2026-01-16 13:10 UTC
Replies (26)
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@mattwilcox@mstdn.social 2026-01-16 13:11
@jonhicks@mastodon.social If you're not paying the supplier, but you're supplying the product to paying customers - that's called theft.
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@mahryekuh@hachyderm.io 2026-01-16 13:12
@jonhicks@mastodon.social Spotify is the real pirate. I would I’d switched earlier.
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@obrhoff@mastodon.social 2026-01-16 13:26
@jonhicks@mastodon.social @nevyn@mas.to For someone who used to work for them. Whats your personal feeling about the whole direction Spotify has taken?
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@Guillotine_Jones@beige.party 2026-01-16 14:01
@jonhicks@mastodon.social At long last is it time to change the name of Spotify to Shittify?
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@hiphopheaven@mastodon.social 2026-01-16 14:01
@jonhicks@mastodon.social it is a shame that funkwale does not have a way to allow artists to get money by donations or subscriptions
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@Adrianthomas@mastodon.social 2026-01-16 14:14
@jonhicks@mastodon.social Silver lining – the cheap bastards will probably start algorithmically prioritising unknown artists they don’t have to pay…
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@Enea90@mastodon.social 2026-01-16 14:17
@jonhicks@mastodon.social thanks for calling that out. They're adopting a business model similar to the one of YouTube, where one needs 1000 subscribers and >4000 watched hours per year in order to be monetized. And the majority of YouTubers are not able to reach it. Indeed theft, as some people pointed out. Or exploitation. In any case, such business practices should have no place in our society.
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@maccruiskeen@social.linux.pizza 2026-01-16 14:51
@jonhicks@mastodon.social The linked article doesn't say 88 percent of songs on Spotify have less than 1000 streams. That is the figure globally across all services they track. Though it is true that Spotify is big enough that their number probably isn't very far off from that.
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@sarah@sosial.link 2026-01-16 15:10
@jonhicks@mastodon.social A friend of mine had their music on spotify for a while, quite the popular band. Tens of thousands of plays. His royalty was so meager the transfer fees in banks would eat the profits. I'd rather give my music away for free.
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@Landsil@infosec.exchange 2026-01-16 15:13
@jonhicks@mastodon.social Not that I like Spotify or something, but 1000 listens in a year seems like basically nothing? Especially with how much Spotify pays people that would be what, 5 pennies total?
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@mjr@masto.bike 2026-01-16 15:14
@jonhicks@mastodon.social "the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply" to that site. Does Spotify use Google AI or a competitor, perchance?
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@gimulnautti@mastodon.green 2026-01-16 15:27
@jonhicks@mastodon.social fucking scam
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@independentpen@mas.to 2026-01-16 15:29
@jonhicks@mastodon.social yeah that's why I too never pay suppliers any money for things I only use a little bit of, like vanilla extract, decorative masonry, or air travel
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@Rebekah@theforkiverse.com 2026-01-16 15:30
@jonhicks@mastodon.social so happy to have switched to tidal after the ICE advertising debacle. No regrets. If anyone is looking for help transferring playlists try https://www.tunemymusic.com/
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@clv1@mastodon.social 2026-01-16 15:37
@andrewleland@mas.to @jonhicks@mastodon.social Terrifying. Those big services are more inhumane than ever.
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@nieuemma@mastodon.de 2026-01-16 15:38
@jonhicks@mastodon.social good thing I just got my music collection up to >10000 songs!
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@paco@infosec.exchange 2026-01-16 15:42
@jonhicks@mastodon.social I stopped using Spotify when the Joe Rogan shit broke. But I think it's fascinating that 9 months ago, when the new payment scheme was announced, this article estimated that 60% of streams would not be monetized. The number turned out to be 88%. But I think we have to be careful with percentages. As Spotify's blog makes clear, there are tons of bad actors out there spamming the service with low-effort, artificially short, pointless tracks and AI-generated garbage. They're making SEO-oriented playlists and hoping to make some bucks from accidental clicks. It looks like there's 253M tracks on Spotify, "65.2m got 1-10 streams....[and] 55.3m tracks got zero streams." So it could be as high as 120.5M streams (47%) that are low-effort bullshit. (Obviously some amount of that 47% is unpopular/undiscovered real artists, but that's not released anywhere near the rate of bullshit releases). Spotify sucks. I don't use it and I urge people not to. But there's a lot of scammers who they don't pay thanks to this policy, and that much is good.
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@arne_senja@mastodon.online 2026-01-16 15:42
@jonhicks@mastodon.social I have switched to Tidal!
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@rlcw@ecoevo.social 2026-01-16 16:13
@jonhicks@mastodon.social Qobuz pays best, last time I checked, and has very good sound quality: https://www.qobuz.com
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@_RyekDarkener_@mastodon.social 2026-01-16 16:22
@jonhicks@mastodon.social So Spotify is a platform for mainstream-music? I’m not surprised. In Germany we say: The devil shits on the highest heap.
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@da_kink@defcon.social 2026-01-16 16:25
@jonhicks@mastodon.social https://archive.is/6zFwV for those who are put off by the cookie wall. 1300 partners? I do love that wheels on the bus is still so popular
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@bitchboss@marcella.masto.host 2026-01-16 17:04
@jonhicks@mastodon.social They can shuff those 5 bucks up their butts. 1 sale on bandcamp doubled my royalties compared to Spotify...
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@fedithom@social.saarland 2026-01-16 17:04
@jonhicks@mastodon.social GTFoff #Spotify
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@jerrej@mastodon.social 2026-01-16 17:36
@jonhicks@mastodon.social fewer
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@greendude@theforkiverse.com 2026-01-16 18:05
@jonhicks@mastodon.social sounds like a lot but if you do the math: payout is 0.003-0.005 cents per song. Processing a payment or that size is more expensive then the allocated revenue. Apparently 10% of songs adds up to 95%-99% of playtime. (Didn't open the article but quick browse online) so not a crazy bombshell. Question to me would be what happens to the money they do not pay out
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@ChemicalEyeGuy@mstdn.science 2026-01-16 14:39
@jonhicks@mastodon.social So #Spotify now gets away with #plagiarism AND #theft. *You* are part of the problem with #billionaires if you listen to the ‘stolen #music on their platforms. #Resist and #DoNotCollaborateWithFascists.