Spotify CEO becomes richer than ANY musician ever, while shutting down site exposing artist payouts
Spotify CEO becomes richer than ANY musician ever, while shutting down site exposing artist payouts
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Honestly, I'm kinda sick of the artists payouts argument. The music industry is incredibly saturated. Like more saturated than anything else we consume daily by far. Having a few million streams sounds really impressive until you realize that the top 1,000 streamed artists all have more than 2 billion streams, and you've probably only even heard of a quarter of them. Some generic singer songwriter dude I went to high school with has a couple million streams, but in the broad scope he's absolutely nobody compared to the big dogs.
It's a competitive field. Physical albums can still sell to collectors, but not like they used to. So if you want to make a living as a band, you have to get creative and find other ways to profit. My personal favorite band realized touring is where they get paid the most, so they do well over 100 gigs a year, all over the world, and they've been doing it for 30 years.
The biggest reason I use Spotify personally is for music discovery. I've discovered countless bands because their algorithm is great and knows what I like. The amount of money I've spent on concert tickets, t-shirts, beers at venues etc all because I heard your song a couple times thanks to an algorithm is lost on folks making the streaming payout argument. If your music is good, it will get me to come see you live. If your live show is good, I'll come back and bring a friend.
Recorded music in my opinion should be an entry point, your argument for why I should come see you instead of the literal 9.8 million other artists on Spotify. Again, it's a competitive ass field. Not to be confused with a 'competitive ass' field which sounds fun.
This argument makes me so mad because you obviously have zero idea how any of it works. The only thing you had right was that it's a competitive and saturated market.
Artists didnt "figure out" touring pays the bills. That is the only way a performing artist can pay the bills. Artists who you would think "oh they made it, and are now setup for life" is just not true. The only ones that are like that are mega ultra pop/rock stars.
I can go on for days but honestly I don't have the bandwidth. Merry Christmas and happy holidays my guy.
To be fair, I worked in the music industry for over a decade booking and promoting shows. I've also worked for two different festivals as well as 5 years managing a radio station, so I have some idea how this all works. It being oversaturated is the point. Just the top 50 artists on Spotify have received over 3,000,000,000,000 streams combined.
I'd love for every talented musician to be able to make a living doing what they love, but people are sheep and will listen to what they're sold and in a crowded space I don't see how that's tenable. When someone comes up with a better system, I'll be on board, but until then I'm gonna keep supporting the bands I love by seeing them live, telling my friends, buying their t-shirts, and encouraging them.
Hope you had a good Christmas too man, cheers
In my personal opinion which everyone will probably hate, any athlete or musician or actor ("entertainment" celebrity) is way overpaid once they hit the top 1%. There is absolutely no way any of them should be billionaires (e.g. Taylor Swift), and probably not even make more than a few million in their lifetime.
On the other hand no CEO should either. Everyone is replaceable, no one should be earning that amount of money. They didn't earn the place from talent and hard work, that someone else didn't put in just as much or be just as talented. They were simply lucky.
Don't even get me started on influencers.
Would anybody pay $200+ to see U2?
sigh apparently...
A bunch of my friends were stoked for the warped tour revival crap and I'm over here like "some of those bands haven't practiced in five years... Go see someone currently good."
It ain't like there's a shortage, but hype and name recognition is all some people care about.
"yeah, they sucked"
Wouldn't they....?
Dude, whatever, but this rent seeking asshole certainly does not deserve this money more than the artists.
But also, I don't care if music is saturated. People can have very niche music tastes. We don't need to all listed to billboard music. I mostly prefer indie stuff and would like they to earn a fair share of my subscription.
I also don't go to any concerts or festivals. It's just not a way I'm interested in listening to music. And I don't need to buy more crap so not gonna buy merch from the hundreds of artists in my favourites.
We're probably on the same page of billionaires should not exist. The argument gets convoluted all the time though and reduced down to rich guy makes more than starving artists, which is misleading in my opinion.
The CEO of Spotify hasn't taken a salary in 7 years. In 2024, he sold $320 million of stock which is only a fraction of his $7.5 billion net worth. Realistically, much of his net worth has likely come from investing his payouts into other things that have nothing to do with Spotify.
