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Spotify shuts down direct music uploading for independent artists
- unparagoned 7y agoIs this just a way to outsource quality control. Making sure meta data was correct, accurate, etc.
- rhamzeh 7y agoGoogle did the same a couple of months back[1]. Is there a reason these companies are actively against independent artists being able to upload the music directly? [1](https://9to5google.com/2019/04/03/google-play-music-shutdown-starts/ https://9to5google.com/2019/04/03/google-play-music-shutdown...)
- nullify88 7y agoPerhaps pressure from record labels? I hope artists can flock to somewhere like Bandcamp, or alternatives.
- fnordsensei 7y agoThis is pretty much the default answer to all such questions, unless directly proven to be otherwise. The last thing they would want is for Spotify, or anyone else, to effectively become a record label in their own right.
- moftz 7y agoPlenty of companies will mass upload your music to all of the streaming sites for like $20-30/year which sounds pretty cheap compared to the old days of needing a record label to do anything other than play in bars. Those companies aren't considered record labels, they are distributors which is almost what Spotify is doing. Some of those distributors offer engineering and marketing services too but it still doesn't make them record labels. There are so many record labels out there that there really isn't an issue with another smaller one popping up.
- fnordsensei 7y agoI'm sure they're fine with the small fish. But with Spotify, Apple, and others who might have the financial muscles to become a threat if given the chance? I'm not so sure.
- jwerle 7y agoI worked at Spotify and I am very close with several folks there who worked on this initiative. This is almost certainly the fault of the labels.
- jakelazaroff 7y agoCould you elaborate a bit? Do you think it's because of copyright issues, or because labels don't want Spotify to become a popular distributor that publishes exclusively to itself?
- jwerle 7y agoI doubt copyright issues had an impact here. There is always a much larger perspective the labels have over the industry than what we can talk about here. Ultimately, it is about control. Every decision from the ads you hear to the choice of music you get in your Discover Weekly playlists (or any made by Spotify) come from the influence of label control over the company (and industry). Songs that appear or can be heard near or in sequence of each other to an end user are not really that random. We as consumers forget that the entirety of Spotify is a heavily curated experience. This includes the features available to us on various devices which directly impact how and what (pod casts) we can listen to and when (free tier on mobile)
- nullify88 7y agoIt's unfortunate that the influence is becoming more and more apparent. Stories like this make me wonder what's to become of Spotify in the future. https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8517869/when-you-listen-they-watch-pre-saving-albums-allow-labels-track-users-spotify https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8517869/when-you... I've always thought Spotify could be the Steam of music: To bring artists and listeners together, but I now believe Bandcamps done more in that regard and Spotify might end up being a data harvesting tool for the labels.
- dmitriid 7y agoThese companies are not against independent artists. The big rights holders are. Allowing artists to upload directly is a legal clusterfuck of minefields and business risks (pardon the language): - what happens when an artist who is signed with Warner Music starts uploading their music directly? - what happens when the Big Three start viewing Spotify (or Google, or anyone, really) as their competitor in music distribution? Somehow almost literally no one focuses on how Warner, Sony, and Universal have a death grip on both artists and distribution companies. But everyone is willing to vilify Spotify.
- lukeh 7y agoIf you did the first thing, you’d be stupid, and in breach of your contract, just as if you shared it elsewhere. And it’d get taken down pretty quickly, algorithmically or not.
- dmitriid 7y agoAh, herein lies the devil in the details. The contracts may or may not specify worldwide distribution rights, may concern distribution rights in some countries only, may or may not leave leeway for the artist to distribute their own stuff etc. etc. etc. It's a legal minefield, and the big three love it.
- fnord123 7y agoRecord labels are like bad unions and want a closed shop.
- cryptofits 7y agoToo bad... That's one of the things I liked about Spotify It gave opportunity for small artists to share their talent
- nerdponx 7y agoThat's OK, they don't pay the small artists more than a pittance anyway. I canceled my subscription a while ago and started pirating music again. When I want to support a small artist, I buy their music on Bandcamp.
