Live data from Hacker News

Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify

stevebenjamins.com

71–80 of 288 posts

Re: Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YES! I played Daddy Yankee's Gasolina at a party once as kind of a joke and for weeks my Discover Weekly was filled with Spanish music. I wish they had a 'stealth' mode or at least an option to reset your tastes.

Second the option to reset, but there is an "private session" mode in the nav menu that seems to not track your listens the same way. Netflix and the video streaming services are the worst here. I hate my Netflix recommendations, and can't get out of them.

Just create a new profile

Re: Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify

#72
post #34

Spotify's discovery playlist is a double edged sword. My account is permanently screwed because I decided to listen to a lot of rain sounds when going to sleep for a few months while I had a puppy. Now ALL I get for recommendations are calm sounds. I don't actually listen to these during the day, I want my old stuff. I hate it and want to reset the discovery playlist, but seems I have no way of doing so aside from ge…

I think Spotify would do well to allow users to set a label of some sort on their listening. Like, there are times when you listen to your music for yourself in the car, and there are times when your phone is being used to power the speakers at a gathering. I don't know what the internals of the system looks like, but it seems like allowing users to maintain different profiles would be simple.

You could create different whole accounts and put them on a family plan together.

Re: Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify

#73
post #51
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it is definitely in Spotify's interest to keep as many quality artists as possible on Spotify, and that probably involves paying them.

I heard a rumour once that artists did not actually need to eat. /s

Imagine saying this about a CD store a few decades ago. It would be ridiculous to say that a store was responsible for promoting indie artist CDs. If you want to get listens or sales make good music, it's pretty simple.

Re: Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify

#74

His Spotify Artist page lists ~70k plays a month, so he's just slightly over $1/1000 plays. I suppose this is peanuts compared to what a radio play is, etc. but strikes me as fairly reasonable?

Keep in mind a single play on a radio station is more like 10,000 plays on Spotify. It's 1-to-many vs. 1-to-1.

Re: Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YES! I played Daddy Yankee's Gasolina at a party once as kind of a joke and for weeks my Discover Weekly was filled with Spanish music. I wish they had a 'stealth' mode or at least an option to reset your tastes.

Private session?

Yeah it’s an option in settings. I always thought it was just to make your listening activity private from your followers, but maybe it does more.

Re: Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify

#76
post #33
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not Spotify's responsibility to make sure indie artists are getting paid.

Well, it is definitely in Spotify's interest to keep as many quality artists as possible on Spotify, and that probably involves paying them.

I think you missed my point, obviously you should get paid for your monthly listens but it's not Spotify's responsibility to drive listeners to your music. You are obviously free to market and promote as much as you can, hitching your success or failure to Spotify including you in Discover seems like a sure way to fail to make a living.

Re: Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify

#77
post #34

Spotify's discovery playlist is a double edged sword. My account is permanently screwed because I decided to listen to a lot of rain sounds when going to sleep for a few months while I had a puppy. Now ALL I get for recommendations are calm sounds. I don't actually listen to these during the day, I want my old stuff. I hate it and want to reset the discovery playlist, but seems I have no way of doing so aside from ge…

Spotify has the feature of a Private Session, most of the time I need this random songs I activate it so they don't get picked up by the algorithm

Re: Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify

#78
post #34

Spotify's discovery playlist is a double edged sword. My account is permanently screwed because I decided to listen to a lot of rain sounds when going to sleep for a few months while I had a puppy. Now ALL I get for recommendations are calm sounds. I don't actually listen to these during the day, I want my old stuff. I hate it and want to reset the discovery playlist, but seems I have no way of doing so aside from ge…

Same. Sometimes my girlfriend uses my account and she is very much into reaggeton, which I hate.

If she listens just two or three songs, I'll get the dreaded reaggeton song in "Discover Weekly" next monday. If she uses the account for a whole day, the playlist is ruined for me.

Re: Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify

#80
post #17
post #2

Does anyone still buy albums on iTunes? I haven't done that in a while, but I have to say I prefer to physically own the music I listen to often. If I can't get a physical media like CD or vinyl, then iTunes store was second best aside from illegal options.

I buy digital music from Bandcamp whenever possible. (Otherwise I buy it from Amazon MP3 or pirate it from Soulseek.) I like to build a collection and I can't stand the notion that some streaming company or copyright holder can just decide I'm not allowed to listen to an album anymore.

Make sure you backup your Bandcamp purchases. I know of at least two artists whose Bandcamp accounts were deleted. The artists claim that Bandcamp never notified them of any copyright claims or policy violations.

There is an album I purchased which no longer appears in my collection. I am only able to listen to it via mobile app because it's still cached on the device.

In the course of writing this response I realized that I had not contacted customer support so I now have.

Post reply on HN