Has anyone else seen her profile and her smile on unsuspecting billboards? 👀🩵 Probably a sign we’re still not over streaming 1989 (Taylor's Version) on YouTube Music. 🤭
yall. don't fucking stream music off of youtube or spotify. they pay their creators shit. the most generous estimate i could find was artists being paid $1 for every 200 streams (0.5¢ per stream), and unless you're listening to songs on an album thousands times in total, it helps tremendously more to just. buy their albums or subscribe to a patreon-like service for them
mp3 players are laughably inexpensive (you can get a decent one with bluetooth for like $40-50 and you can get away with even less if you forego some features), many of them are drag-and-drop, no ads, decent enough sound quality for the average person, unlimited skips, track selection, regular play and shuffle, playlists, being able to shut off your screen, and more importantly, ALL OF THIS IS AVAILABLE WITHOUT A SUBSCRIPTION. i've always been an avid hater of subscription models. there are some things where it's understandable, but you shouldn't lose access to basic QOL features just because you can't or won't fork over $10-15 a month.
"b-b-but $50 is so expensive!" WRONG. $50 (which is more than i've EVER spend on a single mp3 player) is the equivalent to 5 months on spotify premium without discounts. if you can afford that, it's worth investing into a device that can last you literal years if you get a good one and take good care of it
"but i don't wanna carry around another device!" fair enough, but these things are small enough to fit in tiny pockets (mine fits snugly in the watch pocket of my jeans) and are typically light enough to not be burdensome. if you can carry around your phone, you can carry around an mp3 player
"what if people think i'm weird for having outdated technology" let them. it's worth it in my opinion if it means i get to listen to music ad-free. the most I've ever gotten was "wooooah bro's got the dinosaur tech" and i just thought that was funny personally
"but what if the artist collapses without a constant stream of money!!! i'm not supporting the artist!!!!!" companies try to pay as little as they can get away with to artists. most of that money goes to the CEO and other higher-ups.
"but piracy is bad!" Piracy is a Crime. However, downloading youtube videos/audio for your own PERSONAL, NON-COMMERCIAL USE and NOT REDISTRIBUTING THEM is legal (generally, in the US, check your laws, i am not a lawyer, not legal advice, blah blah blah). besides, i never said you had to pirate your music. in fact, i encourage you to buy the albums of and support your favourite artists in other ways. some artists might even provide links for people to download their songs for free in high quality anyway
not gonna link products just in case someone thinks i'm a shill. but literally just look up "mp3 player" on your search engine or shopping site of choice and find something that doesn't look like it'll fall apart if you breathe on it too hard
seriously guys. if you listen to music more than like a few hours a week, and you don't get all of your music from livestreams or radios (although mine can connect to AM/FM radio), consider investing in an mp3 player. i tried out using one regularly in fall of 2021, and I haven't looked back. don't let companies drain subscription money from you
Five Nights at Freddy's and Undertale parody songs have permanently destroyed my pattern recognition when it comes to new music. I'm listening to Wake by Hail the Sun and going "wow this sounds like Mangled by NateWantsToBattle" like what's wrong with me
What are you favourite artists really getting paid?
A comparison of streaming platforms
Music plays an incredible part in shaping our society. From protest songs, educational rhymes, folk, classical, rock, techno, indie and disco music, it shapes our world view in a unique and powerful way. The way of listening to music has changed dramatically over the last one hundred and fifty years, from live bands on corners, to the invention of the radio, record players, CD’s, tapes, electronic music and now live streaming.
However, in a world where everything is about profit and popularity, the competition between streaming services is stiff. The pay ranges from awful to poor and as the algorithm evolves to recommend new artists to you, who is really making the most money?
The obvious answer is the streaming platform itself. Spotify wracked in a $18.68 billion (AUD) revenue in 2022 alone. Although Spotify don’t post their net profit, they did report a $391.2 (AUD) million loss in 2022, assuming this loss came from their initial revenue, Spotify should, theoretically, have made a staggering $18.28 billion dollar profit.
This leads us to the artists themselves, with such a large amount of profit and roughly 11 million artists on Spotify, we can only assume that split evenly and leaving a $2 billion (AUD) dollar profit for Spotify themselves that each artist would be paid an average of $1480 AUD per year.
This is not the case. Spotify pays around $0.003 - $0.005 USD per stream, a pitiful amount. In fact, per 100,000 streams on Spotify an artist can only hope to gain around $300 - $500 USD. On top of this already insanely low number, Spotify practices a 70/30 model with an average of 70% of profit going to the artists themselves, while they take an additional 30%. This leaves us with around $210 - $350 USD profit. The remaining royalties are then divided between the songwriters, publishers, and owners of the master recording. This could include the artist themselves, but it could also be the label they're signed to, leaving an even smaller profit for the artists themselves.
One of the most popular artists in the world, Taylor Swift, makes around $0.0043 USD per stream on her music. The highest paid artist, Drake, makes around $0.0049 USD per stream on his music. To be considered for having a ‘good number of streams’, an artist needs around 10,000 to 50,000 monthly listeners, however only 213,000 artists have hit this threshold out of the initial 11 million we discussed earlier.
In conclusion, Spotify is a scam. Buy physical items, such as CDs, records, merch, concert tickets etc, to truly support your favourite artist. And for god’s sake, don’t use Spotify