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How Spotify and Discover Weekly Earn Me $400/month

stevebenjamins.com

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Re: How Spotify and Discover Weekly Earn Me $400/month

#71

Post by CPLX »

DontGiveTwoFlux wrote: post #18

In college about 5 years ago, I heard a presentation from some recording industry people who worked at a studio. They saw Spotify as the reason their industry would still exist in five years. I think at the time total recording revenues were still declining, but the streaming growth was really picking up. Spotify has brilliantly convinced many people to spend $120 per year on music. The average CD-buyer spent much le…

> The average CD-buyer spent much less than that.

Citation needed

My understanding is that total spending on recorded music is way down from heights in the 90's. I could be wrong though.

Re: How Spotify and Discover Weekly Earn Me $400/month

#72

Post by erikschoster »

This is interesting anecdotally but for those trying to make a living from their music, I would argue direct subscriptions seem far more stable and useful as part of your income. For example bandcamp or something like patreon, where I can subscribe to some artist I really like for $1-3/month or something and get access to everything they do. That's the closest model I've seen for non-huge-industry folks making a living from recordings -- which is of course usually supplemented by touring and a dozen other hustles. (for example mastering or teaching)

IMHO overall it doesn't feel like the situation has changed all that much in this era though. The same huge institutions remain magnets for a handful of lottery-winners (big labels, funded orchestras, etc) and everyone else is scraping by in myriad ways, though the ways are a bit different now.

Re: How Spotify and Discover Weekly Earn Me $400/month

#73

Post by dyeje »

driverdan wrote: post #53

This is a great counterpoint to people complaining about how little they make from Spotify. One thing that stuck out to me: > Because you can only submit one song, it’s best to space out releases. That way you can have ten singles considered by Spotify editors— rather than one single from an album for an entire year. I've wondered why so many artists were releasing a ton of singles on Spotify. This seems like a gamea…

Is it though? The author makes $400 a month, that's not even close to being a living. Mis metrics and revenue match up with my own experience with Spotify and they are very difficult to achieve. Now imagine that your musical project has 4 people instead of 1, now it's $100 a month per person. Except just kidding, because you'll need to pump all that money (and personal money from members) back into the band to keep things growing.

Re: How Spotify and Discover Weekly Earn Me $400/month

#74

Post by mapleoin »

A killer feature for spotify would be if they would tell each individual user how much they are contributing to each individual artist they've listened to. I think that could encourage users to subscribe to spotify and listen more to small artists. I suppose this too could be gamed, but the benefit might outweigh the risk.

Re: How Spotify and Discover Weekly Earn Me $400/month

#75

Post by nwsm »

mapleoin wrote: post #74

A killer feature for spotify would be if they would tell each individual user how much they are contributing to each individual artist they've listened to. I think that could encourage users to subscribe to spotify and listen more to small artists. I suppose this too could be gamed, but the benefit might outweigh the risk.

Like in dollars? I think it would just turn users off seeing how little artists make off streaming.

Re: How Spotify and Discover Weekly Earn Me $400/month

#76

Post by WhompingWindows »

I'm glad Spotify has opened up as a new revenue stream for musicians but it's a laughably small amount of revenue for how much work it is to compose/record hours of original music. Live music is still king for making money.

As an amateur pianist myself, $400 isn't a lot of money per month. I can pull $100/hr in an afternoon at a classy gig playing Classical/Jazz/Folk/Pop, you do that once per week and you're well over the $400 total for the month, without all the long history of recording/mixing/mastering/promoting that OP has done. This has allowed me to focus much more heavily on my musicianship and expanding my repertoire, rather than on recording tech/marketing. My ceiling for income is much lower this way-- I can't/don't want to find enough gigs to solely perform...but that's why I code to pay the bills.

Re: How Spotify and Discover Weekly Earn Me $400/month

#77

Post by siruncledrew »

Fogest wrote: post #58

I used to love the Discover Weekly, but now that I use Spotify most days when going to the gym any of my auto generated playlists like discover weekly kinda suck. I usually put on random gym playlists like the popular "Beast Mode" one. While I like this music for working out, I definitely don't normally enjoy listening to rap, hip hop, and EDM music however this is what most workout music consists of. I wish I could…

I have the same problem. Most of the time I am skipping through >50% of Discover Weekly because the songs are poor recommendations for my tastes or are awfully sequenced in a playlist from separate listening habits (e.g. EDM-AlternativeRock-LoFi).

Finding new music on Spotify could use a lot of improvement, especially for mobile. After a while, it seems like I'm just listening to the same playlists over and over.

Re: How Spotify and Discover Weekly Earn Me $400/month

#78

Post by Signez »

Fogest wrote: post #58

I used to love the Discover Weekly, but now that I use Spotify most days when going to the gym any of my auto generated playlists like discover weekly kinda suck. I usually put on random gym playlists like the popular "Beast Mode" one. While I like this music for working out, I definitely don't normally enjoy listening to rap, hip hop, and EDM music however this is what most workout music consists of. I wish I could…

I don't know if it could really help in your case, but the "Private session mode" available in Spotify's menu could help. In my limited understanding on how things work, I would expect songs listened in that mode not to be used by their awesome recommendation engine.

Re: How Spotify and Discover Weekly Earn Me $400/month

#79

Post by swinglock »

Fogest wrote: post #58

I used to love the Discover Weekly, but now that I use Spotify most days when going to the gym any of my auto generated playlists like discover weekly kinda suck. I usually put on random gym playlists like the popular "Beast Mode" one. While I like this music for working out, I definitely don't normally enjoy listening to rap, hip hop, and EDM music however this is what most workout music consists of. I wish I could…

It's not conveniently placed but there is a way.

https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/the_basics/how-...

Then there's the Daily Mix playlists that partly addresses this issue. Ideally you would find that there's one Daily Mix with your gym type songs and up to five others with other genres you listen to. But it's as much for discovery of new music so it doesn't fully fix the problem when that's the goal.

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