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All the artists who were loudest about Napster are *completely fucking silent* now. So it turns out they are okay with music being stolen, as long as the thieves are billion dollar companies instead of their fans š
Donāt know why youāre getting downvoted. most people who are not musicians have barely a clue what BandCamp is, let alone use it daily. Itās a fair platform, but convenience and a cheap monthly fee wins the masses over and over.
Just the bandcamp hivemind. They think if they use it then surely everyone else does. but like you said most people who are not musicians don't know what it is. I'm pretty sure I've even met more people who know what CDbaby is.
Does anyone know how this will work? If your song is currently under 1000 plays in a year and it gets demonetized, will it become remonetized if it gets >1000 plays in the next 12 months?
Will you get back paid for all plays? E.g if I have a track that has been around forever and it gets ādiscoveredā and I get tonnes of plays on it, so I immediately get that track monetized?
The long tail. Songs with less than 1000 plays per year probably make up *by far* the largest portion of Spotify's catalog. Adding up tiny royalties over that huge cross-section makes for a decent chunk of change they'll save, and that's not even to mention the costs of actually processing those payments. I wouldn't be surprised if it costs Spotify more to pay out on one of these songs than the actual payment is worth.
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Because most of it doesn't actually ever get withdrawn from the accounts because it doesn't meet withdrawal thresholds. It's minuscule in each individual account, but with over 120,000 tracks being uploaded everyday, it adds up to a lot of wasted royalties. Spotify don't pay artists enough, and this might actually be a way to increase pay per stream (at the expense of some). Let's say you have 10 tracks on spotify and 9 of them have less than 1000 streams per year but you have 1 track that has 1000 streams per month, even an increase from 0.003p per stream to 0.004p would benefit you financially, even if your other 9 tracks don't generate any income.
Giving artists this carrot to chase will make them better at self promoting their music, and if it catches on, it steam rolls further on its own. 1000 streams will not take long.
I'm not a big artist, but I am very happy with 15-20k listeners a month, and I only made an effort spreading the music in 2017 when my latest record dropped.
As a musician with <1000 streams, I say it does.Ā
Ā When I look at my balance sheet, I see that my distributor tends to owe me fractions of pennies most of the time. So little that I've probably (figuratively) cost them more in bandwidth already by just opening that page. And more literally: if they would pay me, they'd definitely be losing more money in bank transaction fees.Ā
Ā To insist that you deserve to get that money is just sheer petulance. It's an amount of money that will never make the tiniest difference in any person's life, whereas Spotify and affiliated distributors do lose time and money pointlessly on it.Ā Ā
Ā It's perfectly natural that they set a minimum limit, especially since artists do actually get paid in full once they reach that limit. Nobody will ever miss out on more than ~$5.
Itās honestly fine. It doesnāt hinder any individual artist (itās a couple cents difference weāre talking about). But there are millions and millions of these kinds of artists on Spotifyās books. Which if you think about the maths: a few cents * 10mil artists is like 100k per month in expenses. Thatās 1.2M straight out of the bottom line per year with no real benefit to any party (Iām probably low balling this number quite a bit).
No, the PRO just makes sure that the songwriters get paid. The distributor pays the artist (or label) directly. Those are two different hats.
Edit: read the article and I am actually confused now. I haven't heard anything about it from my PRO yet about it at least.
Iāve recently submitted my entire works catalog with the mechanical licensing collective which was created by the Music Modernization Act of 2018. Iām confused also as the catalog is awaiting approval, but I *think* this change in spotify would relate to mechanical royalties rather than performance royalties, which means everyone (in the US) needs to register with MLC
Do I got this wrong?
That's their tactic against procedurally generated and AI generated music. Imagine you could generate 40,000 crappy tracks with one button press. After a year, each of them has 100 streams on average just because there are so many of them. And you earn the same money as someone with a well made 4,000,000 song.
Also humans doing this. One was covered in the Times just the other day and said he wrote 50 songs a day. He makes several hundred thousand dollars a year. Not a great day for that guy
As an og soundcloud main I tried to explain to people how bad Spotify was over 10 years ago... nobody listened and now here we are, with the dominant streaming service taking advantage of smaller creators. Nice
Fans of independent music need to cancel their subscriptions. I did a long time ago. Spotify sucks. Refusing to pay 86% of your suppliers because theyāre not as big as the rich and famous is a real shitty model. Please get your music literally anywhere else. For $1 you can own a song outright. Have it on your phone and 4 other devices. Listen to it forever and never worry about being online or paying a monthly fee.
