When Bloomberg reported that Spotify would be upping the cost of its premium subscription from $9.99 to $10.99, and including 15 hours of audiobooks per month in the U.S., the change sounded like a win for songwriters and publishers. Higher subscription prices typically equate to a bump in U.S. mechanical royalties — but not this time.
By adding audiobooks into Spotify’s premium tier, the streaming service now claims it qualifies to pay a discounted “bundle” rate to songwriters for premium streams, given Spotify now has to pay licensing for both books and music from the same price tag — which will only be a dollar higher than when music was the only premium offering. Additionally, Spotify will reclassify its duo and family subscription plans as bundles as well.
I really wish there was a better alternative to push my friends to. I do use Bandcamp, so at least I know more of my $$$ are going to the artists and I can take the music with me, but I’m not sure about the platform long-term.
As a musician and composer it really took the life out of my identity as a composer seeing an alternative to bandcamp never really form and then one day waking up to it bought by Epic.
I didn’t cry that day, but I might as well have, it made me extraordinarily sad to see that headline and I imagine there are actually countless talented musicians out there who will never actuate on their creative vision because the environment for music production is at this point, downright hostile towards artists and musicians considering the amount of work music production is.
It takes an obscene amount of work to take a song from something that has promise to being as polished as listeners demand nowadays, and listeners won’t even give your song a chance on actual speakers. You have to twist and warp your music so it sounds good on essentially monophonic phone speakers with shitty frequency coverage or otherwise nobody will give it a try on speakers for actually listening to music. Doesn’t matter though, nobody is going to actually support you for the art you make.
🙃
It seems like https://resonate.coop/ is still around tho which seems like a cool idea (a coop owned streaming service where listeners can stream-to-own a song).
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Ah yes, and unsanctioned art will be classified as a form of terrorism.
And most people will be perfectly happy to consume that and nothing else ever.
Not sure if this is exactly good news, but Epic Games doesn’t own it anymore, it was sold to Songtradr.
Doesn’t sound too good to me. Bandcamp used to be where I could get music from smaller artists who couldn’t afford clearing samples (as they weren’t making money) and I worry a lot of that will be lost.
Still is, for now. I run a small vaporwave tape label via Bandcamp. No significant changes under Epic Games or Songtradr that I’ve noticed. That could change, though.
It will change, I promise you. I am so confident I will literally bet my girlfriend’s chihuahua on it.
better hope lefties and artists get their shit together you tiny little monster
Everyone on Lemmy and the fediverse as a whole should be aware of this pattern. I just hope something can fill in before it gets too bad.
I’m keeping an eye on Faircamp.
That’s how it always begins.
But on a more positive note, care to share the label or more about your experience about it? With regards to Bandcamp and more generally.
Sure, https://mysticspools.bandcamp.com/
Most of it is pretty fun- find music, reach out to artist, make a few tapes. We just do small runs of 25-100 tapes depending on how much will sell. The worst part IMO is order fulfillment, you either pay a third party a boatload or you DIY and packing 100 cassettes is a bit of a drag. Coming up with good art if the artist doesn’t already have something is quite difficult. The label is on a short hiatus for that reason, but I think we’ll do some more tapes now that some labels have dried up. There’s waxing and waning periods when it comes to these little micro labels, and I can tell people are feeling the economic squeeze.
The most fun part is mastering to tape and dubbing. I’ve got a Nakamichi Dragon and 3x NAD 6300, and I’ve dubbed probably 500-600 tapes across them all. Dunno what it is about tapes, but I really like em.
🤷♂️ not really, none of these corporations are real in any sense that matters other than sucking up actual companies that actually make the world a better place and mining the goodwill out of them until they are cynical, worthless husks that corporations use to fleece consumers into buying products from before they realize their favorite company/brand is dead in everything but name.
As bad as Epic is, probably worse…
Even though Bandcamp was profitable the new CEO said this after buying it
So they’re probably looking for any way to cut costs. They fired half of the staff on day 1, including anyone who tried to unionize
How about https://qobuz.com ? I’ve bought some flac files from them.
You can’t use Qobuz if you’re behind a VPN. It makes me sad because I wanted to try this.
It seems that ampwall.com may come sometime as an alternative to Bandcamp? Time will tell…
I use Napster. I chose it way back when Spotify paid for the Rogan podcast, from a list of platforms that pay artists more. I’m not sure if that’s true any longer, but look it up! I’ve been really happy with their service. (And it’s really full circle for me, since I used their original service decades ago.)
ETA I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this site, but it says Napster is still one of the top-paying platforms.
How does this compare to Tidal?
According to that site, Napster pays more. Here’s the info on TIDAL:
I just downloaded Bandcamp, and after searching for my favorite artists, almost none are on the platform aside from 1-2. Did a search on like 20-25. This is why I use Spotify. Maybe if artists started acknowledging Bandcamp as a legitimate alternative to Spotify, then of course I’d listen there. But right now most stuff by my favorite bands are either covers or remixes.
Chicken and the egg, be the change you want to be, but also I am not absolutist about using Spotify.
I just think Spotify and other streaming services are vehicles of class warfare against musicians that also happen to play music. I understand if you like the playing music part!
Qobuz
Is Pandora any better than Spotify at paying artists?