holy fuck spotify scam batman

  On 1/23/2021 at 11:51 PM, thawkins said:

I wonder what the hell sort of label contracts are cool with accepting 50 bucks for a million listens. At least from the article it seems to say that he directly got some receipt from the service.

I agree though all this sounds sketchy as fuck.

the artists get fucked, not necessarily the labels. in the other thread some one (prob dcom) shared some details about how labels accepted trash deals in exchange for spotify shares. the artist makes the product but everyone else gets rich distributing it. great stuff, we love this.

According to a current British inquiry, label cuts average ~40% to the artist's ~15%. Numan's label involvements are a mishmash but I assume one of the major acts have taken control over the online distribution. I hadn't heard of the Spotify shares deal thing. What a brilliantly diabolical way to circumvent the matter further. The Payola is literally their leverage as a continued and oppressively successful corporation. I feel sick.

  On 1/23/2021 at 9:44 PM, chim said:

Doesn't that have something to do with his label contracts? 

Responding to the report of Numan's statement with above seems to be coming from the perspective that some label contracts are good whilst others are not.

The music industry has always screwed over artists. Spotify have just figured out a way to "legitimise" music piracy in the hearts and minds of literally everyone, whilst raking in all the money for themselves.

• Labels see it as a way to get some revenue from something that, up until about 15 years ago, was regarded as the end of their business.
• Listeners see it as a cheap and easy way to get access to all the music they could ever want.
• Artists feel like that must have their music available on there, otherwise they're invisible.

Fairly recently, someone involved in "the industry" in Liverpool was vehemently advocating for and defending Spotify as a platform for expanding your audience. Everyone I know who releases music came back at this person, rightfully stating that the amount of money they pay to distribution services such as DistroKid literally exceeds the amount of revenue they get back from Spotify. It just isn't worth it for many artists to be on Spotify.

bandcamp rules

dead internet theory is post-idm af

the next ekt comp should function as sonic weaponary, with trax specifically designed to fuck up the spotifAI

  On 1/24/2021 at 12:43 PM, oscillik said:

It just isn't worth it for many artists to be on Spotify.

It's probably true that it does not make monetary sense, but it is a kind of a way to get your music out there so that there is a nonzero change someone will listen to it.

I.e. when you have a person in real life asking "hey where can I listen to your music" and they already happen to have Spotify on their phone, they can easily find you and hit the follow button so they can check you out later. The same is true for YouTube and Bandcamp of course, but Spotify is quite popular (also Apple Music I guess), so it helps to be on those platforms.

I have personally bought several vinyls direct from the artist thanks to having heard them on YouTube so even though you may not make your money through Spotify or another platform, having your stuff on there may translate to real sales through other means.

  On 1/24/2021 at 5:14 PM, thawkins said:

It's probably true that it does not make monetary sense, but it is a kind of a way to get your music out there so that there is a nonzero change someone will listen to it.

I.e. when you have a person in real life asking "hey where can I listen to your music" and they already happen to have Spotify on their phone, they can easily find you and hit the follow button so they can check you out later. The same is true for YouTube and Bandcamp of course, but Spotify is quite popular (also Apple Music I guess), so it helps to be on those platforms.

I have personally bought several vinyls direct from the artist thanks to having heard them on YouTube so even though you may not make your money through Spotify or another platform, having your stuff on there may translate to real sales through other means.

Expand  

I'm not sure if you realise it, but your post has literally just proven the apathy I have been talking about.

In the experience of the majority of the people I know who make music and have it up on Spotify, the "exposure" they receive through being on Spotify is negligable, yet they're paying dues to distribution companies for the amazing reward of…negligable increase in listeners. You said "having your stuff on there may translate to real sales through other means". There is a fucking huge emphasis on the word may.

And for some people, that isn't good enough to be paying more than what you're actually earning on the platform.

As far as I'm concerned, the only reason Spotify is being pushed by these so-called knowledgable industry types is because of payola. My musician friends and acquaintences get more exposure from live performances and Twitter

  On 1/24/2021 at 6:04 PM, oscillik said:

I'm not sure if you realise it, but your post has literally just proven the apathy I have been talking about.

In the experience of the majority of the people I know who make music and have it up on Spotify, the "exposure" they receive through being on Spotify is negligable, yet they're paying dues to distribution companies for the amazing reward of…negligable increase in listeners. You said "having your stuff on there may translate to real sales through other means". There is a fucking huge emphasis on the word may.

And for some people, that isn't good enough to be paying more than what you're actually earning on the platform.

As far as I'm concerned, the only reason Spotify is being pushed by these so-called knowledgable industry types is because of payola. My musician friends and acquaintences get more exposure from live performances and Twitter

Expand  

Well what's an artist to do? Sit on their stuff, never post it on the popular platforms that people use for listening? You can rail against copyright and The Industry as much as you want: the end of the day you are still eagerly waiting for a royalty check from them.

