Continuing with Spotify?

I think the Spotify fallout warrants its own thread

― west elm girls (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, January 29, 2022 2:53 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Neil out, Joni out

obviously this pleases me greatly, but it's going to take a contemporary megastar to change minds.

Grimes' mother:

Feeling enormous pride that the artists who got this #Spotifydeleted train going are Canadian.@Neilyoung & @jonimitchell

There are sure to be more, and bigger. But it’s Canadians who led.

— Sandy Garossino (@Garossino) January 29, 2022

I no longer control it or I would in support of Neil https://t.co/hrD132gi8T

— David Crosby (@thedavidcrosby) January 29, 2022

nagl Barry

I recently heard a rumor about me and Spotify. I don’t know where it started, but it didn’t start with me or anyone who represents me.

— Barry Manilow (@barrymanilow) January 28, 2022

it's going to take a contemporary megastar to change minds.

Well, Neil was a step forward after 270 doctors and scientists...

Lol. Cardiacs quit a couple of days before Neil but I am not sure that anyone noticed.

Well, Neil was a step forward after 270 doctors and scientists...

― deep luminous trombone (Eazy), Friday, January 28, 2022 9:23 PM

yeah, which should have been the slam dunk from the get-go. and yet here we still are.

(insert generic angry outrage rant that basically sums up to)

man. this whole thing really sticks in my craw.

ugh, past my bedtime and i'm grouchy. sorry for the unnecessary attitude.

Spotify lost $4 billion in market value this week.

— scott budman (@scottbudman) January 28, 2022

I know it’s just anecdotal, but I know several people IRL who are canceling their Spotify subscriptions this week (and I have few enough IRL “contacts” that that number feels significant to me).

They paved Paradise, put up a Rogan Pod

No idea who this guy is but seeing lots of similar grim takes. And unlike Lloyd Cole, Bret's not afraid to play the 'wrong side of history' card

These artists have a right to remove content in protest. But make no mistake, their intent is to force Spotify to censor Joe Rogan so that you and I can no longer choose for ourselves whether to listen.

They’re on the wrong side of history. Truth persuades. It doesn’t coerce.

— Bret Weinstein (@BretWeinstein) January 29, 2022

Joni jumping in gives me hope that more will follow.

Worth noting here, I think, that The Best Show and Kreative Kontrol have left:

pic.twitter.com/79BJTQe0b1

— The Best Show (@bestshow4life) January 27, 2022

I hope you get the connection... pic.twitter.com/XzT3NsCPc5

— Kreative Kontrol (@VishKreative) January 27, 2022

I suspect a lot of the young popular artists who could potentially make an impact here don't care about vaccines or public health and probably an alarming number of them totally agree with Rogan. OTOH artists have their own issues with Spotify and if a significant number of people drop it it may prompt a few more to leave, or they might at least perceive themselves as having new leverage.

If you’re impressed that Spotify lost $4bn this week, just wait until you see how much they lost in the three weeks prior to that. Shares peaked at €312 last year, they’re less than half that now. The model just isn’t as profitable as investors want it to be (see also: Netflix dropping 45% of its share value in a few months).

^^^

the spotify market drop this week may get a tiny further bump downward from the news but is in line with market trends. artists dropping one at a time isn't going to occasion more than a "we're listening" statement from the company; it would take an organized action to make this more than a PR hiccup for them. Five, ten, fifteen big artists individually pulling their catalogs won't make them say "ok, we'll eat the hundred million we gave Rogan." an organized effort of fifty or more artists might -- Future of Music Coalition is as close as we have to that and I'm not sure they want to spearhead something that might be framed as partisan

it would take an organized action to make this more than a PR hiccup for them

see also: literally every other consumer protest

TIL, Neil and Joni are both polio survivors

I do want to ditch Spotify. I'm in the middle of a 3-month trial of Apple Music but I hate their UI and search functions. I'll give Qobuz a shot with their free month. One frustrating thing is having to pay some third party to migrate playlists, and the migration options seem to have frustrating limits. I just discovered the 1500-track Anthology of Dub playlist this past week, and the Spotify ---> Qobuz migration tool has a limit of 1000 tracks per playlist.

I don’t have any specialty loyalty to Spotify but I have become pretty dependent on streaming. The thing that is bumming me out is that moving to a service that would be equivalent would just be moving to another corporation… I mean, it’s not like Rogan is not in Apple because they are principled. They just lost out o a deal.

i'm continuing with spotify

“Speciality loyalty” = morning brain

My spotify and hulu subscriptions are intertwined, so if I ditch spotify for another platform I lose (free) hulu. As soon as it becomes clear where the greatest number of people are migrating to, I'll follow. But for now I'm stuck.

and the Spotify ---> Qobuz migration tool has a limit of 1000 tracks per playlist.

split the 1500 tracks into two playlists of 750, migrate them both, then drag and drop the second playlist into the first playlist, right?

