as far as I know there’s no streaming platform that treats artists great, like great as in anyone can come along and start making a living making music even if you only have 1000 listeners because quite frankly it’s too easy to make music these days:
Music Streaming Hits Major Milestone as 100,000 Songs are Uploaded Daily to Spotify and Other DSPs
If this was the 1950’s and there was like 100 million people listening to 100,000 artists then yeah, most would probably get paid well but this is the onlyfans era of music, 99% of people make fuck all and a few big superstars make a shitload
The good news is that streaming giants like Spotify do payout quite a bit, so while you feel like you’re not supporting artists enough, tbh you are doing quite a lot as part of a larger group:
The big picture: Spotify has set a record for the highest annual payment to the music industry from a single retailer for the second time in as many years. In 2014 when the industry hit a low of just $13 billion in global revenue, Spotify had around 15 million subscribers and contributed roughly $1 billion to the pot. A decade later in 2024, the Swedish streaming specialist paid out a record $10 billion to the music industry.
Now, over 10,000 artists are making at least $100,000 annually on Spotify.
If you want to support them even more then yeah, best thing to do is buy their vinyl records/merch etc
Thanks very much for the well thought out (and sourced) response!
I occasionally watch videos by a YouTuber named Benn Jordan (just a coincidence with my own Lemmy username to be clear), and he gives what look like pretty damning arguments to me that the numbers Spotify is publishing are misleading and not telling the whole story, and that their treatment of artists over time is growing worse.
I thought there was a more recent one but I’m not finding it. Anyway with that said, I’ve got no dog in this fight and I only watch some of that stuff recreationally, I lack a ton of info.
as far as I know there’s no streaming platform that treats artists great, like great as in anyone can come along and start making a living making music even if you only have 1000 listeners because quite frankly it’s too easy to make music these days:
https://variety.com/2022/music/news/new-songs-100000-being-released-every-day-dsps-1235395788/
If this was the 1950’s and there was like 100 million people listening to 100,000 artists then yeah, most would probably get paid well but this is the onlyfans era of music, 99% of people make fuck all and a few big superstars make a shitload
The good news is that streaming giants like Spotify do payout quite a bit, so while you feel like you’re not supporting artists enough, tbh you are doing quite a lot as part of a larger group:
https://www.techspot.com/news/106538-spotify-10-billion-payout-2024-signals-renewed-appreciation.html
If you want to support them even more then yeah, best thing to do is buy their vinyl records/merch etc
Thanks very much for the well thought out (and sourced) response!
I occasionally watch videos by a YouTuber named Benn Jordan (just a coincidence with my own Lemmy username to be clear), and he gives what look like pretty damning arguments to me that the numbers Spotify is publishing are misleading and not telling the whole story, and that their treatment of artists over time is growing worse.
Here’s one of the videos I think I remember being fairly compelling - https://youtu.be/gDfNRWsMRsU
I thought there was a more recent one but I’m not finding it. Anyway with that said, I’ve got no dog in this fight and I only watch some of that stuff recreationally, I lack a ton of info.