does it take your projects and give you .0000000001 cents per stream like every other musician on that app?
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I’d like to bring up that the main issue here are the major music labels, not distribution platforms. I don’t know how much I can share about this in public so pardon me for being cryptic (don’t want to lose my job).
The much larger (and mostly invisible) issue in the music industry are these labels and the control they exert, both over artists and their catalogues, as to how royalties’ schemes should work, while being in the shadows about these practices since the business relationships are not transparent to the general public.
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There is an audio plugin format for the web, called Web Audio Modules 2. I’ve built a collaborative audio/midi/video environment that supports them, you can check it out here:
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WOW, this is f****g cool! 
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I mean, in a time when they’re going to quickly get “AI” sludge content farms posting Chill Lofi Beats part 1000000000000000000000 it’s definitely a mix of marketing and attempt at encouraging content generation.
I don’t like the company a ton, and I don’t see this as really much more than an attempt to welcome low-quality “content”.
Which honestly isn’t a dig on the developers and I don’t think having more introductory tools is bad. I just can’t help but think cynically about their moves in the last several years, alongside their “Exclusive NFT playlists!!!” feature they were bragging about.
Distribution platforms fuck over independent artists plenty.
This info is cool, though. Thanks for the perspective!
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Like I mentioned, I can’t give details but distribution platforms are held hostage on how they can share royalties by 3 major labels, fucking over independent artists is a result of that.
So there’s a system in place at Spotify where I can completely independently upload my music to Spotify, but my share of the royalties (which I would presume to be only shared between me and Spotify) is decided by another company?
I’m not much of a business brain but surely that’s a bit weird.
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I imagine what’s being suggested is some sort of cartel-style collusion, but we can observe from outside that other services do pay more per stream so there’s choices being made here that can still be criticized without knowing exact terms of whatever content licensing contract.
As much as I want to clarify it, unfortunately I can’t give more details into how this end up affecting independent artists as I believe I’d be sharing confidential information. I’m not a fan of massive corps even though I work for a large-ish one but I feel it’s poorly understood how major music labels fuck up the industry for all of us, blaming Spotify and other distributors won’t change that as these platforms don’t hold that power.
To be honest, I might end up editing my other comments as I basically don’t know where the line hinges on… I don’t want to sound like a streaming platform apologist, there’s tons of wrongs with any major corporation, but I believe focusing on the worst actors is the only way to enact some change, blaming streaming services is exactly the shield for them.
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I’d assume the “by Spotify” tag wont be in the masthead for much longer as it was sold back to its founders Per Emanuelsson and Björn Melinder, for an undisclosed amount very recently. Wonder how much it’s valuation shifted since bingeing acquired in 2017
I’m sure you know a lot more about all this than me and I know the music industry is all kinds of fucked up.
I mean, if the industry was even remotely reasonable id be a millionaire by now…
lol. this is some lame apologizing for a shitty company. yeah, the majors suck… but spotify did give them billions in stock for use of their discographies… which they buried in the label’s financials to insure that artists get none of that $$$$
fucking over independent artists is part of spotify’s business plan.
i hope spotify fails. i hope they make bad decisions, spend all their money and go broke. then they’ll have to liquidate the $50,000 sound system in their office and back out of the $2.77 million monthly rent at their World Trade Center offices.
also, those spotify execs already sucked billions out of their stock valuations so they’re set. they’re now just playing a game and investing in weapons related systems for shitty governments.
daniel ek deserves a pie to the face at a minimum.
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And you wouldn’t have to shit in the bushes either. Oh well, that’s life!
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Exactly man.
Fuckin Spotify gettin in between me andy money.
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Fuck the man!
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and his stupid web based software as service DAW!
Spotify probably has a backdoor so they can either hear what you’re up to or steal your idea’s. Why else would spotify need to make a DAW? LoL
independent artists aren’t part of the major label system. spotify could easily set up tiered royalty system and point the finger at the major labels when some artist signed to one of those labels is unhappy w/their cut… actually, they do that already but in the other direction… it’s why taylor swift and beyonce can negotiate their own royalty rates with streaming services and get a better cut… the gains always go to the top.
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You’ve been pretty graceful about not disclosing company proprietary information, but if you’ve signed an NDA you should be extremely cautious here. Either way, it’s interesting to read your perspective.
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Spotify objectively paying less per stream than any other service is known, though. The publicly available information is more interesting.
I can’t imagine any company as large as Spotify as not being very complicit in the practice.
Nobody at that scale, with that many shareholder obligations is working in the artist’s favor.
Not that I’m a fan of the RIAA or whatever labels, but “trust me” in such a one-sided sense, that there’s only a few labels to blame for the entire industry’s financial structuring is just odd.
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