destroy all dreamers w/ debt + depression . . .
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Spotify is completely evil for many reasons and I stopped paying for that a loooong time ago, but a thought about this move… what kind of royalties are you getting if you have fewer than 1000 plays per year, anyway? Like, 1 cent?
is this a reality? im ready and willing to drop a no true scotsman argument, i dont think anybody who actually likes art doesnt want to see bad art. that sounds more like someone scrolling through their curated instagram feed. sure they may not choose to consume that bad art in its entirety but i think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who is not financially invested in the busted economy of the music industry saying its bad to have bad art.
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Less than 1000 per song. One song having less than 1000 plays brings you about 1.5 usd (just looking at the earnings statement from one song of mine which had 26 plays last month and got 0.04 usd and extrapolating from there. Fun fact, same song had 64 plays on YouTube and made 1.34 usd).
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I mean they did learn from the past but nothing that betters anyone’s experience.
At some point cynicism is inseparable from nihilism.
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Not at all, especially “cream of the crop”.
People are still enjoying top 40, but whats framed as “popular” isn’t by any objective metric the “best”, even if it can occasionally be excellent.
How it gets curated for will always be in the hands of the monied.
I have a day job but treat performances seriously, i could get a second one more “lucratively” but still need the second one to fund other creative projects.
I don’t understand your point here regarding there being so much music the payouts need to be minimal for the streamer to stay afloat?
How does music nobody plays devalue the other songs? I thought they paid per stream not just for existing on the platform
Second: what makes you think the amount of poor quality music on the platform is going to decrease at all from this move?
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Do you know for sure the artist received the money?
Music will never be my full time profession.
Raising my kids and earning steady money when it’s needed will always take priority.
That doesn’t mean that the music I make isn’t just as valuable a piece of art as someone who does it for their “day job” and has the time/energy/social skills/connections to properly promote their work and network with the right people.
I usually get about two hours every few nights between about 11pm and 2am to get my tracks done and the odd half an hour here and there in-between everything else. What’s amazing to me is that all these fuckers that do it for a living and have all this time to dedicate to it aren’t releasing much better and much more music. What the fuck are they doing all day every day?
Seriously though, my music is shit, I make zero effort to promote it and I don’t have any connections in the industry, but I’ve raised over £500 so far this year on bandcamp. Not a lot of money, I know, but I reckon I’m doing better than minimum wage off it (well I would be if I hadn’t given most of it to charity).
I reckon if I really wanted to, I could probably scrape a few grand a year out of it if I could dedicate maybe 15 hours a week to doing it. But I wouldn’t be making a penny trying to catch the attentions of a bunch of square eyed playlist scrollers on Spotify. Find your audience, throw a shit ton of bangers at them for money, piece of piss. Find them though, because they won’t find you if all you’re doing is sitting on Spotify fretting about your monthly listeners.
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That makes sense, I have so many questions about the implimentation and the deals they have with other streaming services like youtube music. Anyway, what a racket.
I’m talking about everyday people who are frustrated that they can’t find “great” music anymore. I think a lot of people pine for the greatness of the classic acts who had lots of label money propping them up, and are annoyed at the current sea of mediocre art that exists. People like us who are “artists” or otherwise associate with that scene don’t feel that way necessarily, but we are a pretty small minority of the population, most of whose interaction with music is just background activity to set a vibe.
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7 or 8 out of ten of them, yes, for sure. I’m talking mostly very small labels… Not likely the kind to be holding bands to ransom on shitty contracts and keeping them high and intercepting their mail
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I would like to see more of this from fans in 2023. There are plenty of ways to send money to artists, circumventing streaming services etc. I think ultimately people have decided they like having streaming for a pretty cheap monthly fee. But the option to seek out the artists you love and find a way to give them money is still up to the dedicated fan.
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Sometimes it’s not even about a label holding back money to be shady, rather collecting for recoup costs from making/marketing a record first. I wouldn’t expect a fan contribution to go there but you never know.
Not that you heard
I made an album that was pretty good, I think. 
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Albums. Its like how people still say “films” but everything’s digital now
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You make it sound like it were possible to objectively asses the quality of an artwork, and that for art to be of high quality the artist would require an inherent quality you call “talent”. I don’t think either is the case . There are films, albums, performances, paintings and books I enjoy tremendously, they enrich my life and resonate with me, and my wife refers to some of them as “utter shite”. Some of those artworks are very crude, and made by people with an obvious lack of what you might refer to as talent, but I imagine I can sense something in there that wants to emerge.
What people might “want” in the current consumerist culture is one thing, but it’s not the way things have to be. What people might want if presented with more opportunity for developing their own ability to both perceive and create art is entirely another thing. And that does not happen when people are only exposed to the “cream of the crop” (which is always just somebody else’s opinion).
And devaluing peoples effort in the way Spotify does with the current change is definitely a step into the wrong direction IMHO.
What a weird thing to say. Corona stimuli effectively went to directly to the 1%, so that is not an indicator at all. UBI will - due to its very nature - go to the people.
I remember vividly when it dawned on me that making money from music has very little to do with the music I wanted to make, but involved not only a certain amount of sheer luck, and of course investing lots of time into things I either hated or wasn’t very good at, while I had to compete with people who loved doing those things and were very good at them, too. I was seriously afraid that this might eventually kill all the joy out of creating music. So it simply wasn’t worth the investment for me, and I’ve met many others who feel exactly the same. I have a job I love, and I still love making music. If you thrive in this environment, that’s great for you. Doesn’t make it a desirable environment for everyone, though.
Citation needed. The marginal costs for streaming a more diverse catalog approaches zero, so payout per stream is not affected by that at all. Either way you have the same amount of income you can distribute to artists, and shareholders of course. The size of the catalog has nothing to do with that at all.
Care to explain the mechanism behind that? Is it the listeners who can’t tell the difference and waste their time on music of barely acceptable quality, so that the serious artists can’t get a higher number of plays? Or is it something else?
Agreed, but so what? So how would that disqualify them for reaping the fruit of their labour, little as it may be, for the benefit of the “serious artist”, who did nothing to deserve this, but now gets more per stream after literally half of the available tracks no longer get any payout?
I’d argue the cost of distributing the revenue fairly is negligible, so I strongly believe so not doing that is unethical, and therefore it’s needlessly devaluating a lot of peoples’ efforts.
I sincerely doubt that. In the end, this will mostly benefit those who wouldn’t need the extra money.
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Lots of good replies here, and I would love to get into this more as it’s a worthwhile discussion but for the sake of my time and sanity I’ll just say that I wanted to present an alternate perspective and I’m happy to leave it there. I appreciate those who have engaged with my ideas, agree or disagree!
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But there is that niche aspect to certain kinds of music, noisy music has some fans too, to divide between what sells, and what is underground stuff also depends on the genere. I would like that my niche artist can live from his efforts too, its not alone about the quality of the art, its about the audience too. It would be a sad world if the only effort would be done for a market.
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I just wondering. A spotify user pays 10 eur a month for listening to „underground music“ that has less than 1k plays a year. So the artists get nothing but the user still has to pay full price? So who gets that money? Does spotify donates that money to build (music) schools or to help people?