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I don’t know much about how music licensing works. But would this cause smaller musicians to decide to pull their stuff off Spotify? I listen to a lot of music

I don’t know much about how music licensing works. But would this cause smaller musicians to decide to pull their stuff off Spotify? I listen to a lot of music on Spotify. And some of it is from smaller indie artists. Not a huge amount, but I’ve definitely listened to songs that are in that <1000 plays category, and for some undiscovered artists that’s a good amount of their library. It surprises me how much of my Spotify library is no longer available. There’s at least a few dozen songs in my Spotify library that have been taken off the platform. It shows up in the list greyed out. A lot of good songs too. As much as I love Spotify and music streaming, it seems like the economics of it fundamentally doesn’t work and can’t work.

cranberryturkey 3y ago
Back to torrenting I guess. If I’m not mistaken snoop said he made 45k off 1 billion plays. Thats ridiculous
- reliablereason 3y ago
  That was apparently a track that was not his own, he was only a partial co author of that track.
- ansc 3y ago
  To be fair, that's because the label siphons the rest. Spotify pays $4 per 1000 streams.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - djxfade 3y ago
    Where do you get those numbers from? I'm a self published artist. I had 150k streams on Spotify last year. I only earned roughly $450. There's no label or other middleman here taking a cut. Spotify is just cheap.
    - Martinussen 3y ago
      It's somewhere around $3.5/1k streams - you're not exactly super far off their estimate either, though. It varies a bit based on (listener, or artist?) regions too, I believe.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      Snoop's number was $0.045 per thousand plays. ansc's number was $4 per thousand plays. Your number is $3 per thousand plays. It sounds like you basically agree with ansc. While Spotify might be cheap, that cheapness is not the problem Snoop is having.
    - auggierose 3y ago
      That's not too far off, is it? 150 * $4 = $600 ≈ $450.
    - ssl-3 3y ago
      They say: $4 / 1,000 = $0.004 per streamed track. You say: $450 / 150,000 = $0.003 per streamed track. The two sets of numbers don't seem so far apart that the discrepancy cannot be explained by rounding errors.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jstummbillig 3y ago
  Ah. Music income numbers, where the details are not actually details. He did say that[1], but the statement is misleading (and has little to do with Spotify). A very rough global average per-stream payout is often estimated at around $0.003 to $0.005. That brings the payout for 1 billion streams between $3,000,000 and $5,000,000. Let's go with the lower end. This is actual money paid out by Spotify for 1 billion streams, as in, a bank transfer of $3,000,000. How do you get from there to $45,000? - As with any legacy artist, the record label gets most (maybe 70%). Why that is, oh well. It's less shocking if you think of the label as an employer and how little an average employee gets compared to what they produce. Do you need an employer? Absolutely not. Do you need a record label? Absolutely not. Anyway, a 70% cut would leave the artist with $900,000. - Expenses: There are various costs associated with producing, distributing, and promoting music, hotel costs. Let your imagination run wild. Safe to say: This is a black hole, depending on how you want the process to look. If Snoop wants to sit in a big studio for months, he pays prices, for month, but that's not required to make music. Renting a high end studio on end is lifestyle. Sure, it's an expense, but it's like complaining about your profit while driving a Porsche. Awkward. Let's assume a 20% deduction here, reducing the revenue to $720,000. - Focus on Publishing Royalties: Publishing royalties are just one part of the total royalties an artist earns. So there's quite a bit of double accounting going on if you want to pretend that the above costs are all deducted from your Spotify income. If we assume publishing royalties make up only 10% of the total, that brings the figure down to $72,000. - tldr: Snoop is living the big life, confused about money, and then proceeds to confuse others about money. [1] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/snoop-dogg-talks-about-how-much-he-earned-from-1-billion-spotify-streams/articleshow/105865552.cms?from=mdr https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/s...
  - tibu 3y ago
    If the ownership is with the publishing studio then AFAIK they pay the producing, distribution and promotion. It is an investment into the artist, so they shouldn't have these costs.
  - addicted 3y ago
