Spotify Is Eating the Entire Music Business?

[ghettosynth]

I saw a video a couple of months ago about an artist who decided to release her latest album on cassettes. At the end she earned considerably more than what she did on Spotify.

Found it. It's a cool video.

Who has a cassette player? And why?

Well, if you're asking, I still have several. However, I also have open reel players, yes plural, as well. I've also released cassettes made from one of those tape copying services. I sold them all, years ago, yay! It was a lot of fun making the j-cards and I don't regret the experience at all. I think that if I went back to playing out and wanted to sell a few tens to a few hundreds of dollars worth of music to my audience at the show, I would go back to doing exactly that. I think that a lot of people who buy cassettes don't actually expect to play them. They are just a part of a collection.

So, in short, if you are small potatos, I think that she's right, but, it's going to be hard to make a living that way.

I find the deezer comment a bit baity though, I think that it was a reasonable choice. Here are some more details:

He added: “The tracks that have been removed include noise, mono-track albums [albums made of copies of a single track], fake artists and tracks that haven’t been listened to in the past 12 months.”

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/ ... sic-group/

Their artist focused model is trying to disincentivize a particular kind of flooding. I'm not going to quote it, but see the article for more details.

I also don't see her point about paying the platforms to be paid. Of course you're paying your distributor, or, they're going to take a cut. That's not unreasonable. I have a track on Spotify, I haven't paid a nickel for that. I don't pay them to listen to my own music, I pay them to listen to others. I'm perfectly ok with giving my distributor a percentage of my proceeds in lieu of paying a fixed rate or a subscription rate to pay for their distribution services. They're never going to make a nickel off of my "music." Sorry about that, but the distributor wrote the contract, so there we are.

[DrGonzo]

I saw a video a couple of months ago about an artist who decided to release her latest album on cassettes. At the end she earned considerably more than what she did on Spotify.

Found it. It's a cool video.

Who has a cassette player? And why?

A couple of my music making friends started going this route 5-6 years ago. But it doesn't matter if you are doing cassettes or not. If you can sell something as obscure as cassettes and earn more than Spotify, something is fundamentally wrong.

[gearwatcher]

People who pay for Spotify will probably be happy with the stuff made with Suno soon enough anyway.

Lol. Bullshit. You're so rad.

Nothing radical about it. I'd bet this sandwich that more than 90% of their paying user-base are people who don't care about music in any emotionally invested way. The people who listen to sugary radio friendly top 40 pop are their bread and butter.

Those people really don't give a f**k if Taylor Swift or Suno wrote the happy go lucky nonsense that's background noise for their grueling office job.

[revvy]

People who pay for Spotify will probably be happy with the stuff made with Suno soon enough anyway.

Lol. Bullshit. You're so rad.

Nothing radical about it. I'd bet this sandwich that more than 90% of their paying user-base are people who don't care about music in any emotionally invested way. The people who listen to sugary radio friendly top 40 pop are their bread and butter.

Those people really don't give a f**k if Taylor Swift or Suno wrote the happy go lucky nonsense that's background noise for their grueling office job.

Elitist misinformed nonsense. You're/I'm no better than everyone else, really.

[gearwatcher]

Point at where I claimed "better" though. I'm pointing at well established fact that people have different interests and music isn't universally one of them.

[revvy]

"Better" is implicit in your putdown of others and their tastes throughout those posts, with the grande finale of calling out the "happy go lucky nonsense" supposedly preferred by more than 90% of Spotify's paying customers.

Agreed that people have different interests, some like music better than others, of course.

[BONES]

No, that's just what you chose to read into it. He's just saying that people will listen to whatever garbage is thrust down their stupid throat and he's not wrong. People don't listen to Taylor Swift's music because they like it, they listen because they like Tayor Swift. She pretends to be their friend so that she can make even more money from them and they happily oblige. Like Apple customers. In fact, I'll bet that the occurrence of iPhone ownership is an order of magnitude greater among Taylor Swift fans than the global average. Gullible people tend to fall for all the scams.

[WackyZoundz]

Those people really don't give a f**k if Taylor Swift or Suno wrote the happy go lucky nonsense that's background noise for their grueling office job.

Correct. That's why artists like Swift are so concerned about being replaced by AI while the rest of the music world doesn't care (because they can't be replaced by AI).

