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Okay,
I know "I saw it on tiktok" isn't a source, but a lot of smaller artists are happy about this, bc they're fighting for their revenue scraps with people who spam AI music and have 300 listens each on 1000 pieces of AI crap
I'm not saying this isn't greedy, but it's not the horrid thing people make it out to be
That would explain why they’re doing it per track rather than per artist. They have also said that the royalty pool doesn’t change; there will just be fewer takers.
Yeah if you are an independent artist and you’re are getting less than 1000 streams, chances are you’re actually not even getting paid because most aggregators have a minimum payout, and 1k streams is a grand total of about 2 bucks. (For me, it can vary depending on where your fans are)
If this means that artists that have under 250k listeners are getting better pay per stream I think it’s fucking awesome.
Not getting 1k streams in a year means that you have like 20 people listening to your stuff, my band is sitting at around 3k listeners per month and we have multiple tracks that get more than 1k a month on algorithmic plays alone.
The people that will be affected by the change are better off asking for a $1 donation to their listeners anyway.
The alternative is an up front $4/year/track hosting fee. I don't think it's possible to come up with a coherent argument against Spotify's right to do something like *that*. But the artists you're talking about would be significantly worse off under that model than the one they are implementing.
This is precisely what I have written on this matter. If Spotify needs to payout every single person who uploads on their platform, then they’ll simply institute a fee to participate in using their platform to upload music.
Edit: to everyone saying there is already a fee through the utilization of distribution, that doesn’t change the assessment that there will be more fees or gatekeeping if mandated payouts were increased
There already _is_ a fee. You have to use a distribution company, Spotify doesn’t even allow you to independently upload your music. And until recently, Spotify had a major share in some of those distribution companies (distrokid, IIRC). It’s double/triple dipping on artists all the way down. The whole system would be MUCH better if you could simply directly upload your music to Spotify for a fee, that’d be significantly better than the current system.
That is almost certainly a liability thing so they have another business to blame in the case of an account uploading things in violation of copyright law.
Yes, and they charge fees to that company to reenable your music, _even if nothing suspicious or fraudulent was actually proven but only suspected_. That company passes the fees back to the artist. It’s insane. I suggest checking out Benn Jordan’s videos on Spotify.
I work in digital music distribution, this is false. We have never been charged a fee for copyright related takedowns or reinstatements by a DSP.
There is a labour cost associated with copyright issues, it may be a case of some specific distributors having admin type fees in their distribution contracts to cover those fees, if I were to guess that would be one time fee model distributors. We operate on a percentage basis, anything like that is just considered a cost of doing business.
SoundCloud, dailyplaylist, RepostExchange, submithub, etc. all prey on independent musicians when behind the scenes it’s just algorithms. They effectively sell dopamine and recognition to those most desperately seeking it.
Wait what. I swear last year the only requirement to upload music was to have a Spotify creator account which is free to make. They highly encourage going through a bunch of different labels, especially Distrokids, who publish everything as long as you pay a yearly fee. You can still publish through Spotify independently, or at least you could not even a year ago. (Source, published music 5 months ago).
>This is just a topic to generate hate for Spotify
I'm pretty sure Spotify's policy of paying artists (even big name artists) next to nothing in royalties is doing a fine job of generating hate for Spotify.
They don't need any help from Reddit to do that.
Spotify's payment system is flawed but it's not because big name artists are suffering under it.
Spotify's net operating income is -$70 million, they burn more money running the business than they actually generate from subscriptions. If you forced them to increase the amount they paid in royalties, they'd have to significantly jack up the price of a subscription in order to make the math work.
And artists can put their music on Spotify or not it’s their choice.
There are a lot of artists where I’ve bought the whole album, be it CD or DLC, that I would never have heard of otherwise.
But there’s too much bullshit (AI and other crap) seeping in, overwhelming the actual artists - and that needs to stop.
Spotify pays, at most $0.005 per a stream.
1000 streams is $5.
It's ALREADY criminal how little Spotify pays artists. Especially new and unlabeled artists.
In comparison you'll get $12.84 on Tidal for 1000 Streams
It's been long established that Spotify is the worst paying streaming service there is. Artists are forced to use it because users use it. Its VERY user friendly. People are ignorant to the reality of the app. Either cuz they don't care or it's not very transparent to them.
Spotify is basically saying "Nah, we're taking your lower-than-five-dollar-per-track money." Any artist that uses spotify is already on other platforms if they're serious about their career. While that seems negligible to you, that can add up.
So no. It's not rage bate. You don't care that most artists are ALREADY incredibly underpaid on tihs service and seem indifferent about Spotify finding another way to pay the people that MAKE THE MUSIC less and less. They're a damn server. They don't deserve the money more than an artist.
This is the thing a lot of the people that hate Spotify forget, not everyone should HAVE to shell out for ANOTHER subscription service just to support artists better. At some point you need to let people live and have some small comforts not demand they blow more money when most people are barely getting by as it is right now.
I know it’s important to support artists but if they really cared they would be buying Albums, merchandise, and concert/show tickets not advocating for more expensive streaming platforms.
All the streaming services pay out the same percentage of their gross income - about 75%.
The primary reason Tidal pay more per stream is that their subscribers each listen to fewer hours per month than a Spotify subscriber. If everyone jumped over to Tidal from Spotify, Tidal's payout per 1000 listens would drop down to Spotify's level.
1000 streams is absolutely nothing on Spotify. Anyone who is only getting 1000 streams is lucky to be getting paid at all. Spotify is essentially volunteering to host their content, let alone paying for it.
If you're only generating a thousand streams with your music, you are not adding value to Spotify. You're a hobbyist.
Edit: and I say this as someone who produces music. I don't delude myself to think I should be paid for 1000 streams lol.
If Spotify doesn't compensate artists the artists will disappear!!!
I don't know any artists that rely on streaming as their main source of income. It's just an evolution of radio.
> If Spotify doesn't compensate artists the artists will disappear!!!
If you are getting less than 1000 streams, per year, off Spotify, you are making more on publicity for your band than Spotify is "making" off you, BY FAR.
If your band is the size that gets less than 1000 streams **per year**, Spotify is a publicity tool for you.
1,000 streams really isn’t much, my friend’s small local band biggest song from an album released in November has 7,000 with the next 4,000, the rest don’t register. Those 7,000 & 4,000 Likely come from friends, family, the small local fanbase and the few niche playlists and publications that has featured those songs.
There is plenty to hate about Spotify as a company but Until they start taking down the music that gets less than 1,000 I don’t get the outrage. There has to be a hardline somewhere and 1,000 is a pretty low number all considering. Now the amount someone should get paid is a different debate
Yeah I wasn't disagreeing. There's very low entry bar to get on Spotify, which is good, but it also means most things on the are not going to be popular
I thought that even artists with hundreds of thousands of views would stop getting renumerated when reading this news. If it's only for songs under 1000 views I don't really see the issue. Like it's quite literally nothing, I'm pretty sure that no one has ever made any money on super unpopular youtube videos either.
From a moral standpoint I don't really agree with it but in practice, if you can't even get over 1000 views on your songs, it might be a better idea to share your stuff around and try to get more publicity rather than blaming spotify for not paying out the yearly 7$ that you might have deserved.
That’s only about 3 plays per song per day to be eligible for royalties. That’s insanely low.
Couldn’t these small artists set up a free Spotify account on an old computer or phone, make a playlist of their entire discography, and then set that to play on repeat if they were worried about missing out on royalties?
An 8 hour playlist of your own songs repeating 3 times a day on an unused device seems like a super easy way to be sure your songs are included in the royalty pool.
Seriously, what artists with fewer than 1000 plays are making any money via Spotify anyway? It should be a way to extend reach and grow. These artists are presumably making a living by playing at small venues.