    A record label is probably much more of a VC than it is an employer. The business has changed since streaming and self publishing but the labels took bets on artists and gave them expensive recording studios and marketing dollars, gave them some basic money, and in return took the majority of rights to the first few albums. They also knew that if the artist truly made it big they would likely go to a different label where they could get better terms or start their own where they’d keep all the money after the initial contract which drove their side higher. The record label model clearly doesn’t work as well in modern days but it was successful for good reasons at the time it really flourished.
- Daz1 3y ago
  Ah yes performative postering by people who 'really care' about artists getting paid.
- Mashimo 3y ago
  > Back to torrenting I guess. Or just buy it on bandcamp friday and give it all to the artists :)
- amelius 3y ago
  I hear taylor swift is a billionaire. Is she on Spotify?
jzzskijj 3y ago
> It surprises me how much of my Spotify library is no longer available. There’s at least a few dozen songs in my Spotify library that have been taken off the platform. It shows up in the list greyed out. A lot of good songs too. This probably has more to do with publishers and licensing contracts than artists pulling their music off from platforms. Sometimes even bigger artists' albums disappear when publisher is sold or goes out from the business. Or the licensing contract's period runs out. As sad it is, many artists don't own the rights to their music, and if the rights owner is defunct, then there are missing albums or even discographies.
- snailmailman 3y ago
  It’s infuriating. Spotify for instance had some Spotify exclusive “DJ mixes” that were all an hour of well-mixed playlists. Spotify got artists to curate them and would have “XYZ’s DJ Mix”. They were perfect for seamless music listening at the gym. No breaks between songs. Non stop music. I listened to them all the time. But one day a few months ago they all just vanished. Every one. I had added several to my Spotify library. For a bit they were playlists of grayed out songs. And then the playlists themselves vanished too. This content was all Spotify exclusive- the music is just gone now. It’s not available elsewhere. It was all “mixed” versions of songs with smooth transitions in an out. Luckily I had added most of the original songs to other Spotify playlists that I had. But still, the mixes themselves are gone.
  - input_sh 3y ago
    You should know: Apple Music filled that niche to perfection. Hands down, better than it ever was on Spotify. More choices, easier discovery, more collaboration with external brands, etc. https://music.apple.com/us/curator/apple-music-dj-mixes/1441811365 https://music.apple.com/us/curator/apple-music-dj-mixes/1441...
    - snailmailman 3y ago
      Interesting! I’ll definitely take a look. I’ve been meaning to try Apple Music.
kredd 3y ago
I’m not sure how it can affect those artists given it’s like $0.5 for 1k streams. I mean, I guess if they have 100 songs all at like 999 streams, that’s about $50 loss/year if they never pass that threshold. It sucks obviously, but not enough to for artists to pull out. My understanding is they’re playing a cat-and-mouse game with auto generated content, that syphons away some percentage of the royalties.
- basisword 3y ago
  While it might not have a big impact on smaller artists financially, the idea of a multi billion dollar company deciding unilaterally to steal a few cents from you could be enough to drive you away.
  - lnxg33k1 3y ago
    Probably if being actively exploited by a multi billion company is a problem for them, it might be better for them to change dream.. or species
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >the idea of a multi billion dollar company deciding unilaterally to steal a few cents from you So, like all the rest of them?
- SSLy 3y ago
  I though labels job was to prevent content like that
  - whstl 3y ago
    Spotify allows people to self publish. Not to mention people can set up labels themselves, it's just a company like any other. I'm sure we don't want big labels being gatekeepers. They have their own set of problems, and make streaming even more difficult for everyone but very large artists/groups (and sometimes even for those, as they eat a big chunk of royalties).
realprimoh 3y ago
I use YouTube Premium 90% of the time now for this reason. All the remixes and other indie mixes that I listen to are on YouTube and YouTube has so much more that I find it a hard value proposition to beat.
- klausjensen 3y ago
  Slightly off topic, but where do you go to find this now?
- rchaud 3y ago
  Why compensate YT to listen to tracks they're not compensating the artists for?
atoav 3y ago
I am in a small and new band. In 2023 we earned roughly 500 Euros via Bandcamp (digital, physical and merch) 300 Euros selling merch on gigs 2000 Euros playing gigs 20 Cents on Spotify There is no monetary reason to be on spotify, the only reason we are on there is because fans asked.
