When Bloomberg reported that Spotify would be upping the cost of its premium subscription from $9.99 to $10.99, and including 15 hours of audiobooks per month in the U.S., the change sounded like a win for songwriters and publishers. Higher subscription prices typically equate to a bump in U.S. mechanical royalties — but not this time.

By adding audiobooks into Spotify’s premium tier, the streaming service now claims it qualifies to pay a discounted “bundle” rate to songwriters for premium streams, given Spotify now has to pay licensing for both books and music from the same price tag — which will only be a dollar higher than when music was the only premium offering. Additionally, Spotify will reclassify its duo and family subscription plans as bundles as well.

    • fpslem@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      😂😂😂

      In seriousness, what is the payment to artists like nowadays on TIDAL? Dare I even ask?

      • HEXN3T@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        As far as I know, it’s $0.14 per stream. Spotify’s rate is $0.03. Pretty substantial difference. TIDAL has the highest rate in the streaming industry.

        • gramie@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          I think that you are off by about an order of magnitude. Spotify pays $0.003 per stream, and title apparently pays $0.01 -0.05.

          • HEXN3T@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            1 year ago

            I think this is correct. In cents, this is 0.3¢ and 1-5¢ respectively. Zeroes are too hard for my mushy brain…

  • scaryjelly@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Because of financial problems i switched from streaming back to my old ipod. Moding this old player was one of the best decisions in my career as music listner. The best thing about it is that my phone can run low on battery but i am still able to listen to chumbawamba.

    Decentrelize your hardware!

  • Senseless@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    So… is there an alternative to Spotify for music streaming inside the EU that also has a large DB of metal? Ideally a service that gives a bigger share to the artists.

    • Simon Müller@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      “Inside the EU” in the sense of “its headquartered in the EU” or in the sense of “available in the EU”?

      either way, I’ve heard lots of people here vouch for Tidal.

      • Senseless@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        It’s available in the EU. Found a promising service the other day but it wasn’t available here.

        • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
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          Most of them, honestly. Idk where you looked but Tidal, Amazon music, apple music, dezeer or however it’s pronounced, all were available in Spain. I stocked with Tidal because of the Linux client but apparently theybalso pay artists the most so yay.

          As an edit, you mentioned metal, I listen to lots of mainstream metal bands (powerwolf, system of a dawn, dragonforce, sonar arctica, blind guardian…), some other maybe not so well known ones (tyr, alestorm, korpiklaani), and some local ones that are more rock than metal (vendetta, su ta gar, kaotiko, la polla records).

          • Senseless@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            Nice, thanks for the answer. They also got a 60 day premium test period for 2 euro, so I’ll test it out.

    • noobnarski@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      I dont know if they have all the metal you want, but maybe Youtube Music. One youtuber has stated that he gets about twice as much per view from YT Music than he does from Spotify.

  • TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Please, people, for the love of the gods, stop using Spotify. There are numerous other services that are so much better value for your money and don’t treat artists (as much) like trash.

    And that being said, try to support your beloved artists directly as much as you can. Buying digital downloads or physical media will give them more money than a lifetime of streaming ever would. Plus you get to keep the higher-quality music even if the platform or artist goes tits-up.

    • stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      One of these services needs to release a feature like Spotify Connect, can’t switch without a replacement for that.

      • zelifcam@lemmy.world
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        Spotify Connect

        Unless I’m reading this wrong, is this just Spotify’s solution for listening with friends? If so, that’s far from a Spotify exclusive feature.

        Edit: Okay. So it’s their version of Airplay. It’s too bad Apple never opened it up. Streaming to remote devices has works for almost 20 years now in the Apple ecosystem.

    • IcePee@lemmy.beru.co
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      1 year ago

      While it doesn’t have well known artists, indie streaming Resonate prides itself as having the most generous (or at least, close to) payments to artists. To support this, it has an innovative payment model akin to higher purchase. You pay a little for the first listen to a track, but the price increases through subsequent listens. After 9 listens, you own the track outright. The total cost of ownership is around $0.9

      • trashcan@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Well better than Spotify is a real low bar. I’m on an apple music family plan and I like it but if I weren’t I’d probably get tidal. And they actually dropped the price of their high quality tier.