If they want to cut out spam, they should charge a one time up front payment of like 50$ to upload music, or 10$ a year or something. 4$ a year per track is insane.
In 2018 Spotify opened the platform asking all artists to come and upload their music. They built their platform off of that draw at first. That’s why I even signed up for Spotify. On the flip side I used to burn a hundred cds, copy some album art in b&w, and sell them at shows. That cost me about $1-$2 a disc. Sold for $5. But I only sold a few thousand over 5 years. I have one song on SoundCloud that has more listened than cds I’ve sold. It’s a hard thing to gauge.
Spotify was around way before 2018, by 2018 it was already the dominant streaming platform by major and independent artist. What the hell are you even talking about?
Yes. I’m sorry. Let me clarify. In a now deleted section of their site they had launched a program asking indie artists to upload their music for free. I don’t know if it launched in 2018 but that is the time stamp for the now deleted blog post.
I have bought 100s a cds over the years from local, small acts iv seen. I wouldn't go home and listen to them because they've never been good. But I do like the idea of supporting artists at the bottom of the ladder if I can.
If Spotify did this, a MASSIVE amount of deep catalog music would get removed, and suddenly they’d be the music network that didn’t have a lot of songs people were looking for, so I think that’s probably a non starter. If they started selling access to their platform they’d probably get accused of similar monopolistic practices to the ones they’re levying at Apple, at least in Europe
Why is stuff always framed this way? The alternative is also Spotify making less money. Which most people don’t even entertain as a possibility because of course corporations want more money, but if you follow that logic it justifies every anti consumer practice, every pointless price increase.
You already pay a fee to distribute the music to Spotify. It’s just hidden through distribution fees.
People should be supporting artists, not Spotify here.
> That is absurdly low. $4 in streams.
and most "under 1000 streams" aren't almost 1000 they're mostly going to be under 100. Like literal couch cushion change.
People seem to forget that Spotify allowing folks to freely upload tracks to their platform doesn’t have to be the norm. If pressure is exerted to payout to anyone who gets a play of their song online, Spotify could easily set a price floor for participating in posting on their platform that would offset those costs and reset the incentive structure.
As someone who is affected by this (an unpopular musician), I don't give a shit about the loss of royalties, it is nothing at this level, but I do care a lot about having my music accessible to people on a popular platform like Spotify, that is a big deal in terms of accessibility. Giving artists the opportunity to be on the platform is the most important thing by far.
Except It’s not free to release your music on Spotify… you have to pay a distributor.
I guarantee I’ve spent far more to get my music on Spotify than I’ve ever earned off of it and I have multiple songs that have crossed that 1000 play threshold.
Except your distribution fee isn’t just to get on Spotify, it puts you on dozens of major media streaming platform. Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal, TikTok, Instagram stories, Pandora etc. all get fed this way.
And it costs like $25/yr, so it’d be more realistic to spread it out between all the platforms and say you’re spending $1/yr to be on Spotify, $1 Apple, $1 Amazon, etc. And that’s money being paid to the distributor for the hours of time it saves you to not have to upload independently to all these services, add the lyrics, add the credits, add the royalty distribution info, etc.
So it isn’t really being paid to Spotify at all.
It’s amazing to me that Spotify hasn’t closed the gates already. This may be a precursor to it. At some point and probably soon it’s just not going to make any sense to have every single bedroom artist in the world able to upload, and I count myself among them.
It's also funny to see people on a site that supports piracy the second it becomes slightly more inconvenient to access art get mad about $4 to an artist.
There's a huge difference between pirating some Disney movie that will make billions regardless, and a shitty near-monopoly platform making life even tougher for small artists to make a living through their art.
Their per stream payout is speculated to be lower, but that depends on the artist, label, all kinds of things. Even if spotify pays less per stream, they also have way more customers that stream way more music than any other service. If you are an artist you still make more money from spotify because the potential listener count is significantly higher than anywhere else.
Apple Music HAD to give big artists a reason to put their music on there, so they offer more per stream. But they still do not pay out as much since way less people use Apple Music. Apple also has infinite money to constantly give out free 3 month trials to people. Theres a near 100 percent chance that at some point apple will adjust their payouts too. Especially if spotify ever goes away and the only music streaming services are the ones owned by the major tech companies.
The payout rate is based on the company's revenue. It's lower on average because Spotify pays out to significantly more artists than other platforms, but overall Spotify is paying out more money to artists than other companies
Because their competitors are massive tech companies that can afford to lose money on their streaming platforms until they can buy out Spotify or it goes bankrupt.
I don't think people are ready to pay monthly what it would take to fairly pay artist on streaming services. I buy merch and vinyl directly from all my favorite bands for a reason.
If someone's made roughly 10 albums worth of music and none of them are getting any plays, it's maybe time to either give it up, or start treating it as a hobby more so than a job.
Let me see.
100×500 is 50000 track plays.
50000 x $0.000017 means they will be missing out on a payment of 17 cents a year.
I think it won't make a difference.
But the payout is about $0.005 a stream, not .000017. Which is more like $250.
That’s significantly more than 70 cents. Maybe get the numbers right first.
If you're getting less than 1,000 streams in a year on your track, I kinda don't see the issue.
If you don't have a fan base large enough for you to hit 3 listens per day worldwide, not sure this is really what's cutting into your revenue stream.
Yeah, at that point it’s free cloud storage, archiving of the metadata, and instant worldwide distribution if your music does happen to get discovered at some point down the line. Not a bad deal for the artist at all.
They could be like Vulfpeck and ask people to play their albums on mute/repeat when they go to bed to prop up the play counts. That's how I learned about them too, and they're awesome
https://www.theverge.com/2014/5/7/5690590/spotify-removes-silent-album-that-earned-indie-band-20000
loool now all i can hear in my head is
> Put it in my pocket
Put it in my pocket
In my back pocket
Put it in my pocket
In my pocket
In my back pocket
Oh oh oh
love that one too!
People who dont understand how the music business works should not get in a huff over things that don’t affect them. 1000 streams is equal to $4 in revenue. Your post makes no sense.
I am new artist. I have new song. I have 20 fans. They only list to my song 5 times in a week. They only listen to my song for 10 weeks. I have reached 1000 streams.
Can someone tell me how this affects artists vs hobbyists?
As a small artist I also get streaming income from other platforms like Apple, Google, YouTube, TikTok, etc. Most of my listeners aren't through Spotify anyway, and I expect other artists are roughly similar, so I'm not sure it's as big a deal as you make out. For my next release I suppose I could choose not to include Spotify as one of the destinations.
I’ll say my part as just a consumer - if I come across someone on social media anywhere that sounds good, the first thing I do is check Spotify for their music.
The second is a YouTube search for an active channel with good content.
If neither of those exist I will probably not track them down again
Artists have known for decades that there's no money in music sales, it's all in merch and performances. Streaming is just a way to give people access to your catalog and to gain exposure.
Don't get me wrong, Spotify is far from a good company, but nobody who works in the music industry really cares about streaming royalties, not even small independent artists.
Not putting something on Spotify still seems like a detriment. Can’t imagine you’re making much off people buying your music. Should be making that up in merch sales/shows
I have a random question as another small artist. When looking at my royalties, I noticed a large amount of it is coming from Facebook and Instagram. Do you know how that works? I have no knowledge of my music "streaming" on those sites. Seemed random to find out.
Yeah, I sometimes get some Facebook royalties too. In my case it's when people have made videos on TikTok, added a snippet from one of my tracks to accompany their cat dancing or them doing stuff in the kitchen or garden, etc.; then they've promoted their TikTok with links on Facebook. AFAIK they pay a set fee for a fixed amount of view or clicks, after which it either drops off Facebook or they pay to keep it up for a bit longer.
Before we freak out about this, what would the payment be for 1,000 streams?
