Previews or snips of the track as offered by Amazon have proven to be insufficient... and I can't keep investing 17 or 18 dollars into an album and than not wish to listen to it further.  There should be  a way to pay and audit an album if the recording company doesn't wish to have its music streamed or can't work out an equitable supportive way in which to have that happen.  I deeply appreciate the quality of ECM.  It is outstandiing.  But, if you go to their website, you are lucky if you can sample one track of the album.

I just don't have the budget to throw money away.   Before Beats took MOG over, I could preview an ECM album and decide upon my purchase.  I have no desire to diminish the experience  of listening to someone like Keith Jarrett on a Nano, an iPad, a computer... when I can have the presence of his music on a high-end audio system.  It's night and day for me.

So, my point is, how does one have the opportunity to preview an entire album before investing into it.  And the 30 second or minute previews as on Amazon can be very misrepresentative of the track.  That's where I am coming from  in terms of experiencing a track, an artist, an album.  Maybe Spotify and these companies can have a way in which I can only stream or listen once.   Because I do think, the opposite exists, that they do limit the possbility of sales by not giving some exposure to it

[Josef_K]

Another MOG refugee here. I noticed ECM disappeared a couple of months before MOG died but I figured it was because MOG was running on fumes by then. I was reluctant to even sign up for another streaming service after having read the David Byrne and Thom Yorke stuff. I completely agree that the streaming business model is currently a raw deal for musicians and needs to change. But like others here, I use it to find new stuff and if I like it I buy it

ECM has probably a quarter of all my favorite musicians, so this is frustrating if they're just going to sit it out. On the other hand, I would encourage them (not that I suppose they read this forum) to start their own streaming service and price it or structure it so everyone benefits. Maybe they can start something that other labels will gravitate towards. And those of us who want our money to go to the makers of the music. Power in numbers.

[mschuerig]

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@Josef_K wrote:

I was reluctant to even sign up for another streaming service after having read the David Byrne and Thom Yorke stuff. I completely agree that the streaming business model is currently a raw deal for musicians and needs to change.

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I've cancelled my Spotify subscription after 3 months and keep buying CDs. But that's more because of the abyssmal metadata Spotify provides for classical and other non-mainstream music and because I still like having physical media.

That being said, in my opinion the musicians are beating the wrong horse when they complain about streaming services. It would have been the record labels' task to make a deal where musicians earn their share. The labels did a bad job at it -- but when did they ever work in the musicians' interest?

[biglarry5]

Don't expect to see ECM stuff on any streaming service any time soon - unless someone pays them well enough or unless Eicher sells the label. Manfred Eicher is one of the most a..l label owners in the history of music business, with all kinds of high-falutin, highbrow Germanic-Romantic notions about  how music should be presented to the public, i.e., in physical form, and so on, and so forth. Something tells me that this is just an excuse for not being offered enough money for his recordings by Spotify and others.

Here's the deal. Most labels have made most of the profits on recordings by major artists made 3-4 decades ago, so they don't mind putting that stuff on Spotify and elsewhere. This is not the case with Eicher. He wants to squeeze the last penny out of the early avant-garde albums from Jan Garbarek (just one example), for which there hardly exists a market. There are a few people like myself that are interested in that kind of jazz, but we're not gonna plunk just under 20 bucks to buy it at the current dollar/euro exchange rate. There is so much great music out there by ECM artists and others on streaming sites that this draconian policy by Eicher will prove to be self-defeating in the long run.

[ieaarva]

This is not just a matter of money. It is also the matter of how many places people have to go to find what they want and how much time and effort people have to use to get what they want. Some enthusiasts may find this worth while and like to go to shops and go through thousands of records etc. and look at that as a valuable activity in itself, but most people I know use Spotify or Wimp and that's it. If the music isn't available there, well then they will only listen to something else. ECM, and the companies like it is most certainly going to die if they don't understand that the most important thing to remain in business is to make the music available where people go to listen to and buy music. 

Rather than doing like ECM does, which basically is to disrespect its customers (what happened to "the customer is always right"?), they should work with the other companies in the business and find viable ways to make the cooperation work. If they can't live with Spotify as it is, and if Spotify isn't willing to charge more and pay more, they may need to come up with a competitor to Spotify where they make all the material available at a price they can live with.

And what about their artists? Most artists I know want to make their music avaliable to as many as possible. Having people listen to them is the reason why they do what they do. The short-sighted ECM way isn't good for the artists either.

[ybelcanto]

Very much missing the ECM artists here.   I would be willing to pay extra on  to of my subscription to be able to listen to Anouar Brahem, Marcin Wasllewski trio, Keith Jarret et al. 

Please try harder

Thank you

[biglarry5]

Eicher and his business people have figured out the dollars and cents equation. It pays more to sell 100 albums at 20 bucks a piece than to have 10,000 listens on streaming media for a fraction of that amount. Because of the esoteric quality of jazz and classical music on that label, the customer niche for their product is relatively small, so the Spotify-type streaming is simply not profitable for them (is it really for anybody?). Those who can't live without ECM will buy their products just like jazz-rock fusion die-hards will keep on buying CD's  or music files at 99 c. a pop from Shrapnel and a couple of other fusion labels.

[Gidyin]

Just stumbled across this thread and some very interesting points being raised. I totally get that what Spotify pays in royalties is probably a fraction of what is required to sustain an income unless you have already made it in the business or are getting major exposure on here. However if I was an artist/label I would be looking at how many potential revenue streams I could get from album sales, touring, merchandise, streaming services and look at the overall picture. It would never work on here to pay slightly more to listen to some artists/labels so they can get a bigger cut because other artists/labels would say "Hey, I want a piece of that". It sounds to me like ECM are seriously dragging their heels and are in real danger of going out of business if they don't move with the times. Spotify is here to stay and the sooner they realise that the better.

[ybelcanto]

I dont know the business of the music business. ECM has a very good product, great artists creative presentation and great sound, If you are right that they are making more money staying off music on demand services (as they are available on Pandora and to lesser extent on Slacker} than they are making the right choice for their product and their artists.
But I find it hard to believe that with so much creativity splashing around with lowering of territorial walls that there is no new formula.
True ECM product was never mainstream even before the arrival of music on demand services but I believe that was a function of the limited exposure that they were getting on mainstream radio. If more people are exposed to beauty that was previously hard to access more people will listen to it. The work of artists represented in ECM catalogue is not esoteric, commercial enterprises in past limited what we can listen to based on lowest common denominator.

One of the reasons for the failure of the old model, free radio and purchasing of recording music, is its limitation of choice created by handful of music directors . Yes with that old model, with a-lot of work one can discover amazing music, not crying. But look at the bliss created by a service that gives so much more choice.

So although , for example, I learned to love the work of the Marcin Wasilowski on Spotify several years ago when it was available on Spotify, Ive refrained from purchasing album and found other artists that create his sound.

Perhaps to my simple eyes ECM and other hold out labels can stream music themselves as the technology becomes more easily accessible. i definitely would be willing to pay for it but at rate of subscriber, a renter not an owner. There is no need to own music anymore plenty of beauty around.

If most of the buyers are buying at flea market prices now and ECM is too proud, or doesn't know how to sell there, everyone loses out. ECM product is a nich product based on old model formulation, and if they and their artist are happy with what they got than I guess that is all that is important, its their show.