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When I see posts like this I always wonder how do you think things were 20 years ago? You send a CD to some label and bam you’re an instant rock star bathing in money.

I think Spotify opens a lot of new ways to reach people. But that does not mean that it should give you money right away. Because let’s face it, most music on this forum is just amateuristic bleeps and farts. Not that it’s a bad thing, though.

I know my music is shit and will probably be this way. My friends might like it, my mom, my sister, whatever. But I don’t even expect anyone to pay me for it.

And if I really wanted someone to pay me, I’d start with gigs at local bars, clubs, communities. Slowly building my street cred, earning my place among others. Uploading your music somewhere is nothing like this. At this point, I think it’s even irrelevant. Keep your music wherever you want, but let’s face it, it’s only for you friend, your mom or your dad, or 20 random listeners from this forum.

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Sorry for a second post, but I just remembered this.

I knew a few guys from a local indie band 20 years ago. Somehow they made it “big” with one catchy song in the mid 00s. Got picked up by local MTV, received some kind of an award. Eventually, even earned a few fans in neighbouring countries.

Soon, that band got an offer from some big label (I think Universal, if memory serves). And surprisingly they rejected it, because it turns out they almost had to pay the label themselves. They said it just wasn’t worth it.

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This sounds very practical.
There’s not much more rewarding than playing for family or having a jam with friends and at the end someone saying in the moment that it was nice.

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Look at Spotify’s financial reports, 70+% of all revenue goes to royalties (aka mostly major music labels).

Spotify as a business model for music is not profitable, the more subscribers it has the more they have to pay for royalties and the subscription price does not necessarily cover for the extra costs. The pay-per-stream is fixed, if a new subscriber paying US$ 10,99 plays more than 4617 plays in a month they’ll lose money just on royalties, not counting all the other operating expenses.

The music streaming business can never pay the artists enough for a fixed price. It’s not viable economically.

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What percentage of $10.99 subscribers will realistically play 4617 songs in a month? By my quick calculation, if songs average 4 minutes each, that is 77 hours of listening per week.

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True. I also had a band when I was in school. We just wanted to play. Anywhere, anytime. Just play. It just feels so good to play together. When you get good at it, you start to feel shivers in your spine. At the same time you feel happy, and elated, and calm, and confident, and a bit anxious in a good way. It’s such a weird feeling, almost like an orgasm. It just bursts. Imagine how life changing this is for 17 year olds.

Again, we didn’t even dare to think about records. We truly just wanted to play.

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49

I work at Spotify so I can’t share much more to avoid legal issues. The median subscription is also not US$ 10,99, it was an example. Users listen to a lot of music.

And I want to disclaim: I’m not, at all, defending my employer, even less after the layoffs last week. I’m just saying that the music steaming business cannot ever be that profitable due to economics, Apple, Amazon and Google subsidise their music business with profits from other parts of the organisation.

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Many people simply do not have the option to just get involved in a local music scene. In my experience there is no electronic music scene (that are not DJs) to even speak of. Even if there were, what if it’s in another gente? Open Mics here are usually for acoustic bands, do you think that crowd will be receptive to a guy making dub techno on a Digitakt? My particular situation aside, I can think of several reason engaging in local community might be much more difficult than some people might think.

I speak mostly from the perspective of “experimental” music, or in other words music that does not fit in to a particular, perhaps more lucrative, mold. Unless you are in a big city where there are places that allow for live music in the particular genre, you are essentially fucked.

In any case, you can say “well thats part of the struggle/grind, you have to find your people” and that’s true! I would encourage anyone to build community in their neighborhood/whatever. But organizing something like that takes a certain kind of initiative that would be unfair to expect everyone to have. I’m a strong advocate for touching grass and being in community, but music and art in general is too subjective — one can’t count on the fact that there is a dub techno scene somewhere close to you.

The dream would be for everyone to find a friend or two who also makes music and find a way to jam together etc, but that’s a huge gift and not common in my experience.

Given all of this, its easy to think that the internet/social media is a good option. Soundcloud and to an extent bandcamp are good options. Even though they too have suffered the consequences of financial pressures and investor demands. You can upload there for free and engage in the social media thing to get followers, sure enough.

Spotify’s business model is, at best, just another avenue to share your music. But their 1000 play limit before payout is a huge kick in the balls.