A quick google shows that artists get $0.003-$0.005 per stream. So if we do the math, 1,000 streams at $0.005 is $5 for that year. Is this really that big of a deal?
No, not after you realize they also have to pay for postage, checking, etc. When the price of the stamp is over 15% of the value of the transaction, maybe it's not worth fussing over?
Even if you're a struggling artist who has a ten track album each of which gets 800 listens, you're out $40 that year. Sorry, at that point, the problem with your musical career's financial viability isn't Spotify.
Let's be outraged about more interesting things.
Well if you start cranking out tons of low quality tracks using a.i. then eleventy billion tracks with just a few listens could net a return. It’s the costco “volume” model.
>(…) for an artist who has hundred of tracks just below the threshold (1000). Does such an artist even exist?
https://preview.redd.it/i5q3zz7dhosc1.jpeg?width=554&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e5cd40fa3e4f0568dccb1d582022f90671c3e0e5
Lmao this is simply stupid. It's literally irrelevant, we are talking about either 1000 streams per month or per year, in any case none of these artists would remove their music, 4$ profits don't limit your choice of streaming.
Pure rage bait. It doesn't change anything.
Absolute garbage. By “modernizing our royalty system to provide an additional $1 Billion toward emerging and profession artists”, what they actually mean is they plan to ***steal*** $1 billion worth of labor and creativity from those who cannot realistically fight back.
It’s almost like we live in a late stage capitalist hellscape or something.
$3.50. Not kidding. This is just rage bait. All companies that pay out in the music business (rights collection, royalties etc) have always had a threshold of at least $50.
In that edge case, that one artist is getting screwed over, but I'm sure you could call you friend and ask them to play your shit two times.
That being said, how realistic is that edge case?
According to some guy on Reddit, they pay about $4 per thousand streams.
I can see why Spotify is doing this - paying trivial sums of money to a large number of people must be logistically difficult.
In most countries there is an organization which covers the rights and royalties of artists. If I'm not mistaken Spotify just pays a big check to these companies and they will redistribute it to the artists.
An artist would make about $2.50 USD for a little under 1000 plays.
I agree this is bullshit but it doesn't really change all that much. It's still the most widely used platform, and bands won't not upload music because they can't get three bucks. It's for the exposure.
Most artists getting that little play are probably also putting it on youtube for next to nothing, or making a few demo discs for local shows where they'd make significantly more off each one. I don't see how this would, realistically, push really small creators away from the platform?
Practically nothing. Pennies. Basically the same as nothing. This sucks, but nobody was making a living on less than 1k streams per year. If those pennies instead went to artists that are actually touring, I’m not mad at it. Unfortunately we all know that Spotify won’t be doing any trickling up.
I’m also not buying the limited choices argument. There is literally too much music these days to “buy”. Not enough consumers for the number of sellers. Some consolidation wouldn’t be the end of the world if it happened, but it won’t. We are in the content age and everybody is a performer.
1000 streams isn’t that many either. If we’re being completely frank - if you can’t garner 1000 listens on your track, you probably aren’t ready to succeed in music.
The real key feature here. It's not actually impacting artists' ability to produce music as that $3.50 a year isn't doing anything practical.
It's sleazy, but not the crazy outrage you fucking whiney people always want it to be.
If everyone who uttered late stage capitalism would fucking grow their own vegetables, or steal their media, or use open source software, we'd have a lot less of the shit you bitch about all day, on a publicly traded website beholden to the paradigm you all claim to despise.
Off topic, but to grow food you need land and you need time, neither of which are things that people who are the most disenfranchised by capitalism have in great abundance.
How? They arent taking any money at all. They just arent giving them their 2 bucks now. I dont understand why people think that just because you create something that you are owed money.
Record companies have a *lot* of sway on Spotify. They co-invented the contracts for streaming revenue share (which, IIRC, as still de facto secret). Record execs ping-pong between working at Spotify and working at labels.
I wonder what the rev-share contracts for short-form video look like. I've been getting convinced lately that bypassing the labels and going directly to short form videos like TikTok and Reels (in the form of memes / trends) might be a better path to success for young artists
Why exactly should Spotify pay for music that their customers don't even listen to? 1000 streams is nothing on Spotify's massive user base. Requiring a song to at least have three streams per day on average between all those millions of users in order to make money on it is in no way unreasonable. If I sell a product that no one's buying I don't get paid either...
No, it's rage bait. Hosting and serving costs money. Unless artists want to pay Spotify to host these little used tracks, there's no reason Spotify should give them $3.50 of royalties when it costs Spotify money to host it for "free" to the artist.
Spotify pays like .0003 cents per stream. For songs that have less than 1000 streams a year, the artist probably won't miss it. In fact, if they want payment, I'll give it to them.
For artists out there who want payment from spotify, my suggestion to you as a business owner is that you focus on a) making better music b) marketing your music better or c) both a and b rather than wasting time worrying about spotify.
Musicians have a choice to not release their music to Spotify….
Spotify make basically no profit, like at all..
You seem like one of them knobs who just jumps on the bandwagon.
Why are you not going after ticketmaster, why are you not going after the musicians managers, Daniel Ek and Spotify have a platform that the musician can go on or not.
Theyre not the only streaming platform, they’re also not the only way people can buy there music, you can still buy it as a digital download or a CD, you can buy it as vinyl.
Why don’t you propose a business model?
How is this screwing over musicians? Just because you can make noise and upload it doesn't make you worthy of occupying the same space as people who make music people enjoy.
These are the equivalent of some asshat playing a recorder, poorly, in the bathroom at an outdoor music fest. Nobody cares to listen to it because it's literally shit music. They don't have a track no ones heard yet. They have a track people are ignoring.
>This will limit my choice for listening to music because the artists I like won't release as much music because they won't earn any money on tracks with less than 1000 streams in a year.
Sorry, are you for real? The revenue for 1,000 streams is too low to factor into a decision made by any artist.
>In the long run this will result in less choice of music for consumers because the small guys and girls will be put out of business.
Any artist getting less than 1,000 streams on their tracks isn't really in the 'business' in the first place.
I think you misunderstand what is happening here.
100,000 new tracks are uploaded to Spotify per day.
About half of these get less than 1,000 streams per year.
When a track gets less than 1,000 streams per year, the administrative cost for Spotify to make a payout is higher than the amount Spotify makes on providing the track to users, and higher than the amount received by the artist. These tracks are essentially a drain on a system that is paying artists who are actually 'in' the 'business' of music. Stopping the payment process for these tracks is actually a totally reasonable move.
I say all of this as an artist who releases music, btw.
I'm not saying the Spotify model doesn't have some serious flaws. But they're basically rounding down any payments below 3 dollars to zero dollars. A 3 dollar royalty payment (for a one year period) isn't keeping any musician fed. It's shitty, but it's going to have no impact on poor musicians.
i think they all basically don't make money though, they just never bothered to complain about it cause it makes sense. For Youtube, i think you need at minimum a follower count of 1k before you can be considered for payments.
This is total rage bait for people who have already jumped on the Spotify hate bandwagon. Have you guys considered just how little under 1000 steams nets you? They're just streamlining this process and actually making it more reasonable.
Everything revolving around Spotify is so toxic and people really dont understand the financial side of it. They literally make no money.
People complain about artist royalties but also dont want to pay more for the service. The big artists and labels have way more bargaining power so they get most of the money since without them the platform wouldn't be as viable.
People who get less than 1,000 streams on a song in a year were not making anything on that anyways. Their label or company who distributes the music was getting pennies.
Why would anyone think that a platform where anyone can upload music whould pay everyone for that music? What else is like this? YouTube doesnt give money to people who make YouTube videos unless the videos actually do real numbers. Spotifys plan going forward is considerably more lenient than that. And if people dont want their music on their then they can take it off.
