That’s totally fair. People seem to fundamentally just not value art, perhaps especially music. Getting normal people to pay for art feels almost impossible, regardless of the medium.
That said Spotify has been pretty aggressive about attempting to cut the amount of money they pay artists, and I don’t think that the average person is necessarily explicitly culpable for that specific aspect - that seems more like the result of shareholder-driven greed. The people who use Spotify and nothing else weren’t going to pay for music anyway.
People don’t value anything. They want everything for free or cheap. Spotify gives that to them. It’s the same as high fructose corn syrup.
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People deserve AI Art then.
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All this stuff is a push and pull. People will take as much as they can and give as little back. That is just the nature of limited resources. We can’t just put our art out there for free and expect people to support us out of the goodness of their hearts. We have to withhold something others value and sell it to them. Until there is a universal basic income allowing artists to live without selling their art, this will be the nature of a market.
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my answer for many of these problems is to move back to the hyper local, the worldwide stage is too big and the game isnt the same
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So maybe its a good time to become a member of a collecting society? I guess GEMA do not care much about new payout models of spotify or any other company.
Dont think a UBI will help if corona virus stimuli were any indicator. All we got were conspiracy theories and NFTs, not more/better art.
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I’m gonna play devil’s advocate for a minute and give my two cents on why this is not necessarily a bad move for people making most or all of their income from music. I’m a full time music producer for indie and small label artists and I have seen a reasonable degree of success in the music industry.
In my view, the main issue with the music industry for the last decade or so has been the insane amount of new music being pumped out every day due to the ease of access to tools for producing and releasing music. It has massively devalued music to the point that streaming payouts need to be minimal for the streaming services to stay afloat. If for a moment we set aside our collective distaste for the capitalist corporations, I think we can all agree that there is wayyy too much music of barely acceptable quality that is devaluing the efforts of serious artists.
I would also propose that any artist that isn’t hitting 1000+ stream per song is either A) not very serious about promoting their music, or B) not being smart about how they promote their music. I acknowledge that it can be very tough, but I’ve worked with several indie and small label artists that have cracked 1M+ streams with moderate effort and smart marketing (and of course a healthy dose of luck), so getting past 1000 streams is really not as unachievable as it seems.
I also think that the <$4 that small artists would be making for songs under 1000 streams is such an insubstantial amount that it’s barely moving the needle for them financially, but the collective savings is enormous for Spotify. THE MASSIVE CAVEAT IS that this new profit needs to trickle down to the artists who rely on streaming (among other things) to pay their bills. I’m not so naive as to think that it will all be distributed to those artists fairly, but I’m not so jaded as to think that it will all be hoarded by Spotify and the labels. Reality is usually somewhere in the middle.
Sorry for the long read - TL;DR this has the potential to ultimately be a great thing for artists who make the bulk of their living from music.
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It definitely wouldn’t help make the art better, but it would help make more art. But like fowl above me is saying, a lot of people don’t want there to be that much art out there, instead preferring to only see the cream of the crop.
Honestly we can’t have it both ways. Either art is an exclusive thing that only a talented few can achieve, and so all the art is of high quality. Or art is accessible and easy for everyone to make, but there is a whole lot of bad art out there.
Personally I prefer the latter. The former seems like the studio model for making music, and that was pretty bad for artists too, except the lucky few.
Maybe curation is really the big challenge now.
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To clarify, I’m all for everyone having access to the tools for self-expression through music and simple distribution so their music can be heard. I just don’t think that the former streaming payout model was effective at supporting those who rely on music for their livelihood. This new payout model seems to allow for both hobbyists and pros to co-exist better IMO.
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What about the Pro Hobbyists? 
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Lots of people claim to want to make money from music, but in my experience very few are actually putting in the effort to treat it like a job. As I said, it’s not unreasonably hard to crack 1000 streams with smart, consistent effort, even as a “pro hobbyist” doing music part-time (as nearly all of the artists I mentioned who are getting big numbers are doing).
And as soon as you are treating it like a job you start to realize the other things that are sooooo much more lucrative when treated like a job.
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Oh for sure, it doesn’t. I also don’t think that’s what it’s designed to do - it’s designed, like so many of these technologies services (especially but not exclusively the ones that serve “content”) - to extract the value of someone else’s labor. The benefit, of course, is a theoretical wide reach, but most will never see that. If a few people manage to make a modest living off of streaming/ YouTube/ etc, that’s a nice side effect.
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For sure! I could have worded that better. Streaming is never gonna provide 100% of an artist’s needed income. It would be a massive help if it provided a large enough chunk to take off some stress and offset the cost of making and promoting the music, as a start.
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It’s not Spotify’s decision, the major labels blocked Spotify from allowing artists to upload directly. UMG, Sony and Warner don’t want independent artists not depending on them, they control 70+% of the music catalogue.
Okay, only bad for those of us who do not want to do marketing. I guess it’s cool, then.
That’s cool that you tried that.
I’d advise not sending money to any label though if your goal is to directly support an artist.
Mostly very small indie labels, addressed directly to the artists. Worked fine.
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What are these “records” you speak of?
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