Spotify Is Coming For Your Royalties in 30 Days
Вставка
- Опубліковано 27 вер 2024
- Spotify has announced some BIG news this week.
The streaming giant plans to introduce a threshold dictating that artists have a minimum number of annual streams before royalties are generated.
While this will act as a gatekeeper and discourage 'hobbyists' and fraud, it's likely to have a significant impact on smaller and emerging artists.
Today we'll explore how these policy changes will affect you. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
-------
Serious? Let’s go.
📈 FREE 20 Day Plan For Your Next Music Release: training.dk-mba...
⚡️ Don’t know where to start? Join The Roadmap To 1 Million Streams: www.dk-mba.com
🌎 1-1 Consultations: damiankeyes.com...
🎥 Work On Your Socials With My Agency: dk-social.com
LET’S GET SOCIAL:
📲 Instagram: @damiankeyes1
📲 TikTok: @damiankeyes
✉️ Email: hello@dk-mba.com
🌐 Website: damiankeyes.com
ESSENTIAL VIDEOS TO RELEASE YOUR MUSIC:
🎬 How To Release A Single In 2024 - • How To Release A Singl...
🎬 10 Ways To Get Your Music Heard In 2024 - • 10 Ways To Get Your Mu...
🎬 I Got This Artist 1M Views In 7 Days And Here’s How - • I Got This Artist 1M V...
📚 MY BOOKS:
Stop Selling Music: amzn.to/2YGWI9
Rule Breaker’s Guide To Social Media: amzn.to/2N1bwtV
👇 ABOUT ME:
Hey! I’m Damian Keyes and I've worked with musicians every day of my life for the past 20 years. The internet is de ply untrusting understandably and here is my background so you can have the full picture.
When I was 18, I was signed to a major label and at 23 I co-founded a Music University in Europe called BIMM (valued at $300M). I’m also a bass player, I’ve played for a number of artists including Eric Clapton, Alanis Morrisette and Billy Cobham. I initially retired at 30, but realised that life gets boring if you’re not building!
I have always been in-between the music industry and education which is how I ended up building my UA-cam channel - I’ve been teaching artists how to release music long before it was a ‘niche’! I now educate artists around the world with my Academy, UA-cam channel and Social Agency.
It’s great to meet you and looking forward to working together on your music!
I think the labels did a back door deal to secure their dominance in the industry because too many indie artists were generating more than a label would have gotten them. BS if you ask me!
Exactly, labels feel the danger of indies... the biggest names come from there, because it's easier to make music nowadays, and learn how to do it like ever.... And Indies have the balls to do new things, big labels do the same garbage for 20years now, and expect people to buy it.
there’s a good article in wired about exactly what happened
Yes the big artist who refuse to pay to be in created lists but have amazing streams on Spotify are hated by Spotify and Spotify will filter their streams we see it happening every day. The Biggest group in the world with the biggest music fan base on planet have called out Spotify more than once even getting them to apologise and replace removed streams as we had Spotify Corrupt trending worldwide with screen shot's from spotify itself. Spofity got caught out and made up some lame excuse but apologised and replaced the streams. I'm referring to BTS and the fan base ARMY took on the might of Spotify because we can unlike the tiny small artists.
Artist who pay to be in created lists really aren't doing themselves any favour's as that might get them so accidential streams but it won't build them a dicated fan base that will pay for concert tickets, buy albums it's more for the odd casual listener. Media hype is just that media hype.
yes they want to make money out of those who refuse to do payola (pay for play)
All artists deserve their royalties. No matter how much or how little. I can easily see someone bringing a lawsuit over unpaid royalties. That's already happened in multiple cases over the decades in other situations. Spotify surely knows this already. So how do they expect to get away with not paying someone just because they're earning a little bit and not some arbitrary minimum amount?
Agreed - there’s going to be a lot of grey areas here
İ think it will also push people to fraud to get to those treshold numbers. Spotify should collect that extra money from the "content" of the sounds submitted. Music and sound recording or book reading types of submission can be evaluated separetly . Maybe it is already i dont know for sure
Exactly. Next time you get a bill for ◇$1.23 try not paying it because it is too little.
This sounds like spotify really wants everyone to pay for their service. Artist and listeners alike. The more you pay as an artist for spotify promotion through them, the more they give you a kick back/royalty on your music, maybe? and listeners pay more so they can keep their advertisers/record labels happy with botted payola streaming from Spotify themselves to the record labels artists and the company own pocket. It really sounds like a no-win for artists and listeners alike. Only the advertisers/paying record labels and spotify wins. Spotify is a payola platform that relies on playlisting and the old radio format that clear channel made in the early days. They are really not that important, and there are so many other places to stream music. All social media platforms want you to pay for being on them, especially if you are an artist or content creator. They want you to pay for views, clicks, likes, and listeners, or they suppress everything. The new style of social marketing now is just a big pay to play scam 😂.
Couldn’t agree more!
For years I tried to ignore when people said Spotify is greedy, but they’re getting harder to defend imo. Taking away small independent artists right to get paid royalties because they aren’t getting enough attention…
That's why I haven't bother getting My stuff on there.
