When Bloomberg reported that Spotify would be upping the cost of its premium subscription from $9.99 to $10.99, and including 15 hours of audiobooks per month in the U.S., the change sounded like a win for songwriters and publishers. Higher subscription prices typically equate to a bump in U.S. mechanical royalties — but not this time.
By adding audiobooks into Spotify’s premium tier, the streaming service now claims it qualifies to pay a discounted “bundle” rate to songwriters for premium streams, given Spotify now has to pay licensing for both books and music from the same price tag — which will only be a dollar higher than when music was the only premium offering. Additionally, Spotify will reclassify its duo and family subscription plans as bundles as well.
Gotta love all my friends who are really into music who happily use Spotify and don’t give a shit it is a weapon of class warfare being used on musicians disguised as a music player!
I basically lost all my drive to make something of my love of creating music seeing how little anyone in my society actually values music or musicians in terms of material support and reward, it is honestly pretty scary how broken music has become.
I really wish there was a better alternative to push my friends to. I do use Bandcamp, so at least I know more of my $$$ are going to the artists and I can take the music with me, but I’m not sure about the platform long-term.
As a musician and composer it really took the life out of my identity as a composer seeing an alternative to bandcamp never really form and then one day waking up to it bought by Epic.
I didn’t cry that day, but I might as well have, it made me extraordinarily sad to see that headline and I imagine there are actually countless talented musicians out there who will never actuate on their creative vision because the environment for music production is at this point, downright hostile towards artists and musicians considering the amount of work music production is.
It takes an obscene amount of work to take a song from something that has promise to being as polished as listeners demand nowadays, and listeners won’t even give your song a chance on actual speakers. You have to twist and warp your music so it sounds good on essentially monophonic phone speakers with shitty frequency coverage or otherwise nobody will give it a try on speakers for actually listening to music. Doesn’t matter though, nobody is going to actually support you for the art you make.
🙃
It seems like https://resonate.coop/ is still around tho which seems like a cool idea (a coop owned streaming service where listeners can stream-to-own a song).
Not sure if this is exactly good news, but Epic Games doesn’t own it anymore, it was sold to Songtradr.
🤷♂️ not really, none of these corporations are real in any sense that matters other than sucking up actual companies that actually make the world a better place and mining the goodwill out of them until they are cynical, worthless husks that corporations use to fleece consumers into buying products from before they realize their favorite company/brand is dead in everything but name.
the largest music licensing platform in the world
Doesn’t sound too good to me. Bandcamp used to be where I could get music from smaller artists who couldn’t afford clearing samples (as they weren’t making money) and I worry a lot of that will be lost.
Still is, for now. I run a small vaporwave tape label via Bandcamp. No significant changes under Epic Games or Songtradr that I’ve noticed. That could change, though.
It will change, I promise you. I am so confident I will literally bet my girlfriend’s chihuahua on it.
better hope lefties and artists get their shit together you tiny little monster
Everyone on Lemmy and the fediverse as a whole should be aware of this pattern. I just hope something can fill in before it gets too bad.
I’m keeping an eye on Faircamp.
Walk me through this.
Before Spotify, I’d buy a record (physical or digital) and listen to that. I pay the artist once. After Spotify, I buy a record and listen to it on Spotify. I pay the artist the normal record price and there’s a long tail from stream payouts (unless they don’t reach the payout threshold).
Before Spotify, if someone heard a song and didn’t buy the record, they didn’t pay the artist. After Spotify, if they still don’t buy a record, the artist now earns from stream payouts.
Finally, before Spotify, if someone bought a record but stopped buying after Spotify, the artist loses that record purchase. This is definitely bad. Was Spotify the real reason? Would something other than Spotify have pulled them away? What levels of fame are materially affected by this?
Do artists have to pay to be on Spotify? Is that the issue?
the artist now earns from stream payouts.
Do artists have to pay to be on Spotify? Is that the issue?
The issue is that artists don’t make any actual money on Spotify, they are being forced to put their music on Spotify because that is where you have to put your stuff if you want to be a successful recording musician.
Meanwhile a couple of years ago the Spotify ceo said in defense of completely destroying any semblance of money making from recording music:
“There is a narrative fallacy here, combined with the fact that, obviously, some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape, where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough,” said Ek.
