For a company that has revolutionized the music industry and changed the way we listen to music, one would expect Spotify to be making a lot of money.
How has spotify “revolutionized” the music industry? Are thy doing anything new? Streaming isn’t new, yearly reviews aren’t new, freemium isn’t new, discovery isn’t new… Is the revolution that it’s now a standard target for artists?
Spotify literally changed the way people listen to music by being popular enough that the general way of listening changed from a purchase, listen forever model. To a listen to anything you want and never not have anything new, way of listening (but you don’t own anything).
A song is no longer worth a purchase of a cd, or dollar at itunes. It’s worth the 3 minutes of listening that it gives you when Spotify recommends it to you.
Obviously I’m biased. And also, yes, there were streaming services before Spotify, but nobody that mattered and with the influence of Spotify.
Hmm… fair point.
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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Labels are an outdated concept that needs to die.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.
To determine if this company is actually a poor widdle guy or just trying to look like their hands are tied with respect to paying artists, look up how much Daniel Ek is worth, and then look up what he does with his money
