New Spotify Revenue Policy Is Sparking OUTRAGE
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- Опубликовано: 10 июн 2024
- Spotify just recently announced their new revenue policy for paying artists/musicians, and a lot of people are clearly upset. But taking a look at it, it seems oddly familiar...
00:00 Intro / Story Background
00:47 What Service Pays Artists The Most?
02:08 What Streaming Service Has The Most Users?
04:34 Spotify's New Royalty Announcement
08:10 This Program Sounds Very Familiar
10:05 How Much Does Spotify Pay Artists Per Stream?
11:00 Spotify Pays More Than RUclips/Twitch
12:24 Too Many Hands In The Pot
13:34 This Isn't That Bad
14:31 What Do You Think? / Outro
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UPDATE:
Since this video was filmed and edited, Spotify has announced that the threshold for royalties getting paid out will be 1,000 streams per year. So for an artist to get paid royalties for a specific track/song, that song MUST have 1,000 or more streams in a year before payments will be sent out for that song.
Maybe some of the lesser known bands would want to put their stuff, along with their friend's stuff, on a playlist and loop it for 24 hours a day to get those streams in.
(Edit: 3 x day, every day)
@@craigs1266 Which has a fair chance of getting the band and the accounts involved banned....
That seems fairly reasonable to me. ~3 streams per day shouldn't be that hard to get with any sort of a fan base.
😂
Some googling suggest that 1000 plays on Spotify usually corresponds to a payout of somewhere between $1.5 and $4 (large number of factors) on Spotify. Multiple sources say it's a per song threshold so it can in theory add up if someone managed to have lots of tracks near the cut-off but... the more I think about the more I think it's actually going to affect Spotify's distributors more than it affects artists - apparently a lot of those very small payments often end up being eaten up by various distributor fees or minimum pay-out rules they have against their artists. And they claim it will result in (slightly) higher payouts as the total ("the pot") will be the same but with less tracks. Very hard to say how it'll play out in real life though.
Someone calculated that only 37.5M of the 100M+ songs on Spotify has managed to get 1000+ plays TOTAL (not annual, all-time!) so it's clearly a very long tail of songs with very few or no plays. Not sure Spotify's new rules are the best solution for this but the impact also seems to likely be fairly limited. Arguably the changes around what they term "fradulent streams" may well have bigger (and positive) impact on artists on Spotify than this part of the changes.
I really like that they don’t pay royalty to AI generated music
How can the tell the difference?
Get ready to hear a lot more AI generated music then.
That’s stupid! Why not get paid for royalty generated AI music?
@@jirenthegray because IA music is fake to me and fake music doesn’t deserve any money
Why would they?
Tank, there's a really interesting aspect to this that nobody talks about (but that was highlighted last year in an article on Music Business Worldwide). Spotify's growing hosting costs. With tracks uploaded to the platform growing exponentially from year to year, storage fees have been taking a higher and higher toll on Spotify's overall budget. The issue with that is that the majority of uploads only reach a few streams, representing very low value for the platform overall. Controversially, I do believe that we are moving towards a future where access to Spotify will be gated, at least partially, due to the fact that oversaturation will make their business model not sustainable anymore.
Yeah that's pretty much what I just said too. If a streaming company is paying for petabytes of server space to be full AND completely unused, thats a BIG issue
I woudn't be surprised if this is one of the reasons Spotify has not rolled out their Hi-Fi service which offers lossless audio. Too expensive to host files of that size in comparison to 320kb/s which I believe is their maximum bitrate.
i've kind of been of this opinion for awhile but don't speak up because people just call you a shill when you do. spotify is not free. they have costs of doing business. can they pay artists more? i truly don't know. i'm always one for "screw the corporations" but when someone like a corey taylor for instance bitches about spotify not paying enough i'm always like "go look @ their operating costs and shit".
@ng0249 they can pay artists more, but that would include raising their subscription prices
@@ng0249of course they can pay an artist more than. 00000027859 cents per play
Good to remember, The music modernization act was refused to be signed by Google, Amazon, and Spotify. Apple and tidal both agreed to pay artists more. Tidal also has hi fidelity audio for PC users.
Just saw you got to that part….
Spotify already pays 75% of its revenue in royalties (vs 56% for apple music). Apple can afford to pay more, Spotify cannot.
Because the issue is AI music and people uploading songs that are just nothing there is no music played.
The money should go to artists and labels that upload music and are real.
Apple will sign anything and at the end of the day not care.
Look at the deal they would have had with the PAC12. If the schools would have went with it, they would have been on the hook for everything. And they would have to somehow bring in more subs than the NFL Sunday ticket.
People want to look deeper into how Apple runs things and where they make their money.
@MrMartinNeumann Apple can, but they don't because it would take away from where they make their money.
They only have streaming because of there Hardware. With out that they have nothing.
They pay big Artists more because the record companies own parts of Spotify. How does this help normal artists? @@MrMartinNeumann
As an indie artist without any label or management behind me, making a not well known style of music (guitar driven synthwave), any gatekeeping, no matter how small, hurts.
First time I uploaded my stuff on Spotify, after 3 months I got 0,50c (fifty cents). Less than peanuts BUT what that showed me was that my music was slowly working for me. It made me understand that music CAN give me something more besides the joy of creating. Eventually it gave me the push to start building it more and more and now I reached a point where Spotify royalties is a nice side income. Because of that income I had the option to leave Germany where I was working for 5 years and go back home to Greece and try to pursue music as a full time job.
Now, there's a good possibility that my released music can have more than 1.000 plays in a year, BUT if it doesn't (which it can happen because of the style of music I play, my lack of knowledge about marketing and no budget to put in it and many other smaller reasons), then it cuts from my already small Spotify income. For an artist like me that really hurts.