- whstl 3y ago
  Similar experiences (but from a few years ago). Even people who have Spotify end up buying stuff in Bandcamp, anyway. I never had merch but had CDs, and sometimes people would buy two physical copies, one to gift. For me there was never any difference between Spotify and piracy.
  - Hoasi 3y ago
    Absolutely. I always buy music from artists to support them on Bandcamp. Spotify lets you discover bands that are little known, which is cool, but it's not a place that enables you to support those artists. Unfortunately, Bandcamp might also change since they are changing owners.
  - magicalhippo 3y ago
    I use Spotify because my SO wants it for podcasts and stuff and family subscription is just tad more, and it's in my car and similar which is convenient. I also buy the music I listen to a fair bit on Bandcamp or at concerts. As an example, last fall a song from a band came up in the randomized post-album "radio" on Spotify as I was driving, and I added the band to my favorites. A month ago Spotify notified me the band was playing in town, so I went and ended up buying several CDs, including from the warmup band as well. That said, I agree that Spotify should pay more to small artists. I really dislike that my money goes to Talor Swift and similar artists who have more than enough and that neither I nor my SO listen to.
    - whstl 3y ago
      Those are fair points, and I agree. I think I should have said that Spotify is the same as piracy from an artists POV. It's definitely not illegal for users, and it definitely helps with "exposure", but it's not really a platform for making real money with your music, except when it's listened to in massive quantities. For me, it's no different than putting a free album link in Instagram, or when Nine Inch Nails put it on PirateBay as a stunt...
TonyTrapp 3y ago
> But would this cause smaller musicians to decide to pull their stuff off Spotify? It's already happening. Even some artists which are above the limit pull out to show their support for smaller artists.
vvillena 3y ago
> There’s at least a few dozen songs in my Spotify library that have been taken off the platform. It shows up in the list greyed out. As infuriating as this is, it's the reason I still use Spotify. A music service that hides their catalog changes by subtly modifying my playlists is a no-go. Having the songs still appear lets me know, as it gives me the opportunity to find those songs elsewhere.
- junon 3y ago
  Yeah I have to admit, Spotify uses the least amount of cruddy dark patterns. Their model is very upfront about paying, so they have never nagged me for anything. Their interface isn't the best but it's consistent. These days there's a lot of worth in that, the bars been set quite low.
countmora 3y ago
I think royalties from <1k streams are basically nothing anyway. Giving up the ability to distribute your music for free and reach more people would be a terrible idea.
Sparkyte 3y ago
Or it would force small musicians to advertiwse more. Which is mutually beneficial to Spotify and the user. 1k is a relatively low number to hit at least they didn't set the demonizations level the same as other platforms.
easyThrowaway 3y ago
>I don’t know much about how music licensing works. But would this cause smaller musicians to decide to pull their stuff off Spotify? A lot of smaller artists don't have a say regarding licensing and distribution. They're usually managed by a local minor label, which in turn has specific agreements with bigger players (Columbia, UMG) once your music sells more than, let's say 50.000 copies and they need a partner to publish a release on more territories. A few artists also get their own label. For example, Peggy Gou tracks are usually released trough Dudu Records (Her own label) -> Ninja Tune -> XL Recordings, which is basically the same label that nowadays publishes Adele and Radiohead. Adele went even a step further, and her music is handled by Columbia Records for the US market. Until you reach this level of clout, you have very little direct control over your syncs and streaming rights in the "regular", Billboard-tracked, market.
kunley 3y ago
The mechanism there is kind of "dontcareism": yes, indie musicians will go away, but Spotify doesn't care, because ultimately this won't stop listeners from using it, over time most of them will forget what they really wanted
- pydry 3y ago
  They do care, they're just exploiting the indie musicians' lack of leverage. Together they matter a lot, they're just powerless individually. It's the same dynamic companies use against ununionized labor.
bashwizard 3y ago
I have a few thousand of streams per month and I make pennies from it. It's not like I care about being demonetized on spotify and losing a few pennies.
baby 3y ago
