Spotify has raised prices for the second time in a year, with no new benefits, after its CEO sparked outrage by claiming the cost of creating 'content' is 'close to zero'
Spotify has raised prices for the second time in a year, with no new benefits, after its CEO sparked outrage by claiming the cost of creating 'content' is 'close to zero'
The latest price hike couldn't have come at a worse time
Summary:
- Spotify has announced another price hike for its subscription plans in the United States.
- This price increase comes shortly after Spotify CEO Daniel Ek sparked outrage among music fans and creators by claiming that the "cost of creating content is close to zero."
- Many musicians and music fans condemned Ek's comments, arguing that music is not just "content" and that it is costly and time-consuming to create.
- Despite the backlash, Spotify is increasing its standard Premium plan by $1 to $11.99, the Duo plan by $2 to $16.99, and the Family plan by $3 to $19.99 per month.
- Spotify claims the price hikes are necessary to invest in and innovate its product features, but this reasoning is questioned given Ek's "content" cost comments.
- Spotify is less vulnerable to customer churn compared to TV/movie streaming services, as users are less likely to switch music streaming providers due to the hassle of rebuilding playlists and losing personalized recommendations.
Related:
- Spotify's royalty system has faced criticism for not paying artists their fair share (Nov. 29, 2023, MSNBC)
The platform does not pay according to a per-stream rate, but rather puts all the revenue from subscribers and ads into a giant pot, and divides that share according to their respective "streamshare." Under this model, artists are estimated to receive between $0.003 to $0.005 per play.
That's about to change. Beginning early next year, Spotify will only pay royalties to artists whose tracks have been streamed 1,000 times in the past 12 months, effectively locking out the smallest artists from the "streamshare" pot. The money that would have been paid out to these small artists — which Spotify said amounts to $40 million a year — will instead go to "those most dependent on streaming revenue."
According to Spotify, artists generally don't pocket the earnings from tracks that have under 1,000 streams anyway, because they don't meet the labels and distributors' minimum withdrawal amount. The company also says it does not make any additional money under the new model. But musicians have said they feel the model is “putting a number on art," and industry experts said that this change essentially makes Spotify the arbiter of which artist is deserving of payment.
There has to be a way for multibillion-dollar companies to both keep music accessible and appropriately compensate musicians — especially fledgling, independent ones.
- Spotify made £56m profit, but has decided not to pay smaller artists like me (Nov. 30, 2023, The Guardian)
Spotify will stop paying anything at all for roughly two-thirds of tracks on the platform. That is any track receiving fewer than 1,000 streams over the period of a year. Tracks falling under this arbitrary minimum will continue to accrue royalties – but those royalties will now be redirected upwards, often to bigger artists, rather than to their own rights holders.
This sounds incredible, but there’s nothing to stop it. And their primary business partners – the three major labels – are cheering the change on because it will mean more money in their pockets.
So what is their excuses for older musicians that paid for expensive studio time before the day of home studios? Cause they still pay them like shit too
The only reason I keep Spotify anymore is that I've got a family plan with something like six accounts. I gave those to random acquaintances back in the Facebook days - people who are really into music.
If I cancel Spotify, there are five people out there who are suddenly and without warning going to find themselves without music.
I really don't even remember who they are, but I feel like continuing the subscription is my community service
I'm so grateful, I have thousands of songs and just hit shuffle and made my own playlists. I always thought internet radio was overpriced 😅
I just download to actually have the songs. No DRM, No Ads, No song getting removed from streaming service... I have 500+ songs downloaded in opus format and it only takes 2.5Gb with many of them being longer than 5 minutes. I don't know why people keep using these services while they keep saying they hate it because there are so many ads or why they keep paying for DRM (aka. not owning anything)...
Meanwhile every update makes the app worse
Another clueless CEO who doesn't know what makes his company's very existence possible.
Here's a few things that are cheaper!
- Soulseek/Nicotine+
- Usenet Groups
- Libraries (only if your local one has CDs, and often is popular music and no indie stuff) And if you want some album art: MusicBrainz Picard
If you want it on your phone, SD cards are cheaper than ever for big space. Unless you're on iPhone.
Just for funzies, my Spotify family plan in Canada is $17.84 CAD, which works out to $13.05 USD at current exchange rate.
Usually Canadians are screwed harder on, well pretty much everything, so I'm surprised that Americans are paying more for this. Guess it's "what the market will bear" or similar nonsense. Please discuss.
I switched to TIDAL, for this, for the disgustingly low amount of revenue passed along to artists by Spotify (the entire value of their business), and for the fact that they continue to partner with Rogan after all the disinformation he peddles.
Not a huge proponent of streaming services in general, but some are objectively better than others. Spotify is atrocious. Tidal is a lot better.
Just another CEO denigrating the work of those who make him rich.
Streaming services don't support artists in any meaningful way.
Instead, buy music for download when it's available (Bandcamp and the like).
If not possible, just pirate it and buy merchandise or go to a concert. You will bring as much revenue to the artists this way, than listening to them on Spotify for 200 years non stop, and it will be cheaper for you in the end.
I never did get a music subscription of any kind. Guess I am glad about that now. I just host my own server. Spotify never had a quarter of what I want to listen to anyways so I guess there is that.
Listening to Legion of Mary 12-10-1974 right now.
After watching how similar business practices torched Twitter, I think this dude is underestimating the general public's commitment to just sail the high seas.
I've spent a good part of my life downloading my music and using mp3 playing apps. On time I downloaded Spotify to add songs to a shared playlist with friends. I figured I might try the app since I have it installed.
This is the worst music playing app in the world. (I was on free tier) How could anyone see this and think "oh yeah I will pay a subscription to this service". Seriously
Welp, gonna try Tidal tonight.
I left when I saw how much of our money they gave to Joe Rogan to punch down on trans people. Already paying for YouTube pro for years and finally took advantage of their music app. It's been great. My car and every Google screen in the house have native support. The only disadvantage is everything from tinder to open source crap I run at home only integrate with Spotify.
Smh I want to get off Spotify for tidal but I don't feel up to teaching my parents how to use a completely different music app
Glad I moved away from Spotify to Apple Music years ago (for different reasons tho)
Who?
Another thing I don't use, and its users with problems I don't have.
There are times when it's good to be asocial.
I just hope that one day Spotify goes premium-only and all of you can go cry somewhere else.
Literally the hero of the music industry, but the whole lemmy takes a dump on them. Man, people on this platform are just all poor and uneducated. So, everything paid is bad, and no idea of what's actually behind the costs.
Go pirate some mp3s and remember, that despite how disgusting music labels are, if everyone did what you do, your favorite artist would've stopped producing their music long-long time ago. So, this simply puts you into the same leeching category with the corpos that you so despise.