Dear Spotify...
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- Опубліковано 8 жов 2023
- This is my open letter to Spotify.
There's no doubting that the world's leading music streaming platform has benefitted the careers of millions of artists, but the system is currently broken. With such a focus on achieving big streaming numbers, artists are now being exploited by third-party companies with the promise of instant success.
Today we explore how playlisting has become such a dangerous phenomenon in this new age for music.
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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!
Hey team! I'd love to know your thoughts, is the system broken?
Damian, It seems to be. Playlisting is crazy and there is no telling what direction the music business is heading. It may be very different a year from now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now. Who knows what's going to happen? Kind of scary. Taking away the streaming numbers is a great idea. Buying bots, numbers is just sad and a sign of desperation. In a nutshell, it's cheating. But in the end, it's the artist fooling him or herself.
i totally agree, taking away the numbers addiction would be a great thing, but somehow i doubt spotify would ever do that, considering all the business that runs around this numbers war. sigh.
This is one of the things I am used to say. I was starting the usage of Apple Music for the simple fact that there is no numbers there. You listen to new music with different ears once you can't see the number of plays.
Oh please..obvious interaction generating question....no one cares
Love this - great points! And a Spotify without play counts.. sign me up. I’d love to see you chat about all of this stuff with someone like Jason Grishkoff from SubmitHub (or someone from Muso Soup etc) on your channel. I think it would be super interesting and educational to hear from you both in a dialogue about play-listing.
I couldn't find a single video about it,but Spotify in India is literally forcing their users to buy premium by literally disabling free features like shuffle,repeat,rewind or to skip to a specific point in a song.THEY DON'T EVEN ALLOW YOU TO CHOOSE A SONG FROM A PLAYLIST AT THIS POINT.It's simply outrageous,I don't know why many people are not talking about this.(btw english is my 4th language so sorry if you find any mistakes😅.)
This is a huge issue in Germany, especially in the rap world. Self-proclaimed "playlist curators" and "marketing agencies" used to message rappers several times a week. I remember one account messaging me on 4 or 5 occasions. Unfortunately, people fall for it.
That happened to me on days were I Ignored how fucked you'll end on with the algorithms, cheers!
Spotify was never created to help artists. I'm not sure why artists think that. Spotify was created to make it easy for music fans to listen to music. Period. Any "help" or money that artists get is purely incidental.
As soon as you said remove the streaming numbers I damn near choked shouting YES YES!! It's just so sad how much we have cheapened music. It breaks my heart
I like the streaming count. It can be a good barometer most of the time.
The idea of removing streaming numbers from Spotify's front end is so on the money. Brilliant video! Sadly I don't think they give a damn about artists, but let's keep the faith.
Great video as always! Yeah, the system is broken, pretty much like any other system, but especially when we talk about the music business. I like how you can make a playlist with someone else's music that doesn't require spending thousands of dollars, actually it doesn't require more than 2 hours of your time invested, and turn it into a full-time business charging artists, that's so effed up. The biggest revelation to me was that labels and managers also use those playlisting services, sometimes clearly botted, so most label artists have artificially inflated numbers as well. But since they're labels, they can do it without Spotify taking down the whole profile, like they sometimes do for smaller artists. Take away the numbers, sure, but most importantly, start cracking down on those playlisting scammers.
As a full-time musician, I agree "We are definitely in living in a weird time".
As an Indian, what Spotify is doing to Indian users breaks my heart. Spotify you won't be forgiven. Like users in India can't even listen to a song from the beginning again or from any part. Furthermore, we can't even listen to what we want to listen after the current song without having to buy premium. Slow 👏👏 for Spotify.
It breaks your heart you guys cant listen to music for free? U ok guys?
Every other app is giving it free so if this one try to be paid then it will receive a huge backlash in India. As now Spotify already received pretty big backlash on Play Store reviews it's on 1.8stars. I am not saying that Spotify can't do it. They can do whatever they want. People will shift to other apps.
After we landed some sync placements, the spotify algo has completely destroyed our “fans also like.” We’re lumped in with mostly sync artists/bands and not with our peers that we tour with etc. We’ve noticed this algo problem deff effects fan discoverability. 💀
Maybe this is why some artist are moving into the world of sync. You’ll have way more listeners, get paid upfront sync fee and have backend royalties.
You're absolutely right, Damian. Unfortunately, Spotify doesn't care because, implicitly, they do precisely the same. Spotify pays the Label/Artist advances (this is the standard), thus to get that money back, they are forced to put those artists on major playlists. Sadly, the democratization of the music industry they initialized 17 years ago, turned even worse than it was before.
