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'Death to Spotify': the DIY movement to get artists and fans to quit the app

130 points by mitchbob 1y ago

jncfhnb 1y ago
Always tilted by the megastars that pretend to be part of the protest when in fact their asymmetrical comp is a large part of why small musicians get such as a low payout
- itopaloglu83 1y ago
  It’s almost like they’re funneling wealth from masses to a few superstars. One might be a paid subscriber and only listen a few small musicians, and yet majority of their money would go to the superstars and almost none to the musicians they listen to.
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    What you are describing is not a subscription service, but the "label/artist" relationship. If you remove streaming services from the equation, this exact same system crops up with precisely the same RIAA middlemen. It's why we call it "the music industry" now; rightsholders get the ultimate say.
    - itopaloglu83 1y ago
      Though with a record label, the sales of small musicians do not actively go to the superstars, they may receive a higher percentage of their sales but not the money from small musicians. I’m not supporting music labels, but Spotify is not a good company either.
- whiplash451 1y ago
  It’s not like superstars are responsible for other artists not becoming one. The whole system follows a brutal power law induced by network effects and engagement feedback loops.
  - jncfhnb 1y ago
    Superstars demanding a greater share of revenue than their share of playtime is directly responsible for lower payouts, however.
hnspammers 1y ago
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kogasa240p 1y ago
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- dewey 1y ago
  Of course they pay the artists / musicians, why do you think there’s music on that service.
  - Alupis 1y ago
    People often mistakenly believe artists could/should be paid significantly more per listen, ignoring the huge costs of streaming distribution as well as the global scale/reach/discovery these platforms offer smaller and indie artists. People don't buy music anymore, outside of a few niche environments. In the day of at-home music production, music has become a commodity. The few artists that do "make it big" are rewarded appropriately.
bko 1y ago
Call me naive, but can't an artist just refuse to be listed on Spotify? No meetings, groups, boycotts necessary. If an artist feels like the payout isn't high enough, they can just exclude their catalog from the app. And if they don't own their own catalog, then that's a decision they made knowingly and they gave up their right to control where it gets hosted. If they got exploited or didn't know, then they should take it up with their agent, whoever was advising them or the person that owns the rights. They can also try to buy their rights back. Has nothing to do w/ Spotify. This anger against Spotify and other streaming services just strikes me as misdirected. Spotify pays out ~70% of its revenue to music rights holders, which strikes me as reasonable, although I have nothing really to base this on. But I feel like the people behind this kind of movement expect a much bigger payout, so even if Spotify paid out 100% of their revenue to rights holders, they would still think its too low.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- ricardobeat 1y ago
  If only it was that simple. Record labels own the whole pipeline and you're unlikely to make it if you don't submit to signing away your rights and the majority of your royalties [1]. Even the best selling artist on the entire planet at one point (Taylor Swift) had to put up a fight to regain control of her records [2]. Even if they could pull their music from the platform, it's like shooting yourself in the foot. You lose most of the exposure that will lead to actual revenue: physical albums and show tickets. [1] https://informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/ https://informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-ar... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Swift_masters_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Swift_masters_dispute
  - tensor 1y ago
    In edm most large artists now just have their own label. It’s easier than ever to do. Even a single individual can do it easily. There are a lot of decent distribution services that will get your music on all the services. I’m sure the big labels are still valuable for advertising but after you’ve grown enough I can’t understand why you wouldn’t just have your own label.
cm2012 1y ago
This is so stupid. Spotify pays out over 50% of its revenue to small artists, at a much higher rate than radio did. They dont have much pricing power or margin either.
- jmclnx 1y ago
  If this is true, I agree with you. I have never used Spotify, do users get to choose their favorites on that platform ?
- LargeWu 1y ago
  Artists are underpaid because subscription fees are too low to provide adequate payouts. There just isn't enough money to go around. Everybody wants artists to get better payouts but nobody would pay the $200 a month subscription fee it would require.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > Everybody wants artists to get better payouts but nobody would pay the $200 a month subscription fee it would require This sounds very much like everyone does not want artists to get better payouts. (At least not all artists.)
    - CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
      No, it sounds like many people want artists to get better payouts, but not if it means they have to pay more, which really isn't the same thing. If more than 50% of what listeners end up paying for the subscription goes to the artists, I guess they'd prefer that, rather than the money going elsewhere.
  - whiplash451 1y ago
    > $200 a month subscription fee Where did you get this arbitrary number from? And no, it doesn’t look like everyone wants artists to be paid more. What everyone wants is cheap access to a large catalog.
  - 1y ago
ZeroConcerns 1y ago
Yeah, sure, I get it, Spotify==Big Tech==Bad, self-hosting is nirvana, et cetera. But, one simple question: how are the Creators (especially those not signed with a Big Bad Label) expecting to be paid in this marvelous post-Spotify era? Because, fact: like 80% of revenue (if not more, and the rest is pretty much evenly divided between YouTube, the remains of iTunes, and some niche portals like Beatport) flows through them these days. And, for all Spotify's flaws, that revenue stream might be something to have a pretty good plan to replace, and I don't see any hints at that in the linked article?
- manquer 1y ago
