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Direct your passion for getting musicians paid to Spotify and the distribution system, not to this. If everyone who uses this software were to use Spotify direc

Direct your passion for getting musicians paid to Spotify and the distribution system, not to this. If everyone who uses this software were to use Spotify direct, ads and all, in the long run it would make pennies for the artists at best. You're better off listening to music however you please and buying albums on Bandcamp to support the artists; a lifetime of spotify listening will make less money for an artist you like than buying a single album from them on Bandcamp. Even if you only listen to one artist, 8 hours per day, 365 days a year, they will earn a whopping... 100 bucks from Spotify.

apwell23 3y ago
> Direct your passion for getting musicians paid to Spotify and the distribution system, not to this. How exactly do you do this ? What a dishonest comment to support stealing.
- drewdevault 3y ago
  >How exactly do you do this By reading the rest of my comment. >What a dishonest comment to support stealing. Copying is not theft.
  - apwell23 3y ago
    > By reading the rest of my comment. I did. You made a silly assumption that all artists put their music up on bandcamp. No one even knows what bandcamp is my area.
    - drewdevault 3y ago
      Bandcamp is available in more markets than Spotify. Not sure how that's relevant to my argument, though.
      - apwell23 3y ago
        Here is an example of an artist not on bandcamp . This is what i am listening currently on spotify( I have no idea who this is) Odeon Yılları Album by Nesrin Sipahi
        westhanover 3y ago
        So mail her a check? Do we have to think of everything for you?
        lxgr 3y ago
        How do I find an artist’s mailing address? And what is a check?
    - lawgimenez 3y ago
      I’m the only one buying stuffs on Bandcamp in my family. Casual listeners see no reason to be on Bandcamp when they can listen it on YouTube or Spotify. For the parent comment, it’s better to support artists on whichever platform they want to be in, because parent comment feels like he has an axe to grind on Spotify.
    - pcthrowaway 3y ago
      Why would artists not put their music up on one of the most well-known platforms that allow people to significantly support them by purchasing a copy of their music. I legitimately don't get it. I don't necessarily believe that Spotify is necessarily worse as a way to make money from their music (I think ad-supported and subscription "bundling" services such as Youtube and Spotify probably result in more money going to artists than all the options for purchasing artists' music piecemeal, like Bandcamp), but artists should definitely make their music available somewhere for fans to purchase regardless Substitute Bandcamp with Google/Apple music or whatever, the point remains, one can use Spotube and choose to support artists buy paying for their music. I don't think most people are actually doing this though..
      - apwell23 3y ago
        > I legitimately don't get it. Because its not " one of the most well-known platforms" outside english speaking countries. I assure you no one in Sri Lanka or India know what bandcamp is. This kind of western arrogance is kind of infuriating to ppl from other parts of the world. Like american tourist demanding that ppl speak to them in english in turkey.
  - sdoering 3y ago
    Copying is robbing the artist of their revenue. So you are actually proposing a solution to make life worse for artists. What a dishonesty.
    - drewdevault 3y ago
      Copying is not theft, it is materially different. Moreover, I have proposed ways of engaging with music which makes substantially more money for artists. I am not the one being dishonest here.
9dev 3y ago
That doesn’t paint the full picture, though. Artists get something from Spotify in return - exposure to listeners (even those that wouldn’t traditionally listen to an artist or never discover them otherwise), global and immediate distribution, marketing, and simple payment handling. Today, artists don’t need most of the services traditional record labels provide, which treated them way worse over the last half century. And that’s a good thing. Not to say I think it’s fair how little streaming services pay to musicians, but this is more nuanced than just Spotify exploiting artists.
viraptor 3y ago
> If everyone who uses this software were to use Spotify direct, ads and all, in the long run it would make pennies for the artists at best. I'm not sure that "they get paid so little that we may as well stop paying them anything" is an argument you really want to make here? Yes, Spotify pay is crap. Not paying anything is crap too. Two wrongs don't make a right.
- drewdevault 3y ago
  I'm not making that argument. I made an argument that you have better options in which the artist is paid more.
  - viraptor 3y ago
    You said "Direct your passion for getting musicians paid to Spotify and the distribution system, not to this." but that's not the problem this specific software can solve. However the authors of this software can work on adding reporting the plays back to Spotify. (And I believe they should)
    - drewdevault 3y ago
      This software is not trying to solve the problem of getting artists paid, and the suggestion that people should listen to Spotify ads and all is not really going to solve that problem, either.
  - jsnell 3y ago
