Soon A.I artist will take over and only rich kids will make music as there will be no $$ in it to even survive. Its happening slowly in nyc. Venues are closing, musicians get offered shit paying gigs and cant make money selling media. Only tour pays artists but not the rent money NYC is asking for these days… another medium has to be developed to counter this…
As an artist, I subscribe to Apple Music - they still pay me, even if a track gets 999 plays. Each month, Spotify steals a small amount of royalties from me and from the majority of their artists. Spotify may not have made a profit, but the guy at the top is richer than Taylor Swift. Spotify is horrible. Great job covering this story.
I cancelled Spotify when they cancelled my royalties. They are saving a few bucks a year in royalties and losing $132 in subscriber fees. I know it doesn’t mean a whole lot but it means something to me.
^ 🤟 If everyone put their foot down like you, it would add up real fast and they would change their tune or fail at some point. You should make a video about it and get the word out! $132/year x thousands or hundreds of thousands of consumers would sting.
As an artist what are your thoughts about tidal? I left Spotify a while ago and changed to tidal cause they apparently pay the artists more and the audio quality is definitely better. I am just a listener tho so im not in the know of the artists experience
@@perryperch8948 I don't know much about Tidal, to be completely honest. I use Apple Music because I'm in the Apple ecosystem, and I've been very happy with it. But I use CDBaby to distribute my music, so I'm on Tidal (as Richard MacLemale.)
@@substandardtim I've thought about yanking my albums from Spotify for the same reason. They aren't stealing much from me, but they won't be stealing anything from me if my albums are gone.
SAME!! I can't stand streaming, you're paying for a service that can yank absolutely any artist, at any given time, for seemingly any random reason.. It's liek HERE, take my money to take stuff away at any time, then let me go online and bitch about it the second they do....
Consumers won't do shit. It's artists and labels that will have to take a stance. If enough artists leave the platforms then people will cancel their memberships. It's as simple as that.
consumers dont care about this at all IMO labels have the most power here, but idk if any of them are willing to take a stance. and tbh, as a consumer, i don't even want them to take a stance: i like spotify and don't want it gone. everyone, including me, will flock over to apple music, which is strictly worse in terms of UI and recommendations. might be slightly better for artist payouts but they've done shady stuff as well (not paying artists for any streams from "3 month trial" accounts)
They tried that over covid with Young and co removing their work. They're all back up as the artists caved. Shaming the listeners might be the only option.
I honestly feel like this is exactly why Spotify is doing this. If they can get enough of their costumers hooked on second screening a bunch of shitty tracks, well, then it won't matter.
And when did a boycott ever work? We have eyes on Spotify cause it's the big game in the forest, but other companies are also playing by these rules. If the rules of the game don't change, the playstyle won't change. Simple as that.
@@drakonyanazkar a) we have no evidence the other streaming services are doing the same. (unless you can produce some, notthat it matters as they pay nothing to artists either) b) Ratners were boycotted due to the CEO saying he was putting tat on the wrists of his customers. They went bust as a result. Weinstein's production company faced an industry and viewer boycott when allegations first came out - it weakened his stance and now he's in jail. So there are TWO examples.
From a business perspective, they don't think of themselves as middlemen or tools to help artists, they think they provide a product to customers and artists is simply an expense, and reducing expenses makes for more profits. We don't even need these services with modern tech, but they kinda inserted themselves as the go-to place to listen to music.
When Spotify finally gets exposed, because they will, we will look back at the saddest mass destruction of musician/artist careers in human history. So many goods bands and artists quit because they realized IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to play this streaming game when the system is like this. And when the house ALWAYS WINS, you are just stupid to continue playing. Now I have to give Spotify that they played smart. Keeping this scheme hidden for so long, and fooling the consumers to the point where the have a monopoly. Wow! Congrats! Im ashamed to be a Swede. Im a musician myself and I’m lucky enough I can produce/mix/master enough stuff to make a good living but every day I think about my poor clients who are so extremely talented and hopeful. For them, unsigned, unknown bands, its completely impossible for them to ”make it”. I cry for the young ones especially. I had the fortune to release a few records on CD and Vinyl so I could tour and actually become ”a real band” but yeah. This is beyond f*ckef up. I really truly hope that the Swedish gov will put an end to this soon and apologize to the whole world. Not only did we bring you Ikea. We also killed music. 😢
Seems the Swedish have a knack for shady operations lol Another example is Elektron’s business model in recent years, where they divided more and more features between different products, to lock you in their environment. AT LEAST, they make damn good gear…
thank you for supporting real artists, I love bandcamp, it doesn't get the reach and views of youtube and spotify but it's real support from real fans, and with an 80% cut for the artist even a few $ is worth more than thousands of streams.
Bandcamp is bad for artists because artists don't get paid for music streams and you pay for the artist's music once and for all. And everything seems fair, unless you think that you can listen to a song you paid 1 euro for endlessly. While the artist has invested a lot of time, experience and effort into it. And if the artist is independent, then he gets practically nothing, because Bandcamp also takes a commission from 1 euro for a song. Top payment for streams is more profitable for the artist, because he will receive money for the number of listenings and so instead of 1 euro he can actually earn more over time.
A+ story, man. Just wanted to leave a comment to say I appreciate these more traditional journalist-style pieces you do once in a while. I bet the research must take much longer to do compared to a WNN episode but your writing is coming along really well and I hope more people see this as a result
Here is another lesser known "fun" fact: A significant portion of Spotify's revenue comes from selling what they call "emotional user profiles" to the ad and marketing industry. In a nutshell, the USP of that product/service is that these user profiles of Spotify listeners not only come with the usual profile data, but with the added benefit of exact information of which user listened to which kind of music at which time, in other words, valuable information about consumers *emotional* state at any given time they listen(ed) to a certain song, genre or mood of music. That's some massive USP in the advertising world. It's a mystery to me why both this and the Spotify fake artists are not talked about more. The information is out there, this isn't something new and has been going on for years.
You didn't explain how targeted ads based on emotional user profiles are a problem... There's nothing unethical or wrong about this, you are just learning how ads work and are freaking out for some reason.