  Are non big label musicians even making any money on Spotify given the notoriously low per stream rate that Spotify pays out ? Even if 80%[1] of all money is going through large platforms like Spotify and YouTube, the real question is how much % of indie money is going through them. The best bet for semi professional or indie today is to do live performances, sell merch or have fans on Patreon or get viral on TikTok and so on, nobody is living on Spotify money. Platforms are more used to grow audiences and improve discoverability than make any real money as an indie artist. --- [1] Big platforms combined may very well be 80%, however I doubt Spotify alone is 80% of the even the English market, let alone global where it is just many times pretty much only YouTube or some regional player bundling services. [2] iTunes may not be significant, Apple Music and Amazon Music are. They have enormous distribution due to install base and Prime, and they sell a ton of bundled deals with telecom and other packages. Then there is TikTok which is huge for music too There are other players in streaming like Satellite with Sirius XM or traditional FM/AM Radio who also pay for streaming music. The organized music market is pretty vast, Spotify hardly controls 80% of anything.
  - izacus 1y ago
    Yes, they're absolutely making money there and probably more than they did in the era of CDs.
- aeonfox 1y ago
  Distribution and discovery existed in the before times, it’s just that they didn’t take such an obscene slice of the pie. Bandcamp and iTunes at least give you the option to purchase music outright. The artist gets a more substantial cut and that music is yours to keep. To your point though, streaming allows people to listen to a greater variety of music for little cost, and I’ve discovered music through other peoples playlists that have been really enjoyable. I think most people want to have a larger library without paying more and that’s a significant part of the problem.
Spunkie 1y ago
Ya no, not gonna work. Even I, a dyed in the wool pirate at heart, pays for Spotify. They are simply too convenient, too functional, too well priced. Like 99.98% of the music I've ever looked up is there, even pirate sites don't have that much coverage.
- beanjuiceII 1y ago
  yep same, and have family plan, everyone loves it
RickJWagner 1y ago
I love Spotify. I use the free version and put up with the ads. I make playlists of my favorite songs, sometimes Spotify suggests great music I didn’t know about. It’s superior to any other way of listening to music, for me. I’ll keep using it ‘till something better comes along. Hooray for progress!
mihaaly 1y ago
I feel that the algorithmic listeners problem will not be solved with this. Nothing to solve there actualy. That's how some paople are, and that is all fine. They will not become more engaged in conscious music listening. And those paying attention can use it the way they need, seek out music they like, not leaning into the lukewarm stream of suggestions. I used Spotify a lot until I quit many years ago not because of not having my freedom to listen (their approach of lossless drove me away). I use Tidal, it is a piece of sh*t, the player is made by unattentive stupid children with no clue, the single worst piece of software I had the unfortune to use, but the access to the catalogue and the reasonable price I got keeps me there still. I can browse, discover, build up my own beautiful playlists that I listen to for months so the individual palylists become the sound of an era in my life. If there was a different service from musicians themselves with rich database - must contain lukewarm lemonade too! as sometimes it is lukewarm lemonade day, also oldies and goldies - and not too high prices but a better player (not hard to do), I'd switch in an instant never looking back. Just like I did with Spotify (for a different reason).
velomash 1y ago
I recently switched to TIDAL and got off Spotify. Better music quality. Better payouts to the artists. Great playlists. I don't miss Spotify at all.
- CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
  > Better music quality Doesn't Spotify do lossless now? How can it get better than lossless? > Great playlists That sounds like a skill issue if I've ever heard one.
  - zenethian 1y ago
    It's literally brand new for lossless to come to Spotify. Also that's a really rude comment. Curated playlists are great for those of us who aren't regularly exposed to new music in any other way.
  - ufocia 1y ago
    What does lossless really mean. Sounds like an amorphous buzz word. It's only lossless from the master/copy they receive.
  - whazor 1y ago
    Well, what I found is that 'music quality' is not the same as how compressed a song is. Tidal tends to have different mastered versions of album's that do give a different listening experience.
- zenethian 1y ago
  Yeah I've used TIDAL for 8 years now and I've loved it. The fact that they pay artists better and even have a system for paying the artist you listened to the most each month is pretty neat.
- bberrry 1y ago
  Tidal is using a revenue share model, just like Spotify. A higher per-steam payout just means users on Tidal are listening to less music than Spotify users.
ra0x3 1y ago
If you want to migrate off Spotify but are worried you’ll lose your library, feel free to checkout my tool Libx (libx.stream). It’s a tool to export your entire Spotify library to a nice and neat CSV file
- CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
  I like minimalistic websites, but I feel like that's too far. No information what so ever about anything at all, just a "Login with Spotify" button. What happens once you're logged in? No one knows.
  - parineum 1y ago
    I suppose there's a lesson in there that they could write an explanation of what happens when you log in on the page but you'd still have no actual knowledge of what happens. No explanation is honest.
- seneca 1y ago
  This doesn't appear to work. It exports a csv with only headers.
joduplessis 1y ago
> “I find it pretty lame that we put our heart and soul into something and then just put it online for free,” Rose says. How absolutely entitled. Almost 20 years ago I would have killed for a distribution platform as slick as what there is today. Is it a generational thing maybe? I don't know, but just because you create doesn't obligate people to consume.
- CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
  It's also kind of dismissive of the entire FOSS ecosystem which basically runs on hearts and souls you can git clone for free. But I think that's more about lack of knowledge rather than anything else.
  - whycome 1y ago
    It's also dismissive of a million different types of art and expression that don't have the benefit of this type of platform. Art and its value is always intertwined with artist. Is art diminished when it's known that the artist did it only to get paid? I want universal basic income just so the most artistic and interesting of us can go and try cool innovative stuff without fear of death.
    - ares623 1y ago
      IMO open source thrived is also driven by the ZIRP era boom. Lots of engineers who made bank and lots of free time (basically self manifested UBI) were free to take risks and create things without worrying about the basics. It is the most successful UBI experiment. Now that the gravy train is over, I suspect open source projects will suffer and will increasingly be at the mercy of corporate funding or VCs.
