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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

#71

Post by basisword »

silisili wrote: post #63
basisword wrote: post #39

This shouldn’t be legal. It’s a massive abuse of power. Small artists need to be on Spotify (pulling their music in protest is not viable and not going to lead to change anyway). What gives Spotify the right to arbitrarily decide “you make so little money it’s not worth our time paying you”? There’s no other business you could get away with this in. Scum.

It depends on the amount here, which I'm still not actually sure of. Lots of companies today only pay you out once you reach $X, usually some nominal amount. It sounds like that could be the case here. Why deal with payment processors, billing disputes, etc for a customer only earning pennies?

>> Why deal with payment processors, billing disputes, etc for a customer only earning pennies?

Spotify doesn’t have to deal with these things. Artists work with distributors who then deal with Spotify on their behalf. The distributor pays the artist.

For me the issue here is they’ve changed the deal to the detriment of the littlest of the little guys. A company that just signed a non-exclusive $250m deal for Joe Rogans podcast, can’t afford to pay $10 a year to a whole bunch of independent artists. That’s outrageous. For me it’s the ethics of it rather than the amount.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#72

Post by Hendrikto »

cjk2 wrote: post #38

I suspect the truth around this is that it contributes to their eternal losses actually paying artists so they worked out another way of not doing it for their balance sheet. I was at a gig for a moderately successful band recently and they said rather loudly they were bastards and buy one of their CDs instead even if you never play it because they need to eat.

> they said rather loudly […] buy one of their CDs instead even if you never play it because they need to eat

They could try making music people actually want to listen to. If they can‘t, that career may not be for them.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#73

Post by djxfade »

ansc wrote: post #41
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

To be fair, that's because the label siphons the rest. Spotify pays $4 per 1000 streams.

Where do you get those numbers from? I'm a self published artist. I had 150k streams on Spotify last year. I only earned roughly $450. There's no label or other middleman here taking a cut. Spotify is just cheap.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#74

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

Even if this doesn't really impact the small artists, Spotify is not even profitable for shareholders yet AND still doesn't pay a meaningful amount to most artists. It is only going to get worse from here.

I do not believe that their business model will ever do anything but fuck over the artists. It's also deeply disturbing to me that there are only a few options left for people to actually own their music and the rest is rent-seeking platforms.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#75

Post by avtolik »

HenryBemis wrote: post #9
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…

> I don't want, and never wanted, Audiobooks or Podcasts or News or other crap on the music app. Regarding Spotify, which I use daily, I also dislike their updates. I remember some months back I could disable/hide "Recommendations". Now in all my (personal & private) playlists I get a list of Recommendations. It's an annoyance because when I scroll fast to reach the bottom "to listen to that one song" it end up surfi…

I really like Podcast Addict. Its price is like 10$ per year to hide a small ad on the bottom and to get a choice which screen is the first to show.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#76

Post by Sparkyte »

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…

Or it would force small musicians to advertiwse more. Which is mutually beneficial to Spotify and the user.

1k is a relatively low number to hit at least they didn't set the demonizations level the same as other platforms.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#77

Post by iamacyborg »

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.

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#78

Post by Helmut10001 »

ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #74

Even if this doesn't really impact the small artists, Spotify is not even profitable for shareholders yet AND still doesn't pay a meaningful amount to most artists. It is only going to get worse from here. I do not believe that their business model will ever do anything but fuck over the artists. It's also deeply disturbing to me that there are only a few options left for people to actually own their music and the re…

Self-host Funkwhale [1] * (or something else). Curate your own music library. This is the only way forward.

* I self-host this internally, for my family and me, since 2019. One of the best designed interfaces / UX you can find.

[1]: https://www.funkwhale.audio/

Re: Spotify demonetizes all tracks under 1k streams

#80

Post by klausjensen »

realprimoh wrote: post #29
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 use YouTube Premium 90% of the time now for this reason. All the remixes and other indie mixes that I listen to are on YouTube and YouTube has so much more that I find it a hard value proposition to beat.

Slightly off topic, but where do you go to find this now?
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