We should all abandon Spotify

[J0n35y]

I’m an ex Spotify user but only because I prefer Apple Music so I guess I’m still a part of the problem but I won’t be stopping.

I don’t quite buy into this whole royalties argument and the hatred towards Spotify as a result. I’m not arguing that the royalty % is not low here but I kind of think many need to get with the programme a bit more. I read about some classicist guy who was crying about royalties earned recently but in the article he acknowledged that most who stream will still physically buy the album. So while streams of his new release earned a paltry amount he still had the album sales to follow.

Maybe I’m not a typical use case example but if I stream a song and really like it then 9/10 times it goes on to my “CD’s to Buy” list and I buy the album at a later date. If a song is shit then I wont. In short - make better music and take more of my money!

Having said that, I’d support a shift in streaming modelling that would place a limit on streaming songs each month. Or perhaps have a top tier where a larger % went towards artists but, being honest, for most artists you’d be talking needing a several hundred % increase in royalties to make much of a difference here and that aint going to happen.

[vasilymilovidov]

whether listeners will buy your album after streaming also depends on the kind of genres you’re working in. contemporary classical music? sure. some cool techno? maybe they’ll buy your vinyl. lo-fi bedroom hip-hop/pop? i don’t think so.

[mattleaf]

I guess I’m old school because I don’t stay subscribed to any music services, but I’ll drop a couple hundred on label discographies here and there on Bandcamp, or other direct download sites. my music listening habits are incredibly repetitive. I don’t know what that says about me. I’m not one of these people that hunts pitchfork and RA waiting for the latest stuff. weirdly I mostly listen to video game soundtracks lately, and ambient stuff. but because I listen to those mainstay albums over and over I find it’s better in the long run if I just buy the actual thing. If I do subscribe I often ask myself why am I subscribed when I just listen to this one album over and over. And honestly I probably find YouTube the most interesting for music, the algorithms there usually serve up more interesting and agreeable recommendations for me.

I’m not sure if it’s just me getting old or what but I’ve completely lost touch with any sense of what artists is what, who’s cool. And when I’m listening to stuff it’s primarily a mix, so I just have no idea who it is. Nor do I care. Sometimes I’ll come across someone special, and again I’ll buy there stuff and sync it to my phone

[vasilymilovidov]

from the listener’s point of view I think that mid to late 00s/early 10s were the best for music consumption. it was wild because of all the piracy, but it seemed like everyone was exploring new music on the internet. it was so easy to find something new. then streaming services came and conquered it all by seemingly giving us more convenience and making it all legal. but in reality I think they are limiting our choice (it’s too convenient to only use streaming services), softly forcing us to listen to particular music and giving our money to the wrong people (mostly taylor swift).

[silent_move]

@craig
If your goal is to make cash out of streaming then yes I get your point of view.

[0mega]

I’m anti trump to the bone, but the TikTok thing isn’t about capitalism, it’s about spying and the threat is real. We have created a world where it’s easier for a nation state to manipulate millions on social media (Russia loves this game and they are so good at it) and it’s easier to spy on an entire nation through technology than to focus on a few individuals.

[J0n35y]

True but in those scenarios (and genres) there’s likely little money to be made even if royalties were pumped up 1000%!

I just feel that there are a lot of lazy, entitled artists out there not doing the hard graft. It’s like a mirror image of the general public’s consumption of music in a way. Streaming has made life “easy” for a lot of us. And even those getting a bit of attention kind of just expect it to keep coming.

Seems to me that “music of the future” is still in its infancy and still finding its feet in this highly connected world. It’ll continue to be shaped and defined over the next decade or so. But trying to end streaming is like trying to hold back the tide. Best using your energy more creatively.

[hausland]

That’s my point. The real threat of centralised channel power in a platform model. My argument was that any claim of the power being distributed “democratically” across such platforms (which the platform owners love to claim) is unaware at best, consciously deceptive at worst.

[0mega]

So I thought I’d look at this. Allegedly Apple pay’s 0.0056 per play. I pay $10 a month so that’s 1786 streams. (Although in reality Apple takes 30% first so its exactly 1250 streams. Let’s go with that). Most of that is background music (coding, chill playlists while I sleep, something in the background while I cook). Very little is active as I’m an adult with children.

