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Spotify made £56m profit, but has decided not to pay smaller artists like me. We need you to make some noise | Damon Krukowski

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/30/spotify-smaller-artists-wrapped-indie-musicians

What its Wrapped campaign doesn’t say is that indie musicians and labels are treated terribly, and deserve a better deal, says Damon Krukowski

Spotify made £56m profit, but has decided not to pay smaller artists like me. We need you to make some noise | Damon Krukowski

148 comments

sub_

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I remember when Joe Rogan was getting giant paycheck from Spotify promoting antivax stuff, and people talked about moving to Apple Music, but it feels like many just stuck with Spotify.

I came across a post on instagram that says that Al Yankovic's 80 million stream on playlist only netted him enough money to buy a sandwich.

Also, Spotify underpaying artists, making fake playlists with cover artists to undermine artists, are not new. It feels like the mainstream crowd just doesn't care, which pushes me further into depression.

Fiivemacs

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I personally don't care because if a company isn't paying you for your time/work, that's their problem to sort out, not mine. I will go where the music is. If artists start leaving Spotify and it becomes a wasteland of nothing but trash, then I'll find new places to get it from. Why should I worry about their income? I'm paying for a service, I get the service and use it. I have my own income issues to handle, I don't need theirs too.

mkhoury

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What Spotify does affects the entire music market. Why should you worry about their income? Because Spotify's strategy makes it harder and harder for musicians to have the income to keep on making music. If you care about having music to listen to, you should care about this. Also, Spotify and music is just one example of the overall exploitation of workers. If you don't stand for artists when it's their livelihood at stake, why should anyone stand up for your rights when it's your livelihood at stake?

CalamityBalls

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Buy concert tickets if you want to support musicians, streaming income doesn't really factor into it afaik.

mkhoury

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That's the point, though. Spotify is rigged specifically so that they don't have to pay small artists. Spotify splits the pot with the Big Three and everyone else can go fuck themselves. I would much rather my monthly payment go toward the artists I actually listen to. Instead, most of a monthly payment goes to the most played artists-- which Spotify rigs to be whoever nets them the most money (low royalty artists, high dividends for Spotify and the Big Three who are highly invested in it)

streetfestival

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I think Tidal scores the best among music streaming services in terms of compensating artists. I switched from Spotify to Tidal several months ago and have no regrets

morry040

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It's estimated that Tidal pays $0.013 per stream, Spotify pays $0.003 - $0.005, and Apple pays $0.01 per stream.
https://dittomusic.com/en/blog/how-much-does-tidal-pay-per-stream/

cwagner

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I doubt it pays much better, the issue might be partially the distribution, but mainly that they are too cheap.

Kiloee

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While it isn’t a lot more in general it is still about three times of Spotify. It also takes into consideration which artists you actually stream afaik, so that your money goes more towards those.

scytale

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Even concerts barely break even for artists after all expenses. Right now, merch and physical album sales are the best way (other than directly giving money) to support your favorite artists. I don’t buy physical albums because they just become clutter at home, so I make it a point to buy merch when I go to a concert.

cwagner

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Buying digital albums works just as well. No need to go physical.

astraeus

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Does Spotify affect the music market or does the music market affect Spotify’s mode of operations? Can Spotify really exist in an ecosystem where artists are fairly represented and paid equally? Look at Bandcamp, it’s been trashed and deserted because the companies that have taken advantage of it found the model unprofitable by their estimates.

There of course are many things Spotify could do, but unfortunately the momentum in the music industry is towards profit and not actual talent or social consciousness. Spotify is owned by money makers, not individuals with true appreciation for the art of music.

acastcandream

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All we know is the companies weren’t able to extract what they wanted out of band camp, not that its model wasn’t working or couldn’t work.

astraeus

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As I said, by their estimates. I do not endorse the idiocy that compels this greed and ignorance towards true art. I myself am a musician and by no means am I popular or thriving on my art. I can’t be upset with Spotify because it’s still a better system than hoping any physical media I release will make it into the hands of others, in a music industry that has generally discouraged people from listening to underground artists. With digital media, Bandcamp is probably one of the best platforms for artists.

AnonStoleMyPants

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Not op but I would not care much. Sure things could be better but it's not my problem. There is enough shit to worry about and music (or Spotify) is nowhere near the top half.