Let's put it into perspective that you are talking about 20 bucks a year for Distrokid, which will get ALL your albums on 20 something services, including Spofify/iTunes/Youtube/Amazon. This price is worth it even if you treat this just as a way to upload your music somewhere and share to your friends.

I am not arguing that industry people are pushing Spotify because they get kickbacks or are just useful idiots. This stuff should be relentlessly called out as much as possible, but go ahead name a better way to spend those 20 bucks a year.

You're not getting it. I give up. Have a good evening m8.

  On 1/24/2021 at 6:31 PM, oscillik said:

You're not getting it. I give up. Have a good evening m8.

Not sure what is there to get. All popular streaming platforms are bad, but there is no real way around it because they are the only players in town.

At the same time, if you can't imagine how it might be good for artists if people can listen to their stuff on Spotify to help them decide if they want to pay for a concert ticket then yeah sure it will never make sense to pay 20 bucks to Distrokid.

  On 1/24/2021 at 7:05 PM, thawkins said:

All popular streaming platforms are bad, but there is no real way around it because they are the only players in town.

‘the only restaurant that delivers to me serves nothing but half dead armadillos and shredded newspapers, it sucks to eat that every day but what else am i going to do?’

speaking personally (not saying this is how anyone else should think) it's been a long time since i've had any aspiration to make it online, in the sense of developing any sort of an audience or making a profit. to that end the two primary reasons i could conceive for wanting to get music out there (beyond the more mundane reasons of wanting safer cloud storage, or sharing it with actual friends who know you as a person rather than as a producer) would be either

A. an artistic statement on the medium itself - ie there'd be something about the way in which the music is distributed online which would reveal previously unconscious aspects of the medium itself, its affects on consciousness/media perception/social interaction etc

B. a political statement, ie doing something with the intention of subverting the current power structure of the internet or society more broadly. tbh i see this being done more affectively by memes generally, rather than by individual named content producers (although obviously there can be a big overlap)

Again I'm not saying that putting stuff out there for 20th century reasons (ie building an audience, getting people to come to a show etc) are invalid reasons. but i do this that the media landscape is in a (probably century long) process of transformation which will eventually neccessitate entirely new conceptions of what it means to be an artist, an audience, a creator, a consumer, what media is etc etc

  On 1/24/2021 at 6:50 AM, chim said:

According to a current British inquiry, label cuts average ~40% to the artist's ~15%. Numan's label involvements are a mishmash but I assume one of the major acts have taken control over the online distribution. I hadn't heard of the Spotify shares deal thing. What a brilliantly diabolical way to circumvent the matter further. The Payola is literally their leverage as a continued and oppressively successful corporation. I feel sick.

Historically, successful artists usually got more like 5% or less but I have  feeling that's 15% of a smaller amount of profit.

Still beats being someone like Elmore James and making all of your money posthumously for Jimmy Page.

EDIT: point being, the music business has always, always, always been utter shit for artists even when it isn't being a literal criminal enterprise.

EDIT2: and business in general.

What benefits does Distrokid offer that someone like Soundrop doesn't? I use Soundrop and they take a cut of my income, which makes sense as I don't make much cash off streaming. There are no upfront costs so I'm never out of pocket. Obviously if somehow my music starts getting a lot of traction and my Soundrop fees end up well above £20 a year then I'd move to a different model, but for those who aren't even recouping that much then surely it's a better approach?

  On 1/26/2021 at 12:55 PM, purlieu said:

What benefits does Distrokid offer that someone like Soundrop doesn't? I use Soundrop and they take a cut of my income, which makes sense as I don't make much cash off streaming. There are no upfront costs so I'm never out of pocket. Obviously if somehow my music starts getting a lot of traction and my Soundrop fees end up well above £20 a year then I'd move to a different model, but for those who aren't even recouping that much then surely it's a better approach?

Distrokid claims (not sure actually) not to take any cut, but there have been reports of some 'processing fees'. I guess they just were the first to do this thing, now that there is competition it's probable that something else exists that is better.

I plan to switch off Distrokid to Soundcloud Repost soon, because nobody listens to my stuff anyway and I am already paying for the Pro Unlimited plan (which includes Repost).

When you thought they couldn't get worse....

"New Spotify Patent Involves Monitoring Users’ Speech to Recommend Music

The streaming platform is interested in extracting data points like emotional state, gender, age, and accent to hone its recommendations"

https://pitchfork.com/news/new-spotify-patent-involves-monitoring-users-speech-to-recommend-music/

Relevant:

with my seagull homies we roll in to mcdonalds parkin lot, tunes blarin on the whip someone put on spotafry