Even on RUclips, I have my channel since 2014 and only in 2020 it became monetized because of a viral video. Before that I was uploading music for 6 years and it made me nothing. All that time I was thinking that music is just for fun and never had any ideas to make it as a job.
I understand why Spotify does those changes, I understand why gatekeeping is happening but for many indie artists who want to share their music and see that it CAN offer them something besides the gratification of completing a song, that is a step back.
Anyway, we'll see what happens in the near future.
You mean like midnight danger? love that stuff. I'll check yours out.. by gatekeeping you mean major record labels setting barriers to entry? tha means you have to join their club and get extorted or no play? wow who'd have thought! hahah edit, subbed nice work
@@UziMusic Yes that's exactly the music I make mate, you got it (and thank you so much for the sub!) :D
About gatekeeping, I mean let's say for exampe Spotify will have a barrier of 1000 plays before you get paid (which it doesn't have now). RUclips another example where you have to have 1k subscribers + 4k hours of watch time on your videos, else you aren't getting paid. They are barriers for us who are indie artists and prevent us from getting paid.
I am not referring to major labels here at all because that's a completely different conversation that has to do with what you're willing to accept in order to win fast an audience. From contracts with smaller labels I have seen you go usually 50/50 split. Then if you have a manager (which I don't but let's say that as an example), they get their 10% too. What is left from earnings is 40% for you and if you belong to a band, you split that even more between you. That's why bands say they don't get paid from Spotify, because the money gets split to so many pieces.
With all respect, if you're not getting 1,000 plays in a year, you wouldn't be getting more than a token payment anyway.
People who just want to share their music can still do so (for now) without it being monetized.
This is exactly why its not going to change... Not to disparage you but when anyone with an internet connection can make/upload music the exclusivity drops and so does what people are willing to pay for it...
honestly the only reason I even use Spotify is because a lot of foreign artists I listen to either aren't on other services or only a smaller portion of their discography is
Unfortunately I can't currently just go out and buy every album I want so I rely on streaming services right now so my only real option is Spotify. It's kind of a shame that some of us don't have many options because something like Tidal, while I'm sure is better, has very little of the music I actually listen to
Streaming is such a mess overall
I use spotify in two ways:
1. discover new Music
2. use it outside my house like on the way to work and back and the like
If I like the music / band I buy the physical copy on CD or Vinyl to enjoy it in my cozy living room
Same.
that's really the only way. when you buy cd/vinyl they get that money but if you listen to it on repeat when youre outside, they wont be paid even if it's not much
Very much the same. I use Qobuz to listen some new (and old) stuff with my headphones in hires or cd quality. I cannot afford everything i like so thats the next best thing. But not with Spotify, its like back in 2004 with torrents and mp3s in quality, no thanks 💩😬🤣
For me the biggest problem with spotify (and the rest of the music streaming services) has been this:
I pay say $10 to listen. Service takes 30% so that leaves $7 to be distributed. Now my $7 goes to a pool of money where it is divided by what the freeloaders and rest of the mindless zombies are listening to. I dun wanna pay for some useless pop, I want my money to make a difference.
What I'd pay for is a service that would monitor where the money came from, what the money listened to and then would give the money to the artists accordingly. Example: I pay the $10 which leaves $7. For the whole month the only song I listen to is Pantera - Fucking Hostile. Now that $7 goes to Pantera and all the parties concerned. Next month I also listen to Cannibal Corpse - Hammer Smashed Face. Now Pantera gets $3.5 and CC gets $3.5. If you are a freeloader, they should have and idea of how much revenue one listen makes and pay the artist accordingly.
Until such a service is available, I'll stick to my gooddamn CDs.
I'm with Tidal and every month 10% of my subscription goes directly to the artist I listened to the most that month
@@ngaugeblading9690 that's not bad. But I want 100% of my sub to go to the artists I have listened to.
wow, you sound like an awful person. people who like different music than you aren't mindless zombies, they are individuals with opinions as valid as yours. thinking you are superior due to the music you listen to is incredibly childish.
If you want your money to make a difference, buy the music in a physical medium. Using Spotify is like giving a dollar at to charity and acting like you fed the world.
Yeah, that seems like the truly scammy aspect of this change: Some music that gets played (even if it's not played much) will not earn ANY royalties while the money instead gets divided among others who did not help produce that revenue- many of which probably have far greater financial resources behind them to begin with. Interesting how that serves the interests of major labels- two of which own a stake in Spotify, according to the article quoted in the video. It looks like yet another example of the few corporations that have been allowed way too much power and influence seizing even more at the expense of people with far less resources, as usual.
My band has 6 songs uploaded. Our recent single we released 3 weeks ago today, we got on a playlist and as of now we have 1600+ streams & our music video has over 3.8k views. No management or label. Happy we’re at least getting whatever we could get for now
I have a friend who’s a singer/songwriter and independent artist. And I love how she’s incredibly open and transparent on her socials and especially Patreon about how much things cost and how little she still makes in the end. It’s been eye-opening to how much hard work and dedication has to go into working your way slowly up to building a following and earning a living.
That's been the path for most artists for centuries. It is definitely not for everybody and we all wish they made more. What I love about a service like Spotify is that it's got so many users and it's possible find the music of someone like your friend. Then I can find out where they're playing and buy a ticket to the show, buy some merch and spread the word on how great they are. Pre-Spotify, I found that I was usually pretty entrenched in my niche and the bands I knew and did a lot less exploration. Having a low cost of entry makes it so much easier than dropping $20 on an album just to find out it isn't your jam.
Spotify is the reason I still buy a few CDS each year. Artists might not get much from a CD sale, but I just can't listen that much to an album to reach the amount a CD can reach.
