20 ms·
Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify
- sgt 6y agoDoes anyone still buy albums on iTunes? I haven't done that in a while, but I have to say I prefer to physically own the music I listen to often. If I can't get a physical media like CD or vinyl, then iTunes store was second best aside from illegal options.
- brink 6y agoYes. There will always be times when the internet isn't there for you. To me, flac file backups are king, and what makes bandcamp so good.
- itcrowd 6y agoSpotify does allow you to store your songs locally on your smartphone. Although you are of course locked into their ecosystem. For me it works, for others it may not be adequate.
- monocasa 6y agoSpotify seems to regularly delete all my music downloaded to my phone, and it's where I notice right as I'm losing service.
- bluejekyll 6y agoI do. I enjoy the entire album experience, and tend to enjoy artists that make fully connected albums more than others. Tool, Arcade Fire, and Pink Floyd are great examples. I don’t need the physical media though. Why? Probably something about renting vs. owning that’s always driven many of my decisions on spending money.
- nickthegreek 6y agoI normally purchase a vinyl which comes with a digital download code for mp3/FLAC. But I will still normally just stream the music.
- josefresco 6y agoI have such a hodgepodge of purchased music. I have a giant library of old pirated MP3s. I have 30ish MP3s I bought from Amazon years ago when I was trying to avoid iTunes. And then I have about 15 tracks bought from iTunes, mixed with some mixtapes that were free but imported into iTunes. I listen to none of it now. I was a Pandora customer, now I'm a YouTube Music customer. In the car, it's SiriusXM.
- drngdds 6y agoI buy digital music from Bandcamp whenever possible. (Otherwise I buy it from Amazon MP3 or pirate it from Soulseek.) I like to build a collection and I can't stand the notion that some streaming company or copyright holder can just decide I'm not allowed to listen to an album anymore.
- tohnjitor 6y agoMake sure you backup your Bandcamp purchases. I know of at least two artists whose Bandcamp accounts were deleted. The artists claim that Bandcamp never notified them of any copyright claims or policy violations. There is an album I purchased which no longer appears in my collection. I am only able to listen to it via mobile app because it's still cached on the device. In the course of writing this response I realized that I had not contacted customer support so I now have.
- PascLeRasc 6y agoI really like to buy on Bandcamp. They've been running promotions and either forgoing their 15% commission or donating it to Covid/BLM efforts. I think it's one of the best music platforms and I've discovered so many fantastic artists that aren't on Spotify or anywhere else.
- notagoodidea 6y agoIt depends on the artists you are following but I tend to only buy albums on Bandcamp : * Artists get most of the money, Bandcamp takes a fixed rate. * I can have physical albums and/or .flac numeric version. * If I am lazy, I have access to the streaming app of Bandcamp for the music I bought or to discover (actively, not through playlist) new artists. Not perferct but better than iTunes and Spotify for me (and only for me not in general).
- sickcodebruh 6y agoI buy albums on Bandcamp when it's an artist I love. Bandcamp is also where my band makes the majority of our sales, a combination of digital purchases and merch. It seems like a growing number of people really enjoy supporting artists directly and Bandcamp is the best platform for that.
- mcgreenbeats 6y agothis music is fantastic! Congrats on the success.
- parhamn 6y agoI just listened to "Lullabies For Little Crimes" and "Circles", it was great! I'm really happy Spotify found a way to surface artists like this who deserve attention!
- andygcook 6y agoAgreed. After an initial listening, it's clear Steve's really talented. Which admittedly probably helps with the earning money part of the article. It's kind of like that PG quote: "What Customers Want - It's not just startups that have to worry about this. I think most businesses that fail do it because they don't give customers what they want. Look at restaurants. A large percentage fail, about a quarter in the first year. But can you think of one restaurant that had really good food and went out of business?" (edit - formatting)
- dataqat 6y agoI can think of many restaurants with really good food that went out of business... that's a terrible analogy. Certainly a very helpful ingredient, though maybe not even the main one.