One, because it would be quite naive to think they won’t raise it in the future. Two, because an indie act will only eventually break the 1000 play mark. So despite having your stuff on SC + Bandcamp (sometimes for free!!) your fans ask you to put stuff on Spotify (because in my humble opinion, they are pampered in their consumption methods). But you will most likely lose money on a distrokid sub in the long run. So I don’t blame OP at all. And hey, if they cant be arsed to type in bandcamp dot com to listen/download your music, are they really a fan ? :wink:

I echo similar sentiments that Spotify (and one could argue most) streaming services are too concerned with the bottom line to be salvageable and it’s better to look somewhere else. I would even say Spotify’s days are numbered.

For now, Youtube, bandcamp and soundcloud give you enough freedom that make them more viable, though they are not perfect.

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51

Two thoughts:

(a) If you don’t share your work, no one knows it exists.
(b) If everyone shares their work, it gets lost in the abyss.

That’s why I do almost all my research in secret.

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If you live somewhere 5 hours away from civilization then perhaps maybe. But it’s not uncommon to hear dub techno being played by guys using syntehsizers in public venues. There are artist collectives, amateur festivals, gatherings and so on. If you really like what you do, why not go an extra mile? Push it through. You have to know how to sell yourself a bit. Be annoying, nosy, email random venues, perhaps call them. Be present. That’s the only way.

Nowadays people want everything with minimal effort. But that’s not how things work. 1000 listeners on Spotify is nothing. That being said, 1000 actual fans would be something. Imagine if at least 10 percent of them actually bought something from you. Perhaps a token of gratitude - a souvenir, a t-shirt, or give you a tip, maybe buy you a beer. This would boost your confidence immensely. That’s the real deal.

I often work with ecommerce websites. Clients come to me and say make us the best stuff possible, we want to sell. They think the moment the website will go live, people will come flocking. Obviously it doesn’t happen. Then they return and say we have no visitors, make us more visitors. We do make more visitors. Then they say, but they don’t buy anything! Exactly.

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Spotify is pure evil.

There’s only one reason to make music, because you love it. If you’re in it for the money, be a dj and do weddings.

If you want to share your tunes, bandcamp, and link it here. Find your audience and talk to them. This was impossible before the internet unless you were lucky enough to get gigs with a crowd that actually liked your music. Which was rare in those days.

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and use a Spotify playlist to minimise the costs :wink: and if you’re a musician, also offer DJ services or you risk losing the market to the DJs

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I agree with 100% of what you said. I didn’t mean to sound whiny but I’ve been looking for exactly that around where I live for months and it been frustrating! I’m sure other ppl in small towns feel the same.

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Where do you live?

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It really depends on where you are. I live in a medium-sized city. There is one venue in my entire metro area that hosts any kind of electronic music with any regularity. There are one or two other venues that very rarely host electronic music. The fact is that some people just don’t live in places where this kind of scene exist - people frequently travel three or four hours by car to get to my city for these relatively infrequent shows.

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Rural Florida. I like about 3 hours from Tampa which is the nearest “big city”. It’s tough out here.

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I am confident that Spotify and any other streaming services have multiple strategies for handling high volume consumers. First of all, they know who they are and, if not, they profile them.

Then they manage to convince them to subscribe to a higher tier service, if such a tier exists, or they increase ad content for them if the TOS allow for it, or they reduce the speed/quality of their service provided as of a certain undisclosed volume. All more or less silently, of course.

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im a broken record about this but Soundcloud is still alive and well! collectives abound, small time “labels” with community discords, beat battles, direct messaging so you can actually connect with other up and coming artists. it just still requires some of that “get out into the community” energy.

they really shot theirselves in the foot by removing groups, if they bring them back Soundcloud would once again be the premiere location to connect with electronic musicians of all genres from across the world

i have seen plenty of producers form alliances and fanbases together with other like minded producers on Soundcloud, i have never heard of anybody linking up with anyone else or organically growing an audience because of Spotify

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Ha yes the music I have removed from Spotify.

The music that totally exists that I’ve published then unpublished.

All those tracks that were definitely finished. Yes. Yes.

A shame that it’s unavailable but then again sometimes someone has to take a stand.

As I did (As observable by my total lack of presence on Spotify).

:grimacing:

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To the people who focus on the “unsuccessful” part of my post: This is not the main reason why I removed my tracks. I know that I probably could make it somehow if I invested way more time and focused on something that might attract a bigger audience. But I’m not willing to put that much time into it and, yeah, I’d rather work at my day job to pay my bills.

I want to create some kind of art, express my feelings, play around and explore ideas. To make that part even more enjoyable, I removed the things I don’t enjoy about this hobby. And that’s the whole marketing bullshit.

It just took a rather long time to realize that. The main problem was that I couldn’t let myself enjoy the whole experience without getting the OK from some external force. I guess, I need to let go more often.

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