Matte

I’m not sure if that changes anything. by logic I’d say if you pay more, more money will get redistributed but I can’t say for sure. what I can say is that I see my payouts, and Tidal is the one with the highest payout rate per streaming.

sure thing, I’m not saying it’s not true. but we had two models to choose from: the bandcamp model, which is a marketplace where the artist can set their own price, the spotify model, where the distributor sets the price, and an in-between that was itunes, where the artist would suggest the price and the distributor could modify it.

for some reason we went to the nuclear solution, and chose the terrible spotify business model, where three companies make money while killing everybody else.

of course it’s a better deal, Youtube Music barely pays anything. it’s even worse than Spotify, and most of their streamings come for free, which is enraging to say the least.

anyways they have two paths: they either suck the costs in and increase the subscriptions (and lose customers in the meanwhile, so they’ll earn less in order to give more money to the small artists) or they cut the share they’re giving to the majors, which is the biggest percentage of the pie. but majors will simply boycott spotify and create their own platform, just as it happened with netflix.

nope. majors have flooded the factories a couple years ago and cut off all the orders from small labels. we had a turnaround of 8 weeks, that from one month to another suddenly became 12 MONTHS. we tried looking for another factory but they were all booked. lots of labels died because of this. the majors played aggressively to kill ALL the competition, included small actors like me.

have you seen the hundred thousand unsold copies of Adele’s last album last year? just to name one

ah, you got to the main issue of the question. the problem is not different from before, and Spotify has just been used as a tool from the majors. if you read a comment below, I wrote that it’s true that Spotify pays their 70% to the artists… but they don’t tell how that money is redistributed. what we earn as independent is absolutely not the same of what a Warner or Sony artist earn. Spotify made under-the-table agreements with the majors in order to grab their catalogue and avoid getting shut off.

the majors saw spotify as a great tool to get themselves out of the hole they dug themselves into during the post 2000s, and kept doing their same shady kind of business.

so well spotted, you’re absolutely right.

of course a direct purchase from bandcamp, either an album or a shirt/merchandise is the best. avoid amazon at all costs. purchasing from itunes is decent. if you want to stream, pay for an account on tidal, it’s the one that pays best of all the streaming services. the very worst is spotify and right under spotify youtube/youtube music. it’s better if you just grab the album from piratebay at that point, since youtube is the only one making money.

and capitalism killed bandcamp too now…

they don’t. spotify says they’re paying 70%, but they don’t tell how they redistribute that revenue. they have under-the-table deals with the 3 majors who grabs most of that money, and leave the crumbs to everybody else.

I’m a small label owner and I guarantee you that it’s a red herring. they set the price of the service, and you can either upload your music on spotify, or not upload it.

compared to the market before digital platforms, where YOU set the price according to several factors, Spotify is the judge and the jury. they choose what the subscription cost is. they choose what your music is worth. they choose the amount of payout you’re gonna get. this is completely backwards! WE should be the ones, labels and artists, to tell spotify what our cost is, and THEY should be the ones setting their subscriptions on the according price for them to be able to cover all their running costs.

but they put themselves in the dominating position on the market, and contributed to the destruction of the physical market. we got left with no choice but to upload our music on their service and eat shit.

we passed from earning thousands of euro per year in physical and digital sales, to getting 100€ every three months for royalties on spotify. this is unsustainable whatever the way you look at it.

they’re the pirates, and ruined the market much more than what pirate bay ever did.