- andygcook 6y agoI agree that it's definitely not a foolproof analogy. But good food (like good music) is usually a table-stakes ingredient for a successful restaurant. Again of course again, there are exceptions there too.
- feteru 6y agoYeah I can think of a few. Some just couldn't manage expenses, whether it was ingredients or rent.
- 6y ago
- ecmascript 6y agoVery interesting read. I have never made any music but I am compelled by the idea of starting some time in the future. I have always thought that releasing music on Spotify was nothing that could ever bring in any revenue but it seems I was a bit wrong on that. Really nice blogpost!
- jdxcode 6y agoI feel Spotify makes it hard to listen to albums. I can queue up a song to play and it’ll then get back to my playlist, but if I play and album eventually it’ll reach the end and quit playing anything. Then I will have to stop what I’m doing and find something else to play. I feel the UX could be improved and it might change listening habits similar to Discover Weekly
- ehnto 6y agoWhat do you want to happen after an album is finished?
- soulofmischief 6y agoSpotify needs better queuing strategies.
- gen3 6y agoTidal goes into a mix based off of the album, which is nice.
- petargyurov 6y agoThere is a setting for that: "Autoplay similar songs when your music ends" - does that not work in your case?
- onychomys 6y agoThere's a setting to have it play related songs after it finishes an album. On the desktop client, it's in hamburger menu > edit > preferences > Autoplay > Autoplay similar songs when your music ends.
- cvburgess 6y agoThey actually have a setting for this, look for "Autoplay" in settings.
- qppo 6y agoWhat, you don't appreciate an ad between the Happiest Days of our Lives and Another Brick in the Wall part 2 or 2112 Overture and The Temples of Syrinx? This comment may date myself
- michaelbuckbee 6y agoHis Spotify Artist page lists ~70k plays a month, so he's just slightly over $1/1000 plays. I suppose this is peanuts compared to what a radio play is, etc. but strikes me as fairly reasonable?
- monocasa 6y agoRadios don't have to pay anything unless they're an internet stream
- michaelbuckbee 6y agoI believe that over the air and internet streams are paid out separately. Over the air looks to play 12c to 6c per play https://www.quora.com/How-much-are-music-artists-paid-in-Royalties-for-each-song-played-on-radio https://www.quora.com/How-much-are-music-artists-paid-in-Roy...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- satyrnein 6y agoUS terrestrial radio only pays out to the composition side (whoever wrote the song) and not to the master side (who performed and recorded the song). Internet and satellite radio pay both sides. Non-interactive radio uses rates set by statute across the board; this is all separate from on-demand streaming like Spotify.
- josefresco 6y agoDo traditional radio stations pay per track play? I'm unfamiliar with the business.
- dataqat 6y agoKeep in mind a single play on a radio station is more like 10,000 plays on Spotify. It's 1-to-many vs. 1-to-1.
- 6y ago
- nickthemagicman 6y agoHe's really talented as well, so that helps.
- smeeth 6y agoWith great power comes great responsibility, Spotify Data Scientists. If discover weekly is truly that impactful a decision made by a model to include or not include a song could determine whether or not an indie artist can pay their rent that month. Not quite iris dataset classification. Edit: I should clarify that I only mean that this impact raises interesting questions and DSs (I am one) should pay close attention to the impact of their models.
- devalgo 6y agoIt's not Spotify's responsibility to make sure indie artists are getting paid.
- mkl 6y agoWell, it is definitely in Spotify's interest to keep as many quality artists as possible on Spotify, and that probably involves paying them.
- devalgo 6y agoI think you missed my point, obviously you should get paid for your monthly listens but it's not Spotify's responsibility to drive listeners to your music. You are obviously free to market and promote as much as you can, hitching your success or failure to Spotify including you in Discover seems like a sure way to fail to make a living.
- _eht 6y agoI heard a rumour once that artists did not actually need to eat. /s
- devalgo 6y agoImagine saying this about a CD store a few decades ago. It would be ridiculous to say that a store was responsible for promoting indie artist CDs. If you want to get listens or sales make good music, it's pretty simple.