Same argument about standing up to someone's livelihood being at stake can be said literally about everything. I got a limited amount of fucks to give. I'm happy if people want to fight this stuff and make music better for everyone but I ain't part of that crew.

wildginger

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I dunno, I feel like its not that big of a deal to not pay spotify $15 a month

toothpicks

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I am a musician and I deserve to make a living just like you.

mkhoury

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Yeah, agreed and every person can only do so much. I like to think that it's all the same fight, it's the fight against the stranglehold that the rich have on the rest of us.

onlinepersona

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Found the egoist!

acastcandream

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You’re welcome to feel that way but you basically surrender any right to complain about the state of the music industry.

Uncle_Bagel

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Sony and Universal own a pretty decent chunk of Spotify, so they have every incentive to force their artists to stay on the platform.

Turun

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This is a valid opinion to have as a consumer in the here and now.

However, if you think about the bigger system and how it will change in a few years time, you'll notice that the matter is not quite this simple. It's easy to imagine that no single musician is brave enough to take the first step onto a new platform devoid of users, just like you are not willing to jump to a new platform devoid of musicians. And if no artist takes the first step and no user takes the first step, then the status quo will prevail. Now, that may not necessarily be a bad thing. But if artists are not paid enough to continue making music for Spotify, then they'll stop making music for Spotify. That's fine if you like mainstream music of whoever games the system successfully. But it's easy to see how that would be a loss to some people.

Skua

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Reporting on Spotify's payments to artists typically puts payments at 0.003 - 0.005 USD per stream. 80,000,000 streams at 0.003 is just shy of a quarter of a million dollars. And it's totally fair to still argue about whether that's enough or whether it's fair to the many small artists than Weird Al, but his video is definitely a joke and not reflective of the actual income unless he's getting unbelievably shafted by his label

cwagner

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Which is why it really sucks. Now people remember that number, keep repeating it, and essentially he has become a fake news peddler. Good job, Al.

NightOwl

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When pay is basically non existent is there a reason to be on spotify? Or is it for "exposure" in hopes of finding new fans.

Neato

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The same reason merchandise sellers are on Amazon even though Amazon forces them to lower prices and make less: if you're NOT on Amazon, people just won't find you. If you're not on Spotify, you don't exist in the music world to some people. Because otherwise where else will they search for you? Youtube Music or Apple Music, both pay sites. Otherwise you're having word of mouth or searching manually.

cwagner

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I came across a post on instagram that says that Al Yankovic’s 80 million stream on playlist only netted him enough money to buy a sandwich.

It was hyperbole, unless his sandwich costs 200-300k. Which is the reason why his statement was very questionable.

Masimatutu

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https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=fNjQG7y9aoQ

I love Weird Al! But pretty sure this was hyperbole. The point still stands, though. It really is depressing that people just follow "everybody else" when giving abusive megacorporations money. Same with social media, especially when there are great, healthy, ethical alternatives to be found is the Fediverse.

Edit: I'll just link pixelfed just because...

nix

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Apple Music isnt much better and giving even more power to such a huge corporation sucks. Regardless though, there’s this thing thats been understood with services/products where most people don't switch unless the competition is 10x better.

aroom

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Apple Music pays two time what Spotify does. Easy pick between the two.

PrivateNoob

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I'm stuck in a family plan with 4 of my friends + a friend's sister. I'm open to getting a Family Tidal Hifi Plus, but I'm not so sure, if all of them are willing to change for a higher tier and using a different servicr.

blazera

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If you want to do the maths, the maximum one can possibly earn in Spotify royalties is $0.003 a stream. It doesn’t add up to a living wage for most artists.

And now, to make matters far worse, starting in 2024 Spotify will stop paying anything at all for roughly two-thirds of tracks on the platform. That is any track receiving fewer than 1,000 streams over the period of a year.

So if my maths are right, this means people not getting paid...are people that would make less than 3 dollars in a whole year?

admiralteal

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Which really illuminates how fucked it is that they aren't paying those people.

These tiny artists earning barely anything are evidently a major enough cost sector that it's worth Spotify just telling them to get fucked. Playing their content is evidently significantly important to Spotify, but not enough to justify an annual check that isn't even enough to buy a beer.

blazera

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With hits that low, youre basically just advocating for UBI at that point, you cant expect pay for every little amateur hobby folks have.

Prunebutt

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People want to listen to it tough, don't they? Don't these amateur musicians provide a service that people value?

blazera

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Thats just it, number of hits is the metric for that, if its low then folks dont want to listen to it.

