I remember when Joe Rogan was getting giant paycheck from Spotify promoting antivax stuff, and people talked about moving to Apple Music, but it feels like many just stuck with Spotify.
I came across a post on instagram that says that Al Yankovic’s 80 million stream on playlist only netted him enough money to buy a sandwich.
Also, Spotify underpaying artists, making fake playlists with cover artists to undermine artists, are not new. It feels like the mainstream crowd just doesn’t care, which pushes me further into depression.
I personally don’t care because if a company isn’t paying you for your time/work, that’s their problem to sort out, not mine. I will go where the music is. If artists start leaving Spotify and it becomes a wasteland of nothing but trash, then I’ll find new places to get it from. Why should I worry about their income? I’m paying for a service, I get the service and use it. I have my own income issues to handle, I don’t need theirs too.
What Spotify does affects the entire music market. Why should you worry about their income? Because Spotify’s strategy makes it harder and harder for musicians to have the income to keep on making music. If you care about having music to listen to, you should care about this. Also, Spotify and music is just one example of the overall exploitation of workers. If you don’t stand for artists when it’s their livelihood at stake, why should anyone stand up for your rights when it’s your livelihood at stake?
Buy concert tickets if you want to support musicians, streaming income doesn’t really factor into it afaik.
That’s the point, though. Spotify is rigged specifically so that they don’t have to pay small artists. Spotify splits the pot with the Big Three and everyone else can go fuck themselves. I would much rather my monthly payment go toward the artists I actually listen to. Instead, most of a monthly payment goes to the most played artists-- which Spotify rigs to be whoever nets them the most money (low royalty artists, high dividends for Spotify and the Big Three who are highly invested in it)
I think Tidal scores the best among music streaming services in terms of compensating artists. I switched from Spotify to Tidal several months ago and have no regrets
It’s estimated that Tidal pays $0.013 per stream, Spotify pays $0.003 - $0.005, and Apple pays $0.01 per stream.
https://dittomusic.com/en/blog/how-much-does-tidal-pay-per-stream/I doubt it pays much better, the issue might be partially the distribution, but mainly that they are too cheap.
While it isn’t a lot more in general it is still about three times of Spotify. It also takes into consideration which artists you actually stream afaik, so that your money goes more towards those.
Even concerts barely break even for artists after all expenses. Right now, merch and physical album sales are the best way (other than directly giving money) to support your favorite artists. I don’t buy physical albums because they just become clutter at home, so I make it a point to buy merch when I go to a concert.
Buying digital albums works just as well. No need to go physical.
Not op but I would not care much. Sure things could be better but it’s not my problem. There is enough shit to worry about and music (or Spotify) is nowhere near the top half.
Same argument about standing up to someone’s livelihood being at stake can be said literally about everything. I got a limited amount of fucks to give. I’m happy if people want to fight this stuff and make music better for everyone but I ain’t part of that crew.
I am a musician and I deserve to make a living just like you.
Yeah, agreed and every person can only do so much. I like to think that it’s all the same fight, it’s the fight against the stranglehold that the rich have on the rest of us.
You’re welcome to feel that way but you basically surrender any right to complain about the state of the music industry.
Sony and Universal own a pretty decent chunk of Spotify, so they have every incentive to force their artists to stay on the platform.
This is a valid opinion to have as a consumer in the here and now.
However, if you think about the bigger system and how it will change in a few years time, you’ll notice that the matter is not quite this simple. It’s easy to imagine that no single musician is brave enough to take the first step onto a new platform devoid of users, just like you are not willing to jump to a new platform devoid of musicians. And if no artist takes the first step and no user takes the first step, then the status quo will prevail. Now, that may not necessarily be a bad thing. But if artists are not paid enough to continue making music for Spotify, then they’ll stop making music for Spotify. That’s fine if you like mainstream music of whoever games the system successfully. But it’s easy to see how that would be a loss to some people.
