This anger against Spotify and other streaming services just strikes me as misdirected. Spotify pays out ~70% of its revenue to music rights holders, which strikes me as reasonable, although I have nothing really to base this on. But I feel like the people behind this kind of movement expect a much bigger payout, so even if Spotify paid out 100% of their revenue to rights holders, they would still think its too low.
Even if they could pull their music from the platform, it's like shooting yourself in the foot. You lose most of the exposure that will lead to actual revenue: physical albums and show tickets.
[1] https://informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-ar...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Swift_masters_dispute
I’m sure the big labels are still valuable for advertising but after you’ve grown enough I can’t understand why you wouldn’t just have your own label.
In the mainstream music industry it's really hard to grow if you never sign with one of the labels, so it's a bit of a catch-22.
Even artists known as "independent", like Billie Eilish, only have their big breakthrough after signing a deal that gives them access to producers, funding for music videos, radio shows, publicists, concerts, etc.. having access to streaming/publishing is only 10% of the deal.
1. Saying "hey, you can just not list on Spotify" is naive. Unless you're a major artist, you don't have the market power to convince people not to use Spotify. Essentially every labor movement is about pooling the collective power of individuals to fight larger entrenched market owners, and that's what this boycott is about.
2. To me the main issue is not the payout percentage, but how it's divvied up. I believe this is still the case, but payouts are divvied up by averaging across all plays. But the total plays are dominated by large artists. A better deal for smaller artists is to allocate each individual subscriber's revenue based on what that subscriber listens to. For example, if I love Obscure Artist A, and 90% of my songs are Obscure Artist A, then Obscure Artist A should get 90% of my $15 or whatever subscription fee (minus Spotify's cut). But instead, Spotify says "Obscure Artist A only had .000001% of total plays, so they only get .000001% of total revenue" - it ends up being a better payout for the big names but a worse deal for all the smaller artists.
Isn’t this Bandcamp?
[1] https://pitchfork.com/news/epic-games-sells-bandcamp-amid-la...
The article you linked is about Epic selling Bandcamp, which happened relatively quickly after they acquired it. I guess they didn't find any use for it in the end.
My take on this: of course the top artists should not be taking a disproportionate cut at the expense of the less popular artists, a UCPS is not a panacea but it would be an improvement.
[1] https://legrandnetwork.blogspot.com/2021/02/user-centric-mod...
Why would the former pay obscure artists more? Are non-paying users more likely to listen to mainstream artists? Or do fans of obscure artists just play fewer songs each? Is ad revenue shared in the same proportions, but just lower per user? Is revenue really shared on the basis of plays, rather then playing time? If so, and if obscure artists make longer songs, does that contribute to their lack of revenue?
I don't want the obscure artists to get more ― or less, for that matter. I want the artists I listen to to get my money, obscure or not. That's a simple transaction and has worked forever. If I buy a CD from artist X, I know I won't be supporting artist Y with my money, just X. If I then want to listen to Y, I can support them as well. But in any case Z won't be getting any of my money because they make noises I don't consider music.
So I have never even opened Swift’s page on Spotify — let alone played a song (if there are fans here, please don’t come after me). I pay for Spotify. So did you mean to say the largest portion of my monthly fee goes to Taylor Swift?
Dissatisfaction with the payout is only one aspect of why some artists are leaving Spotify. I personally find it super weird how much Spotify profit is getting funnelled into arm manufacturing. Like why should listening to music help new AI drone tech to get developed? Tf?
Assuming you pay taxes, your money is probably being funneled to arms manufacturing anyway.
In the article they do mention Massive Attack, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Deerhoof and Hotline TNT delisting their music and then further speaking out in protest- removal being 1/3 parts of the listed "goal".
But really it seems like the discourse on Spotify is making waves again with the recent reveal of Ek's Helsing investment. Given this is the same dude who said that "the cost of making content is close to zero", it's understandable that people are speaking out.
They want the listeners to change their habits away from Spotify and engage with music differently -- on another platform -- e.g. maybe like Bandcamp. The listeners would discover music at Bandcamp and make purchases there where the artists get more money.
But only a minority of hardcore fans will buy music à la carte like that. Most other mainstream listeners would prefer to have ~100 million songs for a flat monthly subscrption. The tiny 0.04 cents per stream is not a concern of the subscribers. That's why it's an uphill battle.
The vast majority of music listeners aren't music collectors. Those people mostly want to listen to what others are listening to in order to share something in common. It's a very different approach to music than the collector who's looking for new music they've never heard of.
Artists typically fall into the latter category and want everyone else to also. They fail to understand that music, for most people, is a cultural touchstone, not a hobby.
The trade you make is reach, you can't benefit from being discovered on Spotify, it's harder for prospective fans to become fans when they can't listen to your music. You could upload your music to other places but they seem to largely be against "uploading it online and giving it away for free."
This sounds very much like everyone does not want artists to get better payouts. (At least not all artists.)
If more than 50% of what listeners end up paying for the subscription goes to the artists, I guess they'd prefer that, rather than the money going elsewhere.
Where did you get this arbitrary number from?
And no, it doesn’t look like everyone wants artists to be paid more. What everyone wants is cheap access to a large catalog.
But, one simple question: how are the Creators (especially those not signed with a Big Bad Label) expecting to be paid in this marvelous post-Spotify era? Because, fact: like 80% of revenue (if not more, and the rest is pretty much evenly divided between YouTube, the remains of iTunes, and some niche portals like Beatport) flows through them these days.
And, for all Spotify's flaws, that revenue stream might be something to have a pretty good plan to replace, and I don't see any hints at that in the linked article?