    Taking the music without compensation and pretending that you're totally going to buy some music or merch from some other artist doesn't actually lead to artists being compensated. While in the plan where you buy music and only listen to the music you bought you don't need this app at all.
    - drewdevault 3y ago
      I've spent thousands of dollars on Bandcamp over the past several years, attended many live shows, bought merchandise, etc. Suggesting that one is "pretending" to do these things when making this argument is a hell of a strawman. I feel like pretending that you're supporting your favorite artists by listening them on Spotify is a bit more of an appropriate comparison.
pinkgolem 3y ago
>Even if you only listen to one artist, 8 hours per day, 365 days a year, they will earn a whopping... 100 bucks from Spotify. i mean, that sounds fair?
- dotancohen 3y ago
  Especially considering that Spotify claims over 500 million users. The traditional bottleneck in the music industry and the entertainment industry has been distribution. Of course, 500 million users does not mean that 500 million potential fans will be exposed to your work.
- drewdevault 3y ago
  Maybe, maybe not. If an artist makes up 1% of your listening, that goes down to a dollar, and if you factor in more realistic listening habits that goes down further. Consider that this is paid to the rights holder, not the artist, as well -- the artist usually gets even less. Buy one album on Bandcamp for $10 and the rights holder gets $8.50 (on Bandcamp this is usually the artist directly). Fact of the matter is that in terms of getting artists paid, Spotify's business model and distribution model is inferior to other solutions and the economic cost of circumventing the ads is little to none, and in fact if you take advantage of Spotify's distribution model for convenience and buy elsewhere for economics then you are performing a net social good.
  - gnramires 3y ago
    People are saying about 70% of Spotify revenue goes to rights holders, whereas you're saying about 85% of Bandcamp's revenue goes to rights holders. It really doesn't seem like that much of a difference? Maybe what you're saying is, you end up spending much more buying merchandise and labuns directly than you would spend on Spotify. (I'm not sure this would be true for everyone though) Maybe then the solution could be to have a way to just pay more to Spotify (conditional on keeping the revenue split intact). Something I don't like about Spotify though, is that I don't get to have any kind of say on how the revenue is split. I'd personally prefer if there was an egalitarian bias in payment, and the artists with less revenue would get a greater share of my subscription. But there's no way I can control that, that's the most frustrating to me personally, and I'd gladly switch to a system that pays more (since I currently have the means to). In fact, I've proposed FunkWhale, the federated (libre-)music streaming platform, should get a subscription service like that, and that I should have some control over the revenue distribution (maybe there would be a minimum revenue split, and the rest I can 'choose my own algorithm', for example one that heavily favors less popular musicians). I agree that meanwhile the best I can do to support them would be paying them directly, and I've found a few have Liberapay (or Patreon) accounts as well.
petesergeant 3y ago
> Direct your passion for getting musicians paid to Spotify and the distribution system Spotify pay 70% of their revenue back to the rights holders, leaving 30% for operating costs and profits. What percentages would you recommend, and what are you basing it on?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- drewdevault 3y ago
  I would not recommend a different revenue split, I would recommend a different business model. And I did!
- gitaarik 3y ago
  If you would pay $0.01 per song on Spotify. Then if you listen to an artist's album of 10 songs for a 100 times, so 1000 song plays of $0.01, that is $10. Spotify takes 30% cut, then the artist gets $7 and Spotify gets $3. Now if 10,000 people listen to the album a 100 times, the artist gets $70,000 and Spotify $30.000. What the artist needs to do for this is come up with the songs, work them out, practice them with a band, record, produce, mix, artwork, release, promo. For Spotify to release the album on their platform, they just need to sign a deal with the artist and add the album to their library. And this process is obviously largely (if not fully) automated. Of course they have some infrastructure and costs for this, but I think they're much better off than the artists.
jstummbillig 3y ago
> a lifetime of spotify listening will make less money for an artist you like than buying a single album from them on Bandcamp. This is false. And I mean, dramatically. > Even if you only listen to one artist, 8 hours per day, 365 days a year, they will earn a whopping... 100 bucks from Spotify. It's roughly 200$. Number of songs per hour: 60 minutes / 3 minutes per song = 20 songs Total listening hours per year: 8 hours/day * 365 days = 2,920 hours Total streams per year: 20 songs/hour * 2,920 hours = 58,400 streams Total earnings: 58,400 streams * $0.004 (average pay rate) = $233.60 How high do you think that number should be, to be non-"whopping"? I am seriously confused about what or who anti-streamers think they are zealoting for, what alternative fantasy they are defending. As someone who has worked in the music industry (i.e. the people actually making a living through music) I witnessed Spotify/YT and the likes as an absolute force of creation of a new class of musicians, that would never have existed before.
