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by oldtownroad 884 days ago
People say this but don’t understand the reason artists don’t make much per-listener on Spotify etc. is because of their record deals, it’s nothing to do with Spotify. If you’re an independent artist you can live comfortably off of a small Spotify audience!

The stories you hear about an artist getting pennies on millions of listens are because of their record deals and the credits on their work. You can’t solve this with software: artists enter these deals long before software is involved.

I’d argue that Spotify (and YouTube and TikTok etc) have done more for musicians because they’ve made it very easy to make a living when you have a core listener base. Software has not rescued major label artists from major label contracts because… how can it?
2 comments
__MatrixMan__ 884 days ago
The artist signed a contract with a label. I was not party to that contract, I'm not bound by it. I can send them money if I wish.

If only they'd give me an address (of a smart contact which would distribute the funds appropriately. I want to pay the parties whose names I don't know also, provided they're involved in actually creating the art.)

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1shooner 884 days ago
>If you’re an independent artist you can live comfortably off of a small Spotify audience!

Didn't Spotify recently stop paying any royalties for tracks with less than 1k streams?

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oldtownroad 884 days ago
I mean small relative to big artists, not small in absolute numbers. If you have less than 1k streams you probably have less than 50 listeners which is basically nothing.

A (relatively) small audience would be made up of tens of thousands of listeners generating millions of streams. There are many, many independent artists that fall into this group.

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1shooner 883 days ago
According to Spotify's data report site[0], there were 17,800 artists grossing over $50k from Spotify (7,800 being between 50k and 100k), out of a denominator of ~8 million, or 200k if you use Spotify's estimate of “professional or professionally aspiring”.

I don't know much at all about the music industry, so I don't really have a conclusion from those data, but that seems low. It also does put a (not insignificant) number on the independents accomplishing what you describe.

0. https://loudandclear.byspotify.com/

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