Prunebutt

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Would you say that folks don't want to listen to artists with 48k hits?

wildginger

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Lol thats a lunatics take. You absolutely can be expected to pay every person who gives you content to farm users off of.

Imagine applying your take to any other business. "Sorry john, I loved the soap, but you only have 4 people a week asking about you, so Im going to be keeping it for free."

"Love the scarf, really, but you only sold what, 25 this year? 50? Nah, Im just going to keep this. Let me now when you shift real sales, maybe then you will deserve being paid."

Nah dude thats lunacy

blazera

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the product isnt being taken and needing replacing, this is like people coming to look at the soap you made. And if enough people come and look at it, an advertiser might give you some money to put an ad by the soap.

Now, there's nothing stopping you from selling the soap instead. There are avenues to sell your music instead of having it on a freely accessable platform.

wildginger

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Except thats incorrect. Spotify is a store, asking musicians to give them the rights to sell their songs as a package deal in exchange for a cut based on popularity. All music gets ads. There is no "low popularity ad free" section.

And now you, and spotify, are saying "yeah I know we agreed to pay you based on how many customers came in here for your stuff, but I think what you rightfully and legally earned is chump change, so I wont be giving it to you."

You are advocating scamming people because you, personally, think the money owed is a pittance. Thats an evil, black hearted mentality.

blazera

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It's sort of a sliding scale between: making content that is popular enough for a platform to make considerable revenue from it and wants to pay you a portion to keep you there, because your content is competitive and could be making other platforms money. Or, it's a free hosting site for data you're uploading that's funded with ads. Every other platform I know with this model, like Youtube or Twitch, have a cutoff between the two, it's a hosting site for users until they're popular enough to become business partners with a monetary agreement. It's two way freedom between each party, spotify doesnt have to pay anyone anything, and no one has to host their content on spotify.

This isnt a retroactive change of terms, it's new terms starting next year. Everyone's getting what was agreed to this year. If they dont support the new terms, they can leave the platform. They wont, because they're using it as a free hosting platform and not a money maker, maybe with hopes they'll be popular enough someday.

wildginger

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"Its a sliding scale, we want your content but we dont want to pay you for it, so if we think youre not popular enough to take us to court over this we are sliding the scale of how much we pay you for the content to zero"

You sound like an evil cartoon robin hood villain, do you get that? Are you floating about in chains and a nightgown, in preperation for scaring jeff bezos this christmas eve?

"Nah its like youtube bro, the other super evil and morally bankrupt company!" Thats not a defense, why are you saying that like its a defense

conciselyverbose

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What they're actually advocating for is dividing each user's pot by their listens.

If a user primarily listens to a handful of small bands, why shouldn't their cut go to those bands, rather than being thrown into a big pool to be diluted? At first glance they'd be similar, but they're arguing that if you do the math out they aren't.

admiralteal

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To be clear, what I said is Spotify should be sending them their annual several dollar checks. They shouldn't be allowed to just trim away that cost entirely because the artists are small and Spotify wants more profits.

And what you're saying is that they shouldn't get anything because it's "just a hobby".

Fuck you, seriously.

blazera

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Like, i dont think i deserve any money for getting some thousands of views of my art. I think im getting paid about how much money im making the platforms its on, which is nothing. Im not yet good enough to get a job making art, or to sell my art instead of making it freely viewable.

wildginger

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Well thank god you arent in charge of any company worth a damn, you little scammer

Neato

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Any track, not any artist. You could have a hundred tracks getting hundreds of streams a piece. Maximum before cutoff would be about $3/track. Not a ton but could be hundreds of dollars. And combining that from dozens to thousands of artists potentially in that boat.

spwyll

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Your math assumes those people only have one track on Spotify. I currently have 25 tracks on Spotify. Without advertising or promotion of any kind, I earned about $12 this year. The big problems are:

New rules apply per song, so if ALL my songs got 999 streams, that would be $75 they wouldn't pay me--if ONE song hit the magic 1000 streams they would pay me $3 and I still wouldn't get the other $72
They are still making money off my streams, they are just coming up with ways not to pay me for it while still claiming to be "artist focused"
They claim the "small payments" usually don't get claimed anyway so they don't see the need to make them--this is ideologically "paying with exposure"
By your logic, since $33,975 annual income is the federal poverty level, anyone making less than that should not complain about not getting paid at all--you can obviously insert any arbitrary amount here to support the "logic" of "that's not much so nothing at all is just as good"