Famous people don't need help because they are already famous
I manage a band who can pull around 200 to 300 people a night on a tour. Their Spotify figures are very low. It’s because they have concentrated on building up a live audience where every tour they make money. They have also toured the USA played in Borneo Australia Belgium France etc etc Spotify as far as I can see doesn’t get you a live audience from where you can make a living or part living. I know of a band who got 1 million plays for their sing and we’re still playing in a pub for 30 people. This is my observation but of course others may think differently.
The numbers bounce around so much it's too difficult for artist to really form a coherant stategy. I play in a local band. We've had as many as 1800 monthly listeners and now we're at 100. We've had a few hundred streams a day and sometimes just a dozen. We all have full time jobs and don't have the time to chase down a ton of curators. You only stay on most playlists for a couple of weeks thus the fluctations. You have to constantly be on. a bunch of lists constantly to have any consistancy. It's loosing and soul crushing game.
I agree with you about removing the streaming numbers from public viewing. This would make the platform feel, at least psychologically, more like a level playing field (ha, ironic given recent Spotify developments re: royalties but I digress) and when we went into record stores the CD/Vinyl/Cassettes etc weren't labeled with how many units they'd sold. It felt like every item had an equal right to be there, and that's how it should feel on Spotify.
Good point! Been thinking and wondering about this subject a long time, changes are definitely needed. I am a classical guitarist and another issue that I have come across is that alot of artist on Spotifys official playlists for instrumental music is nowhere to be found outside the platform. What’s up with that!?
They (Spotify) should also not let just anybody report a playlist, let alone another account, without fact checking first. I was curating a playlist that was doing pretty good and someone kept reporting. I want to think it was the competition, just someone trying to get my playlist out of the way but, what reason did they give Spotify in their report? Because I, not a bot, was curating it. I was listening to music, to curate it, not copying and pasting randomly from other playlists. There is a huge problem here. Because it looks like absolutely anyone could report. Oh, the finally took the playlist down for good, in case i didn't make it clear. B******s
We realized this a few years back. We never trusted anyone with this promise. We realized anyone who came asking to help was charging in exchange of the service. And it's not fair to cheat the audience. The public deserves respect. Let's build slowly but surely. It helps us too as artists to create in a more personal and creative way.
I know many artists (some of them are even among the Top 500 artists in the world) who are using bots to increase numbers on Spotify
I like the numbers. Maybe give users or artists the pref to hide/show the stream numbers.
I like what you are saying DK, Spotify should shine the brightest light on this matter, until these fraudulent companies are shunned by all like COVID-19. You're looking as fresh as ever, brother! I recently gained a 'Fans also like' on Spotify, took me 4 years, but feels good!
💯, you're spot on. Especially regarding the metrics.
I got stung with a playlist company a few years ago and it killed my Fans Also Like, I wish I never did it. This video sums it up so well!
It sucks there’s so many companies out there who are sharks! They entice you in with thousands of streams and it just messes you up in the long run and it’s difficult to fix quickly!
I'm proud of my streaming numbers, however small. Besides, Spotify is my resume now. I need people to see my progress. I've gotten jobs from the numbers on my page
Totally agree with removing the streaming numbers! Solid suggestion Damian!
hey! what should i do if one of my songs was added to said botted playlist without my permission/consent/ or approval?
Great video, Damp! P.S. a spotify growth promo ad played twice over your video while i was trying to watch. UA-cam is playing games out here 😂
I think when you see platforms not addressing obvious rampant issues its because they gain something from not fixing the problem, and their interests/priorities aren't actually aligned with artists. They are a tech company searching for profitability first, and a service for artists second.
Thank you for your service and advocacy, Damian.
Appreciate you! What do you think is the future?
@@DamianKeyes that’s a great question!!! i’m thinking something along the lines of streamable NFT’s … so, basically, files that are stored in the cloud, but you still own them. it would be the best of iTunes (and ownership) combined with the convenience of streaming/not having to store files locally. what do you think?
11 million musicians... That is 0.1% of the world's population... When you think that only 0.1% of the people make music, seems like almost no one is making music. Why does it feel like the market is oversaturated!?!