As I said on the other thread, between collaborative playlists, and the family plan, I'm not sure how I could readily disentangle myself from using this platform. If I had a single-user subscription, I may just hop over to Qobuz or Apple (mixed results with the free version of SongShift last night, migrating playlists over to my Qobuz trial, but not insurmountable).

xp - merging playlists: may or may not be possible once they're migrated; last night's brief experience gave me a fixed imported playlist that I could neither add to nor delete from.

oh, weird? i shouldn't talk - i've never heard of Qobuz until this morning - but i just figured any playlist could be edited, if you made it in the first place! kinda weird.

i really hate my opinion on spotify and the alternatives, so much that for once i'll stfu

is it easy to import spotify playlists to another plataform?

Xp - yeah, was odd. 37 of 40 tracks matched by SongShift, figured I could add the ones it couldn’t find manually on Qobuz but no: that imported playlist was read-only. The attempt to do the same with one of the ILX c20 classical playlists was hopeless - barely a 10% match.

If I pay actual money to some service to migrate my Bacharach list (738 tracks) and the Dub list and wind up with a 10% match rate, I will be hot under the collar.

The thing that is bumming me out is that moving to a service that would be equivalent would just be moving to another corporation… I mean, it’s not like Rogan is not in Apple because they are principled. They just lost out o a deal.

Rogan signed with Spotify in May 2020, and Apple launched podcast subscriptions over a year later. So AFIK they wouldn’t have been in the running when Rogan made his deal (in fact, it was deals like his which got Apple serious about building out exclusive podcasts of their own)… which may not alter your overall rationale

Do people have to be paid subscribers to hear Rogan on Spotify? I figured it was just to get people to the platform. Apple surely would have made a deal with Rogan to keep people using their platform exclusively, but probably didn’t need to as much as Spotify did.

Right, I don’t think that was part of their business plan at the time. Maybe they would’ve signed him in a different scenario, who knows (in which case Young would presumably be pulling his music from Apple)

Idk, I found a Steve Bannon podcast on Apple. Is it still okay to switch to Apple? Maybe I’ll go to YouTube where absolutely no white supremacists or QAnon nuts exist?

It's his reach and influence that makes the difference, the size of his audience.

I mean, Spotify pulled a bunch of archived episodes - with Gavin McInnes and others - so there was pressure from the beginning not to spoil the platform with his show. The issue then becomes whether giving disinformation on Covid is a deal-breaker for an episode of his that Spotify chooses to host.

I dislike Spotify for a few reasons, but yes switching to Apple or Amazon for political reasons (or even the sole reason of disseminating Covid misinformation) does not make a lot of sense. Some people earlier were suggesting that the fact Spotify directly pays Rogan, rather than simply making money off ads a la YouTube, is worse but idk if I find that super convincing.

That said afaict, Qobuz and Tidal don't have the "we murder workers" problem that Apple and Amazon do nor the "paying Joe Rogan $$$" problem, so it's a little disingenuous to frame this as just "Spotify or Apple? what's the diff"

Maybe so. I’ve never heard of Qobuz until about an hour ago. Admittedly I’ve never tried Tidal.

It was initially challenging to get past the "Tidal? lol" reaction, I'll admit

The thing that is bumming me out is that moving to a service that would be equivalent would just be moving to another corporation… I mean, it’s not like Rogan is not in Apple because they are principled. They just lost out o a deal.

otm. also, to the extent that this list of top 100 podcasts on apple podcast is accurate, the current #10 podcast in the united states (on apple podcast) is the Joe Rogan Experience Review, a podcast where some enormous fucking loser spends 45 minutes dissecting the latest joe rogan podcast

#15 is the ben shapiro show.

ben shapiro is worse than joe rogan (but not as popular). he is a hitler youth

the matt walsh show at #35, what a wonderful person he is

i survey the landscape of american podcasts and i want them all to disintegrate my own brain

let me check google/youtube real quick, see if there is any joe rogan-esque content on there

I moved to Tidal from Spotify about 3 months ago after being on Spotify since it originally launched and for the most part I've been content with it. There are a few things that I miss from Spotify, but nothing that would compel me to go back.

The increased emphasis on podcasts combined with the Helsing.ai thing are what pushed me to pull the plug. I'm also trying to shift more of my spending/listening to Bandcamp, but I'm too hooked on streaming at this point to abandon it completely.