Those people saw where it was going, you enabled Spotify to take it there by ignoring
@@HOLLASOUNDS dat what im talking about
but who has good royalty payout
@@DAEMENENCE1 Exactly, And also who else has the included music protection that Distro has for low price? Alot of producers sell sound packs and samples because theres more money in that that actually selling or streaming there own music.
You said it, those little payments are actually heartwarming for us small artists and contribute to fuel the motivation we need to not give up... It's sad that they're taking that away. I can live without my 5€ a month sure but I was a little proud of being able to create something that was giving me some money back. Something... worth something. I know making music is not about money and that shouldn't be the only reason I'm doing this (and it isn't ofc) but still... Why Spotify why?
Because the majors are trying to corner the market. These platforms are easy manipulated just like the old radio stations were back in the day by the majors. Hands get greased so that they’re artists will get favored. There’s no way around it. That’s exactly why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It’s always been that way and it will always be that way.
Yeah I felt that part big time
I give up, I dont even want to make music anymore, what's the point of making music only you will hear? The point of making music is your creating something for people to hear and enjoy, if that's never going to happen then its pointless.
@@desertbuzzard3531 I hate to break it to you, but the majors own Spotify (they are collectively over 50% of shareholders). They don't just have influence, it is their investment product to continue their monopoly over music production.
So you think that 4¢ a month is a big ego boost ? You're worth so much more bro. There's more realistic ways to monetize music
I hate to see the rich getting richer just for being rich and the small creators getting penalized just for being small.
I think they should leave small artists alone. I would say the popular distributors should vet their music more carefully. As I recall from Spotify's early days, Ek was telling artists to push quantity and more regularity.
I think they should have a separate platform for independent Artist and once they hit a concern number organicly they can be promoted to the next level. 😉 Oh that is what Spotify going to do. Great. ❤
Spotify deffo working with labels for this one, so independent artists struggle more… smh
Yeah the labels have been calling for it. While I don't believe Spotify are deliberately trying to hurt independent artists, it will hurt a lot of them sadly
@@DamianKeyes business is business, if they are gonna earn more money through the labels way - they are not gonna think twice.
we are living in some kind of dystopian society where musicians are scrapping over tiny fractions of a penny.
I understand the quality over quantity, but many smaller indie artists produce some quality tracks, and just because they don't have the marketing budget to get the really high stream count they shouldn't be penalised, their small fan base is still paying a subscription fee, and therefore the artist should get their cut.
Because that "cut" is so tiny it can't even reimburse the processing fees. This should be a wakeup call. Any serious artist should work harder
@@wormsali Sure that might be the case this time, but if they raise the bar in the future to say 100k streams per track, or even 1M before you get paid, then maybe this really would impact some fulltime artists.
Real talk
Exactly and thanks
@@wormsali Not the case. They don't actually do anything when one song makes .007 cents, aside from tracking the data, which with today's server horsepower is free.
It doesn’t matter the major labels will continue to manipulate their streaming numbers and receive payouts. It's a complex web of deceit. Take for instance, G-Eazy; his label was exposed for fraudulent practices, yet all of his songs remain accessible on Spotify. If an independent artist were in the same situation, their songs would likely be promptly removed from the platform. It’s all a game payola since the beginning of time !
EXACTLY, according to spotify all independent artists are responsible for every single stream they get on their song, when they issued this email i stopped promoting my music on spotify, they probably don't give a shit about the mission few thousand monthly plays and i can live without the $15 , but that's what they have done so far, i can imagine what's coming next
I've never used Spotify, either as a creator or a fan. I use bandcamp, which so far has been very fair and open with me about sales, and I've discovered tons of great music there. I've not had many sales, but I never have any problem getting the small amounts I've made, and for bigger hitters (like Radiohead, who use it) it seems like a pretty good deal. The solution to the Spotify situation is for artists not to sign the deals that allow this. Retain your copyrights, don't sign them away and fuck the sharks.
@@CheapSushi Indeed, but so far it's been good.
Ya. It's unfortunate.@@CheapSushi
@@CheapSushiTidal is where it’s at, it pays artists much much more than stupid spotify
We need a open source block chain music hosting and streaming. So the artist who u listen to gets ur money.
@@TJ-bx5px I have no idea what that means, but the principle sounds right! Where do I sign? (Joke. I ain't signing anything!)
not sure how I feel about the threshold. the what they call “working musicians” situation really needs to improve, and the money has to come from somewhere. I’d suggest that if we’re setting up a threshold for the minimum of streams (claiming those are hobbyists that are not serious enough to promote their own music), there should also be one for max, let’s say 10M streams, after which the rate drops in favor of those still climbing up and trying to pay their bills. but of course, every hater under the sun that knows nothing about business is gonna suggest the money should rather come out of Ek’s personal wealth. 🙄
Interesting!! It throws up so many conversations as yeah, if there’s a minimum why shouldn’t there be a maximum
Agree! I've been saying this to anyone who would listen for years. It makes total sense to have the payment rates scaled as the streams get larger, just like everything else in consumerism where it's cheaper when you buy in bulk. So in fact, why shouldn't the rate be higher for streams at the lower end and subsidise it by the streams for those pulling over 10m or over 100m. Putting a gate on emerging artist is the worst possible scenario IMO and leading down a very slippery licensing slope!
either way it goes the GAME is COOKED..if u think any of these Platforms are gonna share what them and there CTO discuss on Parameters and Metrics changes withing there Algorithms, then your sadly mistaken, even Big Artist have no way to tell how many (STREAMS) They've done..it's all on what the streaming Platforms want them to believe and they can cook the numbers any way they want to...there needs to be a OVERSITE TEAM,but thats going down another rabbit hole, because then all they would do is treat them like the TEAMSTERS UNION..n pay the people at the top to GO-ALONG-TO-GET-ALONG! & that would be...never mind
you just suggested socialism lmaoooooooo
@@maknoxx no, not really. those artists that are more popular would still earn a lot more, there’s still a huge incentive for artists to be successful.