@@jazzymichaelNothing wrong initially. Yet with AI the paradigm of users/artists/internet businessfolk (that arent big tech or advertisers) becoming lab rats will worsen. Supposedly google does similar with political cohort profiling. Avg persons market leverage will decrease as personal data is commoditized further, while creepy spyware generated bespoke media/ads grow around them like in Minority Report. Little room in that pipeline for more sincere artists.
As the other person said, this is standard for any platform that runs targeted ads. TH-cam, Facebook, et cetera, guaranteed they all offer similar features to advertisers. It’s weird and creepy yes, but it’s just how the internet works now
At this point you're literally going to have to convince the top 10-15 artists to drop the platform unless it changes; consumers won't put forth the effort required to affect change. What's sad is that people aren't discovering new music and they're going out of their way to hinder that process. The entire benefit of the Internet age to artists was draining power from record companies by making distribution accessible and Spotify has literally pulled a SCOTUS and rolled back decades of progress.
@@jangobango2847 You ever heard of me? I have 40 songs on streaming services. Unless I spend my life savings on paid advertisements nobody will likely ever find any of my music "organically" because the streaming services are purposely making it difficult-if you're not already going viral it's a huge uphill climb and they won't just drop your tracks into suggested radio play (wouldn't that be lovely?). And surveys have shown that most users find "new" music by using the built-in "random" or "radio" functionality of these services-that's just where we are in 2024 (2025). The overwhelming majority of listeners are "passive consumers".
I remeber this being mentioned in my music business class in university. Was told Spotify pay one or more specific artists to make tracks, then spotify buys licensing rights, generate editorial playlists and chuck all of these fake profiles tracks into them. Some playlists even having only these type of tracks.
A big part of the problem is that the majority of the listening world couldn't tell a good song from crap. They don't really know or care. It's just background noise to fill in the gap.I'm a musician and I've actually had people ask me why I"m not driving a brand new high end Mercedes. I play in bars for F$%KS sake! They actually think that if you're a musician, you're automatically rich.
I’ve looked through their piano playlist - every single artist is first name, last name, no description (or a very short one), and around a dozen generic, boring piano tracks. I think that with the advent of aI generated music, they’re actually using AI to create not just the music, but the profiles and the album covers. Don’t listen to the ambient playlists. They’re AI slop.
So true man, I’ve been getting into ambient music lately and the playlists I found scream fake AI composers and generic tunes. Even the “album covers” give it away as sloppy AI work.
$10 per month unlimited streaming is like a restsurant with an All you can eat" buffet with unlimited food type all $10 per month per person. When you look at it in thst scenario its easy to see why it doesnt pay musicians (chefs) good
I've been talking about exactly this since years, without anyone really listening. Btw, there is another side effect to this: The more fake/AI artists Spotify create, the lower the overall payout per stream for all (real) artists becomes. Which saves Spotify money, especially as they don't have to pay royalties to their fake artists anyway.
I have kind of a weird adjacent experience to this, where back in 2019 I released this song “Only”. I think it’s halfway decent and I was fortunate to have some pretty well known musicians play on it. Anyway, I’m in that state of “artist ship” where I’ll publish something from time to time but you won’t find my website or media campaign, so whoever got my song mislabeled it and seemed to think it was the publication of an old song instead of what it was - new music. To this day I’ve wondered why “they” messed with my publication (miscategorized it as like a repub, essentially)… meanwhile all this paint by numbers music gets published and pushed with next to no guard rails or cares. Whether it was Tunecore, Apple Music, Spotify… whoever… they have processes that can jack with your publication… the industry clearly chooses their spots.
This is why artists need to release their music on vinyl first, in order to gain whats known as mechanical copyright (MCPS/PRS), which entitles you to on average 25 - 40% in royalties from retail sales here in the UK. Then wait a couple of months before allowing any digital release. You then get to call the shots with all these digital media platforms. One of the reasons we now have the official UK top 40 Vinyl singles and album chart here in the UK. If you release only digitally, then unfortunately you are releasing into a very saturated market.
I forget who originally said it. But, the fact is that the days of music piracy were so much better. Because, at least at that point, if you were pirating some one's music, you knew on some level that the artist wasn't getting anything. So, then maybe you'd be more willing to buy tickets, merch, or an album later on down the line.
I pirated a lot when I was younger. Now that I have money, I buy everything legitimately. Companies focus so much on stopping piracy, they're willing to sacrifice paying customers.
This reminds me of the joke that asks what’s the difference between a gold digger and a prostitute. At least the prostitute is honest about her profession.
Instant red flag. Also they seem to monopolize yt creators too. Many channels I tried to contact to get my music on made it a requirement to be w epidemic sound.
@ of course! Somebody is registered as the writer of whatever a composer does for Epidemic Sound, its musical slavery, no intellectual rights. Epidemic Sound becomes the composer and publisher of the songs. They just pay the composer a small fee for production, that’s it, no back end royalties for the producer.
@@romanrojas8588 That's exactly correct. These platforms are disgusting. I make sample packs for a living, so i don't have to deal with the bullshit of these types of companies.
Spotify bought its own shares in 2021 for one billion dollars, which is basically a billion dollar handout to its shareholders. It also can easily regulate its incomes by paying the big record companies more or less. So it's indeed very profitable, it's kept un profitable in the books for simple and obvious reason: should it be profitable, music makers would ask for more.
Spotify is basically becoming 1930s american radio : they hire musicians for a fee, broadcast songs they ordered, dont pay them royalties and make all the money.
I am an "artist" (as in, I have music published). I pirate all my music. Download mp3 and such. Like in the good old days. I will never pay a dime to streaming services, I will use their free version, if possible with a cracked or modded version to remove the ads. The best thing you can do for artists is this. Two or three records or shirts sold in a concert will generate more income for my band that streaming ever will, and those who actually are popular enough to earn meaningful amounts from Spotify dont need it. Don't feel guilty about pirating, it is the best for the music community as a whole.
