Earlier quoted context omitted.
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My way of thinking
In the future we will have to fail Turing tests to prove our humanity.
The day I canceled my Spotify subscription
231–240 of 511 posts
Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you've over-complicated this, or at least missed the point by quite a lot. The question is extremely simple: Why should I pay money to listen to music I like, and then that money goes to music and artists I've never and never will listen to? I don't care how much money top performers want. If I am going to spend money on music, it should go to artists that I actually listen to. And it does, because I buy musi…
> if I go into a record store and buy a CD or record or something, that's what I paid for, that's what it goes to. Hell, even if I watch a monetized video on YouTube Premium, a portion of my subscription money goes to that creator. In your examples, money goes to right holders, not necessarily content creators. That was true in CD-age and is true on Youtube. A big distinction to make I think
Sure, there has always been a bit of an issue with the money making it to the actual intended recipients with music. For some reason it feels like it's more egregious and weird with music than most other things.
Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My entire strategy was based on going to a record store and buying whatever had appealing cover art in the metal section. And I did this A LOT. By doing this, you supported the bands you liked, and supported experimentation by accidentally subsidizing a lot of bands which didn't turn out so great (at the very least, experimentation in cool album covers...) But you don't actually do that on Spotify. As the article c…
This has always seemed like fear-mongering to me, because for the pooled proportion of plays to be completely different from the mean of the per-user proportion, there would need to be an extreme discrepancy in amount of songs listened to per month and/or in the kinds of songs played by those who pay for premium vs. those who opt for ad-supported. No, if I only play the same artist for an entire month, they likely wo…
The share is determined by contract, not by some fair-minded algorithm. You would have to listen to that artist over 3000 times in a month for them to get $10 at the normal artist's $0.0032/play. Big artists don't see such low figures, though more obviously goes to the system that pays the salaries of the people who get those deals for them.
Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription
#234I pulled up the Spotify app on a Samsung TV (haven't tried it on other smart TVs) and your options were a handful of playlists or search. When you pull up a song, there's no real way to drill down into the artist and their work, or explore the same genre. Just listen to that song and a playlist based on it or a playlist for the artist. Discovery is what makes music interfaces cool.
Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription
#235The Author doesn't understand how the streaming business works, and as far as I can tell, no one in the comments here has shone a better light on it. There is and there isn't just a pool of money that goes to beyonce, the weeknd and taylor swift... i say there is because what actually happens is, the collecting societies will collect the money, then distribute it based on streams correctly to the artists/writers/prod…
Since you seem to understand how it works, can you explain the following to me: Let's say I pay $10 to listen to my favorite indie band, for 1 hour each week. Let's say another user listens to Taylor Swift 24/7. Does my favorite band get my $10, or do they get $0.12? You see, when I pay $10, I don't expect $9.88 to go to Taylor Swift. Or does my favorite band actually gets my $10, like it used to be when I bought CD'…
If you listen to a single band for 1 hour a week, then you should not be paying for a Spotify subscription, but rather buy the music of that band.
This situation is obviously constructed, but if you were in it and unhappy about it, it would be your own fault for misunderstanding what you're paying Spotify for.
Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My entire strategy was based on going to a record store and buying whatever had appealing cover art in the metal section. And I did this A LOT. By doing this, you supported the bands you liked, and supported experimentation by accidentally subsidizing a lot of bands which didn't turn out so great (at the very least, experimentation in cool album covers...) But you don't actually do that on Spotify. As the article c…
This has always seemed like fear-mongering to me, because for the pooled proportion of plays to be completely different from the mean of the per-user proportion, there would need to be an extreme discrepancy in amount of songs listened to per month and/or in the kinds of songs played by those who pay for premium vs. those who opt for ad-supported. No, if I only play the same artist for an entire month, they likely wo…
It's pretty easy to do some math on this.
There are pseudonymous background music artists who have just released one or two tracks, and who have more listens than famous bands with a 30-year history, because they were featured in one of Spotify's background music playlists. It is of course rumours that this music is commissioned by Spotify (which they deny) or that they get kickbacks in some other form.
You don't get exact numbers (because Spotify won't share them!) but there's no question background music is vastly more profitable on Spotify than the kind of music people go to concerts for, and it's at the latter's expense.
Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription
#237I think Spotify is still quite good overall. They sometimes make very bad UI decisions. But the latest home screen desaster (of huge, almost full-screen size tiles) was luckily already rolled back.
My main gripe is that it carves overly deep channels around what I've listened to before. For discovering new music I find Shazam more valuable. I wish Spotify had some clever randomness.
A good example are Tarantino soundtracks with songs from all over the genre landscape. I've never seen Spotify create playlists like that.
When staying within a genre the autoplay can be amazing though.
Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
I may be in the minority, but I just don't really find the "support the artist" argument that compelling. I have artists I like and I grew up with. If I saw them in public I'd get giggly and maybe try to say an awkward hello. But I am under no impressions that I have some kind of personal relationship with this artist. I assume the artists are reasonable rational adults. If they're on the platform, its economically a…
> But I am under no impressions that I have some kind of personal relationship with this artist. What has that to do with anything? You don't pay because you want them to like you, you pay because you want to give them the chance to keep making music in the future. For that reason, on free support platforms like Patreon, I'm pretty tough about not "gilding the lily". If someone is clearly well-funded enough to have a…
What does that have to do with Spotify? If Spotify isn't fair to them they should pull their catalog. I can't be an arbiter to every economic transaction I participate in. Just sell me something I want at a price I find reasonable. I don't need a story about how it's so hard for you to pursue your passion or how you can't continue in the future.
Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My entire strategy was based on going to a record store and buying whatever had appealing cover art in the metal section. And I did this A LOT. By doing this, you supported the bands you liked, and supported experimentation by accidentally subsidizing a lot of bands which didn't turn out so great (at the very least, experimentation in cool album covers...) But you don't actually do that on Spotify. As the article c…
Weren't we all complaining 20 y ago that music labels were giving bands pennies on the dollar and the only way they could actually live off of the music was by touring and selling merch? I think Radiohead then did the groundbreaking selling of mp3s for a pay what you want fee. Now the baddie is Spotify.
Worse than that, I remember reading articles about how some artists didn't "make" a single dollar from their first album that sold millions. It all went to the record company and paid for marketing and advances.
Sometimes they didn't begin to see revenue until 2nd or 3rd albums.
Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you've over-complicated this, or at least missed the point by quite a lot. The question is extremely simple: Why should I pay money to listen to music I like, and then that money goes to music and artists I've never and never will listen to? I don't care how much money top performers want. If I am going to spend money on music, it should go to artists that I actually listen to. And it does, because I buy musi…
> Why should I pay money to listen to music I like, and then that money goes to music and artists I've never and never will listen to? Well, you could simply bypass Spotify and just buy the music directly from the artist, no (which you indicate you do)? So Spotify isn't necessary for this, I'd guess? Spotify isn't a payment app for artists (again, I feel super weird defending them, I am not a fan myself!), it's a dis…
I take issue with this because it's kind of neither here nor there. You could give a more charitable interpretation by just treating Spotify as a music discovery service, that's not really what Spotify is marketed or intended for. Spotify is meant to be the ultimate end-game of online music streaming: it is meant to flat-out replace your giant MP3 library. And that's exactly how many people use Spotify. Not just Spotify, but also Apple Music, Pandora, etc.
If it was a music discovery service, it would be reasonable for artists to accept lower payouts and whatever other garbage because it's just an additional revenue source anyway. However, streaming music is not just an additional revenue source. Streaming music is becoming the primary way that people consume music all of the time. It is a $25 billion/year industry.
Artists and fans alike can't control the way that the larger market moves, but the way that the larger market moves will for sure have major impact on the entire industry and that impact will trickle all the way down. There is no reason to think that we can't or shouldn't try to discourage and flat-out regulate unfair practices. It's not that all things middlemen do are bad, it's that they routinely gain immense power in the market and then together they act against the best interests of nearly everyone other than themselves, while the barrier to entry remains so high that it may as well not be possible for all intents and purposes.
I don't really understand the point of defending what Spotify does, Spotify fights tooth and nail to try not to pay more royalties. When they were small they argued they had no choice but to pay low rates because otherwise they could never survive, and of course they never went back and changed their mind on that, because what incentive do they have?
So yeah. My opinion? Spotify sucks, the article was spot on.