- efdee 7y agoWhy did you go back to pirating, instead of paying for albums? Could it be that you were only willing to give a pittance to begin with?
- nerdponx 7y agoIn the Spotify payment model, some artists make non-trivial amounts of money, and most make effectively no money. The listener doesn't choose which artists fall into which category. I prefer to choose. If some artists that I listen to will be paid out of my $10/month contribution, I'd rather control that distribution of my $10 directly.
- whenchamenia 7y agoSpotify and the like generate pennies for artists because the record compnies part own it and have price fixed it to hell and back. The only significant profit comes from touring and merch sales. As a starving artist, pirate my shit, see my show. Nobody cares about plays except for getting distribution deals.
- gtirloni 7y agoWhy don't your support big artists as well?
- nerdponx 7y ago
- jasonlingx 7y agoSoundrop and Amuse.io are 2 free alternatives that distribute to a range of platforms. And this is a pretty comprehensive and objective overview of them all: https://aristake.com/post/cd-baby-tunecore-ditto-mondotunes-zimbalam-or https://aristake.com/post/cd-baby-tunecore-ditto-mondotunes-...
- zimpenfish 7y agoI've used Amuse for two tracks (easily findable if you like minimalist dark ambient noisescapes) and ... it's fiddly (lots of form fields and you need your tracks in Dropbox/iCloud) but , barring an approval snafu for track 2 which got sorted out after I bitched at them on Twitter and their insanely long 30 day release window, it's working ok.
- jasode 7y agoThe submitted article doesn't mention it but my guess at connecting the dots is that it's related to EU Article 13's stringent requirement of "upload filters"[0]. Yes, Spotify's direct uploading "gave opportunity for small artists to share their talent" -- but that same mechanism also made it too easy to upload copyright infringing content. Since Spotify does not have a machine learning AI copyright filter like Youtube's ContentID[1], shutting down the direct upload was their best course of action. Restricting uploads to their distribution partners (record labels) is the human version of the "contentid" algorithm. [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=eu+"article+13" https://www.google.com/search?q=eu+"article+13" [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+"contentid" https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+"contentid"
- toxik 7y agoGood job, EU! Squelch your citizenry in the interest of the copyright industry. Content filtering is draconian and fundamentally opposed to a free and open society.
- jsilence 7y agoSelf hosted, federated alternative: funkwhale.audio
- indigochill 7y agoIs the theory that this will be more resistant to copyright takedowns (given the talk about "sharing music with friends") because takedowns will have to be issued to individual pods?
- jakelazaroff 7y agoDoes this pay artists? I can't find any mention of it on their website.
- sethhochberg 7y agoThey claim to specialize in copyleft content, so almost certainly not. The cynic in me thinks that in practice it'll be a fancy frontend for everybody's BitTorrent downloads folder... with an archive.org downloader script for some plausible deniability.
- adam0c 7y agoI guess that means we cant upload tool anymore under other names
- sk0g 7y agoReally wish Spotify did the Google Play Music thing of letting you upload a few thousand songs to fill in the gaps in their library. From what I can tell, they sorta do - they let you add songs on your device, but I haven't been able to find them in my app sooo :|
- Nightshaxx 7y agoThe way they impliment it is pretty bad. Basically you have to add a local music folder on your PC, then you have to use the search tool to find it (on PC) and add it to a playlist. Then you have to go onto your mobile while on the same network as the PC, and download the playlist. Spotify doesn't store your song at all on their servers (unlike google) and if you want to re-download the files on a new device, the original pc that had it has to still be there or else you have to redo the whole thing.
- nicky0 7y agoIt's clumsy but you can see why Spotify don't want anything to do with handling uploaded music on their servers. I wonder how Google treats it from a legal/copyright perspective. I suspect they are just too big to care.