It’s not just about the money. It’s about the exposure! If you’re not a big band you’re making money from touring. More people listening and discovering you online = more people attending your tours and maybe reaching a threshold where you can make good money
- rchaud 3y ago
  It's the opposite. If you're not a big band, you usually cannot afford to go on tour. You have no manager, no contacts, you have to handle booking venues, lodging and transport yourself and hope that you can make some of it back in ticket sales. Most bands can't do this. They're not full time musicians, many have a day job. The ones that can are likely to come from rich families where they get time and money to pursue their passions, insteas of going to college and getting a job. Lana Del Ray, Grimes and Billy Eilish are some of the biggest artists of the 2010s, all of them grew up rich and connected.
  - baby 3y ago
    If not a tour you play in cafes and bars
richrichardsson 3y ago
I have roughly 25-30 tracks on Spotify. They send me a monthly email detailing the number of plays I received as an artist, and it averages around 300. So each track is getting around 10 plays per month. So none of them come anywhere close to the minimum threshold. I made around $10/year from Spotify plays, it's a pittance, but over all the streaming platforms I would get enough for a new plugin each year, this makes it "worthwhile". I absolutely will not allow Spotify to have content on their platform without reimbursement. The only people losing from this are the handful of fans who like my music.
- rohansingh 3y ago
  Article states "threshold of 1,000 plays in the preceding 12 months". Sounds like you're well over that, at around 3-4K plays per year.
  - richrichardsson 3y ago
    If I understand correctly it's each and every track needs 1k plays. As an artist over all my tracks I'd meet the threshold of 1k plays, but I don't think that's how it works.
    - rohansingh 3y ago
      Yeah, good point. This would probably be better received overall if it were a per-artist minimum rather than a per-track. On the other hand, that would make it pretty trivial for garbage/AI content distributors to circumvent.
      - richrichardsson 3y ago
        If they really cared about musicians they would have just left it at fining the aggregators for allowing crap on the platform. Just a tiny amount of KYC from the aggregators would solve the problem, but instead the aggregators were just as greedy as Spotify and were happy to allow any old shit in, so they could grab another slice of the pie.
danpalmer 3y ago
This is the reason I have stuck with Apple Music so long (and previously Google Play Music). I have a fair number of sentimental tracks that I've carried with me in my collection for decades which aren't on streaming sites. Spotify doesn't have an answer for this. Just don't listen to things outside the Spotify library. Apple Music (and GPM before it) lets me upload my own tracks and sync them between my devices.
- sanketskasar 3y ago
  Finally, someone else who feels the same pain as I do. Believe me you, I keep subscriptions of both Apple Music and Spotify. Apple Music for the better in general catalog and better syncing, Spotify for better discovery. I plan on creating a tool that would allow me to download all the songs in my library so that I don't lose on them when Spotify or AM decide to remove it from their catalog. Apple Music, at least, shows the track details but greys it out. Spotify simply shows an empty entry, which frustrates me even more.
  - dkn775 3y ago
    There’s an app called song shift that works 90% well. It’ll transfer the music over from one service to another. Also you can export Apple songs to CSV using desktop iTunes
    - danpalmer 3y ago
      That's solving a different problem. If you have a track that is not on any service, Apple Music will still accept the song file being added to your library and sync it for you. Spotify will not as it does not do cloud file sync.
keeperofdakeys 3y ago
And maybe it wasn't removed by their choice. Below is a video of someone who had all their Spotify music removed with no recourse, due to a claim the were buying streams. No recourse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVY7-Ti77UQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVY7-Ti77UQ
coldtea 3y ago
>I don’t know much about how music licensing works. But would this cause smaller musicians to decide to pull their stuff off Spotify? It might, but then there's this: (1) they're not making money already anyway (they'd be getting like $3 for 1000 streams before) (2) that's were the listeners are (not the listeners they have, since they don't have many to begin with, but the ones they wish to attract) (3) most of such a low number as 1000 streams are usually themselves, band members, friends, and family, plus whoever they sent a link to and gave it a short listen before moving on.