        • slaacaa@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I got a few months of Apple Music with some device, was happy to ditch Spotify. Not very good, preferred Spotify’s UI and logic, but still a better alternative, and at least not pushing podcasts in my face (which I have zero interest in). I will never use Spotify again

        • applepie@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          And they actually dropped the price of their high quality tier.

          This is what we call competition, kids… i know most people don’t understand the concept but it is supposed to make consumer make a change by providing a good deal.

          This is the opposite we see nowadays, where they fuck you and say it is fine because “reasons”

          • trashcan@sh.itjust.works
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            Here’s a link with more info

            Tidal will no longer keep its high-res, lossless and spatial audio content locked behind a £20/$20-per-month “HiFi Plus” subscription. Instead, it is now moved into a single individual user plan, costing a lower-cost, Spotify-matching £11/$11 per month.

            Previously, users paid that price for CD-quality FLAC files, but needed to opt for the pricier plan to unlock 24-bit/192kHz tracks and Dolby Atmos content.

            That’s now all changed as of 10th April, which saw the new £11/$11 per month plan implemented.

            And specifically to your point

            This price drop only puts further pressure on Spotify to improve the quality of its catalogue, which is currently capped at 320kbps in its Premium tier, and has no native support for spatial audio tracks.

            That alone should be enough to get people considering other options. I’m sure there’s more beyond the big three too.

        • ThirdWorldOrder@feddit.nl
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          1 year ago

          I used Tidal for a year but went back to Apple Music. I don’t understand what people like about Tidal that Apple Music doesn’t offer.

              • trashcan@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                That’s true. I still use Bandcamp. But as someone who listens to a lot of rap when I’m on a track and “view artist” I appreciate Tidal allowing me to choose which artist. Apple music defaults to the firs listed artist.

    • azezeB@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      Could you give me some examples of alternative services? I’m paying spotify right now, but i’ll love to ditch it.

      • TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Sure, although keep in mind this will vary by region due to licensing issues.

        Deezer is probably Spotify’s best direct competitor. They are priced equally (depending on region) and now offer high-res streaming as default instead of a paid extra. They’ve been expanding with new features such as lyrics, collab playlists, song identification, and they recently improved their recommendation system. They also offer a discount if you buy subs yearly instead of monthly so you can save if you like the platform.

        Apple Music is also an option now that Apple has put in some work to make the platform easier to use on non-Apple devices such as the recently added Windows app. It’s not as feature-rich as Deezer but if you don’t use those added features anyway then it is an option. I personally would phrase it as “has less bloat”. If you own any Apple devices already then it will have tighter integration with them.

        Tidal is the old favourite of audiophiles and music appreciators. They have been expanding their platform with new features and music and, somewhat recently, have also lowered their prices. High-res streaming is now included in the base sub tier. All of these alternatives pay artists more than Spotify but Tidal has one of the best artist payouts.

        Qobuz is similar to Tidal and is a premium platform with a focus on quality. They are a newer service and are still expanding their regions, so I don’t have personal experience with them as they only recently opened up to my country. Their price and feature set looks competitive, though, and their UI does look slick. They also have better artist payouts.

        Amazon Music apparently has better payouts for artists but Amazon is a shit company so I’ve never looked into them further. I’ll include YouTube Music here as well which has shitty payouts and is a shitty company.

        • ApollosArrow@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The interesting thing about Tidal is that is was originally owned by artists (Jay-Z, Beyoncé; Kanye West; Madonna; Jason Aldean; Alicia Keys; Arcade Fire; Coldplay’s Chris Martin; Rihanna; and deadmau5) Who have since sold off a majority share to Block, while Jay-Z kept a board seat and other artists still have shares. Curious if it will last.

        • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Tidal is the only one for me since it’s the only one with an unofficial HiFi Linux client, which is a wrapper around the web version but with HiFi enabled.