Thank you for your service 🤘
If it is an artist I love, I will def buy the CD. I did that for Smash Into Pieces latest album, even spent a lil more for the signed version.
Remember that Spotify can decide to shut down any minute, and all that music you added to "your" library will be gone.
@@CoreDump451 which happens on a regular basis btw. Every streaming service does that from time to time and some tracks just a) disappear from your library and playlists or b) are greyed out and cannot be played "in this region". Many people simply don't notice.
Thanks for this perspective. The threshold idea does make a lot of sense, though I still think compensation should be a bit higher, but some of that is the way the contracts are written between artists, rights holders, and labels.
I don't think Spotify can pay out more, they already pay a greater share of their revenue (75% of revenue) than any other platform (Apple Music for example pays only 56% of revenue). (you can look these number up on their yearly financial report)
That said the problem is not Spotify but the rights holder in between and the contracts they have with the bands.
@@MrMartinNeumann Spot on.
on the note of rightholders: Iron Maiden has had three or four (don't remember) albums removed off of Spotify this week; No Prayer For The Dying, The Book of Souls and Death on the Road. i am not aware of any official communication on why that's the case but it's super interesting that it's happened right at the same time as this.
Artists & labels often pull tracks off Spotify without notice to replace them with a new/different recording... whenever I get greyed links for tracks off an official album (not a white label or remix) I'll inevitably find that there's a new version of that album on their artist page. There's all sorts of legal & logistical machinations going on behind the scenes between rightsholders, artists, labels & Spotify, so it's rarely anything more than a timing issue.
everywhere you go the ladder is pulled up as you are trying to reach for the rung.
I'd say it's more like a lot of people don't want to take a hard look in the mirror and acknowledge their actual position on the ladder. To be successful in music or any other creative endeavor as a profession you have to reach a certain threshold of popularity. It's always been thus and always will be.
Hot take: I actually think that this is a good change. Now Spotify can spend less money on data storage, and they can spend more money on paying their artists (it probably won't happen, but they might have decreased royalties if this problem kept happening). It's insane that so many songs on Spotify have 0 listens.
Considering that Spotify is currently unprofitable, it's a change that needs to happen. Maybe it will also wake some people up that you can't just put stuff on Spotify and expect something to happen. All it does is discourage artists. Spotify can be useful distributed tool. But just like it doesn't help anything to print cds and wait for someone to order one, just sticking stuff to Spotify won't help.
The people actually doing the work are always the suckers. No gods, no masters
First of all, I think the reason "noone" is complaining about the split for RUclips and Twitch etc is that before these platforms, there wasn't really any viable option of making any money at all from short videos and livestreams, while music streaming services obviously were preceeded by the sale of physical albums and later digital downloads like iTunes.
But the point I always come back too in this discussion is, services like Spotify damn near eliminated music piracy, of course it does still happen but absolutely nowhere near as much as before streaming services became a thing, and you can say whatever the hell you want, Spotify was a major pioneer of music streaming, and no matter how you cut it, Streaming services are a much better option for artists compared too piracy that doesnt pay shit!
Also, I, and alot of other people along with me, have not stopped buying physical albums altogether, I still buy certain albums from artists I really really like, but i do most of my actual listening from Spotify
And another thing I'd like to see someone make a comparison on is - If we compare the sale of physical albums vs streaming, I dont know if I can explain this properly but I'll give it a shot. If I go buy a physical album tomorrow, how many times can I listen to it before, with the pay/streams model as a comparison, I have used up whatever cut of the money the artist gets from the sale of that album, as that is a one-time payout for each album sold.
While on streaming services, every time i listen to an album, no matter how old it is, it earns the rights owner a small cut, it's a longer lasting form of income imo
There were a metric ton of complaints against RUclips and Twitch when they implemented their new systems. There were brands taking legal action and everything, it is just that we have moved on from that as its been a good number of years and people have just accepted the status quo now.
Because ultimately those complaints and legal action came to nothing. These companies have huge legal departments and know exactly what they can get away with under the law.
imo the solution might be, going back to physical copies again. Personally I love collecting the CDs, and have over 200. One of the selling points, at least use to be, was CD's had extra tracks, or songs that wasn't online. I also only exclusively listen to music from bands on their own channel or their record label channel.
I'll always prefer physical media, I love CDs and have 11,000 over 30 years of collecting them.
@@Skycladatdusk78 That's awesome! I remember way back when Hot Topic use to sell CDs and always a great place to get new CDs.
@@DravenReactions I used to get them there and places like Media Play and FYE. Now I just have one local record shop but glad they are still open.
@@Skycladatdusk78 nice i totally forgot about FYE. !
I thought I was the only one collecting CDs anymore, let alone pressing my music onto them.
Woot Woot! Tidal gang!!
I switched from Spotify to Tidal mainly because of the royalty differences. Haven't looked back.
you know what you’re getting into when you sign to a label… it’s a give and take…
same goes for spotify. we’re all adults, if you want to grind harder and put yourself out there, you’ll get all the money, if you want a label to help push your band, you’ll get less…
Im with Tidal. Been using it for nearly 2 years. I was using Spotify before that. I moved to Tidal because not only do they pay more per stream but 10% of my subscription goes directly to the artist i listened to the most that month.
They stopped withe the 10% a couple of months back actually. But still agree. Tidal pays 3-5 times more per stream. So I use it too. Interesting enough though. Napster, ironically, pays the most per stream nowadays.
I would personally prefer, if all of my subscription would only go to artists I listen to. But that probably will never happen.
@@Wollestar whaaaat. Just had a look and you are correct! Apparently it's because it wasn't having as big of an impact as they hoped. They are focusing on Tidal Rising now and saying that will give more to emerging artists
I do notice the quality difference vs Spotify at the top tier of Tidal.