cranberryturkey 3y ago

Back to torrenting I guess. If I’m not mistaken snoop said he made 45k off 1 billion plays. Thats ridiculous

reliablereason 3y ago
That was apparently a track that was not his own, he was only a partial co author of that track.
ansc 3y ago
To be fair, that's because the label siphons the rest. Spotify pays $4 per 1000 streams.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- djxfade 3y ago
  Where do you get those numbers from? I'm a self published artist. I had 150k streams on Spotify last year. I only earned roughly $450. There's no label or other middleman here taking a cut. Spotify is just cheap.
  - Martinussen 3y ago
    It's somewhere around $3.5/1k streams - you're not exactly super far off their estimate either, though. It varies a bit based on (listener, or artist?) regions too, I believe.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    Snoop's number was $0.045 per thousand plays. ansc's number was $4 per thousand plays. Your number is $3 per thousand plays. It sounds like you basically agree with ansc. While Spotify might be cheap, that cheapness is not the problem Snoop is having.
  - auggierose 3y ago
    That's not too far off, is it? 150 * $4 = $600 ≈ $450.
  - ssl-3 3y ago
    They say: $4 / 1,000 = $0.004 per streamed track. You say: $450 / 150,000 = $0.003 per streamed track. The two sets of numbers don't seem so far apart that the discrepancy cannot be explained by rounding errors.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jstummbillig 3y ago
Ah. Music income numbers, where the details are not actually details. He did say that[1], but the statement is misleading (and has little to do with Spotify). A very rough global average per-stream payout is often estimated at around $0.003 to $0.005. That brings the payout for 1 billion streams between $3,000,000 and $5,000,000. Let's go with the lower end. This is actual money paid out by Spotify for 1 billion streams, as in, a bank transfer of $3,000,000. How do you get from there to $45,000? - As with any legacy artist, the record label gets most (maybe 70%). Why that is, oh well. It's less shocking if you think of the label as an employer and how little an average employee gets compared to what they produce. Do you need an employer? Absolutely not. Do you need a record label? Absolutely not. Anyway, a 70% cut would leave the artist with $900,000. - Expenses: There are various costs associated with producing, distributing, and promoting music, hotel costs. Let your imagination run wild. Safe to say: This is a black hole, depending on how you want the process to look. If Snoop wants to sit in a big studio for months, he pays prices, for month, but that's not required to make music. Renting a high end studio on end is lifestyle. Sure, it's an expense, but it's like complaining about your profit while driving a Porsche. Awkward. Let's assume a 20% deduction here, reducing the revenue to $720,000. - Focus on Publishing Royalties: Publishing royalties are just one part of the total royalties an artist earns. So there's quite a bit of double accounting going on if you want to pretend that the above costs are all deducted from your Spotify income. If we assume publishing royalties make up only 10% of the total, that brings the figure down to $72,000. - tldr: Snoop is living the big life, confused about money, and then proceeds to confuse others about money. [1] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/snoop-dogg-talks-about-how-much-he-earned-from-1-billion-spotify-streams/articleshow/105865552.cms?from=mdr https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/s...
- tibu 3y ago
  If the ownership is with the publishing studio then AFAIK they pay the producing, distribution and promotion. It is an investment into the artist, so they shouldn't have these costs.
- addicted 3y ago
  A record label is probably much more of a VC than it is an employer. The business has changed since streaming and self publishing but the labels took bets on artists and gave them expensive recording studios and marketing dollars, gave them some basic money, and in return took the majority of rights to the first few albums. They also knew that if the artist truly made it big they would likely go to a different label where they could get better terms or start their own where they’d keep all the money after the initial contract which drove their side higher. The record label model clearly doesn’t work as well in modern days but it was successful for good reasons at the time it really flourished.
Daz1 3y ago
Ah yes performative postering by people who 'really care' about artists getting paid.
Mashimo 3y ago
> Back to torrenting I guess. Or just buy it on bandcamp friday and give it all to the artists :)
amelius 3y ago
I hear taylor swift is a billionaire. Is she on Spotify?

