Back to Spotify because oh boy it’s getting bad. Living legend Reggie Watts is retracting his music and is just flat-out saying it: “F*ck Spotify”. Nice one, Reggs.

Liz Pelly wrote a book called Mood Machine and it’s making minced meat of the platform. So I thought it was time to follow up on my story from last time to see what other ways Spotify has conjured up to make money off the backs of the musicians that bring value to the platform. Buckle up, it’s going to be a wild one!

In the previous instalment, I mentioned how the big labels basically own the platform and use it to funnel money into their pockets. Taking away money from artists is not enough though. The way they use playlists also diminishes the artist-fan relationship, as they playlists rather than albums so you might never know the original intent of a song as it’s presented on the album. On top of that, they are filling those playlists with cheap music made by ghost artists that please the algorithm and guess who takes the royalties from those tracks.

Last time someone checked, Daniel Ek, founder of Spotify,  made 340 million in one year. I am just putting it in here and let you decide what you think of that.

Spotify made deals with artists so they would receive less royalties in exchange for more exposure but forgot to tell the listeners that if they listened to those playlists they were supporting, well… that guy I just mentioned, I guess, instead of the artists they were listening to.

And then there is a lot of fraud on streaming platforms. People upload hours and hours of music to the platform and then use click farms to boost plays. One guy made $10M in streaming of which $60k came from Spotify. The thing is, we all get paid from the same pot so if Spotify doesn’t care too much for taking on fraud, we all lose. Add the fact that they are allowing a lot of AI crap on the platform too you can see how they are making it harder and harder for artists to make a decent living out of streaming.

“So what do we do?”, I hear you ask, my attentive reader.

If you want to do something right now. There are two things: Start spending money on music you really love. Go to a record store and buy some black gold or be social and go to a concert. The second is to get away from Spotify and go to Tidal. They pay a lot more per stream and they offer a similar catalogue. Also, they give you access to the masters which means the best possible sound you can have. Good for you audiophiles out there.

In the long term though, I am very optimistic about all the platforms that are popping up and some that are already out there, Bandcamp being the one (for now). I love what SmartLabel is and there is much more on the horizon. Platforms like NEWM, Supercollector, and Subvert are building the future and it looks a lot brighter.

Thanks, Liz for pointing everyone in the right direction!