[revvy]

[bermudagold]

it is true that a significant percentage of the population doesn't have an intimate relationship with music...they are more interested in the things "around" music that increase their ability to have access to social activities...music is just a necessary conduit to being socially relevant...I've noticed this being involved in music in many different ways...

a current example is this afrobeat wave...i been playing afrobeats for 30 yrs in my own social circles and people would always turn up they nose,...now those same people claim to love it...average person doesn't really care about music, they just want to use it as a tool to stay relevant socially...they just follow the bandwagons and ride the waves like sheep...so dubstep had its 5 min, reggaeton had its 5 min, which reminded people about dancehall and it got its second 5 min,...now afrobeat is havin its 5 min...these fair-weather afrobeat lovers will be gone in 2 yrs

another example that jumps out is helping to break d'angelo first album on college radio almost 2 yrs before it dropped...couldn't believe no one cared or appreciated it...fast forward 18 months when it blows up...same people in love with it...

[bermudagold]

[FarleyCZ]

Yeah, that's all cool, but ... if we label average listener as "too dumb" and "not worthy" for our precious art, we're essentially eliminating ourselves from the industry, ain't we?

Also, nobody was born with perfect music taste. Acquired tastes are ... well ... acquired. If we let Daniel Ek and Taylor Swift build the system in a way that their customer always consumes just their product and literally nothing else, they won't have a chance to acquire anything.

And it's not just Spotify. That's just the latest most shiny example of the same thing. Why is there literally no chillstep radio in the air? "Well because Taylor is much more famous." ...well yes, yes. But is that the reason or a consequence?

[bermudagold]

Yeah, that's all cool, but ... if we label average listener as "too dumb" and "not worthy" for our precious art, we're essentially eliminating ourselves from the industry, ain't we?

Also, nobody was born with perfect music taste. Acquired tastes are ... well ... acquired. If we let Daniel Ek and Taylor Swift build the system in a way that their customer always consumes just their product and literally nothing else, they won't have a chance to acquire anything.

And it's not just Spotify. That's just the latest most shiny example of the same thing. Why is there literally no chillstep radio in the air? "Well because Taylor is much more famous." ...well yes, yes. But is that the reason or a consequence?

not saying this was aimed at me...but I'm not advocating for some type of elitism at all...but gearwatcher said "Those people really don't give a f**k if Taylor Swift or Suno wrote the happy go lucky nonsense", which seem to trigger folk...but there is truth to this...there is a top 20 song right now apparently made from 4 splice loops,...suno and the like could make that trivially

[_leras]

I'm wondering what Spotify will do with all the millions of tracks which get uploaded by hobbyists which have no or next to no plays. There must come a point when it's just not worth the disk space. Their catalogue must be growing exponentially and I wonder where it leads

Artists have to reach a certain threshold in stream to get anything at all.

For new artists just trying to find an audience it offers nothing over SoundCloud which at least make it simpler to embed and share links etc.

Arguably it's still worth putting the music on Spotify and other music stores. If someone finds a track they like and can look you up and find your back calalog that's a win.

Another big issue with Spotify is that they are taking over the playlists. There are so many Spotify playlists that it's increasingly difficult to find playlists people have put together - and these curated lists are much better to find music imo.

And additionally Spotify seems to be autocreating playlists and filling them with tracks you've already listened to, so you're literally getting steered away from new music in many instances. Shameful and shameless company.

[Scrubbing Monkeys]

I'm wondering what Spotify will do with all the millions of tracks which get uploaded by hobbyists which have no or next to no plays. There must come a point when it's just not worth the disk space. Their catalogue must be growing exponentially and I wonder where it leads

Artists have to reach a certain threshold in stream to get anything at all.

For new artists just trying to find an audience it offers nothing over SoundCloud which at least make it simpler to embed and share links etc.

Arguably it's still worth putting the music on Spotify and other music stores. If someone finds a track they like and can look you up and find your back calalog that's a win.

Another big issue with Spotify is that they are taking over the playlists. There are so many Spotify playlists that it's increasingly difficult to find playlists people have put together - and these curated lists are much better to find music imo.

And additionally Spotify seems to be autocreating playlists and filling them with tracks you've already listened to, so you're literally getting steered away from new music in many instances. Shameful and shameless company.

Sounds like comcast radio. I really feel like the future is grass roots...in your face ...artist-music lover connection at live events.