I got Tidal when Google Play Music moved to RUclips Music and the quality went to shit. I've since switched to Spotify because of cost but I'm seriously considering going back to Tidal. The Tidal app is way better than Spotify, and the higher audio quality is nice.
you have to be a bot cause why wouldnt you use both?
Tidal user, right here.
I'm an Audio Engineer/System Engineer. On big systems(large line arrays with dozens of subs), the difference between spotify and FLAC is very noticeable. But some SEs still use spotify. If you can get spotify sounding good, then anything will sound good.
Awesome video, you've definitely added a lot of healthy balance to this rather hot and heated debate. I've spoken to several bands (smaller scale) after seeing them live on their thoughts about Spotify. The consensus usually is that they're grateful that the algorithm helps them generate exposure for festival and support slots and like you said, WAY more people use it over other streaming services and Spotify also has podcasts and audiobooks that other streaming services don't offer. Furthermore, this isn't a new issue - artists have always been shafted by bad deals with managers and record labels for decades, just in different formats (80s - hands in the pot from vinyl, 90s - then cassette, 00s- then CD, 10s - then stream revenue).
The elephant in the room is that there are a lot of artists that just aren't important to the industry. As long as the Taylor Swiftd of the world are doing well that's all that matters to them. The days of being able to make a go of it as a mid-range band in niche genres are probably over forever.
Purely IT/business angle is that storage of tracks comes at a cost, as Spotify is hosted by Google Cloud, and those daily upload numbers add up. Makes sense to discourage non revenue-generating data and to get some savings from not paying below the threshold to offset the infrastructure costs, even by a little bit.
Totally agree. I went to local shows before any streaming was a thing and those bands would always make a loss on those CDs that they were sitting on, eventually putting them on a huge discount after a few years to break even from the investment they initially made on it. Those same bands now complain about how bad Spotify pay out is, like yeah no sht bro. Just be glad you have 500 listeners on your EP, because 490 of those people would have never bought the CD from you + what is Spotify supposed to do when you do nothing but post twice a year on Instagram and Facebook to your 20 active followers letting effectively no one know that you put content out there, it's not like Spotify is stealing money from you, because you literally make them no money. Paying a producer and paying $100 for a photo-shoot is not marketing, it is stuff that you are supposed to put to good use for the actual marketing, but that's where too many bands think the work is done and stuff will be self-sustaining. ..which is especially ludicrous when you find out that these are the exact people that haven't discovered any new bands on their own in the past 10 years, only sitting there and wait or the new Metallica and Stone Sour release
I use Spotify only because I honestly don't know how to buy music anymore. I used to buy CDs at the music store but those don't exist anymore and now I don't know. There used to be iTunes when I had an iPhone, but now I have no idea where I'm supposed to go. There's no obvious storefront on the internet and Spotify fills the gap in a way that RUclips doesn't.
I really miss going to the music store, seeing the posters advertising new releases, riffling through the CD stacks, listening to a CD that looks promising on the in-store cd player to see if you like it, buying the CD and reading the booklet while you're on the bus home full of anticipation, then putting it into your stereo system (with the three CD changer tray) and pressing play.
Same thing happens with taxes here. If you are owed money there’s a threshold where they won’t pay you until you are owed more than that threshold.
RUclips is all I watch, so I have premium and listen to all my music on YT Music. I'm pretty happy with it.
Better quality than Spotify.
Same!
Apple music also has better available audio quality, but the fact that Spotify has a free tier with ads, is the reason as to why they are much bigger.
Tank, that's why I thoroughly enjoy your vids. Take away the heat and explain music business related things in a calm and well balanced manner.
I agree, from a business perspective it is necessary. Although we as listeners might think different - Spotify is a business entity created to make money. Not a non-profit organisation. 43% of songs with 0 listeners is astonishing and a huge pile of waste for that company (no offense to musicians recording and putting it up, just the perspective of tte company).
I love Spotify, just for the experience in music listening they offer me. Never was annoyed with their performance. And if i really love an artist or a record, i'll nevertheless just f*in buy it, put it on my shelf and listen to it on Spotify. And then i go and watch their gigs and buy some merch.
Nothing actually changed.
Most of my (very small) streaming revenue comes from Apple Music, but this measure will still affect me and my band. This is going to further destroy the indie/small musician market. Making, producing and distributing music costs money, and there should be payback when people listen to it.
And your band should bring enough listeners to pay for hosting your music on their server. If you get 100 listens a month you use the same space per song as Taylor Swift. Who do you think brings more subscribers?
It costs Spotify money to host your music even if no one is listening to it.
How does it destroy indie music that you don't get your 0,1 cents for a track that nobody listens to?
Yikes. This thread of replies is depressing AF. No one here can say how hard or not this individual works for their streams or band's traction so far. Being in an unknown, unsigned, band is a grueling feat and this does definitely make it harder. Not sure that I personally care that much for the tiny scraps Spotify pays out but damn...commenters...must be easy to criticize from the outside.
@@jes.cobar92 it's not about criticizing someone. It's just the truth.
This feels like a good time to try out Tidal.
Appreciate how you always talk about facts and your reasoning. Whatever your take on a topic is, it always seems reasonable and grounded in reality. You never get too caught up in emotions and that's rare to see on youtube.
Tank, I recall you saying that you were learning German. "Schlaf, Kindlein Schlaf" is a nursery rhyme about getting a kid to sleep. Songs helped a lot when I started learning. Hãnschen Klein by We butter the Bread with Butter is good too. Viel Glück!
