Why Spotify Sucks.
Spotify sucks. This has been known for a long time; Whether it be price increases, taking away revenue from indie musicians, or allowing AI “music” on their platform. More indie musicians are boycotting Spotify by the day, and here’s why.
Daniel Ek, Spotify’s CEO, has now become the chairman of an AI Military startup, investing nearly $700 Million. The European defense firm, Helsing, is currently producing its own drones, aircrafts, and submarines, and is developing a new ‘Centaur’ system that will integrate “advanced AI pilots” into the cockpits of fighter aircrafts.
Since that announcement, more artists have started to boycott the platform.
In July, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard pulled all their music off of Spotify. They are joined in the boycott by bands like Xiu Xiu, Deerhoof, Fiver and the Highest Order, and Kahalari Oyster Cult, an electronic based indie label, pulled all of their music off of Spotify.
If the whole “funding AI generated weapons of war” wasn’t bad enough for you, Spotify also grossly underpays all of the artists on the platform, but especially indie musicians.
In order to even start making money off of one song, the song has to reach at least 1k streams. After that, you can start to earn a whopping $0.003 per stream.
That means that in order for an artist to even make a penny, you have to stream the song three times. If you stream a song 1,000 times, the artist makes only $3.
Also, Spotify has allowed AI music and “ghost artists” on their platform. Meaning, when that AI music gets streamed, they don’t have to pay any artist behind it, decreasing money paid to real musicians.
Leaving Spotify for listeners or artists, is slightly difficult. Some of these bands are privileged to be able to take their music off of Spotify. For others, Spotify can be one of the few ways that labels and artists get noticed and make a chunk of their income.
The easiest way to boycott for artists, is just to not upload more music in the future. Go through your distribution and simply opt-out of Spotify.
For listeners, there are other streaming services to choose from; Apple Music, Tidal, Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Deezer, etc. None of these streaming services will be perfect. Almost every platform will be complicit in the ongoing fight for fair pay.
I encourage readers to look into these platforms and see which one would work best for you.
One of the main concerns is “how will I move my music over?”. Simply use a music library moving service, like Tune My Music, Soundiiz, SongShift, or https://playlists.cloud/. After that, you can delete your Spotify subscription.
If you feel so inclined to help artists and musicians out more, you can go to local shows, buy their physical copies, merchandise, etc. Promote local artists, read indie and magazines, and get involved.
Supporting these artists directly is one of the only ways to start making a change.
Written by Shaughnessy Hoefer