You pay 10$ to listen to hundreds of songs a month, how can it possibly be profitable for artists?
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Spotify and all of the likes pays barely nothing to artists, period. It has become more of a promotional tool, like YouTube and such. And the very, very few artists who “make” money they are so big that that money would probably mean nothing to they regular running costs. They are exceptions of course.
Back in the 50s artists would put out two single ls on a record and see no money from that but use it as a promotion tools for radios. They would make their money from touring. That model has gone through a full cycle of transformation (and excess) and is back now.
People (specially the ones not in the industry) like to do all sorts of calculations which doesn’t exist in the real world. For example:
– “You put a record in Spotify and you get paid forever”. Except you actively promote your music (which cost money and time), your music will get buried among the other millions options.
– “There was tons of excesses in the 80s and misspending blabla”. Completely irrelevant. The average artist just want to be able to pay the rent and have done extra money to invest on the next project. Those people make pennies and it is not sustainable. Most make it out of ignorance or just pure love for the craft.
The worst thing of all is the fact of what Spotify has done with music in general: devaluations the craft and make music a commodity or even worse, “content”. This is very dangerous and it’s devastating repercussions are slow and long term to the point by the time we realise, culture as a whole has dropped a few notches and we all pay for that.
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