I just removed all my music from Spotify and the other streaming services

The Lounge General Discussion
86

Lot’s of negativity here.

It was not rare for bands to be liked locally before the internet existed. :laughing: I mean, perhaps if you live in a tiny part of a huge nation things will be more awkward for you but then same goes for everything and you should probably consider moving if you don’t like that kind of isolation.
If you live where you live because of your job, consider what it brings you and where you want to be in 5 years time. Money is not the root of all evil, it’s more a necessary evil. Maybe at some point you can redress the balance?

Even if you’ve only ever written one joke song on an elastic band but some guy wants to fly you to his country to perform it, then you should probably just do it and see where it takes you. You have nothing to lose and lots to gain, and not just financially.

It seems to me like for most people, Spotify is somewhere between the radio and a jukebox you’ve loaded yourself. Most musicians would have killed for that in the past.

Also:
image

1 Like
87

But then, when were musicians (and artists in general) not screwed over? Passion industries breed exploitation, no matter the medium (or even field, academia is full of people being exploited).

Even in programming which is generally a cushy job, game programmers suffer the worst work-life balance (including all the “crunch time” before releases, 60-80h workweeks, weekends at work), get shitty pay while requiring skills that are absolutely not trivial to learn (all the maths you need for rendering graphics, simulating physics).

If there’s passion, there will be exploitation.

88

Yes but it still is a choice if you want to participate with this exploitation.

I’d say the main problem here is that we, as musicians, want our music to be listened to by as many as possible. Therefore we compromise in the fact that others benefit from this desire.

So if you don’t want to be part of tbe exploitation we should accept that only a handful of people will listen to your music.

Heck, we should focus on performing live in our local communities, it’s more fun and rewarding than a digital counter (nr. of plays) on a cloud computer anyway.

3 Likes
89

There will be exploitation if you allow yourself to be exploited. It isn’t mandatory to work for shitty pay, or to put your music on Spotify. Of course if you don’t then you won’t get anything until you have an alternative, but that is a good incentive to find one.

4 Likes
90

There isn’t a need for musicians to sit back and accept exploitation with the current distribution mechanisms available. The problem with Spotify is already that it doesn’t distribute streaming income in an equitable way, instead hoovering it towards the major labels in the same way the industry has always tried to.

For example, if an artist has 10,000 monthly streams, but they all come from the same 200 fan listeners using 20% of their streams on the artist, why should they not get a commensurate portion of the subscription? Instead they get tiny fractions of pennies on the stream, and the profits are all taken by Spotify and the majors. Under the new regime they won’t even get the pennies.

This says to independent musicians, it’s not worth putting your music on our platform. There are plenty of musicians I listen to who have streaming numbers too low to make any money on the platform, but who have been given a “This Is…” playlist - meaning Spotify presumably sees their music as a selling point, but doesn’t see fit to give them any money.

Conversely, a platform like Aslice focuses on equitable distribution of earnings to musicians. DJs are even using it to effectively pay twice just so that producers get a cut when they play their tracks, as this should in theory be covered by the performing rights orgs, but in practice they work just the same as Spotify, and distribute everything back to the major labels no matter what actually gets played.

As soon as Aslice branches into streaming, or another startup does so with the same model, independent musicians will just shift their work over there and the long tail will be gone from Spotify, along with any subscribers who are mainly around to listen to it.

4 Likes
91

Personally I wish there were more high quality, trustworthy curators.
That’s where the value is these days.

I have no need for an equitable Spotify if it just allows me access an endless monotonous pipe of unimaginative wannabes with loop libraries and a daw. And I doubt AI will ever figure out what a ‘good’ track is. It’s a uniquely human talent to distinguish.

BandCamp and formerly eMusic used to have pretty good, well-written articles by people with taste that would unearth 10 interesting albums worth trying for example. eMusic was particularly good at rooting out old obscure stuff.

To pick the last 3 posters : if telos, darenager and rtme set themselves up as curators for a monthly fee of $2 to populate a playlist for me, I’d consider it … if I like the first month, I keep paying. And hopefully they can do all the heavylifting for an extra $8 to find how to stream it to me and pay the artist.
If 10,000 people also like their playlists, then it starts to become a lot worthwhile and they are sharing a talent for good picks.

They could even have a rosette on their website : original artists from ethical sources…

That’s the future I see … sort of a 20% ‘finders fee’ model

6 Likes
92

Couple of other points:

Likening Spotify to a jukebox or radio (from a royalties perspective) isn’t equivalent, mechanical and broadcast royalties are orders of magnitude greater than streaming royalties.

