Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

djmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 425 posts

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#121

Post by kunley »

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…

The mechanism there is kind of "dontcareism": yes, indie musicians will go away, but Spotify doesn't care, because ultimately this won't stop listeners from using it, over time most of them will forget what they really wanted

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#123

Post by lotsofpulp »

VS1999 wrote: post #48
_3u10 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re free to cancel, and I’m sure customer service would give you the refund on the extra cost for the first month. I’ve noticed this in restaurants too, they just change the price like a normal business in an inflationary environment. I bet you get raises too, or ask for them and move on if you don’t get them.

I have no idea how that relates to what I wrote. Edit: Actually I see now, you're replying to where I said they bought services and raised prices without the customer consent. If we're using a restaurant comparison, it'd be like your local burger shop raising prices because your meal comes bundled with discounted carwashes. Consumers generally don't want bundles, they want to buy the thing they're interested in.

> Consumers generally don't want bundles, they want to buy the thing they're interested in.

They have been able to buy the individual song for $1 to $2 for a long time.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#124

Post by code_runner »

truegoric wrote: post #105

Streaming services will be regulated in the coming months in EU https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/17/24041343/eu-music-streami... EDIT: as it’s been pointed out, the article doesn’t mention a time, which is a speculation on my part

That’s not quite what the article linked says. If anything is done it could be years. It’s also unclear if they have any price per stream in mind and how they even think it should be calculated on an ongoing basis.

Sounds pretty early stage

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#125

Post by wkat4242 »

iamacyborg wrote: post #77
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…

Just cancel your Spotify subscription. I did, and now use a combination of Roon and Tidal. I have a much better listening and discovery experience through Roon and artists get paid more with Tidal.

The problem is that Spotify is the only one that really works well on Foss with libspotify / spotify-qt.

All the others don't have clients for my OS and I don't have DRM in my browser which they require.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#126

Post by Semaphor »

cageface wrote: post #100
Semaphor wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What works well for me is a metal discord community (run by writers of a review blog [0]). Tons of interesting recommendations, including sometimes non-metal stuff, my favorite album of the year so far is chamber folk / Americana [1]. For new music, I tend to at least give a few seconds to every new release that is of an even slightly interesting sub-genre, older stuff sometimes shows up in what people post they are…

I hardly ever listen to metal any more but I still often check Angry Metal Guy just because it's such a well run independent music review and community site. Unfortunately such sites are increasingly rare these days.

And no ads/payment whatsoever. Purely volunteer-run, for the fun of writing/reviewing.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#127

Post by noirscape »

IMO the problem is that Spotify is fundamentally breaking the "spirit" of the deal that allowed them to get in the position they are right now.

Spotify's entire promise was "we solve the music inequality problem by just pooling all subscriber money together and then we do an equal(-ish, record labels iirc got slightly different deals) split depending on how many people listen to your music." It kinda sells the idea that if you're just popular enough, you can make it big on Spotify. Of course practically that's been a lie for ages (numbers showcased that only the top 0.1% could afford to live off of Spotify alone, and all those songs are owned by the established record companies anyway), so you could say this is just dispensing with the charade to avoid transaction costs.

I do wonder about the ripple effect this could cause for indie artists; Spotify just told them to go fuck themselves and there's pretty much no incentive to use Spotify anymore now that they pulled this stunt.

If you want to support artists directly, it's still always better to just buy the albums. Most of them have Bandcamp pages and for now, Bandcamp provides a good deal (and as a customer you can just download the FLAC files).

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#128

Post by asdof »

atoav wrote: post #54
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 am in a small and new band. In 2023 we earned roughly 500 Euros via Bandcamp (digital, physical and merch) 300 Euros selling merch on gigs 2000 Euros playing gigs 20 Cents on Spotify There is no monetary reason to be on spotify, the only reason we are on there is because fans asked.

I'd wager the income from playing gigs would be substantially lower if you weren't on Spotify.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#129

Post by dcb_lu »

I hope this doesn't affect Matt Farley[1] too badly, as it seems like he relies on having many songs with only a few streams each as his main strategy for generating income from Spotify.

I once commissioned a Mother's Day song from him -- sent him 10 facts about my Mom and our family and he came back a few days later with a funny and charming little tune. Best $30 I've ever spent.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/31/magazine/spotify-matt-far...

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#130

Post by nottorp »

dacryn wrote: post #13
paranoidrobot wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Probably some dark pattern where they hide the actual price for just youtube music and show you the subscription for a bundle of services you don't want...
Post reply on HN