[coldtea]

>It’s a lot of plastic. A lot of waste.

Compared to the plastic waste produced daily it's a drop in the ocean. And at least this is kept and collected.

>even though it arguably is the best and easiest income generator for artists

Digital is nowhere "the best and easiest income generator" for musicians. A common complain from musicians is how, with the advent of online music, sales craterred, and musicians despite having the same or more fans, and be able to fill the same venues, have lost the living they could make by selling even 50K records (with a favorable indie label split).

[sehansen]

During the entirety of the 90's 11883 records sold at least 50 000 units[0]. If we assume $3 royalty each[1] that's ~1200 artists making $150 000 or more in an average year. That's ~$300 000 adjusted for inflation.

In 2024 1450 artists got over $1 000 000 in royalty from Spotify.[2] Additionally 2.3% (~276 000) earned at least $1000 and 100 000 earned at least "almost $6000".

It seems to me that there now is a long tail of artists making a few thousand a year on Spotify that assume they would have sold tens thousands of records each year in the 90s. E.g. the 100 000th most popular artist on Spotify assuming they would have sold as well as the 1200th most popular artist in 1998.

The more likely case is that the top ~10 000 artists would have made less back then than they do now and the rest would have made essentially zero dollars from selling records back in the 90s.

0: https://bestsellingalbums.org/decade/1990-238 1: https://dailybruin.com/1998/09/27/paying-the-price 2: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2025/03/12/spotify-loud-and...

[TheOtherHobbes]

You're not comparing like for like.

The $1m is gross income, pre-royalty slicing. The actual payout to artists on a label will be much lower.

The $3/album is post-royalty at the other end of the telescope, and the actual number varied by territory. The gross income to labels would be much higher.

So the final premise is incorrect. The real winners - the household name bands, artists, and soundtracks - made incredible numbers from their royalty slices which are impossible on Spotify today, especially once labels take their cut.

Drake may be getting lifetime sales of $400m, but a chunk of that goes to UMG for distribution.

Meanwhile there were vital scene subcultures around indie/rave/dance/hiphop where niche artists turned DIY music production, pressing, and distribution into a workable fairly well-paid full-time career. Those numbers mostly weren't logged.

Spotify dilutes the scene effect because everyone is competing with everyone else, globally, so it's harder to get exposure, even in a specific niche.

[dale_glass]

I think that makes sense and was in a way unavoidable.

Compare a physical shop with Spotify. A physical shop has limited space, so old stuff has to be pruned out to leave room for the new releases. So sales for old stuff gradually stop, and there's a small selection of current releases you can buy.

Spotify and the like aren't like that. It's an infinitely growing amount of music you can play. New releases may be completely unnoticed by users who follow recommendation algorithms. You can trivially follow impulses like "So what else did the the band that made Video Killed the Radio Star make?".

Since digital is infinitely reproducible and not perishable this will keep getting worse and worse. Any new artist competes against all of the music that was released before them.

[AlecSchueler]

> Compared to the plastic waste produced daily it's a drop in the ocean. And at least this is kept and collected.

Basically anything taken individually is a drop in the ocean. Problem is all those drops add up and that's what creates the ocean.

[coldtea]

The ocean of plastic waste isn't just lots of drops aggregted.

There are massive "water bodies" that make 10% and 20% and 30% of the ocean of plastic use. Packaging is about 30-40%, for starters. Clothes (synthetic crap clothes) and shoes are about 15%.

[no-name-here]

1. At least packaging and clothes have more clearly defined utility. 2. There are notable movements to reduce wasteful clothes/packaging. I’ve previously heard people point to the amount of plastic used for commercial shipping, although personally it seems likely that companies use such packaging to avoid even costlier possible product damage? I’m all for reducing waste in each possible area. I guess it’s a similar discussion to the banning of plastic bags/utensils – does that cause people to think more about plastic use in other areas, or does it cause more people to be wasteful in other areas now that they don’t have their plastic forks, etc.

[altacc]

Perhaps they meant digital download sales such as Bandcamp & Beatport and less so for iTunes, Amazon, etc... as there are still real revenues to be made from selling digital music. It all depends upon how many middlemen between purchaser and the artist but vinyl adds in unavoidable production costs, risks of unsold stock, etc... versus Bandcamp where there is little upfront cost, low risk and low transaction costs.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

> And at least this is kept and collected.

Just to expand on this, there is a reasonable distinction made between multi-use and single-use plastics. Things like a shampoo bottle, plasticware, drink bottles, etc. are considered single-use. (Yes, even the shampoo bottle despite being in your bathroom for weeks because its thrown out when it's empty.) As the parent comment mentions, purchasing a vinyl record does little—practically nothing—to contribute to daily plastic waste, especially with how few customers there are (compared to shampoo bottles).

[eptcyka]

I will spend more in a month on a digital download at times than what I would've paid Spotify in years.