To add to this, buy their merch and physical copies of their albums. Go to shows! Lots of small bands would love a bigger crowd and can be seen for cheap or free.
Comment on After announcing increased prices, Spotify to Pay Songwriters About $150 Million Less Next Year
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
weekly PSA that spotify is a dumb company who makes no money because they’re stupid.
To put it bluntly, between the artists, and the musicians, there is the publisher (the traditional music company) the money pretty much only goes to the publisher, because spotify doesn’t want to make money, nor do they want artists to make money. And the artists put their shit on spotify because people believe that spending 15 dollars a month on a service that doesnt pay artists, apparently pays artists.
Go support your local musical artists.
GiveMemes@jlai.lu 6 months ago
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
exactly this, buy merch, buy albums, give them your money directly if you can. (artists, please just let me give you money, i like your shit, maybe i don’t want to buy shit tons of plastic ok?)
BURN@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Spotify negotiated shit deals when they were a startup and they’ll basically forever be not profitable because of it.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
they should’ve became a publisher, or started one on the side, the profit would be immense if they thought of doing that.
BURN@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Seriously. They had a completely open market, then essentially signed a perpetual deal where something like 40% of gross income is paid out to the labels. It’s absolutely insane how poorly run they were in the beginning.
If they had become a publisher, distributor and/or a label, they’d be on top of the world now.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
yeah pretty much. They’d be the single biggest publisher globally, and almost certainly the most profitable.
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Their strategy was probably the classic startup strategy. Grow at all costs and figure out profitability later. These days it’s rather obvious that this strategy sucks and is doomed to fail (for most cases).
Breve@pawb.social 6 months ago
The big record labels are shareholders in Spotify so they’re happy to get less money in streaming royalties because that’s the part they have to share with artists, but the value of their shares they get to keep all for themselves.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
ah of course, schizo economics, how could i forget. “trust me, i will hold shares for you, i promise” Though this still isn’t a good position to be in, because now the publishing companies essentially run spotify, so spotify fucked themselves even more lol.
inset@lemmy.today 6 months ago
I always wonder how the hell don’t make money, it must be some kind of “smart” accounting.
kalleboo@lemmy.world 6 months ago
It’s because they are 100% reliant on the record labels, and the record labels know that. So the record labels can charge Spotify whatever they want, because what is Spotify going to do?
That’s why Spotify tried to hard to move into Podcasts and now Audio books, so that they are less reliant on the record labels.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
they don’t make money because they’re a tech company, they pull in VC funding, and then lose money year after year, they don’t need to make any money because the model is to get everyone on your platform, and then start making money. (which apparently spotify hasn’t figured out yet)
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Ahhh yes, future enshitification!
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
i’m still trying to figure out how they’re going to enshittify, because it’s already expensive as shit. And they still make no money, so.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 6 months ago
Go support your local musical artists.
I miss X Fest… :(
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
i’m still riding the high of all the older artists from the 90s till now that i’ve missed out on. We’ll see how long that lasts lol.
shikitohno@lemm.ee 6 months ago
It’s probably more a case of artists acknowledging the fact that streaming services are one of, if not the, primary sources of music discovery and consumption for many these days. Even if they won’t make money off it, by not being available on these platforms, they may as well not exist for most people. That’s something that only huge, already established names can pull without feeling it.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
you know what else streams your music? The fucking internet, that shits free! Literally just posting your shit on a torrent will give you tons of traction to work with. Especially if you already have a pretty significant listener base. Plus you also get the benefit of people like me who are significantly more inclined to buy physical releases of media.
Regardless, streaming is a good way of getting people to hear your shit, if you really want to use a streaming service, don’t go through a publisher, or at the very least, a mainstream publisher. They tend to fuck you over.
shikitohno@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Sure, but the barrier to entry is significant enough to still deter most people. Even assuming they aren’t bothering with port forwarding and seeding, most people seem like they can’t be bothered with any pattern of consumption more complicated than finding content on major streaming platforms, and the music streaming services haven’t yet gotten annoying enough for most people. They’ll take a peek, go “Do I want FLAC, V0 or 320? WTF is an APE?” and bail again.
We can disagree as to whether it should be that way or not, but I’d wager that the reach of streaming services for a new band far exceeds that of uploading a torrent to a random tracker and hoping it takes off. Unless people already know of you to look for your music, you need to hope a huge number of them are just auto-snatching anything new. On private trackers, sure, you’ll get a bunch of people who auto-snatch any FLAC upload from the current year, but you’re talking about <50,000 users in those cases, and a good chunk of the auto-snatchers are just people looking to build buffer who won’t even listen to most of what they snatch. On the other hand, nobody is auto-snatching all the torrents going up on public trackers, they’d run out of space in no time at all.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
i mean yeah, though nothing stops you from putting it up on both services so, don’t come crying to me lol.
Your publisher might but that’s because they’re a cunt lol. Up to the artist though, personally i’d only release it underground, give it to the people who deserve it. It might take off from there, i’m not going to stop other people from spreading it via clear web mirrors or uploads onto streaming services like youtube or anything.
Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee 5 months ago
This is all assuming that availability is the top priority for all artists. I think spotify has shown 99.999% of artists that their model of maximum availability at all costs simply doesn’t work, either in terms of contacting an audience, making any money or valuing music. It just results in the vast majority of artists being insulted and demoralised and the remainder producing music of a relentlessly narrowing artistic scope. Are you more likely to get around 3500 plays on spotify or get £1 in donations off the back of giving your music away for free? It sounds absurd and that’s because it is. Most artists will get the same out having their music on spotify for a year as walking out onto the street with an acoustic guitar for half an hour on a Saturday. At least out on the street you’re not propping up a capitalist giant and a tiny ‘elite’ of ultra commercial music producers. For me spotify and it’s ilk have been the final nail in the coffin for integrity and reward in releasing music and I would encourage the 99.999% to boycott it and forge ahead with alternatives. Nothing better will emerge until then and artistic culture will continue to become more and more bleak.
Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee 6 months ago
What are your thoughts around generating traction with a torrent? I have two friends who are both sitting on their albums and thinking about how best to release them. I hope to release something one day too and refuse to use the likes of spotify on priciple.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
hmm, if you do release them, it would be prudent to release them with related material, throw in a txt file with some additional little trivia facts or tidbits, as well as some links to places to buy your material, or even donate directly to you. Oh also you should probably throw in some interesting stickers or prints or something, things that aren’t clothing and CDs can be interesting sometimes.
If you want to do a multi platform release, do an exclusive release on the torrents, i.e. throw in some extra unreleased material, or a second mixing/mastering of a track or something. Throwing something in to make the listeners feel appreciated is always good.
Obviously generate some public attention for it, you’re probably only going to attract existing torrent users, but drumming up some sort of conversation around music rights, supporting artists and all that is going to be a good idea. Notably, since you’re the artist putting it up, you have the rights over it, so it’s perfectly legal. If you want to get really funny you can openly license it, so that way people can torrent it without “technically” breaking the law. Though that’s not explicitly required i don’t think. Naturally the most obvious way is to title a song “pirate this” or something lmao. “exercise to the user” as us TMC players would say.
yeah im pretty much out of ideas here lol, hopefully that helped.