- boplicity 6y ago65,000 listeners a month – $800 in revenue. 1.23 cents per listener per month. That works out to 14.7 cents per year. To earn a modest $50,000, you would need ~360,000 monthly listeners. This doesn't seem sustainable without outside sources of revenue.
- sharkweek 6y agoCorrect, this is why bands tour and sell shirts and other merch, and for most, work second jobs. As an anecdote, friend of mine is in two or three bands at any given time and bartends most nights he’s not playing shows. Spotify makes it easier than ever for an artist to get their work out there, which is great, but it’s similar to the publishing world, where most authors who self publish do so into the void.
- racl101 6y agoAs a humble band once said, I think their name was AC/DC: Gettin' old Gettin' gray Gettin' ripped off Underpaid Gettin' sold Second-hand That's how it goes Playin' in a band It's a long way to the top If you wanna rock 'n' roll
- jjice 6y agoThe best way to support an artist you really like is to purchase merchandise, buy their music on Bandcamp, and see them live. For bands I really like, I buy the album on Bandcamp and then just listen to it on Spotify for convenience. Besides, who doesn't love a good tee with your favorite band's lyrics on it?
- sharkweek 6y agoI love buying tour t-shirts. I have amassed a large collection I hope to pass onto my kids at some point. What I wouldn't give for some of the shirts I've seen my dad wearing in old photos of shows he went to. Grateful Dead, Rolling Stones, etc.
- xwdv 6y agoThe truth about bands is that they are basically T-Shirt companies.
- aczerepinski 6y agoIf anybody wants to know how to earn $20/decade with Spotify I can throw some of my own experiences into a blog post :)
- Scoundreller 6y agoLooking forward to your write up on “how to fail at Spotify and enjoy yourself”. Edit: clickbaity: “How to Bomb Spotify”
- shacrw 6y ago"Stupefy by Spotify as a Service" : a mentorship service to protect those who get stupefied by spotify
- HenryKissinger 6y ago$2 a year might have been enough to live a middle class life back in ...... What's the conversion rate for the Roman sesterces in 44BC to USD?
- aczerepinski 6y agoYou can’t have it at $2/year though - my distributor only cuts a check when you reach the $20 threshold. I had forgotten I had music on there by the time the check showed up!
- ipnon 6y agoIt's sad to admit but there are enough musicians in the world. The reason wages for musicians is so low is that there are already countless professional musicians making music in every style.
- swiley 6y agoMaybe, but I think it could be better if Spotify paid artists per listen instead of just paying them for being popular. Also Spotify is definitely missing a lot of obscure music and there definitely aren’t enough live musicians. Otherwise I could afford to have a good band play live in my living room every Sunday morning.
- colinmhayes 6y agoHis comment on albums is interesting. It seems like he's given up on getting press, so albums don't make as much sense for him, but music critics are still the major driver for who gets listens in the non-pop music space. I don't see albums disappearing for that reason. I also enjoy listening to albums much more than singles, but that could just be me.
- jomohke 6y agoAgreed. I think his view comes more from the pop section of the market. Everything I consume and discover is still album-based.
- tinman25 6y agoSo in effect, the Spotify Discover Weekly Algorithm has become the 'last dj' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00sy6_jv7Lc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00sy6_jv7Lc
- volkk 6y agoSpotify's discovery playlist is a double edged sword. My account is permanently screwed because I decided to listen to a lot of rain sounds when going to sleep for a few months while I had a puppy. Now ALL I get for recommendations are calm sounds. I don't actually listen to these during the day, I want my old stuff. I hate it and want to reset the discovery playlist, but seems I have no way of doing so aside from getting a new account?
- njovin 6y agoThis is unfortunately a common problem and the only way to beat the algorithm is to turn it against itself. Create few playlists and add songs you like to them and also be diligent about liking and unliking songs. These will heavily influence your recommendations and you should be able to get back on track.