I’m so triggered I had to comment twice 😭 But in regards to “undeserving” or “genuine artists” It’s insane how a bunch of people sat round a table at Spotify probably with degrees in business marketing etc. and not an artistic bone in their body are the ones in position to determine what “genuine” art is. That statement itself is surely a paradox? I smell one big play from the major labels trying to force us smaller/independent artists to become more reliant/dependant on them when we DON’T NEED THEM!
00:12 🎵 Spotify plans to change its royalty model, aiming to generate an extra $1 billion for artists in the next 5 years.
01:06 📜 Spotify is introducing a new minimum length for tracks to avoid gaming the system, potentially impacting artists with shorter tracks.
02:30 💰 Spotify will implement a minimum annual stream threshold for artists to receive royalties, affecting independent artists and potentially removing $40 million in revenue.
05:25 🚫 Spotify plans to penalize labels, artists, and anyone promoting fraudulent activities to level the playing field.
08:12 🎶 Spotify aims to prioritize quality over quantity, but these changes may inadvertently affect independent artists' motivation and progression.
And thats true but it may also affect small labels who exist on signing many artists and skimming 10% of their income but now that income has gone. This could potentially destroy the music industry.
@logigmusic6458 As a small publishing company and Artist I think the music industry is saturated with noise and it already hurting. Not everyone is going to make it in the music industry only the strong will survive. Artist like Snoop Dog hit 1 billion streams and got 45k that does even help with his break even budget to promote his Artist. It not fair for Artist and Label that high put in money to produce quality content and have huge traffic.
It's interested hearing people comment about artists "scamming the system" when Spotify exists purely off the back of stealing artist's work in the first place. I feel like it's more like reclaiming what is rightfully theirs in the first place. Spotify as a platform needs to be completely re worked, the creators need to be taking home the vast majority of the revenue and that should not be in question.
I hate that they will decide if I am a working artist or not and then just refuse to let me have my royalties. If they do it on the number of followers I'm pretty sure I'll be screwed at the moment. What it does mean is that we have to regroup, They are bigger than us, it will effect every element of our music and they really don't care about independent artists. We need to come up with a different strategy.
number 2 is annoying for sure (since I barely have an audience beyond friends lol), Spotify royalties just about cover distribution costs. This literally takes away all incentive for uploading my music to streaming services :(
totally agree with you... when youtube brought in the subscriber threshold thing it really killed my motivation and enjoyment of making videos, even though i was only getting pennies it made me try to get better each time, I can see a lot of people getting similar feeling when/if it hits with spotify, getting those small pennies are enough to keep people going and actually see music as a potential business rather than just a hobby (which is also not to say it being just a hobby is a bad thing)
True. The YT threshold feels out of reach
@@anthonyvaldez851 dont get me wrong i dont think its out of reach or unattainable... it was just very disheartening, and if i'm honest i think that was simply because of why it happened and made me personally focus on the wrong things, where having the tiny bit of income made me focus on making better videos and trying to improve things each time (which is realistically what we should be doing)
Frankly, as an independent artist, I’m just using Spotify and the other online platforms to get my music out there. My numbers are so small I don’t expect to get much in the way of royalties. Then again, you never know.
Besides, I believe in my songs, and they’re better off out there where the world can stumble across them, rather than hiding away on my hard drive.
Hope you’re feeling better, mate.
Yeah I came here to say pretty much this. I can forgo the £3 per year or whatever it is it currently earns me 🤣 (Totally my own fault as I'm only now trying to learn about promo / advertising / social media in general really)
I agree
Thanks for the insight Damian. Sadly it's a race to the bottom. How cheaply can we get music out of the artist and pay peanuts as they keep moving the bar.
It definitely also brings up the question of “what is art” too
Hey Damo, thanks for this video. I guess my problem with the "working artist" concept, is that I might be out gigging every weekend, selling a few dozen of my CDs at every show, but totally *suck* at promoting myself on Spotify. To an outsider I would still appear to be a "working artist," but Spotify might look at my sub-par plays & say "Nope. This guy is not a working artist." I'm working on fixing this, lol, as you know, but there might be a lot of what you & I would call "working artists" out there who won't fit the Spotify profile. But, it is their sandbox, and they get to set the rules. I'll be interested to see how this all shakes out.
@@lespaul2550 Awesome extrapolation of the sandbox analogy! I like it!
I might stop using Spotify after this. I put everything I have into my music. It will be detrimental sure, but I don´t care. If Spotify has no respect for the little guys and gals, that´s their choice; I´ll be damn sure not to loose selfrespect.