I mean, Tidal is now majority-owned by a gross tech bro, if you're looking for a "political" reason to avoid that too

gross how?

Dorsey? I'm half joking (though he's not my type of fellow). He hasn't paid Rogan $100m, that's for sure. If I were a heavy Spotify user, and not invested in Amazon or Apple, I'd prob switch to Tidal - the UI is v similar

The arguments that other platforms also feature reprehensible content are valid but imho the Spotify/Rogan issue is different because of the extent to which Spotify has made Rogan the face of their brand. Rogans show is one of the most popular media properties out there and Spotify's play for him was explicitly about identifying themselves w/him in a bid to lure his audience, which imho puts it in another category than just "I can find people saying worse stuff on other platforms too". Ben Shapiro is a monster & is platformed by Apple Podcasts, but at least they are not repeatedly giving him big public bearhugs the way Spotify does w/Rogan, giving him the PR boost that his views are something Spotify considers normal & mainstream.

That’s a good way of putting it.

The excellent Liz Pelly book really underscores the precarious insidiousness of any streaming platform but of course mostly Spotify. We have it in our house, and while I would prefer to at least try something else, I've been told my family is too big a fan of its playlists, and also the way it's kept podcasts integrated. (Aiui Apple now inexplicably has a separate podcast app? I used to like Google's podcast app, but they've since rolled it into ... youtube? Some BS like that.) I'd be lying if I said I didn't prefer streaming to a basement literally full of CDs and DVDs, though lately I have really been missing physical media.

re: I used to like Google's podcast app, but they've since rolled it into ... youtube?

YouTube Music
https://music.youtube.com

Yeah, exactly! I have a google phone, but maybe because of my age I just have a tough time thinking of youtube as an audio service. So on the phone I listen to stuff via Spotify or, as needed for the handful of things not on Spotify, side-loaded into a different audio player.

Hua Hsu reviewed the Pelly book in the New Yorker, which prompted a letter from a reader about how she knows Spotify is ultimately not great for musicians but has discovered a lot of artists she otherwise wouldn't know about and has seen them live and bought their sheet music. But the three examples she gave -- Jean-Michel Blais, Joep Beving, and Nils Frahm -- are exactly the kind of artists that Spotify's algorithm loves, because they can be easily slotted into mood playlists like Relaxing Piano or Mellow Winter or whatever. I don't doubt that she genuinely loves them, but I read it as "Spotify helped me discover Spotify-friendly artists."

It's always bad for musicians, and definitely great for discovery for people like us (weirdoes). But a lot of the book focuses on their passive listeners, people that prefer being fed music to hunting for it, and don't really feel passionate about what they are hearing as long as it fits their situation and is tuned to their taste. Apparently Spotify even has popular "sleep" playlists, which Pelly says shows just how passive a lot of these listeners are. My wife told me she has a coworker that quietly plays some of the "chill" playlists mostly to drown out her neighbor's voice. So, literal background music. The book really goes into the pressure to conform to these playlist standards, which becomes a closed, self-perpetuating/proliferating circuit.

it's pretty wild to realize just how popular the modern equivalent of Muzak is with the kids today

Spotify is my only contribution to musicians, although perhaps that’s a net negative.

I mean it's the equivalent of leaving a server a nickel for a tip after eating a $40 meal, so yeah, I'd say not much of a contribution

I listened to ambient stuff pre-Spotify and pretty much listen to exclusively that at work because A. I like it and B. it doesn't disturb my co-workers (well, the dark ambient stuff does when they've been sitting in my office for longer than a few minutes).

I used to love Spotify for this as it had the artists I like and I could make playlists, and it even helped me find some stuff I really like (Cryo Chamber for example) but now the algorithm just recommends too much mass-produced garbage ("Thunderstorm sounds for cats") instead of the good stuff. I also assume that as mentioned upthread it'll favor stuff they own the rights to or otherwise don't have to pay for, which is counter to my interests. Once you lose that trust, there's no way to get it back either.

f. hazel may I recommend an app :)
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fuzzzel-artisanal-white-noise/id6596783978

The iPod thing is tempting. My problem is that if I wasn’t on Spotify, I wouldn’t be buying music at all, or buying secondhand only. And I don’t watch live music. So Spotify is my only contribution to musicians, although perhaps that’s a net negative.

Is Apple any better with payments? Their UI is dreadful but the sound is noticeably better even on an iPhone speaker.

― Chuck_Tatum, 19. februar 2025 13:32

you could always just buy some mp3s on bandcamp every once in a while, artists should get 85% of what you pay (or whatever deal they have with their label)

otm

(I bought the app and am enjoying it now!)

