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Spotify re-invented the radio
(lemmy.world)
Can't even seek through songs.
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this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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https://medium.com/brain-labs/why-spotify-struggles-to-make-money-from-music-streaming-ba940fc56ebd
For anyone wanting to rage at Spotify, I'd remind you that Spotify has never actually turned a profit. They lose money on every single paid user, and even more on free users. Tl;dr of the article (sorry for the account-wall) is that Spotify is contractually obligated to give around 70% of every dollar it makes to the labels, who then eat most of it and give a few crumbs to the artists. If you want to support artists, buy their merch, their physical albums, and go to their shows. If they're independent, they may actually see some non-trivial revenue from streaming as well.
Spotify may also be contractually restricted in what level of access they can offer for free - licensing can be very messy - and they also do need to create enough incentive to actually make the paid tier worth it. Given that a month of access to essentially all music ever costs about as much as a single CD did back in the day, it feels like pretty incredible value to me, personally. Yes, you can of course always pirate if you want to deal with the hassle of that, but you should at least keep it in the back of your mind that, if everyone did that, we wouldn't have any music to enjoy at all. If the cost of streaming or buying music is genuinely a burden, I wouldn't blame you that much for pirating, but if you can afford it, I do think the value really is there, if only to avoid the sheer hassle of pirating and managing a local library. And if you really think that streaming is just uniquely corrupt and terrible, CDs haven't gone anywhere.
But if you can easily afford to pay for music and you still refuse to, at least have the honesty to just admit that you want to get things for free and you don't care about anyone involved in creating it getting paid for it, without dressing it up as some kind of morally righteous anti-capitalist crusade. It's normal to be annoyed about having to pay for things; we all are, and we all want to get things for free. Just admit that instead of pretending your true motivation is anything deeper.
This is bunk. If people pirated the record labels out of business we would have less music sure, but there will always be people who make music for the love of the craft, rather than just to line an executive's pocket.
I'm all for directly supporting artists (and I buy albums and merch directly from the band wherever possible), but let's not pretend like the people pulling the strings aren't also responsible for the shitty situation they're in.
Fuck the recording industry and how they treat artists. And I say that as a premium streaming service customer.
The amount of it would still be dramatically reduced. Those people who are making music solely for the love of it already exist today and people are perfectly welcome to listen to them; nothing is stopping them at all.
I think it's probably safe to say that the vast majority of music that is listened to today would not exist if the artists couldn't financially support themselves from it. Do you really disagree with that?
Of course not, and I clearly called out that there would be less music if there wasn't an monetary incentive to do so. But at the same time, record industry titans falling would leave a massive vacuum that would be filled by more independent artists and labels. In the end, there would be less music overall, but there would still be some way for artists to get their cut.
Industry titans aren't music, they're merely the middlemen who craft what they think the public wants to hear and leech money from artists. Them falling would be a boon to the smaller and more niche acts who don't get the chance to explode because they don't have the weight of a major label to push them into the spotlight.
These aren't the only options. I've gotten into Bandcamp and it's great because I can listen to an album multiple times before deciding if I want to buy it. Then when I do, I get a DRM-free FLAC copy to keep forever, and a much larger portion of money goes to the artist.
Sure it doesn't have the extreme catalog of Spotify or things like social playlists. It's very album-based (which I like personally) and takes a little more effort to choose what you listen to. But I've had no difficulty discovering new artists and great tunes.
Of course the company has problems too. The new buyer just laid off half the staff and says they won't recognize the union, so we'll see how it fares. But even if it goes under, I keep the music I bought.
You'll hate to hear what is currently happening with Bandcamp.
Can you elaborate? I can find articles that say there have been layoffs but what does that mean for the platform and how it supports the artists? Is it basically dead and not worth using anymore? I want the large majority of my money to go to the artist not the label or platform shareholders, is there something similar to bandcamp in that regard? Don't suggest physical media please a lot of artist either don't make any or are extremely difficult to find and buy.
They were bought last year by epic games. Now they were sold to songtradr, probably because it wasn't profitable enough for EPiC. As part of that more than half the people were let go.
They'll want their money's worth, so prices fo up, or in this case the percentage cut. My bet is also the enshitification is starting soon. For now it's fine, the future, probably not. But that's just my guess.
As for alternatives, I've got none.
Holy shit, an actually reasonable take on Lemmy regarding subscription services. I genuinely couldn't believe what I was reading and was waiting for the "LOL, JK! Pirate everything, they don't deserve my money and fuck every ad and paid service ine the universe."
Thank you!
ngl, I was expecting to enjoy roasting in downvote hell, so this has been a pleasant surprise haha.
I think a lot this stuff winds up people taking the bad feeling of paying for a thing, which is course completely normal, and twisting it into them somehow being personally wronged rather than simply accepting that yeah, spending money feels bad.
That said, if there is an obvious bad guy in this story, it's pretty clearly the labels, and given how unimportant radio and traditional music marketing is becoming, I would love to see more and more artists operate independently or with small labels and see the oligopoly of the Big 3 fall apart. They may have been somewhat necessary 80 years ago, but nowadays, they simply don't provide anywhere near as much value as they suck up.
Some subscriptions make sense for the consumer, or at least justifiable.
IMO a music service like Spotify is absolutely one of them.
Turning heated seats in a subscription? Burn in hell.
For sure. Subscriptions have to have some sort of value add, and in a world where I was king they'd be illegal otherwise. Spotify: songs you don't own are being delivered to you. Value add. Dropbox: storage you don't own is being provided to you. Value add. BMW's heated seat subscription: you already own the heaters, the controls, the vehicle, and are paying for the battery that energizes those heaters and the gasoline that charges the battery. No value add. That's just rent-seeking.
And speaking of rent...
I definitely did NOT post a comment, read this comment, then delete my comment for feeling foolish.
Jk i did.
Great take 12/10
This is ridiculous. Spotify has been effectively doing dumping as an economic policy, and now that they have a sizeable portion of the market share, they're turning to enshittification to make a profit. I see nothing defensible in that. The fact that they can't turn a profit means that they're trying to drive out competitors with less VC money.
We as consumers are not obligated to ensure healthy profit margins for random megacorps, and especially not ones engaged in anti-competitive behaviour, and it's embarrassing to defend that. I've never used Spotify and I never will, but the idea that they lose money on every user tempts me. I second the other guy in the comments: If it isn't economically viable, it shouldn't exist. It's just wannabe monopolism otherwise
Fundamentally, no industry can survive on VC money forever, so there simply has to be some kind of crunch eventually, either by reducing the product, increasing the price, or both.
I mean, this is a nice sentiment in the abstract, but in actuality, we kind of are if we want the product to continue to exist. Spotify is not going to be able to operate at a loss forever, and while there is a discussion to be had about what level of profit is warranted, I don't think it's a particularly wild thing to say that the answer is at least non-negative profit.
What I genuinely don't understand is how you can simultaneously say that Spotify shouldn't exist if it's not economically viable, and at the same time, you'll also criticize them for any attempt to make it economically viable. If Spotify shouldn't offer the free tier because it's not viable, and you'll also attack them if they stopped offering it, what do you actually want them to do?
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This is such a lame excuse. If the company never turned a profit - they shouldn't exist anymore. Not shittify their service till nobody uses it.