I have no delusions about ever making a living off Spotify (or my extremely niche music in general), but the idea that a corporation should be able to monetize my work and not have to pay me anything for it is sort of distasteful

blazera

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you dont have to let them monetize anything. host it yourself, or sell your music on other sites.

ripcord

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And it's likely a good bit less than 3

BraveSirZaphod

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Some context is that this is Spotify's first profitable quarter in quite a while. Also, there are 11 million artists on Spotify. I won't pretend to have any data on listening distribution, but even naively and stupidly going with a uniform split, that's of course $5 per artist if you eliminated Spotify's profit entirely. In reality, most of those will have next to no listeners, and the vast majority of streams are going to the top several thousand.

The deeper question to ask is where all the streaming revenue is actually going, and the answer to that isn't to line Spotify's pockets; it's to the labels.

Kaldo

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It's a bit of a confusing situation. Spotify pays the labels for the rights, but also has to pay the artists? Do the artists not get money from the labels for the money they got from seeling their songs? Do artists that own their own songs get a larger cut from Spotify?

And yeah 56mil is nothing to a business like this, I'm surprised it's not more profitable with all the subscriptions and ad money. It's like THE platform for music nowadays.

scytale

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I have around 48k streams on spotify and I’ve earned a whopping $172. Their new payment model would bring that down to essentially $0.

Auzy

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Why is anyone still using Spotify?

They have money to pay Joe Rogan an absolutely obscene amount of money which could have made hundreds of artists life awesome apparently (which feels more like a bribe). So it is clear, they have the cash to pay others too. They just choose not to

twei

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I hate the company but I haven't found another streaming service with a similar amount of music, sound quality and algorithm. I have a jellyfin instance, but it lacks the choice and algorithm.

Edit: I am currently in the process of switching to Tidal. It has pretty much all the niche artists that I usually listen to, the algo is pretty good (at least thats what other ppl say), the audio quality is very good and it has a really nice UI. Also, it pays Artists twice as much as Spotify.
It doesn't have a native App for Linux, but there is https://github.com/Mastermindzh/tidal-hifi, which is an electron wrapper for the web-ui that is also available via Flatpak and works well so far.

Auzy

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Tried tidal and didn't work well for me with Android auto. You can actually use something like tune my music to copy your playlists to every main service for testing.

I used apple music. I don't like Apple in particular, but they pay artists, and don't pay Joe rogan

I actually found the music suggestions were way better than Spotify which mostly just repeated stuff I heard

Yerbouti

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Bandcamp and Tidal. Please everyone, we need to kill Spotify, they hate artists.

SheerDumbLuck

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Bandcamp was sold off without the unionized employees. If you're doing this to be pro-labour, you can't really support Bandcamp right now.

https://www.thefader.com/2023/10/31/bandcamp-united-files-unfair-labor-practice-violation-claim-against-songtradr-and-epic-games

dallo

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As a fellow Bandcamp enjoyer I am quite sad about its enshittification. Someone made Faircamp as an alternative. I hope that Funkwhale will fill the soundcloud/bandcamp niche.

sfera

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Install some software on your server [...]

I'm afraid that this is a big no-go for most artists, which just want to make music and don't want to be server administrators.

dallo

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This is why you can have local or label instance. People have email and website without being server administrators.

sfera

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One important thing the centralized sites like Bandcamp enable, is discovery of new music and artists. I'm afraid that this is such a big deal that Faircamp won't be able to take off until that problem is addressed and solved somehow.

Yerbouti

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I know, but so far, it's still the best way to give money to the creators. It's basically 9:1 in favor of the artists when you buy an album.. Hopefully a fair alternative will come up in a near future. Funkwhale is slowly getting better . Anyway, anything is better than Spotify.

TALL421

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Damn it. And I had JUST made another comment elsewhere in favor of Bandcamp.

SheerDumbLuck

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It's unfortunate that this has to be a bad thing.

BurningRiver

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I feel like you’re doing everyone a disservice when you don’t tell us the most beneficial way for us to hear your music.

Masimatutu

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The best way is always to buy the music directly from the artist, in this case:

somegadgetguy

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beejjorgensen

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What's the pay rate for artists?

somegadgetguy

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tal

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If you want to do the maths, the maximum one can possibly earn in Spotify royalties is $0.003 a stream. It doesn’t add up to a living wage for most artists.

