oh goodness me, i saw this text coming since a while

the last drop, or rather drops, came into play lately and now i feel like i need to open up about this whole massive spotify fraud. “fraud” seems like a serious allegation, i know. but you know what, girls? SHE MEANT WHAT SHE SAID

before i start ranting, here’s some really dry information

that was really weird to see how differently my previous two albums worked. i released ‘1314’ LP when spotify already existed, but obviously most of my fan base still hadn’t used it then, and so I sold digital copies. before spotify we had two main points of digital sales – bandcamp and itunes

for this exact text bandcamp is what makes it all so obvious

‘art brut’ was released after spotify became some sort of a monopolist. and gosh i felt the difference A LOT. let figures speak for themselves

for any serious artist this all would look like a joke, but well, i live off of that and these figures kind of show how much food i can afford after spending two to five years and some thousands of euros to make those albums come out eventually

so i WASN’T AMUSED about the whole streaming endeavour from the very start, but it only gets worse

three things that have driven me completely crazy lately:

1. so i turn on my old computer (imac, 2011) – and yeah, it’s old, but i can’t afford a new one and this guy kinda works alright to satisfy my artistic needs. but after the new mac operating system came out, i started getting this message when opening spotify:

2. and yeah, of course global inflation affects everybody, especially the billionaires – they loose A LOT OF MONEY (by the way, here are their investor reports – there you can check their annual reports and see what their investors make in dividends. a lot.) and artists are fine, i guess, we never had any money. so spotify raises the premium prices:

3. and the last, but not least. you know, i had a few bands in my life and i still release older stuff as well. for example – ‘Gender ID’ was my band before i formed the ‘1314’ collective, and it’s still me and my friends, just a different name. so i have already applied to have access to control panel of that band TWICE. and you know what? after months of waiting i have never heard back from spotify. are they short on personnel, i wonder? well, then i have no idea why they make their money!

and to give you a general idea how it all works

the thing is, an artist cannot submit their song to spotify or other streaming platforms directly. for that you need a MAJOR LABEL or a distributor / aggregator service. i have a very vague idea on how the big artists function in this paradigm, but i can share my knowledge of dealing with it from my perspective as an artist with low income tier. in order to get released on streaming services i have to deal with a distributor who gets money from me for taking care of my digital distribution. the costs are as follows:

so, basically, you pay to be on spotify. and that’s just simple as that

i used tunecore and cdbaby before, they still try to take money from me. if i don’t pay, my older works will be taken down. and it means, once you’re off the roll, that you need to work on making those algorithms get you recognised again, from scratch. now i’m using distrokid, which seems a bit more humane, but ‘seems’ is a keyword here. 19.99 EUR per year for 2 artist names max

so i pay AT LEAST USD 19.99 per year for that doubted commodity. how much do i get in return?

here’s a full report, as it is

but to give you an idea – i made the following money from spotify streamings so far:

2021 – 3.112 USD (= 901 streams from unique users) THREE DOLLARS, YAY!

2022 – 13.597 USD (= 3917 streams from unique users) THIRTEEN DOLLARS, YAHOO!

2023 (so far) – 6.011 USD (= 1714 streams from unique users) SIX DOLLARS IS GOOD, RIGHT?

makes sense, or no?

all these figures are also before tax, indeed

so the question is – DO WE REALLY NEED SPOTIFY?

anyways. just a little rant on how we – artists – survive (or not)

questions to spotify:

1. maybe at least give artists free premium access? ideally – a native free system to submit music, surpassing the distributors who collect even more money from artists.
2. how about acknowledging that your whole business idea is built on thieving the intellectual rights and would you consider revising your payout systems? you know, soon it might be more that just one poor artist who complains. and we know that your main beneficiaries are mostly dead artists like Michael Jackson and David Bowie and so on. don’t you realise that living artists need to eat as well? (irony or sarcasm? who knows…)

well, i’m not really expecting to be heard. more than that, spotify’s chief has already spoken:

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has said musicians should make more music to ensure they make sufficient earnings on the streaming platform.

Speaking to Music Ally after announcing Spotify’s latest financial results, the 37-year-old chief exec said: “You can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough.” 

classic.fm

but the main question to Mr. Ek is – how many albums per year do you personally release? just asking for a friend…

cheers,

gene