Yes streaming will potentially expose your music to a wider audience, along with the millions of other tracks vying for the listener’s attention, to believe that you can make it big or even have a reasonable income from streaming is at best wishful thinking. The numbers are against you at multiple levels.

The vast majority of streaming subscribers have zero interest in buying your music or going to your gig, because the vast majority of people don’t either, nothing changes that.

Building a following other than on a streaming service, for example via bandcamp, physical media, gigging, or some other more tangible method might take more effort but might at least potentially gain you some actual fans.

There is nothing to stop anyone from exploiting their own music in any way they see fit, including putting it on streaming services if they want to. I don’t care what others do, I only talk about my own views WRT to my music.

Back in the day music was pirated, bootlegged, broadcast illegally, taped, Napster etc etc. Of course the artists did not get paid for any of this, however the distinctions to make are the scale and the legality.

I am all for curation, but I think that too wide a pool makes useful curation impractical - which is exactly the reason why I don’t have 50gb sample library etc. I don’t trust some algorithm to curate on my behalf either.

Anyway, as ever just my opinions.

6 Likes
93

It looks like this might be the kind of fanbase that we can hope for anyway, at least for as long as we want to enjoy our artistic freedom. There is so much music offered out there that it is highly challenging, if not impossible, to stand out.

A constant in the music distribution business is that it has always been a tough one. As soon as you want to make money, everyone involved will try to get a share of your gross sales proceeds and, of course, no one wants to hear about your expenses.

94

this sounds like a copout. “things have always been bad so why expect things to be different?” well… that’s a half truth… and things aren’t bad they’re noticeably worse for a lot of working musicians.

and doing it ‘for the exposure’ is just an insult. the problem isn’t streaming itself… it’s how the system is structured and how it came to life. it’s how the resource it holds sway over is exploited for the gain of a handful of people… how it was birthed with venture capital in the same old silicon valley tech bro kind of way. high stock valuation, extraction of billions from the stock market into the hands of the people who made the tech… not the people who created the resource (the music) that holds all the value.

it’s just another in a long line of scams that use the shitty system to make a handful of people very wealthy

3 Likes
95

Yes, as a “non” profi without extreme good connections and promotion you will not have any success in todays music business. Make a perfect track (in your opinion) and upload it to Soundcloud, Spotify, Bandcamp, Youtube,…(even with a expensive Abo) you get some likes and perhaps some cents and nice comments. Taylor Swift or similar persons are industry driven with a big backbone. Not reachable for 99,9999991% of all people in the world. Make music for yourself and enjoy it. But earn your money elsewere.

5 Likes
96

Amen, brother.

2 Likes
97

yeah of course. i mean… i never banked on making a living with my own music but also don’t want to participate in a shitty system if i don’t have to. it’s a bummer that so many people are hooked on music streaming which is not rewarding at all for artists in most cases.

if the veil could be lifted and people shown the truth of how things work… would they even care? or, would it get lumped into those many things people think they’re powerless to do anything about?

IMG_1639
IMG_16391629×1627 241 KB

2 Likes
98

Another kick in the nuts from Spotify is that they will require a minimum number of unique listeners to even count to that 1,000 minimum play number. They won’t publish what that number is but I’d assume it’s 500+ based on the info that has been shared so far. It’s even bleaker for small artists. Check out this math…

You have 400 super fans who listen to your 10 song album at least once a month. That’s 48,000 plays per year. And let’s assume those super fans all pay for Premium which pays out at the highest royalty rate. That’s $240 in royalties you would have been paid in 2023 and previous but now you’ll get nothing. Now let’s say you have 4 albums and you get the same kind of streaming activity. Now that’s close to $1,000 you’ll never see.

They are setting the bar higher than 1,000 streams per track. Hell, it could be 1,000 unique listeners before they pay out for all we know. It’s just shitty and is going to have a much larger impact than the $40m they initially claimed. Just wait, you will see all the news stories about artists making more in royalties in 2024 than ever before.

5 Likes
99

…i start to think, it’s a good decision…

7 Likes
100

This video is a mandatory watch. Period.

3 Likes
101

Bleak.

1 Like
102

This thread made me want to revisit Steve Albini’s classic essay on the music industry from 1993. Worth a read if you’ve never read it.

It was definitely never easy to make it in the industry (“a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit”). Not just hard for musicians either, independent record stores, indie labels. That said, this is a really good watch for some positive indie vibes:

9 Likes
103
1 Like
104
1 Like
105

Can’t find the artist and songs reported on the video as fraudulent, does anyone have a link to the artist page of “Titans” (the ripoff “artist” being denounced in there)?