It's this discrepancy, between stated goals and reality, that has led many musicians to become more vocal about their dissatisfaction with Spotify. It's important to note that this is necessarily an estimate, because each artist makes a slightly different amount per stream - but many use this average figure to estimate Spotify earnings. Calculating Spotify streaming payout as $0.0038 per stream, then $2,500 equals out to 657,895 streams. *Some streaming napkin math: A $15-an-hour minimum wage is $2,500 in revenue per month (pre-tax). But what can it mean, when Spotify's royalty rates are so low that to earn a living wage of $15 an hour, a musician needs 657,895 streams per month*? (And if you aren't a solo artist, multiply that by the number of people in your band.) It's one he spelled out a couple of years ago, before podcasting entered the picture but right before the company went public on the stock exchange: he said he wanted Spotify to help "one million artists to be able to live off their art." This sounds good, especially if you're one of a million artists, rather than one in a million. ![]() To be fair, Ek says he does have another mission in mind for Spotify. As Ek makes clear, even the COVID pandemic can be put to use by Spotify's strategy, as can the death of an existing medium for music, "linear radio" (more commonly known as "radio"). Indeed, health clearly has nothing to do with this. If it's to conspiracist shock jock Joe Rogan – now signed to Spotify for exclusivity of his podcast, reportedly for upwards of $100 million – then it's Joe Rogan. What truly comes first for Spotify is competition – the company is focused on eliminating other places for time spent listening to. Spotify is not a "music company first," as Diamond describes Bandcamp, because music plays a role only insofar as people spend some of their time listening to it, and Spotify wants all their time. Spotify is focused on "capturing the share of time listeners spend elsewhere." This is why Ek talks about "audio" generically, because it doesn't matter specifically what those listeners are doing elsewhere, Ek just wants them doing it at Spotify instead. For us, it will always be about capturing the share of time listeners spend elsewhere and prove out that their time is far better spent with us." So in my mind, our competition is actually those learned and long-held user behaviors. This is a trend that we suspect will be accelerated by the COVID pandemic. The 20-year trend is that everything linear dies and on-demand wins. ![]() And while most focus is on competition between streaming services, we continue to be focused on the billions of users that are listening to linear radio. "When I look ahead both short- and long-term, I'm always thinking about what's Spotify's role within the larger ecosystem. And that is through the direct support of their fans." And the way you do that is by ensuring that artists are compensated fairly and transparently for their work. That's what I feel like we're here to build – that system. And if you start with this idea that music is healing, that is obviously a power that should be in the hands of everybody who has the talent to wield it. Write that down first.' He said that he wanted it to be the guiding principle they used in the book. And he had picked a co-writer and in one of their initial meetings together he said, 'Music is healing. There's this great story – there was a New Yorker article about it – about how Prince was working on his autobiography just before he died. I mean, the mission of the company is, I think, fairly unique. But we're definitely – no question – we're different than a lot of digital businesses. ![]() And the way to best serve artists happens to be through technology, a particular model of technology that our business is based on. "I think of Bandcamp as a music company first, because I think of who we serve as first and foremost the artist. ![]() Given how differently Bandcamp has behaved from a typical startup, I asked Diamond a fundamental question: Is Bandcamp a digital business? Which poses the question: does our 21st-century business world really have to be so much like Spotify, and so little like Bandcamp? I spoke with Bandcamp CEO and co-founder Ethan Diamond to try and understand better how and why his company does business the way they do. But neither could exist at any other time. You might be tempted to say that one is a 21st-century business, and the other belongs to an earlier age. Bandcamp is privately owned, has been in the black since 2012, and continues to grow. Spotify is now worth an estimated $54 billion on the stock market, despite having never shown an annual profit.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |