News

Spotify will demonetize any tracks with less than 1000 streams per year.

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Daniel Ek posted this on X: "Today, with the cost of creating content being close to zero, people can share an incredible amount of content."

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"Spotify, the rumor had it, was filling its most popular playlists with stock music attributed to pseudonymous musicians—variously called ghost or fake artists—presumably to reduce its royalty payouts."

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Any artist on Deezer with less than 1000 monthly listens by at least 500 listeners receives half the royalty rate.

All these small changes paint a bleak future for music streaming for music creators.

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I grew up in the 1990s and have witnessed the changes in the music industry, from dial-up modems to MP3 files, CDs, Walkmans, iTunes, YouTube, Spotify, and the resurgence of vinyl records. The music industry has undergone a seismic shift, irrevocably changed by the advent of technological tools. From the rise of ubiquitous on-demand music streaming technology, use of auto-tune/pitch correction, synthesizers in pop music, streaming fraud (Non-music/ white noise/ stream farms to game the system), and proliferation of entirely generated music on streaming platforms and  (I'm talking about creating "music" without understanding a lick of music theory, musicality, lifting a finger playing or singing a note"). 

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Streaming has saturated and democratized ​the entire music industry. The new music gatekeepers are streaming platforms' tastemakers and algorithms. "New Music Friday" music is bland, tired, sterile, nondescript, manufactured, commodified, and duplicated. It strips music of its soul and organic essence. The same chord progressions, 4/4 rhythm, song structure, use of samples, loops, and topics about flexing material wealth, love, and heartbreak—there's nothing new there. Everything is so stale and recycled.

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Streaming numbers, social media virality, editorial playlist placements, and financial gain are the key factors dominating the current music landscape. Creativity, artistry, and experimentation have taken a back seat. Music is "tik-tok-ified and playlist-tified," made to be easily digestible for instant gratification or even passive background streaming. There is nothing inherently wrong with creating atmospheric background music or music that is derivative or inspired by other artists. But it crosses the line when music is all about the algorithms & numbers game, and everything is strategically made to game the system.

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It's a fact. Music is severely devalued, and Spotify has become an industrial wasteland of audio sludge. Deezer claims that approximately 20,000 tracks uploaded to its platform are entirely AI-generated. Spotify is believed to be the panacea to the piracy problem, the messiah of the music industry. He has solved the problem of music piracy by consolidating all the music made in human history into a free, unlimited jukebox, albeit one interrupted by some obnoxious ads. Alternatively, you can remove them and download them for offline listening with a $10 monthly subscription fee. 

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I used to save money by visiting stores and buying physical records. I would usually patiently wait for them to be released and shipped to Singapore before hitting the retail shelves. Each album cost approximately $20 and contained about 10-15 songs.

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When I first tried Spotify in 2014, I bought an iPod Touch to listen to my ripped CDs (it came with access to the App Store, so I downloaded Spotify out of sheer curiosity). I was mind-blown by the unfettered access to the vast and seemingly unlimited music library at the touch of my fingertips. It seemed like one of my wildest wishes was being fulfilled by a genie in a bottle. I thought," How is this even possible or even legal? This seems too good to be true."

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Looking back, "Seems too good to be true" is an apt description of the Spotify concept. It seems too good to be true because it is not when we look at the equation from the other side.

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To me, music is treated like disposable black garbage bags. They are designed to be cost-effective, manufactured in large quantities, and serve as single-use convenience items solely as receptacles for holding all types of refuse before it is collected and disposed of in large sewage trucks for incineration and buried in landfills. There are no distinct traits that distinguish one bag from another. The contents of the bag also don't matter. They are identical, easily accessible, and gratifying to a certain extent when we clean up the mess and clear the clutter. Music is now a fleeting auditory experience with little to no longevity, fading into the background of our hectic lives and ultimately being forgotten, superseded by the next new viral hit. 

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When there is an endless supply of new music, the perceived value of each piece of music composition tends to decrease significantly, especially when the monthly subscription fees and ad revenues remain essentially the same. However, more people are jumping onto the Spotify bandwagon to enjoy the benefits of a legal, free (or crazy affordable) unlimited music listening platform. This would essentially dilute the streaming pool, especially when music royalties are collected and distributed using a pro-rata model. Not to mention the rise of stream farms to "game the system" and steal royalties from real artists. As the Spotify algorithm learns our personal tastes and preferences in music in the background, it begins to feed us similar-sounding music, and we happily dwell in our little music greenhouse, or comfort zone, consuming what the algorithm provides. 

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As an artist, I'm incentivized to produce the types of music favored by the algorithms: basic, familiar, recycled, and derivative music that caters to the broad spectrum of musical tastes and preferences among consumers. Why take artistic risks when we can stick to the cookie-cutter and formulaic approach to music-making, regurgitating and replicating the success of other hit songs? It's an unwritten game rule for artists to put out "safe" songs lest they ruin their algorithmic goodwill, lose audience engagement, or stall their popularity growth momentum when the listener skips their song within 30 seconds when listeners or the playlist editorial team starts blacklisting them from their playlist placements. In a world so saturated with endless streams of content, limited resources, and time, artists have learned to be strategic with each release. We have become enslaved to the rhythms of the algorithm in the system we have created.