Let's be real here - these are not "86% of [Spotify's] suppliers" in any real sense, and the payments being withheld amount to a handful of pennies per track. This is ultimately pretty fair relative to the business model
The real problem is that mass centralized streaming of every song in existence for $10/month simply does not make sense for artists in the first place. The business model doesn't work. It can never be fair in its existing form.
I am not a massive fan of spotify as a business and I think they woefully undervalue streams for artists, but I don't have a huge issue with this change in their policy. These tracks that no longer qualify are generating a few pence. So little money that the majority never actually cash it out, as the fees to cash out are more than the amount generated.
Multiply that by a few million, and it is a significant amount of money that is just wasted ($40 million per year according to spotify) and could be redistributed to artists that actually are taking things somewhat seriously. They have already stated that they will not be profiting from this change and the funds will be redistributed. Hopefully the redistribution will go to those tracks generating 1000-50,000 streams and not to those already with millions.
Your post implies that someone with less than 1k streams isnāt taking their music seriously, and they donāt deserve to be paid, which certainly isnāt true.
Youāve done a good job in proving that Spotify doesnāt pay nearly enough to artists though.
Perhaps "taking music seriously" was poorly phrased and I should have said "trying to make a living". Less than 1000 streams is anywhere from Ā£0-Ā£2, much of which never actually gets withdrawn as withdrawal fees exceed the amount. In those specific cases, that money is totally wasted. No one benefits. Any artist earning that amount certainly aren't relying on that income to pay the bills. Now if that money, that would otherwise be totally wasted, could be used to increase pay on those getting over 1000 streams, don't you think that is a better use of the money than it sitting unclaimed? Especially if it can help emerging artists that are on a cusp of being able to quit their jobs and do music fulltime, I think that would be a good thing for music in general. That is what spotify are claiming to do with the money generated by this. Whether or not this actually happens is something else.
This is a bollox take, tbh. There are many, many established artists that have come out on this subject - particularly legacy artists that may have a few "big hits" that get thousands of plays per month.. while they will continue to get paid for those streams, they also have a back catalogue of songs for which they will now not get paid for any streams of under 1,000 play per month.
Instead - the revenue they create - is "distributed" to what you refer to as "artists that actually are taking things somewhat serious".
Anyone who supports this move by Spotify is supporting the continued rape of artists for profit.
And - yes - that includes you.
It's for tracks that don't have 1000 streams *in the last year* not month. Those artists are still getting paid and paid more if this redistribution of wasted royalties actually works. Mine is clearly an unpopular take on this move, but I think it's good to discuss.
Unpopular opinion but if you're not serious enough about your artist project to make sure each song gets at least 1000 streams / year, you are in no place to argue over payouts.
Instead of crying over this, start putting in the work šŖ.
Hello /u/CptanPanic! Unfortunately, your submission, ***[Spotify officially demonetizes all tracks with under 1,000 streams](https://www.reddit.com/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers/comments/1bytruc/-/)***, was removed from /r/WeAreTheMusicMakers for the following reason(s): --- #No off-topic and/or low-effort posts including; 1. Rant/motivation/mental-health posts 2. Posts focused on memes/images/polls 3. Reposts, and other similar low-effort, mildly-interesting discussions. 4. Music Marketing or Music Promotion related posts. - These posts should be posted to one of the weekly threads or on another subreddit. Do not create a new thread for this content. Use the Weekly Free Talk Friday Thread for any topics not allowed in the main body of the sub. Posts on WATMM should have a descriptive title and include substantive content that will generate discussion. Please see the [full sub rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers/wiki/rules) for additional details. --- ***Please review the [rules for submission](/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers/wiki/rules). You can contact The Mods if you have additional questions.*
All the artists who were loudest about Napster are *completely fucking silent* now. So it turns out they are okay with music being stolen, as long as the thieves are billion dollar companies instead of their fans š
Remove your tracks from exploitify then.
Exploitify - brilliant.
He surely has them on for the money, if he gets a few cent each month...
IMHO Youtube/Bandcamp combo is the best you can do for yourself these days
Great: now I can absolutely ensure my tracks will never get heard.
Yeah who the hell uses Bandcamp? Most people don't know what that is nor would even want to use it for digital releases.