Reporting on Spotify’s payments to artists typically puts payments at 0.003 - 0.005 USD per stream. 80,000,000 streams at 0.003 is just shy of a quarter of a million dollars. And it’s totally fair to still argue about whether that’s enough or whether it’s fair to the many small artists than Weird Al, but his video is definitely a joke and not reflective of the actual income unless he’s getting unbelievably shafted by his label
Which is why it really sucks. Now people remember that number, keep repeating it, and essentially he has become a fake news peddler. Good job, Al.
I came across a post on instagram that says that Al Yankovic’s 80 million stream on playlist only netted him enough money to buy a sandwich.
It was hyperbole, unless his sandwich costs 200-300k. Which is the reason why his statement was very questionable.
https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=fNjQG7y9aoQ
I love Weird Al! But pretty sure this was hyperbole. The point still stands, though. It really is depressing that people just follow “everybody else” when giving abusive megacorporations money. Same with social media, especially when there are great, healthy, ethical alternatives to be found is the Fediverse.
Edit: I’ll just link pixelfed just because…
I’m stuck in a family plan with 4 of my friends + a friend’s sister. I’m open to getting a Family Tidal Hifi Plus, but I’m not so sure, if all of them are willing to change for a higher tier and using a different servicr.
I have around 48k streams on spotify and I’ve earned a whopping $172. Their new payment model would bring that down to essentially $0.
If you want to do the maths, the maximum one can possibly earn in Spotify royalties is $0.003 a stream. It doesn’t add up to a living wage for most artists.
And now, to make matters far worse, starting in 2024 Spotify will stop paying anything at all for roughly two-thirds of tracks on the platform. That is any track receiving fewer than 1,000 streams over the period of a year.
So if my maths are right, this means people not getting paid…are people that would make less than 3 dollars in a whole year?
Which really illuminates how fucked it is that they aren’t paying those people.
These tiny artists earning barely anything are evidently a major enough cost sector that it’s worth Spotify just telling them to get fucked. Playing their content is evidently significantly important to Spotify, but not enough to justify an annual check that isn’t even enough to buy a beer.
With hits that low, youre basically just advocating for UBI at that point, you cant expect pay for every little amateur hobby folks have.
What they’re actually advocating for is dividing each user’s pot by their listens.
If a user primarily listens to a handful of small bands, why shouldn’t their cut go to those bands, rather than being thrown into a big pool to be diluted? At first glance they’d be similar, but they’re arguing that if you do the math out they aren’t.
People want to listen to it tough, don’t they? Don’t these amateur musicians provide a service that people value?
Thats just it, number of hits is the metric for that, if its low then folks dont want to listen to it.
To be clear, what I said is Spotify should be sending them their annual several dollar checks. They shouldn’t be allowed to just trim away that cost entirely because the artists are small and Spotify wants more profits.
And what you’re saying is that they shouldn’t get anything because it’s “just a hobby”.
Fuck you, seriously.
Like, i dont think i deserve any money for getting some thousands of views of my art. I think im getting paid about how much money im making the platforms its on, which is nothing. Im not yet good enough to get a job making art, or to sell my art instead of making it freely viewable.
Any track, not any artist. You could have a hundred tracks getting hundreds of streams a piece. Maximum before cutoff would be about $3/track. Not a ton but could be hundreds of dollars. And combining that from dozens to thousands of artists potentially in that boat.
And it’s likely a good bit less than 3
Some context is that this is Spotify’s first profitable quarter in quite a while. Also, there are 11 million artists on Spotify. I won’t pretend to have any data on listening distribution, but even naively and stupidly going with a uniform split, that’s of course $5 per artist if you eliminated Spotify’s profit entirely. In reality, most of those will have next to no listeners, and the vast majority of streams are going to the top several thousand.
The deeper question to ask is where all the streaming revenue is actually going, and the answer to that isn’t to line Spotify’s pockets; it’s to the labels.
It’s a bit of a confusing situation. Spotify pays the labels for the rights, but also has to pay the artists? Do the artists not get money from the labels for the money they got from seeling their songs? Do artists that own their own songs get a larger cut from Spotify?