          I’m happy reading that they are decent on pay for artists.

        • ThirdWorldOrder@feddit.nl
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          1 year ago

          Apple Music also has Dolby atmos and much higher quality audio files compared to Spotify.

          The only thing Spotify has on everyone is excellent playlists. I just use SongShift to copy the playlists over.

          Tidal is okay but I prefer Apple Music since it has a better UI, cheaper price and is more user friendly for my non-audiophile family members.

        • narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          What’s the USP of Deezer over Apple Music now that the latter has lossless streaming as well (and live lyrics for longer)?

        • fpslem@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 year ago

          Amazon Music

          I invested heavily in the Amazon Music ecosystem, I bought hundreds of albums on there, and the platform is now very nearly unusuable. I cannot even listen to the songs that I paid for without also having to listen to ads. And the Android app now hides the downloads in some hidden folder so I can’t even download them and listen to them on another player. It makes me furious.

          I’ve actually gone back to CDs, if you can believe it. It’s kind of nice sometimes, especially for full album plays, but I do miss a nice big playlist of my favorite songs from all artists.

          • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I can believe it. I still have multiple libraries of physical media, and I pretty much never buy anything new that I can’t likewise physically own. I might rip and make MP3’s or transcode or emulate, or whatever, for convenience, but sometimes it’s just nice to be able to stick the disk or cartridge in the machine and have it just work without any of the associated modern ancillary bullshit.

            Everything wants to be a service now. I just find that so irritating.

        • redfellow@sopuli.xyz
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          None of these have good app support compared to Spotify, sadly. Not supported by my car, nor my Linux desktop, or home speakers.

          Oh and Deezer pays even less to artists than Spotify.

          • thesystemisdown@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Oh and Deezer pays even less to artists than Spotify.

            I don’t think that’s accurate. Care to provide your source?

      • gila@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        As an Apple hater; Apple Music. Cheaper, good cross-platform frontends, more equitable to artists (though by no means satisfactorily so), has a Wrapped equivalent (though who actually cares). Maybe Spotify added something it doesn’t have in the several years since I switched but, I doubt it

          • Codilingus@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Tidal on Linux is a crap shoot, which sucks because pipewire is awesome for HiRes music since it can change sample rate on the fly to match a source. Best bet is Firefox and their web player, and using the middle tier “high” that’s blue colored, and letting pipewire play @ 44100

          • towerful@programming.dev
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            1 year ago

            Unfortunately, I’ve only found a wrapped up web client thing. Using the web page is probably similar.

            The wrapped up web client works better than the native client on windows, tho. Not sure on sound quality, I haven’t had an issue tho

            • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              If you are talking about Tidal HiFi, the UI might be similar to the web version but apparently itbruns on a modified version of chrome that allows HiFi music? I did test it some months ago and the quality difference is noticeable.

              • towerful@programming.dev
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                1 year ago

                Yeh, the electron wrapped Tidal HiFi for Linux. I just checked the GitHub, and it says it supports High and Max settings thanks to Widevine.
                I swapped from Spotify to Tidal on windows and was blown away. Shortly after I started daily-driving Linux. I haven’t done an A/B between the Linux electron version and the windows desktop version, but it hasn’t annoyed me like Spotify did.

                • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  According to another commenter chromium on Linux is hard capped on quality, so although it’s noticeable vs the web version, it’s not actual Max quality. I haven’t noticed it although my headphones should be able to show the difference (sony MDR 7506, I know, yes, for everything, people say that it doesn’t sound nice, I don’t care I love it) so idk.

        • Neuromancer49@midwest.social
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          1 year ago

          Thanks for the recommendation, I was worried they would be missing some of my artists but they had 99% of my music. Can’t wait to ditch Spotify.

          ETA: dear lord the sound quality is so much better. I had no idea what I was missing.

