How Spotify Is Killing The Music Industry

[@Grasscentral4705]

Why isn't the garbage KZbin algorithm promoting this video? This is very well done, as well as interesting and revealing.

[@5piecekit]

@lukeangelides4075 The algorithm here would promote a video that blames Spotify for destroying the value of music... What??? Destroy Silicon Valley's hustle of everyone can now easily be a rockstar??? It's all a level playing field and everyone's a winner. We can't have that now can we?

[@Grasscentral4705]

@@5piecekit if you had more than 3 braincells, then you would know that spotify is an awful company with no morals.

KZbin doesn’t want artists to know the truth about streaming royalties

[@duduodin7243]

I knew spotify was a sleazy company when I noticed it installed on my computer automatically as part of a bundle with other applications but didn't even ask me if I wanted it installed which I never wanted to do. It freaked me out and made me think I had a computer virus. I support this sooo sooo much. musicians make my life better and I'm sure millions upon millions of others would say the same thing. I hope you all get what you deserve.

[@duduodin7243]

@@peaceofpeace1 Yeah. Thanks for replying. Are you a real person? Its hard to believe anyone is anything these days but I guess from a self defense focused perspective that is a good thing.

[@revevague6256]

Spotify is more interested in kicking my mom off my family plan rather than actually paying me for my streams. Our family plan cost just went up too.

[@TheLeftistCooks]

This is fascinating, thank you so much for making this

[@crimsonwolf9099]

Hey, how do you expect Spotify to pay musicians anything but insultingly low chump change when they need to pay Joe Rogan many several MILLIONS? Let's be fair.

[@Scorpiogirl_1029]

Right? Makes no sense.

[@ThePragmo]

This is so disturbing. I'm now regretting letting my music go there...🙄

[@xeroforhire]

As a musician, I totally understand the struggle. But as a father I have a job because I have bills to pay. It's kind of hard to watch a bunch of young artists whine about the prospect of maybe having to get a real job in order to cover bills because Spotify is successful and we're not. I mean we could just not have our music on spotify. That is an option. Obviously it exists to support music labels, and not artists. But whining and protesting isn't going to change that.

[@elizabethm4705]

Everyone deserves a living wage, and being a musician can be a “real job”. Regardless, Spotify should pay more per stream.

[@Mark_Chandler]

musicians have become gig workers like uber drivers

[@jaym2112]

@@elizabethm4705 And why do you think other people are obligated to pay for your life choices? I chose to specialize in a career that pays my bills and focus on music as a passion of personal interest. There are enough hours in the day. It wasn't until there was affluence in the world where being a full-time musician, or artist generally, was even possible. It is by the efforts and good graces of those doing lucrative things that even makes such a thing possible. This very much makes it a first world problem of "[whine] I can't get paid to do what I love." Talk about privilege...

[@tertlert]

@@jaym2112 you’ve been fired from your favorite job, best job ever. Just get another one in a completely different field. You wont be upset or complain not once? Lmao stop with the moral judge thing. You would be mad if u were in their position too

[@SongDog9]

Buy!!!!

[@stephenallenmusic]

60% of Spotify users are on the free tier

[@politiqueen420]

Commenting and sharing the video for engagement so I can support the artists in smallest way I can.

[@istrumguitars]

This is total bullshit. I feel like cancelling Spotify now.

[@bernios3446]

How much do Amazon Music and Apple Music pay per stream?

[@vb0.o]

more, but not massively

[@JA809_]

Tidal is the final option for musicians

[@Stoneabba9999]

$ should be $1 per stream.

[@quas3728]

@@JA809_ maybe because tidal uses user centric model. apple can pay artist more than spotify because they're big company but it doesn't make huge difference because they don't use user centric model.

[@remyroland8016]

​@@quas3728And they're a premium company. Apple Music is premium only.

[@omi1975db]

Just create another streaming platform that pays the artist

[@JA809_]

Cancel Spotify already we all need to remove our music from that platform...

[@Antuan_the_Swan]

Music industry has been dead for over a decade. Who is making timeless, quality music? Most of them don’t even preform live. Then…WTF IS THE POINT?!!

[@AhmadAli-kl9jn]

Great coverage!