- volkk 6y agoSee I was doing that, and I guess I didn't do it long enough because it didn't do anything for me. I think that algo is so heavily trained at this point. I think Spotify should really release something that is obvious and UI friendly that isn't some weird hack/workaround to fix this issue.
- VBprogrammer 6y agoMaybe being able to mark something as a guilty pleasure which would exclude it from algorithmic use - and ideally from showing it to your friends on facebook if they still do that!
- dawnerd 6y agoSpotify needs to enable dislike on any song playing, not just in discovery playlists.
- dajohnson89 6y agoyes please. i'll never understand why this isn't default behavior.
- fuball63 6y ago> Plus I think asking listeners to listen to a full-length album don’t make sense in our attention-starved world. Asking listeners to listen to a single song might just be a more realistic ask. This is why I love listening to albums, because it flies in the face of throwaway/hyper-consumable media. Spotify, with its algorithmic playlists and singles focus, bolsters the throwaway consumption of music, but many artists also enjoy the long tail of revenue from album streams. If an artist creates an album with lasting appeal, they can smooth out the initial spike of physical sales with a long slow burn of revenue.
- gregmac 6y ago> with its algorithmic playlists and singles focus, bolsters the throwaway consumption of music What is "throwaway" music? Personally, I tend to listen to genre-focused playlists I curate over time, and often in "radio" mode (so algorithms select similar music). When I find something new I really like, I add it to my playlist. Rarely do I find anything I actively dislike, but there's lots of stuff that I don't add but I don't mind either way if I hear again -- is that "throwaway"? I think like anyone, I have a gradient of music preferences -- ranging from "can't stand" to "love". The middle ground is huge -- there's a lot of good music out there, I simply don't have the capacity to "love" everything.
- fuball63 6y agoBy throwaway I mean music that is extremely popular for a short moment in time (measured in months or weeks) and then becomes irrelevant as the next hit single comes out. I don't mean throwaway in terms of musical preference or taste.
- puranjay 6y agoI got into vinyl last year and have been buying up albums. The experience is so different than streaming. There is a physical element to it that's incredibly rewarding. You also notice how tracks flow in a good album so much more when you're essentially forced to listen to the whole thing.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bambax 6y agoI was pretty sure I had read this before on HN but it turns out it was the previous blog post, when he was only earning $400/month: https://www.stevebenjamins.com/blog/spotify-and-discover-weekly https://www.stevebenjamins.com/blog/spotify-and-discover-wee... Still it would be better if the posts had a date. I have 14 "weekly" listeners on Spotify but I only started a month ago. Still, I'm short of ideas on how to grow this.
- oht 6y agoThe author is the same guy behind a $40k/month website builder review site. Big fan of his interview on Indie Hackers[1] It's interesting to see him use SEO to describe algorithmic playlists. He would know, SEO is a huge part of his other business. [1] https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/besting-the-competition-and-building-a-40k-mo-review-site-f2bf1023f0 https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/besting-the-competiti...
- capableweb 6y agoThere is even a shout out to HN in that article! > I worried that readers would not trust this arrangement [affiliate links] when I first started. But in practice it hasn't been a big issue. In fact, readers ask me which links to click to ensure I get my commission. Honestly, negativity about my business model is more likely to come from a community like Hacker News than it is from my readers.
- csa 6y agoThat’s a backhanded shout out if I have ever seen one. ... although I think it’s probably accurate.
- avipars 6y agoInteresting blog post. Off-topic question: When a song gets covered/made into an instrumental version by a 3rd party on Spotify , who gets paid for the plays? The original recording artist or the 3rd party?
- surround 6y agoBoth? I believe you need a license to publish a cover, so the pay will probably be split.