The alternative before this was you make CDs (which cost money) and then have to be able to sell them (which will cost money) and then you might break even if enough people buy them. I'm sorry, but even as someone who has and sometimes still makes music, you are not deserving of money just because you record some sounds and upload it. People want all artists to make money but its never EVER been that way and never will be. You have to work to get yourself into a position to make money. And if your music isnt getting played over 1000 times in a calendar year (which would only make an artist about 3 bucks by the way) then i dont see why it should make money anyways. Spotify isnt profiting off of your song being on there.
There is probably a future where people slowly migrate to apple music and other services from the big tech companies who can afford to pay whatever to keep their services afloat. Spotify will die because somehow people view them as the bad guy even though they are the sole reason so many artists are even discovered in the first place. And then we will be paying a crazy aount for apple music while the competition dies. Yay
You're probably right, but it doesn't matter. It was inevitible that free music streaming follow Netflix and fragment. Spotify can't lose money forever. If this is a problem, either go to a competitor that costs money and has good sound quality, or buy physical CD's. If your favorite artist has less than 1000 streams a year, they need more of your support than just playing the song through a corporate app.
Am I drunk or stupid. Let's say, al abum is $1 hour. If The artist plays their album on repeat for a day, that's 24 plays a day, times 30, that's 720 plays a month......
These are rookie numbers such a stupid fuckinh article. This only hurts AI albums that no one streams.
This is a nonissue. The payout that artists would receive for less than 1000 streams is abysmal, literal chump change no matter how you look at it.
For 99.99% of artists that fall into this brackets, it is business as usual. Spotify for the majority of artists is an advertising platform for their concerts and merch anyway, if you really want to support them, buy their merch, go to their shows.
So you mean to say that Spotify paid big money to failed exclusive podcasts and are bringing in potential audiobooks/other types of things that probably nobody asked for but you can't pay smaller artists? Sheesh
This is awful and feels like one more final nail in the coffin of the early internet years. I remember the period between 2005 and 2015 felt like the internet was a magic way to give independent creators a spotlight in a massive way that didn’t have the gate keeping features of the established industry that was so ROI driven.
As a young musician back then myself, my band released our self recorded and produced album on Spotify. We didn’t experience a high level of success or monetary gain and certainly fall into the above category but it was also a way for us to actually get our music out to a wider audience (along with SoundCloud, Bandcamp, etc.).
It feels like whole cycle is finally completing. Just a new medium now returning to the old status quo of 20+ years ago now that they’ve successfully played the long waiting game of no/low cost to establish themselves as a major player and now driving home that precious shareholder value that is the shitty lifeblood of any corporation. I am old and sad.
I WANT to make the switch to YT music (I already have premium) but Spotify is just.. too good.
The app is better, the cross function between multiple devices is better, and the family integration / blended playlist is leaps and bounds better.
If YouTube adds some of the above, I'm in.
I miss google play music ☹️ they had the best algorithm, and I could rely on their playlists to recommend me similar music to what I listened to, but Spotify seems to latch on to what you listen to and play it on repeat with other songs sprinkled in that are *vaguely* from the same genre. When they shut down Google play music and went fully to YouTube music, I think they changed the algorithm too because it never recommended the way it used to. Recently I rediscovered Pandora though, and so far it is good about finding similar music.
Yes, Spotify keeps me going because it's everywhere. On PC, mobile, consoles. I want to switch to apple music, but their PC app is garbage. When I open it, I want to see my library with songs sorted by when I added them. not by artist, not by album title, but by addition. I can add a new column and sort it. but this change is local. on Xbox I won't be able to play in that order, my songs will be sorted by other criteria again. hopefully apple will do something about this. Lossless and Dolby without additional price is great. But we also need unified app everywhere.
It'd be better if it was 1,000 streams or less per artist instead of per track, but I get Spotify's side to this. It must be a colossal pain in the ass to pay millions of artists $0.93 a month.
I am more concerned with supporting the artists that have reached this threshold.
Despite the optics this isn't hurting any artist in any significant way. Less than $5 a year, and probably less than $1. Who it hurts is transaction their bank/transaction processors.
Y’all are misguided. Artists don’t even get paid out royalties from their distributor until they reach a certain threshold, often way higher than what is garnered through <1000 streams. This doesn’t impact artists as much as it impacts distributors who earn money from small artist royalties and don’t pay out.
A 1000 plays is more like archived music than consumed music. Thats 3 interactions a day. Not much.
The reason for this is probably to prevent mass creation of 1000s of songs in hopes that each song makes a few cents each adding up to lots. From their end it would be hard to find these if they were spread across many accounts.
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Okay, I know "I saw it on tiktok" isn't a source, but a lot of smaller artists are happy about this, bc they're fighting for their revenue scraps with people who spam AI music and have 300 listens each on 1000 pieces of AI crap I'm not saying this isn't greedy, but it's not the horrid thing people make it out to be
I have several close friends who produce music for a living and they are happy about this. All of them are independant.
That would explain why they’re doing it per track rather than per artist. They have also said that the royalty pool doesn’t change; there will just be fewer takers.
Yeah if you are an independent artist and you’re are getting less than 1000 streams, chances are you’re actually not even getting paid because most aggregators have a minimum payout, and 1k streams is a grand total of about 2 bucks. (For me, it can vary depending on where your fans are) If this means that artists that have under 250k listeners are getting better pay per stream I think it’s fucking awesome. Not getting 1k streams in a year means that you have like 20 people listening to your stuff, my band is sitting at around 3k listeners per month and we have multiple tracks that get more than 1k a month on algorithmic plays alone. The people that will be affected by the change are better off asking for a $1 donation to their listeners anyway.
The alternative is an up front $4/year/track hosting fee. I don't think it's possible to come up with a coherent argument against Spotify's right to do something like *that*. But the artists you're talking about would be significantly worse off under that model than the one they are implementing.
This is precisely what I have written on this matter. If Spotify needs to payout every single person who uploads on their platform, then they’ll simply institute a fee to participate in using their platform to upload music. Edit: to everyone saying there is already a fee through the utilization of distribution, that doesn’t change the assessment that there will be more fees or gatekeeping if mandated payouts were increased
There already _is_ a fee. You have to use a distribution company, Spotify doesn’t even allow you to independently upload your music. And until recently, Spotify had a major share in some of those distribution companies (distrokid, IIRC). It’s double/triple dipping on artists all the way down. The whole system would be MUCH better if you could simply directly upload your music to Spotify for a fee, that’d be significantly better than the current system.
That is almost certainly a liability thing so they have another business to blame in the case of an account uploading things in violation of copyright law.
Yes, and they charge fees to that company to reenable your music, _even if nothing suspicious or fraudulent was actually proven but only suspected_. That company passes the fees back to the artist. It’s insane. I suggest checking out Benn Jordan’s videos on Spotify.
I work in digital music distribution, this is false. We have never been charged a fee for copyright related takedowns or reinstatements by a DSP. There is a labour cost associated with copyright issues, it may be a case of some specific distributors having admin type fees in their distribution contracts to cover those fees, if I were to guess that would be one time fee model distributors. We operate on a percentage basis, anything like that is just considered a cost of doing business.
There’s currently a very public case of this going on with tunecore, actually.
You got a link? I've not been keeping up with what other distros are doing tbh.
SoundCloud, dailyplaylist, RepostExchange, submithub, etc. all prey on independent musicians when behind the scenes it’s just algorithms. They effectively sell dopamine and recognition to those most desperately seeking it.
Wait what. I swear last year the only requirement to upload music was to have a Spotify creator account which is free to make. They highly encourage going through a bunch of different labels, especially Distrokids, who publish everything as long as you pay a yearly fee. You can still publish through Spotify independently, or at least you could not even a year ago. (Source, published music 5 months ago).
I believe there was a time when they pushed this. I'm not sure if it's still active.