And now, to make matters far worse, starting in 2024 Spotify will stop paying anything at all for roughly two-thirds of tracks on the platform. That is any track receiving fewer than 1,000 streams over the period of a year.

Honestly, does the 1k floor matter much? Based on the above text, the most that such a track can possibly make is $3/year. It's a safe bet that most aren't sitting right at 999 views and the maximum revenue per track; most are probably well below that. I have a hard time seeing someone caring much about that.

I'm not saying that there isn't possibly some kind of business model for which a track making $1/year or something this might make sense (massive numbers of cheap machine-generated tracks targeting very specific tastes, that all get a few views each). But for conventionally-produced music, I think that if you're making a song that's generating 50 cents or 10 cents a year or something, it's basically not on your radar financially.

scrchngwsl

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There's bands I listen to that have <10 monthly listeners. They still deserve their $3 a year IMO.

klangcola

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How much of this is Spotify's fault and how much is the major record labels sitting between Spotify and the individual artists?

And is there a better place for us consumers to go and vote with our wallet? Ideally somewhere that isn't one of the 5 major tech giants that control everything

mkhoury

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Cory Doctorow writes extensively about how it's Spotify's fault, as an extension of the common exploitation of musicians in the industry, in the excellent book Chokepoint Capitalism. Here's a short summary of the Spotify argument by the author: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ5z_KKeFqE

raptir

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The newest part, which is Spotify refusing to payout what small artists are owed if they don't hit a certain streaming threshold, is 100% on Spotify.

For alternatives, Tidal allegedly pays better and at least doesn't do this. Qobuz is not owned by any big tech company.

Fiivemacs

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We will never know, but somehow people think it's our problem to deal with.

Osa-Eris-Xero512

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The record labels that own Spotify

spiderkle

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The justification for this is demonetizing white-noise tracks or other work without creative effort that supposedly costs spotify too much. I'm not a fan of the direction this is going because one of the best things about the platform was it's selection of underground music. This just buries it deeper and doesn't help artists that are trying to break through. It just shovels the profits to the top earners who are already doing quite well. There aren't many alternatives and bancamp has been passed down from epic games to songtradr and isn't anywhere near a real alternative yet.

state_electrician

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Honestly, 56 million profit is really not much. How many artists are getting next to nothing? 100,000? Splitting that profit between them leaves each with 560 per year. There's even less when you include more.

And if Spotify raises the prices to pay more per play people will leave, leaving Spotify with less money to hand out. Having asshats like Rogan getting millions or the deals huge artists, who are already filthy rich like Taylor Swift, make with Spotify are what's hurting small artists. I think Spotify has the same issue as the rest of the world. There is enough for everyone, it's just not equally distributed.

Stayfi

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Also no fair competition from Apple and google

jjjalljs

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I haven't used Spotify in a while. I buy stuff on Bandcamp (Bandcamp Friday usually).

Godort

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Do you know if this still gives artists the most cash after Epic's purchase(and recent sale to songtradr)?

raptir

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https://get.bandcamp.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500006084082-What-are-Bandcamp-s-fees-

They charge a 15% fee. So the artist (if independent) or record label (if not) gets 85% of whatever you pay.

Godort

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Sounds like they're still one of the best. That's good to hear.

jjjalljs

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I believe on Bandcamp Friday the artist gets 100% of the sale. I'm not sure if they're going to keep doing it after the sale to songtradr.

The loss of bandcamp's independence is a tragedy

novakeith

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Agreed. There is an emerging trend among Fedi artists to use Faircamp, but it doesn’t exactly fill the same void.

charlytune

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I use Bandcamp instead of Spotify now, because that's what most of my musician friends use to sell their music and recommend as the best way of supporting artists directly, and some of my favourite current artists are active on there. Yeah I can't just stream and make playlists of whatever I want, and it's more for new music than older stuff, but I can scroll through and play the suggested tracks which are far more interesting and diverse than anything Spotify would suggest to me, and then I can buy the stuff I really like. I'm slowly building up enough stuff that way to have an interesting collection on my phone to listen to, and it's also introduced me to some really cool music that I wouldn't have heard about from Spotify.

onlinepersona

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It's looking like Bandcamp is going to get axed: Bandcamp lays off half its staff after buyout by Songtradr

jjjalljs

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Capitalism is a machine for producing tragedies.

The only silver lining is even if Bandcamp goes away, I can keep the music I bought on it. It's all drm free. If a streaming service shuts down, you're typically left with nothing despite having paid every month.