- circlefavshape 7y agoMost likely explanation - nobody was using it. They only introduced it as a beta feature recently, and you have to use a distributor like CDBaby or distrokid to get your music onto other streaming sites anyway, so unless you were only interested in Spotify there was no point
- sickcodebruh 7y agoThat’s why I didn’t plan on using it for anything other than disposable demos or EP releases that would otherwise be Bandcamp exclusives. Uploading directly to Spotify wouldn’t break my dependency on Tunecore for the releases I care about.
- rectang 7y agoEven when the humans that run these distribution broker companies have the best of intentions, economic pressures create risk over the long run that the broker will act in ways which its artist customers do not like. This really seems like a place for a member-controlled cooperative.
- pcsanwald 7y ago+1. I'm a musician who has released albums and I'd never use something like this, because who wants to manage distribution for every platform? DistroKid/CDBaby are a much better way to do this.
- steve-benjamins 7y agoAs a fellow artist I disagree :) I’d totally use this. Spotify and Apple Music are 99% of my plays. The other services don’t matter. (Youtube and Soundcloud are uploaded separate from Distrokid / CD Baby.)
- swiley 7y agoAs someone who helped an artist get their stuff onto spotify a couple years ago and has started writing music I was pretty confused by the headline, I didn't even know this feature existed (otherwise I might have actually used it.) It's a shame it disappeared before I even heard about it.
- creaghpatr 7y agoThis sort of addresses a number of disparate issues related to quality control. I don't know how I feel about it, but they probably had to do it to prevent becoming the next YouTube. As long as they don't allow user ratings or user comments they should be fine. https://www.theverge.com/2014/5/7/5690590/spotify-removes-silent-album-that-earned-indie-band-20000 https://www.theverge.com/2014/5/7/5690590/spotify-removes-si... https://qz.com/1212330/a-bulgarian-scheme-scammed-spotify-for-1-million-without-breaking-a-single-law/ https://qz.com/1212330/a-bulgarian-scheme-scammed-spotify-fo... https://www.vulture.com/2017/07/streaming-music-cheat-codes.html https://www.vulture.com/2017/07/streaming-music-cheat-codes....
- neetodavid 7y agoEl-P has also raised similar issues: "What I mean is I regularly have to send take down notices not only for people using my name for their music and it appearing on my artist page but for people uploading my albums to their page and assumedly having my money diverted to them until we catch it." https://exclaim.ca/music/article/el-p_rages_out_on_spotify_for_not_protecting_artists_from_fraud https://exclaim.ca/music/article/el-p_rages_out_on_spotify_f...
- iscrewyou 7y ago> As long as they don't allow user ratings or user comments they should be fine. I will however pay extra for blocklists. If they let me block an artist, oh man. That would be the best money spent.
- oe 7y agoI recently started seeing songs that had 9 famous artists in the artist field, some of which were artists I follow so the song appeared in my recommended playlists.
- rectang 7y agoThere are always the distribution broker services (DistroKid, CDBaby, TuneCore...) but they can go bad. I've contemplated 1) writing some open source quality control software for scanning music distribution uploads, and 2) forming a collective (probably 501(c)(3) charity non-profit) which would serve in the distribution broker role and redistribute income. I wonder if such things could ever come to pass. Any thoughts?
- neka 7y agoWhat problem are you trying to solve?
- rectang 7y agoThe unreliability of distribution brokers as artist allies.
- neka 7y agoWhere has this come up? Not all distributors work direct with artists. Bandcamp is proprietary, for profit and seems to have strong artist allies.
- rectang 7y agoTuneCore changing its pricing structure a number of years ago is probably the classic example. An artist can jump ship to another distribution broker, but there are a lot of downsides such as losing play counts and breaking links. Can any of the distribution brokers be trusted to act in an artist's interest indefinitely? There's just an inherent problem with that.
- neka 7y agoIf you retain your ISRCs and UPCs when moving from one distributor to another, links and stream counts will remain as is. Surely that's an issue solved by the market, if there is a distributor that is reliable & fairly priced then people will move to use and stay with them. I think the current issue is that a lot of the big name distributors are marketers first, distributors second.