          • Logi@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Yeah, happily using Tidal as well. Haven’t missed any music that wasn’t also missing from Spotify, so…

          • towerful@programming.dev
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            1 year ago

            Yeh, it’s pretty amazing.
            Only thing I miss from Spotify are the user generated playlists, where I can search for something like “liquid drum and bass” and get a bunch of playlists

    • Granbo's Holy Hotrod@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s too convenient. Most people just want easy access and don’t even think of the downstream impacts. If a song or two goes unavailable, probably won’t notice. There is gonna need to be an alternative that is cheap and feature rich along with Spotify missing some steps. It’s here for awhile.

      • TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You are not wrong, but there are other services that are just as convenient and for less money. Spotify knows they are the “default” music streaming platform and they are exploiting that.

        • Granbo's Holy Hotrod@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          A quick Google puts the top two at Apple and Amazon. So that is a big no for me boss. I am pretty sure the next ones listed are just torrent front ends. I have a life now so no time for that…spotify it is.

            • BakerBagel@midwest.social
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              1 year ago

              Audio quality is better and they pay the artists the most of all the major streaing platforms. I’ve been using Tidal for 2 years and have been very happy with the switch

  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    Gotta love all my friends who are really into music who happily use Spotify and don’t give a shit it is a weapon of class warfare being used on musicians disguised as a music player!

    I basically lost all my drive to make something of my love of creating music seeing how little anyone in my society actually values music or musicians in terms of material support and reward, it is honestly pretty scary how broken music has become.

    • fpslem@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      I really wish there was a better alternative to push my friends to. I do use Bandcamp, so at least I know more of my $$$ are going to the artists and I can take the music with me, but I’m not sure about the platform long-term.

      • jennwiththesea@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I use Napster. I chose it way back when Spotify paid for the Rogan podcast, from a list of platforms that pay artists more. I’m not sure if that’s true any longer, but look it up! I’ve been really happy with their service. (And it’s really full circle for me, since I used their original service decades ago.)

        ETA I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this site, but it says Napster is still one of the top-paying platforms.

      • Resonosity@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I just downloaded Bandcamp, and after searching for my favorite artists, almost none are on the platform aside from 1-2. Did a search on like 20-25. This is why I use Spotify. Maybe if artists started acknowledging Bandcamp as a legitimate alternative to Spotify, then of course I’d listen there. But right now most stuff by my favorite bands are either covers or remixes.

        • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          Chicken and the egg, be the change you want to be, but also I am not absolutist about using Spotify.

          I just think Spotify and other streaming services are vehicles of class warfare against musicians that also happen to play music. I understand if you like the playing music part!

      • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        As a musician and composer it really took the life out of me as a musician was seeing an alternative to bandcamp never really form and then one day waking up to it bought by Epic.

        I didn’t cry that day, but I might as well have, it made me extraordinarily sad to see that headline and I imagine there are actually countless talented musicians out there who will never actuate on their creative vision because the environment for music production is at this point, downright hostile towards artists and musicians.

        It takes an obscene amount of work to take a song from something that has promise to being as polished as listeners demand nowadays, and they won’t even give your song a change on actual speakers. You have to twist and warp your music so it sounds good on essentially monophonic phone speakers with shitty frequency coverage or otherwise nobody will give it a try on speakers for actually listening to music.

        🙃

        • deranger@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Not sure if this is exactly good news, but Epic Games doesn’t own it anymore, it was sold to Songtradr.

          • trashcan@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            the largest music licensing platform in the world

            Doesn’t sound too good to me. Bandcamp used to be where I could get music from smaller artists who couldn’t afford clearing samples (as they weren’t making money) and I worry a lot of that will be lost.

            • deranger@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              Still is, for now. I run a small vaporwave tape label via Bandcamp. No significant changes under Epic Games or Songtradr that I’ve noticed. That could change, though.

              • trashcan@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                That’s how it always begins.

                But on a more positive note, care to share the label or more about your experience about it? With regards to Bandcamp and more generally.

