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.
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.
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’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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’m…not seeing the problem here. I’m fine with there being a minimum before a check is issued as long as the amount is reasonable, and $3 seems pretty reasonable.
That’s how it works with a lot of things, including advertising, referrals, etc.
It’s not a minimum before a check is issued. If you do not have a certain number of annual listeners on a track you never get paid out for it. If you had 100 tracks that were each streamed by 999 listeners who each streamed them 100 times per year every year, Spotify will no longer pay you a dime, ever.
I think a key point of confusion is in the way they presented it. They talk about how many songs have “less than 1000 listens” and that those would only make $3, but then their new policy is to deny payment for “less than 1000 listeners.” If each of those listeners streamed the song once per month, you’re talking closer to $40 than $3, and that’s on a per song basis.
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My current band, Damon & Naomi, only provided the soundtrack for a comparatively modest trek, “from Berlin to Beijing three times”.
We’ve been hearing these slogans for decades, while watching our incomes from creative work go down and down, until finally now, for many of us on Spotify, they will hit absolute zero.
Down at the level of most tracks on the platform, a devoted fan who listens to the work of a lesser known artist over and over still pays most or all their subscription money to Ed Sheeran, Drake, Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny.
You can count me among that number, along with the US-based advocacy group I am a part of, United Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW); or Tom Gray of the band Gomez, who launched the very visible campaign #BrokenRecord in the UK.
We have been calling for a switch from this so-called pro-rata accounting, to a user-centric system that would reward artists directly with the money paid into the pot by those who actually listen to our work.
None of these three extremely well-capitalised corporations need to listen to artists at the low end of the scale like me, even though collectively we are providing the bulk of content on their platforms.
How much of this is Spotify’s fault and how much is the major record labels sitting between Spotify and the individual artists?
And is there a better place for us consumers to go and vote with our wallet? Ideally somewhere that isn’t one of the 5 major tech giants that control everything
Cory Doctorow writes extensively about how it’s Spotify’s fault, as an extension of the common exploitation of musicians in the industry, in the excellent book Chokepoint Capitalism.
Here’s a short summary of the Spotify argument by the author: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ5z_KKeFqE
The only silver lining is even if Bandcamp goes away, I can keep the music I bought on it. It’s all drm free. If a streaming service shuts down, you’re typically left with nothing despite having paid every month.
I hope Bandcamp survives, and somehow regains independence.
I use Bandcamp instead of Spotify now, because that’s what most of my musician friends use to sell their music and recommend as the best way of supporting artists directly, and some of my favourite current artists are active on there. Yeah I can’t just stream and make playlists of whatever I want, and it’s more for new music than older stuff, but I can scroll through and play the suggested tracks which are far more interesting and diverse than anything Spotify would suggest to me, and then I can buy the stuff I really like. I’m slowly building up enough stuff that way to have an interesting collection on my phone to listen to, and it’s also introduced me to some really cool music that I wouldn’t have heard about from Spotify.
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.
Apple Music isnt much better and giving even more power to such a huge corporation sucks. Regardless though, there’s this thing thats been understood with services/products where most people don’t switch unless the competition is 10x better.
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
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.
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.
The same reason merchandise sellers are on Amazon even though Amazon forces them to lower prices and make less: if you’re NOT on Amazon, people just won’t find you. If you’re not on Spotify, you don’t exist in the music world to some people. Because otherwise where else will they search for you? Youtube Music or Apple Music, both pay sites. Otherwise you’re having word of mouth or searching manually.
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?
Does Spotify affect the music market or does the music market affect Spotify’s mode of operations? Can Spotify really exist in an ecosystem where artists are fairly represented and paid equally? Look at Bandcamp, it’s been trashed and deserted because the companies that have taken advantage of it found the model unprofitable by their estimates.
There of course are many things Spotify could do, but unfortunately the momentum in the music industry is towards profit and not actual talent or social consciousness. Spotify is owned by money makers, not individuals with true appreciation for the art of music.
As I said, by their estimates. I do not endorse the idiocy that compels this greed and ignorance towards true art. I myself am a musician and by no means am I popular or thriving on my art. I can’t be upset with Spotify because it’s still a better system than hoping any physical media I release will make it into the hands of others, in a music industry that has generally discouraged people from listening to underground artists. With digital media, Bandcamp is probably one of the best platforms for artists.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
Fuck em…
Just buy music directly from the artist whenever possible…
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.
They can and do. Most are just lazy/uneducated/choose not to.
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.
Would love to know if this is better at Tidal than at Spotify. After all, that is the main reason I switched.
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
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).
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?
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.
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?
…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.
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.
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.
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.
“Have you tried not being poor? No? How about forgoing a creature comfort to spite a big company in an ineffectual boycott?”
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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 did, I cancelled Spotify and switched to Tidal because of this, and noted the reason in my exit survey.
I’m…not seeing the problem here. I’m fine with there being a minimum before a check is issued as long as the amount is reasonable, and $3 seems pretty reasonable.
That’s how it works with a lot of things, including advertising, referrals, etc.
Maybe I’m missing something?
It’s not a minimum before a check is issued. If you do not have a certain number of annual listeners on a track you never get paid out for it. If you had 100 tracks that were each streamed by 999 listeners who each streamed them 100 times per year every year, Spotify will no longer pay you a dime, ever.
I think a key point of confusion is in the way they presented it. They talk about how many songs have “less than 1000 listens” and that those would only make $3, but then their new policy is to deny payment for “less than 1000 listeners.” If each of those listeners streamed the song once per month, you’re talking closer to $40 than $3, and that’s on a per song basis.
People outraged by anything and not knowing enough to know to not be outraged.