jzzskijj 3y ago

> It surprises me how much of my Spotify library is no longer available. There’s at least a few dozen songs in my Spotify library that have been taken off the platform. It shows up in the list greyed out. A lot of good songs too. This probably has more to do with publishers and licensing contracts than artists pulling their music off from platforms. Sometimes even bigger artists' albums disappear when publisher is sold or goes out from the business. Or the licensing contract's period runs out. As sad it is, many artists don't own the rights to their music, and if the rights owner is defunct, then there are missing albums or even discographies.

snailmailman 3y ago
It’s infuriating. Spotify for instance had some Spotify exclusive “DJ mixes” that were all an hour of well-mixed playlists. Spotify got artists to curate them and would have “XYZ’s DJ Mix”. They were perfect for seamless music listening at the gym. No breaks between songs. Non stop music. I listened to them all the time. But one day a few months ago they all just vanished. Every one. I had added several to my Spotify library. For a bit they were playlists of grayed out songs. And then the playlists themselves vanished too. This content was all Spotify exclusive- the music is just gone now. It’s not available elsewhere. It was all “mixed” versions of songs with smooth transitions in an out. Luckily I had added most of the original songs to other Spotify playlists that I had. But still, the mixes themselves are gone.
- input_sh 3y ago
  You should know: Apple Music filled that niche to perfection. Hands down, better than it ever was on Spotify. More choices, easier discovery, more collaboration with external brands, etc. https://music.apple.com/us/curator/apple-music-dj-mixes/1441811365 https://music.apple.com/us/curator/apple-music-dj-mixes/1441...
  - snailmailman 3y ago
    Interesting! I’ll definitely take a look. I’ve been meaning to try Apple Music.

kredd 3y ago

I’m not sure how it can affect those artists given it’s like $0.5 for 1k streams. I mean, I guess if they have 100 songs all at like 999 streams, that’s about $50 loss/year if they never pass that threshold. It sucks obviously, but not enough to for artists to pull out. My understanding is they’re playing a cat-and-mouse game with auto generated content, that syphons away some percentage of the royalties.

basisword 3y ago
While it might not have a big impact on smaller artists financially, the idea of a multi billion dollar company deciding unilaterally to steal a few cents from you could be enough to drive you away.
- lnxg33k1 3y ago
  Probably if being actively exploited by a multi billion company is a problem for them, it might be better for them to change dream.. or species
- coldtea 3y ago
  >the idea of a multi billion dollar company deciding unilaterally to steal a few cents from you So, like all the rest of them?
SSLy 3y ago
I though labels job was to prevent content like that
- whstl 3y ago
  Spotify allows people to self publish. Not to mention people can set up labels themselves, it's just a company like any other. I'm sure we don't want big labels being gatekeepers. They have their own set of problems, and make streaming even more difficult for everyone but very large artists/groups (and sometimes even for those, as they eat a big chunk of royalties).

realprimoh 3y ago

I use YouTube Premium 90% of the time now for this reason. All the remixes and other indie mixes that I listen to are on YouTube and YouTube has so much more that I find it a hard value proposition to beat.

klausjensen 3y ago
Slightly off topic, but where do you go to find this now?
rchaud 3y ago
Why compensate YT to listen to tracks they're not compensating the artists for?

atoav 3y ago

I am in a small and new band. In 2023 we earned roughly 500 Euros via Bandcamp (digital, physical and merch) 300 Euros selling merch on gigs 2000 Euros playing gigs 20 Cents on Spotify There is no monetary reason to be on spotify, the only reason we are on there is because fans asked.

