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

141–150 of 425 posts

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#141

Post by kredd »

isodev wrote: post #87
kredd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a part-time indie artist, one can do a lot with $50 you get on the side from streams. Also, what is Spotify going to do with these 50$? What if it happens twice, 100$... do they pay you back eventually? Perpetually free access to all their premium services?

I'll take this bad faith argument, and give you even a worse one - $50 is about 5 drinks or less at a bar with tips nowadays. I genuinely doubt a serious person who makes music on the side will look at that number as a potential loss of income.

And if you have made 200 songs (so loss of $100), all streaming less than 1K each, maybe your current production is not marketable on Spotify, and yeah, maybe you should find another venue. Eventually there will be a marketplace for this type of production, and hopefully willing users to pay for it.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#142

Post by iamacyborg »

vachina wrote: post #136
iamacyborg wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

lol. Tidal, the guys that tried to sell us snake oil like MQA. That said you sound like a Meridian shill.

Err, thanks. Heaven forbid someone shares software that they actually like.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#143

Post by vichle »

rightbyte wrote: post #115
estomagordo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No I'd like my subscription (which I canceled due to the new UI and new ToS) should go only to the artists I listen to, proportionally to the amount of minutes played.

Search for white noise and you'll understand why this is not a great idea.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#147

Post by geraldhh »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #97
jzzskijj wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 so…

A lot of that is also bad meta data. I have a few playlists for around 10 years or so. Every so often I have to go in and hunt down greyed out tracks that are no longer there but are available in identical versions elsewhere. Publishers apparently regularly update what they have on the platform and there's a lot of duplication as well between best off albums, remastered albums, etc. And some artists, like Neil Young,…

> Spotify seems very happy to just break everybody's playlists continuously.

definitely possible to avoid this, but given it would be a follow-up cost from the failing core business, it probably could not be done. hell, they didn't even get around to making basic meta-data reliably present.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#148

Post by iamacyborg »

wkat4242 wrote: post #125
iamacyborg wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah annoying, I'd assumed Roon had a Linux client but it appears not to, despite having a compatible server and a bridge client.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#149

Post by tgv »

asdof wrote: post #128
atoav wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your arguments veers close to the "for exposure" payment.

People don't go to indie concerts because of a spotify track. Nor to big name concerts. And 20 cents corresponds to around 50 to 100 plays according to the numbers mentioned here.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#150

Post by reducesuffering »

whstl wrote: post #99
supernes wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm inclined to believe that filling the service with an endless stream of generated garbage is their ultimate endgame - why bother with unreliable and costly human creators when you can just emulate them well enough for undiscerning listeners. No substance, just vibes.

Even Spotify is smart enough to know that people will leave them if this ever happens.

No, that's the end game here. People already mostly have parasocial relationships with artists. There's already famous AI personality Instagrams and Vtubers. With the advent of Generative AI video like Sora and Generative AI music like Suno, people will find their perfect generative AI niche and follow an artist story/interaction that they can't even tell is real or not. Generative AI will create millions of niches, it will hit that spot.
Post reply on HN