- wrigby 6y agoThere are actually two copyrights and sets of rights in play here: one (the © copyright[1] and the "publishing rights") is on the song itself, in the abstract - the melody and lyrics. This is owned by the songwriter, and usually assigned to a publishing company. The other, (the ℗ copyright[2], and "master rights") is on a specific recording of the song, and is usually owned by a record label. The cover generates royalties for both the recording artist (or their record label) that recorded the cover through the ℗ copyright and the songwriter that wrote the song (or their publishing company) through the © copyright. 1: https://www.copyright.gov/forms/formpa.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/forms/formpa.pdf 2: https://www.copyright.gov/forms/formsr.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/forms/formsr.pdf
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- vannevar 6y agoIt's an interesting article, but the essential information is buried in the middle: In my experience, it’s only when I get on an editorial playlist that my songs get heavily featured on algorithmic playlists like Discover Weekly. So how do you get on editorial playlists? I sincerely have no clue. I've been on editorial playlists 16 times but I have no idea how to replicate that. I find that this is true of many of these "I made X dollars per month doing Y!" articles: somewhere in the chain of events, there is a fateful intervention out of the control of the author that propels them to a higher tier of income than their peers who are otherwise following the same procedures.
- jv22222 6y agoAgree, serendipity is the hardest thing to reverse engineer.
- wilshire_nc 6y agoyep, if this were reproducible, we wouldn't be reading about it in a blog.
- hammock 6y agoGreat point. And speaking from insider knowledge, I can tell you that there are consultants you can pay anywhere from a little bit up to thousands per month who will get you tested/placed on different editorial playlists. The more you can get on, and the longer you can stay on them (there is no guarantee of staying on, they only keep you on if you gain traction), the more success you will have.
- rorykoehler 6y agoTom Misch used those for sure. I was only talking about it with my wife the other day. Lost in Paris seems to play evry time I open Spotify. I wish you could blacklist songs on Spotify.
- tomerv 6y agoI'm pretty sure that Spotify has this button. It depends on the interface you're using, but it generally looks like a "no entrance" road sign. I used it a few times, and I didn't hear the song again.
- drcongo 6y agoI made a surprising find on Spotify not so long ago. One of their curated playlists - Techno Bunker [1] - algorithmically mixes from track to track, like a fairly competent DJ, and it does it even if you turn on shuffle. There may be others, but this is the only one I've found so far. [1] https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX6J5NfMJS675?si=x_R4CbLXTrawmOShhzv_ow https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX6J5NfMJS675?si=...
- Etheryte 6y agoThis is amazing, and I'm surprised this isn't noted down in the playlist description, nor anywhere else. It doesn't simply crossfade, it matches beats up much like a human would. This is insanely neat and such a nice find.
- eminence32 6y agoI am not hearing this -- I'm hearing 1 to 2 seconds of silence as one song ends and the next song starts. In my spotify preferences I have "Crossfade" disabled, but there is now a new setting that I haven't seen before: "Automix -- Allow smooth transitions between songs in a playlist". This is enabled. I wonder if "crossfade" also needs to be enabled
- haywirez 6y agoNote that this is all applies only to easy listening music suitable for the background (I checked the author's playlist at the end). Not something emotionally intense or overly energetic that demands your full attention. Spotify is optimizing for muzak, and artists who thrive in this ecosystem are muzak. I could (and soon will) go deeper to prove my point, but Liz Pelly already did a lion-hearted job covering the problems with streaming platforms and Spotify specifically — they have a catastrophic effect on music.[1] Spotify is the No. 1 enemy of music culture and artistic expression. [1] https://lizpelly.com/writing https://lizpelly.com/writing
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bazeblackwood 6y agoI think this is a pretty valid point—in fact the effect of Spotify's approach to promoting music with this hegemonic quality has been documented pretty well, even resulting in something people call "The Spotify Sound": https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2019/06/how-the-spotify-sound-is-changing-music.html https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2019/06/how-the-spotify-soun... Not to mention they were caught with their hands in the cookie jar a number of times, promoting their own fake artists "algorithmically", and it was such a good game that Sony got in on it as well.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- larodi 6y agoYou can imagine my astonishment when someone I know, a deejay and producer, came to me several months ago, at a club, with the very unexpected answer of 'how to run more Ubuntus on one box' ?! Because... he wanted to have them subscribe and then click and play a list of alter-ego-monikers of himself, who release to unknown probably ghost-audience in Spotify Making money in the way - without releases, without gigs. And it is exactly 600-800$ per month he cited as the amount he made from one alter ego with several albums. Somehow I'm sure there are others out there doing the same. I'm leaving for folks here to imagine and comment how relevant would soon Spotify be for indie artists that will be competing with such Spotify click-botnets...