      - ufocia 1y ago
        I see more companies supporting FOSS. Maybe not through direct funding, but with code contributions. You do need a bit of both.
    - 1y ago
NoboruWataya 1y ago
Interesting, though I wonder what they propose as an alternative for allowing discoverability. Do they just want platforms that give artists better terms, like Bandcamp? Or are they proposing moving away from online platforms altogether, in which case I guess we would go back to radio to find new stuff? As a consumer, my primary objection to streaming platforms is that you don't own any of the stuff you pay for. That's obviously different to these artists' main objection, but if the solution they propose (whether it's switching to Bandcamp or something else) also addresses that concern I could get on board with it (and will always have sympathy for artists who want a bigger cut vs the middle man). I do still pay for Spotify despite that objection. I find it provides just enough value to justify the cost. I have found it good for discoverability and, unlike other streaming services, Spotify gives me access to pretty much any music I might like to listen to. (Others with more niche tastes might disagree.)
- nialv7 1y ago
  we used to have very good discoverability platforms, e.g. https://last.fm https://last.fm . then streaming came along and destroyed everything.
  - stagalooo 1y ago
    Last.fm and similar platforms provide intentional discoverability for people who care enough to put in the work. Only radio and Spotify have provided the unintentional discoverability that I crave.
    - darepublic 1y ago
      Re: unintentional discovery it's college radio and YouTube for me
    - Gigachad 1y ago
      I think having some intentionality and work in discovery is probably the answer to the wave of AI slop songs filling up streaming services which rely on an algorithm just shoving the song in front of people who aren’t paying attention.
vkou 1y ago
As a very casual music listener, I have spent ~5x more on music through subscription services than I have before they existed. If they went away tomorrow, that spend would not magically be transferred to a more artist-friendly form or platform. I'd just not pay for new music. There's already more than enough old music I own/free music than I would ever need. I can't imagine I'm an outlier.
- nzeid 1y ago
  This is kind of moot. If the artists literally can't afford to make music, they have no incentive to maintain relationships with any kind of distribution platform. So everyone will be listening to a lot more "old music", not just you.
  - StackRanker3000 1y ago
    Is this actually happening though? I don’t have actual numbers and would be open to be proven wrong, but my impression is that there are more people making music than ever (barriers to entry have been lowered) and more people making a living off their music and related enterprises such as touring and merch than ever (markets are globalized and contain more people with more disposable income) I’m not sure why people believe that artists selling copies of their music being a viable source of income in itself is something that’s necessarily critical and/or a moral imperative to preserve. Humans made music for thousands of years before technology made that possible, and after some decades technology has now made that particular business model less lucrative (it’s now very easy and basically free to share essentially unlimited copies of a piece of music, which has tanked the monetary value of such copies) As long as music is being made, I don’t think it’s a disaster for society that some artists’ preferred way of making money isn’t so viable anymore (if it ever was - what percentage of acts were ever making real bank selling albums?)
    - nzeid 1y ago
      I think my point my have been lost somewhere around how much making music actually costs. Yes, anyone can _do_ music at little cost at any time. But there is a real cost to make "good music" and it isn't in sheer musicianship or equipment - it's also in time. I've never done music full time but I've been in several studio and live sessions and I assure you it's exhausting and time consuming.
cindyllm 1y ago
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dsign 1y ago
This seems like a good time for musicians to start doing their own distribution. Not sure about the technical aspect; but I guess it's still possible to sell albums in iTunes? Or some other app? The problem with Spotify, Apple Music's streaming and YouTube music's algorithm is that it wants you to keep listening and it will feed you whatever it guesses you will like. Which means they will feed listeners AI-generated slop if they can get away with it. So I guess it's time for independent musicians who can prove their humanity to just put a damn ad for their music in front of potential listeners and try the direct sales routes. Mind-you, a non-AI generated ad, created by actual human filmmakers with AI-free tools and workflows. Of course, there may be a second problem, and that's the youth who can enjoy happy music are broke. Middle-agers are too busy caring for kids and for the elderly, and thus naturally depressed and running in coping mechanisms, and that's before coming to our ossified musical tastes. And anybody older than that must use their running-out time wisely and only shop for funerary tunes. Woe if the arts should depend on our patronage.
curvaturearth 1y ago
I like Spotify but it has got a bit bloated with audiobooks, podcasts and features like videos that I do not care for. I also find Spotify makes finding and listening to albums less intuitive, it feels like everything is setup for passive listening to algorithmically generated playlists. That's fine and it is how I listen to music sometimes, particularly for music discovery. But I use other services and means to have a library because Spotify's UI for it isn't great. I can't help but think that's intentional for some reason. I will also throw some points Spotify's way for having half decent support for API clients, decent hardware support (that is for consumers, not sure what the experience is like for a developer). I have an NFC card system setup for albums and playlists so I can have a limited physical library. This uses Spotify's libraries because the support is good. For no fuss music Tidal has been good, but it certainly has fewer artists.
- phainopepla2 1y ago
  > it feels like everything is setup for passive listening to algorithmically generated playlists Even worse, algorithmically generated playlists of algorithmically generated music
- ghusto 1y ago
  > I use other services and means to have a library because Spotify's UI for it isn't great. I can't help but think that's intentional for some reason It is intentional. That kind of poor UX takes _designing_.
- phatfish 1y ago