Wait, they want to support the "hard working artists" what??? Lets imagine you got 1000 real songs in your catalog, you get 100 Streams on each, thats a bunch in total, ok... but the threshold is 1000 streams on a song annually. So you have 100.000 streams but nothing in royalties??!! WHAAT? Lets imagine somebody else got 1 song in their whole catalog with 10.000 streams and they get paid for that in royalties??? Am I tripping? Am I wrong? Who of them is the "hard working artist" they try to support. If this is the model they are going for, then they must have lost their mind....
you better delete your whole catalog then except 1, so people dont distribute their streams on "worthless" songs. tf
It’s kinda nice for Spotify to do my job for me. I’ve been trying to get the audience that I do have to stream on Apple Music or Amazon and now that they see these headlines it makes it easier to convince them lol
If my music is on there, they are earning from it, therefore I should be paid a royalty. The new arrangement could mean new artists can literally never be successful because you need to be on there to get known. This is pay-to-play resurrected. I have tracks that do very much go past the 1,000 streams but I have better ones that do a few hundred. Numbers do not necessarily equal quality. If we accept the nonsense that numbers are what matters, then Spotoify will be full of nothing but predictable easy-to-market hip-hop, mainstream pop and mainstream rock. There are hundreds of other genres and non-genre music that wouldn't ever be heard. This is disastrous for many musicians I know or follow.
That is a very good point, numbers do not necessarily equal quality, but the interesting question then is - what does dictate quality if it’s not popularity with what people are listening to?
@DamianKeyes If it was mass popularity then only RnB, hip hop and predictable mainstream rock could be considered "good". Some of the greatest music in history would not be considered "good" because in some cases it has a very small fan base.
Thank God 🙏🏾
This should be a wakeup call. Any serious artist should work harder
Hope you feel better! I didn't count on making much from streaming. I just started the slow burn of building a fanbase and putting singles up every 4-5 weeks. The gate keeping and someone in your pocket at every step just never stops. We are alrready giving away the music for free - since spotify is free. I've already got merch setup - just need to make that even better.
If the threshold to be considered a "working artist" isn't too high (Like above 100 monthly listeners or 200 streams on a song) and if they use the money that makes them save to reinvest in the "working artists", AND if you get paid retroactively once you hit the threshold, then it all makes sense and I'm for it. An artist with less than 50 monthly listener doesn't care about the .5 cents Spotify would owe them, but on the whole that could be enough money to help artists who count on this for a living.
Really like this view
I don't think anyone would care if they held onto payments until some threshold was reached (most distributors do this with the payments anyway) but my take is that they are suggesting not paying out at all. Happy to see anything suggesting otherwise. It doesn't matter how few streams you get - if someone streams your song and is paying Spotify for it then you deserve your cut, however small.
@@DomTristram I agree in theory that everyone should get paid their due, no matter how small. But with the view I suggested above, you do get paid every cent if you meet the threshold, and if you don't, well you weren't serious to begin with. (Ofc the threshold has to be reasonable. I think 1000 streams is reasonable. By applying yourself a little bit, I think everyone can attain 1000 streams onto every track on your album after a year.)
The way I see it is that since music production has become more accessible than ever, a lot of the 100k songs that are being uploaded every day really aren't serious and that's ok, let people have fun! But we need to protect people who actually put their neck out and their livelihood on the line. Also we need gatekeeping from potential abuse like AI music uploading 5000 songs a day and collecting micro royalties, sucking money for the pool of real artists.
The concern for me is the ethics of it. In terms of copyright law, even the license that Spotify acquired from all artists previous to this new policy had some agreements attached to it. Meaning Spotify in theory has to pay those royalties for the license to distribute. It would mean the blanket agreement aggregators will have to either be corrected, or right from the beginning the agreement did not specify that Spotify had to pay any royalties at all... that would be messed up, and the precedent would be that soon only what they deem as good music will even get added to the service. And they will deem good music as music that has the numbers to make them money.
Whenever you agree to the TOS (which I am sure nobody reads) you agree to allow them to change said TOS without informing you at that. It's shady but 100% legal.
there u go,now u got it!
Get well soon, Damian 🌿
If I need a certain number of streams to be monetized on Spotify, I'm prepared to run SOCIAL MEDIA Ads to get there...
If frequency of payments is an issue, Spotify can pay every three months after a threshold is reached just like the PROs do
PROs hold your money until you're worth paying, they don't say "your royalties don't count until..."
EXACTLY
Yep this
I understand Spotify's problem, and I think there is an element of truth to the fact they want to remove lots of the noise and botted-playlist fodder which gets uploaded daily.
I think it depends on how the threshold will work:
1) If it's "Reach 1000 streams then you get your 1000 streams of royalty" - Annoying perhaps, but you still get the money eventually, I mean, UA-cam itself has a $100 minimum before they payout so it's not unprecedented.
2) If it's "Reach 100 streams, and then we start counting your royalties" - This would be very aggressive (maybe illegal?) and would effectively add a $3 tax per song uploaded to Spotify, so surely it can't be this, right?
Honestly, this is a great video... but there is a bit of manipulation with numbers here. Will be recording my video about it today...