The way of exploitation is at its all time high with the power of internet and social media. Seems no matter where you turn, a greedy approach is being applied to what once was decent. YT is a grand example. Supposed to be full of user content like a open world rpg game meant to be explored, but its full of Dev controlled replicative content to monetize off clicks using cheap tactics and have the nerve to have tons of ads. The more we show them how we react the more they feed off of stragetic methods to be even more greedier as we become dependant.
i’ve tried tidal for some time but almost none of the artists i listen to have their full catalogue without mismatched releases from other artists. i personally have only like 3 albums of mine and the rest is some other producer eith the same name from spain and my label refuses to do anything about it because nobody uses tidal in my country
We need to organize as a working class to demand our rights. Every single company will do what's best for profit because that's the name of the game. But let's say a government was operating this service for their citizens. Now there's no point in profitting, since the government doesn't profit from its peoples. So we'd get a service that's still cheap, but rewards the musicians. But do you think for-profit companies would just call it "fair play"? No way. They'd smear the f- out of that company and that government that decided to do it. This exact thing has been happening for over a hundred years now. The root of this evil is capitalism.
"since the government doesn't profit from its peoples" What world do you live in? thats the only way the governments "make" money is by taking it from the taxpayers
Streams should be a dime or a quarter per stream like jukeboxes were and alternative eould be buy physical cd or vinyl or cassette or digital download (paid). The $10 per month access to every commercially rlessed in last 60 years may be convenient for listebsrs but hrrible for the music makers
Right Spotify should have the Splice type model. Where your subscription gets you like 200 credits a month and flat fee goes to Spotify with every package tier. Each play is the same amount of money regardless of artist. If you try to bot you will easily run out of streams and have to buy more credits which Spotify can make more money off of.
It’s probably better for artists if the music industry goes back to genuine labels with music on physical media, but with the difference that there’s a new artist download sector (to undo gatekeeping against amateurs) that automatically begins physical media runs as it reaches a certain interest goal. If the public wants musos to keep making music they have to grow the fuck up and quit expecting everything for chump change.
The cat is out of the bag. Never in business history has the consumer accepted such a drastic downgrade in their own experience at a single time. The best that can be done is to make it so that the streaming service is a non profit, which will never happen
They should also probably pay big artists way less, they are making bank off ticket sales anyway. But that's not easy to justify, even though the big artists wouldn't be hurt by it.
I actually think this is an even bigger issue for society in general. Namely that people have gotten accustomed to getting shit products, and people don't care, as long as the price is low enough. I mean, how many news stories have been put out on the shady practices of Temu, and yet they're still thriving. It's sad. But, conditioning people to not give a shit has absolutely worked, on all fronts.
@kassemir temu, Amazon. Netflix and Hulu are doing the same thing to TV and movies as spotify is for music. in all these industries the workers are ending up with less leverage and less money, the consumers are getting what they want for the most part, and the few that own these properties are making the bulk of the money
As an artist and musician, I never understand why musicians are simply called musicians. If you’re a musician and someone asks you what you do I bet you don’t say you’re an artist - if you did it would be assumed you do something visual.
The word “artist” in music is grossly overused and often absurd. I’m a musician. I make music. The listener decides if it’s art or whatever they choose to call it.
Streaming is not a lost for major label, they are still making money, they had a little "low" few years ago but those last year were the most profitable years ever for the music industry.
The only thing that'll make a difference is a mass exodus & boycott by a huge amount of artists. Everyone knows what they're up to, & yet they still put their music up there, feeding the parasite - which is the worst possible thing to be doing. Unless you're doing huge numbers on there, are people really gonna be out of pocket if they take all their music off? Artists have collectively enabled this situation, by deciding 'everybody needs this because if we don't who's gonna hear us', so we're as much to blame as the indifferent consumer base IMO.
ive been disliking spotify the most these last 5 years....they throttle my comedy channels,they try to push new artist on me,and worst they tax you to have your catalog offline holding a knife over your throat only due to the fact they have an extensive catalog!!!well screw that!! i know how many songs,artist,comics n or content and the some of it is about 16,000 songs. For the last year i have been making my own mp3 copies of and im up to 9,000. i call it project F-Spotify!! if ya got cd's send um my way,lets bring back burn parties....we dont need these jokers because people are down to share.....and i am one of um. Good post n thank you
Spotify are a joke! Zero reason to still be using their service nowadays. Apple actually pay artists (and a lot more too), and don't randomly delete your music for no reason!
1:11 true but while ppl use these services to explore and search once is a while it mostly gives you this feeling of endless music, but you pretty much listen to the same stuff same amount of music if you were listening to music you bought or recorded from damn radio
Not in my case, though. And also not for a lot of listeners younger than me, who grew up around Spotify and its possibilities. I think it's a big part of why being eccletic is becoming more and more common. The streaming service helps to internationalize music and also give access to things you might have never heard about, but now you can listen to a lot of it.
I noticed that there were fake artists with some weird stuff phonk , hard techno , and a couple other off beat stuff that just appeared and I’ve never heard of and just appeared in the playlist
"It's nearly impossible to convince consumers to leave something because it's unethical, when they're facing an abundance of convenience." The truth behind that is scary.
The mood music genre will be the first to go completely AI. An AI could create moods dynamically tailored to the listeners browser history, pulse rate and geographic location. An artist, on the other hand, is telling the listener a story. The listener is along for the ride. Hopefully listeners will prefer the adventure of the latter as opposed to the coma inducing mood music sleeping pills. But I can't say I have any real reason to be optimistic, other than: This shit has to turn around at some point, right?
It's like going to eat lunch in a school cantina as an adult. We can't fix the system if we can't fix people gobbling up whatever it had been put in front of them.
is true if i leave spotify as an independent artist i will loose and it wont effect spotify. We need all the big names to go in force but they wont because the big names are with UMG who own Spotify corupt as
BTW, this is called 'long-tail marketing'. It's anti-artist by design. Only the provider makes (few pennies from everyone) money off of every artist and subsequently the artist's receive only a few pennies each.
Know what’s better than paying $spotify/month. Buying a cd every month (or just some bandcamp mp3’s for $pay what you want) Then you’ve still got all that music if you stop buying a cd every month.