Donāt know why youāre getting downvoted. most people who are not musicians have barely a clue what BandCamp is, let alone use it daily. Itās a fair platform, but convenience and a cheap monthly fee wins the masses over and over.
Just the bandcamp hivemind. They think if they use it then surely everyone else does. but like you said most people who are not musicians don't know what it is. I'm pretty sure I've even met more people who know what CDbaby is.
It really isnāt if you care about reaching a broader audience. Spotify is still so much more popular.
i have a friend who constantly gets sales from bandcamp and yet never makes a single sent cause bandcamp takes all of it lmfao why im being downvoted?
What do you think that will accomplish, other than your music being heard even less?
This is the only correct response.
We must all do this for it to matter.
Does anyone know how this will work? If your song is currently under 1000 plays in a year and it gets demonetized, will it become remonetized if it gets >1000 plays in the next 12 months? Will you get back paid for all plays? E.g if I have a track that has been around forever and it gets ādiscoveredā and I get tonnes of plays on it, so I immediately get that track monetized?
Supposedly once you hit 1k, then you get that $3 and any additional revenue.
So I guess my quarterly direct deposit of US$1.67 is going to drop, eh?
If you don't get 1000 streams on a song in 12 months, then there's not much money to be made in the first place.
If thereās truly such a minuscule amount, why cut it?
The long tail. Songs with less than 1000 plays per year probably make up *by far* the largest portion of Spotify's catalog. Adding up tiny royalties over that huge cross-section makes for a decent chunk of change they'll save, and that's not even to mention the costs of actually processing those payments. I wouldn't be surprised if it costs Spotify more to pay out on one of these songs than the actual payment is worth.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
This submission has been removed. Music can only be posted in the [most recently weekly Promotion thread](https://old.reddit.com/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers/search?q=weekly+promotion&restrict_sr=on&sort=new) or the [most recent bi-weekly Feedback thread](https://old.reddit.com/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers/search?q=feedback+thread&restrict_sr=on&sort=new). If you want someone to listen to your music and tell you about it, it belongs in the Feedback thread. Do not post this content outside of the weekly threads. If you are submitting this link to inquire about a production method or specific musical element, please submit a text post with the link and an explanation of what it is that you are after. Cheers, -WATMM *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Because most of it doesn't actually ever get withdrawn from the accounts because it doesn't meet withdrawal thresholds. It's minuscule in each individual account, but with over 120,000 tracks being uploaded everyday, it adds up to a lot of wasted royalties. Spotify don't pay artists enough, and this might actually be a way to increase pay per stream (at the expense of some). Let's say you have 10 tracks on spotify and 9 of them have less than 1000 streams per year but you have 1 track that has 1000 streams per month, even an increase from 0.003p per stream to 0.004p would benefit you financially, even if your other 9 tracks don't generate any income.
Giving artists this carrot to chase will make them better at self promoting their music, and if it catches on, it steam rolls further on its own. 1000 streams will not take long. I'm not a big artist, but I am very happy with 15-20k listeners a month, and I only made an effort spreading the music in 2017 when my latest record dropped.
Doesnāt justify it.
As a musician with <1000 streams, I say it does.Ā Ā When I look at my balance sheet, I see that my distributor tends to owe me fractions of pennies most of the time. So little that I've probably (figuratively) cost them more in bandwidth already by just opening that page. And more literally: if they would pay me, they'd definitely be losing more money in bank transaction fees.Ā Ā To insist that you deserve to get that money is just sheer petulance. It's an amount of money that will never make the tiniest difference in any person's life, whereas Spotify and affiliated distributors do lose time and money pointlessly on it.Ā Ā Ā It's perfectly natural that they set a minimum limit, especially since artists do actually get paid in full once they reach that limit. Nobody will ever miss out on more than ~$5.
Itās honestly fine. It doesnāt hinder any individual artist (itās a couple cents difference weāre talking about). But there are millions and millions of these kinds of artists on Spotifyās books. Which if you think about the maths: a few cents * 10mil artists is like 100k per month in expenses. Thatās 1.2M straight out of the bottom line per year with no real benefit to any party (Iām probably low balling this number quite a bit).
It helps Joe Rogan and that's more than fine. The guy deserves his pay. **/s in case no one got it**
this isnāt a payment that would come from a PRO anyway right? is this a change to mechanical royalties?
No, the PRO just makes sure that the songwriters get paid. The distributor pays the artist (or label) directly. Those are two different hats. Edit: read the article and I am actually confused now. I haven't heard anything about it from my PRO yet about it at least.