Great Post! This just in, Spotify stock is projecting and reporting a profit in 2024! And... Royalties on every song, for every play, for every artist, need to get paid, not shifted around or cancelled, that is the whole point of copyright and royalties!!! If a bank removes a penny from every deposit, they would be making millions and billions, ... and is illegal. The way they can dip into the cookie jar and remove payments is by updating their TOS - Terms of Service, so if you don't agree, don't use the service, is what the agreement will say. Furthermore, by limiting that rule to EVERY TRACK, not artist, tracks may spike then may go down over time making the payout limited to initial or limited timeframes on each track! Artists money on every track gets removed from the cookie jar if under 1000 !
I really don't care about any service anymore. Canceled all my subscriptions and now I'm going back to vinyl again. At least I have a hard copy and nice artwork alongside the music. And my attention span has improved greatly. 😃
I 100% agree with you. 2 of their reasons make sense. However, the issue of taking away royalties from "non-working" artists makes less than zero sense. And I can't even see how its legal. All it says to me, is that, once again, the little guys get shafted due to greed of the big guys. I.e. Spotify is cow-towing to the big labels who, in my opinion, are displaying more and more how they left "music" a long time ago, and instead are anti-competitive conglomerates focused only on their quarterly profits. Late stage capitalism cannabilising itself. Its hard enough for independent artists as it is, and now they just made it worse. Shame on Spotify
I swear spotify should make adjustments with their label deals! Spotify is the only platform that paid me and now that's being compromised 😢
Thank you Damian Keys for being detailed about this policy change with Spotify the mainstream media (rolling stone.. billboard) just glossed over it but you revealed it's negative effect on Indy artists
Thank you I'm now subscribing to your channel
It's simple if I give Spotify $11 a month and I only listen to one album the entire month...
Then, all that money should go to that album ...
People are paying Spotify for access to music.
So their money should be distributed to whatever artist they listen to!
That's it!
It’s ridiculous … beside from the shitty deals that you can get into as an independent… now Spotify is gatekeeping who gets paid … are they also making the payments ‘decent’ once you get paid. We are close to entering the age of idiocracy (also in music) and the ‘death’ of true art ….. I’ll just go back to releasing on cd’s and cassettes
Between this news and the news about Bandcamp, this seems pretty bad for small, independent artissts/bands.
I think theoretically these changes could be for the better. We'll have to see how they're actually implemented. I particularly like the changes to minimum length for noise tracks and the like. I think ideally they'd pay artists based on listening time. Although you wouldn't want to encourage like 3 hour long songs either. Some combination of credit for a stream (first 30 seconds) + additional credit for listening longer makes sense to me. Might sound complicated but you'd think Spotify could track this easily enough. It's kind of crazy that a 30 second noise track gets the same credit as someone listening to the 23 minutes of "Echoes" by Pink Floyd.
It’s a waiting game!
I think it should be more than 30 secs. 30 secs is basically a skip
@@thesuncollective1475 30 seconds is a lot longer than you imagine
these changes are better for the wallets of rich artist's managers, but no, these changes steal from the poor to pay the rich
@@thesuncollective1475 yet they still seem to charge the person playing those 30 seconds or play an ad and now just keep the money
Spotify's royalty system removes the "noise tracks" from affecting the larger system anyway, so why to they care? It's the small independent artists that always took the hit from people gaming the system anyway because their percentage of streams in the "not contracted" category gets lower when someone's bot plays a 30-second track a million times. And if there is a threshold of plays, again the guy that cant get 1000 plays gets hurt while the bot farm that can easily get 10000 is just fine. In addition, if you say tracks have to be a certain length, the bot farms just add servers and fake users. come on. we've all seen this leapfrog before. Spotify knows all of this, so they're just finding a way to juice their bottom line at the expense of the little guy. They are not doing this to do the right thing, they want THEIR thing. Money. They don't care who gets squashed.
In the end, this is just proving that the promise of NO GATEKEEPERS is a lie. The gatekeepers just changed from music labels to technology companies. The buggering is still the same.
Tbh it doesn't sound that bad at all. Even the minimal amount of streams (depending on how large of course). If that minimum is set at 1000 streams per song let's say, youre losing cents.
Little late to this party, but just got this video up in my feed.
The first feeling I get when hearing about this, is a sudden urge to stop making music. If Spotify does this upon thousands of independent artists, then is it worth to try to make a living out of something you really enjoy?
But I also see it through the eyes of Spotify. Last week Taylor Swift released her album 1989 (Taylor's Version), a re-release of her 1989 album. This album broke the Spotify record of all time listens of an album on release day. At the same time, multiple music labels went out saying they will change the deals for new artists signing, saying the artist can't make a new edition of an album after 15-20 years insted of the 3-7 years that's industry standard now. Music labels wants their money, but they can't get any money if an artist releases a new edition-album outside of the label they were signed to. So what do the labels do? They go for the source, and try to make a deal with streaming platforms such as Spotify.
Spotify reveals this news the same week as Taylor breaks the record for all time listeners. Coincidence? In my eyes; no. Spotify have been given the task to be a gatekeeper for the music industry, and taken it's role very seriously. At least that's my experience of it since I started putting out music. The job of gatekeeping was something the music labels had until Spotify launched, and now Spotify has taken it a step further. If they release this new payroll policy, they will keep a whole lot of dedicated musicians in the shadows, making it even harder to break through for new acts. And how is this great news for Spotify?