I hope Bandcamp survives, and somehow regains independence.

Plume

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I don't know what to do honestly. I'm fully aware of the situation. Artists deserve better then the shit they're always getting, I'm not disagreeing. But here's the thing, buying music is nice and all, but one: Bandcamp is going to shit. And two, I just can't afford it.

I'm poor and I listen to a lot of things. Buying all that isn't possible for me. Right now, I'm using Deezer, because they offered 3 months for free. And you know what? Just the 10 bucks a month that I'm saving is making a huge difference in my life.

Not to mention that discovering music without streaming services is quite hard. I left Spotify a long time ago, when the home page started recommending me more Podcasts then music. I tried a lot of things and I came to the conclusion that I hate all music streaming platform but they're still, by far, the best way for me to listen to and discover music.

If I love an album, I'll still buy if I can afford it (which I often can't).

zaphod

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I just can't afford it.

I'm poor and I listen to a lot of things. Buying all that isn't possible for me.

So basically: you can't afford the volume of product you want to consume at a price that's sustainable for artists, but want the product anyway and you see that as some unsolvable dilemma? Have I got that right?

Look, it sucks that you're in that financial situation. Not here to downplay that struggle. I've lived like that and it fuckin sucks.

But maybe the answer is to value the effort of musicians and either pay them for their work or consume less?

ramjambamalam

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But maybe the answer is to value the effort of musicians and either pay them for their work or consume less?

What benefit would that decision have? Artists would still receive the same amount of royalties. @Plume would still spend the same amount of money. What benefit is there to artificially limit his music listening hobby because of copyright law?

Plume

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You're acting like I'm pirating the music, here. I'm not. I said that I'm using Deezer right now, a legal and paid for way to listen to music.

I use Deezer and like I said, when I like an album, I still try to buy music from the artists that I love when I can. Which pays them much more then millions of stream.

I feel guilt free, honestly.

zaphod

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So then why post about it?

This isn't a utilitarian argument. It's a moral one.

They want to believe there's some moral dilemma here and they're, by gosh, trying their best to navigate it.

But the reality is: they want music, but they can't afford to pay artists in a way that's sustainable, so they're just taking it however they can get it and paying a pittance to make themselves feel a bit better.

So quit pretending. They've made their choice. Their priorities are clear.

Plume

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The artists put their music on streaming platform as well. There is no such thing as ethical consumption under Capitalism. Everything is fucking exploitative as fuck, everything is awful. There is A LOT of things that I refuse to watch, play, listen to, pay for, consume, for ethical reasons.

Again: I AM NOT PIRATING! I'm using a legal way to access the music I listen to, Deezer. And buying albums that I really love when I can afford it on the side.

ramjambamalam

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I think I understand how I ended up believing you were pirating even though you weren't: @zaphod makes it seem like you're doing something remotely unethical when you not only use a legitimate subscription service but also support the artists through other ways! I'm not sure what more an artist could ask from a patron such as yourself.

ramjambamalam

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My argument isn't simply utilitarian either. It would be utilitarian to say, "It's moral to pirate music as long as your enjoyment exceeds the harm caused to the artist." But I'm saying that there is no harm caused by OP pirating in this situation. Don't most moral arguments involve some kind of measure of harm? (Honest and sincere question)

It's been a while since I studied philosophy, but for my own knowledge, do you know if there is some distinction between this sort of argument (e.g. "no victim = no crime") and plain old utilitarianism?

In other words, what ethical theory is your moral argument based on?

Plume

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But I’m saying that there is no harm caused by OP pirating in this situation.

...but I'm not pirating though! ;-;

ramjambamalam

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My mistake! I lost the thread when typing my response. Don't worry, I'll call the RIAA today and cancel the snitch report I made ;)

Plume

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Too late, the death squads are already at my door.

zaphod

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By your definition of harm, no artist creating non-material goods (books, movies, music, etc) could ever experience harm due to any one individual's actions. "I was never going to pay, so taking it without paying is a victim less crime," etc, etc.

The problem is this is clearly harmful in aggregate.

There are countless actions that, on an individual level are relatively harmless that we deem immoral because they'd be harmful if everyone did them: e.g. polluting.

But setting aside issues of harm--which is absolutely utilitarian--there are also many actions for which no objective "harm" can be identified but which we still deem inherently immoral. For example, if someone cheats on their spouse, and the spouse never finds out, most people I know would say that action is immoral irrespective of the lack of direct harm.