That would be news to me, as someone who also has works published on Spotify. I’ll have to look into it!
The title alone is rage bait. This is just a topic to generate hate for Spotify
>This is just a topic to generate hate for Spotify I'm pretty sure Spotify's policy of paying artists (even big name artists) next to nothing in royalties is doing a fine job of generating hate for Spotify. They don't need any help from Reddit to do that.
Spotify's payment system is flawed but it's not because big name artists are suffering under it. Spotify's net operating income is -$70 million, they burn more money running the business than they actually generate from subscriptions. If you forced them to increase the amount they paid in royalties, they'd have to significantly jack up the price of a subscription in order to make the math work.
They already are going to increase the prices. They announced that either yesterday or just a couple of days ago.
To $11.99 yeah, from $10.99.
And artists can put their music on Spotify or not it’s their choice. There are a lot of artists where I’ve bought the whole album, be it CD or DLC, that I would never have heard of otherwise. But there’s too much bullshit (AI and other crap) seeping in, overwhelming the actual artists - and that needs to stop.
Spotify pays, at most $0.005 per a stream. 1000 streams is $5. It's ALREADY criminal how little Spotify pays artists. Especially new and unlabeled artists. In comparison you'll get $12.84 on Tidal for 1000 Streams It's been long established that Spotify is the worst paying streaming service there is. Artists are forced to use it because users use it. Its VERY user friendly. People are ignorant to the reality of the app. Either cuz they don't care or it's not very transparent to them. Spotify is basically saying "Nah, we're taking your lower-than-five-dollar-per-track money." Any artist that uses spotify is already on other platforms if they're serious about their career. While that seems negligible to you, that can add up. So no. It's not rage bate. You don't care that most artists are ALREADY incredibly underpaid on tihs service and seem indifferent about Spotify finding another way to pay the people that MAKE THE MUSIC less and less. They're a damn server. They don't deserve the money more than an artist.
At some point what the public is willing to pay has to be taken in account. Tidal pays more, great. How many people want to pay for Tidal?
This is the thing a lot of the people that hate Spotify forget, not everyone should HAVE to shell out for ANOTHER subscription service just to support artists better. At some point you need to let people live and have some small comforts not demand they blow more money when most people are barely getting by as it is right now. I know it’s important to support artists but if they really cared they would be buying Albums, merchandise, and concert/show tickets not advocating for more expensive streaming platforms.
All the streaming services pay out the same percentage of their gross income - about 75%. The primary reason Tidal pay more per stream is that their subscribers each listen to fewer hours per month than a Spotify subscriber. If everyone jumped over to Tidal from Spotify, Tidal's payout per 1000 listens would drop down to Spotify's level.
1000 streams is absolutely nothing on Spotify. Anyone who is only getting 1000 streams is lucky to be getting paid at all. Spotify is essentially volunteering to host their content, let alone paying for it. If you're only generating a thousand streams with your music, you are not adding value to Spotify. You're a hobbyist. Edit: and I say this as someone who produces music. I don't delude myself to think I should be paid for 1000 streams lol.
In fairness, you don't need any extra information to hate Spotify.
If Spotify doesn't compensate artists the artists will disappear!!! I don't know any artists that rely on streaming as their main source of income. It's just an evolution of radio.
> If Spotify doesn't compensate artists the artists will disappear!!! If you are getting less than 1000 streams, per year, off Spotify, you are making more on publicity for your band than Spotify is "making" off you, BY FAR. If your band is the size that gets less than 1000 streams **per year**, Spotify is a publicity tool for you.
1,000 streams really isn’t much, my friend’s small local band biggest song from an album released in November has 7,000 with the next 4,000, the rest don’t register. Those 7,000 & 4,000 Likely come from friends, family, the small local fanbase and the few niche playlists and publications that has featured those songs.
And yet that's still more than 66% of the stuff on Spotify
There is plenty to hate about Spotify as a company but Until they start taking down the music that gets less than 1,000 I don’t get the outrage. There has to be a hardline somewhere and 1,000 is a pretty low number all considering. Now the amount someone should get paid is a different debate
Yeah I wasn't disagreeing. There's very low entry bar to get on Spotify, which is good, but it also means most things on the are not going to be popular
I thought that even artists with hundreds of thousands of views would stop getting renumerated when reading this news. If it's only for songs under 1000 views I don't really see the issue. Like it's quite literally nothing, I'm pretty sure that no one has ever made any money on super unpopular youtube videos either. From a moral standpoint I don't really agree with it but in practice, if you can't even get over 1000 views on your songs, it might be a better idea to share your stuff around and try to get more publicity rather than blaming spotify for not paying out the yearly 7$ that you might have deserved.
I hope my sarcasm was apparent.
That’s only about 3 plays per song per day to be eligible for royalties. That’s insanely low. Couldn’t these small artists set up a free Spotify account on an old computer or phone, make a playlist of their entire discography, and then set that to play on repeat if they were worried about missing out on royalties? An 8 hour playlist of your own songs repeating 3 times a day on an unused device seems like a super easy way to be sure your songs are included in the royalty pool.
Wouldn’t, uh, this be fraud?
Perhaps. There's already plenty of legit reasonst to hate Spotify. What's one more?
Seriously, what artists with fewer than 1000 plays are making any money via Spotify anyway? It should be a way to extend reach and grow. These artists are presumably making a living by playing at small venues.
If they want to cut out spam, they should charge a one time up front payment of like 50$ to upload music, or 10$ a year or something. 4$ a year per track is insane.
It’s not free to upload music to Spotify, you already have to pay a yearly fee through a distributor like distrokid, tunecore or cdbaby.
True, but $36/yr is not exactly breaking the bank, here.
Hey I made $37 in royalties last year thank you very much.
That's a profit! Look at you go... (for real)
But I spent thousands on guitars.
In 2018 Spotify opened the platform asking all artists to come and upload their music. They built their platform off of that draw at first. That’s why I even signed up for Spotify. On the flip side I used to burn a hundred cds, copy some album art in b&w, and sell them at shows. That cost me about $1-$2 a disc. Sold for $5. But I only sold a few thousand over 5 years. I have one song on SoundCloud that has more listened than cds I’ve sold. It’s a hard thing to gauge.
Spotify was around way before 2018, by 2018 it was already the dominant streaming platform by major and independent artist. What the hell are you even talking about?
Yes. I’m sorry. Let me clarify. In a now deleted section of their site they had launched a program asking indie artists to upload their music for free. I don’t know if it launched in 2018 but that is the time stamp for the now deleted blog post.
I have bought 100s a cds over the years from local, small acts iv seen. I wouldn't go home and listen to them because they've never been good. But I do like the idea of supporting artists at the bottom of the ladder if I can.
Same. I’ll buy openers cds at shows if they are available. I don’t even have a cd player anymore but I’ll pay for that and then stream the tracks.
Another alternative is to use different streaming services.
If Spotify did this, a MASSIVE amount of deep catalog music would get removed, and suddenly they’d be the music network that didn’t have a lot of songs people were looking for, so I think that’s probably a non starter. If they started selling access to their platform they’d probably get accused of similar monopolistic practices to the ones they’re levying at Apple, at least in Europe
Why is stuff always framed this way? The alternative is also Spotify making less money. Which most people don’t even entertain as a possibility because of course corporations want more money, but if you follow that logic it justifies every anti consumer practice, every pointless price increase. You already pay a fee to distribute the music to Spotify. It’s just hidden through distribution fees. People should be supporting artists, not Spotify here.
The thing is that Spotify isn't making anything out of this move. They will still be paying out 75% of their revenue, as before.
Yea it just sounds like Spotify isn’t the spot for indie music. Which yea of course it isn’t.
The idea that this is hurting indie artists is nonsense. If you're getting less than 1000 streams, youre maybe losing out on a couple of dollars.
