Latest / Ghost Cult Magazine Podcast / PODCAST: Episode 785 - Is Spotify At A Tipping Point for Artists and Fans

Transcript

PODCAST: Episode 785 - Is Spotify At A Tipping Point for Artists and Fans · Ghost Cult Magazine Podcast

• 0:02
  What's up everybody, it's your boy Kefi and I am back with
• 0:05
  another live stream for ghostcultman.com.
• 0:08
  I'm the editor in chief of Ghost Cult, the co-owner, and I'm
• 0:11
  super stoked to be here with you today for this live stream
• 0:14
  discussion about Spotify. Is it at the tipping point for
• 0:18
  bands and fans? We're going to discuss this now
• 0:20
  if you are here again. This was previously a live
• 0:23
  stream and the audio went wonky and was ruined for more than
• 0:28
  half the live stream. So I thought rather than do this
• 0:30
  whole topic yet again, I thought it would pop back on here and do
• 0:35
  a re record. So thanks for listening a second
• 0:38
  time. If you're here a second time.
• 0:39
  If you're new here, check us out.
• 0:41
  If you like what you're hearing and seeing stay awhile.
• 0:44
  Give us a like and a sub. We appreciate it.
• 0:47
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• 0:51
  to us or give us a tip. We always appreciate it, but at
• 0:54
  the end of the day, we provide this service mostly for free.
• 1:00
  So what led us to want to discuss Spotify?
• 1:02
  Well, we did a poll on our YouTube community posts about
• 1:06
  what people wanted to hear about, and after talking a lot
• 1:10
  about the life and death and music of Ozzy Osbourne, this was
• 1:13
  the second most voted on topic. 47% of our people who voted
• 1:18
  wanted this topic, so we're here to talk about it and why and why
• 1:23
  not? Because Spotify, you know, it's
• 1:25
  kind of a necessary evil. It doesn't pay artists.
• 1:28
  It seems like their entire thing is set up specifically to not
• 1:31
  pay artists, which kind of sucks.
• 1:34
  But more often than not, it is a good way to get your music in
• 1:38
  front of people, but not a good way to make a living.
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  And it's weird how it was constructed and conceived of in
• 1:44
  the 1st place by people who used to run The Pirate Bay, the
• 1:49
  notorious file sharing site. It's weird that the record
• 1:55
  industry just caved immediately and was like, there's no hope of
• 1:59
  standing on ground against these guys.
• 2:01
  We're going to just let them run roughshod over us.
• 2:03
  Which is exactly what happened. The three major labels used to
• 2:06
  be 4 or five. The three majors colluded with
• 2:09
  Spotify to set the rates, to set the standard, to agree to terms
• 2:14
  that fucked over the whole world, including underground
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  artists who honestly have nothing to do with mainstream
• 2:21
  music, especially rock and metal like us.
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  And even though rock and metal listeners on Spotify are well
• 2:26
  known as the most loyal listeners, we know that it's pop
• 2:30
  and rap that kind of drive everything because it's part of
• 2:32
  driving youth culture, which is, you know, a thing still.
• 2:38
  But the main reason this came up is because King Gizzard and
• 2:41
  Lizard Wizard made a proclamation and pulled down all
• 2:44
  their music. In case you're not familiar with
• 2:46
  the Australian band King Gizzard and Lizard Wizard, they have
• 2:50
  been around quite a long time. They are prolific music makers.
• 2:53
  They put on multiple albums a year, studio and live, kind of
• 2:58
  like a new Deal, psychedelic rock, Grateful Dead basically.
• 3:03
  And they have hundreds of millions of listeners that were
• 3:07
  on Spotify that they are now no longer on Spotify.
• 3:10
  So at one point they had almost a million monthly listeners.
• 3:15
  So we are talking about a 982,000 listeners.
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  That is a lot. That's not a small band.
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  That is a huge band, even for a rock band.
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  And so the band has been doing some press.
• 3:29
  They were very unhappy with the CEO, Daniel Ack, who already has
• 3:32
  kind of a shitty opinion about artists.
• 3:34
  He's like, artists just need to work harder and make more music
• 3:36
  and this, that and the other thing.
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  And doesn't seem to be, you know, doesn't seem to be
• 3:43
  interested in how to pay artists or why artists don't make more
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  money. He's doubled down and tripled
• 3:48
  down on this opinion. He is personally taking his vast
• 3:52
  profits, which he's entitled to do whatever he wants with them.
• 3:54
  But he is funding a military AI drone company that he is on the
• 3:59
  board of. And so a lot of people took
• 4:01
  exception to this at the company that is, you know, supposed to
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  be sharing music like a search engine should not be helping
• 4:10
  build bombs that will kill people in the future.
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  And so King Gizzard pulled their stuff off.
• 4:15
  It's all still on band camp, which we've had, you know, we'll
• 4:17
  have, we'll discuss band camp later on in the show.
