Gotta love all my friends who are really into music who happily use Spotify and don’t give a shit it is a weapon of class warfare being used on musicians disguised as a music player!
I basically lost all my drive to make something of my love of creating music seeing how little anyone in my society actually values music or musicians in terms of material support and reward, it is honestly pretty scary how broken music has become.
I really wish there was a better alternative to push my friends to. I do use Bandcamp, so at least I know more of my $$$ are going to the artists and I can take the music with me, but I'm not sure about the platform long-term.
As a musician and composer it really took the life out of my identity as a composer seeing an alternative to bandcamp never really form and then one day waking up to it bought by Epic.
I didn’t cry that day, but I might as well have, it made me extraordinarily sad to see that headline and I imagine there are actually countless talented musicians out there who will never actuate on their creative vision because the environment for music production is at this point, downright hostile towards artists and musicians considering the amount of work music production is.
It takes an obscene amount of work to take a song from something that has promise to being as polished as listeners demand nowadays, and listeners won’t even give your song a chance on actual speakers. You have to twist and warp your music so it sounds good on essentially monophonic phone speakers with shitty frequency coverage or otherwise nobody will give it a try on speakers for actually listening to music. Doesn’t matter though, nobody is going to actually support you for the art you make.
🙃
It seems like https://resonate.coop/ is still around tho which seems like a cool idea (a coop owned streaming service where listeners can stream-to-own a song).
Soon we'll have AI music generators and most people will be perfectly happy to only ever listen to what those churn out.
All the streamers suck; plus Spotify definitely sucks the most and it has the most subscribers. So I do my best to support artists I love by buying their albums in some physical form (vinyl if possible because it encourages active listening), t-shirts when I need a t-shirt, fan clubs, etc. It's all I can think to do.
It’s all I can think to do.
I think you thought of a lot of good things to do!
I don’t mean to be overly cynical about people, this is a problem of systems and normalization of things that shouldn’t be normalized primarily, the people are mainly just trying to survive.
sigh
Please, people, for the love of the gods, stop using Spotify. There are numerous other services that are so much better value for your money and don't treat artists (as much) like trash.
And that being said, try to support your beloved artists directly as much as you can. Buying digital downloads or physical media will give them more money than a lifetime of streaming ever would. Plus you get to keep the higher-quality music even if the platform or artist goes tits-up.
Could you give me some examples of alternative services? I'm paying spotify right now, but i'll love to ditch it.
Sure, although keep in mind this will vary by region due to licensing issues.
Deezer is probably Spotify's best direct competitor. They are priced equally (depending on region) and now offer high-res streaming as default instead of a paid extra. They've been expanding with new features such as lyrics, collab playlists, song identification, and they recently improved their recommendation system. They also offer a discount if you buy subs yearly instead of monthly so you can save if you like the platform.
Apple Music is also an option now that Apple has put in some work to make the platform easier to use on non-Apple devices such as the recently added Windows app. It's not as feature-rich as Deezer but if you don't use those added features anyway then it is an option. I personally would phrase it as "has less bloat". If you own any Apple devices already then it will have tighter integration with them.
Tidal is the old favourite of audiophiles and music appreciators. They have been expanding their platform with new features and music and, somewhat recently, have also lowered their prices. High-res streaming is now included in the base sub tier. All of these alternatives pay artists more than Spotify but Tidal has one of the best artist payouts.
Qobuz is similar to Tidal and is a premium platform with a focus on quality. They are a newer service and are still expanding their regions, so I don't have personal experience with them as they only recently opened up to my country. Their price and feature set looks competitive, though, and their UI does look slick. They also have better artist payouts.
Amazon Music apparently has better payouts for artists but Amazon is a shit company so I've never looked into them further. I'll include YouTube Music here as well which has shitty payouts and is a shitty company.
Amazon Music
I invested heavily in the Amazon Music ecosystem, I bought hundreds of albums on there, and the platform is now very nearly unusuable. I cannot even listen to the songs that I paid for without also having to listen to ads. And the Android app now hides the downloads in some hidden folder so I can't even download them and listen to them on another player. It makes me furious.
I've actually gone back to CDs, if you can believe it. It's kind of nice sometimes, especially for full album plays, but I do miss a nice big playlist of my favorite songs from all artists.
It's too convenient. Most people just want easy access and don't even think of the downstream impacts. If a song or two goes unavailable, probably won't notice. There is gonna need to be an alternative that is cheap and feature rich along with Spotify missing some steps. It's here for awhile.
You are not wrong, but there are other services that are just as convenient and for less money. Spotify knows they are the "default" music streaming platform and they are exploiting that.