I never pay for Spotify, I only listen to podcasts with them, I have TH-cam premium and get the music app as well for zero extra. Haven’t found any weird muzak…
As any media composer will tell you: Spotify and Epidemic Sound are a perfect match. Epidemic demands that you as a composer are not part of any Performing Rights Organization (PRO) like ASCAP, BMI or SESAC in order to sign a contract with them. They will then give you a buyout for any track you produce for them (given that they want to have it in the first place), but by not being part of any PRO you won't get any royalties when the track gets licensed for movie, TV, commercial etc. (these royalties are obviously way higher in the long run than the amount of money they pay to their contract partners - those go to Epidemic instead). Their entire business model is targeted towards enriching themselves massively on the back of composers who are desperate for a short term cash influx. And at least in Europe this is potentially illegal.
I was just watching Chords of Orions video where his Ambient guitar streams were stolen by...EPIDEMIC SOUNDS. They seem like a really DODGY AF company!!!
What complicates, exacerbates, and worsens the industry and prospects for songwriters, singers, musicians and producers even more is the following: I warned on several videos at the launch of the Suno AI music generation platform close to a year ago that major labels, distributors, and streaming companies would... stealthily... create their own internal AI music gen tech and become by far the most prolific generators and purveyors of AI-generated music and, indeed, AI-fabricated artists. Why? Because, if AI music can grow in quality and "creativity" to become indistinguishable and equally enjoyable as human-generated music - which in many respects it already has - it just makes plain economic sense to create internally, distribute/stream and keep all royalty payments flowing back inwardly rather than outwardly as for human-generated content.
Spotify sounds like a swamp every once in a while you have to drain them and dredge all the mud and muck, till then stay on their blood bag line cause they got your number good🤓
This is why I use Apple Music for my music streaming. I know - not that much better - but at least it’s not as sus as Spotify. I’ll bet you Busy loves Spotify. Douche probably has stock in them.
What’s Spotify? What’s X/Twitter? What’s Tesla? What’s Amazon? What’s Nestlé? What’s… You've got the power, don’t pass it to someone else and then complain when you’re getting ripped off!
"artists needs to pull off their music from spotify" - it is outrageous to ask for minor artists who already earns shit to pull off their art in one of the most universal platforms available for their visibility. this won't mean nothing besides more problems for those artists, not until some beyoncé pull off their music from the platform. some guys here implying to shift great part of the blame to artists and this is such a coward thing. "consumers don't give a shit" i praise weaver beats for being direct to the point. can't take anymore youtubers making video essays with double the length of this video, going around in circles with euphemisms. on the other hand, i really hope that those who are confirming it doesn't really use spotify. suddenly everybody here does not use spotify anymore and condemns anyone who uses it.
Let's say, the Spotify makes curated list of 30 songs "Music to take a dump to". If 30 out of 30 artists on that curated playlist are the real ones - every one of them gets their stream based revenue (not mentioning the oportunity to get some exposure). If 20 of them are fake, only 10 real people will get their money (and a chance to get some listeners). And the curated lists are where the money is.
The revenue comes from subscriptions which act like a pie, if the pie is 10billion then that 10billion will be distributed to artists and how much of the pie you get depends on how many streams you get, more streams = more of the pie, fake artists are eating part of the pie so there is less for everyone
No. Spotify assigns a fixed % of their income for paying royalties and divides this according to the number of streams. You don't get paid per stream, you get paid per % of all the streams in the platform. If fake artists inflate the numbers of streams, you will get paid less
Time for new distribution: Leave that streaming shite for all the AI bots. That's where they can generate numbers from and for folks who wouldn't pay artists anyway.
It pays more to talk about the music industry than it does to actually make music.
Anything but writing songs pays more in the music industry. One of the hardest career paths you can take.
"the finn mckenty situation is crazy"
Soon A.I artist will take over and only rich kids will make music as there will be no $$ in it to even survive. Its happening slowly in nyc. Venues are closing, musicians get offered shit paying gigs and cant make money selling media. Only tour pays artists but not the rent money NYC is asking for these days… another medium has to be developed to counter this…
It pays to discover
Pfp from afar made me think you were Decap lolll
As an artist, I subscribe to Apple Music - they still pay me, even if a track gets 999 plays. Each month, Spotify steals a small amount of royalties from me and from the majority of their artists. Spotify may not have made a profit, but the guy at the top is richer than Taylor Swift. Spotify is horrible. Great job covering this story.
I cancelled Spotify when they cancelled my royalties. They are saving a few bucks a year in royalties and losing $132 in subscriber fees. I know it doesn’t mean a whole lot but it means something to me.
^ 🤟
If everyone put their foot down like you, it would add up real fast and they would change their tune or fail at some point.
You should make a video about it and get the word out! $132/year x thousands or hundreds of thousands of consumers would sting.
As an artist what are your thoughts about tidal? I left Spotify a while ago and changed to tidal cause they apparently pay the artists more and the audio quality is definitely better. I am just a listener tho so im not in the know of the artists experience
@@perryperch8948 I don't know much about Tidal, to be completely honest. I use Apple Music because I'm in the Apple ecosystem, and I've been very happy with it. But I use CDBaby to distribute my music, so I'm on Tidal (as Richard MacLemale.)
@@substandardtim I've thought about yanking my albums from Spotify for the same reason. They aren't stealing much from me, but they won't be stealing anything from me if my albums are gone.
Sadly, I doubt consumers care. As an artist, I refuse to deal with Spotify. They’re evil.
same here. I dont think i would ever pay back the Time it would take me to upload my music on that platform.
SAME!! I can't stand streaming, you're paying for a service that can yank absolutely any artist, at any given time, for seemingly any random reason.. It's liek HERE, take my money to take stuff away at any time, then let me go online and bitch about it the second they do....
as a consumer, theres not much out there for me to buy from artist.
@@sergiolandz6056 You're not trying hard enough then mate...... there are many good bands/artists out there with easy access to purchase their music.
Consumers won't do shit.
It's artists and labels that will have to take a stance. If enough artists leave the platforms then people will cancel their memberships. It's as simple as that.
consumers dont care about this at all IMO
labels have the most power here, but idk if any of them are willing to take a stance.
and tbh, as a consumer, i don't even want them to take a stance:
i like spotify and don't want it gone. everyone, including me, will flock over to apple music, which is strictly worse in terms of UI and recommendations. might be slightly better for artist payouts but they've done shady stuff as well (not paying artists for any streams from "3 month trial" accounts)
They tried that over covid with Young and co removing their work. They're all back up as the artists caved. Shaming the listeners might be the only option.