Even if 80%[1] of all money is going through large platforms like Spotify and YouTube, the real question is how much % of indie money is going through them.
The best bet for semi professional or indie today is to do live performances, sell merch or have fans on Patreon or get viral on TikTok and so on, nobody is living on Spotify money.
Platforms are more used to grow audiences and improve discoverability than make any real money as an indie artist.
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[1] Big platforms combined may very well be 80%, however I doubt Spotify alone is 80% of the even the English market, let alone global where it is just many times pretty much only YouTube or some regional player bundling services.
[2] iTunes may not be significant, Apple Music and Amazon Music are not. They have enormous distribution due to install base and Prime, and they sell a ton of bundled deals with telecom and other packages.
Then there is TikTok which is huge for music too
There are other players in streaming like Satellite with Sirius XM or traditional FM/AM Radio who also pay for streaming music.
The organized music market is pretty vast, Spotify hardly controls 80% of anything.
Like 99.98% of the music I've ever looked up is there, even pirate sites don't have that much coverage.
I use the free version and put up with the ads. I make playlists of my favorite songs, sometimes Spotify suggests great music I didn’t know about.
It’s superior to any other way of listening to music, for me. I’ll keep using it ‘till something better comes along. Hooray for progress!
I used Spotify a lot until I quit many years ago not because of not having my freedom to listen (their approach of lossless drove me away). I use Tidal, it is a piece of sh*t, the player is made by unattentive stupid children with no clue, the single worst piece of software I had the unfortune to use, but the access to the catalogue and the reasonable price I got keeps me there still. I can browse, discover, build up my own beautiful playlists that I listen to for months so the individual palylists become the sound of an era in my life.
If there was a different service from musicians themselves with rich database - must contain lukewarm lemonade too! as sometimes it is lukewarm lemonade day, also oldies and goldies - and not too high prices but a better player (not hard to do), I'd switch in an instant never looking back.
Just like I did with Spotify (for a different reason).
Doesn't Spotify do lossless now? How can it get better than lossless?
> Great playlists
That sounds like a skill issue if I've ever heard one.
Also that's a really rude comment. Curated playlists are great for those of us who aren't regularly exposed to new music in any other way.
How absolutely entitled. Almost 20 years ago I would have killed for a distribution platform as slick as what there is today. Is it a generational thing maybe? I don't know, but just because you create doesn't obligate people to consume.
But I think that's more about lack of knowledge rather than anything else.
I want universal basic income just so the most artistic and interesting of us can go and try cool innovative stuff without fear of death.
It is the most successful UBI experiment.
Now that the gravy train is over, I suspect open source projects will suffer and will increasingly be at the mercy of corporate funding or VCs.
Even if you exclude all the discoverability functionality, just the pure distribution aspect, at this scale, makes the Spotify system impressive. Why should that system and all the work that went into it, be free?
I don't think there are any legal barriers for someone to go ahead and build their own music distribution system that is more fair than Spotify. It's just a matter of putting in the time, no?
As a consumer, my primary objection to streaming platforms is that you don't own any of the stuff you pay for. That's obviously different to these artists' main objection, but if the solution they propose (whether it's switching to Bandcamp or something else) also addresses that concern I could get on board with it (and will always have sympathy for artists who want a bigger cut vs the middle man).
I do still pay for Spotify despite that objection. I find it provides just enough value to justify the cost. I have found it good for discoverability and, unlike other streaming services, Spotify gives me access to pretty much any music I might like to listen to. (Others with more niche tastes might disagree.)
If they went away tomorrow, that spend would not magically be transferred to a more artist-friendly form or platform. I'd just not pay for new music. There's already more than enough old music I own/free music than I would ever need.
I can't imagine I'm an outlier.
The problem with Spotify, Apple Music's streaming and YouTube music's algorithm is that it wants you to keep listening and it will feed you whatever it guesses you will like. Which means they will feed listeners AI-generated slop if they can get away with it. So I guess it's time for independent musicians who can prove their humanity to just put a damn ad for their music in front of potential listeners and try the direct sales routes. Mind-you, a non-AI generated ad, created by actual human filmmakers with AI-free tools and workflows.
Of course, there may be a second problem, and that's the youth who can enjoy happy music are broke. Middle-agers are too busy caring for kids and for the elderly, and thus naturally depressed and running in coping mechanisms, and that's before coming to our ossified musical tastes. And anybody older than that must use their running-out time wisely and only shop for funerary tunes. Woe if the arts should depend on our patronage.
I will also throw some points Spotify's way for having half decent support for API clients, decent hardware support (that is for consumers, not sure what the experience is like for a developer). I have an NFC card system setup for albums and playlists so I can have a limited physical library. This uses Spotify's libraries because the support is good.
For no fuss music Tidal has been good, but it certainly has fewer artists.
Even worse, algorithmically generated playlists of algorithmically generated music
Is blockchain the next evolution for tracking media ownership, access rights, and consumption? I hate "blockchain" being the fix for everything, but seems logical.
putting the energy into LIVE music and getting a few bucks, and a case of beer to split back stage is going to be a bigger pay day than what many ,many thoudands ever get from shitif6, oops,spottyfeh, sorry guitarer here,clumsy without strings attached, anyway the web is chock full of tunes so good it's a job to give some small percentage of that a proper listen, and it seems that most of it is stashed somewhere that it just plays when you hit the button, click, music, click music, oh! look a guitar
jncfhnb•1h ago
itopaloglu83•1h ago
One might be a paid subscriber and only listen a few small musicians, and yet majority of their money would go to the superstars and almost none to the musicians they listen to.
bigyabai•15m ago
whiplash451•47m ago
The whole system follows a brutal power law induced by network effects and engagement feedback loops.