Power tripping idiots who just chase brads for their personal gain without understanding the underlying scenarios are primarily driven by money and have no sense of responsibility towards others or their surroundings.

Fuck such money hungry job seekers.

About what are we mad here? About the bad contracts the creators signed? Like tf? Of course these contracts suck ass but as long as creators are signing them, the man will get richer.

@Frederick I doubt an artist would do such a thing. It would be more labels filing cases against content creators.

@nitwhiz As if there are many options left for artists to sell their music.

This wouldn't be possible if people didn't support Spotify

@electrineer this.

Companies create because we consume.

Who is really to be blamed!!

Devil's advocate:

Did Paul McCartney help millions of independent creators earn some money without the need for a label?

Not saying Daniel Ek's net worth is justified, or that Spotify's estimated 30-40% cut isn't excessive.

But many labels take much, much more.

Of course you find many sob stories from indie artists claiming that Spotify pays too little and doesn't let them earn a living wage.

Well, no, not if your shitty band only gets 5k streams a month.

Music is an oversaturated market, you're not entitled to a career.

@bittersweet as far as I understand it, the problem with spotify is that the money you pay spotify doesn't go to the artist you listen to. Instead, it goes to the artists most people do.

@bittersweet true. Thank you

@electrineer there are many ways you can pay the artist directly.
When you pay Spotify, you pay for the service

@bioDan yeah, it's better for the artist to pirate the music and support them directly

@electrineer like radiohead did for their "in rainbows" album. You pay what you want with a minimum of $1

@bioDan

There are often very few ways to support an artist directly, especially signed ones. Signed artists don't have a Patreon. They have a label. The label spends 1 million, earns 2 million, pays the artist $250k.

Labels are basically in the business of high risk, high reward loans, at a huge interest rate.

Independent artists on the other hand might have a Patreon, or pay what you want Bandcamp, or a gold-leaf covered hipster collectors vinyl they sell on Etsy, or a $100 NFT of a photo of their ballsack because that's what passes for art these days.

But that won't pay the bills, because you're a small artist, and no one would even know about you if it weren't for streaming service recommendation engines.

Music will always be a strange business.

@electrineer

I think there's no way around a fact which has been true since the tape casette:

Records are just promotional material for your career as an entertainer. The song is the ad to help you sell shows.

Now fill up a sports stadium, lipsync your material, and dance for me, you depraved little monkey!

I have never had a spotify membership. I still buy music off bandcamp and I buy CDs from real artists at pubs or on the street and rip them. I have a 500GB microSD card with all my music. Most big artists I just pirate. 🏴‍☠🦜

If you don't like Spotify, then stop using them. Tell others to not use them. Buy your music, don't rent it.

Class warfare click bait. If the CEO can get millions of people to voluntarily and happily spend $10 a month on music, then he has well earned his $3.8 billion net worth.

Well done sir, well done.

@PaperTrail

Agree to a certain extent.

Although to play the Devil's advocate (Angel's advocate? I lost track which side is the good one) for the class warfare marxists, and against Spotify:

I do think it's creepy that Spotify can change public policies by yelling "Lower taxes on stock options or we'll leave Sweden! Think of our poor engineers!"

I mean, I own stock options in my employer's company, but I'd never be OK with my employer lobbying for tax hikes for the wealthy (or even the moderately wealthy).

There's something deeply unsettling about large software companies forming shadow governments, in some cases even with more influence than actual democratically chosen governments.

@bittersweet > " I do think it's creepy that Spotify can change public policies by yelling "Lower taxes on stock options or we'll leave Sweden! Think of our poor engineers!""

Agree 100%. The class warfare nonsense goes both ways.

@djsumdog tried to tell that to other people. All they did is laughing

This is the same as with Apple. They take a huge cut because they package a product the way the rest of us willingly pay for. Whether you like it or not it's a great, working business model.

And by the way: Spotify and other music and movie streaming providers came in to save the god damn artist from having all their shit illegally shared.

Don't blame these people for their great (business) ideas. The demand is there, and no one is forcing you or anyone else to jump on-board. There are real problems in the world to worry about.

People here have gone nuts.

@bittersweet shitty band is subjective.

Rich man's trash is poor man's gold :P

He did solve a problem but is unethical and is exploiting creators by using masses because the wide majority lacks the ability to think critically.

It's like Jeff Bezos created millions of jobs and he deserves to go to space for 10 seconds but at what cost?

Some careers pay better than others.

@Floydimus

The merits of Bezos dipping the tip of his cockrocket into the darkness of space should be questioned separately from the ethics of Amazon as a company.

The answer to both questions happens to be: "Bezos is a soulless scumbag who deserves to be repeatedly kicked in the testicles".

But the issues should still be viewed separately.

As an ex-Aerospace guy, I believe in the merits of spaceflight, of launching satellites for communication, navigation, monitoring the health of our planet. I believe in the mission of the ISS, where scientists from many countries have cooperated successfully, even in times of geopolitical stress. I'm a big fan of Rocketlab, Astra and Firefly, which enable college students to launch their low-earth-orbit experiments on rideshares.

So if Blue Origin did something useful for the world... that would be a little bit of redemption.

But so far, his launchpenis just smells like a midlife crisis billionaire trying to pleasure himself.

@Floydimus

And I share Musk's vision of "making life multiplanetary", and Bezos' vision of "a million people working and living in space"...

But I STRONGLY believe that as soon as rockets (preferably from many competing companies) start shipping people and goods through our solar system, the ground they touch down upon should initially be "UN territory", and become a completely independent democratic republic after reaching some predetermined form of independence.

Launch companies should become competing taxi services, not become corporatocratic nation states in our solar system, that would be the ultimate dystopian future.

@Floydimus "shitty band is subjective"

Nickelback

@Frederick NullPointerException

@bittersweet lol @ testicles kicks.

I am not against the idea of moving to space or having death star built.

I am against selfish capitalist assholes who exploit others for their own game.

The difference is clear.

@bittersweet I like your idea, sounds rational and detailed. But you first need to finish the cultural hegemony here on earth.

Sadly everything seems very polarized.

@bioDan I actually think that once we regularly view Earth from space, we might start caring about our little blue-green pebble a bit more.

Although, throughout history, deaths from wars (relative to the total world population) have always oscillated around a fairly constant average, so I'm probably too optimistic.