I don't know if it's the same, but don't you offer playlisting when we subscribe to you annualy plan? No offense :) I love your content ;)
my also like tab got absolutely mullered last week, don't know what happened but its embarrassing. Im not in any of those playlists, that's kinda of 6 years of building up our profile and releasing tons of material
The issue is we got offered the world for $10 a month (or free) should been $20/40 from the start they set the price to low (then you got an issue with playlists and the fact Spotify is basically owned by the labels meaning individual artists get screwed) then lastly what you covered in the video
My band is constantly being added on these botted playlists for like a day or a couple of hours and it's super annoying. We have sent many reports to Spotify and we always get the same answer: "Unfortunately, we are currently unable to remove this track from specific playlists. However, we do have tooling in place to mitigate users who are engaged in artificial streaming, as well as mitigation tooling for playlists with high levels of artificial streaming." Spotify, get your shit together.
I get the same thing
I'd bet a lot of those playlists are run by Spotify employees
True about metrics. Measuring popularity .. is life nothing more than popularity?
I have a few playlists with 10k followers. I receive so many messages from artists trying ti be in. But I never ever asked for money. The playlists are a great tool
Not to mention the higher tier distributors that offer "playlisting" as well. They have relationships with Spotify and can greatly increase your "chances" of getting on bigger playlists. For a much higher fee than your standard DistroKid, Tunecore etc. So many ancillary businesses making money off of artists while artists receive fractions of a penny. BUT they wouldn't exist without so many artists who are readily willing to throw good money after bad to make their "dreams" come true. Here's a thought experiment: How much would you be willing to pay if you knew you could become a rockstar?
The answer to this is visible to us EVERYWHERE - look at artists who 'sell their soul'. Look at all the artists who agree to be in debt for the rest of their lives. Most spend their lives touring to try and make back the money. Who as a 40 year old wants to be a show monkey? One of our band members is 28 and says "'m too old and uncoordinated for that shit"!
Yeah feelin the too old thing. But what else are we gonna do, watch Netflix?
@@anthonyvaldez851 😂🧓👴
Interesting food for thought. We released our first song and had an issue with our live streaming numbers - we saw in real time spotify take away the number of streams, up to 3 times in the first week.
I personally think spotify should make its algorithm similar to tiktok where if say 500-1000 people listen to a song, it should promote it to more people interested in the same type of music. That would certainly help and maybe increasing the pay per 1000 streams but idk if that's possible
Love this idea, that’s really interesting
yes Damian you are right just don't show number on Spotify
#1. As an Indy artist, I’m very grateful for playlist curators who honestly serve us, helping to place us with legit playlists. I’ve taken on SO many new followers because of some of the legitimate services, not just temporary streams.
#2 I personally like the stream count. It’s a way for my fans to see our progress. Also, the stream count CAN be a good barometer with helping me to find music that is actually good, verses a lot of the stuff that just isn’t honestly that good.
That’s the thing, you say it’s a good barometer, but it’s self fulfilling. If people don’t even bother to click because the numbers are low, they’ll stay low regardless of quality. That increases the temptation to give yourself a chance at getting heard by using some of these number-boosting services. Having numbers then gets clicks (a bit backwards). So without numbers you won’t have a career, but by using these dark arts you… won’t have a career. The numbers themselves have become a gatekeeper.
Hear hear! I’ve been nagging everyone about the play numbers. For years! First time I hear someone else bring it up.
There is no user need for it!
Hooray for Damian!
You're the best Damian!! Thanks for raising your voice for helping us!
I couldn't agree more about taking away the streaming numbers. It does turn everything into a popularity contest, but not in a good way. In a way that's quantified by cold, hard numbers. It's the same toxicity that pressures people to get as many "likes" as possible on other platforms.
Too busy playing the "500 gigs for 20 people" game to have bought onto a Spotify playlist...
Gigs will always feel better than streaming numbers ❤️
Keep playing those gigs! Hone your craft... cultivate your persona and fan base. This business is about SO MUCH more than just music.
cheers man. thanks for your work. hope they see this.
I'm not sure about removing the numbers. It's a bit like the old singles chart system, where you knew what was doing well by its chart position. Let's face it, if you've got crap numbers, either your music only appeals to you, so deal with it or you have a terrible marketing strategy. So many people put a track out with 'here's my new song' and that's about it. They deserve bad numbers. You need to be spending more money on the marketing, than you do on the recording if you're trying to build a fan base. Like any business, you should expect to potentially make a loss for the first couple of years. If you never get in to profit, then your product/strategy is not up to scratch.
My man! You gonna die ignoring the idea of how much much much much you help us as musicians! Bless you!!!!😊❤🤘🤘🤘🤘👏👏👏👏💥💥💥💥🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🔥🔥🔥🔥
Thanks for making this video. You have the best content and delivery!
