Spotify CEO Daniel Ek says working musicians can no longer release music only “once every three to four years.” Spotify's stock value hit all-time highs of $50 billion this summer.

[prdctvsm]

^ $0.00030909090909 per play

[Candiru]

18 minutes ago, ignatius said:

i just spoke to someone who had 55 million plays on spotify and got $1700. 

Such lucrative. So bootstraps. Who was it?

[ignatius]

2 hours ago, Candiru said:

Such lucrative. So bootstraps. Who was it?

recording/mixing engineer friend. band he worked with. 

[dingformung]

23 hours ago, vkxwz said:

On 8/8/2020 at 7:11 PM, dingformung said:

If you underpay them it indeed isn't enough for them to live on.

Yes, what's wrong with this?

Nothing. They don't deserve better imo

[Candiru]

I admit when I read some naive flash in the pan indie artist complaining about this I think “you’re lucky to even get noticed”, but I do think there are real concerns about music being monopolized in weird unexpected ways. 

[ignatius]

8 hours ago, Candiru said:

I admit when I read some naive flash in the pan indie artist complaining about this I think “you’re lucky to even get noticed”, but I do think there are real concerns about music being monopolized in weird unexpected ways. 

streaming is already dominant. i hate it. i never do it. sometimes i'll search out a track on youtube but i never stream to my phone or any other device. i know cell coverage is pretty good these days but i don't want to have to have internet to be able to listen to music. I much prefer having a lot of music on an ipod and using that. with proper headphones instead of wireless ones. i like making my own playlists with all the gems and for whatever mood. 

also, i think turning over the music industry to a bunch of tech bros who make deals with labels and operate like a start up is shit for long term. spotify is not in the music business. they exploit a commodity. that's how i think they see it. and i'm still not cool with them spending $2+ million a month on rent for their trade center offices in NYC. that's some bullshit. I just think they're a shit company. 

Edited September 27, 2020 by ignatius

[Silent Member]

I am part of the problem

[diatoms]

12 minutes ago, ignatius said:

them spending $2+ million a month on rent for their trade center offices in NYC.

                                           Had to look up how much their lease was - $566 million for a 17 year lease!?!

[drillkicker]

As much as I hate Spotify, I've never had any sympathy for musicians complaining about not getting paid.  It's both foolish and presumptive to expect payment for your hobby, and it seems like music is one of the few skills where people don't seem to value business acumen.  If you aren't investing time, labor, and capital into your marketing then it's immature to act as if you're entitled to payment.  A farmer who spends all his time in the field and not in the market won't make a profit from his work.  Likewise, if you're a musician you also need to be an entrepreneur and find a way to get money from people, rather than focusing only on your music and expecting a career to fall out of the sky.  Entrepreneurs adapt to new situations.  If you own a restaurant and a pandemic happens, you might switch your business to delivery, which is much more effective than complaining and trying to get your landlord to pay you.

 

Also, I'm not aware of anyone who's going around with a gun and forcing musicians to put their stuff on Spotify.  Nobody's done it to me yet, but maybe that's just because my music is boring.

[ignatius]

48 minutes ago, drillkicker said:

As much as I hate Spotify, I've never had any sympathy for musicians complaining about not getting paid.  It's both foolish and presumptive to expect payment for your hobby, and it seems like music is one of the few skills where people don't seem to value business acumen.  If you aren't investing time, labor, and capital into your marketing then it's immature to act as if you're entitled to payment.  A farmer who spends all his time in the field and not in the market won't make a profit from his work.  Likewise, if you're a musician you also need to be an entrepreneur and find a way to get money from people, rather than focusing only on your music and expecting a career to fall out of the sky.  Entrepreneurs adapt to new situations.  If you own a restaurant and a pandemic happens, you might switch your business to delivery, which is much more effective than complaining and trying to get your landlord to pay you.

