a few years ago, back when I was still using Spotify, I checked my Wrapped and apparently I was using Spotify more than 99.5% of users in my country, and when it came to my most listened artist, I was in top 0.05% listeners worldwide. doing some back-of-the-napkin math with the data I got online about Spotify’s payouts, it turned out the money the artist got during that year from me amounted to less than a dollar.
if you want to support artists, use the money you’d pay for your music streaming subscription and buy their album or a piece of merch every two months.
gravitywell@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
No, its so Sony, UMG, and all the other leeches can get paid even less.
I dont feel like editing the image but imagine the guy with most of the cookies in this picture was UMG and the artists are the guy on the right.
Image
Mihies@programming.dev 2 months ago
Yes, sure, but if those don’t get paid, artists don’t get paid. And artists are not forced to pick a label, they are free to go solo, but they still prefer labels, so it’s not that black and white labels bad, artists good
cyberwolfie@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
I’m not sure how you think Spotify compensation works, but it is not a “one stream and you get paid”-deal, but rather a revenue share model where artists are compensated from a large pool by total streams. The main share of your Spotify monthly subscription that goes to compensating artists goes to Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny etc. Being a top listener to your favorite, but underground band contributes negligibly to what they actually get paid.
If you care about their compensation, buy the album as directly from them as possible, or buy merch/go to concerts, and recommend their msuic to other people so they might end up paying customers. Subscribing to Spotify and thinking they get a fair deal out of that is not the way, and increasingly not the way (with their GenAI-shenanigans).
Mihies@programming.dev 2 months ago
First, what am I using is beyond the point and I’m not using Spotify because of their payment method and their politics. And again, if albums are on streaming services, they are voluntarily there, are they not?
gravitywell@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Well if you genuinely care about seeing artists get paid the ones who need it most tend to make their conent available already for free on bandcamp or similar services, and have physical albums and merch you can buy.
Last night i spent $10 on 3 albums on bandcamp, those artists each made more on that single purchase then they would from thousands of streams.
Spotify making less (or more) money does not trickle down to artists on a per stream basis.
Dont be a corporate bootlicker. Say it with me now, "If buying isnt owning Piracy is not stealing. "
Mihies@programming.dev 2 months ago
It is really refreshing how this thread spins in “we know what’s best for the artists, certainly not paying for listening to their streams, that’s exactly what they want”. If you don’t want to use Spotify, that’s fine, I don’t want to either because they are an awful company. But that doesn’t make you the person who create the rules for artists nor does it give you the permission to listen to illegal content.
yessikg@fedia.io 1 month ago
You have no idea how hard it is to go solo, how the fuck would they get their songs out there? They would have to get really lucky on social media. How would they book concert venues? They would be stuck playing in shitty venues that pay peanuts.
Anyways, artists make money off of music purchases, concerts, and merch
Mihies@programming.dev 1 month ago
So, there is value in labels after all?