                • deranger@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  Sure, https://mysticspools.bandcamp.com/

                  Most of it is pretty fun- find music, reach out to artist, make a few tapes. We just do small runs of 25-100 tapes depending on how much will sell. The worst part IMO is order fulfillment, you either pay a third party a boatload or you DIY and packing 100 cassettes is a bit of a drag. Coming up with good art if the artist doesn’t already have something is quite difficult. The label is on a short hiatus for that reason, but I think we’ll do some more tapes now that some labels have dried up. There’s waxing and waning periods when it comes to these little micro labels, and I can tell people are feeling the economic squeeze.

                  The most fun part is mastering to tape and dubbing. I’ve got a Nakamichi Dragon and 3x NAD 6300, and I’ve dubbed probably 500-600 tapes across them all. Dunno what it is about tapes, but I really like em.

              • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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                1 year ago

                It will change, I promise you. I am so confident I will literally bet my girlfriend’s chihuahua on it.

                • trashcan@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  Everyone on Lemmy and the fediverse as a whole should be aware of this pattern. I just hope something can fill in before it gets too bad.

                  I’m keeping an eye on Faircamp.

          • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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            🤷‍♂️ not really, none of these corporations are real in any sense that matters other than sucking up actual companies that actually make the world a better place and mining the goodwill out of them until they are cynical, worthless husks that corporations use to fleece consumers into buying products from before they realize their favorite company/brand is dead in everything but name.

          • ozymandias117@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            As bad as Epic is, probably worse…

            Even though Bandcamp was profitable the new CEO said this after buying it

            the financial state of Bandcamp has not been healthy

            So they’re probably looking for any way to cut costs. They fired half of the staff on day 1, including anyone who tried to unionize

        • Methylchloroisothiazolinone@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          I see a dystopian future where all art is made by ai and approved by big brother. Artists were always a source of wrongthink afterall. It will be clean, sanitary, and devoid of humanity.

          • GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip
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            1 year ago

            100% where we are headed with this backwards capitalist approach to ai. Make bots churn out art, films, music, anything creative really, so the proles have more time for mindless manual labor

    • thesmokingman@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      Walk me through this.

      Before Spotify, I’d buy a record (physical or digital) and listen to that. I pay the artist once. After Spotify, I buy a record and listen to it on Spotify. I pay the artist the normal record price and there’s a long tail from stream payouts (unless they don’t reach the payout threshold).

      Before Spotify, if someone heard a song and didn’t buy the record, they didn’t pay the artist. After Spotify, if they still don’t buy a record, the artist now earns from stream payouts.

      Finally, before Spotify, if someone bought a record but stopped buying after Spotify, the artist loses that record purchase. This is definitely bad. Was Spotify the real reason? Would something other than Spotify have pulled them away? What levels of fame are materially affected by this?

      Do artists have to pay to be on Spotify? Is that the issue?

      • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        the artist now earns from stream payouts.

        Do artists have to pay to be on Spotify? Is that the issue?

        The issue is that artists don’t make any actual money on Spotify, they are being forced to put their music on Spotify because that is where you have to put your stuff if you want to be a successful recording musician.

        Meanwhile a couple of years ago the Spotify ceo said in defense of completely destroying any semblance of money making from recording music:

        “There is a narrative fallacy here, combined with the fact that, obviously, some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape, where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough,” said Ek.

        https://www.reddit.com/r/musicmarketing/comments/mlemlh/why_youre_9998_likely_to_never_make_real_money/

        Streaming is great, but the structural evisceration of musicians and the value of labor in composing and producing is basically negative at this point given the huge amount of time that must go into a track to get it 100% there and ready for listeners.

        • thesmokingman@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          The thread you linked says what I said.

          I’ve been doing DIY music since I was a kid. The vast majority of bands are never going to make any money ever. Spotify didn’t change that. Streaming didn’t cause that. The reality of every kid with a guitar thinking music is about making money not having fun is what did that.

          • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            I don’t subscribe to this cynical of a viewpoint, it isn’t inevitable that recording music is not valued labor, it is a cultural choice same as any other.

            I live in the richest country on earth, it is a subjective choice to devalue the labor of musicians and decouple it from the profits of music companies.