You missed a crucial point: 7:20 "two major record company have stakes in Spotify". This mean that the money the small tracks generate (because, yes, they still generate millions of dollars) will be given to the artists that generate many plays, ie mostly those of the big record labels... So Spotify takes from the small artists to give to the big artists and labels.
The problems they claim to be facing seem - to me - an excuse to just generate more profit for the stakeholders.
There is an interesting video on the same subject by Fantano who shows that in the last 3-4 years the major record companies have not increased their revenues, so that's probably the real motivation behind this changes.
Can you explain how the small tracks "generate millions"?
My band for example won't pass the threshold with most of our songs. I don't think we will mourn the loss of the 50 cents per year we might lose on this 😂
@@punkjay4681 If I remember correctly, I read on music business insider that they all together generate 40 millions, being 0,5% of the total of Spotify revenues, which will not redistribuited to the artists but kept in Spotify's "pool".
I think it's worth repeating that it is per song, per year, so every year the counter is to zero. This means that you can have through the years several songs with thousands of plays that have made you 0 dollars
For whatever it's worth, I use tidal because they do a more accurate profit share, meaning the more you listen to an artist the more of your money they pay them. Also lossless and 360 degree audio is great.
So basically this is like a grocery story saying we only pay suppliers who sell more than 10 of a given item each day. So if they sell 9 bags of coffee they just don't pay that person. Or a record store saying if I don't sell over 100 of your albums per year you don't get paid. So basically 95% of artists don't get paid a cent - not that they aren't generating revenue - they just don't get paid. The Spotify president, shareholders (including the labels), VPs, directors, managers, workers all get paid of course.
If you had a grocery store and half of your stocked items would never be sold, you would kick that shit out pretty quickly, because it just costs you money and you don't get anything from it.
Spotify is a business and not some welfare institution, so it makes sense basing descisions on money.
That's just it though, the artists that are going to be cut out by this AREN'T generating revenue as it costs more to administrate and host their songs than they bring in, which is typically a negligible amount anyway. The two options in that situation are for them to gate unprofitable material from their service altogether or say "you can upload it if you want, but we're only going to pay you if you help us make money?"
Which of those is preferable is debatable, but it is what it is.
Tank do paid subs or free sub plays count the same as far as royalties gor the artists?
Yeah this isnt really a bad change. Theyre literally just saying "almost half of all tracks on our service have absolutely no traffic, and thus are just costing us money by taking up server space, so this is a simple and overall nonintrusive fix"
They service holds well over a hundred million separate tracks, just musically. Not to mention all the podcasts and audio books amd stuff like that. This is quite possibly up in the range of like multiple petabytes of space thats being taken up and completely unused. That shit adds up, fast.
My main issue with Spotify is that it incentiveses short songs and discourages long songs. Why does Epica make the same from me listening to Kingdom of Heaven pt 3, a 13 minute song, as another artist would if I listened to a 2 minute song from them? Then comes the issues of bot farms, it doesn't sound to me like this will actually address that issue, and that is way to complex of an issue to really go into here, there are videos discussing this on youtube
As a DJ services like Tidal and Deezer are very friendly with with DJ's depending on the plan you have. Spotify used to let DJ's use there API but not anymore so there is that it would be nice if spotify changed that policy.
Imagine it like this, the venue/promoter whomever, comes up to you and says “Tank, if your band doesn’t bring at least 1000 people here to the show tonight, we are not paying you a dime,” even though you put in the work and time and effort to get yourselves there, music rehearsed and played the best set of your life. This new Spotify policy is gut-wrenching just like that.
For me, one of the offensive things is that it is per song, each year. If they made an threshold you need to hit for al your songs would make more sence. On youtube or twitch you get monitized if your account gets enough views and hits, and you still get money for a video that does poorly..
Also comparing the revenue share between youtube and spotify is not totally fair in my opinion. Hosting video/livestreaming is more expensive than hosting audio. So that the plit is different because the overheid for youtube/twitch is more is only logical in my opinion.
Also youtube gives shares the money they make on your video. They don´t throw all the money together and split it afterwards and that you get a percentage of the profit based on the percentage of totals plays you had.
I don´t really get you music buddy that says that he doesn´t get the hate on spotify, because it still pays more than youtube (for him). Aren´t we allowed to try to push for something better, just because it pays a bit more than another service for him?
The payout system of spotify is always been flawed. And in my opinion they had to be because otherwise the music labels wouldn´t give them the rights to add their music. ( @BennJordan just did a video on some illegal ways to get a 3x return paying for listens).
When I had Deezer, they had a page for years that they wanted to do a UCPS (user centric payout system, your money gets split between the bands you listen to). But they couldn´t get the labels on board. So they had a page that showed me each month were my money went., and only half got to the bands I listen to. This summer they deleted that page, and added an article that they were working with UMG for an algorithm for better payouts.
I don´t want to support artist I don´t like, and for that I have to listen more than average person(probably 4x more because my songs are 4/5 minutes instead of 3, and I didn´t have a family plan). And the system how they are now susceptible for abuse. And maybe the other things they announced will limit that a bit. But there is a very simple way to make a 3x return it is not possible. And that is simple doing the USCP system.
So anyone that says it is good, because it's better than the rest, maybe it says more about the rest than spotify. So please keep fighting for your/or your fav artists money, because if we leave it to spotify and the labels, it will only get worse and never better.
i was 16 when i went to college tin the UK to study Music & Music Business & our senpai's always said "If you want to make money, this is the wrong career path for you". That was 15 years ago & i still don't give up on making music, writing, recording, playing shows etc cause despite the financial burden it has i made choices in my life where i wouldn't have anyone to take care of me but me alone. I have no wife, no girlfriend, no kids & all my friends are in the band. It's really not for everyone but i wouldn't have chosen a different path.
