Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams • Hacker News Board

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#11

Post by snailmailman » Mon, Apr 08, 2024, 7:26 AM UTC

I don’t know much about how music licensing works. But would this cause smaller musicians to decide to pull their stuff off Spotify?

I listen to a lot of music on Spotify. And some of it is from smaller indie artists. Not a huge amount, but I’ve definitely listened to songs that are in that It surprises me how much of my Spotify library is no longer available. There’s at least a few dozen songs in my Spotify library that have been taken off the platform. It shows up in the list greyed out. A lot of good songs too.

As much as I love Spotify and music streaming, it seems like the economics of it fundamentally doesn’t work and can’t work.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#12

Post by estomagordo » Mon, Apr 08, 2024, 7:26 AM UTC

This change quite obviously can't negatively impact small artists in any meaningful way. When googling for how much Spotify pay artists per stream, ranges vary a bit. But it seems like a high number is $0.005 per stream, or 200 streams to the dollar.

Even if a very prolific artist has 200 songs, averaging 500 plays per year, this would only ever amount to $500 per year. It is not peanuts for a hobby musician, but it would represent an unusually productive artist who happens to be just under this limit with most (or all) their songs, and also who manages to somehow get paid in the upper parts of the span.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#13

Post by dacryn » Mon, Apr 08, 2024, 7:27 AM UTC

paranoidrobot wrote: post #7

Lacerda69 wrote: post #3

And the enshitification begins. Remember that you as users are next. Find a sustainable alternative now. I personally recommend bandcamp + youtube combo. Yt to explore and find new music, Bc to buy the music I enjoy and __own__ it.

I find new music through YT fairly regularly - it's what got me into a whole bunch of artists I'd never seen/heard before. Unfortunately with YT I've had to cancel my Premium subscription on - they want $34/month, and I'm not paying that. I'll move to using third party apps/adblockers, and paying some of the creators I watch directly.

why do they want 34? I pay 12

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#14

Post by loctal » Mon, Apr 08, 2024, 7:27 AM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #6

"Additionally, Spotify now requires a minimum number of unique listeners for royalties to apply. This attempt to stop "further manipulation by bad actors"" What a load of manure. The only reason manipulation of royalties even works is that they pool the streams such that the consumer wont pay the artist he listens too. Just tie the royalties to what each user listens to and what they pay. Solved. No abuse possible. B…

If this is true, I demand that I only pay Spotify if I listen to more than 1000 songs a month

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#15

Post by cranberryturkey » Mon, Apr 08, 2024, 7:28 AM UTC

snailmailman wrote: post #11

I don’t know much about how music licensing works. But would this cause smaller musicians to decide to pull their stuff off Spotify? I listen to a lot of music on Spotify. And some of it is from smaller indie artists. Not a huge amount, but I’ve definitely listened to songs that are in that It surprises me how much of my Spotify library is no longer available. There’s at least a few dozen songs in my Spotify library…

Back to torrenting I guess. If I’m not mistaken snoop said he made 45k off 1 billion plays. Thats ridiculous

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#16

Post by estomagordo » Mon, Apr 08, 2024, 7:28 AM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #6

"Additionally, Spotify now requires a minimum number of unique listeners for royalties to apply. This attempt to stop "further manipulation by bad actors"" What a load of manure. The only reason manipulation of royalties even works is that they pool the streams such that the consumer wont pay the artist he listens too. Just tie the royalties to what each user listens to and what they pay. Solved. No abuse possible. B…

Wait, what. Are you saying that the costs of using the service should be tied to how much listening one does? Because if you're not, then what you are saying should have no bearing at all on how much royalties anyone gets.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#17

Post by jzzskijj » Mon, Apr 08, 2024, 7:31 AM UTC

snailmailman wrote: post #11

I don’t know much about how music licensing works. But would this cause smaller musicians to decide to pull their stuff off Spotify? I listen to a lot of music on Spotify. And some of it is from smaller indie artists. Not a huge amount, but I’ve definitely listened to songs that are in that It surprises me how much of my Spotify library is no longer available. There’s at least a few dozen songs in my Spotify library…

> It surprises me how much of my Spotify library is no longer available. There’s at least a few dozen songs in my Spotify library that have been taken off the platform. It shows up in the list greyed out. A lot of good songs too.

This probably has more to do with publishers and licensing contracts than artists pulling their music off from platforms. Sometimes even bigger artists' albums disappear when publisher is sold or goes out from the business. Or the licensing contract's period runs out. As sad it is, many artists don't own the rights to their music, and if the rights owner is defunct, then there are missing albums or even discographies.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#18

Post by high_priest » Mon, Apr 08, 2024, 7:32 AM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #6

"Additionally, Spotify now requires a minimum number of unique listeners for royalties to apply. This attempt to stop "further manipulation by bad actors"" What a load of manure. The only reason manipulation of royalties even works is that they pool the streams such that the consumer wont pay the artist he listens too. Just tie the royalties to what each user listens to and what they pay. Solved. No abuse possible. B…

I've recently learned how extraction of funds from gift cards and hacked accounts works. What I've come to understand that obfuscation of monetization model, with simple info for the creators "beyond this many discoveries, we'll pay you some portion of general activity" is actually a good way to avoid abuse and allow for easier management of apps funds in general.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#19

Post by snailmailman » Mon, Apr 08, 2024, 7:33 AM UTC

HenryBemis wrote: post #9

paranoidrobot wrote: post #4

I think this is the wrong approach. If they have issues with people abusing the revenue model by publishing white noise and generating fake plays - go after that. However the 1K streams per track thing is going to negatively impact small artists who might have relatively large collections, but few over 1K annual streams. If it's a processing cost issue then make it so that payouts need to meet some reasonable minimum…

> I don't want, and never wanted, Audiobooks or Podcasts or News or other crap on the music app. Regarding Spotify, which I use daily, I also dislike their updates. I remember some months back I could disable/hide "Recommendations". Now in all my (personal & private) playlists I get a list of Recommendations. It's an annoyance because when I scroll fast to reach the bottom "to listen to that one song" it end up surfi…

My Spotify app almost daily shows me a full screen advertisement for some new album when I open the app. It is clearly labeled sponsored content.

I can then click a tiny 3 dots menu, click “stop showing me this” and “I don’t want to see sponsored content” and it will say “sure thing! We will no longer show you these” and the next day it will show me a new advertisement and I repeat the process.

So annoying. The whole premise of premium is that there are no ads! But now I’m constantly getting visual ads in the app. Every artists page has ads for their merch. Spotify notifies me about exclusive merch for artists I listen to. And is constantly trying to get me to go to concerts of artists I listen to.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#20

Post by kredd » Mon, Apr 08, 2024, 7:33 AM UTC

snailmailman wrote: post #11

I don’t know much about how music licensing works. But would this cause smaller musicians to decide to pull their stuff off Spotify? I listen to a lot of music on Spotify. And some of it is from smaller indie artists. Not a huge amount, but I’ve definitely listened to songs that are in that It surprises me how much of my Spotify library is no longer available. There’s at least a few dozen songs in my Spotify library…

I’m not sure how it can affect those artists given it’s like $0.5 for 1k streams. I mean, I guess if they have 100 songs all at like 999 streams, that’s about $50 loss/year if they never pass that threshold. It sucks obviously, but not enough to for artists to pull out.

My understanding is they’re playing a cat-and-mouse game with auto generated content, that syphons away some percentage of the royalties.