Spotify Rant...

[J.F.N.]

"Today, with the cost of creating content being close to zero, people can share an incredible amount of content. This has sparked my curiosity about the concept of long shelf life versus short shelf life," said Ek in a post shared May 29. "While much of what we see and hear quickly becomes obsolete, there are timeless ideas or even pieces of music that can remain relevant for decades or even centuries." 

 

https://www.musicradar.com/news/spotify-ceo-content-zero

 

"Daniel Ek's comments arrive as Spotify reports record profits of over €1bn in Q1 2024"

 

 

Anybody joining me for a trip to Stockholm to "do a little job".... ?

 

😡

 

 

[J.F.N.]

Royalty payment rates for each streaming service are as follows:

 

 Napster: $0.019 Per Stream, 53 Streams For $1

 Tidal: $0.01284 Per Stream, 77 Streams For $1

 Apple Music: $0.00783 Per Stream, 100 Streams For $1

 Youtube Music: $0.00069 Per Stream, 136 Streams For $1

 Deezer: $0.0064 Per Stream, 178 Streams For $1

 Spotify: $0.00437 Per Stream, 228 Streams For $1

 Amazon Music: $0.00402 Per Stream, 249 Streams For $1

 Soundcloud: $0.0019 Per Stream, 526 Streams For $1

 Pandora: $0.00069 Per Stream, 752 Streams For $1

 

https://www.charlescleyn.com/blog/which-streaming-service-pays-more

[Docbop]

Music isn't Content and why Ek thinks the way he does it all just money and profit margins to him. 

[dazzjazz]

Spotify are the enemy yet many professional musicians have accounts with them. 
Qobuz are a much better alternative. They pay musicians the most per stream, and they have very high resolution music. Make the switch cats!

[Docbop]

26 minutes ago, dazzjazz said:

Spotify are the enemy yet many professional musicians have accounts with them. 

 

Because Spotify has made itself into the social media marketing point for people wanting to get their music out.   I'd say most people putting music on Spotify know how badly they are getting screwed, but Spotify is the modern day equivalent of "do it for exposure".  

 

FWIW   I have never liked or used Spotify unless no other choice.    An online school  I was attending always did music lists on Spotify and a couple Patreons I follow do the same.    So I will go on Spotify to see the list and use it to make my own Apple music list, then share the Apple list with others who don't use Spotify.  

[J.F.N.]

9 minutes ago, dazzjazz said:

Spotify are the enemy yet many professional musicians have accounts with them. 
Qobuz are a much better alternative. They pay musicians the most per stream, and they have very high resolution music. Make the switch cats!

 

I left Spotify 3 years ago after being with them since the start as a premium from day 1 it was released, as I can't stand behind Ek and his total ignorance. I went with youtube for a while after that, as it contains both ad free videos and their music platform, but in the end I learned about the payment rates and I've been with Tidal for the last 2 years. But now after the ownership shift, and the appearance of new actors paying better to the authors I definitely will reconsider. Thanks for the information!

[Baldwin Funster]

Playing in the park and passing the hat gives better rates than all the platforms put together. If you're good you are probably going to take in $20 in a couple 2 or 3 hours and maybe some guy drops a $50 in. It's happened. 

[Joe Muscara]

https://newsroom.spotify.com/2024-06-03/adjusting-spotify-premium-prices-in-the-us/

 

"Spotify Raises Prices for Second Time in 12 Months, Now More Expensive Than Apple Music" 😡

[SamuelBLupowitz]

18 hours ago, J.F.N. said:

 

Anybody joining me for a trip to Stockholm to "do a little job".... ?

 

I mean, when someone says "let them eat cake..."

[David Emm]

Music streaming services bring to mind the old physics adage: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite @$$hole." Whenever you see a new wunderdrug advertised, mark your calendar. Within about 10 years, the lawsuits begin, as the inevitably-harmed few per cent start appearing. They're factored into the business model, which assumes X number of people will be hurt. It makes everything seem suspect.

 

Since when did Business and Art NOT clash? They're near-antithetical. Not that you don't need structure and sensible planning to make most of your Art possible, but rather that many bean-counters are 6-foot-tall mosquitoes who often love the taste of your main Creative Battery.

 

Ron Cobb created several illustrations for the movie "Alien." FOX applied them without paying him, who sued them and won. His comment: "They love to grab an artist, suck out the marrow and throw away the husk. Mmm, yum, good artist, drain that one, get another." Gulp! 

 

Yeah, I need a Spotify t-shirt. My car needs an oil change. 🤨 

[Docbop]

1 hour ago, David Emm said:

Ron Cobb created several illustrations for the movie "Alien." FOX applied them without paying him, who sued them and won. His comment: "They love to grab an artist, suck out the marrow and throw away the husk. Mmm, yum, good artist, drain that one, get another." Gulp! 

 

I think that describes any job in the corporate world, they view employee like kleenex to use up and toss out.  They view any department that isn't a revenue generate as something we have to try and eliminate no matter how much they benefit the customer lived through that working in Tech Support and Quality Assurance.   I only worked for one maybe two corporations that tried to treat people humanely  Sun MicroSystems and Borland. 