[@jonathanb.7481]

700 streams is nothing, i feel like these people cry about earning nothing when really their listeners count is almost 0. If youre struggling to establish yourself as an artist, maybe choose a different career? or do art as a hobby and have your main income be a job? i really dont get the point that these people are trying to make, yes the corona crisis left them hanging but that was bc of a lack of governmental support, e.g. here in germany many artists struggled bc the government investet billions in corporations and big companies like Lufthansa etc., not bc they werent popular. Edit: What might be percieved as unfair is that the payment is not uniform across the genres. thats the first thing that has to be fixed

[@kibbles3394]

I think a cent per stream for all artists should be fair.

[@tertlert]

It seems like you’re trying to make sense of the situation but there is no making sense of it. What Spotify pays artists and the record labels complete chokehold on success in music is a crime and needs to change. You cant “establish yourself” or make a living without a major record label signing you. That should not be the case in 2023 but it is. You can not make a living independently as a musician and that is a huge injustice. KZbinrs, comedians, instagram influencers, OF models, tiktokers, ppl with online businesses all able to make a living independently. Without a big entity having to sign them or give them the “OK” Also, you music fans are so naive. Artists with lets say 100,000 monthly listeners (pretty good right?) they still aren’t making a living. You music fans are really underestimating how bad this evil music industry is doing us. People who perfect their craft, are extremely talented and build a big fanbase, should be able to make a living. Thats what the American dream is. You work hard at something, and you are of value then you are able to eat off of it. But the record labels and Spotify deliberately make that impossible so that you HAVE to go through them. And if u know anything about record labels, they love to give bad deals, trap you in deals for years, own your masters even after ur not with them anymore. Your favorite artist is struggling to pay rent for his studio apartment in LA. He has thousands of fans, makes ppl smile, dance, makes ppl happy and entertains and gets nothing in return. You see him with a chain on or taking a pic with a rented Lambo. And you see his 5,000,000 streams, maybe his biggest song has 20,000,000 streams. 20 mil streams is $40,000, practically a minimum wage yearly income. But that song of his came out last year and since then hes been getting 100-500k streams, maybe a few songs with a mil streams. 1 million people listen to your song and you get $2,000 aka a minimum wage monthly check. There is no one getting effed over as bad as artists. Meanwhile a 50 year old white exec at Warner music, who knows nothing about modern music drives his Tesla to his nice house in the hills after working in his cubicle. Collecting money off of what the artists create while they get pennies. The reason bigger artists aren’t saying anything is because they dont want to get blackballed! They’re afraid of the industry! You guys don’t understand what we’re dealing with.

[@ZackAngelMusic]

​@@tertlertThe truth! Streaming services basically makes the artist PAY a fee to upload music that they then turn a profit on from subscriptions, and then give back to the artist 1/4 of a penny. That's like making a business deal that has a 1% chance of making a profit. They get away with it legally because they can basically pay anything since artist aren't employees. Labels then signed contracts with streaming services to have their artists get better deals basically owning them. That planned killed all new upcoming independent talents as well as contributing to the commodification of music. Kills culture, kills originality, kills good music and creativity

[@5piecekit]

@tertlert Absolutely spot on!! Wish everyone could get this, but most people just want to have their $10 subscription and dont give a rats ass about the musicians/ songwriters being screwed over.

[@mateofernando5066]

When the customer is ok with piracy and file sharing and paying nothing for music, that mindset is really hard to change. No one would buy albums or CDs now because usually, the CD only has 1 or 2 hits out of 12 that the customer really cares to listen to. The internet has really just commoditize music, so this is why the artists are paid so poorly. Time for the artists to onto their bus and start making money from concerts and tours. Selling licenced merchandise can also be lucractive.

[@bocurtis1962]

Delete Spotify Premium Plan, just delete the app, they’re adding unwanted “liked” songs, that was rock bottom for me.

[@user-rr3yw9dn1l]

I agree with the musicians on this one.

[@TheGorillafoot]

I refuse to stream from any service.

[@cheesecakejedi]

I agree 100% that musicians do not make enough money off of streaming. Spotify has grown in value but continues to report losses quarter over quarter. To say they can afford something when it would appear they can't afford anything seems disingenuous. Is there better information available for a break down of Spotify's budget or expenditures?

