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Carving out a niche as a small artist on Spotify

stevebenjamins.com

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

#101

Post by psadri »

volkk wrote: 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…

Yes I wish there was a button to reset or stir the pot a bit. Or maybe pay more attention to your more recent playlists. Or discount listens to songs that were recommended to you (to break the feedback loop).

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

#102

Post by Reedx »

boplicity wrote: post #21

65,000 listeners a month – $800 in revenue. 1.23 cents per listener per month. That works out to 14.7 cents per year. To earn a modest $50,000, you would need ~360,000 monthly listeners. This doesn't seem sustainable without outside sources of revenue.

> This doesn't seem sustainable without outside sources of revenue.

The reality for most creators, really. There's way more supply than demand and you have to contend with power laws.

The top ~1% of books, movies, games, music, youtube videos, twitch streams, HN threads, etc, always dominate. Capturing ~80% of attention/money. The distribution falls off rapidly with a long tail, which is unsustainable for most.

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

#103

Post by vannevar »

It's an interesting article, but the essential information is buried in the middle:

In my experience, it’s only when I get on an editorial playlist that my songs get heavily featured on algorithmic playlists like Discover Weekly.

So how do you get on editorial playlists? I sincerely have no clue. I've been on editorial playlists 16 times but I have no idea how to replicate that.

I find that this is true of many of these "I made X dollars per month doing Y!" articles: somewhere in the chain of events, there is a fateful intervention out of the control of the author that propels them to a higher tier of income than their peers who are otherwise following the same procedures.

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

#104

Post by ipnon »

aczerepinski wrote: post #27

If anybody wants to know how to earn $20/decade with Spotify I can throw some of my own experiences into a blog post :)

It's sad to admit but there are enough musicians in the world. The reason wages for musicians is so low is that there are already countless professional musicians making music in every style.

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

#105

Post by rainforest »

volkk wrote: 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…

Spam seems to be a growing problem too. If you follow (or even listen to) an artist, all someone needs to do is credit them on a song (or just squat on their name) for it to be eligible for Release Radar.

There are weird pockets of the Spotify database for this (e.g. "lo-fi beats" artists that churn out hundreds of tracks with many artists) and no way to send any feedback (they shut down Line-In, their metadata feedback a few years ago). Disliking doesn't work because Spotify will only remember you don't like one of the artists, not all of them.

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

#106

Post by volkk »

njovin wrote: post #40
volkk wrote: 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…

This is unfortunately a common problem and the only way to beat the algorithm is to turn it against itself. Create few playlists and add songs you like to them and also be diligent about liking and unliking songs. These will heavily influence your recommendations and you should be able to get back on track.

See I was doing that, and I guess I didn't do it long enough because it didn't do anything for me. I think that algo is so heavily trained at this point. I think Spotify should really release something that is obvious and UI friendly that isn't some weird hack/workaround to fix this issue.

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

#107

Post by phreeza »

volkk wrote: 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 have some music that I kind of consider slightly trashy but do enjoy on occasions. I have the feeling that Spotify knows that this is a kind of "guilty pleasure", and seems to explicitly not recommend it in my autogenerated playlists. Wonder if this is a fluke or a real thing.

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

#108

Post by drcongo »

I made a surprising find on Spotify not so long ago. One of their curated playlists - Techno Bunker [1] - algorithmically mixes from track to track, like a fairly competent DJ, and it does it even if you turn on shuffle. There may be others, but this is the only one I've found so far.

[1] https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX6J5NfMJS675?si=...

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

#109

Post by schoolornot »

boplicity wrote: post #21

65,000 listeners a month – $800 in revenue. 1.23 cents per listener per month. That works out to 14.7 cents per year. To earn a modest $50,000, you would need ~360,000 monthly listeners. This doesn't seem sustainable without outside sources of revenue.

I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action lawsuit by the artists for the conflict-of-interest the labels have with Spotify. Sony, Universal and Warner Music all owned stakes in Spotify and it was against the interests of artists to offer Spotify content in exchange for razor thin royalties.

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

#110

Post by jv22222 »

vannevar wrote: post #103

It's an interesting article, but the essential information is buried in the middle: In my experience, it’s only when I get on an editorial playlist that my songs get heavily featured on algorithmic playlists like Discover Weekly. So how do you get on editorial playlists? I sincerely have no clue. I've been on editorial playlists 16 times but I have no idea how to replicate that. I find that this is true of many of th…

Agree, serendipity is the hardest thing to reverse engineer.
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