Honestly, Spotify is only half bad compared to the real scumbags of this industry, and that's the "rights holders".
It's not the artists who created the music I'm talking about. It's the record companies taking the largest piece for themselves.
They are the ones earning on other people's talent and success.
But...but...muh "discovery"
I'll die on that hill. 90% of the artists I listen to, I found through spotify's algorithms.
Well, their CEO Daniel Ek's investment company Prima Materia "invested €100 million ($114 million USD) in Helsing, an artificial intelligence company based out of Europe that assists in military technological ventures. "
So I'm happy to take my *streaming business elsewhere.
Sometimes, I see some of the takes on here, and it's hardly surprising that the fediverse isn't particularly popular.
Spotify are somewhat responsible for their current position. They hired too many people, extended into markets they didn't need to enter, and have a CEO that has blown money in places that didn't need it. Let's not forget that Spotify spent $300m on sponsoring FC Barcelona, which could have allowed Spotify to employ ALL of the employees it laid off for 1-2 years. Spotify had no need to give $200m to Joe Rogan, either! That's half a billion spunked up the wall on decisions that have done nothing for the company but cause grief. Instead, they could have focused their efforts on paying more out to smaller artists that provide the long tail for their service, while also making deals to promote merch and tour dates where possible.
With that being said, if you think that Spotify didn't play a huge part in making music streaming accessible you're just being contrarian for no reason. They provided (at the time) a solid application, good connectivity with services like last.fm, and had the social connection sorted from the start. Once phones took off, Spotify removed the need for mp3's for the majority of people, largely killing iTunes. Spotify was the winner of the music streaming wars.
Frankly, a lot of people were praising Spotify for their "good" severance package, but IMO shareholders should be livid, and should be calling for a new person at the helm.
removed the need for.mp3s
Im not sure this was a win
It didn't buy the format and then cancelled it, it did it purely by providing a more convenient way of listening to music than downloading mp3s, so yes, it's a win
I personally think mp3's are more convinient. I don't have to use multiple subscriptions to access to platforms exclusivities , i don't need to worry about songs becoming unavailable. I have a big playlist on spotify with a lot of grayed out songs. Also, local music players are a lot better than any streaming service player.
Sometimes, I see some of the takes on here, and it's hardly surprising that the fediverse isn't particularly popular.
You genuinely think the reason the fediverse isn't popular is because people have negative opinions of Spotify? As if these opinions wouldn't also be prevalent on Reddit? As if having to see opinions you didn't agree with was ever holding reddit back to begin with?
And yeah, Spotify made music streaming accessible, but the overall problem is they did what all tech companies at the time did: burned money to establish themselves hoping the profit would come later.
You're praising them for killing iTunes, but maybe iTunes didn't need to be killed. Maybe breaking markets with a type of streaming that wasn't profitable and fucked over artists has given us a few years of good streaming, but the honeymoon is coming to an end, and we'll all be worse off when the stockholders start demanding profit.
Same thing that happened with YouTube, basically. Company runs something at a loss for so long they've effectively broken the market and now that it's time to make money, we're all fucked over.
No it's not because people here don't like Spotify, but the stupid ass takes y'all have that lead to Spotify hate bleed through in half the other content on here that people don't like either.
That fact that you thought ops comment was about disliking Spotify specifically reinforces it.
IMO shareholders should be livid
Why? Shareholders gave Spotify billions of dollars - they expect the company to spend that money. Shareholders are quite capable of depositing their own money in a bank if they didn't want it to be spent.
My take is Spotify hired over 5,000 employees over 2020 and 2021 when the economy looked great. Then Russia Invaded Ukraine in 2022 screwing the global economy and particularly Europe which is Spotify's biggest market. They've laid off about half the people they hired, which is unfortunate... but it's understandable. The couldn't have foreseen the economic shift.
Spotify removed the need for mp3’s for the majority of people, largely killing iTunes
Huh? Apple's music service has about a hundred million users. Up from eighty million a few years ago. Spotify has more than twice that, but iTunes is hardly dead.
Apple Music the music subscription service is different from iTunes the music purchasing store. When’s the last time you heard of anyone buying an individual song / album on iTunes?
I call bullshit. Yeah I'm sure they spend 2/3 of their income on rights holders, mainly Joe Rogan, Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift.
The average musician isn't making shit, and yet the spotify execs are sipping champagne.
The rights holders are the record labels. As much as artists want to complain about Spotify they should direct their criticism to their record labels.
Spotify is far from powerless in this arrangement too. Nobody is forcing them to be in this business.
Pretty sure Spotify is more powerless than you think. The record labels nearly burned their industry to the ground in the 2000s over digital piracy.
Netflix wouldn't be around today if it wasn't for their move into becoming their own movie studio thanks to just about every big Hollywood studio pulling out, arrogantly thinking that they can each run their own service for a bigger slice of the pie. Newsflash, it's going really bad. Especially for Disney, who deserve everything coming to them.
I reckon if Spotify makes even a small move to undermine the big record labels, they would yank all the popular music. Spotify either wouldn't last long or best case they down size into a niche music platform.
