Steelo’s Post

💡 What if Spotify introduced a 'modest' fee for its free tier? 💡 A recent article by Music Business Worldwide delved into this intriguing question, sparking thoughts on the future of music streaming. Spotify and streaming services changed the music industry forever. Many music fans today haven't experienced the era when you had to purchase albums and singles to build your collection. This shift has dramatically changed how music is monetized and how artists are compensated—often, many argue, for the worse. With recent price hikes for premium subscriptions, the question arises: what if Spotify eliminated its free tier altogether? Consider this: in Q1, Spotify reported 615 million global MAUs, with 388 million being ad-supported (free) users. That's over half of its user base. If Spotify started charging for all access, would users flock to other platforms? It's likely, as most streaming services offer similar music libraries. If Spotify isn’t free, users might simply migrate elsewhere unless every platform adopts the same model, which is unlikely. This scenario raises several compelling questions: 👉 Will we ever return to an era of paying for music? 👉 Can 'superfan' platforms and models succeed? 👉 Will artists ever see higher earnings from their music? It's a pivotal time for the music industry. Share your thoughts and check out the full article in the comments! 😁

Great commentary on a really interesting phenomenon in the music industry 🔽 I think whatever anyone feels about this, it's a clear breach of the trust / informal handshake agreement musicians have with the DSPs. We obviously know we're in competition with other artists; that's always been a difficult part of the work. But there's no comparison between an indie artist desperately trying to be heard and a platform-owned ghost writer or producer making music to deliberately take up space on their editorial lists, satisfy an algorithmic need or feed into another business objective. There's a clear financial incentive to playlist one and not the other, regardless of quality. As Drew says, it's an on-the-margins business; Spotify will always say that it can't find more money to pay artists beyond what it pays labels and rights holders already. I think it's an insult to our intelligence as long as these shadow musicians exist and are generating streams in the BILLIONS (with a B). I would call for this to be one of the collective rallying points for us as musicians (alongside low payouts from streaming for songwriters and master rights ownership, the copyright rippoff / stream farming that occurs every day, and what is bound to be a flood-the-zone approach by AI-enabled opportunists) in a push towards streaming equity #streaming #musicbusiness

This is absolutely ridiculous, and incredibly worrying. #AI straight up plagiarizes artists. Period. Example: I clicked on a #FunctionalMusic AI-generated question starred at the bottom of a post the other day and it has a bunch of my content in there verbatim. It didn't even bother to paraphrase. No doubt music-based AIs have a certain amount of "paraphrasing" involved to keep out of legal trouble, but it is still highly immoral. Not only that, it is NEVER going to be good original music. Take this example: All news articles in my feed now are generated by AI, with fantastic clickbait titles and graphics, but the article itself is always horrible. I'll click on a Quantum Physics article and it will spend most of the article explaining what Quantum Physics and the Standard Model is. We know what they goddamn are! Get to the story. And it never does. A paragraph at the end will just say something to the extent of "a breakthrough theory is proposing quantum entanglement is tied to gravity". Nothing else is explained. Why? Think about it, the AI is trained with huge data sets, and the article itself is but a tiny node in that set. Most importantly, AI inherently doesn't know anything about any subject and therefore can't write an accurate article of any interest to anyone, much less an original piece of music. This is a disaster for the music industry, lowering the inherent value of music even further. Instead of just using Muzak stock music, companies will now just generate music sliiiightly different than artists it is plagiarizing. Fortunately, this is not possible to do with Functional Music. There are 12 variables in music that affect cognition and if even one is out of place the whole effect falls apart. Will that stop #startups from trying it? Probably not, but they will fail, see high churn rates, low conversions, and hopefully eventually call us up. But this travesty MUST END for all #music. You invent a sentient AI that can make an original song, what's it going to write about? What emotions will it express that humans can relate to? No, it will be forced to create great "Hooks" that appeal to humans, and IMO that is still immoral and a great disservice to humanity AND to a sentience. But that is light years away. Most people do not realize how dumb AI is. It's a trick. A clever card shuffle. This has to stop. Spotify, you're a dumbass. I've already moved to Amazon Music which has more music anyway. I'm absolutely disgusted right now. (P.S. I saw this under my feed reposted by someone I follow, but the repost option was not available there - sorry about that, and thanks for bringing this to my attention)

Spotify’s new rules see ‘premium’ artists and ‘premium’ content financially prioritized over so-called low-quality tracks and creator accounts with low engagement. Amongst those rules are that tracks on Spotify must have reached at least 1,000 streams in the previous 12 months in order to generate royalties on the platform. Only 19.16% of artists on Spotify had over one thousand monthly listeners in 2023. Spotify’s monthly listener count represents each unique individual who has streamed an artist’s music at least once in the last 28 days. Therefore, even if an individual listener streams a song over and over again within the last 28 days they’re only counted once as a monthly listener. https://lnkd.in/dYPidBPp

By their agreements with rights holders, DSPs aren't allowed to own music copyrights. Except in very limited & specific circumstances. One way they get around this is with fake artists. Most fake artists are not doing this with Spotify's knowledge, but some are (this is less of an issue at the other DSPs). It was always funny to me when I was doing A&R at Sony Music Entertainment and I'd see some new instrumental "artist" with millions of streams on their very few tracks - and the IP address of their contact would be a mile from Spotify's office in Sweden. The DSPs would *love* to follow the Netflix model - produce and own their own content - but that will not fly with the labels & publishers. So they turn to illicit means to garner some revenue on the margins. Streaming is a margins business, after all. #musicindustry #musicbusiness #streaming #fakeartists