- drewdevault 3y ago
  You and I did the same back-of-the-napkin math and arrived at slightly different numbers; I used a 5 minute average song duration and $0.003 average payout. See my other comments for elaboration on why the Bandcamp model is ultimately better for the artist. I don't deny that Spotify has improved the situation for many artists, but rather that it hasn't done enough and other approaches do it better, and I believe this is factually true.
  - jstummbillig 3y ago
    Yes, Bandcamp leaves a bigger percentage to the musician - from nothing/less. For a variety of reasons, Bandcamp is not actually being used and thus not doing for artists what Spotify has. You can start a personal crusade to combat that, but as long as you do not actually make it work (and I think there is good reasons rooted in what Spotify does well over Bandcamp and the service the former provides that the later won't), this is what is actually factually true. Let's just skip the part, where we imply it's somehow okay to circumvent fair use, because nobody is making money off of streaming anyway or any such nonsense. Streaming as intended is fine for now. People can just use Spotify, or any of the alternatives, as they are intended and that's fine and on the whole better than anything we had before.
code_runner 3y ago
The lion’s share of Spotify subscription data goes straight to the labels. The labels are the ones not paying artists. It’s crazy to expect all the music in the world on demand for $12 a month or whatever. Spotify can probably do better in some ways but I don’t see how any of this justifies not giving the artists the pennies your mentioning.
blowski 3y ago
I'm sceptical that Drew DeVault has a sock puppet account on HN, created 3 months ago, in addition to @ddevault. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I don't like non-satirical impersonation.
jasode 3y ago
>You're better off listening to music however you please and buying albums on Bandcamp to support the artists; Often, the "listening to music however you please" will contradict "buying albums on Bandcamp to support the artists" ... because the particular artists the listener wants to listen to are on a big label and thus, their albums are not on Bandcamp. The "buy on Bandcamp" advice only works if one likes to listen to the type of artists (typically indie) that happen to release on Bandcamp. On the other hand, if music listeners want the mainstream stuff (Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Rolling Stones, etc)... they're only on the big tech music streamers like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, etc.
- apwell23 3y ago
  it also sidesteps the whole discovery issue. I would love to know how that person is discovering music that they buy on bandcamp.
  - hedora 3y ago
    Any of the locally-run radio stations in the SF Bay Area are good choices: https://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/locate?select=city&city=mountain+view&state=CA https://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/locate?select=city&city=mo... Here are some that I have found new music on (no particular order): KZSC, KFJC, KZSU, KSJS, KCSM, KKUP, KSJO, KBCZ, KDFC, KPOO, KALX There's also SomaFM. It looks like Pirate Cat Radio finally sold out to The Man, and got a broadcast license for their transmitter. Need to check them out again: https://kpcr.org/about/ https://kpcr.org/about/ Apparently, there are now a handful of high school radio stations around here too. Does that mean the cool kids have kids in high school now? I must be getting old. Also, music podcasts are a thing. I like Dark Compass for metal.
- FirebornX 3y ago
  I think the "buy on Bandcamp" advise extends to any other of a large number of marketplaces you can purchase popular artist albums from. I personally want to own music that I like and not just lose it if I decide to cut my subscriptions. I use Bandcamp for smaller acts and Qobuz for everything I can't find on Bandcamp.
pg5 3y ago
I don't get how this is justification for individuals to pay artists zero with thus bypass. Indie musicians who grow to have 10-100k+ monthly streams are making a nice chunk of money from it.
specialist 3y ago
This Spotify client could autolink to artists on Bandcamp. Radio playlists often have artist links. Sometimes they work. For example: http://www.kser.org/content/live-playlist http://www.kser.org/content/live-playlist
ajross 3y ago
> Even if you only listen to one artist, 8 hours per day, 365 days a year, they will earn a whopping... 100 bucks from Spotify. Is that not reasonable? I mean, obviously this number represents a market price point: the system has reached an equilibrium where the "aggregate value" of being able to listen to music full time is $100/year (plus or minus all the confounding factors like who bears it and how it's distributed, etc...). Is $100/year wrong? That is, after all, right about the price of the subscription you're likely paying already. So... it sounds right to me? What's the mechanism you are imagining where customers paying for subscriptions of that order somehow produce payments to the artists that are significantly higher? I think a lot of the disconnect here is that the idea of "music revenue" is different in today's world than it was in the days of the 70's rock star. People used to pay a lot more for music! But they don't anymore, and all the parties take a hit, not just Spotify/Apple/et. al.