  I have no trouble ignoring the auto-generated playlists and finding the album. In my experience their recommendations pretty terrible, always a step behind my current taste. The "song radio" playlists are useful though, you get a decent list of songs in a similar style when you are in that mood. My new music discovery is almost entirely outside of Spotify, mostly online radio. I have listened to Audiobooks so no issue with that myself, it was a sweetener when they started ramping the price after COVID. Handy for young kids as an TV alternative as well. The desktop client UX has gotten much better over the last ~2 years. Nice compact layout options and really responsive scrolling artists with massive catalogues like in classical. It's the first time I've felt it matches their pre-Electron native UI client from 2012-ish.
eagerpace 1y ago
I'm old enough to remember physical media, mp3s, Napster and Spotify. As a consumer, I'm very happy with it. Low monthly price, everything I could ever want. Im sure it's not ideal, but considering the evolution, it's pretty amazing. Is blockchain the next evolution for tracking media ownership, access rights, and consumption? I hate "blockchain" being the fix for everything, but seems logical.
wyre 1y ago
If the boycott was actually about artist payouts it would have happened a lot sooner. The real reason for the boycott is Daniel Ek being on the board of Helsing, a company developing AI military strike drones (AI murder drones, to put it emotionally). This is the man that become a billionaire off the backs of hard-working musicians and used that money to invest in a company furthering the militarization of AI. Morally unconscionable for a lot of people.
- veeti 1y ago
  As we all know, the bloody Russo-Ukrainian war remains ongoing, and Ukrainian civilians are targeted by hundreds of Russian drones on a weekly basis. Helsing is a defense contractor working for the Ukrainian and European defense sector. So let me flip this argument on its head: Americans! Do you want to help defeat fascism in Europe? Are you tired of your tech companies capitulating to Trump? Do you really want your music to support the IDF in Gaza? There is something very easy you can do: simply switch to Spotify. Cancel your Apple, Amazon and Google subscriptions. Pull your music from their platforms.
- phatfish 1y ago
  I'm pretty sure all the people claiming moral superiority will be begging for more AI drones (and blaming their government for not having them) when an enemy starts targeting where they live. It is also disingenuous for millionaire artists to take this stand while they have the means to sit a war out in their mates bunker in New Zealand, and we die for them.
chrislo 1y ago
As a counter-point to streaming services and to try and provide an alternative, I'm busy building https://jam.coop https://jam.coop - the intention is to be a music store owned collectively by artists and the people who build it. I think it's really important to explore alternatives in this space.
metalman 1y ago
gigging putting the energy into LIVE music and getting a few bucks, and a case of beer to split back stage is going to be a bigger pay day than what many ,many thoudands ever get from shitif6, oops,spottyfeh, sorry guitarer here,clumsy without strings attached, anyway the web is chock full of tunes so good it's a job to give some small percentage of that a proper listen, and it seems that most of it is stashed somewhere that it just plays when you hit the button, click, music, click music, oh! look a guitar
albertgoeswoof 1y ago
My favourite band (king gizzard) removed all their music from Spotify. I took the opportunity to switch to navidrome with tailscale and started obtaining music via bandcamp and ripping old CDs. It works much better than I expected, even transcoding from flac to mp3 on the fly from my phone app. Investing the Spotify fee every month into my own music collection is a great investment, and it has meant that I am actually listening to the music and not just playing the same songs off a Spotify playlist every now and then again
periodjet 1y ago
“Death to Spotify”? Really? That’s the phrasing these people are going with?
righthand 1y ago
Something I’ve heard said within the last 5 years and I find true in practice: Nobody (not enough) pays for music, and streaming made that even more true. Most of the music I don’t intentionally listen to, I instead hear is often out in public (or outside my control): grocery store, restaurant, hotel lobby, subway station, park, neighbors speaker, person on a bike, etc. A lot of this music is often either the radio or ad-based streaming platforms. The only people who pay for music are either die hard fans or people who have been guilted into paying for a streaming subscription. Often times even die hard fans/enthusiasts will purchase an vinyl LP or only use the streaming purchase to offset the pirating they do for high quality formats or rarity reasons. Most listeners of music are not paying for it; if you are…you’re a sucker.* * I have a Tidal subscription
flowerthoughts 1y ago
I remember when Sony wanted to launch their own music streaming service. Naturally only with their catalogue. They're large in Japan, but really small elsewhere. Didn't go well. This has been coming up every other year. The problem is that everyone trying to build a platform wants $10. I'm not paying for two such services, because the marginal benefit over the first is maybe $2. Perhaps the solution is regulation, I dunno. But keeping marginal costs down needs to be part of the solution. Or it'll be Netflix all over where movie studios started doing the Sony thing, and (some) customers went back to pirating.
- Server6 1y ago
  I mean, I have three services now. Spotify, Amazon Music (comes with prime), and YouTube Music (comes with YouTube Prime ad free streaming). If either Amazon or YouTube improved the experience, developed dedicated Music apps, and added Tesla integration I'd dump Spotify tomorrow.
  - munksbeer 1y ago
    They do have dedicated apps don't they? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.youtube.music&hl=en_GB https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.mp3&hl=en_GB https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.mp3...
deleted 1y ago
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ergocoder 1y ago
I've moved back to MP3 + piracy because I've realized I simply listen to the same set of songs over and over again anyway. Now nobody including the billionaires will get my money out of me!
- ufocia 1y ago
  The RIAA might
nikole9696 1y ago
As a user, I love Spotify. I would never discover new music in my more esoteric genres without it, and I would definitely never own ALL the artists I listen to. I'm certainly not going back to having to rip my own mp3s; I don't even own the devices to do that. My car doesn't have a CD player. So whether it's licensed or owned, it's digital for me. My tastes change too. I don't listen to all the same artists I did 5 years ago. I don't WANT to own my music. I won't even have the same tastes in another 5 years. Sure I have some stuff I still like, but for the most part, I get new thrills and ditch older ones. I'm sorry the artists get screwed over, but this needs to be worked out between them and Spotify and whatever music labels are in the picture.