It's not really just Spotify. I'm a hobbyist music producer. I uploaded my entire catalog through Distrokid about two years ago. Distrokid serves just about every streaming service. It costs $20 a year for the most basic package. I've got ~8 million listens according to Distrokid, and that nets me about $40 US. So, I made my money back. Not bad for 20 years of work. Haha!
I don't really care about the numbers, like I said, I'm a hobbyist. I make music because I enjoy making music. It would never be my career unless I dropped everything and struck out touring trying to make it in an industry that traditionally chews up and spits out hopefuls. I'm not exactly the age or attractiveness that most people expect in a touring musician, either.
not exactly the age or attractiveness that most people expect
What gets me is that, for the right style of music, age or attractiveness shouldn't matter as much as it does. You should be able to create your art, whatever kind of art it is, and have the art itself be judged on its merits. Instead we've got a bunch of our culture still somehow wrapped up in these veneers of attractiveness. It's kind of maddening, to be honest. If you're in your 50's and making 90's style Acid House or 2000's style Trance it shouldn't matter what you look like. If you're a DJ it shouldn't matter if you look like Shirley Temple or Shirley Manson. And yet here we are.
8 million listens netting you only 40 bucks really is insane, isn't it? I used to think radio royalties were bad: I remember Sting talking about how every time Roxanne got played on the radio someone somewhere got 3 cents. He didn't say who got the 3 cents, nor did he say how much of that 3 cents went to him. I'm not 100% sure about those numbers ("my memory is muddy, what's this river that I'm in?") but they're a damn sight more impressive than whatever crumbs the streaming companies are paying, somehow a thousand times less than the radio. Spotify's announcement last year that they weren't even going to bother paying for songs with less than 1000 streams per month was a shocker - what stops them from making it 2000, or 10,000?
Still, being a hobbyist isn't all bad. I've been releasing jazz cover-versions of pop songs for about 2.5 years now, and have netted about 25 bucks so far :) Who knew jazz versions of Toxic or Rusted From The Rain could be so popular?
weekly PSA that spotify is a dumb company who makes no money because they're stupid.
To put it bluntly, between the artists, and the musicians, there is the publisher (the traditional music company) the money pretty much only goes to the publisher, because spotify doesn't want to make money, nor do they want artists to make money. And the artists put their shit on spotify because people believe that spending 15 dollars a month on a service that doesnt pay artists, apparently pays artists.
Go support your local musical artists.
And the artists put their shit on spotify because people believe that spending 15 dollars a month on a service that doesnt pay artists, apparently pays artists.
It's probably more a case of artists acknowledging the fact that streaming services are one of, if not the, primary sources of music discovery and consumption for many these days. Even if they won't make money off it, by not being available on these platforms, they may as well not exist for most people. That's something that only huge, already established names can pull without feeling it.
To add to this, buy their merch and physical copies of their albums. Also, go to shows! Lots of small bands would love a bigger crowd and can be seen for cheap or free.
Spotify negotiated shit deals when they were a startup and they’ll basically forever be not profitable because of it.
"Let's throw away all of our physical media! All digital streaming music, movies and books will be so much better! Everything we want, always available, anywhere!!!"
Somewhat true if you're a seasoned sailor of the high seas, not so much if not...
I'm fighting this fight with phone and sd cards. It's part of the reason they are killing sd card slots to get people to put everything in the cloud.
Sadly most people are morons and are doing exactly that.
Most people do not understand that there are many ways to burn a book.
Yeah I'm done with spotify.
Back when it was a fiver, I could get the appeal and had a subscription myself.
At 11 bucks it comes at the price of a CD per month, every month. I didn't buy that much music annually, ever. So right now we are entering a territory where streaming is exceeding the price of my regular music consumption patterns. I'll go back to buying physical media and torrenting whatever old stuff is no longer available and can't be found on ebay.
Fuck 'em with a cactus.
Just cancelled, have been a customer since 2015 or so.
I’ve said many times I would gladly pay more, if it were an elective extra cost that goes 100% to the artists you listen to.
So $11/mo to Spotify, then I could elect to pay another amount of my choosing that gets split up based on what I’m listening to and goes 100% to the artists. I don’t love it but it would be an acceptable solution to me.
A better solution would be for Spotify to be fair and pay artists accordingly from the start… buttttt Capitalism, and Spotify is publicly traded so no chance of that ever happening. I’m out.
"but if we pirate things the singers won't get anything!"
yeah, fuck the music companies and fuck the movie companies. The moral thing to do is to pirate everything you want to watch, read and listen to.
the actors, writers and singers and everyone working behind the scenes are already getting next to nothing for their hard work compared to what the executives at all those corporations are getting for just sitting on their asses.
