Spotify for artists – how is that fair?

25 Aug Spotify for artists – how is that fair?

I have some concerns about how Spotify for artists takes advantage of musical artists. I don’t think they get paid a great deal from streaming on Spotify, although I have heard that it is possible to make a living out of streaming fees. When I do the maths, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If I listened to 190 K minutes of music in 2015, (I can’t remember what it was in 2023, but comparable), that would equate to about 15.83 K minutes a month. Now, for this, I pay $11.99 (soon to be $12.99). Given that, a song is 3 minutes, and perhaps I spend on average 30 minutes to an hour streaming each artist I listen to, that would equate to 263 artists per month. And my petty $11.99 would give them each 0.05 cents each per month. (I think this is right).

I mean, I see there are economies of scale. If an artist gets about 35,000 listeners per month and each spends $0.05 with that artist, it equates to about $1596 AUD per month. Which is not to be sneezed at I guess, but nothing like a living wage.

And this doesn’t even take into account Spotify’s profits, which would be at least 30 %.

What’s changing?

Now, Spotify is planning to force artists to pay to be included in Release Radar and other featured places. And it definitely feels a bit unfair, considering the artists, who put hundreds of hours into making their music each month to then give it away for virtually free and then to be asked to pay for being featured! I can see why some of them are getting a bit pissed off!

After I heard this, the next day I attempted to go for a whole day without listening to Spotify. It was a BLEAK, bleak day, let me tell you about it! All the songs I wanted to listen to were no longer free, and I had to pay about $2.18 for each one, but if I had to do that for each of the songs that I love and feel like listening to, it would be an extravagance that would be very hard to swallow on any given Tuesday.

I had to rely on music that was already downloaded onto my devices, and while that was fine, on the whole, it was a bit dated and didn’t give me the same kind of vitality that Spotify delivers.

I lasted until about 3 p.m. until I caved and fell back into my Spotify ways. But it definitely made me think that we probably aren’t paying enough for the very real privilege of having pretty much ALL THE MUSIC available to us any time we want it for virtually free!

What would be fair – Spotify for artists?

I know I am an outlier. Most people don’t listen to anywhere near as much as 190K minutes of music a year. And I am in that top 1 % of people who do. But I am just thinking that instead of getting artists to pay, perhaps Spotify could get consumers to pay a bit more! Where are we going to go exactly?

Sure, it feels dicey not buying music from artists directly, so that if Spotify goes down, or something else disastrous happens we won’t have music, but I still think that Spotify has a pretty massive market share, and they could be a little more generous to the artists who make their whole platform possible!

Image credits:

“Spotify” by Scott Beale is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

“iPhone 5 & Spotify” by bjornengqvist is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.