The big topic of music industry news this week has been Thom Yorke and his decision to boycott Spotify by removing Atoms For Peace from the streaming service. There has been a great deal of debate back and forth over his decision, and Jesse Cannon, author of Get More Fans: The DIY Guide To The New Music Business and the man behind Cannon Found Soundation, is back to do a special Industry feature today on the news. Read up on the Industry feature below!

Alright people, let’s do this one last time, so we don’t have to do this ever-a-fucking-gain…Cause really–we’ve been through this five too many times now. This week, Thom Yorke didn’t exactly see straight when him and his producer-bud Nigel Godrich decided to take their prog-rock opus Atoms for Peace off of Spotify, saying they’re on the smaller musician’s side and that small acts don’t get paid enough so they want to stand with them. Pretty damn, noble right? Yes actually, but unfortunately this stance is very short-sighted. Like many opinions that make sense on the surface, once you do a little more thinking there is a much more interesting answer. Just don’t try telling this to your moron friend posting about how George Zimmerman was in the right, he’s a hopeless asshole.

Ok back to it, let’s back up a bit. Remember 5 years ago when every music business article said, “How do we save the music business?” Have you noticed those shit-for-brains think pieces have disappeared like Blood on the Dance Floor fans after the awkwardness of puberty ends? Yeah, me too! This is because there is actually progress happening in getting torrenting and piracy to decrease. The reason Napster, Limewire, Soulseek, The Pirate Bay, Oink!, etc, were winning against iTunes and record stores was because it was easier to get music that way through the illegal means than it was the legal means. You see, music fans (myself included) are always going to ingest music in whatever way is easiest.

Spotify, Rdio, MOG, etc. have all made it easier to listen to music than through torrents/P2P downloading, and it’s even more fun to use these service when you can use all the fun apps in Spotify. As streaming music becomes more popular in a particular region, illegal downloads decrease there. So with the dwindling of torrents/P2P, musicians get paid instead of getting zero compensation when their music is pirated. But let’s recognize this is only the first step in getting fans away from piracy in a long fight.

About that payment that musicians receive, yes that fee is pretty pitiful–I know, I get it on songs I have written or performed on. I see the checks, I do the math. But the whole idea of Spotify and their kin is that as they get more paying subscribers, the fees they pay out will get bigger and bigger. You see, this is how Internet companies work–at first the product is free to lure people in, hopefully forming an addiction, then they start selling ads (remember when Facebook didn’t have any ads?), then they make some sort of paid option. This is the game the streaming music services are playing. So, the idea here is that Spotify wants to get you addicted and paying and once more people pay, there will be bigger royalty payments. Get it? Good.

So, when Thom gets all Paranoid Android on us and freaks out “defending” the little guy, what he really is doing is setting the little guy back. As someone who cares deeply for DIY music and has devoted their life for the past four years to being a voice for the movement–I can say, Spotify is one of the best ways for DIY musicians to get heard by new fans-while making a few bucks. For a small fee musicians are able to gain access to millions of potential fans in a way that was never possible a few years ago. In the past, a musician had to be in a record store or get on iTunes front page–now if enough people in someone’s friend feed are listening to them, the musician gets a free recommendation that would have never been possible or cost tons of money just a few years ago. Spotify apps like BandsInTown and SongKick give free advertising for musicians when they’re playing in a fans’s town, a level of access musicians dreamed of for years. Sorry Thom, that cost thousands of dollars when you were coming up as a musician and it now costs a few dollars for a musician to do today. That levels the playing field between Radiohead and a DIY band, that has never existed before.

When you pull your music from Spotify, it discourages music fans from using this service by making it incomplete. You scatter the field of consumption, making it inconvenient for fans looking for a complete listening environment, bringing it back to old school options like iTunes that don’t have nearly the potential Spotify does to democratize music. I actually think Thom and Nigel are good people with good intentions, I read their interview religiously, because they usually say smart things, but if you really care about smaller musicians and the DIY music movement, you are doing it VERY wrong.

Also since we last talked this happened - Ruh-roh! Price Waterhouse (who is not the advertising agency from Mad Men and is actually a real respectable place, where they don’t just get drunk all day) who are some smart guys say that there will be almost no growth in the music business in the next 5 years. Well, um I guess that’s a lot better than losing even more steam. But wait…

Oh wait! There is good news, as with most cases of doom and gloom in the music business, the real truth is all the bad news comes for the major labels and those at the top and the good news comes for those coming up. It turns out there has been a massive growth in employed musicians in the past decade. Yes, it turns out the Internet has flattened the playing field and taken the power away from those with major label connections and given it to those who are actually appreciated by fans. The world really is a beautiful place.