1) Daniel Ek will fill his pockets even more, taking money from independent artists.
2) The big music labels will once again start gate keeping, meaning only the biggest artists in the world will make a living out of making music.
3) We "hobby musicians" will be left with nothing
If Spotify decides to do this, I will re-think my dream of making a living out of my music. I already find it impossible to figure out how to get listeners, how to market my music, and how to write a great pitch. So, yeah, let's all go for take from the poor and give to the rich. Seems like that's the plan for the whole world at the moment.
If your song is played you should get paid. That’s BS. Recording is not cheap and if someone even one person listens to a song you put out Spotify should not have the right to say sorry not enough streams so no money. And the working artist is probably major labels trying to get more money.
Just another squeeze on the small artists. I’m so tired of things being on the labels benefits.
from what I read on the (Verge) they are saying around 200 streams or at least 5 cents in earnings, to be paid royalties, so it's not to crazy
I've read another article (musicbusiness) saying that it's even less (50 streams or less). In any case, no artist is really loosing anything. People are picking up the wrong fight here
I am about to start recording my first demo, not sure if that is release material or if I will need to go to studio with it for a release. I was hoping to aggregate a few singles and/or albums on streaming services to add a little salt on the food when I retire. This change from Spotify means it might not even be worth releasing on Spotify at all. Luckilly there are other streaming platforms that isn't demonitizing minor artists like me... (yet?)
You need to address the fact that Spotify is actively trying to make sure you only listen to the same 25 songs over and over.
All music has value. Plain and simple. Who is anyone to say my song does not have any worth and someone else’s does have worth? Doesn’t sit right with me in any way.
This has really discouraged me and so many indie artists...
It feels like a kick in the nuts. The next step is how to make sure you are above the threshold using legitimate strategies. Building your brand on socials, pitching to playlists and playlist curators and working on building some momentum. Keep going and don't let this discourage you too much! I'm here to help if I can 🙂🙂
It’s a good thing I’ve never paid for Spotify, and I don’t think any of my next releases from here on out are going to be on Spotify at all… never liked them anyway…
Nothing beats real talk. Thank you Damian. ❤
Thank you so much, I appreciate that 🙂🙂
I quitt Spotify some months ago because of their "Universal, Sony, BMG" secret contracts - that are not paying the average Artist!
Im on Tidal for now. Curious if Spotify really gonna change something...
Surely all this is going to do is encourge small artists to seek out questionable ways of boosting streams to reach the threshold? Also is it set per track or over your whole catalogue? The white noise length requirements etc. make total sense but this stream threshold thing just sounds like yet another kick in the teeth to people starting out. It's hard enough already!
Thanks Damian for keeping it real, but still caring about the small independents.
Thanks Andrew, that really means a lot 🙏
I don't think Spotify is trying to do the "right" thing and promote "quality" over quantity. They are trying to please the major labels in order to keep the business afloat.
1) The 30-second threshold should have been changed a long time ago. Alternatives: a minimum percentage of track time listened (say, 50% of track but not less than X (say, 45 seconds), meaning that the minimum length of track would have to be 90 seconds to generate royalties. Another option: adopt sync like in film... you generate royalties per second listened once listening time reaches a specific threshold.. this COMPLETELY equalizes the playing field: a 30 second track will generate 30 seconds of royalties, while an epic like G'n R's Estranged would generate 9 minutes of royalties... This is immediately eliminates the incentive for artists and scammers to generate shorter tracks for the sake of greater royalties.
2) Had they established a user-centric payout system, streaming farms would never have taken off: Each plan's royalty pool is an isolated pool that doesn't influence payouts for any song not listened to by that user. Add this approach to a better royalty accrual and the bulk of royalties lost to fraudulent activity would have been eliminated.
3) Using stream counts for gate keeping is not a measure of quality, it's a measure of exposure. Popular doesn't equate to quality. I am also willing to bet that tracks released by major labels that don't meet the threshold will magically be exempt from this criteria. If Spotify are going to establish a minimum streaming threshold, I'll bet that fraudulent activity is only going to go up so that artists can hit those minimum targets... which wouldn't have anything to do with ego, rather, in attempt to get paid for the use of their IP, which they will no longer get.
I’m not against the thresholds, when I was only doing a couple hundred - even thousands of streams of month, I wasn’t worried about that $5 royalty withdrawal. I was investing a ton more than I was getting paid early on and not worrying about royalties until I reached a point where I was generating enough streams to make a living off my music. If this helps provide higher payouts to artists that reach higher thresholds than I am all for it. Nonetheless, I still don’t know the full details of everything and it could be a change for the worse, but I’m praying its for the better.