- saaaaaam 6y agoBots have been an issue on Spotify for years. Spotify is pretty good at sorting them and removing fake streams.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- annoyingnoob 6y agoIts cool that what looks like your hobby generates income. What do you do to pay the bills otherwise?
- wallawe 6y agoHe's actually got a really cool story, I happened to recognize him from this Indie Hackers interview: https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/site-builder-report-f2bf1023f0 https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/site-builder-report-f...
- annoyingnoob 6y agoNice, good for him.
- SeanFerree 6y agoThanks for sharing! This is a really great article and I enjoyed reading it
- jedberg 6y ago> In my experience, major label artists have an easier time getting on editorial playlists. ... But major label artists also only typically get 13% - 20% of streaming royalties… so there are still plenty of reasons to stay indie! This is just like the tradeoff startups make when they choose to take VC. Will giving up 80% of the company lead to the company being at least five times bigger? If so, then it seems worthwhile.
- bowlingx 6y agoI love your songs :) Thank you!! <3 And you defnitly popped up on discover weekly :D. I usually star songs that I like there, and / or order them in my custom playlists.
- steve-benjamins 6y agoThank you very much— that's awesome to hear!
- happyruss 6y agoSo, what's the best distributor to use to get your music on spotify? Is it cdbaby? tunecore? distrokid?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jacksnipe 6y agoIt may be that causality on this works backwards, but I’ve also noticed that artists that perform concerts together (Spotify does keep track of concerts and who performs at them) tend to be very algorithmically associated. At the very least, I think it’s a huge factor in “Related Artists”.
- leonardteo 6y agoSpeaking of carving out a niche on Spotify.... If your kid ever asks Siri/Google/Alexa to play the poop song a few cents of royalties goes to Matt Farley aka the Toiletbowl Cleaners. It’s quite fascinating https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Farley https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Farley > According to Farley, one song that contains only the word "poop" repeated over and over generates $500 in streaming revenue every month as of 2018, likely in part because children request it from Alexa or other devices.[4][5][6] Farley earned over $23,000 in 2013 from his song catalog.
- w33n1s 6y agoI have an album on Spotify. Normally I get about 8 listeners a month, and then once month I had 2,000+ listeners. Then back to 8. I don't know why. Be I also was really embarrassed for that many people to hear my shitty clarinet playing
- HellDunkel 6y agoWhen i first read this i tried to imagine what kind of music this would be. It sounded exactly what i thought it would.
- SergeAx 6y ago> Albums are big statements. Some of the most iconic releases in popular music have been albums. On the contrary, most of the greatest contemporary hits was singles. I can't remember really bold and moving statements in the form of albums, except maybe "The Wall". Classic composers never wrote albums,their large forms were symfonies and opera - whole pieces of separate parts. Albums was invented by vinyl/CD music industry and will die with them.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> Classic composers never wrote albums,their large forms were symfonies and opera - whole pieces of separate parts. Albums, in the idealized form (there are, of course, lots that are collections of basically disconnected singles, too) are “whole pieces of separate parts”, like symphonies or operas (or, I suppose, soundtracks.) People who lament losing albums aren't talking about package-of-convenience collections of singles, they are talking about pieces where, while the individual songs may stand alone the same way each planetary theme in Holst’s The Planets can, but they also form a single thematic work with an arc and movement across the whole body.
- SergeAx 6y agoThe Planets is a later piece (beginning of XX) and may be inspired by sheet music industry, which worked the same way and has same limitations - it was too expensive to manufacture and distribute "singles". I beleive the term "album" itself was inherited from there.