That’s right folks it’s rant time. A couple of weeks ago I talked to my buddies Nate, Pat, Chap, and Hicks about a new web phenomenon that you may have heard of called “Spotify.” I had seen random notifications about my friends listening to different artists through Spotify on the ol face book but I knew nothing about the company until I talked to Nate and then did some further research on my own. After hearing about what Spotify really was I got seriously fired up and decided to do some research so that I could at least offer an informed raging rant. Let’s start with the basics in case you don’t know what spotfiy is.
Spotify is a Swedish based music streaming service that has been popular in Europe for years. Spotify recently teamed up with record giant the Warner Brother Company to make their service available in the U.S. There are three tiers of spotify users. Basic users get to listen for free, but are subject to advertisements. The nex tier pays 5 bucks a month to stream unlimited music without ads. The final tier pays 10 bucks a month to listen to unlimited music on their computers, phones, and mp3 devices. Spotify has long claimed that its streaming music service fights against illegal downloading which rips off artists and makes music more accessible to listeners. So what’s the big deal right?
Well first of all Spotify claims to be a knight on a white horse graciously fighting against illegal downloading that is robbing artists of what is rightfully theirs. In reality however, Spotify’s efforts aren’t actually helping the artists. Streaming has been shown to reduce the amount of illegal downloading. However, it does not encourage people to actually buy any music. In Sweden studies showed that illegal downloading went down with the creation of spotify. However, music sales (both digital and non) went down even more after streaming. So much for rescuing the artist…..
Spotify claims to be providing a way for artists to be reimbursed for their music instead of just having it stolen when people download it illegally. However the fact is that Spotify does not come anywhere close to providing fair compensation. It is estimated that Spotify pays artists around $0.00029 per listen. Let me put that number in perspective for you. That means that you would have to listen to an artists’ song over Three thousand four hundred times for them to earn a single dollar. An artist would need people to listen to their song 4,053,110 times a month just to make minimum wage… That means that you could be as big Adele or Mumford and Sons or any other band in the world but would probably make less then someone flipping burgers off music streams on Spotify. Artists pour their blood, sweat, tears, heart, soul, and lives into making their music. Spotify has determined that they deserve less then a penny for their art. It is not fair compensation. It is not ethical. It should not be legal (in fact streaming music used to be illegal in the U.S.).
Wait a second though right? Artists choose to have their music on spotify right? Not necessarily, you can listen to music through spotify if it is shared by your friends. Thus, some artists have had their music put on spotify against their will by listeners. Additionally, in some cases record labels have put music on spotify without the consent of the artists. In many cases, artists have very little control of what is done with their music. Their record label controls just about everything and makes just about all the money. Many artists are having to fight to get their music removed from Spotify.
Why do record labels put music on Spotify then? Well the thing is large record labels such as Warner Brothers have deals with Spotify that provide them with an undisclosed amount of money from advertisements shown on the streaming service. Spotify is booming. It’s founders are making millions of dollars. Record labels are also making money. Spotify claims to bring a brand new system but in reality it’s just the same old story. Large corporations and record labels make money while artists make less and less from their creations.
So what now? Yeah Spotify sucks for artists but there’s nothing that you can do about it? We can’t find a solution so we might as well just embrace the problem right? You might not be responsible for large trends in music and technology but you are responsible for your own actions and it’s important for you to realize that spotify is unethical. So don’t steal music through spotify….yes it is still stealing. If you’re not paying a fair wage to the artists and in many cases they don’t even want to stream their music to you…then yes that is stealing. Is this all really such a big deal? Well spotify has 10 million users in Europe and has a goal of that same number in the U.S. that it can easily reach. So yes purely from a numerical stance this is a huge issue, streaming music could revolutionize the music industry and make it unnecessary for anyone to ever buy music again.
Spotify is nothing more than a high tech sweat shop. It claims have a noble intention and character but when you look closer at the organization, you quickly see that it is rotten to the core. It forces people to join the workforce (through labels and music sharing). It exploits workers (artists) by reimbursing them with utterly insignificant amounts of money they couldn’t possibly live on. All the while the company makes more and more and more money for themselves. See the thing with sweat shops is that they destroy the people working at the bottom while creating a cheap unimaginative product. If spotify grows in popularity and streaming takes away more and more record sales, then you will see less and less artists. Furthermore it is only a slight stretch to say that if that happens many of the ones who will survive will make music that is cheap, unimaginative, because that’s all that record labels will want from them. Spotify is nothing more than a new face for a very old story.
What do I want from you? Don’t use spotify, support artists by buying their music. You may not feel like you can do much but think of it this way, if you buy a CD from and artist for 10 bucks, it’s the financial equivalent to over thirty four thousand listens on spotify. So tell yourself you have the strength of 34,000 consumers and choose to support artists. Tell people that spotify exploits artists. Nobody knows, so nobody does anything and the few people that do know don’t think that doing anything will matter, so they do nothing instead. Welcome to every problem worth doing something about in the history of the world. If you are an artist don’t put your music on spotify. It won’t help you to have your music on the service and if people can get any song they want on spotify they will have no reason to ever buy a cd or purchase a song from iTunes ever again. There are large artists such as Coldplay and Adele who are starting to fight to keep there music off spotify. Hopefully, other well known artists will join them. Hope you survived my rant and if nothing more, that it least made you think. I will leave you with a quote
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil if for good men to do nothing”- Edmund Burke
Helpful resources that I found-
http://derekwebb.tumblr.com/post/13503899950/giving-it-away-how-free-music-makes-more-than-sense
http://mymusicthing.com/zoe-keating-on-spotify-apple-and-indies-and-lettuce/
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/
http://www.spotify.com/us/blog/archives/2009/01/28/some-important-changes-to-the-spotify-music-catalogue/
