Month: March 2024

Maybe Spotify should take all those bad actors that are creating playlists with fake bot streams and ban them from the platform. This way, artists can avoid getting hit with takedowns. These disreputable scammers, of which I get several emails a month from, tout their playlists as a way to get more streams. Of course, the only way you can get on their playlists is payola. Their playlists only have “followers” numbered in the hundreds to about 1,500. Spotify claims it’s user base is about 600 million. So the scammers have almost no reach. Unless their playlist is focused on a specific genre, which they never are, the possibility of gaining true fans is a pipe dream.

And also it’s well know that the major labels use bot farms to create streams that inflate their artists reach. 600 million “users”? That’s up from 180 million a couple of years ago. How much of that 420 million are real people? Why doesn’t Spotify clean up it’s “user” base? Because they get revenues from those bots.

It’s past time to have an outside organization audit Spotify. That way, artists can get paid for actual streams instead of reying on Spotify policing itself, which it has shown it cannot do by itself.

When I choose to amplify my dislike of Spotify on social media, I always get pushback from Spotify fanbois who dispute my statements. One such statement is the fact that Spotify claims to pay creators 70% of revenues, which is an absolute falsehood. Spotify pays out out of revenues approximately 62% of gross revenues. Then the fanbois state that the music business pays out 70% of revenues. This 70% includes various minimum payments to big labels and, from what I understand, payments to the big 3 includes payments to those labels for allowing Spotify to carry those labels artists.

For anybody not privileged to sign to a major label, things aren’t so great. Based on the information gleaned from Spotify’s website and app, the average artist is getting the shaft. Advertising rates they publish state that the contracted advertising rate for artists looking to promote on Spotify is $1.50 to $3.50 per thousand impressions. For consumers on Spotify’s “ free” plan, they must plan to have anywhere from 3 to 5 ads played per song listened to. I’ve come up with this observation from statistics for ad insertions over a 3 year period. Using average numbers, this means Spotify makes from “free” subscribers about $.012 per song.

As of the latest numbers from DistroKid, my distributor, Spotify is paying $.0032 per song play. I don’t what math you’ve taken, but .0032/.012 is not 70%, but 26 2/3%. I have no idea whether paid subscribers, which according the 20-F form Spotify is required to file with SEC, amount to 236 million individuals have an equal participation rate, but the numbers just don’t add up. By the way, the same 20-F says Spotify has a total of 600 million subscribers, so the vast majority of subscribers are “free” ones.

Well, once again, Spotify has been caught lying. Today’s listener statistics is a classic example. Spotify gives you stats daily, but today is more egregious than usual. Listener stats vary by 33% depending on whether the stats are by country or by city. If they can’t decide what to report on, I wonder how accurate their play stats are? Are they purposely underreporting those numbers too?

Underreporting plays stats would be a windfall for a company that can’t even manage to make a profit, cutting their losses to deceive their investors.

Maybe artists need to band together and force constant audits of Spotify’s books. Maybe that should be what https://weareumaw.org/ needs to do.

Bought a couple of pieces of gear from Playtronica. Just got shipped. Can’t wait until they arrive. I hope to be able to make some new music with the Touchme and Playtron. Also bought a few accessories to go with these devices. Time will tell whether I’ll release music made with them.

Well, my first real glitch on Hostinger. Tried to upgrade plugins and the site crashed. Took a few tries in the support area to figure the plugin that caused the problem. Had to delete two plugins but was only able to reinstall one of them. At least the site’s back up.

So, at least for me, Bandcamp, is an evil joke. My stats for almost 4 years don’t even amount to one days plays on streaming platforms, Spotify included. I’m not expecting any better results from tomorrow’s activity. But if youre interested, my bandcamp page is at https://jaypeach.bandcamp.com/