As for your last question, tbh I have no idea.

ramjambamalam

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By your definition of harm, no artist creating non-material goods (books, movies, music, etc) could ever experience harm due to any one individual’s actions. “I was never going to pay, so taking it without paying is a victim less crime,” etc, etc.

False. I acknowledge that there could be harm if a consumer would otherwise be able to afford to pay for all of the music they listen to. The distinction here is that if a consumer is already spending as much as they can truly afford then artists aren't going to get any more money out of this consumer, regardless of whether or not they pay for it.

In other words: if you pirate because you must = no harm; if you pirate because you can = some harm.

That's an interesting thought experiment about the cheating spouse, though. Thank you for the interesting perspective! This makes me want to re-visit my philosophy notes.

For the record, I pay for Spotify and also support artists through Bandcamp, merch, vinyl, and live concerts. I also pirate music which isn't otherwise available through Spotify and/or Bandcamp (e.g. The Grey Album by Danger Mouse, and up until recently The Flamingo Trigger by Foxy Shazam) and don't feel guilty about those instances.

TinfoilRat

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“Have you tried not being poor? No? How about forgoing a creature comfort to spite a big company in an ineffectual boycott?”

zaphod

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x3i

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Would love to know if this is better at Tidal than at Spotify. After all, that is the main reason I switched.

furycd001

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Fuck em..
Just buy music directly from the artist whenever possible....

raptir

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I did, I cancelled Spotify and switched to Tidal because of this, and noted the reason in my exit survey.

ripcord

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I'm...not seeing the problem here. I'm fine with there being a minimum before a check is issued as long as the amount is reasonable, and $3 seems pretty reasonable.

That's how it works with a lot of things, including advertising, referrals, etc.

Maybe I'm missing something?

raptir

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It's not a minimum before a check is issued. If you do not have a certain number of annual listeners on a track you never get paid out for it. If you had 100 tracks that were each streamed by 999 listeners who each streamed them 100 times per year every year, Spotify will no longer pay you a dime, ever.

I think a key point of confusion is in the way they presented it. They talk about how many songs have "less than 1000 listens" and that those would only make $3, but then their new policy is to deny payment for "less than 1000 listeners." If each of those listeners streamed the song once per month, you're talking closer to $40 than $3, and that's on a per song basis.

Black_Gulaman

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People outraged by anything and not knowing enough to know to not be outraged.

Mikina

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After several of my favorite songs disappeared from Spotify, I've adopted a different approach to music.

If I see on on a band show merch stand, I buy a cassette. It's more of a novelty item and a way to slightly support the band. While I do have a portable tape player, I only rarely take it out. I switched from LPs to tapes because of the costs and huge effort associated with playing or storing them (that is, if you do it right are are not OK with fucking up your LPs), but tapes are cool and don't have that many storage or playing problems.

Other than that, I've stopped paying for any kind of streaming services, and save the 10$ per month to just buy one or two (new or old) albums from my favourite artists on Bandcamp, that I've spend the last month listening to the most. The albums I buy I add to my NAS library, which usually replaces stolen copies of said albums that I've previously got from Redacted.

This allows me to keep a pretty expansive library, by just stealing what I need, but with a promise that I'll eventually buy the album (using the money I saved on streaming services), if it's something that I've listened to extensively. I'm also not at mercy of streaming services, that can take away my music whenever they decide to.

So far I've been doing this for a few years, and even increased my budget for just buying albums if I can't immediately find them on Redacted.

vortexal

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You know what, this makes me feel a lot better about using an ad-blocker when using their site. Although, I would prefer if the artists I listen to didn't exclusively use Spotify for some reason.

tesseract

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I'm all for ad blockers. But this doesn't solve the creators' issue with not getting paid. The internet is a severely underutilized resource. Creators should be able to sell their content directly to us without middlemen like these.

Ilandar

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Creators should be able to sell their content directly to us without middlemen like these.

They can and do. Most are just lazy/uneducated/choose not to.

vortexal

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I agree with that and some of the artists I listen to actually do use platforms where you can purchase their music directly but unfortunately buying the music directly just really isn't viable for me. Platforms that use ads for monetization are really the only way that's viable but the artists I listen to only use Spotify, or if they do use other platforms, they just use them for demos and other promotional stuff.

toothpicks

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Someone mentioned Faircamp recently. I haven't had a chance to look into it properly but it looks great!