It’s fair to say that unless I’m listening to the kids playlist (music from 50s to now) in the car, very few tracks get more than a 10 plays per month although some artists might get 5-10 tracks. As a consumer I’m getting access to a lot more music than $15 cds and $4 singles got me. To compare…

Let’s say a album has 12 songs on it and let’s pretend I want to listen to them all and would never skip. My $120 per year music budget (same as apple) would get me 8 cds (92 tracks) per year. From the money, the store would get 25%-50% of that (so let’s say $15 down to $10). Then the distributor and label take their cut, which I assume is in the 50%-100% of the remaining money. This leaves the artist with $5 best case (which seems high for mass distributed stuff). If I only listened to those 12 artists on Apple Music the artist might not have a label and therefor might get on average $7 from me.

So Apple Music is a better deal for me as a consumer and it might be a better deal for the artist too (if I limited what I played, which reduces my value as a consumer).

There are two types of streamers , the free ones and the paid. The free ones are probably not spending $120 per year on music if the streaming sites go away. They are copying their friends cds or pirating so you aren’t getting much there.

So yes, Apple and Spotify are getting rich on economy of scale, just like Sam Goody used to do with its stores. But they are also providing a higher payout than cds would get you and they are democratizing the industry a bit.

In short, nothing changes. You wouldn’t be banning the sale of your cd at Sam goody if they were going to carry it worldwide. You’d be so happy to reach that many people in the 90s. So it’s fun to complain about these big businesses but most people are consumers not artists and so really you can cater to the masses or you can’t but I don’t think it’s anywhere close to “unfair”.

[80sBass]

As an “artist” who has worked with multiple labels (albeit very small ones), my releases show up on all the different streaming platforms without my knowledge. I get texts from friends that they noticed my cassette release is up on Spotify or YouTube now, and I just scratch my head. With Spotify or YouTube I have yet to see a dime, and probably never will. But I get paid directly from someone sending me cash for a pay-what-you-want release on Bandcamp, even though they take a fairly hefty fee. If you’re not gigging or DJing, and don’t have vinyl distro deal and some capital to get records pressed you’re probably not gonna make any money making music (unless you live in Europe or Canada and can get lots of help from the government)

[0mega]

Obviously platform owners do it to get paid. Jay z didn’t help start tidal to help musicians, he did it for the green. I do think the platforms democratize things. They give a slight edge to artists by leveling the field against labels. But you can’t really get away from distribution costs.

[traxx.space]

full disclosure: i run a digital distribution service called traxx.space. we distribute music to all the major stores (including spotify). so i have some insider knowledge i can share…

you are right, the vast majority of artists will make pennies on streams from spotify. but i will say that those same folks are making anything from any other platform either. the example in your pitchfork article talks about how the band was featured on a top list. so that was instant exposure for them. if they were on spotify or other platforms for that album, they would have done well there too. in fact, a quick look at their spotify numbers, i see thier top 10 songs have a total play count of about 550,000 plays all time. that’s over $2,000 at an average rate of $.0038. the rate changes each month and is usually higher. closer to $.005/play.

for example, this past month, we had over 80 artists/labels who cleared $5k+ in streaming revenues alone. many are in the 5 figure range. and that’s just one month.

we’ve had a few artists get placed on popular playlists and see their streams hit several million in a month. though that is rare.

it all comes down to your audience. are the people who are listening to your music users of bandcamp? if so, yes, you can make more there because you can control the pricing. also note that bandcamp does not pay for streams. just download sales. so folks could just come to your page and listen to your music for free.

you can also sell your music in multiple places. maybe have albums with exclusive bonus tracks only available via bandcamp download. but still keeping your regular albums on spotify/itunes/google/etc.

i’m not trying to say streaming is the best way to make money in the music industry. there is no ‘best way’. it’s different for each artist/band/label. but i will tell you that the number of listeners on the majors stores dwarfs what you could ever possibly expect from bandcamp. both ways take lots of leg work though. you have to promote yourself. i think that’s a little easier to do on the major stores than a site like bandcamp.

if you want to talk about ripping off artists…tidal. no joke. they are the WORST streaming platform out there. they are typically about 9-12 months late on paying royalties and very often they report suspiciously low numbers. as in a release doing $3k/month on spotify, $2k/month on itunes/apple music, another $1k from google play and like $0.48 from tidal. uhhhh…i don’t think so. i know their local government is actively investigating them for fraud and manipulation of numbers. i wouldn’t be surprised if they were gone in a year.

