Almost everyone you know consumes the majority of their music through streaming platforms. The popular music streaming app Spotify was launched in 2008, and the platform now boasts over 696 million users and more than 100 million songs. But how many of these songs are from real, roots artists? The answer is: not as many as you would think. It has become fairly apparent in recent years that the majority of music featured on Spotify’s curated “ambient” and “piano” playlists comes from companies such as Epidemic Sound, a Swedish company that offers royalty-free music primarily for use in television and film. Spotify’s head of global strategic initiatives, Jonathan Prince, pushed back against calling these artists fake and argued that Spotify held no rights over these songs, but failed to deny that they cost the platform less to play. It’s easy to see, then, why they would promote music that they would have to pay less for.
It’s discouraging to see independent artist campaigns that barely gain any traction, despite having a promising discography. Even worse, Spotify pays its (real) artists the least amount per song of any major streaming platform, at only $0.003 to $0.004 per stream — this means that for every ten streams an artist gets, they only make three cents. For larger artists who make the majority of their money from merchandise sales, brand deals, and other outlets, this is simply a nice additional source of income. However, for smaller, independent artists who rely on streaming for the majority of their income from the music industry, this is far from a livable wage; in fact, alone, this money hardly pays for recording and distribution fees.
Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek recently announced that he will be stepping down from his position to shift focus towards “long-term strategy” (CNBC). The news comes only months after many artists pulled their discographies from the platform due to Ek’s recent $700 million investment into European defense firm Helsing, which specializes in AI drone software. One band, in the wake of leaving Spotify, is even attempting to breathe life back into Bandcamp, a platform that allows consumers to ‘name your price’ for albums and pays artists directly. This is a promising turnaround for the future of independent music, but its long-term effects are yet to be seen. One can only hope that with enough pushback, the financial volatility of music streaming will be addressed.