Spotify not paying small artists
Discussion
How does this work then?
Apparently Spotify is changing its T&C so that artists who get fewer than 1000 streams in a year (and there are a huge number of them) will no longer be paid even the pittance they got before.
Those artists can't even refuse to have their music on the platform, since the deals are done at by the record label for its entire catalogue.
Seems a bit rubbish. I knew my streams didn't pay much, but at least i though a small amount of money went to minor artists. Not sure that I like the idea that my money now only goes to Spotify and not the musicians.
Apparently Spotify is changing its T&C so that artists who get fewer than 1000 streams in a year (and there are a huge number of them) will no longer be paid even the pittance they got before.
Those artists can't even refuse to have their music on the platform, since the deals are done at by the record label for its entire catalogue.
Seems a bit rubbish. I knew my streams didn't pay much, but at least i though a small amount of money went to minor artists. Not sure that I like the idea that my money now only goes to Spotify and not the musicians.
We released a 3 track ep in January. Didn't pay for any sort of promotion or anything like that, instead preferring to wait until we get a further 3 tracks published early next year before doing any sort of marketing..... We've totalled just under 2000 streams across the platforms with over half of that number being Spotify, the vast majority of the balance being YouTube with a few from apple/Deezer etc .....
It costs £20/year to host through ditto and so far from the couple of thousand streams we've earned the princely sum of £6.06!... Spotify are by FAR the worst payer of all platforms. Good job I'm doing this for the artistic satisfaction because the last time we did this back in the 90s we only had to sell a couple of CDs or one t shirt to make more than that!
It costs £20/year to host through ditto and so far from the couple of thousand streams we've earned the princely sum of £6.06!... Spotify are by FAR the worst payer of all platforms. Good job I'm doing this for the artistic satisfaction because the last time we did this back in the 90s we only had to sell a couple of CDs or one t shirt to make more than that!
jonsp said:
As i understand it Spotify pays about $0.005 per stream, so 1k streams/year = 5c a year. Somebody correct if I'm wrong.
You can understand them not wanting to pay those amounts, likewise the artist wouldn't miss it.
Your maths is shocking You can understand them not wanting to pay those amounts, likewise the artist wouldn't miss it.
Current stream rate is lower at $0.003 per stream, so $3 per 1000 streams.
One of a few reasons not to use Spotify, I use Apple Music, which I don’t think is much better, but I also buy music via bandcamp, even if the tracks/album is on Apple Music. It’s full of brilliant smaller artists, and a few big ones. The artists do much better through bandcamp than any other platform.
boyse7en said:
The artists seem to have no ability to withdraw their labour from the site, so Spotify can just decide not to pay them and there is nothing they can do.
Not sure that's true. Garth Brooks, one of the richest artists in the world, doesn't put most of his work on Spotify. Presumably because he's not happy with the terms and/or doesn't see value in the exposure - he's previously shown himself to be a very shrewd guy in terms of getting paid. Spotify can't force him to give them more of his content than he wants to. Probably a case of who's the tail and who's the dog.
Edited by jonsp on Sunday 3rd December 14:35
jonsp said:
boyse7en said:
The artists seem to have no ability to withdraw their labour from the site, so Spotify can just decide not to pay them and there is nothing they can do.
Not sure that's true. Garth Brooks, one of the richest artists in the world, doesn't put most of his work on Spotify. Presumably because he's not happy with the terms and/or doesn't see value in the exposure - he's previously shown himself to be a very shrewd guy in terms of getting paid. Spotify can't force him to give them more of his content than he wants to.
boyse7en said:
The artists seem to have no ability to withdraw their labour from the site, so Spotify can just decide not to pay them and there is nothing they can do.
If you self-publish through CD Baby or the like you can select the places where you want your work to appear - you could exclude Spotify if you so wished. I can't believe that a record lable doesn't have the same level of controls, so is it not the case that someone with a record deal could stipulate that their work isn't included on streaming sites that don't pay artists whose streams are below a certain threshold, or is it the case that record labels won't give artists that level of control?bigandclever said:
jonsp said:
boyse7en said:
The artists seem to have no ability to withdraw their labour from the site, so Spotify can just decide not to pay them and there is nothing they can do.
Not sure that's true. Garth Brooks, one of the richest artists in the world, doesn't put most of his work on Spotify. Presumably because he's not happy with the terms and/or doesn't see value in the exposure - he's previously shown himself to be a very shrewd guy in terms of getting paid. Spotify can't force him to give them more of his content than he wants to.
But like every other other wealthy artist he started off grinding it out singing for nickels, then found people liked his stuff. If people like your stuff you go from being the tail to the dog.
That seems reasonable.
QJumper said:
Playing devil's advocate the headline could equally read "Small artists no longer get free exposure on Spotify".
Which sounds fair. Every time somebody streams a song it must cost Spotify money in terms of bandwidth. Anyone old enough will remember if you wanted to listen to a singer you had to go out and buy their CD or if you're really old try and tape the top 40 on Sunday night, probably a few of us here who did that. Now for a tenner a month you can get just about every song in the world. Genius.
I don't think Spotify should give away access to their user base or their tech any more than artists should give away their work. They both have valuable commodities.
boyse7en said:
How does this work then?
Apparently Spotify is changing its T&C so that artists who get fewer than 1000 streams in a year (and there are a huge number of them) will no longer be paid even the pittance they got before.
Those artists can't even refuse to have their music on the platform, since the deals are done at by the record label for its entire catalogue.
Seems a bit rubbish. I knew my streams didn't pay much, but at least i though a small amount of money went to minor artists. Not sure that I like the idea that my money now only goes to Spotify and not the musicians.
So Spotify are just aligning with themselves with youtube/tiktok etc which all don't pay the creator unless you are sufficiently popular?Apparently Spotify is changing its T&C so that artists who get fewer than 1000 streams in a year (and there are a huge number of them) will no longer be paid even the pittance they got before.
Those artists can't even refuse to have their music on the platform, since the deals are done at by the record label for its entire catalogue.
Seems a bit rubbish. I knew my streams didn't pay much, but at least i though a small amount of money went to minor artists. Not sure that I like the idea that my money now only goes to Spotify and not the musicians.
There'll be a fair few soon-to-be-ex employees bemoaning some of the $billion podcast deals this morning.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67611361
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67611361
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