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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

#141

Post by jjice »

sharkweek wrote: post #31
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.

Correct, this is why bands tour and sell shirts and other merch, and for most, work second jobs. As an anecdote, friend of mine is in two or three bands at any given time and bartends most nights he’s not playing shows. Spotify makes it easier than ever for an artist to get their work out there, which is great, but it’s similar to the publishing world, where most authors who self publish do so into the void.

The best way to support an artist you really like is to purchase merchandise, buy their music on Bandcamp, and see them live. For bands I really like, I buy the album on Bandcamp and then just listen to it on Spotify for convenience.

Besides, who doesn't love a good tee with your favorite band's lyrics on it?

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

#142

Post by hombre_fatal »

iamstupidsimple wrote: post #111
daxelrod wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This exists. It's called "Private listening". https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/features/how-to...

As opposed to public listening? This whole feature is named after a Freudian slip.

Click the link and you'll see that yes, as opposed to appearing on your public activity feed. Perfectly reasonable name for the feature. Not sure what's Freudian about it.

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

#143

Post by wolco »

NoodleIncident wrote: post #136
mathisonturing wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also reject a recommendation. Click on the Options button for that video (three vertical dots), select "Not interested"

Removing the source of the recommendation from your history works a lot more reliably. Sometimes the "Not interested" button will allow you to say "I don't want recommendations based on videos", but they're in denial about how that's the only thing their recommendation engine does, so the option isn't always there.

Browsing in private mode always works.

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

#144

Post by heed »

aerospace_guy wrote: post #75
parthdesai wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It used to only hide your activity but now apparently anything you play in a private session won’t influence recommendation features:

https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/features/how-to...

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

#145

Post by sickcodebruh »

sgt wrote: 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 albums on Bandcamp when it's an artist I love. Bandcamp is also where my band makes the majority of our sales, a combination of digital purchases and merch. It seems like a growing number of people really enjoy supporting artists directly and Bandcamp is the best platform for that.

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

#146

Post by feteru »

andygcook wrote: post #41
parhamn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just listened to "Lullabies For Little Crimes" and "Circles", it was great! I'm really happy Spotify found a way to surface artists like this who deserve attention!

Agreed. After an initial listening, it's clear Steve's really talented. Which admittedly probably helps with the earning money part of the article. It's kind of like that PG quote: "What Customers Want - It's not just startups that have to worry about this. I think most businesses that fail do it because they don't give customers what they want. Look at restaurants. A large percentage fail, about a quarter in the fir…

Yeah I can think of a few. Some just couldn't manage expenses, whether it was ingredients or rent.

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

#147

Post by dajohnson89 »

dawnerd wrote: post #139
njovin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Spotify needs to enable dislike on any song playing, not just in discovery playlists.

yes please. i'll never understand why this isn't default behavior.

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

#148

Post by indigochill »

psadri wrote: post #101
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).

On the point of the feedback loop, if we picture musical preferences as a mountain, with most-listened to stuff at the peak, I've been wondering what would happen if these algorithms (particularly Youtube's and Deezer's, but Spotify's a bit as well) would slide the mountain a little farther down instead of optimizing for the peak.

So to over-simplify, something like instead of saying "You just listened to an RPG soundtrack, here's another RPG soundtrack!" it would say "You just listened to an RPG soundtrack, here's a symphony".

The idea is to lengthen the links of recommendations to encourage more exploration and wider discovery rather than circling the same narrow interest constantly.

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

#149

Post by tarsinge »

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…

Having absolutely 0 insight or parameter tuning on these recommendations algorithms, from feeds to Spotify playlists, is really a shame. Like imagine you had 0 control on your computer parameters or smartphone, and it was always guessing like “This resolution should suit you”, “I just turned the WiFi off, hope you like it”, or “I just dialed that friend you seem to like to interact with”. It’s not a technical problem, I know there must be advertising incentive to not allow settings, but still the result when you think of it is ridiculous, having to reverse engineer algorithms and create alternate profiles just to emulate lacking UI for parameters.

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

#150

Post by tekno45 »

kleer001 wrote: post #81
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…

Youtube suffers from the same bias in their algorithm. I bet it's just a bias setting or a single falloff that would help things. It reminds me of Cronenberg's "The Fly" where Brundle had to teach his teleporting pod to reproduce living tissue rather than interpret it.

I've never had this issue with youtube for more than 2 days.

My friends send me weird stuff pretty ooften too.

How many channels are you subbed to?

I also have youtube premium, i wonder if that affects it?

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