A Little Less Paid Promotion

I saw a couple of posts today regarding changes at Spotify that give new artists the ability to take a lower royalty in order to get promoted in what they are calling "Discovery Mode" - and there are of course, complaints. Because essentially, people believe that they should get promoted by the algorithms for free and this is just another greedy corporation. It may very well be the case, but what are they expecting to be promoted upon

The quality of the music?

Who chooses what gets boosted?

An emerging artist essentially comes to the table with a zero fanbase, so through Discovery Mode, they can submit their songs and get bumped by the algorithm in exchange for less royalty. This might very well seem like a money grab, but it is also a sorting process and once they are established, they would be able to move off the emerging list, possibly having a fanbase that crosses the globe and gives them alternate sources of income, like potential to tour.

Currently, it is difficult to get discovered through the streaming platforms for emerging artists, because in general, people will automatically listen to what they know, using collections and playlists that are curated, not randomly looking for unfamiliar music.

Wouldn't you want to be able to advertise to get visibility?

And, while this way it is skimming from earnings, at least it is coming from earnings - not an outlay before earnings, like the advertising. It isn't money out of the pocket, it is potential future money, before it ever goes into the pocket. A subtle difference, but an important one, as far too many people see money that could be their in the future, as already theirs in the present. We see this on Hive of course, where people get a vote on their post and then a downvote, and believe they have had money taken away from them. That is not the case, as the platform code allows for posts to be open to negotiate the value, and only when it is transferred from the blockchain pool into the private wallet, it becomes owned.

Ownership.

It is the future. It is the past and present too, but currently the average expectation is that everything should be given for free, even though no skin has been put in the game. In the case of the bands, there may be skin in the game in terms of the band at a local level, but that doesn't give it strength to negotiate on a platform at a global level. The platform is under no obligation to boost anyone's music and they can instead just drive for profits. And if that is what they are going to do, then it is more efficient to just have the big name artists there and the ones the record labels are willing to push.

If you want exposure and support, you are going to have to pay for it.

One way or another.

In many ways, this is a good thing for the artists, because it is starting the trend away from the middlemen negotiators who take their cut too, and lets the artist themselves make their decisions. No one is forced to pay a slice of their royalties to be discovered on Spotify and, no one is forced to be on Spotify at all. Granted, it is one of the places an artist might want to be on, but what is the point if not getting listens?

Anyone can publish on Spotify, as long as they have been signed to a label or get added through an aggregator. But, being on the platform is largely like the tens of millions of Instagram accounts that don't even have their family and friends checking in regularly - they are not monetized. They might dream of "making it big", but the reality of it is, only a miniscule amount of artists ever do make it mainstream. Not many are even indie popular.

Ownership isn't just about the content, it is also about the distribution activities and control over the visibility. Too many people think that these centralized publishing platforms are public forums, rather than the corporate, for-profit entities that they actually are. It is their business model to make money and ultimately, their success depends on being able to take a cut from the artists. It is up to the artists to decide whether they are willing to pay or not, and if they want to earn, they are going to have to pay someone - they have publicists and managers that work for a fee, right?

And this is something interesting to note in terms of payments from Spotify, because most of what they payout, goes to the record labels and distributors, and it is up to them to pay the artists.

While I do think that streaming music is one of the killers for new artists, I also think that it has increased the money being generated in the music business as a whole, with select artists taking in a lot more than they would have earlier. I also think that it is part of a changing meta in the industry, where once again "proof of person" is going to be the deciding factor, and the artists that are touring and performing live, will take the largest share of the cake, because they will build a fanbase through paid gigs, that will also drive streams on platforms for supplementary income.

And perhaps this is where it comes down to these days, where a lot of people in general , want to be able to earn large amounts of money, without having to do all the work, or even getting out of their house. Technology has shifted so that we can work from anywhere and still reach a global market, but the attention of that market is always going to be limited and therefore, needs to be won. On top of this, the culture of society has made everything disposable and people flick and change from one thing "they love" to another, very, very quickly.

Few artists can maintain the attention of their fanbase for long, which is why the "stars" are getting up to all kinds of mischief in order to get the attention on what they are actually selling - themselves. It is rarely about the music these days, it is about the story behind the personality that people connect with and through that, they attach themselves to the music too and, keep listening. They might need one song to be the hook -

Where will they hear it?

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]