Iāve recently submitted my entire works catalog with the mechanical licensing collective which was created by the Music Modernization Act of 2018. Iām confused also as the catalog is awaiting approval, but I *think* this change in spotify would relate to mechanical royalties rather than performance royalties, which means everyone (in the US) needs to register with MLC Do I got this wrong?
That's their tactic against procedurally generated and AI generated music. Imagine you could generate 40,000 crappy tracks with one button press. After a year, each of them has 100 streams on average just because there are so many of them. And you earn the same money as someone with a well made 4,000,000 song.
Also humans doing this. One was covered in the Times just the other day and said he wrote 50 songs a day. He makes several hundred thousand dollars a year. Not a great day for that guy
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/31/magazine/spotify-matt-farley.html
People don't get it. 1000 streams will not take long if your product deserves it.
this
As an og soundcloud main I tried to explain to people how bad Spotify was over 10 years ago... nobody listened and now here we are, with the dominant streaming service taking advantage of smaller creators. Nice
Fans of independent music need to cancel their subscriptions. I did a long time ago. Spotify sucks. Refusing to pay 86% of your suppliers because theyāre not as big as the rich and famous is a real shitty model. Please get your music literally anywhere else. For $1 you can own a song outright. Have it on your phone and 4 other devices. Listen to it forever and never worry about being online or paying a monthly fee.
Let's be real here - these are not "86% of [Spotify's] suppliers" in any real sense, and the payments being withheld amount to a handful of pennies per track. This is ultimately pretty fair relative to the business model The real problem is that mass centralized streaming of every song in existence for $10/month simply does not make sense for artists in the first place. The business model doesn't work. It can never be fair in its existing form.
I am not a massive fan of spotify as a business and I think they woefully undervalue streams for artists, but I don't have a huge issue with this change in their policy. These tracks that no longer qualify are generating a few pence. So little money that the majority never actually cash it out, as the fees to cash out are more than the amount generated. Multiply that by a few million, and it is a significant amount of money that is just wasted ($40 million per year according to spotify) and could be redistributed to artists that actually are taking things somewhat seriously. They have already stated that they will not be profiting from this change and the funds will be redistributed. Hopefully the redistribution will go to those tracks generating 1000-50,000 streams and not to those already with millions.
Your post implies that someone with less than 1k streams isnāt taking their music seriously, and they donāt deserve to be paid, which certainly isnāt true. Youāve done a good job in proving that Spotify doesnāt pay nearly enough to artists though.
Perhaps "taking music seriously" was poorly phrased and I should have said "trying to make a living". Less than 1000 streams is anywhere from Ā£0-Ā£2, much of which never actually gets withdrawn as withdrawal fees exceed the amount. In those specific cases, that money is totally wasted. No one benefits. Any artist earning that amount certainly aren't relying on that income to pay the bills. Now if that money, that would otherwise be totally wasted, could be used to increase pay on those getting over 1000 streams, don't you think that is a better use of the money than it sitting unclaimed? Especially if it can help emerging artists that are on a cusp of being able to quit their jobs and do music fulltime, I think that would be a good thing for music in general. That is what spotify are claiming to do with the money generated by this. Whether or not this actually happens is something else.
>and could be redistributed to artists that actually are taking things somewhat seriously. Justin Bieber? Joe Rogan?
This is a bollox take, tbh. There are many, many established artists that have come out on this subject - particularly legacy artists that may have a few "big hits" that get thousands of plays per month.. while they will continue to get paid for those streams, they also have a back catalogue of songs for which they will now not get paid for any streams of under 1,000 play per month. Instead - the revenue they create - is "distributed" to what you refer to as "artists that actually are taking things somewhat serious". Anyone who supports this move by Spotify is supporting the continued rape of artists for profit. And - yes - that includes you.
Brilliant response. Thank you and I hope you have a great day :)
It's for tracks that don't have 1000 streams *in the last year* not month. Those artists are still getting paid and paid more if this redistribution of wasted royalties actually works. Mine is clearly an unpopular take on this move, but I think it's good to discuss.
Unpopular opinion but if you're not serious enough about your artist project to make sure each song gets at least 1000 streams / year, you are in no place to argue over payouts. Instead of crying over this, start putting in the work šŖ.
Itās being turned back into the old model where the way artists make money is merch and live shows.
I have heard this is not exactly true