Chartmetric's Year in Music report for 2023 revealed that only 19.16% of Spotify artists had over 1,000 monthly listeners. Approximately 81% had fewer than 1,000 listeners. Taylor Swift and The Weeknd were the only artists to surpass 100 million monthly listeners for the first time that year. Chartmetric tracks over 9.7 million Spotify artists. Around 7.9 million of these artists have fewer than 1,000 monthly listeners, while just over 1.8 million have more than 1,000. Spotify's monthly listener count tallies unique individuals who streamed an artist's music at least once in the last 28 days, regardless of how many times they listened. #Spotify #MusicIndustry

How to assess the impact of Spotify's Music Pro on your streaming royalties Spotify's new Music Pro tier probably won't solve the artist compensation problem. The music industry is buzzing with news about Spotify's upcoming Music Pro service (previously known as Supremium). But what does this mean for artists? Let's break it down: 1. Enhanced features: Music Pro offers advanced mixing tools and mood-based filters. 2. Audio quality boost: Lossless audio up to 24-bit/44.1 kHz FLAC. 3. Customization: Headphone enhancement for a tailored listening experience. 4. Add-on model: It's an upgrade for existing subscribers. Sounds great for listeners, right? But here's the catch: There's no mention of increased royalties for artists. The truth is that a premium tier doesn't automatically translate to better compensation for creators. Artists are still left wondering: → Will this new tier actually increase their earnings? → Or is it just another way for Spotify to boost its bottom line? The streaming giant has a history of prioritizing user experience and company growth over fair artist compensation. And this new tier seems to follow the same pattern. So, what can artists do? 1. Diversify income streams. 2. Engage directly with fans. 3. Push for transparency in royalty structures. 4. Collaborate with other artists to advocate for fair compensation. Remember: Their art has value. Don't let streaming platforms dictate an artist's worth. What do you think? Will Music Pro make a difference for artists, or is it just another shiny (albeit good) feature for consumers? Let me know in the comments.

In 2015, Jay Z and his powerful musician friends launched a music streaming service. It was called: Tidal. What was the goal of Tidal? Simple, They wanted to create a streaming platform that would pay artists better. Their goal was to deal with the bad payment structures of giants like Spotify. But just 3 weeks after the launch, Tidal failed. The question is Why? The answer is simple: To launch a successful business, it is important that you understand what your customer wants and build a solid case for why they should choose you... Tidal didn’t do that, They did not focus on what their customer wanted. So TIdal says, we will pay artists better, right? How does paying the artists better help the life of the average music listener? It only makes the artist richer and does nothing for average music listeners. Tidal has no free, ad-supported tier, but does have a more expensive $20 tier for higher-quality sound. So why did Tidal flop? Tidal did not build their business with the customers in mind. So the customers ignored them and it failed woefully. If you want your business to succeed as a Coach, Expert, online business owner, or consultant. You must always answer the question... What is in it for my customer or client? Humans are selfish, if there is NOTHING in it for them, they will ignore you. If you don’t understand this, your marketing will fail woefully... Because you read this to the end, I have a gift for you: Learn how to clarify your brand message with this 12-minute video: https://lnkd.in/dfH7suKt

And now -- Spotify offers Music Only subscription

Some of you may know that as well as DevOps and tech stuff, I run a record label and produce music. Recently, along with quite a few other #independentartists and #independentrecordlabels, I took the decision to completely remove my record label from Spotify due to their horrendous business model, the theft from artists with under 1000 streams per track and the comments of their CEO which showed they have nothing but contempt for the artists who provide the "content" for their platform. So far, we're doing well. We've not suffered and I am happy with my decision. Sales are good and support for the decision from my peers and artists on the label has been quite overwhelming. We've seen a slight uptick on other, better paying, platforms which has more than offset the minimal loss we expected from dropping #Spotify - this has been a bonus. We never needed them. They need us. We were fine before they came along and just did it all ourselves. I plan on doing the same as we did back in the 90s when none of the established "music industry" took our music seriously and thought it was a "fad". We did it all ourselves.. networks of artists, labels, distributors, record shops, pirate radio stations. music publishers and ultimately, the DJ's and fans all made our own "sub music industry" that was independent of the mainstream music business and, indeed, the so called "independent music industry" at the time. We were entirely self contained. Somewhere along the line we let them convince us that we needed to be on these new platforms to succeed and "gain exposure" to "new fans" - and that in order to do this we had to give the music away for next to nothing (free to consume with ads) and were assured the amount of new fans would translate into greater numbers and the micro payments would soon mount up. We let them convince us that music was, essentially, free. None of it worked out for artists who are now worse off than at any time in living memory. Even those at the "top of the charts" with the streams into the tens of millions are being ripped off. There needs to be a rebalance. With that in mind I am building my own streaming platform. A #Spotify type platform but with the changes we, artists, need to see and then some. WE don't need Spotify and I am going to prove it. Because it needs doing and nobody else is going to do it for me - so.. I will do it. Again. Just like I did in the 1990s. #boycottSpotify #fairpayforeveryplay #dontunderestimate