I am both a tech person and a music person, so I naturally have a very complicated relationship with Spotify 😬

Spotify appears to be changing its royalty model “to keep up with the rising popularity of releasing new music” – which basically translates to: we’re not willing to pay new artists anything until they hit a minimum number of streams. It’s a way to also combat exploitation of the model, like when people publish 1-second white noise tracks that aren’t even really music.

Some of this I get as a product person.
The math nets out to requiring enough streams to generate ~60 cents USD per year - that’s basically nothing. There’s likely a lot of complexity and ancillary cost to sending 60-cent-or-less payout to millions of artists who won’t reach that threshold, plus it pools to a large sum of money that more prominent artists can receive. YouTube basically already has this model. It’s tried and true.

But it’s also kind of a “screw you” to those genuinely trying to get their music out there. Making YouTube videos is not like making music, at least to some. Music is an art form that’s existed literally since the dawn of man. For many (including this guy), it’s an emotional outpouring of one’s soul. It may even be that way for a listener.

I don’t care that I won’t be making less than 60 cents on many of the songs I’ve released in my lifetime that are on Spotify. But it’s the coldness of the business decision, and the increasing obviousness that my art form of choice is commodified, which hurts.

Go buy my stuff on Bandcamp? (I don’t need the money, but the gesture is always nice 😅 )