Appreciate you bro!! Always here to help ⚡️⚡️
Maybe they are aware of it, but having a department like that wouldn’t bring additional revenue most likely. It would only cost them money I think. Maybe in the long hall it would improve the experience, but I think big numbers attract people to stream a song even more by seeing the number of streams other people have listened to.
Agreed! now, how do i get onto that brilliant 'Damo's' playlist"? haha
Great ideas man!!
YES, those numbers is something an artist wants to know but not to show, it's so fucked up and toxic that people can see it! Damo, you need to write a petition to spotify, I'm sure almost all of us with sign it, maybe spotify will consider it then
It is .....I was approached by Groover to be a Curator,,,,which I am doing...I like to feel Im genuine , I have small playlists in terms of followers....am I helping artists ?..I down really know TBH...I share their music what more can I do ?
Spot on!
100% agree with you!!!!
I am curious. How many users just don't use others playlists?
I almost exclusively listen to my one massive playlist (on what Spotify calls "shuffle").
I'd be alright with them if they just opened up the Spotify Ad service to UK musicians. They've only been "working on the tax setup" for about two years...
At least one of two can be done immediately. I look forward to the play numbers going away.
Great idea Damian! Thanks for this. 🙏
Very much agree with the point and the suggestions being made in this video - HOWEVER, the "I'm not bashing Spotify" initial sweetener pill and the "has allowed music & artists to etc etc" are IMHO totally unnecessary: Spotify deserves ALL & ANY bashing it may ever get, because despite how widespread, accessible and practical it might be (for both listeners and artists) it has completely hijacked and screwed up the possible democratization & freedom of the digital music biz, plus the payment schemes & devaluation trend it has enforced and still so greedily enforces are a true stain of shame in the history of humanity and the arts, plus it's far worse than the darkest & crappiest folds of the evil old megalabels of an era gone by because its investment in the music it distributes and profits from, or in the development & guidance of the artists that provide it is literally zero; not to mention that Spotify's metrics and by extension today's charts have become a thousand times more open to corruption and tampering (often by those same record labels of old), thus becoming an unreliable meter of anything.
🤷🏼♂️
I love this. I've been saying spotify should get rid of those numbers since day one.
Good question, removing the numbers on the front end is not really going to work for Spotify. It has the same allure and effect as a “like” on social media.( Don’t get me wrong I would love to see it happen one day. )
Policing the illegal market would be something they should be able enough to enforce there own terms of service by now. But with no incentive from a government body it will work out the same way as other social platforms on something like privacy reform. Anyhow good question your putting out there 💪
YEEEEEESSSSSSS. Remove the numbers. Or create a charts area for those who care (I guess), and some policing would be much appreciated
You showed the rule saying that you can't pay to get on the "official" playlists. This sounds like the ones published by Spotify, not users. Is there actually a rule against the second one?
right on
YES 💯
I think there's a difference between editorial and curated playlists,, maybe they mean fraud as in Editorial and that you shouldn't pay to get an editorial playlisting but a curated playlist that's on you, they can't control whether you paid for your music to be placed there or not
Or am I wrong? 🤔
It’s against TOS either way, there’s a loophole in which you can’t pay to be on a playlist but you can pay someone to review, like submithub
@@DamianKeyes I've used submithub before but I didn't pay for anything they just sent me a review. Is it possible to get a placement through submithub?
Maybe a better alternative to taking the numbers away is giving the choice to the artists on an individual level?
One thing that is very disappointing is your music has to fit into a box to the point that it has to draw people in immediately within the first minute. This fits exactly into the point of every song having to be very similar and not having unique properties. To be honest some great songs like Stairway to heaven, Free Bird, or if you wanna go to more recent rock years you can say The Reason by Hoobastank , these all would not get playlisted very often, since it takes certainly over a minute until it gets exciting or "interesting" enough for listeners ears. Its a shame attentions spans have gotten so bad and that everything now has to be placed in a box to be deemed "good enough" . Music is about freedom of expression and creativity where every song doesn't sound the same.
It was hilarious getting a Spotify ad in the middle of this.
Hahaha no way
Thanks for a grat video and I just gave to agree. Be safe and skilful. Pinge
How bout Spotify and Chartmetric just talk to each other. Duh
hundreds of languages in the world and Damian chooses to speak facts
It's kinda broken however I don't really use playlists at all to find new music. I just go off what artists Spotify suggest to me and it tends to be more accurate anyway because of the algorithm. So definitely not cool but I don't think it's the only way to get exposure.
Damien: if your Spotify IS broken, is it possible…With time…to unbreak it?
