You pay 10$ to listen to hundreds of songs a month, how can it possibly be profitable for artists?
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Without Spotify, people would just buy a song and illegally put it online for someone else to download. Same thing happens with movies and entertainment.
Spotify, Netflix, etc is just a way to make some money by providing convenience to the user without them having to do the work of pirating it.
your band makes a good song and it lands in some kids favorites songs list.
you know that when your band comes to town that kid is buying tickets to your show and tee shirts
Short version, it’s not unless you get millions of plays. The real value comes from being able to direct promoters, venues, event coordinators, etc, to something you’ve made and distributed through official channels. Once your product is accessible, it becomes marketable with a lot of dedication.
Short answer: it’s not, especially indie artists. Wanna help an artist? Buy their stuff from Bandcamp.
“How can that be profitable for Frito Lay?”
The problem is the gatekeeping and the delocalizing of music discovery. Nobody goes to shows anymore for various reasons but a big one being that there are no local music scenes. When Spotify chooses who gets on these playlists they don’t consider how it can connect fans with their local artists….on top of that, it’s created a “pay to play” model for many of these playlists behind the scenes. To make matters worse, Spotify pays major label artists a higher stream royalty than indie artists…which may have made sense in 2012 before streaming was established but not anymore.
Maybe I’m getting old but seems like it’s affecting the quality of music too.
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