[@EphemeralTao]

It's been well documented for decades that media companies use a wide range of accounting tricks to report losses when they are actually making record high profits. There have been multiple lawsuits filed against record labels and film production companies by artists (musicians, actors, etc.) because of these businesses failing to pay out shares and other types of profit-linked compensation. One of the most common ways that they do this is to set up shell corporations to act as "owners" of assets like production equipment and facilities, which they then "lease" back to the parent company for exorbitant fees; or they set up a separate distribution company that charges the parent company huge fees that are well over actual distribution costs; so the money never actually leaves the parent company, but they can still claim the fees as an expenditure when determining profits. There are lots of these little tricks they can use to overinflate their expenditures simply by passing money around between various departments and divisions and branches in the same parent corporation. Here's an article about how it works in the film industry. The music industry uses a lot of the same tactics and tricks. www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2020/06/how-hollywood-studios-manage-to-officially-lose-money-on-movies-that-make-a-billion-dollars/

[@reggiereg2064]

I dont know if i agree with this. Streaming wouldnt be so big if it werent for piracy. I feel like its a symptom of the "devalue" of music, not the cause.

[@ZeroSmoke.]

Yes. Streaming has actually played a huge role in reviving the music industry. Spotify isn't perfect, but it has made it much easier for artists to go independent rather than relying on labels (and thus further dividing the revenue between artist & label).

[@SeeSawMassacre]

@@ZeroSmoke. I disagree entirely. Are you a musician? There's nothing easy about "going independent". What that really means is that you alone are responsible for getting people to listen to your songs (they won't- why would they?), recording your own music, mastering, mixing, booking shows, advertising, selling merchandise, running a website, graphic design of everything, getting vinyl pressed (expensive), and more. It doesn't work well- there used to be scores of people who were paid to do these things when there was money in it- and it's hard work that goes unpaid. I'd bet a lot of money if i had any that you couldn't get 2000 individuals to listen to this song, which i think is fantastic, in one year: kzbin.info/www/bejne/sGOwap55Z5abiZI

[@FTMStudios]

AWESOME UPLOAD!

[@lezliwelge9626]

This is the reason why so many new Artist & musicians have started making the videos and hiring their own!

[@Scorpiogirl_1029]

I use YT Music atm. But once the subscription is done next week, I'm going back to Tidal.

[@john_hunter_]

How do other music streaming services compare? What is the amount you make off KZbin for example?

[@ahkucucukgemi]

much less than Spotify

[@-IMMOBILIZER-]

That's not exactly a good question.... If other people fuck us too is that cool???

[@wittttttt]

Spotify pays 75c on every $1 earned. How much should they pay? They are already a losing money company with difficult path to profitability. In the video they mentioned their stock price, that jumped from 117 to 354 during covid suggesting how much money they made. It’s false and manipulation, because the stock price is just what we (the public) think how Spotify is valued, which could be wrong (right now stock dropped from 354 to 130 btw). The real problem (not mentioned here) is that, people don’t want to pay a lot for music. Especially for unknown artists. Would you pay $100/mo for subscripion? Excactly..

[@-chrisburke]

I would pay $100/mo

[@quas3728]

then I'd buy 10 albums for $100

[@thepostalteenager2206]

Go invest your money into a service which does worst than youtube which is free

[@lightphasermusic]

Yes, now Spotify is killing it :D

[@jonathanvillalobos7994]

So no more,R.I.A.A. certified Gold,and Platinum Records no more!🙁

[@joshbhargava1042]

Spotify does provide a great forum for listening to older OOP music, Many great seemingly forgotten 60s-90s albums that would be very difficult to find and buy.

[@SeeSawMassacre]

Like what, for example?

[@-IMMOBILIZER-]

Yeah, like WHAT

[@sadierose2890]

What’s “OOP”…??? 👀 🌈🪬

[@diegoibarra5576]

How much Per download

[@Mark_Chandler]

so do they get paid when non paying members of spotify listen to their music?

[@juniordunkley2751]

Screw you Spotify is great Daniel EK is a genius

[@ryanhardy4830]

I religously listen to rock music and knowing all the money go to pop artist make me mad..fak spotify..I'll buy their album direct

[@atlassasha]

There should be a link to the union's website in the description of this video.

[@evacody1249]

Without Yotube and spotify how many people do you think would even know your band unless you were signed to a major label? How many do you think would know you inlets you were on the radio, MTV or VH1. Answer 0 because you would be told by aome guy in a suit that your music was bad and would not make it in the top 40. You would be told well its not what is selling these days. You have no idea of howbhaed it was for the underground, and indy acts to get any where. These days the major label's can be bypassed. So no its not hurting music. Trying to drag it back to the days before streaming would kill music.

