21 Jan Where energy flows – paying for music
I think it is true that linking to a Spotify playlist of my Hottest 100 shortlist is not going to further the cause of good music in 2025 and beyond.
If we want to support the musicians who make music we love we need to pay for their music rather than rely on Spotify’s 0.003 per play to pay artists for making music.
I have seen many posts about this lately and it is pretty crappy to compare the wage of the CEO of Spotify with the pittance that the artists get paid. This is likely to get much worse since Spotify is favouring adding AI music to their playlists so that they get the revenue from the plays as well.
The problem is that Spotify provides such a convenient and satisfactory experience for its users. Artists seemingly have no choice but to list their songs on the platform since that is where their listeners are.
Last night I dropped a bit of coin into Apple Music and paid for a dozen or so tracks to be downloaded onto my hard drive (and phone).
It felt like something I could do to contribute to the livelihoods of artists that make such a difference to my world!
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