[insect]

just came across this in faceboo and want to share it here:

Sign the Petition

[0mega]

Lol. That would get paying consumers 1000 plays if Spotify took no cut. 33 plays per day on average. As a consumer I would get cut off from listening after 100-150 minutes per day.

[Wolf-Rami]

Who needs streaming anyway? Not me.

[tasker]

@J0n35y

entitled artists

I think you’re being a bit harsh, but there is a question of expectations. I think our expectations of what a musician can/should make are largely skewed by the realities of the past - the popular musicians of the 60s and the 70s were at the front of the boom in demand for popular music, and had much less competition (fewer acts, fewer genres), which meant spending was focussed more directly on them.

This seems true in other arts. I read an article about declining royalties for novelists, and one guy was bemoaning that while he could still live off his royalties, he could no longer afford to keep his second ‘writing apartment’ in central London. To expect to be able to keep a second apartment in one of the most expensive locations worldwide, when people working full time find it hard to afford a single place there, seems an absurd failure of expectations.

Living costs are an important factor. A member of the 70s New York scene was talking about how you could live off one or two bartending shifts a week, and spend the rest of the time making music - that’s an impossible dream for most people living in big cities in the west.

But then, we also expect higher standards of living - those people in 70s New York weren’t eating much, lived in run-down apartments, and didn’t have mobile phones, laptops, spotify subscriptions… Same elsewhere - how many Berlin acts were living in communes back then?

I wanna be a professional artist but I don’t want the hassle of an old laptop, and I want Elektron gear, and of course I need an iPhone

And it’s more recent too - producers of 80s-90s dance musics talk about how you could live off your record sales, but that was when the music was new and in the charts, and was being made by only a few people, rather than anyone with a cracked copy of Ableton.

Or the rise of indie in the 90s, basically off the back of the record industries throwing cash at anyone who ‘might be the next Nirvana’.

So it’s different worlds, but that recent past of music means we still have expectations/daydreams of ‘living off our music’ when ironically those daydreams are set by the same dastardly music industry we criticise for robbing our artists.

[acidhouseforall]

ahaha, I’m pretty much in the same situation. I do like to discover stuf on youtube though. But once I find something great I always buy a vinyl or a CD. The problem is not every artist has physical music for sale, so I may add something to play files in the future.

[Ryan]

I like Spotify, I buy albums I like off Bandcamp. I have my music on Spotify out of convenience to people that want to listen to my music, not expecting to make a dime off streaming or albums. I think the albums I put on Bandcamp are on name your own price(except an album that’s $1000 because I don’t want any one to listen to it)

The only modern artists I listen to today are Kanye(I think he’s doing alright), and artists from here- most I buy their music, the rest is music from 1995-2004. Many aren’t still making music

[tasker]

Haha, Wikipedia claims that there were 4,000 albums and 5,700 singles released in the US in 1970: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_in_music#Albums_released

Now, apparently 40,000 songs are added to Spotify every day: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/nearly-40000-tracks-are-now-being-added-to-spotify-every-single-day/

Talk about a smaller slice of the pie…

[traxx.space]

and this is where the math just doesn’t work out. spotify pays out 70% of revenue to artists/labels and keeps 30% for itself. that’s 70% of REVENUE, not profit. hence why they aren’t profitable yet. the only way the rate goes up is if there are significantly more people paying for streaming each month but never streaming anything. the math never works out that way. so when you see article pointing to different stores paying different rates, it’s all the same formula. 70% of revenue (give or take a few % from store to store) divided by the number of streams. apple music, early on, wasn’t as popular so their rates were higher.

as an example, here are the per play rates from PREMIUM accounts from May on the major stores. I looked at ALL the premium streams (ignoring the free tier ones on certain platforms) and here is the average:

Amazon Unlimited - $.009406
Apple Music - $.006117
Tidal - $.005589
Google Play - $.005516
Spotify - $.005463
Deezer - $.003583
Pandora - $.001957