apwell23 3y ago

> Direct your passion for getting musicians paid to Spotify and the distribution system, not to this. How exactly do you do this ? What a dishonest comment to support stealing.

drewdevault 3y ago
>How exactly do you do this By reading the rest of my comment. >What a dishonest comment to support stealing. Copying is not theft.
- apwell23 3y ago
  > By reading the rest of my comment. I did. You made a silly assumption that all artists put their music up on bandcamp. No one even knows what bandcamp is my area.
  - drewdevault 3y ago
    Bandcamp is available in more markets than Spotify. Not sure how that's relevant to my argument, though.
    - apwell23 3y ago
      Here is an example of an artist not on bandcamp . This is what i am listening currently on spotify( I have no idea who this is) Odeon Yılları Album by Nesrin Sipahi
      - westhanover 3y ago
        So mail her a check? Do we have to think of everything for you?
        lxgr 3y ago
        How do I find an artist’s mailing address? And what is a check?
  - lawgimenez 3y ago
    I’m the only one buying stuffs on Bandcamp in my family. Casual listeners see no reason to be on Bandcamp when they can listen it on YouTube or Spotify. For the parent comment, it’s better to support artists on whichever platform they want to be in, because parent comment feels like he has an axe to grind on Spotify.
  - pcthrowaway 3y ago
    Why would artists not put their music up on one of the most well-known platforms that allow people to significantly support them by purchasing a copy of their music. I legitimately don't get it. I don't necessarily believe that Spotify is necessarily worse as a way to make money from their music (I think ad-supported and subscription "bundling" services such as Youtube and Spotify probably result in more money going to artists than all the options for purchasing artists' music piecemeal, like Bandcamp), but artists should definitely make their music available somewhere for fans to purchase regardless Substitute Bandcamp with Google/Apple music or whatever, the point remains, one can use Spotube and choose to support artists buy paying for their music. I don't think most people are actually doing this though..
    - apwell23 3y ago
      > I legitimately don't get it. Because its not " one of the most well-known platforms" outside english speaking countries. I assure you no one in Sri Lanka or India know what bandcamp is. This kind of western arrogance is kind of infuriating to ppl from other parts of the world. Like american tourist demanding that ppl speak to them in english in turkey.
- sdoering 3y ago
  Copying is robbing the artist of their revenue. So you are actually proposing a solution to make life worse for artists. What a dishonesty.
  - drewdevault 3y ago
    Copying is not theft, it is materially different. Moreover, I have proposed ways of engaging with music which makes substantially more money for artists. I am not the one being dishonest here.

9dev 3y ago

That doesn’t paint the full picture, though. Artists get something from Spotify in return - exposure to listeners (even those that wouldn’t traditionally listen to an artist or never discover them otherwise), global and immediate distribution, marketing, and simple payment handling. Today, artists don’t need most of the services traditional record labels provide, which treated them way worse over the last half century. And that’s a good thing. Not to say I think it’s fair how little streaming services pay to musicians, but this is more nuanced than just Spotify exploiting artists.

viraptor 3y ago

> If everyone who uses this software were to use Spotify direct, ads and all, in the long run it would make pennies for the artists at best. I'm not sure that "they get paid so little that we may as well stop paying them anything" is an argument you really want to make here? Yes, Spotify pay is crap. Not paying anything is crap too. Two wrongs don't make a right.

drewdevault 3y ago
I'm not making that argument. I made an argument that you have better options in which the artist is paid more.
- viraptor 3y ago
  You said "Direct your passion for getting musicians paid to Spotify and the distribution system, not to this." but that's not the problem this specific software can solve. However the authors of this software can work on adding reporting the plays back to Spotify. (And I believe they should)
  - drewdevault 3y ago
    This software is not trying to solve the problem of getting artists paid, and the suggestion that people should listen to Spotify ads and all is not really going to solve that problem, either.
- jsnell 3y ago
  Taking the music without compensation and pretending that you're totally going to buy some music or merch from some other artist doesn't actually lead to artists being compensated. While in the plan where you buy music and only listen to the music you bought you don't need this app at all.
  - drewdevault 3y ago
    I've spent thousands of dollars on Bandcamp over the past several years, attended many live shows, bought merchandise, etc. Suggesting that one is "pretending" to do these things when making this argument is a hell of a strawman. I feel like pretending that you're supporting your favorite artists by listening them on Spotify is a bit more of an appropriate comparison.