Might be a me thing but music has totally become a hobby and labor of love. Marketing was too much, so I found another way to start getting rich... and now music is that much more enjoyable that I can separate it out. Ironically I think I make better stuff for the free time and lack of stress too.
i'm a small artist i'll probs be cut even though i'm not gaining the system :/ great (woo spotify has made money they been underpaying everyone now increase and wont give us that profit it will go to the labels..) music is my hobby - royalty helps make more music buy more effects /stuff and so on so never spent anything i made on anything else - ill still make music but if i get cut this will hold me back more
What about brand spanking new artists? Do we only get paid after a year since uploading the first song even if we receive over a 1000 streams or immediately after a 1000 streams? Confused about that concept. I'm looking into marketing my music only with a Spotify link but not sure if it's worth it now.
we secretly produced for over 20 years to release our LP "Water Us Universe 1999 to 2020" in 2023; underground, unknown, and growing. thanks for the updates. - PREXENTS & Spaceoceans Studios
I mean it seems the same as it always has been, right? The labels get the better deal and everyone else picks up the scraps. Even though major labels expect artists to do more work than ever. If someone is on Spotify for any amount of time and listening to your music, you’re keeping them on Spotify and any profit made from that should be split with you, the Artist. It’s like a job telling you if you don’t work at least 6 hours you don’t get paid for any of it.
I really don’t think it’ll affect many that much. If you’re making any sort of profit from streaming, I assume you’re making a lot more from merch, Patreon etc..
but it’s the principal, really. Shows where Spotify’s motive are.
The focus has to be on building the fanbase and controlling that process as much as you can in house, as you’re right, powerhouses like Spotify have their motives first and foremost, so artists have to do the same
@@DamianKeyes Absolutely! Nothing more important than doing the most you can as an artist to be self contained or at least have control over where the money goes and how decisions are made. Appreciate your channel a lot for helping to decide what decisions we’re making.
Sounds like things are moving backwards to where only a few (big) bands get royalties. I am against this
Spotify has never made a profit because Universal, Sony & Warner Music group take 70%, they’ve always been in the red. So, even us independent artists are still paying the majors whether we like it or not, just to be “findable” to our smaller audiences that we hope to grow. Welcome to the threshold of music hell, haha! I think if you create anything you should be paid for it, even videos. Content and music creators eventually will need to create their own platforms or use blockchain to keep track of their art. UA-cam still leads with payout but I do think it would be powerful if they made the platform less involved with the pirates out there. ❤
At the end of the day we make music because we want to. Where we put it is our choice, I am hopeful the future of independent artists will rule out the bad guys someday. 😊
Raising the subscription? ✅
Leaving the royalties per stream at the same amount? ✅
Leveraging a minimum threshold for payout? ✅
Sounds like Spotify alright..
to be fair, it's just barely made them profitable. The whole system is broken.
Personally, I think this is great for all indie artists. If that threshold is 1000 streams , you’re only missing out on 3$ per song or so and once you work past that threshold (which really isn’t hard to do with a little effort and some marketing) , then you will be super thankful for the increase in royalty payouts that are a product of this change- especially as you scale. I personally am frustrated with how many people are taking money from the pot with no effort at all. I’ve been at this for years with millions of streams and 100,000 monthly listeners and it’s sad that even with all my years of efforts, I’m not even close to this being a full time income. I want better for all of us so that we can get to that point of full time sustainability with our work, and maybe this change will get us closer? Idk just some thoughts. Not trying to argue here- I hear you all. Just wanted to offer another opinion.
Interesting perspective 🤔
My thoughts too. Just released a few tracks (neo classical stuff) a couple of weeks ago. Started promoting last week on socials and paid promotion (not much, less than €50). One of the tracks already has more than 200 streams. >1000 should be feasible in a month.
It will take some time to earn back those promotional costs but I believe it will be a good investment in the long run.
I’m not gonna take my music off Spotify but I’m definitely changing my streaming service cause I’m sick of their bs.
Damian waiting on your new release plan after the changes.
Coming Jan 2024 :)
Spotify and other platforms are not paying something near fair to the artists. It's really not fair at all. All the sacrifice some musicians make to have a decent recording so other people make money with their music it really sucks. Someone have to do something. There have to be a way to change the system.
Also, this will most likely give major labels more control on the market if the aggregators start to lose dollars.
Spotify is such a ripoff! I am never going to upload to that crap platform again. They get the benefit of a lot of great music and don’t have to pay a cent for it!
if i was releasing music theres no way i would allow it to be on spotify
I'm sure they can't do that if a musician is signed up to the specific rights membership.
Every stream should be paid and as is, is under paid significantly. This is an ongoing pursuit to devaluing music.
Not sure what you meant by illegal promotion... I'm sure it's not illegal, it would add no value to your user base for sure and may be against Spotify policy, but not illegal and should not be finable. Just most likely some form of restrictions.
Unfortunately as much as I enjoy Spotify for my own music listening, I feel it's sets the bar for a poor pay out for all the musicians
very true...its INSPIRATION...every third of a penny counts and whatever we earn is still what we earn.
Which distributor allows you to release a track that's 30 seconds long because mine doesn't.
When you say “game”, and “incentive” you reinforce the idea that popular music is good and vice-versa. One could argue the exact opposite: the most accessible, the less risky and artistically impactful.