"not making profits"
Just massive salaries and equity
You know they don't pay the artist directly? Like with physical the ones taking the biggest share are the labels... Also the average musician isn't making shit cause compared to a very few bigger artists they represent an extremely low percentage of the overall streams on the platform.
Man, a lot of people here don't understand how the music industry works. From the perspective of someone who's been loosely following the music industry, what I've learned is that it doesn't matter if Spotify gave up 2/3rds of their revenue, or 100% of it, the artists would still make fuck all.
Why?
The labels love taking their cuts and as a result, artists make very little. Instead of taking the blame for giving artists a <10% cut of the label's revenue from their music (my understanding is that it's pretty common for musicians to get <10%, sometimes <5% if you're on a particularly shitty label), the labels are blaming platforms like Spotify.
Now, I'm not saying that Spotify is blameless, however I think there's a lot of misdirection from the labels going on. I don't remember anyone complaining about pre-spotify services like Pandora Radio for not paying out enough when they were largely ad-supported, which is another reason I'm not totally buying the, "it's cause it's free" argument either.
Fuck, remember Pandora?
Labels are an outdated concept that needs to die. Now that you can find any music from just a quick search artists shouldn't have to rely on them, at least not as heavily, for advertising.
There was a very, very brief moment from about 2005 to 2011 or so where there was money to be made directly by artists on iTunes or the other music stores where the tracks were like 99 cents each.
But people stopped buying as soon as Spotify became popular, and now any artist that wants to release on Spotify without a label still doesn't make much money.
Ugh, yes poor poor spotify, fuck that. Artists can't even make a living making music anymore thanks to spotify. Fuck off blaming artists for trying to get paid. Fuck this article. Oh no it only gets a third of the revenue?! Abhorrent, no it should get ALL the revenue, for doing what, having a server with music on it. Amazing. Fuck spotify.
Is Spotify the villain here or is the “big three”? Because it sounds like Spotify is delivering a service and deserves some profit from that.
But what are the big three doing? Seems like they are just skimming because they hold the IP rights. Are they providing any service?
Spotify is definitely not the villain here, they have created the best music streaming platform in the world. The big publishers also can't be called the villains per say, but it wasn't so nice of them to force a small startup (Spotify in it's early days) to sign contracts that will permanently force it to payout about $0.66 out of every $1 it makes.
Have you ever looked into the operating costs of having a server with music on it which over 400M monthly active users use?
I actually work in cloud engineering and regularly price this kind of thing up.
Their costs are salaries not aws bills.
Wooh. 👀. This isn't Spotify's fault. They can't pay artists if they don't have money.
I'll take "Unethical accounting" for 500, Alex
How is this news? The price you pay for media of any kind I can think of goes mostly to the rights holders, not the companies physically delivering it to you. You may object to the rights holders being shitty record labels, but that term also includes independent artists. And more to the point, rights holders are by definition the people who are entitled to profit from selling access to the media they own.
If you want to get pissed at someone, get pissed at the record labels sharing a ridiculously small part of their licensing fees with the artists who make their product.
If you want to support an artist pirate their music and see them in concert.
This is outdated and bad information. Most small artists lose money touring. Bigger artists might break even.
If you can buy merch, do that, if you can buy physically do that. Spotify is gonna pay pennies for thousands of streams, so nothing you do on spotify is going to benefit an artist. But "pirate and see live" is probably gonna result in a negative bank balance for artists.
Nothing short of handing them cash in person is truly a guarantee. Really depressing how it's turned out.
I think Taylor Swift just about broke even, mostly thanks to my wife and her friends.
Nice try ticket Master!
Equity.
In total, at the close of last year, SEC documents show that exactly 65 percent of Spotify was owned by just six parties: the firm’s co- founders, Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon (30.6 percent of ordinary shares between them); Tencent Holdings Ltd. (9.1 percent); and a run of three asset-management specialists: Baillie Gifford (11.8 percent), Morgan Stanley (7.3 percent), and T.Rowe Price Associates (6.2 percent). These three investment powerhouses owned more than 25 percent of Spotify between them — a fact worth remembering next time there’s an argument about whose interests Spotify is acting in when it makes controversial moves (for example, SPOT’s ongoing legal appeal against a royalty pay rise for songwriters in the United States).
Furthermore, according to MBW estimates, which my sources suggest are still solid, two major record companies — Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group — continue to jointly own between six percent and seven percent of Spotify (Sony around 2.35 percent and Universal around 3.5). With Sony and UMG added into the mix, then, the names mentioned here comfortably own more than 70 percent of Spotify.
https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/who-really-owns-spotify-955388/>And yet, they still aren't even close to the highest paying service when it comes to musicians getting their cut.
https://dittomusic.com/en/blog/how-much-do-music-streaming-services-pay-musicians
It's hilarious that Napster now tops the list. I use Tidal, myself, since it's got great quality audio. Spotify is horrible quality for 2023.
This is probably why you get a nearly endless stream of covers and remixes if you just let Amazon Music play random music.
How much money would they want to skim to distribute the music? 33-66 split doesn’t sound so bad considered that they don’t produce the music, sign artist, promote them, etc
They can always start their own label if they believe that vertical integration will be more profitable for them.
They tried that with podcasts and it didn’t go as planned
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