Sea of pennies, Sub Pop, digital salvation

Sailing the sea of pennies: Sub Pop's digital salvation: " . . . Labels, too, will be in place to catch royalties from services like Spotify and Rdio. And while the criticism of low royalty rates amongst the aforementioned streaming services isn't without merit, Kiewel points out that, when it comes to making money on the internet, every little bit counts -- and it will likely continue to be the label's role to do that counting. "Someone who is much smarter than me talked about the rivers of pennies," he says. "You can't ignore anything anymore, especially with these streaming companies where it's pennies sometimes. It's finding these trickles of pennies and making sure you count each one and are where you need to be." But models, like services, come and go, particularly these days, and the adaptiveness that has served Sub Pop for the past decade is almost certain to become even more important to the label's survival. And while it's tough to predict whether the industry will ever be half as stable as it was prior to the explosion of online music stores, there's a pervasive sense that, at the very least, things are moving toward a more dominant model. And as we wait to find out precisely what that model will be, Kiewel believes that it's the job of the labels to be flexible -- and to hang on for dear life. "I think there's gonna be a reckoning," he says rather ominously. "There's no such thing as a seamless transition. There will be causalities. It's just surviving long enough for whatever new model asserts itself."

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