I honestly feel like this is exactly why Spotify is doing this. If they can get enough of their costumers hooked on second screening a bunch of shitty tracks, well, then it won't matter.
And when did a boycott ever work? We have eyes on Spotify cause it's the big game in the forest, but other companies are also playing by these rules. If the rules of the game don't change, the playstyle won't change. Simple as that.
@@drakonyanazkar a) we have no evidence the other streaming services are doing the same. (unless you can produce some, notthat it matters as they pay nothing to artists either)
b) Ratners were boycotted due to the CEO saying he was putting tat on the wrists of his customers. They went bust as a result. Weinstein's production company faced an industry and viewer boycott when allegations first came out - it weakened his stance and now he's in jail. So there are TWO examples.
From a business perspective, they don't think of themselves as middlemen or tools to help artists, they think they provide a product to customers and artists is simply an expense, and reducing expenses makes for more profits. We don't even need these services with modern tech, but they kinda inserted themselves as the go-to place to listen to music.
The low IQ public allows Spotify and other subscription cancer to thrive.
When Spotify finally gets exposed, because they will, we will look back at the saddest mass destruction of musician/artist careers in human history. So many goods bands and artists quit because they realized IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to play this streaming game when the system is like this. And when the house ALWAYS WINS, you are just stupid to continue playing. Now I have to give Spotify that they played smart. Keeping this scheme hidden for so long, and fooling the consumers to the point where the have a monopoly. Wow! Congrats! Im ashamed to be a Swede. Im a musician myself and I’m lucky enough I can produce/mix/master enough stuff to make a good living but every day I think about my poor clients who are so extremely talented and hopeful. For them, unsigned, unknown bands, its completely impossible for them to ”make it”. I cry for the young ones especially. I had the fortune to release a few records on CD and Vinyl so I could tour and actually become ”a real band” but yeah. This is beyond f*ckef up. I really truly hope that the Swedish gov will put an end to this soon and apologize to the whole world. Not only did we bring you Ikea. We also killed music. 😢
Seems the Swedish have a knack for shady operations lol
Another example is Elektron’s business model in recent years, where they divided more and more features between different products, to lock you in their environment. AT LEAST, they make damn good gear…
@ we’ve always been shady. And good at hiding it 🥳
This makes me feel even better about all the albums I bought on Bandcamp.
thank you for supporting real artists, I love bandcamp, it doesn't get the reach and views of youtube and spotify but it's real support from real fans, and with an 80% cut for the artist even a few $ is worth more than thousands of streams.
Bandcamp is bad for artists because artists don't get paid for music streams and you pay for the artist's music once and for all. And everything seems fair, unless you think that you can listen to a song you paid 1 euro for endlessly. While the artist has invested a lot of time, experience and effort into it. And if the artist is independent, then he gets practically nothing, because Bandcamp also takes a commission from 1 euro for a song. Top payment for streams is more profitable for the artist, because he will receive money for the number of listenings and so instead of 1 euro he can actually earn more over time.
A+ story, man.
Just wanted to leave a comment to say I appreciate these more traditional journalist-style pieces you do once in a while. I bet the research must take much longer to do compared to a WNN episode but your writing is coming along really well and I hope more people see this as a result
Here is another lesser known "fun" fact: A significant portion of Spotify's revenue comes from selling what they call "emotional user profiles" to the ad and marketing industry. In a nutshell, the USP of that product/service is that these user profiles of Spotify listeners not only come with the usual profile data, but with the added benefit of exact information of which user listened to which kind of music at which time, in other words, valuable information about consumers *emotional* state at any given time they listen(ed) to a certain song, genre or mood of music. That's some massive USP in the advertising world.
It's a mystery to me why both this and the Spotify fake artists are not talked about more. The information is out there, this isn't something new and has been going on for years.
Can anyone see my above comment ? Somehow YT seems to be acting up with that post.
@@beatz04I can
You didn't explain how targeted ads based on emotional user profiles are a problem... There's nothing unethical or wrong about this, you are just learning how ads work and are freaking out for some reason.
@@jazzymichaelNothing wrong initially. Yet with AI the paradigm of users/artists/internet businessfolk (that arent big tech or advertisers) becoming lab rats will worsen.
Supposedly google does similar with political cohort profiling. Avg persons market leverage will decrease as personal data is commoditized further, while creepy spyware generated bespoke media/ads grow around them like in Minority Report.
Little room in that pipeline for more sincere artists.
As the other person said, this is standard for any platform that runs targeted ads. TH-cam, Facebook, et cetera, guaranteed they all offer similar features to advertisers. It’s weird and creepy yes, but it’s just how the internet works now
At this point you're literally going to have to convince the top 10-15 artists to drop the platform unless it changes; consumers won't put forth the effort required to affect change. What's sad is that people aren't discovering new music and they're going out of their way to hinder that process. The entire benefit of the Internet age to artists was draining power from record companies by making distribution accessible and Spotify has literally pulled a SCOTUS and rolled back decades of progress.
A SCOTUS?
If you aren't finding new artists you probably are just a passive consumer 😅
@@jangobango2847 You ever heard of me? I have 40 songs on streaming services. Unless I spend my life savings on paid advertisements nobody will likely ever find any of my music "organically" because the streaming services are purposely making it difficult-if you're not already going viral it's a huge uphill climb and they won't just drop your tracks into suggested radio play (wouldn't that be lovely?). And surveys have shown that most users find "new" music by using the built-in "random" or "radio" functionality of these services-that's just where we are in 2024 (2025). The overwhelming majority of listeners are "passive consumers".
I remeber this being mentioned in my music business class in university. Was told Spotify pay one or more specific artists to make tracks, then spotify buys licensing rights, generate editorial playlists and chuck all of these fake profiles tracks into them. Some playlists even having only these type of tracks.