• 4:20
  I wanted to discuss about maybe the misconception about music
• 4:24
  streaming and about what platforms technically pay the
• 4:28
  best. SO Statista, which is a data
• 4:34
  company basically and they pull data and make charts and you
• 4:38
  know things for presentations. They put out a lot of data on
• 4:41
  the streaming services and they rounded up in 2024.
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  So this is all 2024 information. I recognize we are more than
• 4:48
  halfway to 2026, but gross payout to labels.
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  This is the pay to labels, not bands per stream by selected
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  streaming services. And apparently the biggest one
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  of them all is Xbox, which is owned by Microsoft strangely
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  enough in terms of what they pay for people to use music.
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  Now I don't know if that is also to labels for games and things
• 5:14
  like that because that would make a lot of sense.
• 5:17
  Rhapsody is number 2, followed by title, Apple Music, Amazon,
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  Deezer, Google which I assume is YouTube Music now, Spotify,
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  Pandora and YouTube again. So what the shit?
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  Not great numbers but that's how the labels make money.
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  And then what artists earn from music streams.
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  And some of this is incomplete information because title does
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  not give out how many subscribers they have to soon to
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  be about 1,000,000. So the average amount earned
• 5:51
  with 1000 streams on different music music streaming platforms
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  in 2024. And so amount earned per
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  thousand streams and how many Subs are paid, which is an
• 6:03
  interesting, you know, data point.
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  So Amazon Music apparently leads this with $8.80 per thousand
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  streams and they have 80 million paid subscribers.
• 6:12
  Amazon Music often gets like thrown in as a Gimme, as a
• 6:16
  giveaway to people with Prime, to people who buy certain things
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  on Amazon. Get a year of Amazon Music free
• 6:23
  if you buy this vinyl title is number 2 on that list.
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  Again, not surprising at $6.80 per thousand streams.
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  Again, we don't know how many Subs they have.
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  Apple Music, it's said here has 93,000,000 paid subscribers, but
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  again, I don't know if that's an old number or not $6.20 per
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  thousand streams. YouTube, which again is just
• 6:44
  YouTube I assume for videos and audio only, tracks $4.80 at 100
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  million paid Subs. And again that probably includes
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  YouTube television, YouTube Premium, Deezer at $4.00, also
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  same amount as YouTube Deezer somehow with four $4.80 on 10
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  million paid Subs. I don't know anyone personally
• 7:08
  that uses Deezer, but it's out there, right?
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  Pandora with $3.20 per thousand streams with only 6,000,000
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  Subs, Spotify with 265,000,000 subscribers paid and probably
• 7:20
  another double that amount. You know, so probably like
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  another hat like a billion more people that use Spotify for free
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  and all the other services that use Spotify, TikTok and
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  Instagram and stuff. Spotify $3 per thousand streams
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  and TikTok with a very lowly $0.50 a stream per thousand.
• 7:40
  But you know, TikTok songs go viral and can get hundreds of
• 7:43
  millions of plays. And we don't know how many Subs
• 7:45
  they have either. Just a couple of programming
• 7:48
  notes as you listen to this. Every week I do a live stream.
• 7:51
  The weekly ritual of rocket Metal news, concert reviews,
• 7:55
  metal festivals, interviews we've done with bands, all the
• 7:58
  new music you need to know about, all the rumors and drama,
• 8:02
  all the new albums announced, all the news that fits in about
• 8:06
  an hour or so. So check us out every Thursday
• 8:09
  afternoon. Also, I am the Co host of the
• 8:11
  glacially musical podcast Beer Metal and swearing.
• 8:14
  We are giving away vinyl and CD bundles.
• 8:18
  If you check it out in the link in the description as well, you
• 8:21
  can sign up for that. So just moving this idea of
• 8:25
  forward a little bit more. Interestingly enough, Napster is
• 8:29
  back from the dead and we're as soon as they revived as a
• 8:32
  company, they were immediately sued by Sony for like half a
• 8:35
  billion dollars for fraud from an existing, you know, past
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  issues, I guess. But Napster is coming back.
• 8:43
  So one other options do bands have.
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  If you want to take your stuff off of Spotify for whatever
• 8:47
  reason, and you know, there are the list is long.
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  It's not that many artists in metal.
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  Joanna Newsom, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young's partially still
• 8:55
  there. Tool is on there now as of, you
• 9:01
  know, 2019 when they put everything on there, you know,
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  Joni Mitchell, but you know, it's not on specifically a lot
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  of popular bands, if you have any.
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  And the problem is I've talked often about this, a lot of the
• 9:21
  tools for DIY artists are being bought by the major labels and
• 9:26
  major mainstream music industry. So like distro kit is now owned
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  by, you know, the majors. It's crazy.
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  It's now owned by Universal. So it's like all the playing
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  field, all the tools that used to level the playing field where
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  an indie artist could make the same amount theoretically as a
• 9:43
  major label artist is now gone. Or it's just not, you know, the
• 9:47
  the playing field is not as level as it used to be.