And yeah 56mil is nothing to a business like this, I’m surprised it’s not more profitable with all the subscriptions and ad money. It’s like THE platform for music nowadays.
I feel like you’re doing everyone a disservice when you don’t tell us the most beneficial way for us to hear your music.
The best way is always to buy the music directly from the artist, in this case:
Why is anyone still using Spotify?
They have money to pay Joe Rogan an absolutely obscene amount of money which could have made hundreds of artists life awesome apparently (which feels more like a bribe). So it is clear, they have the cash to pay others too. They just choose not to
I hate the company but I haven’t found another streaming service with a similar amount of music, sound quality and algorithm. I have a jellyfin instance, but it lacks the choice and algorithm.
Edit: I am currently in the process of switching to Tidal. It has pretty much all the niche artists that I usually listen to, the algo is pretty good (at least thats what other ppl say), the audio quality is very good and it has a really nice UI. Also, it pays Artists twice as much as Spotify.
It doesn’t have a native App for Linux, but there is https://github.com/Mastermindzh/tidal-hifi, which is an electron wrapper for the web-ui that is also available via Flatpak and works well so far.Tried tidal and didn’t work well for me with Android auto. You can actually use something like tune my music to copy your playlists to every main service for testing.
I used apple music. I don’t like Apple in particular, but they pay artists, and don’t pay Joe rogan
I actually found the music suggestions were way better than Spotify which mostly just repeated stuff I heard
Bandcamp and Tidal. Please everyone, we need to kill Spotify, they hate artists.
Bandcamp was sold off without the unionized employees. If you’re doing this to be pro-labour, you can’t really support Bandcamp right now.
I know, but so far, it’s still the best way to give money to the creators. It’s basically 9:1 in favor of the artists when you buy an album… Hopefully a fair alternative will come up in a near future. Funkwhale is slowly getting better . Anyway, anything is better than Spotify.
I don’t know what to do honestly. I’m fully aware of the situation. Artists deserve better then the shit they’re always getting, I’m not disagreeing. But here’s the thing, buying music is nice and all, but one: Bandcamp is going to shit. And two, I just can’t afford it.
I’m poor and I listen to a lot of things. Buying all that isn’t possible for me. Right now, I’m using Deezer, because they offered 3 months for free. And you know what? Just the 10 bucks a month that I’m saving is making a huge difference in my life.
Not to mention that discovering music without streaming services is quite hard. I left Spotify a long time ago, when the home page started recommending me more Podcasts then music. I tried a lot of things and I came to the conclusion that I hate all music streaming platform but they’re still, by far, the best way for me to listen to and discover music.
If I love an album, I’ll still buy if I can afford it (which I often can’t).
I just can’t afford it.
I’m poor and I listen to a lot of things. Buying all that isn’t possible for me.
So basically: you can’t afford the volume of product you want to consume at a price that’s sustainable for artists, but want the product anyway and you see that as some unsolvable dilemma? Have I got that right?
Look, it sucks that you’re in that financial situation. Not here to downplay that struggle. I’ve lived like that and it fuckin sucks.
But maybe the answer is to value the effort of musicians and either pay them for their work or consume less?
But maybe the answer is to value the effort of musicians and either pay them for their work or consume less?
What benefit would that decision have? Artists would still receive the same amount of royalties. @Plume would still spend the same amount of money. What benefit is there to artificially limit his music listening hobby because of copyright law?
You’re acting like I’m pirating the music, here. I’m not. I said that I’m using Deezer right now, a legal and paid for way to listen to music.
I use Deezer and like I said, when I like an album, I still try to buy music from the artists that I love when I can. Which pays them much more then millions of stream.
I feel guilt free, honestly.
So then why post about it?
This isn’t a utilitarian argument. It’s a moral one.
They want to believe there’s some moral dilemma here and they’re, by gosh, trying their best to navigate it.
But the reality is: they want music, but they can’t afford to pay artists in a way that’s sustainable, so they’re just taking it however they can get it and paying a pittance to make themselves feel a bit better.