I'm a bit lost. One one hand, it's getting more and more difficult for band to make money touring (performing and selling merch) because of everyday increasing competition. But one the other hand, bands and independent artists now making less money by streaming their music on Spotify. So what should young bands do now? It's became very hard to start making and performing your music 'cause of low budget and high competition.
Does anybody have a creative advise what to do in this situation? I would like to read it
Patreon is another option. Bands that have an active fan base can do well there. It does require time to create at least some exclusive content, and the platform takes its cut. But it can be a steady income stream.
This doesn't change anything for bands. It's fraud prevention.
I buy the CD's for music I like. Should I be listening on Spotify also? And does the free version work the same? I'm too cheap to pay to listen to music I bought on CD.
3 words. Lars was right.
Just don't let him know that😢
Actually yes😊
4 words: Lars is an ass.
If it wqs up to him and people like Eddie Trunk no one would be able to hear about bands from Europe, Asia, South America, or Australia.
@@abbysaabye832oh he knows
@@abbysaabye832metallica would need another tour truck for his ego.
Fair commentary. People need to get comfortable with the idea that they need to pay people to create stuff and pay companies that provide the platforms to distribute stuff. There are too many freeloaders out there. I do think there needs to be more innovation around revenue generation and the advertising industry needs to play fair if they want ad-supported services to flourish.
Put your music back in Physical Media..
When you can hold it in your hand,the bands get money in theirs...
I think in general Spotify sparks outrage lol
So I use both tidal and Spotify, the main resom for this if work, most of tidal users are djs as its one of the select few streaming platforms that work with both virtual dj, and engine (could work with other softwares that's just what I'm familiar with), so I only use tidal for work, which is a shame because its a good platform
When you go to enough concerts without ear protection every streaming service sounds the same 😂
I always enjoy your insight into the music/metal industry. You and Nik are how I stay up to speed with everything.
Personally I think it makes totally sense, that there is a barrier to overcome before getting revenue. From a business standpoint it would be an absolute nightmare, if you have to do the accounting, support and so on for thousands and thousands of "artists" that make a few cents a month because they have two and half listeners. And it prevents - at least to a certain degree - that people upload every BS.
I don't use any of the streaming services and I'd buy CD's every time if I could find them anywhere! When I do find them the shipping often costs more than the CD.
personally as a musician that has music that is published on spotify i feel that this move is gonna cause a lot of small labels to struggle even more to make any royalties or cause them to stop publishing there music as it is right now i and other artists i know do not really get that much revenue from them same with other platforms that we use i think this move will start to kill the number of uploads and active users and make it harder for artists overall !
I always buy a record or a CD every show I go to for this reason. Usually multiple if I already don't have the discography.
I use only Tidal
I think this is probably more a step in the right direction than anything honestly. Artists who work their asses off to get 1,000,000 streams on a track are rightly upset that they make pennies on the dollar, but they could be making a lot more if Spotify's margins weren't dumped into the overhead of hosting hundreds of millions of tracks that generate zero revenue for the company. Unfortunately, in order to pay premium rates, Spotify's only option is to desaturate the market and curate their content. Musicians used to have to earn radio play, you never heard 20,000 different bands playing on a station, because the station would never be able to afford the royalties. Spotify is now in the same position, they are going to have to choose and measure who is worth hosting. I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually reach a turning point where failure to reach a monetizable threshold will result in your content expiring off the platform after a set period of time.
This. Under such a model, bands that are actually getting plays will see their royalties go UP, not down.
Corey Taylor said on Rockfeed, he doesn’t make anything on Spotify because you have to scream billions to make thousands do you have any idea how hard that is?! Quoted from Corey.
I’m in a band that gets millions of streams a year. One of our songs does about 2.5 million streams a year. As a whole our band makes about 4k dollars from that song a year…
Don't know if you'll read this but, how does the band's feet paid , on spotify, when the user of spotty downloads the song? For offline playing.
I don’t think downloading the track for offline listening makes any difference on revenue for the band, but I’m not 100% sure.
i've often wondered whether or not it was actually worth it to be signed.
there's a band i absolutely adore, Citizen Soldier, and (so far as i know) they're currently STILL fully indie and unsigned. but i've often wondered whether it would even be worth it for them to sign to a label if they were approached, because they seem to be doing pretty damn good on their own. they've got nearly a million monthly spotify listeners, 548k subscribers on YT, a minimum of 200k views per video, and a dedicated fan base that lives for their music (myself included). i've already seen them on tour, so clearly they're doing that, and they just announced they're playing rockville this year. so all in all, it seems like they're doing well enough on their own and continuing to grow in such a way that it might actually be to their detriment to sign to a label, especially if they get a deal that isn't so great and i think it's worth considering too, how much creative freedome unsigned bands/artists have.
but i do also follow some hardcore local indie bands that are TINY. like Initia Lux, this band from CT. i think they've got around 60 ish monthly spotify listeners. so tiny. and i wonder if they'll still be able to get revenue from spotify, if they have enough listeners to meet that threshold, you know?
i don't know much about the behind the scenes side of music, i'm mostly just a listener, so who knows how this will actually affect bands in the long run. but hopefully it won't hurt
Funny thing with lossless is that it doesn't work on wireless headphones (and a lot of peeps have those), because Bluetooth hardware isn't that developed to handle that much stream of data going through, so if you have wireless headphones something like lossless wouldn't matter, cause you won't get it.
My stuff has zero plays? Sounds like I need to get the local communities I'm involved in and my family to all stream my albums on repeat overnight with the speakers off.
Im surprised more artists haven't just given up on major labels at this point, and as for Spotify, they should be paying more, without the artist, theyd have no platform....
We should make a platform, invested into the artists. Guarantee it would sell, and make $$, solely around the fact that wed pay the adtist directly.