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  Just like band camp started to, you know, be open to major
• 9:53
  bands. I was like, well, it's cool that
• 9:55
  Corn wants to use band camp, but they don't need to use band
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  camp. They have their own store, a
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  website that's paid for in perpetuity, their URL they own
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  forever, and a Shopify software cart store or whatever places
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  all over the world that's legally sell corn merch and
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  stuff. So I don't know, you know, So in
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  terms of the rankings of payouts per stream, Napster is number 1.
• 10:19
  You know, assuming when they come back and they're back, full
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  line title is number 2, followed by Apple Music, Google Play,
• 10:26
  which I assume again is YouTube and YouTube Music and YouTube
• 10:31
  podcasts used to be Google Podcast, Deezer, Spotify,
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  Amazon, Pandora and YouTube again at the bottom with the
• 10:39
  lowest number quite by far. And these are all percentiles of
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  a penny, by the way, none of these are even a penny a stream
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  in terms of a payout. It's pitiful.
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  So I wonder if more bands will not follow Spotify.
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  A lot of bands got rid of Band Camp after they were sold.
• 10:54
  Well first to Epic Games and now the Song Trader.
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  Song Trader is also owned by Universal.
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  It's crazy. But what other options do bands
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  have? Well you know, Apple Music does
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  seem to pay the best and do the best in terms of listening
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  experiences. I know a lot of people were
• 11:11
  still heavily into Apple Music and Band Camp.
• 11:14
  We still use Spotify. I always urge people to use
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  Spotify as a Google. It's a search engine, but it
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  doesn't really pay bands. I mean, if you really want to
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  help a band you love and you're unattending your phone for a
• 11:25
  while, I know people are addicted to their phones.
• 11:27
  If you go into bed for the night and you love your a band, you
• 11:30
  know, plug your phone in and leave it playing on your
• 11:32
  favorite band Spotify playlist. You know, this is 9 Inch Nails.
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  This is whoever or small band you know.
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  Band Camp is starting to grow out new tools, so that's a nice
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  option. You do sell merch.
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  Band Camp does take a big cut and their monthly fees for
• 11:47
  artists are high to be honest with you.
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  So it turns out to be like 4 or $500 a year if you have a label
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  or multiple projects. Ampwall is a relatively new
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  company, a couple of years old, that is a direct competitor to
• 12:01
  Band Camps programmed encoded by Chris from the band.
• 12:06
  Whoa, black metal band from New York City.
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  It is $10 a month, $10 a year, excuse me, for unlimited
• 12:14
  products and uploads. And seems like they're also
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  rolling out a lot of new stuff all the time.
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  And then, you know, the other problem with all the streaming
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  services, but especially Spotify, is Spotify has a
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  terrible AI problem. We've been hearing about, you
• 12:29
  know, Velvet Sundown and all these crazy bands that have
• 12:32
  hundreds of millions of streams. They're completely artificial.
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  And we're hearing about famous producers like Rick Rubin and
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  Timberland just doubling and tripling down on AI and making
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  fake bands. And you know, Spotify's own
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  self-interest is to take a playlist with all these bands
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  you love. Even it's happened to me where
• 12:50
  I'm listening to Mastodon and Gojira and Biohazard and all my
• 12:54
  favorite bands and then suddenly there's another band and they're
• 12:56
  plugged in that I don't know about and I'm like where did
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  this shit come from? Why is this a thing so?
• 13:03
  And they don't seem to be interested in policing it at
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  all. And again, I'm not anti AI.
• 13:08
  I'm anti abusive AI and I don't want, I want my music and my
• 13:12
  metal especially from real people.
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  And I want real artists to get paid for real artwork on albums
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  and things. One of my favorite Youtubers is
• 13:22
  Top Music Attorney, and she has a whole video on Spotify.
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  In general, they were legal terms of service.
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  You know, just why? It's just horrifying the stuff
• 13:33
  that they do in the name of music.
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  So, you know, there's not a lot of options, but there's still
• 13:38
  opportunities for underground artists to make and sell music
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  on their own. It's just becoming harder and
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  harder. Stop expecting Spotify to pay
• 13:47
  people. They just seem built not to.
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  And at the same time, you know, this is very, you know, this is
• 13:53
  a topic for another time, but it's no different than Live
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  Nation and merch cuts. There's there's all these things
• 13:58
  that take little slices out of people and harness.
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  And I think it's really shitty. But this is unfortunately the
• 14:04
  business that was built around us.
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  And I still want people to please go out there and make
• 14:08
  music and start new bands and pick up a guitar and pick up a
• 14:11
  bass and scream into a microphone and play the drums
• 14:15
  and make music because that's what keeps us all going right
• 14:18
  now in this dumpster fire of a life is the arts, music and art
• 14:21
  and things. So, but it's pretty bleak out
• 14:24
  there in terms of what these guys are doing.
• 14:28
  But in any case, thanks for listening.
• 14:29
  That's my two cents for today. And please tune in every day to
• 14:36
  our podcast and to our YouTube. Give us a like and a sub.
• 14:38
  Come visit us at ghostcultman.com and see what we
• 14:41
  got cooking up next for you. I am Kefi, a ghost cult.
• 14:45
  Thanks for listening, peace.