Dandelion Break The Ugly Truth About Spotify Is Finally Revealed

[AgentPete]

I’ve only just caught up with this (others here will already have done so, I’m sure) but it does repay careful reading, just to see what the @&%$ happened to the music industry… and could it happen to publishing?

I’m inclined to think, not exactly.. but…?

The Ugly Truth About Spotify Is Finally Revealed

A year-long investigation by an indie journalist is a call to action

www.honest-broker.com

 

[Vagabond Heart]

Wow, that’s depressing. Greed keeps winning.

 

[Sarit]

In one of my past lives I worked in the music industry in NY, it was the most corrupt biz on the planet. I hope the whole thing just crumbles down, artists certainly don't need labels today--they can record and distribute their own music. I never buy music anymore, I listen to everything on YT.

 

[JoanUP]

I’ve only just caught up with this (others here will already have done so, I’m sure) but it does repay careful reading, just to see what the @&%$ happened to the music industry… and could it happen to publishing?

I’m inclined to think, not exactly.. but…?

The Ugly Truth About Spotify Is Finally Revealed

A year-long investigation by an indie journalist is a call to action

www.honest-broker.com

It's hard for me to picture USA legislating a music "ethical violation" in another country, especially when they can't even figure out what to do about Americans electing a felon into office, Musk buying votes, Trump dismantling the US government, and the US govt kidnapping people off the streets to send them to prisons.

Even the radio stations in USA play the same crappy songs over and over again, with each city having its own repetitive play list. To me, this also suggests they're just playing what they get paid to play. No "60's, 70's, and 80's" DJ in their right mind is choosing yet another crappy Aeorosmith or ACDC song over Simon and Garfunkel or Janis Joplin.
Also, and I have no numbers to back this up—my impression only— but we used to have awesome MoTown stations, and they disappeared so that now commercial stations are pretty much playing music exclusively from white males.

 

[AgentPete]

It's hard for me to picture USA legislating a music "ethical violation" in another country, especially when they can't even figure out what to do about Americans electing a felon into office, Musk buying votes, Trump dismantling the US government, and the US govt kidnapping people off the streets to send them to prisons.

Yup, the “buying votes” thing is utterly extraordinary, surely jail time…?

The (current) administration surely won’t lift a finger on this "ethical violation" issue, I feel sure. What puzzles me is the way the record labels have meekly fallen into line. It’s their funeral.

Also, and I have no numbers to back this up—my impression only— but we used to have awesome MoTown stations, and they disappeared so that now commercial stations are pretty much playing music exclusively from white males.

There’s very little local programming now, it’s all playlist automation from afar...

 

[Jonny]

That's truly depressing and infuriating. And certainly there is no love for Spotify among music artists per se.

The royalties are hopeless to an everyday jobbing musician trying to earn a crust. No one I know playing pro or semi-pro makes a cracker out of Spotify.

It only starts to amount to something when it's multi-millions of individual instances of small royalties, as is the case in the Taylor Swifts and Ed Sheerans of the business. These add up to (what for most ordinary people) might be a significant sum. But for these same big artists they are frequently seen calling out Spotify for the paltry percentages they pay.

As mentioned above, the music business has always been bent and this is just another facet of the greed and exploitation aimed at struggling performers trying to make an honest living.

 

[Pamela Jo]

If I had money to invest I would start a string of local radio stations in the US and it would play independent audio books and music. Or I'd do another offshore pirate station.

 

[AgentPete]

We had an experimental internet radio station going for a while, “Radio Litopia”, and I absolutely loved it. I could set one up for you…

 

[Jonny]

We had an experimental internet radio station going for a while, “Radio Litopia”, and I absolutely loved it. I could set one up for you…

Great idea, Pete. Playing my music wall-to-wall.

 

[Pamela Jo]

Great idea, Pete. Playing my music wall-to-wall.

You laugh Jonny.
That is an idea Pete. I'm not quite ready...

But what about some of the readers from Popups doing an audio read of winning books from the new popups. If you win you could at least be advertised?
It seems it could also adapt to be an audio royal road?
A serialization of a chosen WIP?
Maybe it could be lab connected. There area text to speech aps everywhere. Not ggodenoughto publish, but I would have more ttime to listen to a longer piece to critique than I do read. It would have all the advantages of the old popups...

 

[AgentPete]

So this is where the concept (mine, I do believe) of "appropriateness of medium" comes into play. It's an idea that is often not always understood or taken into account when planning a new venture, even books sometimes.
Different media, even sub-media, have varying AoM profiles relative to their audiences.
Radio, a sequential medium with little user agency, has been torn apart by non-sequential, high agency media such as YouTube and podcasts. There's no point in competing for that sort of audience profile, it's a losing game.
But it does have its own AoM positives, too
EG live experience (podcasts can't do that YouTube can, with some success) and community (ditto). I'm sure there are other positives, too.
I too sometimes miss simply listening to "the radio" Sometimes the insanely wide choices offered by podcasts /, YouTube is just too arduous to wade through.

 

[Pamela Jo]

So this is where the concept (mine, I do believe) of "appropriateness of medium" comes into play. It's an idea that is often not always understood or taken into account when planning a new venture, even books sometimes.
Different media, even sub-media, have varying AoM profiles relative to their audiences.
Radio, a sequential medium with little user agency, has been torn apart by non-sequential, high agency media such as YouTube and podcasts. There's no point in competing for that sort of audience profile, it's a losing game.
But it does have its own AoM positives, too
EG live experience (podcasts can't do that YouTube can, with some success) and community (ditto). I'm sure there are other positives, too.
I too sometimes miss simply listening to "the radio" Sometimes the insanely wide choices offered by podcasts /, YouTube is just too arduous to wade through.

I think radio was totally ignored until the conservative movement in the 90's saw it's potential. The thing about radio is that it can serve a small community and be set up easily. it is why in my childhood when you drove across the US you would get a new station every ten minutes or so. A remnant of the 1930's. I tthink it will play an important role for creatives and communities in the future. In Kansas I cannot tell you how not having a local station to give accurate tornado reports shocked me on my return. We knew there were sightings some were on the ground but all theradio came from some corporate feed a thousand miles away and even the local reporters were in a city hours away.

Radio and theatre has a role to play in surviving the insecure future we now all face. First world and third.

 

[Pamela Jo]

Creative people will look for creative ways to get their work out there. Only Fans seems to be another forum. Step back and all tech has done is monetize people doing peopley things. Which doesnt bode well to them thinking their Frankenstein monster can do people things better.

Jonny Are we going to find you on here?

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/31/g-s1-57321/only-fans-musicians-kate-nash-lizzie-no?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_source=facebook.com

 

[Josephine]

What about Bandcamp? (and maybe analogous platforms that I don't know about)? ...and what would be a literary equivalent...?

 

[Katie-Ellen]

We had an experimental internet radio station going for a while, “Radio Litopia”, and I absolutely loved it. I could set one up for you…

It was brilliant.

 

[David Newrick]

My recently new Denon multi channel network amplifier can call up on-screen endless internet music channels and paid services like Tidal and Spotify. The choice is so enormous I am lost with it all. As a result I react as any human does, hunch up to shrink my profile against the onslaught and turn back to old favourites that I already know. We are literally being swamped by our own technology because we can store big data across world-wide data centres capable of storing the entire sum of human knowledge and more. Yet what happens? In a YouTube video the multi award winning artist Michael Bublé quips that he hasn't had a payment from Spotify, or if he has it was so small he didn't notice it. If such a famous artist is unhappy then what chance do the rest of us have?