Hello. I'm an artist who has never bought my way onto a bot playlist or any playlist for that matter. And here is me with my 3 monthly Spotify listeners ha ha
I find it interesting that Spotify raised their sub price but didn’t increase the % that they pay musicians. I mean where would they be without my 5 plays a month?
I find it strange that Spotify have never declared a profit since it began. They've reported a loss every year..........If we can get you up to 10 plays a month, then maybe that could swing things for them a bit?
The root cause is streaming can pay the 10k top artists 100k per year or more and 10 k divided by 8 billion is you always wanted to be a long haul trucker didn't you (generalized numbers from loudandclear)
Amazing idea man!
Wonder why Spotfify does not take some kind of action to discard / disband / delete such manipulated 3rd party Playlists!!
Shout out to Thrice, the greatest band on Earth.
Even the fake curators reject me
Let’s work on getting your fanbase so you don’t need to submit anything at all!
Popularity - whether streams, followers, ads, playlists, videos, SM presence, SEO, etc - should NEVER be a criteria in matching someone to high quality music that perfectly fits their tastes. The "algorithm" should look at the music, period. With the latest AI tools, a purely objective music taste-matching and quality assessment algorithm is entirely possible.
Honestly I'd settle to just not have it say
problem of Spotify nowdays is that is battleing with tik tok ,I think this will ruin streaming forever..
It's the new modern-day payola. This is what radio stations do and have done for years. It's just more in your face now instead of being on the back end. Spotify wants you to pay for the promotion and for ads as an artist, and if you do that they open up your song or playlist, boosting it with their own bots and users to everyone in the world. I don't pay for that shit and my band The Circus In Your Town Spotify numbers are low. I don't care because there are more places than just Spotify to stream music. My band has been on Spotify for a long time, and I don't pay for streams or listeners on any of the streaming services. All of these streaming services are just chasing what MySpace accomplished. Their new and improved changes after the MySpace fall off are just to charge for the user experience. It's weird to think that we are all just living in a huge social media commercial being marketed to like the home shopping network on a daily basis 😂.
I made a song with a friend.. and he bought 3000 streams cause he thought it was okay... now my channels fucked
Take away the numbers and send them to the companies or artists directly. And if they choose to share, cool, if not cool. That way you take away the 💩 being a popularity contest, collapse it all!
Apple Music does not show the number of streams to the public and I think it's a good thing. I believe Spotify follows the same system as Instagram and Facebook regarding vanity stats of likes and friend count. I would love it if Spotify would remove their public vanity matrix. I believe this would definitely prevent people from buying streams from bad actors.
Yeah I believe you are right and hopefully then artists would do their best to promote music in a healthy way and remove the anxiety. 🙂🙂
When you say illegal, it is not criminal. It’s a breach of contract.
Yeah not criminal, against TOS!
The app sucks these days, took out a lot of features that used to be in the older versions. We can't skip, can't play back, can't repeat, and so many more.😡😡😡
"I believe there is a duty of care for spotify to look after artists in general .. " hahaha ... I'll be up off the floor in a minute ...
I mean. You're right. But in what universe has that ever been the case? With a company that prioritised podcasts over music? And is cramming the thing up with fake music by non existent anonymous artists and now AI generated crap? It just isn't like that, and never has been. Spotify is tanking financially due to a fundamentally broken business model, and caring about artists is at the bottom of its to-do list, and will remain there.
@DamianKeyes Spot On. I also think numbers on socials should go too! Imagine how many people would follow each other if numbers weren’t on the ‘front end’
I think you should re-make this video , you are putting all playlisters on the same box , if you want to report bot playlists you should have names and be specific. Before attacking playlisters who actually help artists and labels ,why you don't talk about labels owning radio stations , clubs, tv channels just to mention some .Those are the real gate keepers who don't allow independent artists to be heard. Also you should be careful who you attack just to get clicks a little advice. Be smart you are exposed specially in the UK .
You sound butt hurt. If you’re charging for playlisting that you fit the description period. If you’re not, then he’s not even addressing you.
This man is a genius...
Not at all but thank you 🙏⚡️
I’m willing to bet some of these playlist sites are propelled by Spotify.
My open letter to Damian, You are aware that shirts actually have buttons near the collar? Might boost numbers if we didn't have to see that,....tip..you're welcome...Morsecoder
Very interesting. It’s not something I’ve thought about, but I totally agree removing the streaming numbers would abate a lot of anxiety from artists. Great video and well argued! 👏
If they have more numbers than me they paid money. I have 8 listeners and i been on for 2 months on spotify. The truth is 99 percent of the artist bought their numbers. Im 1 percent that didnt.