130 points by mitchbob 1y ago

Always tilted by the megastars that pretend to be part of the protest when in fact their asymmetrical comp is a large part of why small musicians get such as a low payout

itopaloglu83 1y ago
It’s almost like they’re funneling wealth from masses to a few superstars. One might be a paid subscriber and only listen a few small musicians, and yet majority of their money would go to the superstars and almost none to the musicians they listen to.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  What you are describing is not a subscription service, but the "label/artist" relationship. If you remove streaming services from the equation, this exact same system crops up with precisely the same RIAA middlemen. It's why we call it "the music industry" now; rightsholders get the ultimate say.
  - itopaloglu83 1y ago
    Though with a record label, the sales of small musicians do not actively go to the superstars, they may receive a higher percentage of their sales but not the money from small musicians. I’m not supporting music labels, but Spotify is not a good company either.
whiplash451 1y ago
It’s not like superstars are responsible for other artists not becoming one. The whole system follows a brutal power law induced by network effects and engagement feedback loops.
- jncfhnb 1y ago
  Superstars demanding a greater share of revenue than their share of playtime is directly responsible for lower payouts, however.

hnspammers 1y ago

[flagged]

kogasa240p 1y ago

[flagged]

dewey 1y ago
Of course they pay the artists / musicians, why do you think there’s music on that service.
- Alupis 1y ago
  People often mistakenly believe artists could/should be paid significantly more per listen, ignoring the huge costs of streaming distribution as well as the global scale/reach/discovery these platforms offer smaller and indie artists. People don't buy music anymore, outside of a few niche environments. In the day of at-home music production, music has become a commodity. The few artists that do "make it big" are rewarded appropriately.

bko 1y ago

Call me naive, but can't an artist just refuse to be listed on Spotify? No meetings, groups, boycotts necessary. If an artist feels like the payout isn't high enough, they can just exclude their catalog from the app. And if they don't own their own catalog, then that's a decision they made knowingly and they gave up their right to control where it gets hosted. If they got exploited or didn't know, then they should take it up with their agent, whoever was advising them or the person that owns the rights. They can also try to buy their rights back. Has nothing to do w/ Spotify. This anger against Spotify and other streaming services just strikes me as misdirected. Spotify pays out ~70% of its revenue to music rights holders, which strikes me as reasonable, although I have nothing really to base this on. But I feel like the people behind this kind of movement expect a much bigger payout, so even if Spotify paid out 100% of their revenue to rights holders, they would still think its too low.

deleted 1y ago
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ricardobeat 1y ago
If only it was that simple. Record labels own the whole pipeline and you're unlikely to make it if you don't submit to signing away your rights and the majority of your royalties [1]. Even the best selling artist on the entire planet at one point (Taylor Swift) had to put up a fight to regain control of her records [2]. Even if they could pull their music from the platform, it's like shooting yourself in the foot. You lose most of the exposure that will lead to actual revenue: physical albums and show tickets. [1] https://informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/ https://informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-ar... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Swift_masters_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Swift_masters_dispute
- tensor 1y ago
  In edm most large artists now just have their own label. It’s easier than ever to do. Even a single individual can do it easily. There are a lot of decent distribution services that will get your music on all the services. I’m sure the big labels are still valuable for advertising but after you’ve grown enough I can’t understand why you wouldn’t just have your own label.

cm2012 1y ago

This is so stupid. Spotify pays out over 50% of its revenue to small artists, at a much higher rate than radio did. They dont have much pricing power or margin either.

jmclnx 1y ago
If this is true, I agree with you. I have never used Spotify, do users get to choose their favorites on that platform ?
LargeWu 1y ago
Artists are underpaid because subscription fees are too low to provide adequate payouts. There just isn't enough money to go around. Everybody wants artists to get better payouts but nobody would pay the $200 a month subscription fee it would require.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Everybody wants artists to get better payouts but nobody would pay the $200 a month subscription fee it would require This sounds very much like everyone does not want artists to get better payouts. (At least not all artists.)
  - CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
    No, it sounds like many people want artists to get better payouts, but not if it means they have to pay more, which really isn't the same thing. If more than 50% of what listeners end up paying for the subscription goes to the artists, I guess they'd prefer that, rather than the money going elsewhere.
- whiplash451 1y ago
  > $200 a month subscription fee Where did you get this arbitrary number from? And no, it doesn’t look like everyone wants artists to be paid more. What everyone wants is cheap access to a large catalog.
- 1y ago

ZeroConcerns 1y ago

Yeah, sure, I get it, Spotify==Big Tech==Bad, self-hosting is nirvana, et cetera. But, one simple question: how are the Creators (especially those not signed with a Big Bad Label) expecting to be paid in this marvelous post-Spotify era? Because, fact: like 80% of revenue (if not more, and the rest is pretty much evenly divided between YouTube, the remains of iTunes, and some niche portals like Beatport) flows through them these days. And, for all Spotify's flaws, that revenue stream might be something to have a pretty good plan to replace, and I don't see any hints at that in the linked article?