 

Also, I'm not aware of anyone who's going around with a gun and forcing musicians to put their stuff on Spotify.  Nobody's done it to me yet, but maybe that's just because my music is boring.

i view it like this... spotify is taking someone else's work and using it for profit. it's really that simple. they aren't offering up fair renumeration for the thing they are selling. Regardless if it's a hobby or full time job..  art was created. sometimes for its own sake and sometimes it's one hat that a person wears to make a living. most artists of all kinds have some kind income stream that isn't from their art directly.. maybe they teach.. maybe they work in advertising.. maybe a recording engineer or sound designer etc etc.. so, saying that "oh you're just a hobbyist because you're not making a living from your art" is disingenuous. It's harder than ever for niche artist to make a living from the work and most artists would be considered hobbyists by that standard. 

your farmer analogy doesn't really add up to me. it's a bit simple. 

anyway.. i don't see it as entitlement to expect compensation for work. I think it's entitlement on spotfy's  to expect to use someone's work essentially for free and charge other people to hear it then not compensate the person who created the work.  I'm not saying everyone who has music on spotify should be able to support themselves from that or get rich or something.. but fair pay is fair pay and spotify isn't living up to their end. 

[drillkicker]

It actually isn't that simple.  Creating an app like Spotify involves manyears of devops and server management, in addition to the costs of servers and physical facilities themselves.  It's actually much more laborious and expensive than music.  They do make their money from the distribution of products that were created by other people, but those people presumably opted to have their products distributed on the platform.  I don't see any injustice in this system.

 

However, I do see extreme injustice in the way that Spotify coerces its end users through unfair software licenses and invasive disregard for privacy.  I will never use Spotify, especially since I can stream an even greater range of music at no cost (neither monetary nor ethical) by using YouTube proxies like Newpipe and youtube-dl.

[dingformung]

5 minutes ago, drillkicker said:

However, I do see extreme injustice in the way that Spotify coerces its end users through unfair software licenses and invasive disregard for privacy. 

NoBoDy FoRcEs ThEm To UsE iT

[drillkicker]

As far as I know, that is still true.

[zlemflolia]

2 hours ago, drillkicker said:

As much as I hate Spotify, I've never had any sympathy for musicians complaining about not getting paid.  It's both foolish and presumptive to expect payment for your hobby, and it seems like music is one of the few skills where people don't seem to value business acumen.  If you aren't investing time, labor, and capital into your marketing then it's immature to act as if you're entitled to payment.  A farmer who spends all his time in the field and not in the market won't make a profit from his work.  Likewise, if you're a musician you also need to be an entrepreneur and find a way to get money from people, rather than focusing only on your music and expecting a career to fall out of the sky.  Entrepreneurs adapt to new situations.  If you own a restaurant and a pandemic happens, you might switch your business to delivery, which is much more effective than complaining and trying to get your landlord to pay you.

 

Also, I'm not aware of anyone who's going around with a gun and forcing musicians to put their stuff on Spotify.  Nobody's done it to me yet, but maybe that's just because my music is boring.

>ever1 including artists must conform to market

>if you dont conform market dont expect eat

[dingformung]

21 minutes ago, drillkicker said:

As far as I know, that is still true.

You used exactly that as an argument to claim that Spotify doesn't treat artists unfairly. Why does the same argument not apply to the end user, then? Both aren't violently forced to use the platform. Your logic is obviously flawed.

 

Edited September 28, 2020 by dingformung

[zlemflolia]

32 minutes ago, drillkicker said:

It actually isn't that simple.  Creating an app like Spotify involves manyears of devops and server management, in addition to the costs of servers and physical facilities themselves.  It's actually much more laborious and expensive than music.  They do make their money from the distribution of products that were created by other people, but those people presumably opted to have their products distributed on the platform.  I don't see any injustice in this system.