- snowwolf 7y agoI’m not familiar with the process, but could there also have been a fraud aspect (not copyright) to this that wasn’t worth the effort required to prevent? Upload “songs”, generate lots of listens, get paid.
- beckler 7y agoYes, I hope so, because fraud is a huge issue with Spotify. An older acquaintance of mine is a professional musician living in Nashville doing commissions. He made a track for a trailer of a video game, but chose not to publish it on Spotify (for reasons I don't know). One of the fans ripped the song from the trailer, uploaded it to Spotify, and was collecting all the royalties. Even though Spotify keeps taking it down, someone else uploads it again, ad nauseam.
- anoncake 7y agoSounds fair. He didn't want the money of Spotify's customers so someone else took it.
- snowwolf 7y agoYeah, the uploading of copyright infringing content is one aspect, but I was also wondering about just uploading rubbish and somehow generating fake listens or tricking real users into listening to your track (game the ranking algorithms to get it into recommended playlists) to get royalties. Something like the Amazon ebook scams: https://www.zdnet.com/article/exclusive-inside-a-million-dollar-amazon-kindle-catfishing-scam/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/exclusive-inside-a-million-dol... https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/amazon-book-stuffing-authors-scam-chance-carter-romance-kindle-unlimited.html https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/amazon-book-stuffing-author...
- holy_city 7y agoI don't think fraud is so big an issue as artist name duplication. I've had to report a number of tracks on my release radar from artists that have the same name as artists I listen to regularly but clearly are not the same, checking out the label/artist only leads to a bandcamp or Facebook page and it was clearly uploaded by an independent artist who hasn't done their due diligence on their naming. Nothing wrong with it, just lack of foresight on the uploaders' part.
- bitL 7y agoNew mafia is merging with the old mafia... "Wonderful" end to dreams about technology enabling better world...
- yason 7y agoIf, for once, you can get of all the middlemen it allows you to create your own.
- macinjosh 7y agoWasn't Spotify just complaining that Apple's App Store policies hurts consumers? The shoe seems to be on the other foot now. This policy hurts both independent artists and consumers. Not to mention this policy stems from unnecessary government regulations that benefit only large players in the music industry.
- aaronarduino 7y agoIf others are looking to move away from Spotify, here is a comparison of what streaming services pay artists per stream. https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/12/25/streaming-music-services-pay-2019/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/12/25/streaming-music-...
- djsumdog 7y agoThis is what happens when you rent your music. I'm glad I never had a Spotify account. I always either buy CDs from shows or get them off Bandcamp. I prefer Bandcamp because they take a smaller cut (15%, as low as 10% if you have a label which high volume) and really hate it when an artist I like only has the option of Apple/Google/Amazon (all which take ~30% or more). I just went from a 200GB microsd card to a 512gb, and can carry all my music in my phone, ready for offline playback, where ever I go.
- pedrogpimenta 7y agoI agree with you. I did Spotify for some months and one of the reasons I quit is because I noticed I had stopped listening to music that was not on Spotify. Which is unnacceptable, of course. Since then I had the music on an SD on my phone. But I'm afraid of losing it and losing all my music, also don't want to have to manually backup the music. Now I have a Raspberry Pi as a Music Server and it works flawlessly :) (One SD Cards with the system and music and another one as an automatic system backup so I don't lose any music and can just swap the cards if one fails)
- sylk 7y agoI love all kinds of music and it'd be unrealistic for me to have it all purchased. I listen to easily 20 artists in a day, and those rotate very quickly.
- proxygeek 7y agoA streaming service is _not_ just a collection of your favourite songs. Content discovery and auto-playlist are some of the not so easily irreplaceable featured offered by the likes of Spotify. And anyway, the diss about ownership Vs rental is far too broad a swipe for the topic at hand.
- jakubp 7y agoWhy do you guys speculate what the reasons are instead of just asking Spotify?
- scelerat 7y agoArtists uploading directly would threaten the monopoly major labels have on distribution relationships.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]