I see spotify more like as an audio-based customer acquisition channel, like the radio.
Maybe it could build in some kind of "donate" patreon-like feature into the app. I wish Soundcloud had this.
In the early 1990s I worked for Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond's record label, back when they were dominating the UK and European pop charts as The KLF (https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/07/20/537708922/...).
They never made a pound touring. Their success and much of their impact was tied to European club playlists, the sales of singles, album sales, and the media.
You can talk to many other artists from that era who did depend on touring and merch, but also used distribution and sales of singles and albums (and advances on record deals) to establish themselves.
While plastic media was doomed long before Spotify, this "audio-based customer acquisition channel" is, by design, set up to benefit Spotify, record labels, and top artists, in that order.
Everyone else in the 98.6% tier gets the scraps.
yeah because they're getting 1.4% of the listens.
It's not because Spotify is a meritocracy for music.
I have created something similar with SoundRat (https://soundrat.com) that connects more with the patreon-like features and makes listening of music free but gives fans an option to donate to artists and get some perks for doing so.
Yup, so why start now, right? That would go against tradition.
> That would go against tradition.
a tradition of it being unprofitable, perhaps. It just goes against the numbers. Small artists just don't get enough listens.
Everybody complains, but you aren't entitled to success. Once you're popular, there's plenty of ways to monetize.
The only solution is basic income, because you probably aren't gonna live off your music otherwise.
Each location could have their share of top talent to perform for the region.
Ah, Spotify, famously a win-win for all its stakeholders, including the musicians who can no longer make a living by recording music.
The guys who always get paid are the majors, and the majors are the one who ensure the top artists (who are signed to thos labels) are always given the majority of the share.
I don't even agree that they deserve it. The aggregate musical output is valuable, sure, but individually it's commoditized and worthless for all but the top musicians.
Ah, you surely mean recording companies and copyright holders that take up to 70% of Spotify's revenue and pay out pennies to artists. Why don't you ask those companies where all the money is going?
> Why can't he share his largesse with the builders who make it possible for his service to exist?
Well, he is sharing it. At IPO Spotify disclosed that had paid "$9.7 billion in royalties to artists, music labels and publishers since it launched in 2006." [1] The thing is, Spotify doesn't have direct contracts with artists (and can't afford to for fear that the Big Four[2] will pull their content). So the question is: where did those billions go?
Let's read the article you're commenting on (emphasis mine):
--- start quote ---
Spotify pays the major record companies a 52% share of all net receipts attributable to streams of their artists. This was a figure the parties agreed to during negotiations in 2017, and it’s believed to have remained unchanged since.
According to Spotify’s Q2 results, the firm generated €1.89 billion ($2.05 billion) in the three months to end of June. We can therefore broadly assume that 52% of this money, or $1.07 billion, is being paid in recorded music royalties to labels and distributors, who will carry a portion of that over to their artists.
--- end quote ---
The article then continues being disingenuous pretending that 100% of the money that Spotify pays out goes to artists and that Spotify is solely responsible for that money.
So what is that "portion that labels and distributors carry over to their artists"?
Oh, look, only 12% of music revenue goes to artists [3] But obviously, it's the sole responsibility of Spotify (and Amazon, and Apple), and not of the Big Four that hold the music world hostage.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/28/how-spotify-licenses-and-pay...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry#Consolidation
[3] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180819/00051140461/only-...
He's made his billions on the backs of builders, the musicians who can record music all day long but will be lucky to receive pennies for a million listens. The 98.6% of artists outside of Spotify's top tier are making an average of $12 per month (https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/features/spotify-million-ar...).
Why can't Ek share his largesse with the builders who make it possible for his service to exist?