For the past year or so, popular music streaming application has been gaining a lot of fame that for the most part was positive news. Spotify, for those who don’t know, is a music streaming application that lets you stream full albums by millions of artists. Record labels are in contact with Spotify and they get the bands that are signed to the label the ability to get their music on Spotify. It also lets the user create playlists and if they have Spotify premium, a monthly or yearly subscription to the service, lets them take their playlists on the go via smartphones and tablets.
But Spotify also comes at a hefty cost, a cost I’d say 50% of the users are unaware of. Music is something that people work hard to hone and master. They work on their technique, run patterns practically every day, and strive to make their music stand out and unique. Spotify, and other music streaming applications make this possible, but how would a indie musician or a band just get off of their feet be able to pay for all of this? Spotify does generate money for the musician, but not as much as they would generate if people bought the musician’s merchandise such as t-shirt and albums. 10,000 times a song is streamed; a band or musician would make about $2.00... and if that is divided amongst a band of four, each member would get around fifty cents. Hell, if a tenth of those people who streamed the song bought the single or something from the band, at least it would put the band in a better state financially. Spotify is also known to do side deals with record labels, and thus scything out more money from the bands that are signed to the label for themselves, an act I am strongly against since I don’t believe record labels have the right to have side contracts with other music platforms in order to get more money for themselves and not the artist.
In recent music news, Thom Yorke, the lead singer from Radiohead, as well as their producer Nigel Godrich have recently taken down any and all of Thom’s side projects off of Spotify as a protest. These bands would include Atoms for Peace, Ultraista, and Thom’s solo project. In his Twitter outburst, Godrich stated their reason for leaving Spotify was that:
” The reason is that new artists get paid fuck all with this model.. It's an equation that just doesn't work”
Although Atoms for Piece is not a new artist, but rather a collaboration of various musicians consisting of Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Thom Yorke from Radiohead, Nigel Godrich, and Joey Waronker from R.E.M., they are standing for what they believe in, and not become another mindless cog in Spotify’s machine. Pink Floyd recently got their music on Spotify, and Godrich uses this to his advantage by stating the following:
“Pink Floyd's catalogue has already generated billions of dollars for someone (not necessarily the band) so now putting it on a streaming site makes total sense. But if people had been listening to Spotify instead of buying records in 1973, I doubt very much if "Dark Side..." would have been made. It would just be too expensive."
I agree with this whole heartedly because bands such as Pink Floyd and ACDC and Aerosmith and the Rolling Stones have already made the mark on history. They have generated millions of dollars in revenue, and putting their music on Spotify is smart because they are bound to have a huge cataloge of music that not everyone can own. But in the case of news bands or artists that are coming out with their first EP or their first full length album it just works against them. Yes they get their album on Spotify, yes this gives the new band the ability to have their music heard across the music streaming platform, but they won’t generate any income out of it, not a lot of it at least. They’ll make pennies, and pennies won’t pay the bills, or walk the dog, or even buy you dinner. Music streaming applications such as Spotify (and Pandora) need to come up with a better monetary scheme so that they can directly benefit the musicians that are putting their heart and soul into their work and spending money on recording time, and getting shows. They deserve it, more than anyone else
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