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It's a music dystopia where all music sounds so similar that an AI can replicate humans' voices and create a song from scratch based on prompts, and it could still resemble and pass off as the work of a real artist. AI technology is still in its infancy, having yet to realize its potential fully. The results of generative AI songs may vary in terms of their quality. And we may still argue that AI-generated songs that sound robotic and artificial, and holograms look unrealistically funny. Still, with time, it will evolve into a gargantuan machine that churns out endless streams of mindless, cheap content efficiently, endlessly, and effortlessly. The line between machine-generated content and human creativity is becoming increasingly blurred. What about an artist's intellectual property (their voices, their unique defining style of creations) and musicians' livelihood? When AI moves closer to replicating a real artist's work, do we have sufficient safeguards to protect humans' artistry, "real art," and the artists' livelihood, as well as the inherent value of Art? The threat of AI and music devaluation looming ahead for the future of the music industry is genuinely terrifying. 

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As I scroll through my Spotify and Tidal music recommendations, I notice that AI-generated works are being passed off as those of real musicians and are being released on the official artists' pages. How can this be allowed? How did the music distributors enable these scammers to release their AI-generated content to slip through the cracks? Spotify is demonetizing works with fewer than 1,000 streams; they're discreetly adding ghost artists' works to their editorial playlists to increase streams and avoid paying real artists by diluting the royalties pool. The discrepancy between the label and independent artists' treatments cannot be ignored. Almost every song on Spotify's featured playlist is from a major label. 

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I believe it's time for artists to acknowledge Spotify's influence on the music consumption landscape and advocate for their rights and fair remuneration. It's time for artists to revolutionize how music is consumed and valued. It's time for artists to protect their Art and not "dedicate their lives' works to a (technological) experiment." Spotify is taking "music" out of the music industry. It's an industry. A fast fashion industry. It's an avalanche of music content produced in a factory by injection molding, ensuring maximum consumer satisfaction and engagement, all moving at lightning speed on a conveyor belt. Spotify has increasingly shifted its focus to podcasts and audiobooks, investing heavily in exclusive podcast acquisitions. Spotify does not have the best interests of musicians at heart, despite its surface-level and performative acts of advocating for musicians' rights and fairer payouts. 

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As a music lover, amateur artist, and aspiring musician, I would strongly encourage Spotify and YouTube Music to evaluate and examine their current systems, making concrete moves to address the issues. Level the playing field for independent musicians, value music as an art form (not endless, mindless content), value real human artistry, and take a firm stance on eradicating and outright banning AI-generated content on its platforms. Make streaming equitable for all musicians regardless of status and label affiliations, and rework the entire streaming model's royalties and music consumption systems. Desaturate the oversaturated market and value quality over quantity of music. Artists must maintain their artistic vision and integrity, avoiding the production of commercialized and homogenized music content, to stand out from the noise.

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Real progress will not occur if the major players do not step up and the musicians remain silent. I may not be familiar with the intricacies of how the business model operates, but here's my two cents, my take, and my proposal to change the music streaming system.

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My proposition is a transition from the current music-renting model to one where music ownership is valued. This shift emphasizes physical and exclusive experiences that digital streaming platforms cannot replicate. For instance, artists can now offer "album-exclusive" tracks alongside physical merchandise, such as signed CDs, demos, photos, postcards, posters, and keychains, as well as exclusive premieres, live showcases, or live stream videos. 

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Instead of the pro rata model, I propose a pay-per-play model for each stream to count and be truly valued. This system operates on a limited user-centric payment system of 500 credits and is not run by the conventional subscription model. Artists can establish a minimum royalty rate (1, 3, or 5 credits per stream). They can offer selected singles or EPs as free samples, allowing listeners to discover their work without a cost barrier.

A proprietary encrypted audio format will protect artists and prevent audio copying and misuse, leveraging the Web 3.0 blockchain technology. Our clean music UI ensures that the focus remains on the album format and the whole album experience, rather than algorithmically generated playlists, with only a handful of playlists for each genre curated by music professionals. Importantly, a play is defined as streaming the entire duration of a song, not just a mere 30 seconds. 

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The commitment to quality is further emphasized through stricter quality control measures for music releases on the platform, resulting in a curated library of high-quality content from artists, regardless of their popularity or label affiliations. I believe in direct artist distribution, which removes the middleman and distributors' cuts, withdrawal limits, and provides better direct quality control. Additionally, efforts will be made to declutter current platforms by removing and banning AI-generated music and makers. As a result, only real music with substance will be allowed, excluding non-musical sounds like rain or white noise. 

 

A separate "Zen music" channel will offer lo-fi music, binaural beats, white noise, and mellow piano loops. The "Zen music" does not consume listening credits, as it is AI-generated and sourced from royalty-free sound libraries. 

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This multi-faceted approach aims to enhance the overall listening experience with quality content and boost the perceived value of music in an oversaturated digital landscape. This platform enables artists to receive fair compensation for their work. It provides them with a platform to reward their loyal fans with a unique experience that cannot be replicated elsewhere.