Figure out how much you can afford to spend on music a month. Download whatever you want to listen to on Soulseek. Whatever non-huge artist you really enjoyed listening to that month, spend money at their bandcamp. Even if you’re only giving somebody ten bucks a month, that’s doing more good than the half pennies artists are making from your spotify listening.

OTM

I have a friend who had made a pretty good living on a minimal lifestyle as a musician for a couple decades, but with the rise of Spotify, the money she was making just absolutely cratered. She continued to have approximately the same turnout at shows, but in terms of selling vinyl and CDs at those shows, it just wasn’t happening. Why would people give her 15 bucks for an LP when they could just listen to it as part of their monthly plan? And you know if you sell 20 records or CDs at every show that’s pretty decent but if that plummets it becomes an issue, especially if you couple that with the issue of artists dealing with shady venues. So anyway, she had to go and get a day job and seems to be doing better financially and now just plays small shows locally every month. I would love it if she kept releasing records because she’s really really good but who knows.

It's sad, but there are thousands of stories like this. I'm sure everyone here is acquainted with at least someone who is in a similar predicament.

As if we need another reason to hate this cursed service. I still get emails from them from time to time and just got one that said:

Les Rallizes Dénudés is hitting the road! Find out the tour dates, on-sale details, and event information – even if tickets aren't on sale yet.

To say I was surprised would be an understatement. Turns out, clicking the link reveals that it is actually some punk band from Milwaukee called just Denude. Just laziness and sloppiness all around.

Why would people give her 15 bucks for an LP when they could just listen to it as part of their monthly plan?

yes and, I would imagine that most of these people (who are coming to her show, so presumably many of them are the tip of the spear of her biggest fans!) would be happy to throw her 15 bucks, but there's a mental calculus of "that's no longer how I listen to music, I don't put a record/CD on, I just queue it up on streaming, so why would I buy a record/CD?". that's part of the insidiousness of fair compensation not being built in to the technological advancement, as it rarely is. no shade to physical media users (I am one), but when you have to ask people to be regressive in order to support the artist, you're playing a losing game.

it’s not that streaming companies are evil. they are an improvement for musicians over napster. and the music industry is making more money now anyway. the problem is the musicians have no union bargaining power. and also due to laptops and apps, it’s easier than ever for randos to release music, so the market is flooded.

it’s obvious that the true value of ad free super convenient multi device streaming is way more than the current price, compared to what serious music fans were paying in the 60s-90s. i was buying about 2-3 cds a week as a working college kid. pizza delivery money. i had a couple hundred cds. i had several friends with similar collections. spotify is an insane deal and i understand it’s not essential for everyone to have a streaming service but it’s something id easily pay 3x for.

if 90% of touring artists kept all their tracks off streaming apart from a greatest hits, that’s step one. then you fix the hole by adding band camp/itunes style purchasing of albums into the streaming services, step two.

if there was a unified musicians union that went on strike to demand fair assessment of pricing, of royalties and ticket surcharges, and of who can join the union and release music on a streaming platform (say, 3 live shows supporting union musicians and getting them to affirm you’re nota bot or scammer)… that’s step three.

musicians who tour and don’t make much from streaming should simply not put their albums on streaming services apart from a greatest hits. then sell vinyl and cds and merch. they should also form a union. it’s not the consumer’s fault music is given away so cheap.

it’s not that streaming companies are evil. and the music industry is making more money now anyway.

citations needed

Second statement is undoubtedly true https://www.statista.com/statistics/272305/global-revenue-of-the-music-industry/

First one, bit more of a struggle to back that up.

trm (tombotomod) at 7:08 16 Feb 25

https://open.substack.com/pub/mushmouth/p/its-time-to-quit-spotify

musicians who tour and don’t make much from streaming should simply not put their albums on streaming services apart from a greatest hits.

I like this idea, I wonder how bands would get there though. New(er) bands need all their tracks out there for maximum exposure etc though, and established bands would be taking albums off at that point, and that tends to be viewed poorly. And of course, so many bands with a catalogue don't really have a say in what is streaming where anyway. If a band could somehow get the whole $25 for a record sold for $25 at a show- great! But it's never that way with venue/square cuts, the cost of actually manufacturing the records, etc. Which, by the way- how does that generally work if you're on a label? Do you get an allotment to sell yourself, or do you have to buy them for yourself wholesale?

I know CDs are/have been threatening to come back for awhile now but I don't think they really sell much. Shirts/posters, yes. But isn't that kind of a bummer for musicians? All that work getting to the point of making music and touring just to hope to sell some t shirts. I think a lot of people, even if inclined to pick up a record at a show, will just buy it on Discogs later.