I think people forget that music streaming services like Spotify & AppleMusic are fundamentally different businesses to the likes of RUclips & Twitch. YT & Twitch started out as places _anyone_ could upload/stream, with a professional creator industry emerging _after_ monetisation from ad revenue was established. Music streaming services were built as _digital music distribution services for professional artists & the wider audio/music industry,_ and hosted a lot of copyrighted content from the start - they stepped into an existing industry rather than creating one.
So while you have YT bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars in ad revenue _per quarter_ & only deigning to share a small fraction of that with creators _they_ deem "advertiser-friendly", Spotify has been paying artists anytime their tracks are streamed but without the benefit of advertising or other revenue sources like channel subscriptions, bits & donations, superchats, etc that keep Twitch _et al_ afloat.
Because make no mistake.... the only reason RUclips has half-decent algorithms that detect bots, manage copyright, etc. is because of the all-important advertising money.
This sounds to me like Spotify trying to address the rising problem of bot farms & scammers, as well as offsetting some of the cost of hosting these files. I'd be really interested to understand what their stats are around 0-1000 streamed tracks and how many are legit indie & amateur artists versus bots, re-uploaded copyrighted content, etc.... because if nearly half of your inventory sits in this category there's definitely people milking your system.
I'm def checking out tidal now...
About the music industry, the best thing that could happen to artists today would be an app that let you register your name as a label, so upon registration in the app, you the "artist" is the brand and become automatically your own label, allowing you to keep all your publishing, all your masters, and all your royalties. Everything you create you own, making the major record labels completely obsolete for the music industry we know today and for all future generations to come.
I'm mostly wondering what happens to the revenue that would have been generated by those 1000 streams once the track reaches that threshold. Do those royalties get paid out? Do they just get kept? Also, especially if they decide to keep those revenue shares or put them elsewhere, what's to stop them from raising the limit again and taking even more money away from those smaller artists?
Really reducing overhead is key.
I have a client that only has me do a few hours of consulting every month and it's barely worth doing the work to do invoice processing for them.
If you have to invest multiple hours of workers time to process invoices all worth a payout of a couple cents...it's not worth doing
The labels used to be the gate keepers, now it's going to be the streaming services. Nothing has changed.
I think you'll find some of the labels are involved in spotify.. TME and Sony are or were definitely in there
You can still upload to a streaming service, you just might not get paid until you can prove you're commercially viable. If the goal is just exposure/distribution, that's still more available than ever before.
Yes it has...we actually made more with labels.
For me, being in a band who uploads to streaming platforms..I often wonder if we are getting lost in the shuffle on sites like Spotify. It's more about exposure..money is nice but I really just want people to hear us. Do you think that a local or upcoming band would have a better chance of being randomly heard on a bigger platform or with the smaller ones like Tencent etc....I feel like with all the music being uploaded its easy to get overlooked...because who had the time to sift thru millions of tracks? I know money is the subject here but what about exposure? How will Spotify's changes affect that. What's the best bet in getting your music heard????
When it's already Friday and Tank drops a video about Spotify so Friday becomes 10x better.
I think some artists and songwriters should ask their record labels and publishers instead where all the money goes… Spotify pays out 70% of what they make as you said, ”someone” is making billions of dollars from Spotify streaming each year. The problem isn't really lack of money anymore. Here are some numbers from 2021 if anyone wants to ”do the math”:
”Sony, Universal and Warner - earned $12.5 billion from streaming recorded revenue alone, with Spotify payments representing approximately a third of that streaming total: around $4 billion.
The report states that Spotify also paid out more than $1 billion to publishing rights holders for the second year in a row - significantly less than they paid labels. But it is important to note that Spotify’s payouts for recorded music dwarf what they pay to publishers - Spotify says the ratio is 75-80% vs. 25-20% - due to the way the labels structured their original deals with the company.
The report notes that at the peak of the CD era, nearly 25% of U.S. album sales were accounted for by the top 50 artists. On Spotify in 2021, only 12% of U.S. streams were of the top 50 artists - meaning that revenue opportunities now reach far beyond the superstars.
In Thursday’s report, Spotify says it has paid more than $30 billion to rights holders since it was founded in 2006. In 2021, streaming revenue alone exceeded total industry revenue in each year from 2009 to 2016.
It notes that more than 28% of those artists who generated over $10,000 self-distribute to Spotify, many via distributors like DistroKid, Tunecore, CDbaby or others that assist artists in self-releasing their music. It says those 15,140 artists represent a 171% increase since 2017.
On the other hand, major record labels - Sony, Universal and Warner - earned $12.5 billion from streaming recorded revenue alone, with Spotify payments representing approximately a third of that streaming total: around $4 billion.”
variety.com/2022/digital/news/spotify-7-billion-music-industry-labels-publishers-2021-1235212986/amp/
I wonder if the Artists, or the Federal Government could sue Spotify for anti-trust.
I personally never liked Spotify's business model from the get go, so it has always been a no go for me, especially as it grew and became the dominant streaming service. Its net effect seems to have contributed to the overall genericizing and dumbing down of pop music (including rock, hip-hop, country....) in general: its AI generated playlists create what are called "filter bubbles" that kind of summarizes what its users tastes are and serves up music to accommodate them, primarily using songs that fit many other users tastes, creating essentially comforting background music that many of your friends may also like enough to be a nice social commonality. Admittedly this works fine enough for people who like music, but are not really into it, especially genuinely new, cool stuff. It's kind of like what Keurig is to people who like morning coffee and at work, but who are not really "into coffee."
I’ve used Tidal for the last year or so. About the same number of available tracks as Spotify, the UI is essentially identical and they pay the artists much more.
