Well, and the fact that Spotify has never been profitable. And Spotify has a low royalty rate.
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Spotify Trials New Option to Turn Off Personalized Recommendations
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This is very negligible. The rate per stream numbers that are bandied about online misrepresent the way streaming royalties are paid.
All of the services are paying pennies to artists and some of them (Apple, Amazon, Google in particular) are run by companies that could afford to pay much more but they don't.
Spotify just changed their policy in such a way that I will literally not get paid royalties for my music, and any royalties I would have generated will go to higher performing artists. Even if it's a couple dollars, while it may be negligible to you, for me it's basically theft.
Right now I do, yes. I'm in the process of pulling my tracks from Spotify now since my audience is too small to justify leaving it there for Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift to make a few extra cents.
Fair enough, tough place to be. I suppose pulling from the platform isn't an option.
How do you feel about the rate that Amazon, Apple et al pay royalties?
Easy for them to say 'we pay more than Spotify' but when their revenues are hundreds of billions compared to tens of billions in Spotifys case you would expect that really.
It's a bit more but honestly I have so few listeners it's inconsequential in that regard. I think Apple pays $0.01 per stream where Spotify only pays $0.0033.
I'm a local club DJ and only record songs here and there that mostly get streams when I perform at work events or post the link on socials so it's definitely not a source of income. I was using the royalties to basically cover the renewal fees for years. It's mostly a matter of principle for me now. Spotify doesn't care if my songs are gone but I care if they're redistributing what should've gone to me and other lesser known performers to people who already have streamers.
It's literally stealing from the disadvantaged to give to the advantaged, it delegitimizes my art simply because i dont have a huge audience yet, and I'm absolutely baffled how anyone thought this was acceptable.
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Spotify has in my opinion the best recommender engine for music on this planet. I tried Apple Music and Deezer. Apple music performed the worst. For some reason they thought I would like black rap... ehm no!
Apple wants you to gravitate to hip hop. I don’t know why, but I can guess.
I wish it would allow me to block specific artists or songs. That would solve so many problems even without them having to improve their algorithms.
Wow you're an absolute visionary, I had never even considered that. Thank you for this profound contribution to the conversation.
And prevent DJ from playing the same 50 songs over and over and over and over… I want some NEW music, that’s what I thought DJ was going to be!!
Because Spotify doesn’t completely wreck and confuse your vast collection of personal mp3s/song files, which worsens the overall experience to the point of dismay.
Apple once had a great app and, assuming it, capable designers. What changed?
And that's totally fair. On the other hand, lately I've been more of the philosophy to use software and services that just do one thing and focus entirely (or almost entirely) on that.
For Spotify, music is their one product. If they neglect it, that's their whole business. For Apple, Music is a line item on a budget. A big one, but still just one of many. They have so many more irons in the fire that every now and then they get around to adding things like a favorites playlist.
Definitely more expensive to do it that way but there's something to be said for the old Unix philosophy of doing one thing, doing it well, and interoperating well with others. That last bit is all too often neglected, but is an important part of it. Spotify has Spotify Connect, a whole Proper Noun devoted to connecting to anything that will let them and playing from anywhere. Apple more or less expects you to be using an Apple Product to listen to Apple Music.
This is not in defense of Spotify in particular, just food for thought.
Management incentives / interest / internal politics / etc inside a trillion dollar company for whom Music is just one of many, many products.