Firstly hope you feel better soon Damian. This is such a difficult one...as an independent artist I would like to have all my royalties no matter how small the pay cheque is, just because I don't have the thousands of streams yet - shouldn't make me exempt. I know my songs are deserving of the same treatment - they just haven't got there yet unfortunately so it's not fair if I get penalised when I'm just as serious as all the other artists who have the same determination and heart for their career, getting money for songs that some could say are just as good quality depending on how subjective we wanna get. However I appreciate that they're trying to separate the wheat from the chaff - but i'm certainly not chaff just because I don't have over 5k streams for one of my songs yet, heck not even 100K (which would be a flippin' miracle at this rate) so I get it - and i see and understand why they're doing it...but it's just not fair on the sloggers like myself who haven't quite got their breakthrough yet but are trying so dam hard to release good quality music lol.
Had about 5 of my artist albums taken down since May and they refuse to pay the correct amount of royalties owed its maybe about £5k plus
Interesting to hear, Damien. Thank you for posting. Although I made 90p in the past 3 months from streaming, so I’m not gonna lose too much sleep over it all! Hope you feel better.
Thank you! This one has hit me!
Hey Damian, I was curious to know where you're able to get your news like this from? Most of the major Spotify updates I hear about are from you and I was wondering where I could go to read this stuff myself
They are currently paying .004 cent per stream. Or something close to that. Who is making any money on it anyway? Maybe a few elites. This is just going from terrible to horrible
I think a few PROs have a minimum threshold too. It's a waste of administrative time. It means they money sits there until it reaches a certain amount. So still generating revenues but they payout doesn't happen until the threshold is reached. Limits the amount of payouts required.
Hey Damian, thanks for the video... Do you have a link to a press release or some other comms from Spotify about this change?
I'm working on amusic-tech startup focused on artist payments... I'd love to reference this change from Spotify but can't find any info.
I realy appreciate your kind ❤ and supportive words. Thank you DK
I do actually like to have a bit of a challenge. I think if you have to do something to get paid we’ll see how much you need. It actually inspires me to try.
The most fair way would be to split royalties from their listeners by percentage. E.g. if I listen to 2 bands on Spotify per month and listen to them for roughly the same amount of time out of my £10 subscription each artist gets £3.50 and Spotify takes it normal 30%.
So what exactly is a working artist? You spend years or even 10:49 decades writing songs and then finally you get some decent recordings. You put them on Spotify and you get about ten streams? Are you then regarded as junk? I don’t think so. People who cynically and deliberately put out garbage and game the system should by all means be penalized or preferably banned but artists who simply haven’t cracked it? A little support from these companies would be nice.
This new policy seems fine. Why would I possibly care about the 12¢ I'm not getting? There are so many other big-picture issues to tackle that will actually make or break your career.
Should I give up? Or should I just keep chasing thresholds?
I would like to see a tiered promotion where if your new and you have less than 1000 streams you get paid.002 cents per stream. If you get to over 1000 you could get paid .004 cents per stream 5000 .005 etc. Make there be an incentive to growing the Spotify brand. Penalizing new artist under 1000 streams is discouraging to a new artist. Where is the .003 that would be paid to those new artist that have not gotten 1000 streams going? It's not paid out. Its in Spotifys pocket. The problem with this system is they are not supporting new artist and they are not incentivizing existing artists to keep growing.
One of the big statements in Damien's video is how this will affect Distrokid and Cd Baby's bottom line going forward. I'm certain they'll "pass the savings" onto their consumers. Spotify doesn't seem worth the trouble. They keep making the news for the wrong reasons; Finally made a profit this year and oh yeah, we're coming after your royalties now.
Yup. These middlemen will still get paid because they're the barrier to entry for small artists without a label. You can't directly upload your music on Spotify and a few of the other streaming sites without a distribution service like Distrokid.
The chance that you're an 'upcoming artist' is slim to nil. If Spotify's decision bothers you, you probably shouldn't be releasing music and should instead focus on improving yourself as a person and as an artist. The people who make a living in music are mostly people who sell stuff to artists, like Mr Keyes for example. Artists making money from their actual music are very talented and very driven people who make more utility music such as trailer music, film and game scores etc. Original music artists get big either through luck or because they're musical geniuses operating from another dimension entirely.
But like with so much big business, how do we the small time musicians have absolutely any power to change it?
We have even less than the amount of royalty we get for one listen. despite the hundreds and in many cases thousands of pound we invest to get that track that gets 15 listens a month from our bedrooms onto Spotify.
What is the best alternative to spotify? Is youtube premium any better.
i just started actively putting out music every week and this is definitely discouraging me from putting out music again. i’ll just stick to selling beats again
I could be wrong but it sounds like what Spotify wants to do is hold on to your royalties until you reach a certain dollar amount. It’s probably a huge hassle to pay out fractions of a penny. If that’s the case I think it’s ok. I have a minimum dollar amount set to pay out from my distributor anyway. Spotify is one of the few streaming services that actually pays you in a decent amount of time. It took Facebook/instagram 4 years to pay me for my music that was played on instagram.
Y’all know where to move your products where you can create value to a new platform. In this day and age, the labels are watching EVERWHERE so they can keep up with where the money is going. Keep what information that you know to only word of mouth between legitimate fellow artist. Gate keep that information because it’s always a matter of time before those sites get bought out and the cycle continues even faster than before
I believe that Deezer has (or will) change their distribution policy as well. At first, just in France, but the plan is to extend to all artists.
I don't know the details, but the intent is to purge non-music and provide more to artists who receive streams from "fans."
IMO, this is a better plan than what Spotify has in the works.