I’m too busy figuring out the last few stanzas on my latest song to care about how Spotify isn’t paying enough to be an artist.
This isn’t exactly a reactionary post to some of the “boycott Spotify” articles, as I haven’t read any. I’ve only seen Instagram posts referencing said articles. Though I want to read them all, so I can offer a thorough counterpoint, I’m too busy working right now to make money to pay bills for my family, then use the surplus to be my own patreon. Ugh. I hate that word. Matreon feels better.
I used to not work so hard. Then Amazon gained in popularity and became crippling competition to my family’s 25 year old internet business. It earned a reputation that supersedes its ability, at least in my line of work. Many people believe Amazon’s owes its success solely to an efficient business model. I can attest from experience that Amazon stole our data then used it to compete against us. They probably did the same to hundreds of thousands of other small business. I’m not going to bore you with the details.
The posts I’ve seen which plea for the public to boycott Spotify are about as far fetched as me asking people to boycott Amazon.
In the old days, someone bought your album. Once. You didn’t get paid after that. If someone played your songs one time, or a millions times, your cut was static, a profit stuck in time.
Spotify seems to invest more money in their platform than anyone else. Their playlists, algorithms, the way you can connect to others, the vastness of their libraries, ease of searching, the user end friendliness.
Spotify changed my life. I remember on the twilight of cd’s and ipods I put some mp3 songs up on my website so people could “stream” them directly from my webpage. Crickets. That old “hit counter” registering visitor traffic didn’t budge. With Spotify, this month alone, my old band reached 28 listeners who streamed 40 times from as far as Ireland and Gernany. And my more current tracks as a solo song writer garnered 65 streams this month. ALL of this cost a paltry $20 per year for me to digitally distribute. I didn’t have to press cd’s, get a record label distributor. To a celebrity songwriter these stats are anemic, but I had close to zero streams on my own 2007 website. Spotify has reached critical mass. With all those millions of music seekers, it’s effortless to cruise on that inertia.
Sure, there’s room for improvement, in terms of sonic quality and artist profit share. There is room for that in all areas of the industry.
For me, this industry’s clear subjugation of women is my main concern. How that lame ass Songwriter Magazine bashed Spotify, then the next day post its own curated Spotify Playlist, only ONE of which was a female artist. How Rolling Stone declared only about TEN female songwriters as the 100 best of all time. How I went out to eat several times and the rock music pumping into the restaurant didn’t include female artists. Not one.
Spotify recognized this disparity and launched their Equal section. This earned my respect exponentially. Neil Young’s gripes of sound quality and questionable pod cast content can’t erode my feminist respect.
I have little sympathy for artists calling for a Spotify boycott because they’re not making enough money. Musicians who have amassed houses and cars from their art. I’m even more perplexed by my fellow indie artists who jumped on that bandwagon. Some I would never have heard, if not for a friend’s Spotify playlist. Increased streaming revenue won’t make a difference to us. Only big time musicians and they mostly don’t care about us, insomuch as they care that we care about them.
Nobody will stop buying from Amazon 100% so I can make more money at my job. Likewise, I can’t conceive of cancelling my Spotify membership so professional musicians will get more streaming revenue . Until then, I have to get back to work, then get home so I can play and write more songs. I will continue to benefit from all that Spotify has to offer me, as an artist and a fan, none of which is money.