Spotify - What's in it for us?

There has been some interesting discussion amongst the music community of late about Spotify. Specifically the focus is on it's role as a new model for delivering music to the consumer and the impact it is having on artist royalty returns. An interesting comment was made recently by the Bass Music Blog in terms of how Spotify is great for the user but not so great for the actual creators of music.

We decided not to put our Label's music on Spotify because there really is no benefit for us in that relationship. Whilst our ideal would be to have consumers buy directly from us and receive 100% of the royalty, we do have a distributor that helps us get our content into online stores such as iTunes for a small fee. Now according to them "the revenues paid by Spotify are 50% of what the service generates globally divided amongst artists based on their number of plays and includes revenues from both advertising-funded 'free' accounts, and subscriber accounts". If, as many people are pointing out, Spotify is losing millions, where the hell is the other 50% going?

As an independent it's hard to get enough people to hear what we're doing, get people to buy it and make any money without having a huge marketing budget behind it (which, clearly, we don't have). And being pretty much unknown means that people aren't going to find our music without specifically searching for it or paying people like spotify or myspace or iTunes to feature our releases (something which only major labels seem to be able to secure).

We have to find our own ways to market/distribute our content using social media channels, directing people to our content in places that we have control of. The reality of doing this is that right now we won't actually need Spotify until the point that we enter the mainstream and people will know enough about us to just want to find our music on their platform (which might never happen).

We are using Twitter as a marketing platform, directing people to our website where they can buy music direct from us. Ultimately we want people to support us by buying our music so that we can continue doing it, not listen to it for free on Spotify. Even more so if 50% of every play is being siphoned off by the major label shareholders.

The music industry is endorsing a model that encourages people not to buy music but get it for nothing. Whilst they are clearly making money from the millions of plays and channel adverts, they are paying the artists next to nothing in return for using their product. So the consumer is getting product for free and the artist is getting nothing which, correct me if I'm wrong, is awfully similar to piracy. Basically the music industry is legitimising and endorsing this model because it is something they can make money from, which they couldn't with good old fashioned piracy.

So once again it's the people that actually make the music we all listen to that are being well and truly shafted. Only this time it's not just the music industry doing the shafting but also their previous arch enemies the digital industry.

Personally, I'd rather people shared our music through good ol' fashioned file sharing because it means that at least one person has bought it and that's 59p in the bank, which is more than we'll get from Spotify.

Maybe they should think about sharing some of the revenue from their ads with the artists because, let's face it, without the music there would be nothing to interrupt with their shitty ads.