            • thesmokingman@programming.dev
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              1 year ago

              Who the fuck has a label? Do you know anything about music that isn’t already incredibly corporate? When was the last time you went to a DIY show and bought handmade merch off a band touring in their minivan? Compare that to the last time you bought a record from a label or merch from an online store run through not the band.

              There are more than likely 300+ bands in a 20 to 50 mile radius around you. Do you support all of them as much as you’re pushing people on the internet to support all music? What about the really bad cover bands? Them too?

              Your statements paint a picture that you have no idea what I meant by “levels of fame” because fucking no one makes money off music unless you get lucky. There’s just too much because music is fun.

              • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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                1 year ago

                Your statements paint a picture that you have no idea what I meant by “levels of fame” because fucking no one makes money off music unless you get lucky. There’s just too much because music is fun.

                Again I don’t see any quantitative evidence to accept this framing of the status quo as inevitable or reflective of some fundamental tendency of human artists to overproduce art.

                Capitalists have systematically stole the labor of musicians and normalized and absolutely absurd vision of austerity where the only way to make money is by doing things that people don’t want to do. It is absurd, and this ideology is pretty easy to locate the motivation behind, it makes us good compliant factory workers.

                • thesmokingman@programming.dev
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                  1 year ago

                  So you’ve bought every album from every artist you’ve ever listened to? Or, like the rest of us, do you have a limited amount of resources and have made strategic decisions about who to support? Because if you’re not dropping $20 in the tip jar of the next busker you see, you’re a huge fucking hypocrite.

                  I have not devalued music at all. You have, multiple times. You’ve also said that music has to be about money which is pretty fucking capitalistic. I’ve highlighted it’s about fun multiple times. You keep advocating for labels and ignore DIY which means you’ve already established a class system in music. You’ve provided no quantitative evidence to show you support any music and seem to hype up record labels whose business is built on licensing.

                  Should everyone get paid for all their music? Fuck yeah. Can I afford to pay every band? Fuck no. Did Spotify or streaming or even the fucking radio do that? Nope. Sure fucking didn’t. The market saturation did because music isn’t about money, it’s about fun. If you want it to be your job, good fucking luck. That’s just simple commerce. Not capitalism. If everyone on the commune is just making bead necklaces and there’s only one customer looking to buy one necklace, is that customer fucking all the people on the commune except the person they bought from?

    • 👍Maximum Derek👍@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      All the streamers suck; plus Spotify definitely sucks the most and it has the most subscribers. So I do my best to support artists I love by buying their albums in some physical form (vinyl if possible because it encourages active listening), t-shirts when I need a t-shirt, fan clubs, etc. It’s all I can think to do.

      • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        It’s all I can think to do.

        I think you thought of a lot of good things to do!

        I don’t mean to be overly cynical about people, this is a problem of systems and normalization of things that shouldn’t be normalized primarily, the people are mainly just trying to survive.

        sigh

          • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            Many of us here might even be toxic in other contexts (I am certainly not perfect at keeping away from being overly negative or argumentative with people), but what matters is which version of someone we invite in the door to our community.

            We can invite in any version of people we want, and I agree in general I think the fediverse invites in the better version of people and it is one of the primary reasons I love this weird, loosely connected blob of non-corporate social media.

      • mihies@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        The thing is, you’re buying from their record labels, not directly from artists. And then it depends on their contract how much they actually get. But they are still getting more from it, I guess.

    • trashcan@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      How much do they really care? I’m not usually a quality snob, especially since I frequently use gear of varying quality making it moot, but wouldn’t most people who are really into music at least consider the competition that offers higher quality files at similar if not the same price?

      Or are they the type to only have local FLAC with their DAC? Because I like my collection but streaming is still worth the convenience for jumping into a new album.

      • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        I have spent a lotttt of time messing around with music production and learning what is pseudo-science (a whole fuckton of it) and what is real science. In all of the ABx testing I have done, read about, and seen demonstrated in person myself a quality MP3 with a decent bitrate encoding (idk 128kps or so?) using a decent algorithm and hell even a sampling rate of 41khz will produce an audio recording that when played back on a hifi audio system and level matched (EXTREMELY IMPORTANT, it is well known in mastering and mixing that a louder mix always sounds better at first glance) is indistinguishable from the source .wav file to the human ear (I don’t care how super human you claim your ear is).

        People make this silly mistake of thinking that digitization introduces these sharp staircase edges into audio waveforms, which is actually kind of a hilarious misconception (which I completely understand, not trying to insult people’s intelligence) because the entire idea of digitizing a waveform into a bandwidth-limited digital waveform is utterly reliant on every the analog reproduction of a digital square wave/stair step function with a voicecoil and diaphragm, physical hardware components with shape, size and crucially mass, must necessarily create a smooth analog waveform because physical hardware components have mass and momentum, they aren’t theoretical ideas. It is better to think of a bandwith limited digital waveform as a series of movement commands for an RTS unit in Starcraft 2. The unit will naturally path between discrete points in a way that creates fluid movement, fundamentally it wouldn’t make any sense for the unit to just teleport directly to where you click and then teleport directly to where you click next etc…

        • trashcan@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Believe I’ve gone down a similar path. I agree, but I assumed the layman dedicated music fan would at least be curious.

          And on another note we need more discussion music and audio production around Lemmy.

    • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Soon we’ll have AI music generators and most people will be perfectly happy to only ever listen to what those churn out.

      • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        I mean, we’ll see.

        Maybe.

        Maybe we will just look back at the period that is rapidly coming to a close as a golden era of music (and video games for that matter) where the tools became sophisticated, affordable and distributed for music production but venture capital hadn’t yet destroyed any last vestiges of the monetary value of musician’s labor (audio engineer’s included) in recording contexts.

        Of course, I am sure Spotify and other streaming services are coming around to the value of recorded music being unsustainably low, I mean everybody knows it deep down right? That is why they are going to continue to raise their prices. From the perspective of Spotify, the artists that actually do the work of making Spotify a valuable company aren’t in principle excluded from their share of the pie when the line starts to go back up and the company has a chance to reverse some of the belt tightening and sacrifices everybody had to make to keep the lights on… but every single one of these vapid losers believes deep down in their bones that the rules of the game say that it isn’t the responsibility of shareholders or upper management of Spotify to just hand the musicians their fare share of the increasing profits, or even alert them to the fact that profits are in fact increasing in the first place. Musicians are not the customers nor the shareholders of Spotify, they are the commodified, interchangeable contractors that aren’t much different than the day laborers who hang out outside of most Home Depots in the US looking for handyman work.

        This is like when the English saw that the only crop Irish peasants could afford to grow on the side for subsistence farming to feed their families, potatoes, were getting destroyed by a potato blight, and decided that it would send the wrong message to let those Irish peasants have any of the rest of the crops that Irish farmers were growing to sell to foreign markets to simply pay the English rent for their farmscrops that were not significantly impacted by the potato blight because it would make the Irish reliant on handouts and encourage a problematic tendency towards apathy and entitlement stubbornly latent in the Irish population.

        🔥 Burn 🔥 It 🔥 Down 🔥
        (with love)

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      In my experience those kinds of people are Ice Spice fans.

      Who think that SSSniperwolf arriving at another person’s house live on Insta and doxxing them during a manic episode is ‘slay’.

  • redfellow@sopuli.xyz
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    I mean, Spotify is a great service for the consumer. One reasonable monthly fee for most of the music in the world.

    If a similar video streaming service existed for 40€/month, I’d pay for it in a heartbeat. Now I have a plethora of arr apps and a vpn, and Plex. But it’s a hassle sometimes.

    We’re all aware of the issues it created for the artists, and I’d be willing to double the fee if that money directly went to the artists, but this is where the capitalist model fails, as that won’t maximize the profits for shareholders.

    If we ever come up with a way to fix the underlying greed models that come with publicly traded companies, that would be great.

