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Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

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Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#51

Post by ojosilva »

VS1999 wrote: post #8

How much of an issue is this? Does it work like ad revenue on youtube? If something has under 1k streams I have to assume that was only a few dollars hobbyists get occasionally, if even that.

As a side-gig musician and composer - my wife and I as a matter of fact - this is a non-issue. It's a few bucks a year, maybe $5 to $15, depending if we release some new album. It's symbolic, not even a tip, and we can't cash it until it reaches I think $60 or more iirc. Spotify is not (or barely) making money out of our work, but we otoh are "making money" by using its platform and visibility as means to reaching to our small fan base that will finance our work through concerts.

For Spotify otoh, these few bucks add up to a long-tail loss of an increasing and disturbing magnitude. Additionally, bad actors are in fact exploiting it, ruining the experience for me as a musician and as a user. The issue, if any, is that in all fairness we should all be making money, proportionally, from the platform. But under 1000 streams, as an artist, you are probably getting more value from having your work uploaded and streamable.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#52

Post by [deleted] »

cranberryturkey wrote: post #15
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

[deleted]

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#53

Post by jstummbillig »

cranberryturkey wrote: post #15
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

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 streams, as in, a bank transfer of $3,000,000.

How do you get from there to $45,000?

- As with any legacy artist, the record label gets most (maybe 70%). Why that is, oh well. It's less shocking if you think of the label as an employer and how little an average employee gets compared to what they produce. Do you need an employer? Absolutely not. Do you need a record label? Absolutely not. Anyway, a 70% cut would leave the artist with $900,000.

- Expenses: There are various costs associated with producing, distributing, and promoting music, hotel costs. Let your imagination run wild. Safe to say: This is a black hole, depending on how you want the process to look. If Snoop wants to sit in a big studio for months, he pays prices, for month, but that's not required to make music. Renting a high end studio on end is lifestyle. Sure, it's an expense, but it's like complaining about your profit while driving a Porsche. Awkward. Let's assume a 20% deduction here, reducing the revenue to $720,000.

- Focus on Publishing Royalties: Publishing royalties are just one part of the total royalties an artist earns. So there's quite a bit of double accounting going on if you want to pretend that the above costs are all deducted from your Spotify income.

If we assume publishing royalties make up only 10% of the total, that brings the figure down to $72,000.

- tldr: Snoop is living the big life, confused about money, and then proceeds to confuse others about money.

[1] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/s...

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#54

Post by atoav »

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.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#55

Post by TonyTrapp »

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…

> But would this cause smaller musicians to decide to pull their stuff off Spotify?

It's already happening. Even some artists which are above the limit pull out to show their support for smaller artists.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#56

Post by Semaphor »

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.

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 listening to, but there are also listening pods (me and two others are currently doing a one album a day discography run of Necrophobic), and adopted months: March was Screamarch, where two people curated a list of Screamo and adjacent albums/eps for every day, now it’s Finlapril where a Finn curated 1-2 albums a day moving through the history of Finnish metal.

Since joining, my monthly bandcamp purchases went pretty far up, though. And I’m only buying digital albums, there are quite a few who do vinyl purchases for even higher bills.

[0] https://www.angrymetalguy.com/

[1] Vera Sola - Peacemaker https://verasola.bandcamp.com/album/peacemaker

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#57

Post by input_sh »

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…

You should know: Apple Music filled that niche to perfection. Hands down, better than it ever was on Spotify. More choices, easier discovery, more collaboration with external brands, etc.

https://music.apple.com/us/curator/apple-music-dj-mixes/1441...

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#58

Post by basisword »

kredd wrote: post #20
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.

While it might not have a big impact on smaller artists financially, the idea of a multi billion dollar company deciding unilaterally to steal a few cents from you could be enough to drive you away.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#59

Post by Daz1 »

cranberryturkey wrote: post #15
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

Ah yes performative postering by people who 'really care' about artists getting paid.
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