Dan Gillmor
Spotify is a creepy, and grossly unethical, platform at this point. it rips off musicians and rewards huge companies -- and itself. Apparently what it's doing is legal, however.
This is great reporting, from a new book by Liz Pelly. A compelling read.
https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machine-liz-pelly-spotify-musicians/
Joe Ortiz
@ohmu @AccordionBruce There's a huge reason why the musicians that are supporting the #InternetArchive's fight for survival aren't major names.
AccordionBruce
@ohmu @dangillmor
I don’t have an answer
For now I don’t do much streaming. If we want to support musicians, give money to musicians. Bandcamp seems to be probably the highest percentage going to musicians, and they do streaming
But tons of mainstream artists aren’t on there, because the record companies don’t get as big a cut possibly?
Weird Socks
@AccordionBruce
I know the answer there because Belly explained it. The agreements that bands sign with the major labels often say they can't put their music up anywhere except via that label.
And yes to Bandcamp! It's where I do most of my listening any given day.
But, as you already alluded to, it's for listening to artists that haven't signed to a major and they don't have an equivalent to Spotify letting me listen to all of the Inner Ocean artists in a genre on shuffle.
Weird Socks
@dangillmor
I'm not sure what to say.
I tried Tidal for awhile. It was more to pay and had only a little less wrong with it.
I might tolerate commercials but not YouTube commercials and I'm trying to disentangle myself from Google.
I'm not going to join Apple's walled garden.
So I'm still on Spotify.
I tried focusing on the "lo fi hip hop" label I like that has actual artists, (Inner Ocean). Guess what? That sent me back to Spotify.
Nemo_bis 🌈
@huis Spotify's current state is the result of regulation, specifically #copyright and art. 17 of the 2019 copyright directive in the EU.
HuisOpDeGaard
@dangillmor This is what happens when #platforms are not properly regulated. #tiktok #facebook #instagram #youtube I just wonder about the possibility that #spotify isn’t just copying an already existing ‘business model’ from eg. a social media conglomerate, or whether it’s (already) the other way around. @EUCommission #dsa #dma.
Nemo_bis 🌈
@huis Probably, but art. 19 transparency obligations are in the first instance the responsibility of labels or collecting societies I think. I have no idea whether anything happened. https://mamot.fr/@nemobis/112236494808525546
I'm sure the collecting societies got some privileged access to YouTube and Spotify data after 2019, but I don't know how much and I doubt they're sharing it with small artists.
HuisOpDeGaard
@nemobis meaning that #spotify fails to comply with the transparency obligation? And is likely not to comply with the #dma.
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