Spotify Is Acting Like a Cartoon Villain
Spotify Is Acting Like a Cartoon Villain
November 16, 2023, 1:15 am
Filed under: art, business, economics, music | Tags: cartoon villain, CEO, Lullabies, money, music, payments, Reverse Robin Hood, spotify, Taylor Swift, Universal Music Group, villain
Over a decade ago, my friend wished I could be there to sing her baby some lullabies so I recorded some and wrote one specifically for him. Then I burned those songs onto a CD and put them in the mail. I did this for a fair number of my friends with babies for a fair number of years. Then some of the parents of those babies wished they could listen to them on Spotify and so I put them up there and they became available for anyone who wanted them. Now, hardly anyone has a CD player anymore, so I send new babies a link. It’s somehow not as special but companies like Spotify made it this way.
My music has been on Spotify for something like seven years now. Of all the albums up there, the lullabies are the most popular and my friends who listen to them there like knowing that I get a little payment every time they listen. That’s not something that happens when you listen on a CD. The payment on Spotify isn’t much (between .002 and .005 cents per play). I made $43.24 last year (from all the streaming services, not just Spotify) but it’s something. And it is a meaningful something. It’s money I have earned in sharing my music with the world. I could have kept these songs for only the families I made them for but in sharing them on Spotify, I can also maybe buy a stuffed animal or a book for one of these babies, in addition to writing them a song.
Do I get a lot of streams? No. I don’t have a fanbase. I don’t have an agent. And Spotify’s discoverability algorithm is useless. Some of my songs get only six streams a year.
And now Spotify, beginning next year, is going to deny me any compensation for any song that did not get 1000 streams a year. If only 999 people listen to one of my songs, they will take that money I earned (with my art) and they will put it in a pool that will go to the major labels. It will go to places like Universal Music Group and maybe back to its artists, like Taylor Swift, and leave me with nothing.
I find it kind of comically villainous. Spotify is taking money from its least popular artists and giving it to the most successful companies. (There are only three of them!) They are literally taking from the poor to give to the rich. It’s like they’ve entirely missed the point of Robin Hood.
Let’s say I made five dollars with one of my lullabies. Maybe that doesn’t seem like a lot of money (and it isn’t, that’s another bone to pick with Spotify, their absolutely embarrassing artist compensation rates) but that five dollars is more meaningful to me than it is to Universal Music Group. It’s a significantly larger part of my income than theirs, proportionally speaking. That five dollars is literally worth more to me.
And speaking of Universal Music Group, their CEO is reported to have called the indie music companies, “merchants of garbage.” He has so little opinion of the music that isn’t popular; He calls it garbage. He’s calling my work, my lullabies, which have sent my friends’ babies to sleep for the last thirteen years — garbage. I’m on Spotify through those indie platforms. I am the garbage that the Universal Music Group wants to see disappear. He’s a cartoon villain, this guy. Not everyone is Taylor Swift, Mr. Monopoly. And I only see one piece of garbage around here and it isn’t any of my fellow indie musicians making pennies on their songs.
Spotify plans to steal all the earnings from the scrappy indie musicians who could really use five dollars to buy a coffee, to give to the who guy probably pays several assistants a yearly salary to bring him a coffee. Are these guys sitting in their offices twirling their mustaches? It sure seems like it, tying artists to the railroad tracks like that.
Can we stop this? I sure hope so. I’d hate to have to pull my lullabies from a platform because it’s run by cartoon villains now. I’d like to see Spotify turn this terrible idea around and while it’s at it, maybe increase the compensation for indie artists, too. I mean, spotlight is on you, Spotify. Are you going to keep tying us to the railroad tracks or help us up? Give us a hand and dust us off.
I know about this mischief Spotify is getting up to because of a fellow indie artist, who shared it to a group I’m in because of another indie artist. David Wellbeloved created a playlist on Spotify to try and help lift all of our boats. My song on this playlist is at the top of my Spotify plays because of their efforts. That kind of support is the opposite of garbage.
And by the way, the head of Universal Music Group says he’s sorry about calling us garbage, “Sorry, I can’t really think of another word for content that no one really wants to listen to.” I have a little story I’d like for him to think about. This year, one of my lullaby kids got injured on the playground and at the hospital, he opened up Spotify, typed in his own name and comforted himself by listening to his lullaby. Just because a thousand people don’t know his lullaby doesn’t mean no one wants to listen to it. Someone very much wants to listen to it. And not just once.
And Spotify can be the good guy in this situation or twirl their mustache some more. They’ve reported that they stand to take $40 million from indie artists this year if this policy holds. I hope they turn it around. If not, I may return to burning CDs for my friends, like in the old days.
Artists, we can write to Spotify here: artists.spotify.com/contact.
And there is a movement to take this to congress to make this kind of wage theft illegal — so contact your reps, too!
If want to learn more about this, watch this video.
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Originally published at http://artiststruggle.wordpress.com on November 16, 2023.