 

However, I do see extreme injustice in the way that Spotify coerces its end users through unfair software licenses and invasive disregard for privacy.  I will never use Spotify, especially since I can stream an even greater range of music at no cost (neither monetary nor ethical) by using YouTube proxies like Newpipe and youtube-dl.

ya who created spotify, its sure not the people profiting off spotify, its wage workers who also werent compenstaed just as much as the artists werent compensated

its so simple

if you arent a communist youre just blind to the reality of it all

[drillkicker]

41 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

>ever1 including artists must conform to market

>if you dont conform market dont expect eat

I'm not here to defend the current state of the market, only to acknowledge it.  The truth is that you will not have much if you don't try to acquire anything.   That's just the way it is and I personally lack the power to change that rule.

43 minutes ago, dingformung said:

You used exactly that as an argument to claim that Spotify doesn't treat artists unfairly. Why does the same argument not apply to the end user, then? Both aren't violently forced to use the platform. Your logic is obviously flawed.

The agreement that Spotify will take a portion of the proceeds from all music streamed is, I believe, very explicitly present in the decision to offer music to Spotify.  When an entrepreneur is making business decisions, they have the responsibility to do thorough research and decide which risks they want to take.  I have personally been very careful about where I send the music that I have made and care about, despite the fact that I've never even expected a monetary return.

The abuse of the end user, on the other hand, is not explicit in the Spotify business model and nothing in the advertisement of the service indicates that this is an abuse.  The idea of end user license agreements has been literally forced onto people in many circumstances (for example, invasive classroom software for online public education, or companies that mandate use of Microsoft systems) that the end user often doesn't have a chance to realize that this is an unnecessary abuse.  It took many years for me to learn about the full implications of nonfree software and I don't expect anybody else to realize this on their own, especially when it's become so pervasive.

In short, the artist is made aware that there is an agreement to split the proceeds, while the end user is led to believe that they receive access to music in exchange for a recurring fee, which is a dishonest representation of the actual relationship and the power imbalance therein.

1 hour ago, cyanobacteria said:

ya who created spotify, its sure not the people profiting off spotify, its wage workers who also werent compenstaed just as much as the artists werent compensated

I would be interested in seeing a source for this.  I haven't personally looked into the history of Spotify so I'm not aware of how it was made and who made it.

[zlemflolia]

37 minutes ago, drillkicker said:

I

I would be interested in seeing a source for this.  I haven't personally looked into the history of Spotify so I'm not aware of how it was made and who made it.

its nothing to do with spotify its how wage labor works under capitalism

[Brandi_B]

kill yourself is my response, not thread poster...the ceo

[Zephyr_Nova]

I'd send him this, via his own platform 65 million times, so that Alex Empire might eat for a week.

 

[IDEM]

11 minutes ago, Zephyr_Nova said:

Alex Empire

Not tryin' to be a smart Aleck, but it's Alec. 

Great plan though!

[zlemflolia]

theres about a million things in the DSM that apply to me but none that apply to this brainworm ridden CEO?

[dingformung]

Both ICD and DSM list narcissistic personality disorder. There you go

3 minutes ago, cyanobacteria said:

theres about a million things in the DSM that apply to me but none that apply to this brainworm ridden CEO?

 

[prdctvsm]

https://www.adbusters.org/the-pulse/google-is-watching-heres-what-it-knows-about-you

https://lunarline.com/lunarline-blog/google-is-watching-you-heres-what-it-sees/

[Diurn]

17 hours ago, prdctvsm said:

https://www.adbusters.org/the-pulse/google-is-watching-heres-what-it-knows-about-you

https://lunarline.com/lunarline-blog/google-is-watching-you-heres-what-it-sees/

This is well known since years ago, at least all software developers are aware of that. We're creating a monster and still not realising about it, but anyway what has this to do with artist revenues?

This pandemic has destroyed live show businesses, a major income for a lot of DJs and musicians. Idk if this is good or bad for the scene but it will change the perception of culture for sure.

Regarding this CEO, he only wants to hoard the maximum musical material of all artists because I mean... money is money.

see ya

Edited October 1, 2020 by Diurn