Why We're Finally Leaving Spotify
After years of only releasing singles on the cannibalistic streaming platform, this is the last straw.
We all know Spotify is bad for musicians. Right? I was manning the merch stand at our last gig in London, tempting a woman with a discount on buying two CDs by the main act when she said, “Oh thanks, I’ll just find them on Spotify.” I said “Did you know that artists don’t make any money from Spotify? It means a lot to musicians when you buy their CDs directly from them.” She honestly had no idea and immediately, eagerly bought two CDs.
I thought The “Cost of Living” in Spotify Streams article and David McCandless’s How Much Do Music Artists Earn Online? infographic were pretty widely known, but I realise now that people not involved directly in the industry or people who aren’t hard-core music fans simply don’t know.
It’s not just the pitiful payouts that make Spotify a problem for the music industry. There are a litany of transgressions by the company listed publicly on Wikipedia, but a better introduction to their nefarious doings would be to read the incisive and deep articles from Liz Pelly on Spotify for The Baffler. In “The Big Mood Machine” she writes about how Spotify re-shapes the listening experience for its users:
“The decision to define audiences by their moods was part of a strategic push to grow Spotify’s advertising business in the years leading up to its IPO — and today, Spotify’s enormous access to mood-based data is a pillar of its value to brands and advertisers.”
This article goes into alarming details about Spotify’s surveillance of user data, their emphasis on placing relevant ads through monitoring, predicting and manipulating user emotions and importantly;
“In appealing to advertisers, Spotify also celebrates its position as a background experience and in particular how this benefits advertisers and brands. Jorge Espinel, who was Head of Global Business Development at Spotify for five years, once said in an interview: “We love to be a background experience. You’re competing for consumer attention. Everyone is fighting for the foreground. We have the ability to fight for the background. And really no one is there. You’re doing your email, you’re doing your social network, et cetera.” In other words, it is in advertisers’ best interests that Spotify stays a background experience.”
Spotify has 600 million monthly active users and over 60% of those are aged 18-24. It is actively changing the way people listen to music by monitoring and manipulating users’ moods and turning music into a background experience driven by advertising.
If this wasn’t bad enough, Spotify then began to disseminate stock or “library” music throughout these background music playlists in an effort to reduce their royalty payouts. This was known as the “Fake Artists” controversy of 2016/17 (which we reported on in BOOcast #24).
These library musicians work under pseudonyms and typically aren’t part of performing rights societies, so Spotify benefits financially from not having to pay these royalties. The side effect of Spotify sidelining real artists for library or AI-generated music in playlists also means that real artists don’t get heard, therefore paid.
Spotify encourages the myth that playlist placement can change an artist’s life by giving massive exposure, while behind the scenes they curate playlists to include only the most profitable tracks for the company instead.
Spotify isn’t just bad for musicians, it’s bad for music. At its best, music is a transcendent experience, deeply connected to our bodies, our souls, our communities and culture. Music is not just a background experience, it’s central to the human experience on this planet.
Given that we knew all this and remained on the platform for so long, you may ask why.
As independent musicians, our defence of being on Spotify has always been its ability to connect artists with their audience. When it comes to promoting a new release, most music review sites demand a Spotify link (though this is changing). For many people, Spotify is the only way they listen to music. We didn’t want to prevent people from accessing our music because we disagreed with the platform in principle, so we compromised. We left our singles up on Spotify and only released albums on Bandcamp. Our Spotify bio contained the following notice:
“BOO only make singles available to stream on Spotify, not albums. While we understand it's economical and convenient for people, we don’t wish to encourage support for a platform which we feel is inherently anti-music, from their handling of user data to their unfair distribution of royalties. We prefer to promote platforms that value music and musicians, like Bandcamp.”
So why change now?
I could point to Liz Pelly’s newest article “The Ghosts in the Machine” from her forthcoming book, in which she confirms that Spotify did have an agenda to promote fake artists. Their internal program to spread more profitable tracks across the platform, usually library music, was dubbed “Perfect Fit Content”. Spotify paid fewer royalties and increased their advertising revenue with mood-based playlisting.
I could say it’s because I recently discovered that in 2024 Spotify introduced a minimum threshold for payouts, 1000 streams per year for any song. While I can see the benefits of this to the company, it is punishing to independent artists and labels.
But really, this was a long time coming and we’ve simply had enough. As humans, we tend to accept things we don’t like drip by drip because of a nebulous idea of a greater good being achieved. We didn’t like being on Spotify but we stuck with it because we thought we had to. But that drip, drip, drip corrupts, and one day you realise that if anything is going to change, you need to do something different.
I’ve seen people argue that Spotify isn’t profitable because streaming can’t be profitable. The streaming model of business just doesn’t work. If that’s true, then we need a new way of doing things. Music is important, no matter how much Spotify may try to turn it into a background experience, an incidental element of advertising, mere content.
I believe people want to pay for things that are important to them. I believe this because that’s how I feel. If it’s not true of you and your friends then it’s something we need to inculcate in society. When I told the woman at that gig that the musicians she wanted to support would not be supported if she just streamed on Spotify, she rushed to do something meaningful instead, buy their CDs. Education is key.
We need a societal change, whereby everyone understands how to support the arts they love. The best way to support a musician is to buy directly from the artist. People can use fairer platforms like Bandcamp, or a band’s own website shop or buy music at gigs, or maybe even pay a subscription service to continually support the artists that matter to them.
When you support musicians, you support the whole industry, a vast ecosystem encompassing all sorts of professions, from mastering engineers to lighting technicians, venue owners, instrument builders, bar staff, festival organisers and more. It’s a living, breathing community made of millions of people across the world.
With cuts to the arts, and a squeeze on all creatives, I foresee the patronage model becoming more widely accepted and promoted. It feels good to support good causes. It’s a badge of honour to be a part of helping these things happen. Where government and capitalism fall down I trust people to rise up and help each other to support the things that matter.
That’s partly why we’re here on Substack now. We want to find our people and build things together. We want to make great music and share our joy and wonder at the world. These are the things which make us human, which give life meaning. We don’t need Spotify to do it.