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If you mean the changes declared in https://artists.spotify.com/en/blog/modernizing-our-royalty-system https://artists.spotify.com/en/blog/modernizing-our-royal

If you mean the changes declared in https://artists.spotify.com/en/blog/modernizing-our-royalty-system https://artists.spotify.com/en/blog/modernizing-our-royalty-..., then I find it hard to reconcile the description given there with your editorialization.

richrichardsson 3y ago
> Starting in early 2024, tracks must have reached at least 1,000 streams in the previous 12 months in order to generate recorded royalties. This will take my Spotify income from pitiful to non-existent. Fuck Spotify.
- unnamed76ri 3y ago
  As soon as this change was announced, I cancelled my Spotify subscription. I know it won’t mean much of anything to the overall number but at least in my case, they saved less than $10 in royalties at a cost of $132 in subscription fees.
  - swozey 3y ago
    I tested getting off spotify last year, but the other apps were so bare bones and featureless. I tried most of the popular ones, Quboz, Tidal, Spotify, Apple music, youtube music, amazon music.. i think 1-2 others. Thankfully there's an app called soundiiz that for like $2-3 will sync all of your music app playlists/favs/etc to one another. ALL of them had absolutely useless/bad Android Auto/Carplay apps. I know at least half of them (quboz tidal for sure) didn't have a way to search in the car app. Quboz or Tidal didn't even display your subscribed albums/playlists. I forget exactly but I think I could only play their recommended stuff. Exacts are off here but I remember specifically sitting in my car with both of those apps wondering why I couldn't figure how to play my fav playlist or search for an artist. Then the social stuff. I share collab playlists with a few friends. Apples adding these feautures IIRC. Surely not important to most people but they really make the other apps just feel barebones. I like gamification, rewinds, badges, etc. The Carplay thing is the killer for me, though.
    - hedora 3y ago
      I haven't had many issues with Tidal's CarPlay support. I've only used it in rental cars (so cars that shipped mid to post pandemic) though. It definitely shows subscribed albums, etc. The one exception was that, on an older Toyota, it only showed the first dozen or so albums in my collection one time out of the dozen I drove the rental. Parking the car then coming back a few hours later fixed it.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  Spotify pays ~$0.004/stream. 1,000 streams is $4.00. That's a coffee. Lots of services for creators have minimum payouts. Google AdSense won't pay you until you reach $100. Patreon has a $10 minimum payout using PayPal. A threshold of just $4 is actually very much on the low side. I genuinely don't understand how this is something to get upset over. It's comparable to what an artist used to make in royalties from a single CD sold. What's more surprising to me is that Spotify previously didn't have a minimum at all.
  - jwagenet 3y ago
    Yea, I don’t get it either. This makes sense as a spam reduction move. If an emerging artist wants to make money, you would probably be more successful performing live until you boost your numbers significantly.
  - unnamed76ri 3y ago
    You’re looking at it wrong. That $4 per song! What artist only releases one song ever? Spotify and other streaming platforms pay royalties to an artist’s distributor and that aggregate of royalties from all platforms gets paid out to the artist when they reach the distributor’s threshold. Spotify is making that money no longer exist at all for indie artists.
    - crazygringo 3y ago
      Ah sorry, I hadn't picked up on that -- thanks. But it still doesn't change the overall point at all. So if you've got 2 albums of 10 tracks each, then you need 1,000 listens of each album to reach a minimum payout of $80, which you've got an entire year to accumulate. So Spotify isn't on the low side -- it's comparable with AdSense's minimum payout of $100. But honestly, compared to the effort involved in producing an album, that's... nothing. $80 is not the difference between making or breaking your music career. It's under $7 a month. A slightly more expensive coffee. I just don't understand how that can be upsetting. If your streams on Spotify are that low, then you're doing it as a hobby anyways, for the love of it. Which is wonderful. But it isn't your source of income.
unnamed76ri 3y ago
Taking the news directly from Spotify? Try this for another perspective: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2024/01/11/spotify-stream-minimum-impact/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2024/01/11/spotify-stream-m...
- jwagenet 3y ago
  I listen to a lot of music under 1000 streams, artists with 10s to 100s of monthly listens. Based on the junk that makes it to my discover weekly or release radar, some big percent of that <1000 listen cohort is spam that’s ai generated or has erroneously added real artists as collaborators to get well positioned. I have a lot of respect for actual musicians trying to make money, but I am honestly ok with Spotify setting a threshold for payouts to divert that cash to real artists.

