Streaming services don’t support artists in any meaningful way.
Instead, buy music for download when it’s available (Bandcamp and the like).
If not possible, just pirate it and buy merchandise or go to a concert. You will bring as much revenue to the artists this way, than listening to them on Spotify for 200 years non stop, and it will be cheaper for you in the end.
Meanwhile every update makes the app worse
Summary:
- Spotify has announced another price hike for its subscription plans in the United States.
- This price increase comes shortly after Spotify CEO Daniel Ek sparked outrage among music fans and creators by claiming that the “cost of creating content is close to zero.”
- Many musicians and music fans condemned Ek’s comments, arguing that music is not just “content” and that it is costly and time-consuming to create.
- Despite the backlash, Spotify is increasing its standard Premium plan by $1 to $11.99, the Duo plan by $2 to $16.99, and the Family plan by $3 to $19.99 per month.
- Spotify claims the price hikes are necessary to invest in and innovate its product features, but this reasoning is questioned given Ek’s “content” cost comments.
- Spotify is less vulnerable to customer churn compared to TV/movie streaming services, as users are less likely to switch music streaming providers due to the hassle of rebuilding playlists and losing personalized recommendations.
IIRC this means the family plan costs more than 3 individual plans did like 3 years ago. If not more than it saves you like $.50 in comparison. I would try and look it up but Google search has also turned to shit so I don’t feel like dealing with it.
The Internet just isn’t fun anymore.
Indie internet is better, hi Lemmy
They’re still scraping us unfortunately
I’m so grateful, I have thousands of songs and just hit shuffle and made my own playlists. I always thought internet radio was overpriced 😅
Glad I moved away from Spotify to Apple Music years ago (for different reasons tho)
Just another CEO denigrating the work of those who make him rich.
A “subscriber consent to renew on price increase” law would go a long way
A “subscriber consent to renew
on price increase” law would go a long wayFuck auto-renewing in general
Looking at you, amazon prime free trial auto renew
Spotify Premium in practice has new benefits!
More specifically: Lyrics that they took away from regular users some time ago.
They fucked it up for premium users too, though, since they’ve done that. Half the songs that I knew to have lyrics either no longer have them, or they constantly “fail to load.”
Seriously, damn, that’s feels like such a basic thing
I remember I used to have an add-on (at least I think it was an add-on; didn’t Spotify officially support those at some point?) that synced the lyrics of a song to the timestamp. It used user submissions to figure out the timestamps and edit the lyrics. It was pretty cool.
The only reason I keep Spotify anymore is that I’ve got a family plan with something like six accounts. I gave those to random acquaintances back in the Facebook days - people who are really into music.
If I cancel Spotify, there are five people out there who are suddenly and without warning going to find themselves without music.
I really don’t even remember who they are, but I feel like continuing the subscription is my community service
Pretty sure you can see their email address. This should give you the opportunity to message them stating you’ll be canceling the subscription. They’ll still be able to subscribe on their own.
I never did get a music subscription of any kind. Guess I am glad about that now. I just host my own server. Spotify never had a quarter of what I want to listen to anyways so I guess there is that.
Listening to Legion of Mary 12-10-1974 right now.
I switched to TIDAL, for this, for the disgustingly low amount of revenue passed along to artists by Spotify (the entire value of their business), and for the fact that they continue to partner with Rogan after all the disinformation he peddles.
Not a huge proponent of streaming services in general, but some are objectively better than others. Spotify is atrocious. Tidal is a lot better.
I also switched to Tidal after learning about Spotify’s dystopian future war AI powered killer robot plans. It’s also bullshit how little they pay artists.
I wish Tidal had podcasts, but I’m happy enough with AntennaPod.
My music app not having podcasts is a bonus for me. They really should give users the option and not force it upon you.
they continue to partner with Rogan
They don’t anymore.
Though I am far more concerned with Spotify’s attempts to destroy what is otherwise a last bastion of internet freedom with their exclusive podcasts.
They do, but not as an exclusive. This year Spotify signed a deal with him worth 250M.
But also yeah, I can appreciate that sentiment.
Ah, last I heard the deal had just expired. Now they’re paying him even more money than before? And for what reason?
At least it sounds like that Spotify exclusive bullshit is dead?
Isn’t this also on the Publishers? They get paid first before the artist.
Spotify is usually reported as one of the worst paying for the artists.
They also don’t distribute the value by time listened, but pool in and award the largest artists (don’t remember the specifics, you might need to look it up).
They were also found/accused of using their auto generated playlists with made-up artists who’s money goes to ‘noone’, just shady stuff.
The average person: Spotify sucks and is making me hate them even more
Shareholders seeing layoffs followed by AI replacements for those workers and then repeated price hikes: 🤑
The myth of capitalism is that it improves things for the consumer. It’s very obvious that it only improves, at best, the next quarter’s returns for the investor. Once that husk of a company stops “line going up,” the money goes elsewhere and we repeat.