....sorry I blacked out, what were we talking about?
You should never pirate anything! that would be bad!
Pirate and go to live shows.
Companies love selling you digital stuff cause they are essentially giving you nothing (as in it doesn’t cost them anything).
I mean, Spotify is a great service for the consumer. One reasonable monthly fee for most of the music in the world.
If a similar video streaming service existed for 40€/month, I'd pay for it in a heartbeat. Now I have a plethora of arr apps and a vpn, and Plex. But it's a hassle sometimes.
We're all aware of the issues it created for the artists, and I'd be willing to double the fee if that money directly went to the artists, but this is where the capitalist model fails, as that won't maximize the profits for shareholders.
If we ever come up with a way to fix the underlying greed models that come with publicly traded companies, that would be great.
As it stands, it is what it is, but I'm glad we have this, instead of a "different Spotify per music publisher".
I already commented somewhere else in this thread, but I've been just buying music via bandcamp and I feel pretty good about it. If I buy about one new album a month for $8, it's cheaper than spotify and after a couple years I have a large library of music I own outright.
This works with my listening habits, which are something like "I have like one new (-to me) album on heavy rotation every couple of weeks". Someone who's more of a "i never listen to the same song twice" extreme wouldn't have as good a time.
More money for the executives and less for everyone else. People need to start standing up to this shit.
Technology is so amazing. It is finally possible to pay artists in exposure
Definitely thinking about cancelling with this. I’ve used Spotify as long as I can remember, after finally switching over from pandora radio.
Their shuffle and discovery algorithms suck so much now that it’s nearly impossible to listen to more than 20-30 songs they just keep repeating.
Add on the extra, inserted ads in podcasts, there’s really no reason to continue to use their platform.
Then again, I’m probably going to YT music, which is only marginally better, but since I pay for YT premium already there’s no additional cost
Stop using this shitty service. There are much better options. I like Tidal, but even Apple music seems decent compared to Spotify.
The audio quality alone should be telling people just how bad spotify is.
I love how no one mentions that the great success business Spotify got all their starting music from the mp3 warez scene.
Early Spotify songs still had the meta data from those files, including misspelled song names and years of issue.
No matter what you think about Apple, Apple Music pays multiple times more than Spotify
And Tidal pays multiples more than Apple.
It’s up to you if you want to support artists or not.
I switched to Tidal after Spotify announced the price increase. The catalogue is basically identical, the apps are much more intuitive, and the audio quality is higher (they recently rolled their premium FLAC subscription into the basic one).
I had to retrain the algorithm for a bit, but that was not so difficult. There are services that can migrate/convert playlists which might actually work for favourites as well.
Also, it's easy easier to download stuff from Tidal, which is very nice for listening to Audiobooks with a dedicated player.
And 99.99999 percent of musicians lament being humiliated and poor.
Stop releasing your music on Spotify. They depend on you for their reputation as having all the music and will give you nothing in return except ever-broadening inequality and ever-narrowing artistic culture. People have mocked boomers for claiming that music is dying but that's exactly what is happening.
15 hours of audiobooks per month is a joke. That's not even one longer book.
I feel so bad for artists. They deserve to get paid for their hard work. Unfortunately, it’s been so hard for me to convince friends to move away from these predatory streaming platforms. A lot of people don’t want to lose having an unlimited catalogue at their fingertips.
Maybe I’m going to sound like a boomer here, but I don’t get why people need an unlimited catalogue at all. What’s wrong with paying artists directly to get their vinyls and CDs (or digital album)? What happened to curating your music library? What happened to the days where you’d buy CDs and listen to them over and over again, front to back? What happened to the days where playlists were manually curated for yourself, or even better, for your friends? Some of my fondest memories are music related, of my best friends painstakingly selecting a playlist of songs for me and burning them onto a CD for me to enjoy. What happened to the days where we didn’t need a constant stream of music pushed to us by an impersonal AI? What happened to developing your own unique and interesting personal taste?
I get that these streaming platforms are convenient, but it feels to me that we’re losing the ability to actively listen to music, to truly appreciate it, to understand the labor of love that it was for the artists, all for the sake of convenience. I don’t want music to be convenient, music is a fucking gift. I don’t want to be pushed AI generated recs, or AI generated music.
I’m rambling, lost my train of thought, and probably sound like a Luddite, but I have such strong feelings related to music and just hate these streaming platforms so much. I refuse to use them.
tldr please please please support your favorite artists by buying from them directly
The music world that er have today cannot be compared.
If we just had CDs 99.99999% of artists would just never be put in a store. There would just not be shelf space.
Say what your will about streaming but the internet has allowed a lot more people to make music and to get heard.
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