My hatred of Spotify has never been about revenue split (the music industry has always been the biggest artist abuser around), I left years ago because Spotify refuses to impliment 2FA security. Even with 2FA, data gets stolen all the time, but just because robberies keep happening that doesn't mean I'm going to stop locking my doors. If a business isn't willing to do the bare minimum to protect my information, I will NOT be using their service.
they actually don't have 2FA? What a clown company.
Is Tidal even worldwide?
As for why it matters, there are transaction fees in sending that 5 cents a month, there is administrative costs in every payout, there is costs to having that track on their servers. This doesn't really solve the last one, but it does solve the first 2, and twitch/youtube has minimums before any kind of revenue sharing so it is no surprise really.
Spotify is fudging their numbers. They're not counting unique daily users. They're counting active users which means at least like 1 mil of that number is just people creating new accounts or using family accounts.
60/40 for RUclips actually seems a lot higher than I'd expect if music is at 70/30. The overhead on video is so much higher than aongs.
Not sure if that means music is too low or not but thats an interesting split to me.
Well, it’s 60 in favor of RUclips and 40 in favor of the content creator.
@@TankTheTech oh, I heard that wrong. Okay that makes more sense to what I'd expect.
You know you're in trouble when even Apple is more generous than your company...
Another thing I was wondering was that Me listening to a SMKC record (4) which is 40 minutes and 10 songs of Myles singing valued the same as me listening to Alter Bridge's Pawns and Kings which is 55 minutes and 10 songs of Myles singing
i'm the unpopular one still buying CD's on that chart.
I do use Spotify, but I also buy CD's and vinyl's from the artists' whose music I discover, like, and want to support.
Never even HEARD of title until this video.
43% of tracks on Spotify have 0 plays?!? The Dead Internet Theory is becoming reality
More to the Tidal argument: There are way less artists to compete with and the listeners are less in favor of top 100/40/10 and you can convert more sales and fans on an indie level. Definitely better for indie artists or those more direct with a consistent fan base.
The comparison with youtube aunt quite correct as RUclips is per channel not video, the spotify deal is per track not artist (or whomever)
It seems to come down to what kind of value it will provide for the artist. However many customers there are on Spotify (or I would imagine any such platform for that matter), If the scene is drowned in "submitted material" that either makes it difficult to get genuine (your) music heard, or the mere existence of the "submitted material" dilutes the scene to the point that it all becomes worthless enough to make it more trouble than it's worth.. a good revenue split would have to be on the table otherwise there'd be absolutely no impetus for people to commit to using or submitting that service. Really there's perhaps some valid consideration to not allowing Spotify (or any such platform) to become a dumping ground, yet that essentially contradicts the beauty of the opportunity for the internet for all.. so again it seems to circle around back to the need for ethics and mature, cleaner economics. No amount of door opening can make things better without an underpinning commitment to ethical business. In the end even the biggest space will fill up and outstay its welcome or ability to function, so.. unfettered capitalism can't work? Where have we run into problems like that before?..
"yeah but Spotify has more users so we still pay out more money" is gaslighting. Imagine an employer saying "yeah we pay you half of minimum wage, but you work 80 hours a week so its fine"
I get the point you're making. But... It's not gaslighting, it's fact. Does it justify the reason that they're paying artists less? Absolutely not, and I wasn't trying to make it sound like that. It's just pure fact that Spotify has the entire market cornered, therefore artists do make the majority of their streaming income from Spotify.
@@TankTheTechyes, I was unclear about who is doing the gaslighting and where the "quote" was coming from. I meant that those words coming from a Spotify employee (your friend who works there) sounds like corporate propaganda meant to deflect from the fact that they pay less per stream. I didn't intend to call you a gaslighter! I'm sorry it came off that way. What you do is the opposite of gaslighting! Peace and Love 🤘
Antiphrost the G with his graphic lurking in every community's corner! ❤😂
Dumb question, but I use exclusively Apple Music. How do artists get paid? (I'm only 3 mins in, so apologies if Tank covers it). Is it per time someone listens, over all streaming?? Am I going to benefit someone more by just listening to a stream/radio or just blasting music through my playlists?
I’d it’s the same as Spotify, it’s per stream. Any time someone listens to 30 seconds or more of s track, it counts as 1 stream.
Part of the Tidal gang here. I use it personally for the hifi options it has because I have a relatively nice audio setup and the fact they pay more even if we are the vast minority. Don’t think we will ever grow above 10 or 15 million active users per year, but I’m here for the hifi 😔🤘
It will be interesting to see what the threshold is and what Spotify considers “professional”
Its never going to change, as long as there is streaming and people have the ability to upload their music the money generated by the "artists" will continue to dwindle. Anyone with an internet connection and a phone can create/upload music to streaming services, the industry no longer has any exclusivity, there are no barriers to entry anymore. Streaming won't go away because people don't want to pay for music anymore, they haven't had to in a decade. Its just the way of our world, we don't move backwards.
Example: News became widely free online>no one wants to pay for news>outlets forced to take money from advertisers and sponsors>wasn't enough so ended up with a corporate buyout and biased reporting....
this is the correct answer. no one wants to pay for content, so the creators suffer and eventually they leave and we won't have independent media anymore.
I dont understand why Spotify continues with these horrible business practices solely designed to bite the hands that feed them. They are simply making it easier for their competition to put them away.
Small note, I tested tidal's sound quality. I 100% heard the slight static on lossy audio files from tidal's highest quality settings. Did this on a few songs that I know loses data on streaming platforms. Also the UI sucked lol.
It’s the Spotify wraps and metrics that keeps the people hooked, I think. I’m not sure if other platform do something like that too. I have Apple Music and don’t think it does. 🤔