Recent news revealed that Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek has been investing heavily in military tech companies, which adds another ethical layer to a platform already criticized for how little it pays musicians !
Spotify only pays artists about $3–5 per 1,000 streams, using a pro-rata model that directs most money toward major stars… By contrast, Qobuz (≈$18–20 per 1,000 streams) and Tidal (≈$12–13) pay far more fairly!
However Tidal is far from ethical. Most of its revenue is controlled by private investors and founders and small artists still earn very little…
More fair-minded platforms like Bandcamp, Resonate, Ampled, or SoundCloud’s fan-powered royalties prioritize musicians over investors.
With these more ethical alternatives available, why do we keep using Spotify?
Personally I do this by buying merch. If I buy a shirt from a band than not only do I get a cool shirt but the band also gets paid more in that single transaction than if I listened to their music 5000 times on spotify.
Sure, but that doesn’t give you rights to pirate their music, does it? There is also the problem who gets paid what when you buy their merch.
Ask any artist: they make most of their money from merch and ticket sales (depending on venue).
I assume that depends on the contract they have with their label, but usually it’s a way for them to earn more.
Are most artists still aligned with labels these days? I was under the impression that there’s been a massive shift to going independent.
I have no idea, but if they aren’t, pirating their content is even worse based on criteria here.
Not sure why the jump to piracy here, but it’s consistent with your thoughts on the rest of the thread. “Won’t somebody think about the music labels that screw artists? It’s piracy ruining everything!”
I’m not really worried about whether a label or corporation deems me to have the “right” to listen to their music. The only thing I’m concerned with outside of consuming the art is the artist who made it. I highly doubt any artist would genuinely care if someone pirated their music but still payed them through other means (like buying merch, tickets, etc).
I think the argument of who gets paid what when you buy merch is irrelevant when you consider the alternative being the artist gets virtually nothing. I would have to listen to an artist 200 times for them to maybe get a singular dollar from spotify. If whoever is handling their merch store is giving them less than that for each sale of a shirt then it’s the artists fault at that point for still working with them.
That’s literally what happened with Napster. Metallica were rather pissed, and Napster shut down, leading to the fun P2P days of Whac-a-Mole.