this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2023
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They just changed the rules so that if smaller artists don't get a certain number of plays they don't even get a payout.
With less than 1000 streams per year.
This is solely to kick out the AI generated music, which is already taking a significant share of the payout from the musicians.
This change is not against smaller artists, but for them.
I kind of call bullshit on that take.
There's definitely AI generated music that can surpass 1000 streams per year and many real bands that cannot.
Less than 1000 streams is like a band being unable to fill up a 100-person venue for a 10-song set once in a year (for the kind of band that plays live gigs). Opening acts for obscure bands play more than that. If you're that unpopular, you're hardly a band at all.
They didn't say all AI generated music gets less than 1000 streams; they implied most of it does.
But then are you implying that those bands that are that unpopular are undeserving of getting paid even a little? Because they're not a "real" band?
Stuff that nobody wants to listen to just takes up space and clutters up searches, making it harder for people to find the stuff they actually want. It had negative value for the platform and for users. That's why they went the AI stuff gone. If a few actual bands miss out on a few dollars of revenue as a result of Spotify getting rid of the outright junk, I'm not gonna shed a tear over it.
You don't have to shed a tear. But I find your take incredibly harsh on bands that are trying to start out and find their audience.
Eliminating low quality AI content is desirable for me as well, but nuking even more incentive for bands that are starting out is the wrong thing to do in IMHO
Even if you are starting out thousands streams is nothing. I have a few friends who have a band. Its really small, basically everyone who listens to them knows them personally. They have 20 monthly listeners, but almost all of their songs on their own have 1.000 yearly streams – because Spotify puts them randomly into their automatically generated playlists.
Meanwhile kicking all the 'bands' out with less than 1000 streams allows them to pay the rest more.
I don't actually know anything about where bands are supposed to find an audience, but I don't think bands who haven't found an audience should expect to get paid, the same way I don't expect to get paid for going to a job interview or engaging in a hobby. If a band doesn't have an audience they can reliably entertain, what they're doing is self promotion for their own benefit, not entertainment for the benefit of an audience.
I thought it was 2,000?