From X: (its true though)

 

 

 

One stat you won’t find in your Spotify Wrapped is how much artists are paid for all that listening on the platform.

 

The max possible in 2023 is $0.003 per stream. And in 2024, Spotify will stop paying anything AT ALL for 2/3 of the tracks on the platform.

 

 

 

 

For instance julianne from 80s act All About Eve posted her royalty check from Spitify for 30,000 plays. £2.

 

As i pay for downloads still rather than screw artists thats the equivalent of me and a couple of others donating more income than 30000 plays.

 

 

I'm not a fan. Rich acts get the cash everyone else gets screwed by virtue of "if you dont accept our rules you dont get to use the platform to potentially i troduce your music to new fans. And then pray that a few of em like your music enough to buy an album. But most will if course just stream it. Win for Spitify!

My friend Mishkin posted a video yesterday detailing her breakdown from Spotify this year.

 

She had over 1,020,000 streams of her music this year which earned her £3,060. Once that was divided by the band/collaborators, she earned £765.

 

It cost her £3,200 to make the last album. When you factor in that touring for smaller acts is often a loss generating exercise too, then the issue is clear.

 

It doesn't take a genius to see the model is unsustainable for smaller artists and benefits popular acts at their expense.

 

I may occasionally stream from Spotify through necessity but I will never pay them, especially as you're only renting the music. Not when Spotify is actively hurting musicians and there are much better ways to supports an artist. Bandcamp, Patreon, gigs, merch, and physical copies are the best way to support smaller acts. Tidal is the best streaming platform to support artists (or you could say the least worst)

 

I've seen too many good bands pack it in, because it's unaffordable, and whilst that has somewhat always been the case, the situation is far worse than ever.

Not to rock the boat but it doesn't bother me THAT much because it's more analagous to the radio than to music buying in my opinion.

 

That is, the vast majority of people that listen on streaming would never have been album/single buyers anyway before the service existed.

 

An alternative to trying to change the entire system might be for artists to bring back a 'fan club' style subscription service in order to support your favourite artists directly instead of relying on streaming or itunes to do it for you.

 

If artists think of it more as an advertising platform than a selling platform I think that shifts the mentality around it. It does for me anyway. So that as a young artist starting out you would try to use spotify to engage and drive potential fans to support you directly, instead of just putting your content on spotify and having that be the end of it.

I don't think it is more analogous to radio, rather an amalgamation of both radio and sales with a slant towards replacing sales, the primary factor being radio was chosen for you. I get your argument because playlists are chosen for you should one choose to use them, but you can listen to whatever you want on the platform at any time, which before streaming could only be done if you owned music (or recorded it off radio lul).

 

The fact is now streaming music has replaced a HUGE chunk of sales, to the point real sales are negligible compared to previous levels. Before I caved and subbed to Apple Music I would still buy CDs rather than downloads a lot, not because I would play the CDs much or at all, but because one could get a CD at the same price as the mp3 download, and you could rip (higher quality) mp3s off the CDs anyway, and I had a physical souvenir. Other than the previously mentioned issue with tracks disappearing from stores, when mp3s are the only option it just doesn't make much sense from the consumer's point of view to not use streaming, the sub averages the cost of one album a month.

 

The current model is necessary in the current climate, that's just the way that people want to consume content and it is really good for the consumer but it is exploitative for artists and it doesn't have to be. There are ways in which the pie could be divided more fairly. Fan clubs, Patreons, YouTube channels, social media presence - sure, all good ideas but not everyone can do that and that shouldn't devalue their art. Can you imagine someone like Nick Drake or Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel trying to become a "3D artist" in this day and age? Just because you're a great musician it shouldn't mean you should have to be great at marketing, PR, social media, all that shite and on top of that finding things to monetise other than music itself. Sure, it needs to be done and that's what labels, managers etc should be for but they all need to be paid too and you have the same problem with lack of income. Maybe it's the idealist in me but I feel that the art should be able to speak for itself.

Not to be defeatist but the fact is that Spotify is nothing new, it’s been around since 2006 and the model, as ones have already explained, is not viable for new artists.

 

What would change? Would some new subscription music service come about that would give more to the end user whilst at the same time provide artists with royalties they deserve? It’s hard to see anyone challenging Spotify with a different model anytime soon, and that’s why the likes of Apple Music, Amazon Music and others have jumped on the same bandwagon to hitch a ride. There’s nothing new here, and perhaps it will stay that way, regardless of what artists themselves try to do to make things better.

 

I think what it comes down to is what does your average subscriber want for their money?

 

• They want the latest music to listen to and create their own playlists

• They want access to historic music from over many decades

• They want to be able to listen offline if necessary and with as little disruption as possible (i.e. advertisements)

• They want exclusives (live versions/music videos/exclusive mixes)

• They want personalised recommendations from their own listening habits

• They want annualised listening statistics and trends

 

They don’t want to be paying more than the cost of a double compilation per month for this.

 

So where do you go from here if you were to devise a new platform for digital music consumption? :thinking:

Well, Spotify wasn't that big in 2006 and didn't become what it is until the 2010s but I digress. The precursor was piracy which indicates the necessity for the streaming model. The thing is though, nothing or not much about the model from the consumer end needs to change, there's plenty of wiggle room on the other end, how the money from subscribers is actually divided.

It’s been less than a year since the last rise, but I got another email notification this week that prices are set to rise again as soon as June 2024 to £11.99 a month, representing a 20% increase in their premium model in less than 12 months. :mellow:

When is it going to stop? It feels like we're in a death spiral of capitalism with everything going up except wages.