Co-workers asked me the other day "why do you hate spotify?" and truly, I could've gone on for hours. I didn't (much to their relief) but thought I'd write down my thoughts and opinions on it seeing as how a few angry missives have been the total sum of my output on the subject. So here you go: my opinions and thoughts on it.
People like to view the music industry through various different lenses, but in the end it's all connected. You can trace the fact your favourite band doesn't come to your city, back to why they only put stuff out on vinyl or why they break up after 18 months. It's all very, very connected.
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| shout out to Max, aka Peretsky for this one |
I didn't always loathe spotify.
Y'see, back in the day, we were all sold this lie of 'music democratization'. The thinking was that if you could blow up online (using social media & blogs primarily), you could bypass all those nasty A&R dudes at big labels and just do it all yourself. Slowly but surely though, blogs disappeared as the ad money dried up and people got older, apps and sites started to shift around from an 'anything goes' model to a 'you need to pay us to reach your own fans' one, and people got bored & broke, so bands needed to reset again. Ironically the tradtional methods just crept back in- A&Rs, big labels, management types, booking agents, etc. it all just reverted to type, but we were all locked in to these behemoths like Facebook and Twitter. Everything became about numbers. Big, pointless numbers. I'll never forget a manager telling me that satan wouldn't get a booking agent until we had 10,000 followers on our Facebook page. I mean, it was nonsense, complete bollocks, but he believed it so passionately.
So anyway, in amongst all this, you had a growing problem of piracy. It'd moved on from just 'download 1 song a week' like the old Napster days, to 'fill this entire harddrive in 30 minutes' as technology and internet speeds got better. And so, people moved their focus from the new Metallica album to very DIY bands that didn't exactly make any money in the first place. So far, so 'democratized'. People helped themselves, and sometimes that was fine, other times it wasn't, but it made no difference. You were fucked either way. "I'll buy tickets to your shows!" they used to say, despite the fact we barely ever played outside of Leeds and they lived in California. But, whatever, it is what it was.
So some tech bros spotted this gap in the market and ran with it. Spotify was born, and now kids wouldn't need to download half a terrabyte of your life's work in 20 minutes as they could just stream it - you didn't even need to be good with computers, it was user friendly! Even your mum could stream stuff! And we'd get royalties! I mean, they're not great, but they'd get better, right?
Yeah, sure.
So extrapolate that to right now, and we have Spotify paying $0.003 per stream (and even less if you agree to cut your rate to boost your music through their algorithm), jumping into bed with AI arms manufacturers, an incredibly regressive practice of only paying out tracks that have had 1,000 or more plays every year, and a music industry that is, even at this smaller level, completely and utterly fucked.
Even if you remove the arms stuff, and the payment stuff, and the 1,000 stream stuff, and you simply focus on Spotify as a thing in and of itself, and it fails to get any better. In fact it might be worse.
Streaming didn't have to be this way - it has the means to be better for all concerned, but it won't. I don't think it ever will, simply because it's just awash in so much money.
Bands and artists continue to upload their work, knowing that if it hits 999 streams in a year, those royalties generated will get just given to god knows who for no particular reason. It's FOMO on a huge scale, combined with that nagging hangover from the big blog days of the mid 10s - "this year will be my year!"
It's the apathy that absolutely does me in. Artists, bands, music industry people, shitposters on Instagram - everyone's been banging on about what a total shitshow Spotify is, has been and continues to be for a while now, and it's largely just been met with an almighty shrugging of shoulders, and carrying on, because 'well yeah, but I've got my playlists on there, and I like my Spotify wrapped!', despite the arms tech investments, despite the meagre royalties, despite the sacking of their editorial team, despite the 1,000 play thing, despite the creaking tech that's full of bugs, despite the adding audiobooks to they could argue for an even *lower* royalty rate, despite the general cheapening and disconnection of music, despite the explosion of shitty AI slop, despite one man masquerading as many different artists being responsible for a huge royalty payout by juicing the system, despite the literal owner of the platform claiming that 'content' doesn't take any money to make these days, despite everything, despite all of that. But people just think it's a bit of fun.