Streaming is great, but the structural evisceration of musicians and the value of labor in composing and producing is basically negative at this point given the huge amount of time that must go into a track to get it 100% there and ready for listeners.
The thread you linked says what I said.
I’ve been doing DIY music since I was a kid. The vast majority of bands are never going to make any money ever. Spotify didn’t change that. Streaming didn’t cause that. The reality of every kid with a guitar thinking music is about making money not having fun is what did that.
I don’t subscribe to this cynical of a viewpoint, it isn’t inevitable that recording music is not valued labor, it is a cultural choice same as any other.
I live in the richest country on earth, it is a subjective choice to devalue the labor of musicians and decouple it from the profits of music companies.
Who the fuck has a label? Do you know anything about music that isn’t already incredibly corporate? When was the last time you went to a DIY show and bought handmade merch off a band touring in their minivan? Compare that to the last time you bought a record from a label or merch from an online store run through not the band.
There are more than likely 300+ bands in a 20 to 50 mile radius around you. Do you support all of them as much as you’re pushing people on the internet to support all music? What about the really bad cover bands? Them too?
Your statements paint a picture that you have no idea what I meant by “levels of fame” because fucking no one makes money off music unless you get lucky. There’s just too much because music is fun.
Your statements paint a picture that you have no idea what I meant by “levels of fame” because fucking no one makes money off music unless you get lucky. There’s just too much because music is fun.
Again I don’t see any quantitative evidence to accept this framing of the status quo as inevitable or reflective of some fundamental tendency of human artists to overproduce art.
Capitalists have systematically stole the labor of musicians and normalized and absolutely absurd vision of austerity where the only way to make money is by doing things that people don’t want to do. It is absurd, and this ideology is pretty easy to locate the motivation behind, it makes us good compliant factory workers.
In my experience those kinds of people are Ice Spice fans.
Who think that SSSniperwolf arriving at another person’s house live on Insta and doxxing them during a manic episode is ‘slay’.
Although it’s far from the best, Deezer has a much fairer royalties compensation method, which is more closely based on a per-user basis, rather than total amount of minutes listened (that Spotify currently employs).
This isn’t super related to OPs post but I thought it might be worth mentioning aswell.
I’ve been using Deezer for a while now. Not only is the streaming quality (FLAC) much better but also the artist compensation much fairer. Plus, they at least act as if they actually cared for the customer…
I already commented somewhere else in this thread, but I’ve been just buying music via bandcamp and I feel pretty good about it. If I buy about one new album a month for $8, it’s cheaper than spotify and after a couple years I have a large library of music I own outright.
This works with my listening habits, which are something like “I have like one new (-to me) album on heavy rotation every couple of weeks”. Someone who’s more of a “i never listen to the same song twice” extreme wouldn’t have as good a time.
This works with my listening habits, which are something like “I have like one new (-to me) album on heavy rotation every couple of weeks”
I actually kinda do the same thing, so you’ve got me thinking I should start just buying albums. Build a Jellyfin server so I can still stream music, and just not deal with subscriptions.
And actually, most of the time I buy records that come with digital downloads anyway. Time to rethink my Tidal subscription.
It’s not really just Spotify. I’m a hobbyist music producer. I uploaded my entire catalog through Distrokid about two years ago. Distrokid serves just about every streaming service. It costs $20 a year for the most basic package. I’ve got ~8 million listens according to Distrokid, and that nets me about $40 US. So, I made my money back. Not bad for 20 years of work. Haha!
I don’t really care about the numbers, like I said, I’m a hobbyist. I make music because I enjoy making music. It would never be my career unless I dropped everything and struck out touring trying to make it in an industry that traditionally chews up and spits out hopefuls. I’m not exactly the age or attractiveness that most people expect in a touring musician, either.
I appreciate this. Can I have a listen? I also make music… Sometimes.
I release everything as “Underwaterbob” - my username. You can find me just about everywhere. If you don’t have a subscription, it’s all on YouTube, too: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ_MZ9yX0STsY1l2Ml2zBFw
I make a wide variety of music.
not exactly the age or attractiveness that most people expect
What gets me is that, for the right style of music, age or attractiveness shouldn’t matter as much as it does. You should be able to create your art, whatever kind of art it is, and have the art itself be judged on its merits. Instead we’ve got a bunch of our culture still somehow wrapped up in these veneers of attractiveness. It’s kind of maddening, to be honest. If you’re in your 50’s and making 90’s style Acid House or 2000’s style Trance it shouldn’t matter what you look like. If you’re a DJ it shouldn’t matter if you look like Shirley Temple or Shirley Manson. And yet here we are.
8 million listens netting you only 40 bucks really is insane, isn’t it? I used to think radio royalties were bad: I remember Sting talking about how every time Roxanne got played on the radio someone somewhere got 3 cents. He didn’t say who got the 3 cents, nor did he say how much of that 3 cents went to him. I’m not 100% sure about those numbers (“my memory is muddy, what’s this river that I’m in?”) but they’re a damn sight more impressive than whatever crumbs the streaming companies are paying, somehow a thousand times less than the radio. Spotify’s announcement last year that they weren’t even going to bother paying for songs with less than 1000 streams per month was a shocker - what stops them from making it 2000, or 10,000?
Still, being a hobbyist isn’t all bad. I’ve been releasing jazz cover-versions of pop songs for about 2.5 years now, and have netted about 25 bucks so far :) Who knew jazz versions of Toxic or Rusted From The Rain could be so popular?
If I made 3 cents a stream, I’d have a quarter of a million…
I’m not exactly the age or attractiveness that most people expect in a touring musician, either
Idk. I was happy to pay to hear Mic Jagger live and he looks like shit.
Worst case scenario, just become the new Gorillas
They suck ass. Stop paying them money.
Please, people, for the love of the gods, stop using Spotify. There are numerous other services that are so much better value for your money and don’t treat artists (as much) like trash.
And that being said, try to support your beloved artists directly as much as you can. Buying digital downloads or physical media will give them more money than a lifetime of streaming ever would. Plus you get to keep the higher-quality music even if the platform or artist goes tits-up.
Could you give me some examples of alternative services? I’m paying spotify right now, but i’ll love to ditch it.
Sure, although keep in mind this will vary by region due to licensing issues.
Deezer is probably Spotify’s best direct competitor. They are priced equally (depending on region) and now offer high-res streaming as default instead of a paid extra. They’ve been expanding with new features such as lyrics, collab playlists, song identification, and they recently improved their recommendation system. They also offer a discount if you buy subs yearly instead of monthly so you can save if you like the platform.
Apple Music is also an option now that Apple has put in some work to make the platform easier to use on non-Apple devices such as the recently added Windows app. It’s not as feature-rich as Deezer but if you don’t use those added features anyway then it is an option. I personally would phrase it as “has less bloat”. If you own any Apple devices already then it will have tighter integration with them.
Tidal is the old favourite of audiophiles and music appreciators. They have been expanding their platform with new features and music and, somewhat recently, have also lowered their prices. High-res streaming is now included in the base sub tier. All of these alternatives pay artists more than Spotify but Tidal has one of the best artist payouts.
Qobuz is similar to Tidal and is a premium platform with a focus on quality. They are a newer service and are still expanding their regions, so I don’t have personal experience with them as they only recently opened up to my country. Their price and feature set looks competitive, though, and their UI does look slick. They also have better artist payouts.
Amazon Music apparently has better payouts for artists but Amazon is a shit company so I’ve never looked into them further. I’ll include YouTube Music here as well which has shitty payouts and is a shitty company.
Just looked into these. It doesn’t look like any of these have official Linux apps :(
Apple Music has a web based player
Amazon Music
I invested heavily in the Amazon Music ecosystem, I bought hundreds of albums on there, and the platform is now very nearly unusuable. I cannot even listen to the songs that I paid for without also having to listen to ads. And the Android app now hides the downloads in some hidden folder so I can’t even download them and listen to them on another player. It makes me furious.
I’ve actually gone back to CDs, if you can believe it. It’s kind of nice sometimes, especially for full album plays, but I do miss a nice big playlist of my favorite songs from all artists.
I can believe it. I still have multiple libraries of physical media, and I pretty much never buy anything new that I can’t likewise physically own. I might rip and make MP3’s or transcode or emulate, or whatever, for convenience, but sometimes it’s just nice to be able to stick the disk or cartridge in the machine and have it just work without any of the associated modern ancillary bullshit.
Everything wants to be a service now. I just find that so irritating.
None of these have good app support compared to Spotify, sadly. Not supported by my car, nor my Linux desktop, or home speakers.
Oh and Deezer pays even less to artists than Spotify.
I switched from streaming back to my old ipod. Moding this old player was one of the best decisions in my career as music listner. The best thing about it is that my phone can run low on battery but i am still able to listen to chumbawamba.
Decentrelize your hardware!
weekly PSA that spotify is a dumb company who makes no money because they’re stupid.
To put it bluntly, between the artists, and the musicians, there is the publisher (the traditional music company) the money pretty much only goes to the publisher, because spotify doesn’t want to make money, nor do they want artists to make money. And the artists put their shit on spotify because people believe that spending 15 dollars a month on a service that doesnt pay artists, apparently pays artists.
Go support your local musical artists.
To add to this, buy their merch and physical copies of their albums. Also, go to shows! Lots of small bands would love a bigger crowd and can be seen for cheap or free.
exactly this, buy merch, buy albums, give them your money directly if you can. (artists, please just let me give you money, i like your shit, maybe i don’t want to buy shit tons of plastic ok?)
And the artists put their shit on spotify because people believe that spending 15 dollars a month on a service that doesnt pay artists, apparently pays artists.
It’s probably more a case of artists acknowledging the fact that streaming services are one of, if not the, primary sources of music discovery and consumption for many these days. Even if they won’t make money off it, by not being available on these platforms, they may as well not exist for most people. That’s something that only huge, already established names can pull without feeling it.
you know what else streams your music? The fucking internet, that shits free! Literally just posting your shit on a torrent will give you tons of traction to work with. Especially if you already have a pretty significant listener base. Plus you also get the benefit of people like me who are significantly more inclined to buy physical releases of media.
Regardless, streaming is a good way of getting people to hear your shit, if you really want to use a streaming service, don’t go through a publisher, or at the very least, a mainstream publisher. They tend to fuck you over.
Don’t use spotifly.
Give your money to SomaFM instead.
And Radio Free Fedi.
What is radio free fedi?
Radio Free Fedi or @RFF is a community internet radio station which plays music from artists on the fediverse. From their own website at https://radiofreefedi.net/ :
radio free fedi is consent, agency and artist celebrating community radio from the fediverse. We actively and openly present contributing artists’ information with the hopes that you will drop-in, discover, and then LEAVE? That’s right, RFF has no interest to be an end-point for hyper focused consumption. We also do not have the resource to provide infinite custom streams and we love the community to not do soulless algorithms. We want to foster organic discovery and discourse. We want to generate support for independent artists on the platforms and methods of their choice, no judgement. Support independent and fedi artists!
I’ve discovered loads of awesome and unique music on it :)
Dude that sounds rad! Thanks for mentioning them and explaining what they are, I’ll have to check that out!
It fuckin is rad! I love it so much! I mostly listen to the Comfy channel but I’ve found some wicked stuff on the main channel too. There’s usually a link so you can find them on the fedi or buy a track too. Maybe it’s because of the fediverse/freedom/generosity ethic and I’m in a biased bubble but everything on there is just so genuinely good, even if it’s not normally my taste. I’ve had a bunch of really sweet evenings listening to it and my gf always asks what the track is when I put it on. I kinda want to volunteer for the channel tbh. Check it out and feel free to DM me with what you think! I’m spending more time on Lemmy than Mastodon these days, so I’m not seeing people mention them via hashtags as much. RFF and Pixelfed are basically the best thing about the internet right now imo :)
Spotify could charge ten times their current price - indeed, should have been, for nearly the entire catalogue of western music? even at $100/mo it would have been a steal - and even so, they wouldn’t be paying artists significantly more, or even at a reasonable rate.
The model is the problem. The middleman is the problem. The service itself is the problem. It can never work in a way that pays artists fairly as long as it requires human oversight, administration and intervention, let alone all the wasteful shit like advertising and legal overhead/payola for politicians.
Get an AI to do it right, though… puffpuff, pass
thank you. the fact that we aren’t rioting to have more automated services that pass the cost benefit on to the people is something i’ll never understand. we have the tools to build utopia but they can;t figure out how to make enough money from it.