The Spotify market cap is $100 billion. Which means investors, retail included, keep pumping money into the company because clearly users keep using it. So is the real issue one guy? Or all of us who want a lot for a little, whether it be unlimited music access, or for our $200 on Robinhood to become $300.
To my original point, in a crowded field of nearly 10 million bands/artists streaming their music on these services, if you care about their success as a consumer the best way to support them currently is live shows and merch. It's okay that you're not into either of those, but even if you could choose which artists your monthly $10 is allocated to, it wouldn't be enough for everyone to get fed with all the competition out there.
Tidal, which is currently the 'best' in terms of streaming payouts pays 3x higher to artists than Spotify. The problem is likely scalability though. If people left Spotify en masse and went to Tidal, their server costs go up, they need to hire more staff etc. They'd end up probably very similar to Spotify on the long run.
And I'm not trying to give you sass or argue, but I feel like your comment supported my point. You said you have hundreds of artists in your favorites, that you don't prefer to go to shows, or want to buy merch, all of which is fine and your choice. But when you extrapolate your hundreds, against my hundreds, against the 9.8 million other bands/artists on these streaming services, $10 a month minus the operating costs of the company that provides that service to us, of course it's not enough. So again, yeah, fuck billionaires, but like, one dude is not the end all be all problem and all I was saying was it's a reduction argument that is overused.
when people criticize the system arguments about how the system works and that we all participate in the system aren't useful arguments.
You can criticize capitalism and own stocks, you'd be an idiot to disadvantage yourself in the game just because you don't like the rules, but you can still suggest a different game
That's like saying visual artists shouldnt make enough money off their prints because people should go to a gallery to buy the originals as their primary income. So they're supposed to not profit off their work, take time off their other job to travel all over just so they can FINALLY maybe make money?
That's unreasonable to ask of musicians and artists.
You can use Spotify without needing to justify it to yourself. It's okay. You can hate what they do and still use their product because it works for you. I bought something off Amazon the other day because I couldnt find it in the store. We all do it. It doesn't absolve those companies of shitty behavior though.
I'm fresh back from a difficult Xmas with the Republican family, now checking Lemmy to relax, and gotta say your simply sane perspective is my biggest smile of the day. Appreciated.
sure but why should the CEO and shareholders keep so much of the generated wealth?
I don't think anyone misses that. That's all pretty obvious stuff. The issues are one step further. Why should this Spotify CEO be making that much off of the backs of the actual content creators? That's the rub. Why is that money going there, to someone who is completely invisible to the people paying the money, rather than to the people making the content they create? Or the people making the platform they use (Spotify devs)? This is ALWAYS the problem when people say X CEO made so much compared to Y service worker.
All this broadening what you have to do to attract a fan base is diluting the point of the art. I listen to music because I like the music. The artists should get compensated for their music. Encouraging them to do other things to make their money dilutes their time and effort. That is to say, if someone's talent is making music, let's give them money for that, not for striking a contract with some merch vendors or whatever other hoops we want them to jump through for their food.
I'd argue though that talent is subjective of course. You said, let's give them money for their talent, making music, but how do we quantify that? If someone write 200 songs real quick but they're all hastily and crappily done, does that get rewarded with money if they themselves argue, hey, I'm talented, this is what I do full time, and I made more songs than other people, so I deserve more? The current way we have to quantify this is by number of streams unfortunately. That doesn't mean of course that T Swift is more talented than that super sick jazz band you like who have all spent their entire lives being classically trained etc, but it's what has garnered people's interest and unfortunately that is the game as it stands today.
It’s almost as if musicians expect they will become rich from streaming… the real money is absolutely in touring and merch sales… like bfd you got streamed
2M times; what does YouTube give for 2M views? Even if it’s 1¢ per stream, that’s only a 20K payout which is a nice payout, but only really half of a single person’s salary for a year. Imagine having to split that 4 ways with bandmates.The biggest reason I use Spotify personally is for music discovery.
YES! This is the single biggest reason to use any streaming service. DISCOVERY! I've been heavily using Jellyfin and Navidrome for media recently. Acquiring media is easy (especially if you speak English), managing media has never been easier.
But the reason I can't convince my wife to drop her subscriptions is due to discovery. And I get it. I feel it too. I have to put in extra effort. What do I download? IDK. I have to spend time to research now without Spotify and then commit to downloading, adding, managing the media. On Spotify/Netflix, etc I don't have to think.