A big part of the problem is that the majority of the listening world couldn't tell a good song from crap. They don't really know or care. It's just background noise to fill in the gap.I'm a musician and I've actually had people ask me why I"m not driving a brand new high end Mercedes. I play in bars for F$%KS sake! They actually think that if you're a musician, you're automatically rich.
And so many companies exploit artists too
In my experience, musicians are expected to be dirt poor having made a shitty choice in life to pursue 'their dreams'.
I’ve looked through their piano playlist - every single artist is first name, last name, no description (or a very short one), and around a dozen generic, boring piano tracks. I think that with the advent of aI generated music, they’re actually using AI to create not just the music, but the profiles and the album covers.
Don’t listen to the ambient playlists. They’re AI slop.
So true man, I’ve been getting into ambient music lately and the playlists I found scream fake AI composers and generic tunes. Even the “album covers” give it away as sloppy AI work.
$10 per month unlimited streaming is like a restsurant with an All you can eat" buffet with unlimited food type all $10 per month per person. When you look at it in thst scenario its easy to see why it doesnt pay musicians (chefs) good
I've been talking about exactly this since years, without anyone really listening. Btw, there is another side effect to this: The more fake/AI artists Spotify create, the lower the overall payout per stream for all (real) artists becomes. Which saves Spotify money, especially as they don't have to pay royalties to their fake artists anyway.
I broke Spotify...
YOOOO I SAW THAT VID!!
I have kind of a weird adjacent experience to this, where back in 2019 I released this song “Only”. I think it’s halfway decent and I was fortunate to have some pretty well known musicians play on it.
Anyway, I’m in that state of “artist ship” where I’ll publish something from time to time but you won’t find my website or media campaign, so whoever got my song mislabeled it and seemed to think it was the publication of an old song instead of what it was - new music.
To this day I’ve wondered why “they” messed with my publication (miscategorized it as like a repub, essentially)… meanwhile all this paint by numbers music gets published and pushed with next to no guard rails or cares.
Whether it was Tunecore, Apple Music, Spotify… whoever… they have processes that can jack with your publication… the industry clearly chooses their spots.
This is why artists need to release their music on vinyl first, in order to gain whats known as mechanical copyright (MCPS/PRS), which entitles you to on average 25 - 40% in royalties from retail sales here in the UK. Then wait a couple of months before allowing any digital release. You then get to call the shots with all these digital media platforms.
One of the reasons we now have the official UK top 40 Vinyl singles and album chart here in the UK.
If you release only digitally, then unfortunately you are releasing into a very saturated market.
I forget who originally said it. But, the fact is that the days of music piracy were so much better. Because, at least at that point, if you were pirating some one's music, you knew on some level that the artist wasn't getting anything.
So, then maybe you'd be more willing to buy tickets, merch, or an album later on down the line.
I pirated a lot when I was younger. Now that I have money, I buy everything legitimately. Companies focus so much on stopping piracy, they're willing to sacrifice paying customers.
This reminds me of the joke that asks what’s the difference between a gold digger and a prostitute. At least the prostitute is honest about her profession.
I know somebody that produces music for Epidemic sound. They don’t allow or want writers to join a PRO, you must be unaffiliated to work for them.
Yup absolutely correct.
Does it make them any money?
Instant red flag. Also they seem to monopolize yt creators too. Many channels I tried to contact to get my music on made it a requirement to be w epidemic sound.
@ of course! Somebody is registered as the writer of whatever a composer does for Epidemic Sound, its musical slavery, no intellectual rights. Epidemic Sound becomes the composer and publisher of the songs. They just pay the composer a small fee for production, that’s it, no back end royalties for the producer.
@@romanrojas8588 That's exactly correct. These platforms are disgusting. I make sample packs for a living, so i don't have to deal with the bullshit of these types of companies.
Spotify bought its own shares in 2021 for one billion dollars, which is basically a billion dollar handout to its shareholders. It also can easily regulate its incomes by paying the big record companies more or less. So it's indeed very profitable, it's kept un profitable in the books for simple and obvious reason: should it be profitable, music makers would ask for more.
It also be done to evade taxes. Companies understate the profit in their books to evade taxes
and they would have to pay taxes
So essentially Spotify is doing the same thing they had a man arrested for??
Spotify is basically becoming 1930s american radio : they hire musicians for a fee, broadcast songs they ordered, dont pay them royalties and make all the money.
Good parallel and factual.
all streaming platforms are a joke. They suck and i wish there was other options out there.
I am an "artist" (as in, I have music published). I pirate all my music. Download mp3 and such. Like in the good old days. I will never pay a dime to streaming services, I will use their free version, if possible with a cracked or modded version to remove the ads. The best thing you can do for artists is this. Two or three records or shirts sold in a concert will generate more income for my band that streaming ever will, and those who actually are popular enough to earn meaningful amounts from Spotify dont need it. Don't feel guilty about pirating, it is the best for the music community as a whole.
Unless labels go against spotify,nothing will change
The way of exploitation is at its all time high with the power of internet and social media. Seems no matter where you turn, a greedy approach is being applied to what once was decent. YT is a grand example. Supposed to be full of user content like a open world rpg game meant to be explored, but its full of Dev controlled replicative content to monetize off clicks using cheap tactics and have the nerve to have tons of ads. The more we show them how we react the more they feed off of stragetic methods to be even more greedier as we become dependant.
i’ve tried tidal for some time but almost none of the artists i listen to have their full catalogue without mismatched releases from other artists. i personally have only like 3 albums of mine and the rest is some other producer eith the same name from spain and my label refuses to do anything about it because nobody uses tidal in my country
watched a vid earlier of a guy who broke their Spots algo. Extremely satisfying to see the results
We need to organize as a working class to demand our rights.
Every single company will do what's best for profit because that's the name of the game. But let's say a government was operating this service for their citizens. Now there's no point in profitting, since the government doesn't profit from its peoples. So we'd get a service that's still cheap, but rewards the musicians. But do you think for-profit companies would just call it "fair play"? No way. They'd smear the f- out of that company and that government that decided to do it. This exact thing has been happening for over a hundred years now. The root of this evil is capitalism.
