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Spotify shuts down direct music uploading for independent artists

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Re: Spotify shuts down direct music uploading for independent artists

#31

Post by Radle »

jasode wrote: post #14

The submitted article doesn't mention it but my guess at connecting the dots is that it's related to EU Article 13's stringent requirement of "upload filters"[0]. Yes, Spotify's direct uploading "gave opportunity for small artists to share their talent" -- but that same mechanism also made it too easy to upload copyright infringing content. Since Spotify does not have a machine learning AI copyright filter like Youtu…

Is "thanks GDPR" the new "thanks Obama"? This spamming of anti GDPR related stuff, without any evidence support quotes or anything the like is absolute disastrous.

Yes it's possible that Spotifys decision was influenced by GDPR, it's also possible that the decision was only done because of it.

But since Spotify hasn't said so, blindly assuming that GDPR is at fault is incredible dishonest.

Re: Spotify shuts down direct music uploading for independent artists

#32

Post by Krasnol »

jasode wrote: post #14

The submitted article doesn't mention it but my guess at connecting the dots is that it's related to EU Article 13's stringent requirement of "upload filters"[0]. Yes, Spotify's direct uploading "gave opportunity for small artists to share their talent" -- but that same mechanism also made it too easy to upload copyright infringing content. Since Spotify does not have a machine learning AI copyright filter like Youtu…

I don't believe this is the issue here. If it would have been, they wouldn't hesitate to use this as a reason there and not go with this marketing bs.

Re: Spotify shuts down direct music uploading for independent artists

#33

Post by jasode »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #28
jasode wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there an advantage for Spotify to allow 2 more years of copyright-infringing uploads that they have to clean up later? Is there another plausible reason for Spotify shutting down direct uploads that's unrelated to copyrights?

> Is there another plausible reason for Spotify shutting down direct uploads that's unrelated to copyrights? It's a service very few people use that costs them money to maintain and support. You already need to go through cdbaby and similar services for all other distributions and being just on spotify instead of all of them is not very appealing.

>It's a service very few people use that costs them money to maintain and support.

I'm not a Spotify expert so I'm not understanding why independents artist without labels "costs money to maintain support" that isn't already spent to enable the labels to upload their artists' songs.

Let's say a Universal Music Group[1] representative logs into Spotify's system to upload Justin Bieber's latest 4-minute song. (Spotify has spent money on their backend system to enable this upload workflow.)

Why does it cost more to Spotify to let the unknown-Joe-Blow-not-signed-to-a-label upload his 4-minute song?

[1] https://www.umusicpub.com/us/Artists.aspx

Re: Spotify shuts down direct music uploading for independent artists

#34

Post by pgeorgi »

Radle wrote: post #31
jasode wrote: post #14

The submitted article doesn't mention it but my guess at connecting the dots is that it's related to EU Article 13's stringent requirement of "upload filters"[0]. Yes, Spotify's direct uploading "gave opportunity for small artists to share their talent" -- but that same mechanism also made it too easy to upload copyright infringing content. Since Spotify does not have a machine learning AI copyright filter like Youtu…

Is "thanks GDPR" the new "thanks Obama"? This spamming of anti GDPR related stuff, without any evidence support quotes or anything the like is absolute disastrous. Yes it's possible that Spotifys decision was influenced by GDPR, it's also possible that the decision was only done because of it. But since Spotify hasn't said so, blindly assuming that GDPR is at fault is incredible dishonest.

Article 13 has nothing to do with GDPR except that it comes from approximately the same regulatory body.

Re: Spotify shuts down direct music uploading for independent artists

#35

Post by indigochill »

jsilence wrote: post #19
toxik wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good job, EU! Squelch your citizenry in the interest of the copyright industry. Content filtering is draconian and fundamentally opposed to a free and open society.

Self hosted, federated alternative: funkwhale.audio

Is the theory that this will be more resistant to copyright takedowns (given the talk about "sharing music with friends") because takedowns will have to be issued to individual pods?

Re: Spotify shuts down direct music uploading for independent artists

#36

Post by scarface74 »

sk0g wrote: post #27
jasode wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there an advantage for Spotify to allow 2 more years of copyright-infringing uploads that they have to clean up later? Is there another plausible reason for Spotify shutting down direct uploads that's unrelated to copyrights?

Yeah, they could build an in house alternative to the YouTube algorithm to detect dupes/ infringing material. Spotify please hire me so I can work on this, tack.

How would this benefit Spotify? The few people it would attract wouldn’t be worth the cost. According to other posters, it’s barely used.

Re: Spotify shuts down direct music uploading for independent artists

#37

Post by fb03 »

neka wrote: post #15
fb03 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are still several services that "automagically" publish your music to several platforms at once. Some are pretty affordable, like DITTOMUSIC https://www.dittomusic.com/pricing

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.dittomusic.com

Thank you.

Any good alternatives?

Re: Spotify shuts down direct music uploading for independent artists

#38

Post by dmitriid »

criley2 wrote: post #20
toxik wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good job, EU! Squelch your citizenry in the interest of the copyright industry. Content filtering is draconian and fundamentally opposed to a free and open society.

It keeps happening with their draconian regulations. After the privacy/data protection bill, I hear that the european market for online advertising imploded trying to meet regulations and Google Ads gobbled up some 30-40% more market share in Europe. It came down to the fact that Google was able to meet the regulations fastest, and achieve informed user consent across a wide userbase dramatically faster than small lo…

Why do you think that advertising business is good and imploding ad business means privacy regulation is bad for small businesses in general?

Besides, GDPR is an extension of similar laws that have existed for years.

Re: Spotify shuts down direct music uploading for independent artists

#39

Post by Xelbair »

jasode wrote: post #21
_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's unlikely. If I am not mistaken, the EU directive will not be implemented for another two years.

Is there an advantage for Spotify to allow 2 more years of copyright-infringing uploads that they have to clean up later? Is there another plausible reason for Spotify shutting down direct uploads that's unrelated to copyrights?

Remember what happened with GPDR.

There was also a two year period to adapt. Everyone scrambled to do it in last week, or last few days.

there could be plenty of reasons: it didn't bring them expected revenue, that team was allocated something with higher business priority while the feature itself required updates etc.

Re: Spotify shuts down direct music uploading for independent artists

#40

Post by moftz »

fnordsensei wrote: post #10
nullify88 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps pressure from record labels? I hope artists can flock to somewhere like Bandcamp, or alternatives.

This is pretty much the default answer to all such questions, unless directly proven to be otherwise. The last thing they would want is for Spotify, or anyone else, to effectively become a record label in their own right.

Plenty of companies will mass upload your music to all of the streaming sites for like $20-30/year which sounds pretty cheap compared to the old days of needing a record label to do anything other than play in bars. Those companies aren't considered record labels, they are distributors which is almost what Spotify is doing. Some of those distributors offer engineering and marketing services too but it still doesn't make them record labels. There are so many record labels out there that there really isn't an issue with another smaller one popping up.
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