 

  "For every action, there is an equal and opposite"   I'd say the evil streaming services are the opposite reaction.    From working in record store off and on for many years and in music biz for management companies I've watched all this.     Early record biz the companies didn't work about piracy/stealing because vinyl couldn't be copied, so they took the same view as book publishers.  Their attitude as later by a software company I worked for the Paperback Book license.   Two people can't read a book at the same time, same with a vinyl record only one can play it.   So you buy an album like it and lend to a friend, since you can't play it because they have it the record company was fine with that.   Move ahead and cassette tape comes out and its easy to connect the cassette deck to your stereo and make copies of the vinyl and record companies are now getting ticked.  So they make a stink and eventually government agrees to put an additional tax on cassette sales that goes to the record company to compensate them for lost royalties.   Didn't matter that you bought cassette to record classes in school you still paid that tax because it was hidden in the price of the blank cassettes.    People made cassettes for each other the beginning of stealing music, but record companies got some money from cassette sales they were content.   For historical reference when CD's and recordable CD's came out the record companies started demanding a similar tax to cassettes.  This time the blank CD companies started selling "Music CDs" that had the tax and Data CD's without the tax.   Didn't take long for the public to figure out the CD's were identical except for the tax, and Music CD disappeared.   Since early CD burners weren't that cheap record companies just lived with it.   

 

Then  the big change came in the form of the early internet which was all text based, but utilities came out to convert binary data to text files that could be shared.  It was kind of a pain but it worked but internet wasn't that popular yet because it was all text based.    Then early 90's and the WWW  the web came out and now internet was easy for the average person to use.   Also now there were tools to rip CD and video and people started sharing music, video, software, books you name it on the internet.    So called good people decided steal some thing digital was okay and went crazy.   This was people who in the real world wouldn't steal a pencil, but if something was digital they stole it and mass quantities.    Then sites like Napster and others for exchanging music became huge and rampant stealing was going on.  Record companies went nuclears and started raising prices higher and higher and the higher they went the more people stole music.    So the birth of streaming services came along and pitched to record companies to lease their catalogs for a fee and pay the songwriters and artist next to nothing.   Record companies were happy with  that because they had a guaranteed income stream.   Then the big bad owner of many record labels and publishing sees the values isn't the music and mechanical royalties the real money is owning the song publishing and you have UMG buying up publishing rights to everything they can get their hands on.   So owner of so much of recorded music is no longer focus on  the mechanical royalties they see the future money is in owning the copyrights.   With AI and rise in DIY music we are in another big change in the record industry.   All because of  every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.   Bet you didn't think I get back to that.  <grin>

 

Grab a beer and ponder that. 

[RABid]

I've never used Spotify but often wondered why music artists share Spotify lists of favorite songs with their fans rather than alternatives. Had Pandora for a while, back when you could not choose what to listen to. Only stations by type with the ability to like and dislike songs. Settled on Apple music as I subscribe to Apple One Family Plan.

 

What I wonder when I see lists like this is what the reimbursement is for play on radio or having your song played in a restaurant or some other setting that has to pay to play music.

[JoJoB3]

Make the ugly, bad, bald joke of a man who thinks he runs music go away. 

www.youtube.com/premium

[CrossRhodes]

On 6/3/2024 at 12:32 PM, J.F.N. said:

"Today, with the cost of creating content being close to zero, people can share an incredible amount of content. This has sparked my curiosity about the concept of long shelf life versus short shelf life," said Ek in a post shared May 29. "While much of what we see and hear quickly becomes obsolete, there are timeless ideas or even pieces of music that can remain relevant for decades or even centuries." 

 

https://www.musicradar.com/news/spotify-ceo-content-zero

 

"Daniel Ek's comments arrive as Spotify reports record profits of over €1bn in Q1 2024"

 

 

Anybody joining me for a trip to Stockholm to "do a little job".... ?

 

😡

 

 

There are a lot of ways you can support your favorite artists as streaming doesn't seem to be one of them. You can usually purchase digital downloads or even vinyl from most musicians these days. Not to mention most artists sell merchandise through their websites.

[CrossRhodes]

16 hours ago, RABid said:

I've never used Spotify but often wondered why music artists share Spotify lists of favorite songs with their fans rather than alternatives. Had Pandora for a while, back when you could not choose what to listen to. Only stations by type with the ability to like and dislike songs. Settled on Apple music as I subscribe to Apple One Family Plan.

 

What I wonder when I see lists like this is what the reimbursement is for play on radio or having your song played in a restaurant or some other setting that has to pay to play music.

I'm sure some see it as another social media platform to promote their music with hopes that it will translate into concert ticket and merch sales.

[Anderton]

At least he didn't mention "consuming" music. That makes music sound like something you'd get at Burger King. I'm sure the inhabitants of this forum "listen to" music  

 

But that's what Spotify (and video streaming services) are about: an industrial age consumption model rather than a Renaissance art model. I can't take Apple Music seriously when Apple spends billions on creating original content for Apple TV, yet spends nothing on creating original content for Apple Music. Tim Cook and Daniel Ek aren't Lorenzo de’ Medici.

 

[J.F.N.]

Just jumped the wagon, ditched Tidal and signed up for Qobuz. The playlist transfer initiated by Qobuz using a third party service worked out fast and flawlessly as well!