[@riodejaneiro664]

99% of all musicians who signed a recording contract made no money. The music industry has been broken since forever. This is just another chapter of the same old story.

[@JohnDought]

Therefor you should buy a CD, good for the band better for your wallet.

[@crayray1310]

This makes me so angry. Own your media, people!

[@hokedo]

It's our fault for pirating music in the first place but at the same time spotify n most streaming platforms are a bunch of business ####

[@tomsimpson5317]

Should be my life

[@Stoneabba9999]

The youth cannot be blamed for access to very cheap music. Who wouldn’t?

[@jaydenp4975]

Why do talentless artist like Nicki Minaj and Iggy Azalea get so rich? Do they really have billions of streams?

[@TheDonPud]

One thing about Nicki, she’s very Talented. Please stop. I’m pretty sure your fav artists can’t do by better!

[@thepostalteenager2206]

@@TheDonPud It is just marketing from cringe ass ppl like u

[@jaym2112]

2:08 "demands"? Wtf? This is a voluntary business people. No one makes you choose this profession. No one makes you put things on Spotify. I try to support musicians I love because I know it's not a lucrative business for artists, but you guys make me see musicians as a bunch of entitled babies. When I was a kid, it was common knowledge that being a musician, a writer, or an artist was to be in a constant financial struggle. That was the price of the endeavor. I chose to work in a more career-minded field and work on music as a passion supported by my unrelated career ... call it a hobby if you want, though, there's more to it than that. Now, I can make music for the love of music ... Or not. It's all the same. I sympathize with the struggle, but why are you looking externally for the source of the struggle? I made my choice. You made your choice. Don't sit here and pretend you didn't know that choosing this profession would have this sort of lifestyle. Acting all indignant and making demands of the people that literally enable your art to be broadcast around the globe. Perhaps you'd like to go back in time where the radios won't give you airtime and no one wants to invest money in making records, tapes, CDs for your music? The entitlement... it's like you spent all this time and effort building a sandcastle really close to the water, and you're angry with moon when the tide destroys it. You demand the world to be different. You scream at the water to stop. You yell at the people up shore to build berms, levees, or dikes to protect what you've built. Childishness. Living in the first world is a blessing. You can have a career and passions outside the career and never worry about poverty. You literally just have to stand up and choose to live that way. How many musicians have I heard: "I just can't work a 9 to 5... rat race...working for the man... Not for me"? ... But I can demand things from those who do, apparently. Music as a "career" or profession wasn't even a real thing until there was such a thing as affluence. I know our passions are important to us, but ... Do you not hear how childish this all sounds?

[@SeeSawMassacre]

Demanding money for music is not entitlement. You and people like you would have Bob Dylan work a 9-5, and would cost the world countless incredible songs as a result. If you devalue something, that thing eventually becomes worthless. And you're the entitled one if you think a song is worth next to nothing, when it costs sometimes hundreds of hours to make, and sums of money, and you take it for free. Music as a career was a thing even in ancient times. Thousands of years B.C., in Jerusalem, it's written that "Those who were musicians, heads of Levite families, stayed in the rooms of the temple and were exempt from other duties because they were responsible for the work day and night." Leonard Cohen became a musician for the money. He's said in interviews that writing poems and novels wasn't making him enough money to live off of, so he became a musician- there was significant money in it. You wouldn't be so flippant if people collectively decided your own profession should be unpaid. The sandcastle of music is not being destroyed by some faceless tide; it's being stomped on by people like you and everyone who isn't even looking where they're going.

[@SvavarKnuturofficial]

Yeah man, I’m an entitled baby for not enjoying a 95% drop in revenue from recorded music since Spotify showed up. It’s not even enough to cover the recording sessions. I’m not even asking for money for myself, just to be able to pay for the studio and recording costs. But yeah. We’re entitled babies to expect to get fairly compensated for our work.

[@5piecekit]

@Seesawmassacre 👏👏👏💯💯💯

[@loiusnyez5009]

get a real job instead

[@tertlert]

Why? Explain why someone who is gifted/talented at something should work with the common folk with no talent or skill like you?

[@spark300c]

the thing is before modern technology being musician was real job. back in day if wanted to listen music and not play instrument your self you had to go somewhere which live music was played. Now music play through a play list and live music is rare.