And you can scream it from the rooftops, but it's hard to snap people out of it. I mean, I'd understand if spotify was the only game in town, but it's clearly not - you've endless supplies of streamers if that's what you want. Hell, you could even just go back to buying things too, but if you want to keep streaming, you've so many other options - Tidal, Deezer, Apple, Bandcamp, Amazon, even fucking YouTube - it's not hard to just switch up. It's the weakest amount of pressure that's ever been applied to anyone's life, but people still seem so resistant, so hesitant to ditch it.
Even if you divorce all of that from spotify, what you're left with is a hollow experience: music as an unlimited trough of 'stuff', of 'content', with no regard to how it managed to come into existence - is this some AI slop generated by a guy somewhere sat at a computer? Maybe? Who knows, anyway, here's the new Snow Patrol album, here's a new Drake song, here's an advert, here's the new Blink 182 song, here's another advert, here's a longer advert, here's a song by a band that toured with Blink 182 and is most probably paying through the nose to be in your ears right now, here's another advert.
Always remember: you're only ever paying for access to a certain number of things, never the things themselves with streaming. At any given point, access can be revoked for whatever reason, and if that happens: what do you do next? I remember when Mos Def's The Ecstatic left streamers, and kids just didn't know how to act - I saw a change.org petition to get it back, when the CD was just sat there for like £5. You guys ever thought about just heading to a record store?
One thing I love about those Amoeba 'What's in my bag?' videos is that just one of them - just one 12 minute video - contains more joy and connection and life affirming love for music than anything Spotify can ever hope to give you. Here's Pallbearer talking about a solo flute album that was recorded in the Egyptian pyramids. Here's Keanu Reeves' band Dogstar recommending Big Star, Tom Petty and New Order. Here's Blood Incantation talking about why they love Steve Hillage and Klaus Schultze. Here's Marc Maron talking about Can and Thelonious Monk. Here's Alvvays talking about why they like Enya. It's fucking great, and even if you don't like the music, you can feel the connections, you can feel the passion in which they talk about how music and art shaped their lives. Why wouldn't you want something like that?
You don't need access to every record ever made (despite the fact spotify doesn't currently contain every record ever made), you need a few records that you'll absolutely love, and to get to that point, you need to do the hard yards I'm afraid - you need to see shows, listen to albums that stink, go and look in a record shop, talk to people, talk to your friends! Make friends with bands! See what they like, see where they came from, get involved in scenes! Read books! Make a zine! Fuck me, the possibilites are *endless*, why you would want to outsource the music discovery element of all this to a fuckin algorithm, I don't know. "oh but I don't have time" yeah, no-one does! Listen to cool mixes then, put the radio on, ask 1 person right now for a recommendation and go from there. It's not hard! In fact, it's never been easier! Or more fun! Fuck me.
Bands/ artists: ask yourself, seriously and deeply. Look in the mirror calmly and just quietly ask yourself: what is Spotify actually doing for me? Look at your numbers, your money, your stats, your place in the world and just ask yourself is it worth it? You might have a billion streams on something, but you've no way of reaching anyone who's streamed it - does that not seem a bit weird to you? All the numbers in the world won't get you any further along because the biz is simply a closed door to you, to me, to all of us in the same boat. Your big shot at the big time will not come because of spotify - it'll come through doing what we've always done: the hard yards. The big numbers might seem important, but they're just a mirage. Would it make the music any better if I just paid for bots to stream it all day? And there's nothing to say that the more organic streams you get, the more spotify will punish you because it just thinks (ie. most probably uses AI) you've done it against the rules. And there's no comeback to that - you can't argue with them because there's no-one there to argue against, just a memory hole of AI chatbots. Game over.
It's all connected my friends - if you don't invest any time in music, then don't be surprised that the next artist that could change your life just jacks it in after a few years - it's really, really fucking difficult out there. Venues are drying up, the money's all gone, we're being squeezed at every single corner, so the least you can do is just sit and listen. Not just to the music, but listen to what the challenges are these days and try, in any small or seemingly insignificant way, to help out. Most of those ways are totally free too! Sign up to a mailing list, watch a video, stream a song, post on your socials about a record you like, do something - do anything, it's all connected.
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