"since the government doesn't profit from its peoples"
What world do you live in? thats the only way the governments "make" money is by taking it from the taxpayers
Well, if the government is corrupt, they would f- you over way worse. Not every government is transparent
Streams should be a dime or a quarter per stream like jukeboxes were and alternative eould be buy physical cd or vinyl or cassette or digital download (paid). The $10 per month access to every commercially rlessed in last 60 years may be convenient for listebsrs but hrrible for the music makers
Right Spotify should have the Splice type model. Where your subscription gets you like 200 credits a month and flat fee goes to Spotify with every package tier. Each play is the same amount of money regardless of artist. If you try to bot you will easily run out of streams and have to buy more credits which Spotify can make more money off of.
They would very quickly get priced out of the market by everybody switching to Apple Music
You sound retarded. Like you failed basic math class. I bet you're a Kamala voter. Stop doing drugs.
It is hard to get picked for any playlists on spotify day by day as an Indie artist or a new artist.
It’s probably better for artists if the music industry goes back to genuine labels with music on physical media, but with the difference that there’s a new artist download sector (to undo gatekeeping against amateurs) that automatically begins physical media runs as it reaches a certain interest goal. If the public wants musos to keep making music they have to grow the fuck up and quit expecting everything for chump change.
Yeah good luck convincing people to spend more money on anything really. They'll just pirate the sh out of every music.
The cat is out of the bag. Never in business history has the consumer accepted such a drastic downgrade in their own experience at a single time.
The best that can be done is to make it so that the streaming service is a non profit, which will never happen
They should also probably pay big artists way less, they are making bank off ticket sales anyway. But that's not easy to justify, even though the big artists wouldn't be hurt by it.
I actually think this is an even bigger issue for society in general. Namely that people have gotten accustomed to getting shit products, and people don't care, as long as the price is low enough.
I mean, how many news stories have been put out on the shady practices of Temu, and yet they're still thriving. It's sad. But, conditioning people to not give a shit has absolutely worked, on all fronts.
@kassemir temu, Amazon. Netflix and Hulu are doing the same thing to TV and movies as spotify is for music.
in all these industries the workers are ending up with less leverage and less money, the consumers are getting what they want for the most part, and the few that own these properties are making the bulk of the money
As an artist and musician, I never understand why musicians are simply called musicians. If you’re a musician and someone asks you what you do I bet you don’t say you’re an artist - if you did it would be assumed you do something visual.
The word “artist” in music is grossly overused and often absurd. I’m a musician. I make music. The listener decides if it’s art or whatever they choose to call it.
Streaming is not a lost for major label, they are still making money, they had a little "low" few years ago but those last year were the most profitable years ever for the music industry.
The only thing that'll make a difference is a mass exodus & boycott by a huge amount of artists. Everyone knows what they're up to, & yet they still put their music up there, feeding the parasite - which is the worst possible thing to be doing. Unless you're doing huge numbers on there, are people really gonna be out of pocket if they take all their music off?
Artists have collectively enabled this situation, by deciding 'everybody needs this because if we don't who's gonna hear us', so we're as much to blame as the indifferent consumer base IMO.
Spotify is a big L nowadays unfortunately.
They have been that way since they started.
I imagine they will be cutting their costs even more soon with AI. Why even pay for stock music when you can generate it for nothing.
ive been disliking spotify the most these last 5 years....they throttle my comedy channels,they try to push new artist on me,and worst they tax you to have your catalog offline holding a knife over your throat only due to the fact they have an extensive catalog!!!well screw that!! i know how many songs,artist,comics n or content and the some of it is about 16,000 songs. For the last year i have been making my own mp3 copies of and im up to 9,000. i call it project F-Spotify!! if ya got cd's send um my way,lets bring back burn parties....we dont need these jokers because people are down to share.....and i am one of um. Good post n thank you
With AI music reaching maturity, Spotify can skip the lube and just go in raw on artists soon.
Spotify are a joke! Zero reason to still be using their service nowadays. Apple actually pay artists (and a lot more too), and don't randomly delete your music for no reason!
1:11 true but while ppl use these services to explore and search once is a while it mostly gives you this feeling of endless music, but you pretty much listen to the same stuff same amount of music if you were listening to music you bought or recorded from damn radio
Not in my case, though. And also not for a lot of listeners younger than me, who grew up around Spotify and its possibilities. I think it's a big part of why being eccletic is becoming more and more common. The streaming service helps to internationalize music and also give access to things you might have never heard about, but now you can listen to a lot of it.
I noticed that there were fake artists with some weird stuff phonk , hard techno , and a couple other off beat stuff that just appeared and I’ve never heard of and just appeared in the playlist
Glitch and 8bit stuff too
I skip tracks from bands without a description or any information due to this.
"It's nearly impossible to convince consumers to leave something because it's unethical, when they're facing an abundance of convenience."
The truth behind that is scary.
The mood music genre will be the first to go completely AI. An AI could create moods dynamically tailored to the listeners browser history, pulse rate and geographic location. An artist, on the other hand, is telling the listener a story. The listener is along for the ride. Hopefully listeners will prefer the adventure of the latter as opposed to the coma inducing mood music sleeping pills. But I can't say I have any real reason to be optimistic, other than: This shit has to turn around at some point, right?
It's like going to eat lunch in a school cantina as an adult. We can't fix the system if we can't fix people gobbling up whatever it had been put in front of them.
We need a Spotify RICO Asap
"Epidemic Sounds" what an accurate label name
is true if i leave spotify as an independent artist i will loose and it wont effect spotify. We need all the big names to go in force but they wont because the big names are with UMG who own Spotify corupt as
BTW, this is called 'long-tail marketing'. It's anti-artist by design. Only the provider makes (few pennies from everyone) money off of every artist and subsequently the artist's receive only a few pennies each.
Know what’s better than paying $spotify/month. Buying a cd every month (or just some bandcamp mp3’s for $pay what you want)
Then you’ve still got all that music if you stop buying a cd every month.
I never pay for Spotify, I only listen to podcasts with them, I have TH-cam premium and get the music app as well for zero extra.
Haven’t found any weird muzak…
That’s because you haven’t used the niche playlist
As a bedroom producer, I guess I need to focus more on uploading to Bandcamp now
As any media composer will tell you: Spotify and Epidemic Sound are a perfect match.