    As it stands, it is what it is, but I’m glad we have this, instead of a “different Spotify per music publisher”.

  • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Stop using this shitty service. There are much better options. I like Tidal, but even Apple music seems decent compared to Spotify.

    The audio quality alone should be telling people just how bad spotify is.

    • Evrala@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      If I still used Apple products I’d still be using Apple Music. Good sound with the ability to upload my own music library to mesh with it seamlessly to cover the gaps of what wasn’t available? It was my ideal music streaming service.

      Now I’m on Deezer but every streaming service has gaps in their catalog for what I listen to.

      Slowly working on getting my own music library together to get rid of streaming services entirely. Plan on using Plex for now, but eventually I’ll just move to a phone that has an SD card slot.

      Mix of purchases and stuff downloaded and saved from Deezer.

      • PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I am okay with YouTube premium with the music app. I am no audiophile so I can have all the gaps filled with music videos and just play the audio.

    • BigPotato@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I dunno. Spotify stopped billing me for the family plan I was paying for some years ago and at this point I’ve got five accounts mooching off of them and I’m using powershell to download gigabytes worth of music off of them…

      Like, Spotify is evil but at this point I’m a negative number for them every month. I’m gonna keep on going until they decide to shut off the hose.

      Oh, but I do go to concerts and buy records.

  • oxlikesmath@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Just download music from 3rd party sites. Not that hard, don’t understand why you are complaining so much.

  • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The very great and very funny singer Neko Case made a playlist on Spotify and entitled it “PAY FOR IT YOU CHEAP PRICKS!!!” I howled.

  • lepinkainen@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    No matter what you thing about Apple, Apple Music pays multiple times more than Spotify

    And Tidal pays multiples more than Apple.

    It’s up to you if you want to support artists or not.

        • Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Radio Free Fedi or @RFF is a community internet radio station which plays music from artists on the fediverse. From their own website at https://radiofreefedi.net/ :

          radio free fedi is consent, agency and artist celebrating community radio from the fediverse. We actively and openly present contributing artists’ information with the hopes that you will drop-in, discover, and then LEAVE? That’s right, RFF has no interest to be an end-point for hyper focused consumption. We also do not have the resource to provide infinite custom streams and we love the community to not do soulless algorithms. We want to foster organic discovery and discourse. We want to generate support for independent artists on the platforms and methods of their choice, no judgement. Support independent and fedi artists!

          I’ve discovered loads of awesome and unique music on it :)

          • Cris@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Dude that sounds rad! Thanks for mentioning them and explaining what they are, I’ll have to check that out!

            • Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              It fuckin is rad! I love it so much! I mostly listen to the Comfy channel but I’ve found some wicked stuff on the main channel too. There’s usually a link so you can find them on the fedi or buy a track too. Maybe it’s because of the fediverse/freedom/generosity ethic and I’m in a biased bubble but everything on there is just so genuinely good, even if it’s not normally my taste. I’ve had a bunch of really sweet evenings listening to it and my gf always asks what the track is when I put it on. I kinda want to volunteer for the channel tbh. Check it out and feel free to DM me with what you think! I’m spending more time on Lemmy than Mastodon these days, so I’m not seeing people mention them via hashtags as much. RFF and Pixelfed are basically the best thing about the internet right now imo :)

    • Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz
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      1 year ago

      I’ve been with Tidal since. I miss the Spotify recommendation algorithm but that’s it.

      • lingh0e@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        I’ve been a paying member for almost a decade. I’ve been training it that entire time with what I do and don’t like. I’ve also been using their suggested playlists for years and further refining what they recommend. So their algorithm is a huge part of it for me. I am constantly finding songs and artists I wouldn’t have been exposed to otherwise.

        That said, I’ve been holding my nose while I renewed the service for the past couple of years. I’m willing to part ways for Tidal if it’s a comparable service with better benefits to the artists.

      • Jarix@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        i paid for the best tier Tidal for a year and it was a worse experience than spotify. Their catalogue is incomplete compared to spotify