So quit pretending. They’ve made their choice. Their priorities are clear.
The artists put their music on streaming platform as well. There is no such thing as ethical consumption under Capitalism. Everything is fucking exploitative as fuck, everything is awful. There is A LOT of things that I refuse to watch, play, listen to, pay for, consume, for ethical reasons.
Again: I AM NOT PIRATING! I’m using a legal way to access the music I listen to, Deezer. And buying albums that I really love when I can afford it on the side.
I think I understand how I ended up believing you were pirating even though you weren’t: @zaphod makes it seem like you’re doing something remotely unethical when you not only use a legitimate subscription service but also support the artists through other ways! I’m not sure what more an artist could ask from a patron such as yourself.
My argument isn’t simply utilitarian either. It would be utilitarian to say, “It’s moral to pirate music as long as your enjoyment exceeds the harm caused to the artist.” But I’m saying that there is no harm caused by OP pirating in this situation. Don’t most moral arguments involve some kind of measure of harm? (Honest and sincere question)
It’s been a while since I studied philosophy, but for my own knowledge, do you know if there is some distinction between this sort of argument (e.g. “no victim = no crime”) and plain old utilitarianism?
In other words, what ethical theory is your moral argument based on?
By your definition of harm, no artist creating non-material goods (books, movies, music, etc) could ever experience harm due to any one individual’s actions. “I was never going to pay, so taking it without paying is a victim less crime,” etc, etc.
The problem is this is clearly harmful in aggregate.
There are countless actions that, on an individual level are relatively harmless that we deem immoral because they’d be harmful if everyone did them: e.g. polluting.
But setting aside issues of harm–which is absolutely utilitarian–there are also many actions for which no objective “harm” can be identified but which we still deem inherently immoral. For example, if someone cheats on their spouse, and the spouse never finds out, most people I know would say that action is immoral irrespective of the lack of direct harm.
As for your last question, tbh I have no idea.
By your definition of harm, no artist creating non-material goods (books, movies, music, etc) could ever experience harm due to any one individual’s actions. “I was never going to pay, so taking it without paying is a victim less crime,” etc, etc.
False. I acknowledge that there could be harm if a consumer would otherwise be able to afford to pay for all of the music they listen to. The distinction here is that if a consumer is already spending as much as they can truly afford then artists aren’t going to get any more money out of this consumer, regardless of whether or not they pay for it.
In other words: if you pirate because you must = no harm; if you pirate because you can = some harm.
That’s an interesting thought experiment about the cheating spouse, though. Thank you for the interesting perspective! This makes me want to re-visit my philosophy notes.
For the record, I pay for Spotify and also support artists through Bandcamp, merch, vinyl, and live concerts. I also pirate music which isn’t otherwise available through Spotify and/or Bandcamp (e.g. The Grey Album by Danger Mouse, and up until recently The Flamingo Trigger by Foxy Shazam) and don’t feel guilty about those instances.
But I’m saying that there is no harm caused by OP pirating in this situation.
…but I’m not pirating though! ;-;
My mistake! I lost the thread when typing my response. Don’t worry, I’ll call the RIAA today and cancel the snitch report I made ;)
Too late, the death squads are already at my door.
The justification for this is demonetizing white-noise tracks or other work without creative effort that supposedly costs spotify too much. I’m not a fan of the direction this is going because one of the best things about the platform was it’s selection of underground music. This just buries it deeper and doesn’t help artists that are trying to break through. It just shovels the profits to the top earners who are already doing quite well. There aren’t many alternatives and bancamp has been passed down from epic games to songtradr and isn’t anywhere near a real alternative yet.
Honestly, 56 million profit is really not much. How many artists are getting next to nothing? 100,000? Splitting that profit between them leaves each with 560 per year. There’s even less when you include more.
