Technology

60044 readers

3677 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

1482

After announcing increased prices, Spotify to Pay Songwriters About $150 Million Less Next Year (www.billboard.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

377 comments fedilink hide all child comments

When Bloomberg reported that Spotify would be upping the cost of its premium subscription from $9.99 to $10.99, and including 15 hours of audiobooks per month in the U.S., the change sounded like a win for songwriters and publishers. Higher subscription prices typically equate to a bump in U.S. mechanical royalties — but not this time.

By adding audiobooks into Spotify’s premium tier, the streaming service now claims it qualifies to pay a discounted “bundle” rate to songwriters for premium streams, given Spotify now has to pay licensing for both books and music from the same price tag — which will only be a dollar higher than when music was the only premium offering. Additionally, Spotify will reclassify its duo and family subscription plans as bundles as well.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 55 points 7 months ago (8 children)

Yeah I'm done with spotify.

Back when it was a fiver, I could get the appeal and had a subscription myself.

At 11 bucks it comes at the price of a CD per month, every month. I didn't buy that much music annually, ever. So right now we are entering a territory where streaming is exceeding the price of my regular music consumption patterns. I'll go back to buying physical media and torrenting whatever old stuff is no longer available and can't be found on ebay.

Fuck 'em with a cactus.

[–] GarytheSnail 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I typically like to just buy my music but the appeal of spotify, to me, is the algorithm and being able to play random singles and one offs from artists I would probably not ever hear a single thing from otherwise.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I like bandcamp a lot more than spotify for finding new music. A lot of it feels less soulless because it is (presumably) written by real people.

https://daily.bandcamp.com/essential-releases/essential-releases-may-10-2024 - timely https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/japanese-acid-folk-list - genre deep dive

Plus on a given album page, like https://castleratband.bandcamp.com/album/into-the-realm-2 , it has links to "Other people liked this", and the genre tags. It's pretty good for discoverability, though maybe not as smooth as the soulless algorithms of spotify.

Bandcamp sold to epic and then got sold to some other vultures so they might turn to shit, but until that happens it's a good, profitable, seemingly equitable platform. Artists got a big cut, you got drm-free music. The idea seems solid, if you can avoid the "infinite growth at all costs" and "i'm gonna sell out, fuck you" traps.

load more comments (6 replies)