Good for you! Anytime I post music, it’s always on Bandcamp and streaming services, but the only place I actively promote is Bandcamp. Better for artists in all aspects.
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Sound quality on Spotify is not great - I have a pretty nice hifi system in my living room and I did extensive AB testing between Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal, with Tidal obviously having the best quality by a margin, then Apple Music (still noticeably better than Spotify) and finally Spotify (flat, one dimensional, poor detail).
I barely use Spotify’s algorithm, not because it doesn’t occasionally produce interesting results, but I listen to many different genres and I feel Spotify is very slow in following listening behaviour and barely integrates different genres at all - example: I once spent a mere week sampling 70s soul tracks with my MPC in a rush of nostalgia for 90s east coast hip hop…my freaking discovery list was exclusively 70s soul tracks for the next two MONTHS or so.
I also often feel overwhelmed by the amount of music available on any streaming platform, which makes it harder to enjoy a track or album with focus, but that’s just me I guess.
Most importantly though, I think most of these streaming services are dickheads. Some 8% of Spotify are owned by Sony Music and Universal directly - and Tencent Holding, which holds another 9% of Spotify is owned by Universal, Sony and Warner Music - that means these guys benefit from artists putting their music on that platform through the amortisation of the shares they hold, so earnings per stream don’t really matter to them.
Spotify founder Daniel Ek’s recent comments about artists being lazy and that they cannot expect to live off one or two albums every three years just shows you how little understanding and respect these guys have for the work and hustle that goes into making music and albums.
Yet, these very musicians with their very lazy work have made the man and his co-founder rich to an absurd degree in the span of 14 years…no one should expect to get that rich by simply writing some code and cutting a few deals with record labels…
my point is: Ek and Co are CLEARLY benefitting from the work musicians do, more so than musicians do.
The fact that he has little respect for that work and that the platform itself captures most of the value in the value chain for itself and its shareholders is akin to worker exploitation in the early 20th century, only here the workers are musicians without a regular salary, health insurance, or even just employment status. I mean, I know people that sell placement on their playlists for more money than some of my artists make through streams despite getting streamed by a million people every month.
Unfortunately this is true for the streaming model as a whole - we haven’t worked out a decent strategy to redistribute value across the value chain more fairly in this model.
In a way I’d love for musicians and labels to go on “strike” or for governments to step in like they have with Uber and other ride share companies. The exploitation of drivers in these cases have been lamented and fought against all across Europe (unfortunately still losing though), but I think the bias in our societies towards creative work as something that has no economic value has blinded us to the fact that streaming platforms exploit creatives and their output just the same.
I don’t know if collective action would have any impact on the supplier side, as the majors are intimately in with Spotify specifically and so they are unlikely to complain about its exploitation since they benefit from it…maybe a musician owned platform?
ah, the structural challenges of internet capitalism of the 21st century…
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Spotify isn’t really profiting yet, are they? I know they’re bringing in money, but as for profit, they’re not quite there, are they? If I understood it correctly. Their business model is still just a concept that should, but doesn’t, work quite yet.
And they’ve been around since … 2008? Or earlier?
Correct me if I’m wrong. I’m not even saying I think I’m right. It’s just what I’m hearing. From friends who work there. Since a long time back.
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Regarding criminality, there’s an irony that, for a good many artists (people with low sales/listen counts), there’s more money to be had from your album being pirated than being streamed - so long as the uploader actually buys the album to begin with, it has to be pirated a lot before it’s making less than on spotify…
(This is not an advocacy of piracy, just an interesting aspect of the debate around legality and what is ‘good for the artist’.)
Without going too off-topic, this is a good example of current start-up capitalism - businesses like Spotify, Uber etc, ‘disrupting’ an industry based on funding that can’t be sustained, creating certain consumer expectations and changes in culture, and even reliance, with the significant risk that they may collapse down the line.
I guess at least Apple and Google can afford to bankroll their versions of spotify…
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They are turning a profit since last year, but more importantly their market cap is around $50bn USD, so that’s where all of our value created went 
In a bizarre way, profitability is not key in the platform economy. Scale and market share are. Investors aim for a run at a service monopoly, that’s the strategy for these businesses. The idea is: we’ll scale up losing lots of money and once we dominate the market as the central solution in the marketplace, we’ll recoup it all.
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In the long run, you gotta turn in a profit that’s just black numbers at the bottom of the sheet. The ways there are many, including just monopolising the market, but in the end, you’ll tank if the market exists because you gave it constant life support.
I worked on the very first Xbox. There was a clear strategy there to simply take a share of the market, and a substantial loss on the hardware was acceptable for a long time. But not forever. As for the Xbox 360, there was profit, albeit small, but still a case for being sustainable.
Spotify is no exception from this, but if they do make a profit now, then they don’t have to be.
I kind of think it is on topic, because if we say we abandon a platform that’s so dominant, there needs to be an argument on that platform’s place in the market and how it enables artists, because I refuse to accept that it’s all bad. There has to be acts that do better on Spotify than they’d do without it, just for the purpose of being able to reach out in ways that just wasn’t possible before.
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Bandcamp helps a lot these days. They are doing great with their bandcamp friday etc. I´m always very happy to ship out vinyl orders to everywhere in the world. Since that works very well and we have fans buying every record before it´s even out. But since Covid-19 it´s mega expensive to ship out vinyls from Germany to USA
For digital sales … it has gone up some years ago but it just replaced the sales from beatport.
So I don´t see really bandcamp vs. Spotify. The fans who will support you will buy from bandcamp. And others will just stream from Spotify or YouTube Music or Apple or whatever comes next.
The point is, I guess, it depends on the genre a lot. I see many great young artists releasing kind of future trap music or chill out beats and gain up to 10 millions of plays of just 1 track alone. Music for the young generation.