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:
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My current band, Damon & Naomi, only provided the soundtrack for a comparatively modest trek, “from Berlin to Beijing three times”.
We’ve been hearing these slogans for decades, while watching our incomes from creative work go down and down, until finally now, for many of us on Spotify, they will hit absolute zero.
Down at the level of most tracks on the platform, a devoted fan who listens to the work of a lesser known artist over and over still pays most or all their subscription money to Ed Sheeran, Drake, Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny.
You can count me among that number, along with the US-based advocacy group I am a part of, United Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW); or Tom Gray of the band Gomez, who launched the very visible campaign #BrokenRecord in the UK.
We have been calling for a switch from this so-called pro-rata accounting, to a user-centric system that would reward artists directly with the money paid into the pot by those who actually listen to our work.
None of these three extremely well-capitalised corporations need to listen to artists at the low end of the scale like me, even though collectively we are providing the bulk of content on their platforms.
Saved 78% of original text.
This is one of the reasons I use soundcloud when listening to music.
How much of this is Spotify’s fault and how much is the major record labels sitting between Spotify and the individual artists?
And is there a better place for us consumers to go and vote with our wallet? Ideally somewhere that isn’t one of the 5 major tech giants that control everything
The record labels that own Spotify
We will never know, but somehow people think it’s our problem to deal with.
The newest part, which is Spotify refusing to payout what small artists are owed if they don’t hit a certain streaming threshold, is 100% on Spotify.
For alternatives, Tidal allegedly pays better and at least doesn’t do this. Qobuz is not owned by any big tech company.
Cory Doctorow writes extensively about how it’s Spotify’s fault, as an extension of the common exploitation of musicians in the industry, in the excellent book Chokepoint Capitalism. Here’s a short summary of the Spotify argument by the author: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ5z_KKeFqE
I haven’t used Spotify in a while. I buy stuff on Bandcamp (Bandcamp Friday usually).
It’s looking like Bandcamp is going to get axed: Bandcamp lays off half its staff after buyout by Songtradr
Capitalism is a machine for producing tragedies.
The only silver lining is even if Bandcamp goes away, I can keep the music I bought on it. It’s all drm free. If a streaming service shuts down, you’re typically left with nothing despite having paid every month.
I hope Bandcamp survives, and somehow regains independence.
I use Bandcamp instead of Spotify now, because that’s what most of my musician friends use to sell their music and recommend as the best way of supporting artists directly, and some of my favourite current artists are active on there. Yeah I can’t just stream and make playlists of whatever I want, and it’s more for new music than older stuff, but I can scroll through and play the suggested tracks which are far more interesting and diverse than anything Spotify would suggest to me, and then I can buy the stuff I really like. I’m slowly building up enough stuff that way to have an interesting collection on my phone to listen to, and it’s also introduced me to some really cool music that I wouldn’t have heard about from Spotify.
Do you know if this still gives artists the most cash after Epic’s purchase(and recent sale to songtradr)?
https://get.bandcamp.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500006084082-What-are-Bandcamp-s-fees-
They charge a 15% fee. So the artist (if independent) or record label (if not) gets 85% of whatever you pay.
Sounds like they’re still one of the best. That’s good to hear.
I believe on Bandcamp Friday the artist gets 100% of the sale. I’m not sure if they’re going to keep doing it after the sale to songtradr.
The loss of bandcamp’s independence is a tragedy
Agreed. There is an emerging trend among Fedi artists to use Faircamp, but it doesn’t exactly fill the same void.
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.
Apple Music isnt much better and giving even more power to such a huge corporation sucks. Regardless though, there’s this thing thats been understood with services/products where most people don’t switch unless the competition is 10x better.
Apple Music pays two time what Spotify does. Easy pick between the two.
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.
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.
When pay is basically non existent is there a reason to be on spotify? Or is it for “exposure” in hopes of finding new fans.
The same reason merchandise sellers are on Amazon even though Amazon forces them to lower prices and make less: if you’re NOT on Amazon, people just won’t find you. If you’re not on Spotify, you don’t exist in the music world to some people. Because otherwise where else will they search for you? Youtube Music or Apple Music, both pay sites. Otherwise you’re having word of mouth or searching manually.
It was hyperbole, unless his sandwich costs 200-300k. Which is the reason why his statement was very questionable.
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.
Sony and Universal own a pretty decent chunk of Spotify, so they have every incentive to force their artists to stay on the platform.
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?
Does Spotify affect the music market or does the music market affect Spotify’s mode of operations? Can Spotify really exist in an ecosystem where artists are fairly represented and paid equally? Look at Bandcamp, it’s been trashed and deserted because the companies that have taken advantage of it found the model unprofitable by their estimates.
There of course are many things Spotify could do, but unfortunately the momentum in the music industry is towards profit and not actual talent or social consciousness. Spotify is owned by money makers, not individuals with true appreciation for the art of music.
All we know is the companies weren’t able to extract what they wanted out of band camp, not that its model wasn’t working or couldn’t work.
As I said, by their estimates. I do not endorse the idiocy that compels this greed and ignorance towards true art. I myself am a musician and by no means am I popular or thriving on my art. I can’t be upset with Spotify because it’s still a better system than hoping any physical media I release will make it into the hands of others, in a music industry that has generally discouraged people from listening to underground artists. With digital media, Bandcamp is probably one of the best platforms for artists.
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
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.
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/
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.
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.
I dunno, I feel like its not that big of a deal to not pay spotify $15 a month
I am a musician and I deserve to make a living just like you.
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.
Found the egoist!
You’re welcome to feel that way but you basically surrender any right to complain about the state of the music industry.
Stop using spotify. Start using Vimusic, innertune
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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