I’m pulling my music from the streaming services.
I suspect you know why, but briefly:
Spotify’s CEO has become the earningest person ever in the music industry while paying artists less than a pittance for their work. Screw that and screw him.
Spotify’s ecosystem allows for those with a budget to buy playlist placement to “succeed” in a way unavailable to those of us who can’t afford this. If that doesn’t make you cynical, you’re not me.
100,000 new songs are released on Spotify daily, with an ever-increasing number of those being generated by AI-driven software. Gah.
Any satisfaction from having my music out there has been overshadowed by the frustration of the numbers game. I should be enjoying releasing music, but worrying about the “performance” of the music online has almost destroyed that joy in me. Screw that. Making music is awesome and I will not let the billionaire class destroy that.
Frankly, it’s not worth the ~$25 dollars I’ve made by having my album on all the services for two and a half years.
I will reclaim the joy of making music. This is the first step.
“This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ours, cause we don't give a darn. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do.” - Woody Guthrie
Yes, I’m aware that my microcareer in music will not be missed by The Machine, and that I’m not doing any damage here to The Enemy. I just don’t want to participate in that world any longer.
“You know, we just buy music now. We don't make it any more. And that goes for just about everything. I think it's so important that people develop and subscribe to and have confidence in their own ability to make music, however rough it is.” - Tom Waits
Make music, friends. It’s been such a life-long joy for me and I wish that for everyone. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. Three chords on a cheap ukulele will take you a long way.
“Everybody should do some music. Every creature and every material has the music inside, it's its energy; music is actually very easy, there's nothing to it, and everybody should search for his own.” - Erkan Oğur
My music will remain on bandcamp and YouTube. Yeah, YouTube/Google is part of the problem but my experience with that service seems far less negative than the others, and I do want folks to be able to hear my songs for free somewhere.
I have more releases in the works and I hope you’ll continue to listen once in a while. Just not on Spotify.
-Rob
I just started releasing music again. Last time I did streaming wasn't really a thing yet. I'm still in the pink cloud early days, but I can already see how I let the visible metrics on certain websites inform my own estimations of the value of my art. Oof. I bet when I return to this post in 3-4 years it will be to make a very similar resolution.