Spotify
Update Jun 3rd 2024:
Since I'm on record of believing Spotify devalues music and does not pay artists fairly, I'm now drawn back to update this post once again. The shrewd evil billionaire that has created the platform that killed the independent musician's revenue source is now on record believing that this art is just mere content that was free (at least very inexpensive) to make. Here's the article link
Here's an update from Jan 2022:
“an innovative, ‘artist-centric’ model that values all subscribers and rewards the music they love”
Yep the spin is evil and they are out to kill anyone not signed to a label. Read the whole article here.
Thank you Carol and Karen for bringing it to my attention. I do think it would take a general organized strike of Independent Musicians removing their music to get them to budge because the labels are only adding money into their pockets in this move.
I found this person very to the point on calculating the math and sharing some good recommendations including having the government step in an force them to pay fairly. What he didn't address is how 999 streams is roughly 60 HOURS of listening that they aren't going to pay anything for in 2024. Just think about the old days of iTunes wrecking the industry; if 1/3 of those streams were new listeners asked to pay $.99 each it would have provided $300 to the artist. Spotify continues it's march to devalue music.
Ok what follows is my original Gospel according to Dave:
Right it didn't take long before people started asking if I was going to publish these playlists on Spotify. ABSOLUTELY not. While Spotify likes to say they want to help the million artist on their site, they are losing money, and not paying people a living wage for the music being streamed on their site. Meanwhile they dumped huge amounts of cash to podcasters. I will link a great NPR article that mentions $100 million to Joe Rogen, but also on their platform is a podcast from Bruce Springsteen and President Obama and I bet they are getting paid.
The NPR Article.
POINT of Reference that chart was Jan 2021, here's where it's at 2022. Not only are they devaluing music so you think a cheap subscription of $120 a year is adequate, they can't even develop a trust that they'll make money.
I shared my Lucky Dog statement with the following post. Truly minor for me but do the math and people are getting robbed. To me as an accountant who worked for a company with 1,000 of licensing contracts it's simple; a MINIMUM Guarantee first for XX spins and then their paltry royalty %, but back to the first paragraph they are losing money so they would have to take it away from the labels or someone they paying too much for. So much I've decided to run the numbers and add them to this blog later.
You know what? I am thrilled someone has listened to our Bones cd on either Amazon streaming or Spotify. I am embarrassed for people trying to make money on this platform. 4,288 spins might equate to (being generous) 84 people buying a song or two and listening to them 50 times.. that should net us $80 at $.99 a song at the going download price. We accrued $.92. Big whoop. Artist will have a difficult time disconnecting because it's a marketing issue to them, but you should stop paying for the service and hit them where it hurts until the stop the terrible distribution of royalties. It needs to pay from the bottom up. A minimum guarantee, and then what's left gets dished up to the big labels.
Bandcamp isn't perfect but they are making money! I do believe they should have a playlist feature of the songs you own; but it's the best platform out there and with the Free Bandcamp Fridays in 2020 and 2021, they show they care. Meanwhile, Spotify wants all your favorite radio stations to go out of business, sounds evil doesn't it? Plus the Spotify owner thinks artists secretly do like not getting paid, add delusional to their profile.
Let us start a revolution, one Spotify account at a time. Stop paying for the subscription for it; it's not going to your independent musician anyway. With all the news lately, there was even an article from Mashable to help you understand how to cancel your subscription.
I know many will say, "Now that I'm hooked on how simple and cheap Spotify, Apple Music, or Amazon streaming is, what's my alternative?" Go back and check I bet you OWN CD's, start building a library, all phones have mp3 music players. Take a month or so, don't go cold turkey; but stop paying. Your guilt about paying was lining the wrong people's pockets. I always told my son at college, don't steal music. I can afford to buy you anything that you want to listen too. We actually shared an iTunes account, and boy do I have a lot of metal music I'd never listen too, but at least they got something from him and I for their efforts.
I also will never fault a hard working independent musician using Spotify or listening to it. They are in the business and need to understand what is out there; besides they aren't making money on Spotify; they should be given their premium membership for free.
Since the Neil Young story came out, more people are talking about Spotify, so I'll keep adding to this post with new conversations and counter points to the benefits of the platform.
I ran into a music teacher who claimed that it's a great platform to bring up a song to practice with a student and what's an alternative. My comment would be that if you are getting paid for teaching "BUYING the song" is both tax deductible and a great model to the student that it's the right way to pay an artist for their studio time. My other ideas was Bandcamp allows usually three streams of a song before you need to pay for it, and there is always YouTube.
The other thing I hear is that it has become the radio of choice and musicians never felt they ever got paid from the radio. First calling it a radio when you choose the music you listen too is NOT a fair comparison, it's your music decision and not Spotify unless you have it on random play. If you do use more random, then the comparison is true. Second, the musicians don't get paid? BMI and ASCAP aggressively charge for rights to play music on radio stations, and the running joke is that Bruce Springsteen and few other large performers are about the only ones who ever get a check for it. The sad thing about that is that Spotify (like a WalMart's retail strategy of pushing out all the small shop competition) wants you to stop listening to those radio stations. The internet radio station that I had shows on went out of business because the revenues and the listeners couldn't justify the royalty payments to ASCAP & BMI. Spotify is killing choice, and those radio stations are your local friends.
As I retire, I did move my 401k Portfolio to a friend who works for Hanson & Associates with Amerprise; I made a point to tell them that I really want stocks that I use, and asked to have my Coke stocks moved to Disney instead; heck at least I subscribe to them and they own ESPN and I don't drink Coke products. I did make it very clear I never want to see that I'm backing Spotify. Looks like their battle to make a profit is not sitting well with the market either. I hope the attention brought by Neil Young and Joni Mitchell helps their slide. They need to wake up and start getting better press by PAYING the musicians they've built their company on. American Songwriter is reporting their value is plunging.
I do appreciate that artists are posting the streaming wages in other formats but let's be honest, none of these are as good as getting paid $1.00 a song for every song a person wants to listen to more than say 3 times. Even at the best rate I would have to listen to a song over 1.8 hours before the artist got a lousy dollar. I'm embarrassed to even tip that little when I see them live in concert.
Ok here is now my proposal I wrote up, though it is before a brilliant article that will follow this presentation. Thanks Neil Young for giving me a push to put together the numbers. I would recommend the first 41,600 Streams to be paid at $.10 and anything above that at a 1/3 of what they pay today or $.0011. I'll eventually explain it clearer, but I use an artist I know who posted their Spotify annual report. While they didn't say, I would have paid them $552; my version would pay them $4,308. A much more favorable structure to allow musicians to keep creating and adding more content to their platform. Truly I do believe this is time you creators and subscribers with a passion for the independent musicians rise up and make this viral. They do not have to go out of business, they just need a fair model. You don't have to unionize, you need to understand they need you as creators (and this model would actually allow more incentive for creation) and subscribers. Get subscribers to demand fairness.
Note the red type was areas where I had to make estimates, but I believe I truly did not go way over, nor would it effect outcome much. The simplicity of $.10 a song for 41,600 streams (40 hours a week at a 3 minute song) is something they could program in their sleep. Originally I was intent on per song, but you know if the song is awesome, the fans buy the same song in 000's so it's fair to do in total. I'm here for the numbers debate, but not go sell a streaming service on a LP Dual Rate (Living Progressive - Long Play - Living Pledge) and I'll truly subscribe. Make #LPDualRate get noticed and implemented in one of the streaming services.
If you are a content supplier to Spotify, find yourself on the chart.
Ok that was my proposal, and then I read this very complete review of The Economics of Spotify by Mark Dent on The Hustle. While I used 80% it appears they contractually give back 67% and of course the uproar about that favoring the Labels and the top TWP % is incredible. There are 8 Million Creators providing music to the company, more of you need to take your music down until it's fair. It will be tough to get a change with the Major labels owning so much of Spotify. Recently Ek is now saying they will spend $100 million to help the marginalize. You know if you are making only $1,000 on Spotify you are already marginalized, my proposal would raise that to $4,000+. Meanwhile his contribution sounds generous, it would mean $500 per person for that class, and if he intended to go to the 98%, well let's just say that would be under $20 per user, you might as well give them a premium service for free.
I can't leave this great article without talking about these AWESOME Playlist that they feature your music and you get all giddy. "If you listen to Spotify’s music recommendations, there’s a good chance you’ve come across songs by Sadie Dupuis. As Dupuis told The Hustle, she’s been on the cover of 4 Spotify-curated playlists at the same time. But while the coveted spots on the playlists may have led to greater exposure, they did not lead to greater riches. She recalls making more money from lesser-known music sites like Bandcamp in a month than she does from Spotify in a year. "
Exactly what I've been saying.
Now back to some topical articles:
Here's a new one released Sep 27, 2022... thank you Carol for pointing me in the direction:
One of the many things I read into this article is that the people who have unplugged are listening and valuing the music again. Beautiful.
Back to other articles I had in the pre-update:
I love this Sarah Ann Harris, she's me all over. Playlists to document your life, but you know at $9.99 a month, it's not your music. You are renting a Cadillac at the price for a Prius. I would love you to have taken all that money you spent and bought your own library, you could enjoy it like I can until you retire. I'm not hoping that all your favorite artists leave Spotify, but enough to make you re-think the idea of making playlists of your life with songs you OWN. And for those of you leaving Spotify, I found this article on Exporting your Playlists.
Now with Sarah's excellent article, I decided to contribute to the Guardian. Reading it today I found another great recap. Here's my favorite paragraph, but please read it all at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/30/podcasts-meant-to-revive-spotify-joe-rogan-culture-wars-frontline
The Young-Rogan contretemps is a PR headache of a different order, one that exposes the tensions inherent in Spotify’s aggressive move into podcasting and decision to make music a subset of audio. Now artists and subscribers are effectively funding politically inflammatory content in the middle of a global health crisis. The rappers mentioned by Ek haven’t embraced Covid misinformation and would not reach 11 million listeners if they did. For a company proud of its progressive record, doubling down on Rogan on the pretext of a sudden dedication to free speech appears disingenuous, cynical and greedy.
Now don't worry, Joe has apologized like Holly describes, "like your worst ex-boyfriend." Ha. I loved a person a company prides themselves in music streaming paid someone a $100 million and they think Joni Mitchell sang "Chuckie in Love"
Because I don't stream, (and likely won't start) many conversations of why to move to another platform goes right by and I don't read it. This article I thought had some real compelling reasons to use Apple Music and why he deleted his Spotify app. https://www.tomsguide.com/opinion/im-ditching-spotify-for-apple-music-and-its-not-because-of-joe-rogan
Plus if you are wondering why more artists aren't joining Neil, this is a sad tale of who owns your favorite artists songs including David Crosby and Bob Dylan.
I have honored the right for people who are not leaving because of free speech, but then I also saw India.Arie. She's taking my language about fairness for all musicians and Black people specifically and I'm impressed less with what Joe Rogan has said outside of vaccinations.
Chris Milam wrote an excellent wrap up of why he's leaving Spotify. Such a sad state of affairs that artist pay to get more streams on Spotify only to get gigs. Thank you American Songwriter for sharing this. I'm going to find out why he's not on Bandcamp, I want to contribute to his survival.
Drop a comment, send a link and I'll keep updating this post.
#NotOnSpotify #LPDualRate