manquer 1y ago
Are non big label musicians even making any money on Spotify given the notoriously low per stream rate that Spotify pays out ? Even if 80%[1] of all money is going through large platforms like Spotify and YouTube, the real question is how much % of indie money is going through them. The best bet for semi professional or indie today is to do live performances, sell merch or have fans on Patreon or get viral on TikTok and so on, nobody is living on Spotify money. Platforms are more used to grow audiences and improve discoverability than make any real money as an indie artist. --- [1] Big platforms combined may very well be 80%, however I doubt Spotify alone is 80% of the even the English market, let alone global where it is just many times pretty much only YouTube or some regional player bundling services. [2] iTunes may not be significant, Apple Music and Amazon Music are. They have enormous distribution due to install base and Prime, and they sell a ton of bundled deals with telecom and other packages. Then there is TikTok which is huge for music too There are other players in streaming like Satellite with Sirius XM or traditional FM/AM Radio who also pay for streaming music. The organized music market is pretty vast, Spotify hardly controls 80% of anything.
- izacus 1y ago
  Yes, they're absolutely making money there and probably more than they did in the era of CDs.
aeonfox 1y ago
Distribution and discovery existed in the before times, it’s just that they didn’t take such an obscene slice of the pie. Bandcamp and iTunes at least give you the option to purchase music outright. The artist gets a more substantial cut and that music is yours to keep. To your point though, streaming allows people to listen to a greater variety of music for little cost, and I’ve discovered music through other peoples playlists that have been really enjoyable. I think most people want to have a larger library without paying more and that’s a significant part of the problem.

Spunkie 1y ago

Ya no, not gonna work. Even I, a dyed in the wool pirate at heart, pays for Spotify. They are simply too convenient, too functional, too well priced. Like 99.98% of the music I've ever looked up is there, even pirate sites don't have that much coverage.

beanjuiceII 1y ago
yep same, and have family plan, everyone loves it

RickJWagner 1y ago

I love Spotify. I use the free version and put up with the ads. I make playlists of my favorite songs, sometimes Spotify suggests great music I didn’t know about. It’s superior to any other way of listening to music, for me. I’ll keep using it ‘till something better comes along. Hooray for progress!

mihaaly 1y ago

I feel that the algorithmic listeners problem will not be solved with this. Nothing to solve there actualy. That's how some paople are, and that is all fine. They will not become more engaged in conscious music listening. And those paying attention can use it the way they need, seek out music they like, not leaning into the lukewarm stream of suggestions. I used Spotify a lot until I quit many years ago not because of not having my freedom to listen (their approach of lossless drove me away). I use Tidal, it is a piece of sh*t, the player is made by unattentive stupid children with no clue, the single worst piece of software I had the unfortune to use, but the access to the catalogue and the reasonable price I got keeps me there still. I can browse, discover, build up my own beautiful playlists that I listen to for months so the individual palylists become the sound of an era in my life. If there was a different service from musicians themselves with rich database - must contain lukewarm lemonade too! as sometimes it is lukewarm lemonade day, also oldies and goldies - and not too high prices but a better player (not hard to do), I'd switch in an instant never looking back. Just like I did with Spotify (for a different reason).

velomash 1y ago

I recently switched to TIDAL and got off Spotify. Better music quality. Better payouts to the artists. Great playlists. I don't miss Spotify at all.

CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
> Better music quality Doesn't Spotify do lossless now? How can it get better than lossless? > Great playlists That sounds like a skill issue if I've ever heard one.
- zenethian 1y ago
  It's literally brand new for lossless to come to Spotify. Also that's a really rude comment. Curated playlists are great for those of us who aren't regularly exposed to new music in any other way.
- ufocia 1y ago
  What does lossless really mean. Sounds like an amorphous buzz word. It's only lossless from the master/copy they receive.
- whazor 1y ago
  Well, what I found is that 'music quality' is not the same as how compressed a song is. Tidal tends to have different mastered versions of album's that do give a different listening experience.
zenethian 1y ago
Yeah I've used TIDAL for 8 years now and I've loved it. The fact that they pay artists better and even have a system for paying the artist you listened to the most each month is pretty neat.
bberrry 1y ago
Tidal is using a revenue share model, just like Spotify. A higher per-steam payout just means users on Tidal are listening to less music than Spotify users.

ra0x3 1y ago

If you want to migrate off Spotify but are worried you’ll lose your library, feel free to checkout my tool Libx (libx.stream). It’s a tool to export your entire Spotify library to a nice and neat CSV file

CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
I like minimalistic websites, but I feel like that's too far. No information what so ever about anything at all, just a "Login with Spotify" button. What happens once you're logged in? No one knows.
- parineum 1y ago
  I suppose there's a lesson in there that they could write an explanation of what happens when you log in on the page but you'd still have no actual knowledge of what happens. No explanation is honest.
seneca 1y ago
This doesn't appear to work. It exports a csv with only headers.

joduplessis 1y ago

> “I find it pretty lame that we put our heart and soul into something and then just put it online for free,” Rose says. How absolutely entitled. Almost 20 years ago I would have killed for a distribution platform as slick as what there is today. Is it a generational thing maybe? I don't know, but just because you create doesn't obligate people to consume.

CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
It's also kind of dismissive of the entire FOSS ecosystem which basically runs on hearts and souls you can git clone for free. But I think that's more about lack of knowledge rather than anything else.
- whycome 1y ago
  It's also dismissive of a million different types of art and expression that don't have the benefit of this type of platform. Art and its value is always intertwined with artist. Is art diminished when it's known that the artist did it only to get paid? I want universal basic income just so the most artistic and interesting of us can go and try cool innovative stuff without fear of death.
  - ares623 1y ago
    IMO open source thrived is also driven by the ZIRP era boom. Lots of engineers who made bank and lots of free time (basically self manifested UBI) were free to take risks and create things without worrying about the basics. It is the most successful UBI experiment. Now that the gravy train is over, I suspect open source projects will suffer and will increasingly be at the mercy of corporate funding or VCs.
    - ufocia 1y ago
      I see more companies supporting FOSS. Maybe not through direct funding, but with code contributions. You do need a bit of both.
  - 1y ago

