171–180 of 192 posts
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They also commission music from "ghost artists" that they can pay a fix rate, then place said artists in popular playlists to reduce royalty payouts.
gotta mix in a little baby powder, ya know?
( If you need a baby break try @ 1:20 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7DAGXVC1tQ )
I stopped my Spotify subscription and gave Apple Music and Youtube Music a try for a few months. I'm now again a Spotify user, despite that Youtube Music is still included in my Youtube Premium. The apps are terrible in terms of usability, performance, and reliability. I couldn't believe Apple dropped the ball on so hard on this, but then I remembered iTunes and started believing again. Most of my problem is basic ne…
A couple of points missed for why Spotify is bad: - Paying musicians cheap wages to make boring music (ghost artists) for playlists they promote: https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machin... - Not paying musicians anything at all if they don't have enough streams: https://www.engadget.com/spotify-confirms-it-wont-offer-payo... - Not preventing the deluge of AI-generated music flooding the platform:…
I mostly only use spotify for discovery, using either discovery weekly or starting a radio stream from a particular song. Is there another service that treats artists better that I can use instead for this purpose?
A couple of points missed for why Spotify is bad: - Paying musicians cheap wages to make boring music (ghost artists) for playlists they promote: https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machin... - Not paying musicians anything at all if they don't have enough streams: https://www.engadget.com/spotify-confirms-it-wont-offer-payo... - Not preventing the deluge of AI-generated music flooding the platform:…
Also, even for premium customers they will display ads (local concert tickets) and add sponsored albums/tracks to playlists and the home screen.
.. could have purchased a few 512GB microSD cards (assuming it is not iPhone, iPad). I have all my data offline. I can also use a uPnP on android to share it across all of my WiFi network be it TV or another persons phone.
A couple of points missed for why Spotify is bad: - Paying musicians cheap wages to make boring music (ghost artists) for playlists they promote: https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machin... - Not paying musicians anything at all if they don't have enough streams: https://www.engadget.com/spotify-confirms-it-wont-offer-payo... - Not preventing the deluge of AI-generated music flooding the platform:…
Spotify doesn't pay artists at all. You know why? Because they pay the rights holders. Literally no one with their performative outrage against Spotify ever ask where are the billions of dollars that Warner Music, Sony, Universal collect.
"Oh, Spotify is so bad it doesn't pay artists". Spotify pays 70% of its revenue (that is, money before all the taxes, expenses etc.) to rights holders. What more do you expect them to pay?
The article at Harpers that you quote frequently makes rounds. And even though the article itself literally writes how Spotify is completely beholden to rights holders and pays them 70% of its revenue... it still goes on to blame Spotify and only Spotify for everything.
> to make boring music (ghost artists) for playlists they promote
1. IIRC Spotify doesn't produce any music of their own
2. The article confuses Spotify and companies that are literally in the business of providing that music (and besides the scammy ones there are legitimate ones that have been in this business forever).
And, again, Spotify doesn't deal with artists directly.
Can't say anything about PFC or Strategic Programming (even though I worked at Spotify. Even if I knew anything, I probably couldn't say anything anyway).
As for the bullshit about "keeping intiatives under wraps". Lol. At any given time Spotify is involved in about a hundred different "initiatives". It doesn't have to advertise all of them. Especially not things like (pure speculation:) "there's probably a 5% increase in listening to stock music, can we get preferential contracts with companies that already provide 70-80% of stock music".
And to top it off. Read the quote from one of the musicians you so deride: "The money was better than any money I could make from even the successful indie labels".
Performative outrage is performative.
> Not paying musicians anything at all if they don't have enough streams
1000 streams per year comes out to $3-$5 per year, perhaps less. That's the cutoff. I'm ambivalent about this decision, but again stop with the performative outrage.
> Not preventing the deluge of AI-generated music flooding the platform
Here's an AI-generated artist. Please tell me how you're going to detect that it's AI-generated and remove it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3Uyfnp-jag Or, indeed, why it's worse than the brain rot that Taylor Swift (to give an example) outputs by the ton.
So Spotify does what any sensible company does since they have no choice: let generative music in (btw, generative music has been a thing since computers were invented), and attempt to curb the flood of slop (for some definition of slop).
Just as with any other performative outrage no one discusses what exactly Spotify (or other platforms) can do to stop this.
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Amazon Originals, Netflix Originals. Disney Originals. Paramount Originals. I'm just wondering what is different between series and music, that for music its very bad morally to create your own and to put your own in the front row. While for other streaming its accepted.
One big difference is that these shows and movies are not "ghost," they credit their crew and talent like any other production, and those folks negotiate their pay rates similar to other productions. If you are a grip on a Netflix original movie, you will get listed in the credits like any other movie. The other big difference is that TV and movie productions have always been "assemble when needed." Production compan…
The only reason is because unions in the movie business negotiated this. That's it.
There are no unions of note in the music business, and artists get shafted left and right.
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Sure - but as you can see here the focus on "ditching spotify" is often ethical. You can absolutely use services that have an artist pay-rate of $0 per stream, but I don't think people typically advocate for that - and indeed this author does not seem to either (otherwise they would have no collection size issues).
The piracy route can even be ethical. Compare: * Have a Spotify subscription, listen to all 10 albums of some artist. * Pirate everything, but buy a T-shirt from that artist. * Buy one album digitally (their latest), and pirate the rest. What is the artist earning from your contributions in these three cases?
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You should check out iomoio.com They have an impressively large amount of music available. In addition, they price songs at $0.16 USD/song —- or cheaper if you deposit more money onto the platform and. This isn’t piracy (money is flowing to artists) and you get to own at a fraction of the cost of iTune, Qobuz, or other platforms that charge around $0.99/song
You would be better off pirating all of your music and buying just one piece of merch from an artist. These rogue foreign licensing agencies provide no real value, and in fact are functionally illegal and unrecognized outside of Ukraine. It's also highly unlikely much money flows back to the artists. https://law.stackexchange.com/q/499 , https://archive.is/EZ2U3
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It's very hard for me to see how someone could believe this unless they never even tried to actually find new music. I just bought a great new metal album (human made) yesterday.
And what is the name of this great new metal album? Show me.
And these are good youtube channels for finding new things: https://www.youtube.com/@NWOTHMFullAlbums/videos https://www.youtube.com/@666MrDoom/videos