And if Spotify raises the prices to pay more per play people will leave, leaving Spotify with less money to hand out. Having asshats like Rogan getting millions or the deals huge artists, who are already filthy rich like Taylor Swift, make with Spotify are what’s hurting small artists. I think Spotify has the same issue as the rest of the world. There is enough for everyone, it’s just not equally distributed.
Also no fair competition from Apple and google
Fuck em…
Just buy music directly from the artist whenever possible…Someone mentioned Faircamp recently. I haven’t had a chance to look into it properly but it looks great!
You know what, this makes me feel a lot better about using an ad-blocker when using their site. Although, I would prefer if the artists I listen to didn’t exclusively use Spotify for some reason.
I’m all for ad blockers. But this doesn’t solve the creators’ issue with not getting paid. The internet is a severely underutilized resource. Creators should be able to sell their content directly to us without middlemen like these.
I agree with that and some of the artists I listen to actually do use platforms where you can purchase their music directly but unfortunately buying the music directly just really isn’t viable for me. Platforms that use ads for monetization are really the only way that’s viable but the artists I listen to only use Spotify, or if they do use other platforms, they just use them for demos and other promotional stuff.
Why are you not moving to a different distribution model where you’ll get what you’re worth? I’ll go where the music is. If you keep putting it on Spotify then I’ll play it on Spotify.
There are plenty of better ways to obtain music, such as actually buying the music instead of streaming it. And, hey, that’s like saying you’d stay on Reddit because that’s where the content is. Ethics should come before easy entertainment.
So, where do I buy the music? I’m not seeing an alternative being offered here.
Same as with most artists, go to their website and you’ll find the bandcamp/faircamp/etc page, in this case:
Just so I’m clear here - are you doubting the existence of websites where you can buy and download music? I have a feeling that is not what you mean but I also can’t really figure out another way to interpret this.
I checked a couple of songs on my playlist and didn’t find places that were obviously better than Spotify. Is Bandcamp better? How about Beatport? Being able to buy and download music is not a guarantee that the artist is getting paid fairly.
As a side note I’m growing weary of having to keep track as a consumer of the revenue streams and ethics of every brand out there. There’s a lot on my plate already. I wish that if musicians didn’t want me to buy things for a certain price or at a certain place, that they just wouldn’t offer it to me in that way. Or, if they were being coerced into it, that they would push for regulation to prevent that. But I have a suspicion that the principle of supply and demand dictates that selling music online just won’t be as profitable as they (naively) expect it to be. Too many musicians, too few ears.
There’s a lot on my plate already. I wish that if musicians didn’t want me to buy things for a certain price or at a certain place, that they just wouldn’t offer it to me in that way.
This is the Amazon / Valve / [Insert dominant company] problem. It’s not musicians’ fault. A ton of small companies hate Amazon but if they don’t have a presence on Amazon, 90% easily are missing out on too much marketshare to survive. Same with Valve - if you are PC game and you choose not to publish on Steam, you are cutting yourself off from a massive revenue stream as Valve controls ~75% - which is absolutely staggering - of the market.
So this goes for Spotify now as well. If you aren’t on spotify, your ability to gain an audience plummets. You hobble yourself like crazy.
Yes Bandcamp and Beatport are viable. CD’s which you can rip are also readily available still. Ditching Spotify means ditching some convenience, that’s the cost ultimately (outside of the dollars and cents). You either care enough to do it or you don’t. It’s your call and no judgment here. But those are the answers ultimately.
I recently swapped to Proton Mail/Drive/Calendar from Gmail et al. I pay some extra money annually and sacrificed a few QoL things because decoupling from google was more important to me. I don’t expect everyone to follow suit and again no judgment, but I had to accept I wasn’t going to get those google QoL elements to the same degree when I made the swap. That’s just how it is.
What’s your method of determining that Beatport and Bandcamp are good options?
I’m not sure I understand the question. Go on the sites and look for yourself I guess?
Spotify has the market pretty much cornered, though.
How is that going to help artists getting paid?
I usually use them to discover music. Then I make donations or buy merch/disks of the artists I really like.
Small stuff and when I can afford it, but I try to make my part
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