NoboruWataya 1y ago

Interesting, though I wonder what they propose as an alternative for allowing discoverability. Do they just want platforms that give artists better terms, like Bandcamp? Or are they proposing moving away from online platforms altogether, in which case I guess we would go back to radio to find new stuff? As a consumer, my primary objection to streaming platforms is that you don't own any of the stuff you pay for. That's obviously different to these artists' main objection, but if the solution they propose (whether it's switching to Bandcamp or something else) also addresses that concern I could get on board with it (and will always have sympathy for artists who want a bigger cut vs the middle man). I do still pay for Spotify despite that objection. I find it provides just enough value to justify the cost. I have found it good for discoverability and, unlike other streaming services, Spotify gives me access to pretty much any music I might like to listen to. (Others with more niche tastes might disagree.)

nialv7 1y ago
we used to have very good discoverability platforms, e.g. https://last.fm https://last.fm . then streaming came along and destroyed everything.
- stagalooo 1y ago
  Last.fm and similar platforms provide intentional discoverability for people who care enough to put in the work. Only radio and Spotify have provided the unintentional discoverability that I crave.
  - darepublic 1y ago
    Re: unintentional discovery it's college radio and YouTube for me
  - Gigachad 1y ago
    I think having some intentionality and work in discovery is probably the answer to the wave of AI slop songs filling up streaming services which rely on an algorithm just shoving the song in front of people who aren’t paying attention.

vkou 1y ago

As a very casual music listener, I have spent ~5x more on music through subscription services than I have before they existed. If they went away tomorrow, that spend would not magically be transferred to a more artist-friendly form or platform. I'd just not pay for new music. There's already more than enough old music I own/free music than I would ever need. I can't imagine I'm an outlier.

nzeid 1y ago
This is kind of moot. If the artists literally can't afford to make music, they have no incentive to maintain relationships with any kind of distribution platform. So everyone will be listening to a lot more "old music", not just you.
- StackRanker3000 1y ago
  Is this actually happening though? I don’t have actual numbers and would be open to be proven wrong, but my impression is that there are more people making music than ever (barriers to entry have been lowered) and more people making a living off their music and related enterprises such as touring and merch than ever (markets are globalized and contain more people with more disposable income) I’m not sure why people believe that artists selling copies of their music being a viable source of income in itself is something that’s necessarily critical and/or a moral imperative to preserve. Humans made music for thousands of years before technology made that possible, and after some decades technology has now made that particular business model less lucrative (it’s now very easy and basically free to share essentially unlimited copies of a piece of music, which has tanked the monetary value of such copies) As long as music is being made, I don’t think it’s a disaster for society that some artists’ preferred way of making money isn’t so viable anymore (if it ever was - what percentage of acts were ever making real bank selling albums?)
  - nzeid 1y ago
    I think my point my have been lost somewhere around how much making music actually costs. Yes, anyone can _do_ music at little cost at any time. But there is a real cost to make "good music" and it isn't in sheer musicianship or equipment - it's also in time. I've never done music full time but I've been in several studio and live sessions and I assure you it's exhausting and time consuming.

cindyllm 1y ago

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dsign 1y ago

This seems like a good time for musicians to start doing their own distribution. Not sure about the technical aspect; but I guess it's still possible to sell albums in iTunes? Or some other app? The problem with Spotify, Apple Music's streaming and YouTube music's algorithm is that it wants you to keep listening and it will feed you whatever it guesses you will like. Which means they will feed listeners AI-generated slop if they can get away with it. So I guess it's time for independent musicians who can prove their humanity to just put a damn ad for their music in front of potential listeners and try the direct sales routes. Mind-you, a non-AI generated ad, created by actual human filmmakers with AI-free tools and workflows. Of course, there may be a second problem, and that's the youth who can enjoy happy music are broke. Middle-agers are too busy caring for kids and for the elderly, and thus naturally depressed and running in coping mechanisms, and that's before coming to our ossified musical tastes. And anybody older than that must use their running-out time wisely and only shop for funerary tunes. Woe if the arts should depend on our patronage.

curvaturearth 1y ago

I like Spotify but it has got a bit bloated with audiobooks, podcasts and features like videos that I do not care for. I also find Spotify makes finding and listening to albums less intuitive, it feels like everything is setup for passive listening to algorithmically generated playlists. That's fine and it is how I listen to music sometimes, particularly for music discovery. But I use other services and means to have a library because Spotify's UI for it isn't great. I can't help but think that's intentional for some reason. I will also throw some points Spotify's way for having half decent support for API clients, decent hardware support (that is for consumers, not sure what the experience is like for a developer). I have an NFC card system setup for albums and playlists so I can have a limited physical library. This uses Spotify's libraries because the support is good. For no fuss music Tidal has been good, but it certainly has fewer artists.

phainopepla2 1y ago
> it feels like everything is setup for passive listening to algorithmically generated playlists Even worse, algorithmically generated playlists of algorithmically generated music
ghusto 1y ago
> I use other services and means to have a library because Spotify's UI for it isn't great. I can't help but think that's intentional for some reason It is intentional. That kind of poor UX takes _designing_.
phatfish 1y ago
I have no trouble ignoring the auto-generated playlists and finding the album. In my experience their recommendations pretty terrible, always a step behind my current taste. The "song radio" playlists are useful though, you get a decent list of songs in a similar style when you are in that mood. My new music discovery is almost entirely outside of Spotify, mostly online radio. I have listened to Audiobooks so no issue with that myself, it was a sweetener when they started ramping the price after COVID. Handy for young kids as an TV alternative as well. The desktop client UX has gotten much better over the last ~2 years. Nice compact layout options and really responsive scrolling artists with massive catalogues like in classical. It's the first time I've felt it matches their pre-Electron native UI client from 2012-ish.