Had to back out from that statista link bcz it didn’t give the option of picking and choosing cookies.

but when you have to ask people to be regressive in order to support the artist, you're playing a losing game.

There’s nothing regressive about buying physical media, or expecting customers to do so, if only as a show of support so that the artists can continue doing their work. If it helps, ask yourself if it’s regressive to “buy” a tote bag when you donate to PBS.

it’s not that streaming companies are evil. they are an improvement for musicians over napster.

I think this is categorically and demonstrably false. I bet if you asked omar’s friend if things were better for her during the Napster era, she would tell you that they were.

You can actually use a tote bag

Maybe artists should just sell girl scout cookies at shows.

I love buying merch from bands, though I am running out of wall space for posters and drawer space for t-shirts.

Pelly's book tells about some guy that makes anonymous lo-fi "chill" tracks for Spotify playlists that get something like 300K streams a month, but he says if he played an actual gig in Los Angeles maybe 20 people would show up. We (here) are such outliers, I think the majority of people listen to Spotify pretty passively and are happy to get whatever the service serves them. Probably the same reason whatever BS Netflix slaps on its homepage gets a ton of eyeballs as well. You ask, who watches this stuff? And the answer is, pretty much exactly who the service wants to watch it. Same with Spotify. Just a pure numbers game that has nothing to do with good or bad, just more or less.

One good side of the vinyl resurgence is the ability to give music as a gift again (if they have a record player).

I really miss making mix cds for holidays/birthdays.

I bet if you asked omar’s friend if things were better for her during the Napster era, she would tell you that they were.

!=, not =!

Been a while since I've pulled that one out of the bag

As said, the music industry is worth more than ever. I think the streamers could give more per stream and still be profitable, but not so much more that artists like omar's friend would have the same kind of income they used to. But I haven't quite worked out the mechanism by which they've got screwed. Just more music around so revenue spread more thinly? Smaller artists often being enjoyed by the kind of serious music fans who are now getting a bargain from the all-you-can-eat subscription model?

but when you have to ask people to be regressive in order to support the artist, you're playing a losing game.

buying it when tech companies say "this is how we've decided things should be done now, anything else is regressive" is regressive

otm

ok but we're not talking about Apple / Meta VR or something. Spotify has been around for 17 years - thats roughly how long LPs had been around when their eventual replacement, cassettes were introduced - and has 675 million monthly users. We're not going back to CDs. sorry.

In another 17 years, it's prob more likely for the dominant format to be acoustic instruments around a communal fire

what's the saying? WW IV will be fought with copies of REM's Monster?

for years ppl have been throwing up their hands and saying "the current system is tragic but we live in a new world now, theres nothing else to be done" as if consumers have been forced against their will to pay $11.99/month for all music. but this is driven by consumer choice at the end of the day, we all have control over our own spending habits, and if anyone can think of a better & more effective way to pay musicians than buying their actual music, by all means go nuts. if it doesnt happen en masse, thats because people dont want it, not bc spotify et al made it impossible.

i just dont accept that buying recorded music - something that was considered normal and convenient for 120 years, is suddenly impossible/unrealistic/insane just because a cheaper & more evil option is now available. its not asking people to go back to writing letters by hand with big feather quills, its buying an album, something so easy and convenient i was able to do it when i was 10

of course i dont think CDs are going to replace Spotify, but dont let billionaire tech ceos fool you into thinking we dont have free will about it

I'm sure there are plenty of examples in history of things that were a fad for 100 or so years and never came back

should I ask chat gpt for some examples?

Oh yeah, CDs will never replace streaming, but I was reading an article recently about how CD sales, even in just the US, are rising again (although still paling in comparison to their heyday and streaming), but an interesting observation.

My guess is it's mostly due to K-pop with those collectible CD releases that make up most of the music at local Targets and Barnes & Nobles. But wonder if also due to Bandcamp and increasingly small vinyl runs, people want something.

like i said, i agree that physical music buying is not going to replace streaming. what i dont agree with is people who cite that fact as a reason not to buy music, especially if they feel bad about artists not getting paid enough

"The state of music is awful and artists are getting screwed, but buy a CD or some mp3s? Why don't I go buy a horse & buggy while I'm at it lol!"

otm

sorry i dont mean to get heated i just really like buying CDs, lets all buy a great CD this weekend ok thanks

Got three in my bandcamp cart as we speak!

This debate will forever go in circles because the best argument against consumer convenience is empathy for artists.

Empathy—for artists, for sweatshop workers, for the earth itself—has yet to win out against convenience, in any industry.

And it never will with that attitude.