pinkgolem 3y ago

>Even if you only listen to one artist, 8 hours per day, 365 days a year, they will earn a whopping... 100 bucks from Spotify. i mean, that sounds fair?

dotancohen 3y ago
Especially considering that Spotify claims over 500 million users. The traditional bottleneck in the music industry and the entertainment industry has been distribution. Of course, 500 million users does not mean that 500 million potential fans will be exposed to your work.
drewdevault 3y ago
Maybe, maybe not. If an artist makes up 1% of your listening, that goes down to a dollar, and if you factor in more realistic listening habits that goes down further. Consider that this is paid to the rights holder, not the artist, as well -- the artist usually gets even less. Buy one album on Bandcamp for $10 and the rights holder gets $8.50 (on Bandcamp this is usually the artist directly). Fact of the matter is that in terms of getting artists paid, Spotify's business model and distribution model is inferior to other solutions and the economic cost of circumventing the ads is little to none, and in fact if you take advantage of Spotify's distribution model for convenience and buy elsewhere for economics then you are performing a net social good.
- gnramires 3y ago
  People are saying about 70% of Spotify revenue goes to rights holders, whereas you're saying about 85% of Bandcamp's revenue goes to rights holders. It really doesn't seem like that much of a difference? Maybe what you're saying is, you end up spending much more buying merchandise and labuns directly than you would spend on Spotify. (I'm not sure this would be true for everyone though) Maybe then the solution could be to have a way to just pay more to Spotify (conditional on keeping the revenue split intact). Something I don't like about Spotify though, is that I don't get to have any kind of say on how the revenue is split. I'd personally prefer if there was an egalitarian bias in payment, and the artists with less revenue would get a greater share of my subscription. But there's no way I can control that, that's the most frustrating to me personally, and I'd gladly switch to a system that pays more (since I currently have the means to). In fact, I've proposed FunkWhale, the federated (libre-)music streaming platform, should get a subscription service like that, and that I should have some control over the revenue distribution (maybe there would be a minimum revenue split, and the rest I can 'choose my own algorithm', for example one that heavily favors less popular musicians). I agree that meanwhile the best I can do to support them would be paying them directly, and I've found a few have Liberapay (or Patreon) accounts as well.

petesergeant 3y ago

> Direct your passion for getting musicians paid to Spotify and the distribution system Spotify pay 70% of their revenue back to the rights holders, leaving 30% for operating costs and profits. What percentages would you recommend, and what are you basing it on?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
drewdevault 3y ago
I would not recommend a different revenue split, I would recommend a different business model. And I did!
gitaarik 3y ago
If you would pay $0.01 per song on Spotify. Then if you listen to an artist's album of 10 songs for a 100 times, so 1000 song plays of $0.01, that is $10. Spotify takes 30% cut, then the artist gets $7 and Spotify gets $3. Now if 10,000 people listen to the album a 100 times, the artist gets $70,000 and Spotify $30.000. What the artist needs to do for this is come up with the songs, work them out, practice them with a band, record, produce, mix, artwork, release, promo. For Spotify to release the album on their platform, they just need to sign a deal with the artist and add the album to their library. And this process is obviously largely (if not fully) automated. Of course they have some infrastructure and costs for this, but I think they're much better off than the artists.

jstummbillig 3y ago

> a lifetime of spotify listening will make less money for an artist you like than buying a single album from them on Bandcamp. This is false. And I mean, dramatically. > Even if you only listen to one artist, 8 hours per day, 365 days a year, they will earn a whopping... 100 bucks from Spotify. It's roughly 200$. Number of songs per hour: 60 minutes / 3 minutes per song = 20 songs Total listening hours per year: 8 hours/day * 365 days = 2,920 hours Total streams per year: 20 songs/hour * 2,920 hours = 58,400 streams Total earnings: 58,400 streams * $0.004 (average pay rate) = $233.60 How high do you think that number should be, to be non-"whopping"? I am seriously confused about what or who anti-streamers think they are zealoting for, what alternative fantasy they are defending. As someone who has worked in the music industry (i.e. the people actually making a living through music) I witnessed Spotify/YT and the likes as an absolute force of creation of a new class of musicians, that would never have existed before.