eagerpace 1y ago

I'm old enough to remember physical media, mp3s, Napster and Spotify. As a consumer, I'm very happy with it. Low monthly price, everything I could ever want. Im sure it's not ideal, but considering the evolution, it's pretty amazing. Is blockchain the next evolution for tracking media ownership, access rights, and consumption? I hate "blockchain" being the fix for everything, but seems logical.

wyre 1y ago

If the boycott was actually about artist payouts it would have happened a lot sooner. The real reason for the boycott is Daniel Ek being on the board of Helsing, a company developing AI military strike drones (AI murder drones, to put it emotionally). This is the man that become a billionaire off the backs of hard-working musicians and used that money to invest in a company furthering the militarization of AI. Morally unconscionable for a lot of people.

veeti 1y ago
As we all know, the bloody Russo-Ukrainian war remains ongoing, and Ukrainian civilians are targeted by hundreds of Russian drones on a weekly basis. Helsing is a defense contractor working for the Ukrainian and European defense sector. So let me flip this argument on its head: Americans! Do you want to help defeat fascism in Europe? Are you tired of your tech companies capitulating to Trump? Do you really want your music to support the IDF in Gaza? There is something very easy you can do: simply switch to Spotify. Cancel your Apple, Amazon and Google subscriptions. Pull your music from their platforms.
phatfish 1y ago
I'm pretty sure all the people claiming moral superiority will be begging for more AI drones (and blaming their government for not having them) when an enemy starts targeting where they live. It is also disingenuous for millionaire artists to take this stand while they have the means to sit a war out in their mates bunker in New Zealand, and we die for them.

chrislo 1y ago

As a counter-point to streaming services and to try and provide an alternative, I'm busy building https://jam.coop https://jam.coop - the intention is to be a music store owned collectively by artists and the people who build it. I think it's really important to explore alternatives in this space.

metalman 1y ago

gigging putting the energy into LIVE music and getting a few bucks, and a case of beer to split back stage is going to be a bigger pay day than what many ,many thoudands ever get from shitif6, oops,spottyfeh, sorry guitarer here,clumsy without strings attached, anyway the web is chock full of tunes so good it's a job to give some small percentage of that a proper listen, and it seems that most of it is stashed somewhere that it just plays when you hit the button, click, music, click music, oh! look a guitar

albertgoeswoof 1y ago

My favourite band (king gizzard) removed all their music from Spotify. I took the opportunity to switch to navidrome with tailscale and started obtaining music via bandcamp and ripping old CDs. It works much better than I expected, even transcoding from flac to mp3 on the fly from my phone app. Investing the Spotify fee every month into my own music collection is a great investment, and it has meant that I am actually listening to the music and not just playing the same songs off a Spotify playlist every now and then again

periodjet 1y ago

“Death to Spotify”? Really? That’s the phrasing these people are going with?

righthand 1y ago

Something I’ve heard said within the last 5 years and I find true in practice: Nobody (not enough) pays for music, and streaming made that even more true. Most of the music I don’t intentionally listen to, I instead hear is often out in public (or outside my control): grocery store, restaurant, hotel lobby, subway station, park, neighbors speaker, person on a bike, etc. A lot of this music is often either the radio or ad-based streaming platforms. The only people who pay for music are either die hard fans or people who have been guilted into paying for a streaming subscription. Often times even die hard fans/enthusiasts will purchase an vinyl LP or only use the streaming purchase to offset the pirating they do for high quality formats or rarity reasons. Most listeners of music are not paying for it; if you are…you’re a sucker.* * I have a Tidal subscription

flowerthoughts 1y ago

I remember when Sony wanted to launch their own music streaming service. Naturally only with their catalogue. They're large in Japan, but really small elsewhere. Didn't go well. This has been coming up every other year. The problem is that everyone trying to build a platform wants $10. I'm not paying for two such services, because the marginal benefit over the first is maybe $2. Perhaps the solution is regulation, I dunno. But keeping marginal costs down needs to be part of the solution. Or it'll be Netflix all over where movie studios started doing the Sony thing, and (some) customers went back to pirating.

Server6 1y ago
I mean, I have three services now. Spotify, Amazon Music (comes with prime), and YouTube Music (comes with YouTube Prime ad free streaming). If either Amazon or YouTube improved the experience, developed dedicated Music apps, and added Tesla integration I'd dump Spotify tomorrow.
- munksbeer 1y ago
  They do have dedicated apps don't they? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.youtube.music&hl=en_GB https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.mp3&hl=en_GB https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.mp3...

deleted 1y ago

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ergocoder 1y ago

I've moved back to MP3 + piracy because I've realized I simply listen to the same set of songs over and over again anyway. Now nobody including the billionaires will get my money out of me!

ufocia 1y ago
The RIAA might

nikole9696 1y ago

As a user, I love Spotify. I would never discover new music in my more esoteric genres without it, and I would definitely never own ALL the artists I listen to. I'm certainly not going back to having to rip my own mp3s; I don't even own the devices to do that. My car doesn't have a CD player. So whether it's licensed or owned, it's digital for me. My tastes change too. I don't listen to all the same artists I did 5 years ago. I don't WANT to own my music. I won't even have the same tastes in another 5 years. Sure I have some stuff I still like, but for the most part, I get new thrills and ditch older ones. I'm sorry the artists get screwed over, but this needs to be worked out between them and Spotify and whatever music labels are in the picture.