Capitalism!!! USA!! USA!! USA!! 🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲 You poor fucks don’t deserve music.
We don’t deserve music for other reasons too… like we don’t care what the lyrics are even about as long as it “sounds good.”
I mean, Spotify is a great service for the consumer. One reasonable monthly fee for most of the music in the world.
If a similar video streaming service existed for 40€/month, I’d pay for it in a heartbeat. Now I have a plethora of arr apps and a vpn, and Plex. But it’s a hassle sometimes.
We’re all aware of the issues it created for the artists, and I’d be willing to double the fee if that money directly went to the artists, but this is where the capitalist model fails, as that won’t maximize the profits for shareholders.
If we ever come up with a way to fix the underlying greed models that come with publicly traded companies, that would be great.
As it stands, it is what it is, but I’m glad we have this, instead of a “different Spotify per music publisher”.
I’m glad we have this, instead of a “different Spotify per music publisher”.
What would be wrong with a model where artists had their own website where they could distribute their music? That’s what Faircamp does. Then people could actually download it, rather than use a companies crappy client with DRM.
I was referring to the sharding that happened with video streaming services. It used to be Netflix had mostly everything, in the start, similar to Spotify. Now there are services per publisher that contain their own catalogues.
Fuck. That.
So you’d rather a monopoly?
No, dude… Spotify doesn’t have exclusive streaming rights to its music
They were talking about how each publisher was making their own streaming service as if the solution would be to have them all under one roof aka a monopoly.
I’d pay 40€ a month for an officially licensed private torrent tracker. If they gave discounts based on the amount seeded I doubt they would even need the stupidly expensive infrastructure.
I don’t even have the arr stack because it’s cheaper, just because it’s more convenient and no one can take it away from me
Maybe it’s because my schema for torrents is dichotomous with licensed uses, but I’m having trouble wrapping my head around this.
Is the distinction you’re making here between your proposed ‘licensed private tracker’ and something like a subscription-based catalogue (à la Audible) simply the way it’s distributed (in this case a centralized vs peer-to-peer)?
I like the idea of distributed media networks, but I really doubt any copyright owner would go for a distribution network that they don’t have any level of control over. The idea of an ‘officially licensed private torrent tracker’ seems incompatible with how that industry works.
I’d happily pay for an unlicensed private torrent tracker, though.
Totally agree, they’ll never go for that. I meant licensed as in that the media is being legally distributed. But they wouldn’t go for it as it would mean that customers might have an amount of ownership.
The distinction is that the private tracker is legal to run, as you’d be paying the licence holder for the ability to torrent using their private tracker.
I like the Audible idea of “you have X amount of GB a month that you can download, and you can pay more for more GB”. It gives the customer a reason to keep paying, and therefore allow the business to exist.
Licence is probably the wrong word as I’m not anywhere near an expert on this
Spotify is a great service for the consumer. One reasonable monthly fee for most of the music in the world.
Plus ads.
instead of a “different Spotify per music publisher”.
I was perfectly happy with Napster, before it got blown up.
As it stands, I’ve been leaning on SoundCloud and Bandcamp when I’m hunting for something indie and pirating or going vinyl for anything mainstream.
Spotify’s model is doomed to fail over time. Far better to own the media than stream it.
Not sure about the ads? If you mean when the app notifies you about live gigs etc. then yeah, that’s shittification. Luckily it doesn’t happen on my desk or car, but I wish it didn’t sometimes appear on my phone. That’s the one thing that might push me to add music to my video streaming arr stack.
Certain content (podcasts, most notably) insert ads into the feed above and beyond what Spotify Premium ostensibly removes. There’s also Spotify’s persistent need to blow up your phone with notifications and bloat your in-app screen, but at least some of that you can silence manually.
My wife has Spotify and she’s noticed the increased pressure to be always-online, as well. We were on a flight, and she’s got her take-off chill music, when she discovered putting the phone in airplane mood before starting up the app caused a bunch of bugs in her selection screen. Which - in the middle of a take-off that she did not enjoy - fucking sucked.
The service is definitely getting worse over time. And when you can keep an enormous library of music locally, the service becomes harder and harder to justify imho.
I’m perfectly happen to send $30/mo to Patreon for a few of my favorite artists. $12/mo for Spotify just feels like money down a well.
