Many a true word is said in jest. It’s not some deep dark secret within the music or hi-fi industry that Spotify doesn’t exactly pay artists a lot of money for their music. Tell us something that we didn’t know.
We discussed it at length during our Record Store Day 2021 podcast and there was an overall consensus from both us and indie record store owners that younger listeners care about artists earning a proper paycheck and that they will continue to spend $30 or more on records because they know artists make more money from physical media and because they own the music versus “rent” with streaming platforms.
Has streaming become so large (85% of the market) that the larger platforms don’t even care what artists earn at this point because they hold enormous leverage over the labels?
Tidal and Qobuz are trying to do the opposite and pay artists a lot more but Spotify is 30 times larger than both platforms combined so it’s not hard to read this savage bit of satire from the Onion and understand the state of affairs.
Reference: Spotify Celebrates 100th Dollar Given To Artists (The Onion)