If the line can’t go up through creation it’ll go up through destruction.
The myth of capitalism is that it improves things for the consumer
So you don’t think your life is better than someone from the 16th century?
I’m so tired of this nonsense argument, is capitalism your God to which you give credit for every human accomplishment? How did capitalism help to raise the Russian serfs to the status of a world superpower? It didn’t… How did capitalism help Russia get to space before the United States? How did capitalism help human life improve before the 16th century?
I wonder what you even think capitalism is. I wonder if you comprehend that technological advancement, markets, money, and trade aren’t synonymous with it.
You love democracy but when it comes to matters of economic decisions you are bootlicking the petite dictators that control every aspect of your economic life. You are employed by people whose means of acquiring wealth is to skim off the top of what you’re producing and steal it from you but you are too busy making eye contact while you suck them off that you don’t see their hand in your pocket.
The world is burning and there’s plastic in your balls because of capitalism, you are such a good submissive little peasant.
It worked differently before speech was considered money. Or I like to tell myself that.
It worked differently before because the information network was orders of magnitude slower and data was expensive as Pope shit.
Nowadays, the information is almost instant and everything is interconnected and data storage is cheap so we got big data with people paid solely to boil that down to algorithms that squeeze money as much as possible from customers.
Just look at all the streaming services that makes you pay more if you don’t want ads and they resell your data. Triple dipping baby
This is for sure a big part of it also. Greed greed and greed being the main draw lol
Everyone that works for a company is poorer, every company is scraping by and making cuts, but executives are making more and more money
I would suggest anyone bothered by this to look into xManager.
This is the way.
Kind of love and hate that their website doesn’t explicitly say what it does. Like, if you can’t figure it out, you probably shouldn’t do it, even their GitHub is a bit dodgy on what the software is for, you can figure it out, but it’s never explicitly stated what it’s specifically meant for. “We help you install old versions of the app who must not be named” kinda bullshit.
I think it’s intentional to avoid eyes on taking it down.
Production cost for a full length album STARTS at around $10-15k.
That’s a lot more than “zero” in my book.
In the modern era, that’s not exactly true. This number is only relevant if you’re outsourcing tracking, mixing and mastering which are all things that can be done in a bedroom nowadays. How do I know? Because I did so myself a number of years ago.
If you’re not learning how to do these things yourself, you’re simply wasting money or you’re rich enough/your band is supported enough to not give a fuck.
The only thing we paid for was album art and mastering simply because I wanted one specific engineer to do it just cause. All in all we paid less than $2k for a full release. We could have paid zero if we did our own artwork and I mastered the album myself which is not exactly impossible for the average person to do.
I get your sentiment, but money is not necessarily needed en masse to release music any more. If you already have your instruments and associated gear, a REAPER license is $60 and you can use the included plugins to create a full professional quality release.
I had a plethora of plugins a while back but I’ve wiped them from my drive in favor of REAPER’s stock plugins, the available JS plugin libraries and a few choice free plugins along with a single drum VST. That’s it. I have pro quality mixes and masters with just that.
The days of the studio as a necessity are over. Studio time is a luxury, not a necessity.
I want to end this comment with a big “fuck you” to Spotify anyway because streaming services are cancerous to the music creator scenes.
I totally get where you’re coming from, have done the DIY production thing, etc. And with full respect to the piece of art you put your soul into, I have to ask, was it a commercial success? As in, paying the bills at home? Because in my experience, you do end up having to invest those kinds of sums if you want to make a return at that level. I hate how music is commerce, trust me. But that’s just what I’ve seen so far.
No it was not what many would consider a commercial success. My music is a bit niche, but it was a success in its own right. We had label support (non-financial, basically just printed CDs) for our debut release and more than recouped the cost and if we followed up with releases it likely would have had potential to snowball by re-investing the money into the band. We only released digital and CD digipaks of the album, no merch no extra anything and that gave us more than enough for a second release and then some. I just have no use for the music “industry” as it were. Music is not a means to an end for me, its an outlet and I do it on my terms. I don’t jive with the industrialization of art in general and I certainly don’t want to whittle my relationship with music down to how much money it can make for me. I get it if people wanna commoditize it though. That angle is just not for me.
Indie artists by and large self produce and a metric ton of them do so to an incredibly high caliber. Big tech Spotify man is not wrong, he’s just an asshole. A leech, if you will.
I appreciate you taking my question in the spirit it was meant, and the thoughtful response.
I guess what rubbed me the wrong way about CEO Douchebag’s comment was that it discounts just how relatively enormous of an expense production can be for the small artists trying to make a living. I’ve spent some time in the music industry and it has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. The necessary evil of commerce intersecting with art is a big reason for that, especially coming to the realization of just how necessary that evil is.
But yes I agree, it is definitely possible to create excellent art of high technical quality from home.
