tl;dr Spotify's service model disadvantages small artists and only works as a viable financial support to artists whose work would be lucrative under any circumstances [123]

plus their library is a joke

Lets blame streaming services for record labels being shitty haha yeah

Edit: music distributors / record labels, same drift

distributors are C-tier label supplements for unsigned artists, not record labels, and the spotify model literally demanded their rise to prominence

"Lets blame streaming services for record labels being shitty haha yeah"


^the fuck are you talking about? this has nothing to do with a record label. read the article before commenting.

i hope that this dude is able to sort their stuff out with ditto - they seem legit on the surface so one can only hope this is some sort of admin error but not responding is dubious as fuck and continuing to make royalties on suspended accounts is sketchy as shit. this is certainly a bigger issue than just this individual creator.

this, however, isn't the fault of spotify. i don't particularly like spotify and frankly i make more from bandcamp in a week than i do from spotify in a year but i put my music where my fans want it.

spotify are, when you get down to it, more of an IT company than a music one, and it's just not designed (through willful ignorance or otherwise) to take these kind of things into account unfortunately

yeah i doubt spotify would want to get involved in disputes between artists and distributors when they could just as easily put their hands over their ears and just let them fight between each other. fans are none the wiser.

Agreed with Jas, on which basis it's less to do with this being Spotify's 'fault' and more whether you accept their service as an adequate playing field

"tl;dr Spotify's service model disadvantages small artists and only works as a viable financial support to artists whose work would be lucrative under any circumstances"
This isn't a Spotify issue this time though, it's a distributor issue

false dichotomy. the distributor is the #guiltyparty for sure, but their service (whether shoddy or crooked) is solicited by Spotify and necessitated by their library model

"only works as a viable financial support to artists whose work would be lucrative under any circumstances [123]"

Demonstrably false as evidenced by obscure beat makers on high profile beat playlists

brb gonna stream their entire discography to see if I care

Fair point Pots - overlooked Spotify playlists because I never listen to them, but ofc there's opportunities to be had there

I'd be curious to know more about the distributors these artists use and what kind of returns they expect (in $$, not recognition and promotion)

most distributors take either a flat annual fee or a small fee per track/album and many often have added stuff involved such as rights management. they usually don't take percentage cuts like labels do and are banking on having as many users as possible rather than catering to performance-based revenue. this one i've never heard of, which is usually a sign it's sketch as fuck, but this isn't a spotify problem in the sense that the only other way to get music onto spotify is through a label who will also manage your account. essentially the distributor is just handling the reproductive and physical rights. if anyone could just upload whatever to spotify at any point it would be a complete spamfest and creating this fairly easy to overcome barrier removes a lot of the low-level QC work on spotify's end. this is only really an issue about checking what your distributor is doing and researching beforehand, most everyone i work with who makes music usually uses distrokid because it's cheap and by all accounts i've seen very reliable - or simply the few complaints i see people put up about them scream user error who doesn't understand what they're doing

@Johnny my one buddy has made as much as 12000 in a month from being on spotify hip hop playlists and my other buddy at least makes enough to pay his rent every month just by being on those playlists too! The former buddy is able to just make beats full time because of this and for the latter buddy that's still not a bad side hustle!

damn i thought even big artists made next to nothing from spotify

streaming sucks dick. actually own/buy your music

Draining Love Story is excellent. Still gonna stream on Spotify though, don't really have a choice sorry.

if someone gun to my head told me to stream on bandcamp, tell my family i loved then

yep, same here dawg. im str8 broke as it is, every penny counts

"streaming sucks dick. actually own/buy your music"

i own my music but idk, i might try spotify soon

also, didn't the flashbulb also have an issue with spotify? or was it apple music?

@Pots hot damn dude, respect to your pals - didn't realise those playlists translated so directly into pocket (assumed they were most powerful as a promotional opening for signings/bookings/features elsewhere)! I guess I'm due a reevaluate on what Spotify can do for a start-up musician

"plus their library is a joke"


what

I've been using Spotify for some months and I'm pretty happy with it. As a musician, my stuff is there but I am not as wealthy as Pots' pals (lol). The service makes possible for an absolute nobody like me to reach millions of people so I guess it's not so bad? Limiting to it might be the problem, there are plenty of other services and ways to distribute your music yourself and one should covet them all!

Spotify’s convenience allows me to (very lazily) hear loads of stuff I otherwise wouldn’t get around to. It would be a shame if it isn’t helping artists because now I’ve started I don’t see myself stopping - as selfish as that is. I used to buy EVERYTHING, but that wasn’t realistically sustainable.

A lot of people massively into streaming services still buy physicals/go to gigs etc. So even if artists don’t make much I hope it at least has beneficial ‘knock-on effects’.

streaming sucks dick. actually own/buy your music [2]

@get low

"Every artist has the choice to remain independent. These guys didn't and now they're facing the consequences."

- Get Low's take on Dragged Into Sunlight being ripped off by their label

and now this. youve got some weird takes, man.

i guess

should've just used distrokid

"streaming sucks dick. actually own/buy your music"

you can do both

Sewerslvt ew

streaming sucks dick. actually own/buy your music [3]

Why don't a bunch of big artists get together and pull their music from the streaming sites? They could at least demand a higher $/listen. It's pretty sad it's a fraction of a penny per song or some shit

i'm sure their labels would be right happy to throw away all the revenue they make by doing nothing

So all you've got to do is make playlist-ready music and you too can make 12000 a month!

Some really bizarre takes here, first the comment about spotify's library sucking dick (sure they don't have absolutely everything, but saying it's bad is just ridiculous), then the people trying to blame spotify for this situation

Like hey enjoy your drugs but maybe don't make comments here under the influence

streaming sucks dick. actually own/buy your music [4]