Spotifry

It’s not a typo.

 

Hardly a week passes when someone doesn’t talk to me about Spotify. To newbies just discovering it, they are evangelists for the uncluttered music service.

I understand why many like music without constant, long interruptions of talk and commercials.

I don’t understand why artists creating music agree to the deal Spotify has struck.

Spotify has released some data about its artists, namely the fraction of them that take in a livable income from the streaming service.”

“The company paid out $5 billion to rights-holders in 2020, up from $3.3 billion in 2017. According to Spotify, 1.2 million artists have over 1,000 listeners, but only 184,000 generated recording and publishing royalties of over $1,000.”

“There were 13,400 artists who made over $50,000 in royalties from Spotify, 7,800 who made at least $100,000 in royalties and a select few 870 artists on Spotify whose catalogs generated $1 million or more in royalties.” *(all quotes from Ashley Carman at the Verge)

The reason we should all care is because if artists can’t see the value in their creation, there will be less of it.

And it may explain why current music doesn’t hold a candle to music created before streaming services arrived.