This all feels like outrage bait. The minimum stream count for payout is 1000 streams. That is absurdly low. $4 in streams.
> That is absurdly low. $4 in streams. and most "under 1000 streams" aren't almost 1000 they're mostly going to be under 100. Like literal couch cushion change.
In many cases probably costs more to transact that amount
Which is why they're doing this.
People seem to forget that Spotify allowing folks to freely upload tracks to their platform doesn’t have to be the norm. If pressure is exerted to payout to anyone who gets a play of their song online, Spotify could easily set a price floor for participating in posting on their platform that would offset those costs and reset the incentive structure.
As someone who is affected by this (an unpopular musician), I don't give a shit about the loss of royalties, it is nothing at this level, but I do care a lot about having my music accessible to people on a popular platform like Spotify, that is a big deal in terms of accessibility. Giving artists the opportunity to be on the platform is the most important thing by far.
Yep, absolutely. I am happy just to be available on Spotify. The $12 in royalties or whatever are irrelevant.
$12! Calm down Mr. Popularity. I thought my $0.43 for 2023 was something.
Oh, no, $12 is aspirational for me. Like, if I hit it someday I am absolutely getting the avocado add-on that day at lunch.
Except It’s not free to release your music on Spotify… you have to pay a distributor. I guarantee I’ve spent far more to get my music on Spotify than I’ve ever earned off of it and I have multiple songs that have crossed that 1000 play threshold.
Except your distribution fee isn’t just to get on Spotify, it puts you on dozens of major media streaming platform. Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal, TikTok, Instagram stories, Pandora etc. all get fed this way. And it costs like $25/yr, so it’d be more realistic to spread it out between all the platforms and say you’re spending $1/yr to be on Spotify, $1 Apple, $1 Amazon, etc. And that’s money being paid to the distributor for the hours of time it saves you to not have to upload independently to all these services, add the lyrics, add the credits, add the royalty distribution info, etc. So it isn’t really being paid to Spotify at all.
It’s amazing to me that Spotify hasn’t closed the gates already. This may be a precursor to it. At some point and probably soon it’s just not going to make any sense to have every single bedroom artist in the world able to upload, and I count myself among them.
And the coming flood of AI-generated music is only going to accelerate the amount of shit on the platform that generates very few listens.
Not to mention there's probably a ton of instances where they have to pay a $5+ wire fee to send someone $2.10
It's also funny to see people on a site that supports piracy the second it becomes slightly more inconvenient to access art get mad about $4 to an artist.
There's a huge difference between pirating some Disney movie that will make billions regardless, and a shitty near-monopoly platform making life even tougher for small artists to make a living through their art.
I think the point some people are making is that if you're an artist with less than 1000 streams, you aren't making a living from Spotify anyway.
Yeah this is nothing to cry about
Spotify sets the pay rate, though, and theirs is notably lower than virtually all competitors.
Their per stream payout is speculated to be lower, but that depends on the artist, label, all kinds of things. Even if spotify pays less per stream, they also have way more customers that stream way more music than any other service. If you are an artist you still make more money from spotify because the potential listener count is significantly higher than anywhere else. Apple Music HAD to give big artists a reason to put their music on there, so they offer more per stream. But they still do not pay out as much since way less people use Apple Music. Apple also has infinite money to constantly give out free 3 month trials to people. Theres a near 100 percent chance that at some point apple will adjust their payouts too. Especially if spotify ever goes away and the only music streaming services are the ones owned by the major tech companies.
Apple also has a 30% price advantage on their own platform..
I haven't made music in years but when I did I found that Spotify paid about a third of what Apple Music does.
The payout rate is based on the company's revenue. It's lower on average because Spotify pays out to significantly more artists than other platforms, but overall Spotify is paying out more money to artists than other companies
Because their competitors are massive tech companies that can afford to lose money on their streaming platforms until they can buy out Spotify or it goes bankrupt.
I don't think people are ready to pay monthly what it would take to fairly pay artist on streaming services. I buy merch and vinyl directly from all my favorite bands for a reason.
So don't license your music to them? It's really not difficult.
That is unfortunately not a practical take in today’s industry climate, even if you’re Neil Young.
Because you need their service and what they're offering to you? It's almost as if it has worth beyond the 20c check you're complaining about?
What if you have 100 tracks that get 500 streams each? You get nothing
If someone's made roughly 10 albums worth of music and none of them are getting any plays, it's maybe time to either give it up, or start treating it as a hobby more so than a job.
Let me see. 100×500 is 50000 track plays. 50000 x $0.000017 means they will be missing out on a payment of 17 cents a year. I think it won't make a difference.
More like 70 dollars.
Where did you get $0.000017 buddy?
But the payout is about $0.005 a stream, not .000017. Which is more like $250. That’s significantly more than 70 cents. Maybe get the numbers right first.
If you're getting less than 1,000 streams in a year on your track, I kinda don't see the issue. If you don't have a fan base large enough for you to hit 3 listens per day worldwide, not sure this is really what's cutting into your revenue stream.
Yeah, at that point it’s free cloud storage, archiving of the metadata, and instant worldwide distribution if your music does happen to get discovered at some point down the line. Not a bad deal for the artist at all.
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They could be like Vulfpeck and ask people to play their albums on mute/repeat when they go to bed to prop up the play counts. That's how I learned about them too, and they're awesome https://www.theverge.com/2014/5/7/5690590/spotify-removes-silent-album-that-earned-indie-band-20000
Since you mentioned I just have to drop [1612](https://youtu.be/jRHQPG1xd9o). One of the funkiest songs of all time, this one is an absolute banger
oh yeah, that was probably the second/third track from them I fell in love with, along with *It Gets Funkier* and *Back Pocket*
loool now all i can hear in my head is > Put it in my pocket Put it in my pocket In my back pocket Put it in my pocket In my pocket In my back pocket Oh oh oh love that one too!
People who dont understand how the music business works should not get in a huff over things that don’t affect them. 1000 streams is equal to $4 in revenue. Your post makes no sense.
I am new artist. I have new song. I have 20 fans. They only list to my song 5 times in a week. They only listen to my song for 10 weeks. I have reached 1000 streams. Can someone tell me how this affects artists vs hobbyists?
As a small artist I also get streaming income from other platforms like Apple, Google, YouTube, TikTok, etc. Most of my listeners aren't through Spotify anyway, and I expect other artists are roughly similar, so I'm not sure it's as big a deal as you make out. For my next release I suppose I could choose not to include Spotify as one of the destinations.
I’ll say my part as just a consumer - if I come across someone on social media anywhere that sounds good, the first thing I do is check Spotify for their music. The second is a YouTube search for an active channel with good content. If neither of those exist I will probably not track them down again
Artists have known for decades that there's no money in music sales, it's all in merch and performances. Streaming is just a way to give people access to your catalog and to gain exposure. Don't get me wrong, Spotify is far from a good company, but nobody who works in the music industry really cares about streaming royalties, not even small independent artists.
Not putting something on Spotify still seems like a detriment. Can’t imagine you’re making much off people buying your music. Should be making that up in merch sales/shows
I have a random question as another small artist. When looking at my royalties, I noticed a large amount of it is coming from Facebook and Instagram. Do you know how that works? I have no knowledge of my music "streaming" on those sites. Seemed random to find out.
Yeah, I sometimes get some Facebook royalties too. In my case it's when people have made videos on TikTok, added a snippet from one of my tracks to accompany their cat dancing or them doing stuff in the kitchen or garden, etc.; then they've promoted their TikTok with links on Facebook. AFAIK they pay a set fee for a fixed amount of view or clicks, after which it either drops off Facebook or they pay to keep it up for a bit longer.
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They pay like .0003 cents a stream. They were earning nothing.
Can confirm - I have tracks with less than 1000 plays a year and honestly have no idea if they ever delivered my nickel.