whstl 3y ago
Similar experiences (but from a few years ago). Even people who have Spotify end up buying stuff in Bandcamp, anyway. I never had merch but had CDs, and sometimes people would buy two physical copies, one to gift. For me there was never any difference between Spotify and piracy.
- Hoasi 3y ago
  Absolutely. I always buy music from artists to support them on Bandcamp. Spotify lets you discover bands that are little known, which is cool, but it's not a place that enables you to support those artists. Unfortunately, Bandcamp might also change since they are changing owners.
- magicalhippo 3y ago
  I use Spotify because my SO wants it for podcasts and stuff and family subscription is just tad more, and it's in my car and similar which is convenient. I also buy the music I listen to a fair bit on Bandcamp or at concerts. As an example, last fall a song from a band came up in the randomized post-album "radio" on Spotify as I was driving, and I added the band to my favorites. A month ago Spotify notified me the band was playing in town, so I went and ended up buying several CDs, including from the warmup band as well. That said, I agree that Spotify should pay more to small artists. I really dislike that my money goes to Talor Swift and similar artists who have more than enough and that neither I nor my SO listen to.
  - whstl 3y ago
    Those are fair points, and I agree. I think I should have said that Spotify is the same as piracy from an artists POV. It's definitely not illegal for users, and it definitely helps with "exposure", but it's not really a platform for making real money with your music, except when it's listened to in massive quantities. For me, it's no different than putting a free album link in Instagram, or when Nine Inch Nails put it on PirateBay as a stunt...

TonyTrapp 3y ago

> But would this cause smaller musicians to decide to pull their stuff off Spotify? It's already happening. Even some artists which are above the limit pull out to show their support for smaller artists.

vvillena 3y ago

> There’s at least a few dozen songs in my Spotify library that have been taken off the platform. It shows up in the list greyed out. As infuriating as this is, it's the reason I still use Spotify. A music service that hides their catalog changes by subtly modifying my playlists is a no-go. Having the songs still appear lets me know, as it gives me the opportunity to find those songs elsewhere.

junon 3y ago
Yeah I have to admit, Spotify uses the least amount of cruddy dark patterns. Their model is very upfront about paying, so they have never nagged me for anything. Their interface isn't the best but it's consistent. These days there's a lot of worth in that, the bars been set quite low.

countmora 3y ago

I think royalties from <1k streams are basically nothing anyway. Giving up the ability to distribute your music for free and reach more people would be a terrible idea.

Sparkyte 3y ago

Or it would force small musicians to advertiwse more. Which is mutually beneficial to Spotify and the user. 1k is a relatively low number to hit at least they didn't set the demonizations level the same as other platforms.

easyThrowaway 3y ago

>I don’t know much about how music licensing works. But would this cause smaller musicians to decide to pull their stuff off Spotify? A lot of smaller artists don't have a say regarding licensing and distribution. They're usually managed by a local minor label, which in turn has specific agreements with bigger players (Columbia, UMG) once your music sells more than, let's say 50.000 copies and they need a partner to publish a release on more territories. A few artists also get their own label. For example, Peggy Gou tracks are usually released trough Dudu Records (Her own label) -> Ninja Tune -> XL Recordings, which is basically the same label that nowadays publishes Adele and Radiohead. Adele went even a step further, and her music is handled by Columbia Records for the US market. Until you reach this level of clout, you have very little direct control over your syncs and streaming rights in the "regular", Billboard-tracked, market.

kunley 3y ago

The mechanism there is kind of "dontcareism": yes, indie musicians will go away, but Spotify doesn't care, because ultimately this won't stop listeners from using it, over time most of them will forget what they really wanted

pydry 3y ago
They do care, they're just exploiting the indie musicians' lack of leverage. Together they matter a lot, they're just powerless individually. It's the same dynamic companies use against ununionized labor.

bashwizard 3y ago

I have a few thousand of streams per month and I make pennies from it. It's not like I care about being demonetized on spotify and losing a few pennies.

baby 3y ago

It’s not just about the money. It’s about the exposure! If you’re not a big band you’re making money from touring. More people listening and discovering you online = more people attending your tours and maybe reaching a threshold where you can make good money

rchaud 3y ago
It's the opposite. If you're not a big band, you usually cannot afford to go on tour. You have no manager, no contacts, you have to handle booking venues, lodging and transport yourself and hope that you can make some of it back in ticket sales. Most bands can't do this. They're not full time musicians, many have a day job. The ones that can are likely to come from rich families where they get time and money to pursue their passions, insteas of going to college and getting a job. Lana Del Ray, Grimes and Billy Eilish are some of the biggest artists of the 2010s, all of them grew up rich and connected.
- baby 3y ago
  If not a tour you play in cafes and bars

richrichardsson 3y ago

I have roughly 25-30 tracks on Spotify. They send me a monthly email detailing the number of plays I received as an artist, and it averages around 300. So each track is getting around 10 plays per month. So none of them come anywhere close to the minimum threshold. I made around $10/year from Spotify plays, it's a pittance, but over all the streaming platforms I would get enough for a new plugin each year, this makes it "worthwhile". I absolutely will not allow Spotify to have content on their platform without reimbursement. The only people losing from this are the handful of fans who like my music.

rohansingh 3y ago
Article states "threshold of 1,000 plays in the preceding 12 months". Sounds like you're well over that, at around 3-4K plays per year.
- richrichardsson 3y ago
  If I understand correctly it's each and every track needs 1k plays. As an artist over all my tracks I'd meet the threshold of 1k plays, but I don't think that's how it works.
  - rohansingh 3y ago
    Yeah, good point. This would probably be better received overall if it were a per-artist minimum rather than a per-track. On the other hand, that would make it pretty trivial for garbage/AI content distributors to circumvent.
    - richrichardsson 3y ago
      If they really cared about musicians they would have just left it at fining the aggregators for allowing crap on the platform. Just a tiny amount of KYC from the aggregators would solve the problem, but instead the aggregators were just as greedy as Spotify and were happy to allow any old shit in, so they could grab another slice of the pie.

danpalmer 3y ago

This is the reason I have stuck with Apple Music so long (and previously Google Play Music). I have a fair number of sentimental tracks that I've carried with me in my collection for decades which aren't on streaming sites. Spotify doesn't have an answer for this. Just don't listen to things outside the Spotify library. Apple Music (and GPM before it) lets me upload my own tracks and sync them between my devices.

sanketskasar 3y ago
Finally, someone else who feels the same pain as I do. Believe me you, I keep subscriptions of both Apple Music and Spotify. Apple Music for the better in general catalog and better syncing, Spotify for better discovery. I plan on creating a tool that would allow me to download all the songs in my library so that I don't lose on them when Spotify or AM decide to remove it from their catalog. Apple Music, at least, shows the track details but greys it out. Spotify simply shows an empty entry, which frustrates me even more.
- dkn775 3y ago
  There’s an app called song shift that works 90% well. It’ll transfer the music over from one service to another. Also you can export Apple songs to CSV using desktop iTunes
  - danpalmer 3y ago
    That's solving a different problem. If you have a track that is not on any service, Apple Music will still accept the song file being added to your library and sync it for you. Spotify will not as it does not do cloud file sync.

keeperofdakeys 3y ago

And maybe it wasn't removed by their choice. Below is a video of someone who had all their Spotify music removed with no recourse, due to a claim the were buying streams. No recourse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVY7-Ti77UQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVY7-Ti77UQ

coldtea 3y ago

>I don’t know much about how music licensing works. But would this cause smaller musicians to decide to pull their stuff off Spotify? It might, but then there's this: (1) they're not making money already anyway (they'd be getting like $3 for 1000 streams before) (2) that's were the listeners are (not the listeners they have, since they don't have many to begin with, but the ones they wish to attract) (3) most of such a low number as 1000 streams are usually themselves, band members, friends, and family, plus whoever they sent a link to and gave it a short listen before moving on.