richrichardsson 3y ago

> Starting in early 2024, tracks must have reached at least 1,000 streams in the previous 12 months in order to generate recorded royalties. This will take my Spotify income from pitiful to non-existent. Fuck Spotify.

unnamed76ri 3y ago
As soon as this change was announced, I cancelled my Spotify subscription. I know it won’t mean much of anything to the overall number but at least in my case, they saved less than $10 in royalties at a cost of $132 in subscription fees.
- swozey 3y ago
  I tested getting off spotify last year, but the other apps were so bare bones and featureless. I tried most of the popular ones, Quboz, Tidal, Spotify, Apple music, youtube music, amazon music.. i think 1-2 others. Thankfully there's an app called soundiiz that for like $2-3 will sync all of your music app playlists/favs/etc to one another. ALL of them had absolutely useless/bad Android Auto/Carplay apps. I know at least half of them (quboz tidal for sure) didn't have a way to search in the car app. Quboz or Tidal didn't even display your subscribed albums/playlists. I forget exactly but I think I could only play their recommended stuff. Exacts are off here but I remember specifically sitting in my car with both of those apps wondering why I couldn't figure how to play my fav playlist or search for an artist. Then the social stuff. I share collab playlists with a few friends. Apples adding these feautures IIRC. Surely not important to most people but they really make the other apps just feel barebones. I like gamification, rewinds, badges, etc. The Carplay thing is the killer for me, though.
  - hedora 3y ago
    I haven't had many issues with Tidal's CarPlay support. I've only used it in rental cars (so cars that shipped mid to post pandemic) though. It definitely shows subscribed albums, etc. The one exception was that, on an older Toyota, it only showed the first dozen or so albums in my collection one time out of the dozen I drove the rental. Parking the car then coming back a few hours later fixed it.
crazygringo 3y ago
Spotify pays ~$0.004/stream. 1,000 streams is $4.00. That's a coffee. Lots of services for creators have minimum payouts. Google AdSense won't pay you until you reach $100. Patreon has a $10 minimum payout using PayPal. A threshold of just $4 is actually very much on the low side. I genuinely don't understand how this is something to get upset over. It's comparable to what an artist used to make in royalties from a single CD sold. What's more surprising to me is that Spotify previously didn't have a minimum at all.
- jwagenet 3y ago
  Yea, I don’t get it either. This makes sense as a spam reduction move. If an emerging artist wants to make money, you would probably be more successful performing live until you boost your numbers significantly.
- unnamed76ri 3y ago
  You’re looking at it wrong. That $4 per song! What artist only releases one song ever? Spotify and other streaming platforms pay royalties to an artist’s distributor and that aggregate of royalties from all platforms gets paid out to the artist when they reach the distributor’s threshold. Spotify is making that money no longer exist at all for indie artists.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    Ah sorry, I hadn't picked up on that -- thanks. But it still doesn't change the overall point at all. So if you've got 2 albums of 10 tracks each, then you need 1,000 listens of each album to reach a minimum payout of $80, which you've got an entire year to accumulate. So Spotify isn't on the low side -- it's comparable with AdSense's minimum payout of $100. But honestly, compared to the effort involved in producing an album, that's... nothing. $80 is not the difference between making or breaking your music career. It's under $7 a month. A slightly more expensive coffee. I just don't understand how that can be upsetting. If your streams on Spotify are that low, then you're doing it as a hobby anyways, for the love of it. Which is wonderful. But it isn't your source of income.

unnamed76ri 3y ago

Taking the news directly from Spotify? Try this for another perspective: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2024/01/11/spotify-stream-minimum-impact/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2024/01/11/spotify-stream-m...

jwagenet 3y ago
I listen to a lot of music under 1000 streams, artists with 10s to 100s of monthly listens. Based on the junk that makes it to my discover weekly or release radar, some big percent of that <1000 listen cohort is spam that’s ai generated or has erroneously added real artists as collaborators to get well positioned. I have a lot of respect for actual musicians trying to make money, but I am honestly ok with Spotify setting a threshold for payouts to divert that cash to real artists.