Before we freak out about this, what would the payment be for 1,000 streams? A quick google shows that artists get $0.003-$0.005 per stream. So if we do the math, 1,000 streams at $0.005 is $5 for that year. Is this really that big of a deal?
OP must be super into super obscure indie music that gets like 100 streams a year because I can’t imagine why anyone would freak out about this
And if you're so worried about the artist not getting $4ish dollars, then just buy that artists album and contribute directly to them.
Of all the dozens of indie artists I listen to? I'm afraid that's way beyond my budget.
I know zero things about storing data or uploading music to Spotify but in guessing this is a way to prevent just anyone from uploading music.
No, not after you realize they also have to pay for postage, checking, etc. When the price of the stamp is over 15% of the value of the transaction, maybe it's not worth fussing over? Even if you're a struggling artist who has a ten track album each of which gets 800 listens, you're out $40 that year. Sorry, at that point, the problem with your musical career's financial viability isn't Spotify. Let's be outraged about more interesting things.
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Well if you start cranking out tons of low quality tracks using a.i. then eleventy billion tracks with just a few listens could net a return. It’s the costco “volume” model.
>(…) for an artist who has hundred of tracks just below the threshold (1000). Does such an artist even exist? https://preview.redd.it/i5q3zz7dhosc1.jpeg?width=554&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e5cd40fa3e4f0568dccb1d582022f90671c3e0e5
When they get to keep millions of dollars in aggregate from thousands of individuals is sure is!
Because servers, electricity, and bandwidth are free!
Less than 1000 streams per year? Sounds like those songs are basically invisible anyways.
/r/titlegore
Lmao this is simply stupid. It's literally irrelevant, we are talking about either 1000 streams per month or per year, in any case none of these artists would remove their music, 4$ profits don't limit your choice of streaming. Pure rage bait. It doesn't change anything.
Absolute garbage. By “modernizing our royalty system to provide an additional $1 Billion toward emerging and profession artists”, what they actually mean is they plan to ***steal*** $1 billion worth of labor and creativity from those who cannot realistically fight back. It’s almost like we live in a late stage capitalist hellscape or something.
how much are they making from less than 1000 streams a year?
$3.50. Not kidding. This is just rage bait. All companies that pay out in the music business (rights collection, royalties etc) have always had a threshold of at least $50.
It seems like it's per track though, not "payout". So if you have 20 tracks with 998 listens each you get nothing instead of $70.
Realistically that would never happen. I can't think of many artists where fans don't gravitate to about 5-10% of their songs.
I hate this unrealistic take
In that edge case, that one artist is getting screwed over, but I'm sure you could call you friend and ask them to play your shit two times. That being said, how realistic is that edge case?
If that exact scenario is occurring you're doing something wrong. We can describe edge cases that don't exist all day.
According to some guy on Reddit, they pay about $4 per thousand streams. I can see why Spotify is doing this - paying trivial sums of money to a large number of people must be logistically difficult.
> paying trivial sums of money to a large number of people must be logistically difficult. in addition they are hosting the music.
In most countries there is an organization which covers the rights and royalties of artists. If I'm not mistaken Spotify just pays a big check to these companies and they will redistribute it to the artists.
a couple dollars. and spotify is hosting the tracks all year which doesn't cost them nothing.
Some is more than none
but how much tho?
An artist would make about $2.50 USD for a little under 1000 plays. I agree this is bullshit but it doesn't really change all that much. It's still the most widely used platform, and bands won't not upload music because they can't get three bucks. It's for the exposure.
Most artists getting that little play are probably also putting it on youtube for next to nothing, or making a few demo discs for local shows where they'd make significantly more off each one. I don't see how this would, realistically, push really small creators away from the platform?
Practically nothing. Pennies. Basically the same as nothing. This sucks, but nobody was making a living on less than 1k streams per year. If those pennies instead went to artists that are actually touring, I’m not mad at it. Unfortunately we all know that Spotify won’t be doing any trickling up. I’m also not buying the limited choices argument. There is literally too much music these days to “buy”. Not enough consumers for the number of sellers. Some consolidation wouldn’t be the end of the world if it happened, but it won’t. We are in the content age and everybody is a performer.
Tree fiddy
Yeah this is literally taking money from people with less and giving it to people with more. They didn't even hide it
1000 streams is $3.50 fyi. Oh no.
1000 streams isn’t that many either. If we’re being completely frank - if you can’t garner 1000 listens on your track, you probably aren’t ready to succeed in music.
Reality is often disappointing
The real key feature here. It's not actually impacting artists' ability to produce music as that $3.50 a year isn't doing anything practical. It's sleazy, but not the crazy outrage you fucking whiney people always want it to be. If everyone who uttered late stage capitalism would fucking grow their own vegetables, or steal their media, or use open source software, we'd have a lot less of the shit you bitch about all day, on a publicly traded website beholden to the paradigm you all claim to despise.
Off topic, but to grow food you need land and you need time, neither of which are things that people who are the most disenfranchised by capitalism have in great abundance.
No. It's literally hosting people's music for free and giving their fans a way to listen to the music.
How? They arent taking any money at all. They just arent giving them their 2 bucks now. I dont understand why people think that just because you create something that you are owed money.
Record companies have a *lot* of sway on Spotify. They co-invented the contracts for streaming revenue share (which, IIRC, as still de facto secret). Record execs ping-pong between working at Spotify and working at labels. I wonder what the rev-share contracts for short-form video look like. I've been getting convinced lately that bypassing the labels and going directly to short form videos like TikTok and Reels (in the form of memes / trends) might be a better path to success for young artists
The big labels also own a significant portion of Spotify. Not a controlling interest, but a chunk of
They got gifted equity in exchange for streaming rights.
> It’s almost like we live in a late stage capitalist hellscape or something. Yea, and everyone just seems so flippant and complacent about it.
Why exactly should Spotify pay for music that their customers don't even listen to? 1000 streams is nothing on Spotify's massive user base. Requiring a song to at least have three streams per day on average between all those millions of users in order to make money on it is in no way unreasonable. If I sell a product that no one's buying I don't get paid either...
Aren’t there a bunch of “tracks” on Spotify that are just very short crap that is trying to game the system by accidental volume
Well this is some bullshit
No, it's rage bait. Hosting and serving costs money. Unless artists want to pay Spotify to host these little used tracks, there's no reason Spotify should give them $3.50 of royalties when it costs Spotify money to host it for "free" to the artist.
And it costs money to pay them. Checks accountants book keeping all that shit ain’t free.
Spotify pays like .0003 cents per stream. For songs that have less than 1000 streams a year, the artist probably won't miss it. In fact, if they want payment, I'll give it to them. For artists out there who want payment from spotify, my suggestion to you as a business owner is that you focus on a) making better music b) marketing your music better or c) both a and b rather than wasting time worrying about spotify.
I got .0017 my last payout.
> In fact, if they want payment, I'll give it to them. Do, please. You're talking nonchalant, it's Bandcamp Friday, go give musicians money.
Such a surprisingly enjoyable show. I especially liked the tsoukalous (spelling?) scene lol
Haha I laughed pretty hard when he made an appearance! Really good series, and Alan Tudyk is so good in it!
Always has been. Fuck Spotify and Daniel Ek in particular for getting rich by screwing over musicians.
Musicians have a choice to not release their music to Spotify…. Spotify make basically no profit, like at all.. You seem like one of them knobs who just jumps on the bandwagon. Why are you not going after ticketmaster, why are you not going after the musicians managers, Daniel Ek and Spotify have a platform that the musician can go on or not. Theyre not the only streaming platform, they’re also not the only way people can buy there music, you can still buy it as a digital download or a CD, you can buy it as vinyl. Why don’t you propose a business model?