drewdevault 3y ago
You and I did the same back-of-the-napkin math and arrived at slightly different numbers; I used a 5 minute average song duration and $0.003 average payout. See my other comments for elaboration on why the Bandcamp model is ultimately better for the artist. I don't deny that Spotify has improved the situation for many artists, but rather that it hasn't done enough and other approaches do it better, and I believe this is factually true.
- jstummbillig 3y ago
  Yes, Bandcamp leaves a bigger percentage to the musician - from nothing/less. For a variety of reasons, Bandcamp is not actually being used and thus not doing for artists what Spotify has. You can start a personal crusade to combat that, but as long as you do not actually make it work (and I think there is good reasons rooted in what Spotify does well over Bandcamp and the service the former provides that the later won't), this is what is actually factually true. Let's just skip the part, where we imply it's somehow okay to circumvent fair use, because nobody is making money off of streaming anyway or any such nonsense. Streaming as intended is fine for now. People can just use Spotify, or any of the alternatives, as they are intended and that's fine and on the whole better than anything we had before.

code_runner 3y ago

The lion’s share of Spotify subscription data goes straight to the labels. The labels are the ones not paying artists. It’s crazy to expect all the music in the world on demand for $12 a month or whatever. Spotify can probably do better in some ways but I don’t see how any of this justifies not giving the artists the pennies your mentioning.

blowski 3y ago

I'm sceptical that Drew DeVault has a sock puppet account on HN, created 3 months ago, in addition to @ddevault. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I don't like non-satirical impersonation.

jasode 3y ago

>You're better off listening to music however you please and buying albums on Bandcamp to support the artists; Often, the "listening to music however you please" will contradict "buying albums on Bandcamp to support the artists" ... because the particular artists the listener wants to listen to are on a big label and thus, their albums are not on Bandcamp. The "buy on Bandcamp" advice only works if one likes to listen to the type of artists (typically indie) that happen to release on Bandcamp. On the other hand, if music listeners want the mainstream stuff (Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Rolling Stones, etc)... they're only on the big tech music streamers like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, etc.

apwell23 3y ago
it also sidesteps the whole discovery issue. I would love to know how that person is discovering music that they buy on bandcamp.
- hedora 3y ago
  Any of the locally-run radio stations in the SF Bay Area are good choices: https://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/locate?select=city&city=mountain+view&state=CA https://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/locate?select=city&city=mo... Here are some that I have found new music on (no particular order): KZSC, KFJC, KZSU, KSJS, KCSM, KKUP, KSJO, KBCZ, KDFC, KPOO, KALX There's also SomaFM. It looks like Pirate Cat Radio finally sold out to The Man, and got a broadcast license for their transmitter. Need to check them out again: https://kpcr.org/about/ https://kpcr.org/about/ Apparently, there are now a handful of high school radio stations around here too. Does that mean the cool kids have kids in high school now? I must be getting old. Also, music podcasts are a thing. I like Dark Compass for metal.
FirebornX 3y ago
I think the "buy on Bandcamp" advise extends to any other of a large number of marketplaces you can purchase popular artist albums from. I personally want to own music that I like and not just lose it if I decide to cut my subscriptions. I use Bandcamp for smaller acts and Qobuz for everything I can't find on Bandcamp.

pg5 3y ago

I don't get how this is justification for individuals to pay artists zero with thus bypass. Indie musicians who grow to have 10-100k+ monthly streams are making a nice chunk of money from it.

specialist 3y ago

This Spotify client could autolink to artists on Bandcamp. Radio playlists often have artist links. Sometimes they work. For example: http://www.kser.org/content/live-playlist http://www.kser.org/content/live-playlist

ajross 3y ago

> Even if you only listen to one artist, 8 hours per day, 365 days a year, they will earn a whopping... 100 bucks from Spotify. Is that not reasonable? I mean, obviously this number represents a market price point: the system has reached an equilibrium where the "aggregate value" of being able to listen to music full time is $100/year (plus or minus all the confounding factors like who bears it and how it's distributed, etc...). Is $100/year wrong? That is, after all, right about the price of the subscription you're likely paying already. So... it sounds right to me? What's the mechanism you are imagining where customers paying for subscriptions of that order somehow produce payments to the artists that are significantly higher? I think a lot of the disconnect here is that the idea of "music revenue" is different in today's world than it was in the days of the 70's rock star. People used to pay a lot more for music! But they don't anymore, and all the parties take a hit, not just Spotify/Apple/et. al.