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Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

djmag.com

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Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#151

Post by quitit »

noirscape wrote: post #127

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 t…

Essentially Spotify now pays small artists in “exposure”.

Looks a lot like abuse of market position.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#152

Post by helsinkiandrew »

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.

> There is no monetary reason to be on spotify, the only reason we are on there is because fans asked.

This isn't an excuse for Spotify not paying much for plays, but I bet having music on spotify helps the gig revenue though.

In some ways this is also true for Taylor Swift et al - they also make thousands times the amount from playing gigs than 'selling' albums, streaming, and radio plays but that drives ticket sales.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#153

Post by tibu »

jstummbillig wrote: post #53
cranberryturkey wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ah. Music income numbers, where the details are not actually details. He did say that[1], but the statement is misleading (and has little to do with Spotify). A very rough global average per-stream payout is often estimated at around $0.003 to $0.005. That brings the payout for 1 billion streams between $3,000,000 and $5,000,000. Let's go with the lower end. This is actual money paid out by Spotify for 1 billion stre…

If the ownership is with the publishing studio then AFAIK they pay the producing, distribution and promotion. It is an investment into the artist, so they shouldn't have these costs.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#154

Post by joshuamorton »

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…

Something like 15% of spotify's revenue is from ads, and so even if you do that you have to address the ad-fraud problem.

You also aren't even addressing one of the issues here, which is functionally "listen-time" related fraud on Spotify, but simple solutions don't really work, since yt has the same issue in reverse.

As a general rule, if you think something like "No abuse possible.", you are unfamiliar with the problem space.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#156

Post by aaaarc »

FireInsight wrote: post #138
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.

This is exactly the reason why my preferred method of music consumption is piracy + Bandcamp. Every Bandcamp Friday (when Bandcamp doesn't take a cut) I buy about 2 to 6 albums I've listened to in the past month or a few. If an artist is not on Bandcamp, I'm less likely to listen to them, but if I do, I eventually pirate their stuff. All the music I buy and pirate is in FLAC and funneled into my local library, where…

In case of smaller artists we'd be better off pirating music instead of helping cement Spotify's brand as a central platform. The only person losing money in this case is the platform holder so we could argue the decentralised aspect of piracy helps fighting monopolisation of the industry.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#157

Post by anentropic »

rglullis wrote: post #111
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.

Would you/your band be interested in trying out a pay-what-you-want system? I started the work to add crowdfunding support to communick (described on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39399121 ) and I'm looking now for musicians/artists/FOSS developers for some beta testing.

it's already possible to do pay-what-you-want in Bandcamp

always good to have more options though!

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#158

Post by kypro »

This seems quite reasonable. I have quite an uncommon taste in music so I tend to listen to artists with very small followings. I know most songs I listen to only have a few thousand views in total on YouTube, so I was initially worried that it would be similar on Spotify so just took a look... Spotify seems to be about x10 whatever the stats are on YouTube so almost all of the songs I listen to qualify for monetisation. The only exceptions are tiny self-recording artists I've randomly stubbled on from browsing Soundcloud or other corners of the internet.

I find it hard to see how this decision would impact small artists to be honest. Maybe if an artist had thousands of tracks all with ~500 streams then it might impact them, but I'm guessing small artists who are currently monetised are making almost nothing anyway from their handful of songs with under Supporting monetisation on all songs is probably more headache than it's worth when you're dealing with paying out a few cents. Honestly the best thing you can do to support small artists isn't stream their music, but share it with your friends, donate to them and buy their merch (assuming they have merch because many won't).

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#160

Post by WickyNilliams »

snailmailman wrote: post #27
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…

It’s infuriating. Spotify for instance had some Spotify exclusive “DJ mixes” that were all an hour of well-mixed playlists. Spotify got artists to curate them and would have “XYZ’s DJ Mix”. They were perfect for seamless music listening at the gym. No breaks between songs. Non stop music. I listened to them all the time. But one day a few months ago they all just vanished. Every one. I had added several to my Spotify…

Not sure what genre you listen to, but soundcloud and mixcloud are the place to go for high quality mixes imo. That's where the DJs post. It's not immune to takedowns and tracks disappearing. But I have a playlists of hundreds of mixes curated over years and they're all still there. Many even with an option to download if you so wish
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