Epidemic demands that you as a composer are not part of any Performing Rights Organization (PRO) like ASCAP, BMI or SESAC in order to sign a contract with them. They will then give you a buyout for any track you produce for them (given that they want to have it in the first place), but by not being part of any PRO you won't get any royalties when the track gets licensed for movie, TV, commercial etc. (these royalties are obviously way higher in the long run than the amount of money they pay to their contract partners - those go to Epidemic instead).
Their entire business model is targeted towards enriching themselves massively on the back of composers who are desperate for a short term cash influx. And at least in Europe this is potentially illegal.
I was just watching Chords of Orions video where his Ambient guitar streams were stolen by...EPIDEMIC SOUNDS. They seem like a really DODGY AF company!!!
People are still using streaming services in the current year ...
as you make this comment on a platform that offers streaming services
Spotify seems to flow better for work than pandora
Underground and Indie artist with less then 1000 listeners funds Spotify. Got damn scammers.
i completely believe this thank you for shinning light on this
What complicates, exacerbates, and worsens the industry and prospects for songwriters, singers, musicians and producers even more is the following: I warned on several videos at the launch of the Suno AI music generation platform close to a year ago that major labels, distributors, and streaming companies would... stealthily... create their own internal AI music gen tech and become by far the most prolific generators and purveyors of AI-generated music and, indeed, AI-fabricated artists. Why? Because, if AI music can grow in quality and "creativity" to become indistinguishable and equally enjoyable as human-generated music - which in many respects it already has - it just makes plain economic sense to create internally, distribute/stream and keep all royalty payments flowing back inwardly rather than outwardly as for human-generated content.
Yet,
no matter how screwed things are,
people as in, the audience/listeners,
will never give a shit about it.
only
"oMg wHY ISn't tHiS oN sPOtiFY"
I took my music off that platform half a Decade ago.
Sont forgetthe fact that Universal owns 20% of Spotify indirectly. So they make money of spotify profits…
Artist that steal my name aren``t enough....that sucks...
damn weaver happy you finally got 60k you were at 38k for a minute
Loving the quiet background music
Spotify sounds like a swamp every once in a while you have to drain them and dredge all the mud and muck, till then stay on their blood bag line cause they got your number good🤓
I have a feeling Daniel Ek is soon to be Luigi'd.
Great video
This is like a jungle branded shop that has 7654456 cat typing brands that all make the exact same thing
Nice choice of background music, I heard some peter gun in there somewhere.
switched to Tidal years ago, quality is way better, artists receive more % and now it’s even cheaper than Spotify, at least in my country
I wonder what the "fair" monthly price would be for streaming. Nothing is really going to benefit if you can get every song ever for $10 / month.
This is why I use Apple Music for my music streaming. I know - not that much better - but at least it’s not as sus as Spotify. I’ll bet you Busy loves Spotify. Douche probably has stock in them.
i use youtube premium for videos and youtube music for music. no spotify, no soundcloud nowadays
This is the quality content I signed up for.
👍
Already left Spotify for their crummy business decisions
good thumbnail...you forgot the Star Of David, however.
Marketingwise the dude is a hero ;-)
Almost seems like a money laundry business front. 😮
Artists suck at business. That is the biggest problem.
Its a left vs right brain issue
Just casually slipping some Cowboy Bebop soundtrack into the background like we wouldnt notice
Even more reasons not to return to music streaming, thanks Weaver !!
We need to send Luigi to visit Daniel Ek.
its so cooked out here
Beautiful.
Is it hard to avoid spotify official playlists?
What’s Spotify?
What’s X/Twitter?
What’s Tesla?
What’s Amazon?
What’s Nestlé?
What’s…
You've got the power, don’t pass it to someone else and then complain when you’re getting ripped off!
i feel like im one of the only spotify users who has never listened to a single official spotify playlist
"artists needs to pull off their music from spotify" - it is outrageous to ask for minor artists who already earns shit to pull off their art in one of the most universal platforms available for their visibility. this won't mean nothing besides more problems for those artists, not until some beyoncé pull off their music from the platform. some guys here implying to shift great part of the blame to artists and this is such a coward thing.
"consumers don't give a shit" i praise weaver beats for being direct to the point. can't take anymore youtubers making video essays with double the length of this video, going around in circles with euphemisms. on the other hand, i really hope that those who are confirming it doesn't really use spotify. suddenly everybody here does not use spotify anymore and condemns anyone who uses it.
Watch weaver get like 500k views all the sudden on this one… manifesting
Millions of plays for unknown artists. That says it all.
This has always been their agenda. If you think they care about music, because they say they do - then you been suckered.
Radio Paradise. Listener supported commercial free radio. I would encourage you to explore this avenue. It's been my main source for the last 22yrs.
We almost had it when the .99 cent song was a thing. They killed us all with streaming.
Spotify stinks
So, in light of all of this, are you removing your music from Spotify?
Could someone explain how having fake music reduces the revenue real artists get? Isn't revenue based on the number of streams?
Let's say, the Spotify makes curated list of 30 songs "Music to take a dump to". If 30 out of 30 artists on that curated playlist are the real ones - every one of them gets their stream based revenue (not mentioning the oportunity to get some exposure). If 20 of them are fake, only 10 real people will get their money (and a chance to get some listeners). And the curated lists are where the money is.
The revenue comes from subscriptions which act like a pie, if the pie is 10billion then that 10billion will be distributed to artists and how much of the pie you get depends on how many streams you get, more streams = more of the pie, fake artists are eating part of the pie so there is less for everyone
No. Spotify assigns a fixed % of their income for paying royalties and divides this according to the number of streams. You don't get paid per stream, you get paid per % of all the streams in the platform. If fake artists inflate the numbers of streams, you will get paid less
Appreciate the replies
Love your work bro. Also, people seem to forget that Ek invested $100 USD in an AI weaponry firm. Fucked up shiet.
Time for new distribution:
Leave that streaming shite for all the AI bots.
That's where they can generate numbers from and for folks who wouldn't pay artists anyway.
Picture day at school Weaver?