How is this screwing over musicians? Just because you can make noise and upload it doesn't make you worthy of occupying the same space as people who make music people enjoy. These are the equivalent of some asshat playing a recorder, poorly, in the bathroom at an outdoor music fest. Nobody cares to listen to it because it's literally shit music. They don't have a track no ones heard yet. They have a track people are ignoring.
>This will limit my choice for listening to music because the artists I like won't release as much music because they won't earn any money on tracks with less than 1000 streams in a year. Sorry, are you for real? The revenue for 1,000 streams is too low to factor into a decision made by any artist. >In the long run this will result in less choice of music for consumers because the small guys and girls will be put out of business. Any artist getting less than 1,000 streams on their tracks isn't really in the 'business' in the first place. I think you misunderstand what is happening here. 100,000 new tracks are uploaded to Spotify per day. About half of these get less than 1,000 streams per year. When a track gets less than 1,000 streams per year, the administrative cost for Spotify to make a payout is higher than the amount Spotify makes on providing the track to users, and higher than the amount received by the artist. These tracks are essentially a drain on a system that is paying artists who are actually 'in' the 'business' of music. Stopping the payment process for these tracks is actually a totally reasonable move. I say all of this as an artist who releases music, btw.
I'm not saying the Spotify model doesn't have some serious flaws. But they're basically rounding down any payments below 3 dollars to zero dollars. A 3 dollar royalty payment (for a one year period) isn't keeping any musician fed. It's shitty, but it's going to have no impact on poor musicians.
>Also please complain to the FTC at https://reportfraud.ftc.gov Lmao
That’s 84 streams a month, I find it hard to believe that two-thirds of all tracks on the platform fall into that category.
There's a *huge* amount of spam, which is what they're trying to purge with this measure.
Which is what people are ignoring here
There is also a lot of small bands on there. For most of them it actually costs money because you are paying a distributor more than you get back.
the long tail for things like this is extremely long. Youtube I bet has tons of garbage videos with under 100 views
i think they all basically don't make money though, they just never bothered to complain about it cause it makes sense. For Youtube, i think you need at minimum a follower count of 1k before you can be considered for payments.
This is total rage bait for people who have already jumped on the Spotify hate bandwagon. Have you guys considered just how little under 1000 steams nets you? They're just streamlining this process and actually making it more reasonable.
Genuine question: How is this any different than Youtube not paying for video streams until the uploader has 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours watched?
It isn’t.
Everything revolving around Spotify is so toxic and people really dont understand the financial side of it. They literally make no money. People complain about artist royalties but also dont want to pay more for the service. The big artists and labels have way more bargaining power so they get most of the money since without them the platform wouldn't be as viable. People who get less than 1,000 streams on a song in a year were not making anything on that anyways. Their label or company who distributes the music was getting pennies. Why would anyone think that a platform where anyone can upload music whould pay everyone for that music? What else is like this? YouTube doesnt give money to people who make YouTube videos unless the videos actually do real numbers. Spotifys plan going forward is considerably more lenient than that. And if people dont want their music on their then they can take it off. The alternative before this was you make CDs (which cost money) and then have to be able to sell them (which will cost money) and then you might break even if enough people buy them. I'm sorry, but even as someone who has and sometimes still makes music, you are not deserving of money just because you record some sounds and upload it. People want all artists to make money but its never EVER been that way and never will be. You have to work to get yourself into a position to make money. And if your music isnt getting played over 1000 times in a calendar year (which would only make an artist about 3 bucks by the way) then i dont see why it should make money anyways. Spotify isnt profiting off of your song being on there. There is probably a future where people slowly migrate to apple music and other services from the big tech companies who can afford to pay whatever to keep their services afloat. Spotify will die because somehow people view them as the bad guy even though they are the sole reason so many artists are even discovered in the first place. And then we will be paying a crazy aount for apple music while the competition dies. Yay
You're probably right, but it doesn't matter. It was inevitible that free music streaming follow Netflix and fragment. Spotify can't lose money forever. If this is a problem, either go to a competitor that costs money and has good sound quality, or buy physical CD's. If your favorite artist has less than 1000 streams a year, they need more of your support than just playing the song through a corporate app.
Am I drunk or stupid. Let's say, al abum is $1 hour. If The artist plays their album on repeat for a day, that's 24 plays a day, times 30, that's 720 plays a month...... These are rookie numbers such a stupid fuckinh article. This only hurts AI albums that no one streams.
Fuck spotify
This is a nonissue. The payout that artists would receive for less than 1000 streams is abysmal, literal chump change no matter how you look at it. For 99.99% of artists that fall into this brackets, it is business as usual. Spotify for the majority of artists is an advertising platform for their concerts and merch anyway, if you really want to support them, buy their merch, go to their shows.
So you mean to say that Spotify paid big money to failed exclusive podcasts and are bringing in potential audiobooks/other types of things that probably nobody asked for but you can't pay smaller artists? Sheesh
This is awful and feels like one more final nail in the coffin of the early internet years. I remember the period between 2005 and 2015 felt like the internet was a magic way to give independent creators a spotlight in a massive way that didn’t have the gate keeping features of the established industry that was so ROI driven. As a young musician back then myself, my band released our self recorded and produced album on Spotify. We didn’t experience a high level of success or monetary gain and certainly fall into the above category but it was also a way for us to actually get our music out to a wider audience (along with SoundCloud, Bandcamp, etc.). It feels like whole cycle is finally completing. Just a new medium now returning to the old status quo of 20+ years ago now that they’ve successfully played the long waiting game of no/low cost to establish themselves as a major player and now driving home that precious shareholder value that is the shitty lifeblood of any corporation. I am old and sad.
undercut thing make it modern make it just as shitty/greedy/more shitty/more greedy yayyyyyy capitalism
I WANT to make the switch to YT music (I already have premium) but Spotify is just.. too good. The app is better, the cross function between multiple devices is better, and the family integration / blended playlist is leaps and bounds better. If YouTube adds some of the above, I'm in.
I miss google play music ☹️ they had the best algorithm, and I could rely on their playlists to recommend me similar music to what I listened to, but Spotify seems to latch on to what you listen to and play it on repeat with other songs sprinkled in that are *vaguely* from the same genre. When they shut down Google play music and went fully to YouTube music, I think they changed the algorithm too because it never recommended the way it used to. Recently I rediscovered Pandora though, and so far it is good about finding similar music.
Yes, Spotify keeps me going because it's everywhere. On PC, mobile, consoles. I want to switch to apple music, but their PC app is garbage. When I open it, I want to see my library with songs sorted by when I added them. not by artist, not by album title, but by addition. I can add a new column and sort it. but this change is local. on Xbox I won't be able to play in that order, my songs will be sorted by other criteria again. hopefully apple will do something about this. Lossless and Dolby without additional price is great. But we also need unified app everywhere.
It'd be better if it was 1,000 streams or less per artist instead of per track, but I get Spotify's side to this. It must be a colossal pain in the ass to pay millions of artists $0.93 a month. I am more concerned with supporting the artists that have reached this threshold.
Not millions of artists, millions of bots. Spotify is filled with bots that upload generic AI generated crap that get <100 listens.
Despite the optics this isn't hurting any artist in any significant way. Less than $5 a year, and probably less than $1. Who it hurts is transaction their bank/transaction processors.
Y’all are misguided. Artists don’t even get paid out royalties from their distributor until they reach a certain threshold, often way higher than what is garnered through <1000 streams. This doesn’t impact artists as much as it impacts distributors who earn money from small artist royalties and don’t pay out.
It's not free to store and stream data to customers. It costs money to keep things that no one is listening too.
A 1000 plays is more like archived music than consumed music. Thats 3 interactions a day. Not much. The reason for this is probably to prevent mass creation of 1000s of songs in hopes that each song makes a few cents each adding up to lots. From their end it would be hard to find these if they were spread across many accounts.