My most streamed track on SY is featured in a official playlist. It has 13K plays. Maybe Dub Techno is just music for old people 
A Question rised: how many download sales would that be equal? Are there people who otherwise would not have discovered the track? How many people are behind 13K plays? 100? 500? 130? And would everyone also bought this track?
In case of 13.000 Plays vs. 130 sales (each buyer plays 100 streams)
Spotify: 39,00 EUR
Bandcamp: 104,00 EUR
conclusion:
If you would have invest in Spotify shares in March you would have made more money be now then investing in your music, studio etc.
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No radio !!
I thought I was old school
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There’s a big difference: Streaming is only renting the right to listen to the music, rather than having the right to listen forever (or until you burn a hole through the vinyl)
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It’s increasingly impossible to make money from records.
The only sustainable way to make a living from music (unless you’re Taylor Swift) is to see the records you make as adverts for your gigs and gig (or DJ) relentlessly, which is obviously impossible right now. I think that’s why there’s been an increased focus lately on how bad Spotify etc. are, because it’s suddenly artists’ main source of income.
I remember the good old days, when musicians got a load of stick for selling their music to advertisers and “selling out”. The problem now is that very few, if any musicians are in a position where they would be able to be so principled about how their music is used.
I think this is ultimately the problem, of which Spotify is a symptom, that the money people have broken the industry down to the point that no-one hoping to make a living can dare to say no to them. In essence, they have won themselves an unlimited licence to use artists’ music however they want precisely by limiting artist’s ability to make money from their work.
I love Bandcamp and use it both as a consumer and an artist but I don’t know anyone who isn’t either an artist or otherwise involved in the music industry who uses it.
I do use Spotify as a consumer, but have been giving a lot of thought lately to giving it up, as I don’t use it that much and better alternatives are available for me. As an artist though, it would be difficult for me to just boycott streaming platforms, as that’s where most of your potential audience is hanging out.
Luckily for me, I never expect or need to make money from music (just as well really), so can be a little more picky about where I put my records. Don’t be mad if I sell out though, I love money.
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Vinyl worn out, two choices buy it again or record to another format. Musicians Union past slogan ‘home taping is killing music’
What i am saying is that even though you are streaming ultimately you are ‘listening or watching’ in the comfort of your own four walls or headspace.
Music recotding industry made an absolute killing when a whole generation re bought their vinyl collections on ‘pristine’ CD.
Not arguing with you here, there is a magic that some take great pleasure from in the ritual of holding a record, viewing the artwork and placing it on the platter. Mind you, never understood cassettes as comercial release formats… Sound like shit. And yes, you can do this as many times as you like. Clearly people do the same with streaming sites.
Buy a vinyl album once at the price of say £10.00 If you had listened to that 2000 times that is £0.005 per listen. But of course this attempt at comparison to steaming model breaks down.
And as band width increases, 4K video, uncompressed high bit rate audio. And then the great floods came, the fires, the plagues the power cuts and humankind looked at their arrogant great works and held their heads in their hands and wept :–)
It’s good to discuss and debate this stuff
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This!
People that want to support you, will buy your shit from bandcamp or where ever. And you never know, some people might even hear you first on spotify ( or other totally evil streaming site) and then go look you up on bandcamp!
So in a way, I see streaming sites as a form of advertising.
As I said, I was principled and resisted the streams for years. Some labels put some of stuff up last year, much to my annoyance, now im doing it myself.
But then I dont make music with any hopes of fame or fortune. Making music helps my sanity. Sharing it and hearing what people think increases that. I personally dont use spotify (or other debased form of low grade audio stream, I spit you harridans! ) to listen to music, dont even have an account.
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I wonder if stuff like Patreon will provide a model for sustainability for music/the arts. It’s already popular amongst Youtubers, illustrators etc.
Seems one of the issues for fans is you get limited ways to support an artist - once you’ve bought an album, t shirt, gig ticket, how else can you support them monetarily (and when you pay for those things, how much actually goes to the artist)?
If you look at it that the artist is the ‘commodity’, rather than the individual pieces of art, then it becomes less about ‘how much can I get paid for this album/track’ and more ‘how can I create stuff that people value enough to support me?’ Manage to get 1000 fans willing to give $1 a month each, and you’ve already got a lot more than most are making on Bandcamp/Spotify.
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I agree, this is ‘part’ of the solution
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As much as I agree, this model risks only rewarding artists who are also good self-promoters and takes the focus away from the art produced and onto the “personality” producing it. Which is fine if you are selling that, but not everyone is.
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I cant stand patreon. It makes me feel nauseous.
Cant say I like the smell of spotify or amazon or any of the rest of them. Bastards all.
And yet I’ve released my music across those putrid wastelands…
Figure that out 
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That is why it is only part of the solution.
The ‘manager’ model exists because the artist did not know how to navigate the water.
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Never have and never will use spotify.
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286 million users need to abandon Spotify.
1.69 billion users need to abandon Facebook.
etc…
etc…
It’s not just down to corporations and business models.
Society has a huge hand in creating it’s own shit show I am afraid.
All you can really do is inform yourself and make your own choices.
Try not to judge your friends and family.
Accept the heartbreak.
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Hm that’s a really interesting point. I suppose I had the image in my head of the super-keen fans of small indie bands/producers, but yeah there’s just as many Andrew Huangs/RMR’s doing the YT hype thing with reminders to ‘click the button CLICK THE BUTTON!!!’ on every vid.
I would hope there’s a way for the small-scale artists to do this without the big promos - indie illustration/comic scene stuff seems to be doing okay with this, without too much hype and promo. But you’re right that so much of the current market space relies on artists also being effective marketers.
Genuinely interested in why that is.
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