Another Seven Days on Spotify or How I Discovered a Musical Microverse

The charm is starting to wane from Spotify now. The joy of discovering a new album has been replaced with ho-hum. Every innovation it seems loses its wow factor after a while. While browsing a newspaper I discovered Spotify is an instrument of measurement of the UK chart system. Looking at this week charts the current number one had 3.8 million streams. Upon further investigating I found out a few more things about Spotify.

Looking into the chart system, it takes over a 150 streams to be counted as one sale. Now if you divide the 3.8 million by the 150 you get approximately 253.333 thousand sales accounted for. Compare this to Wonderwall by Oasis; I don’t even like the song or the band but I can’t argue with the sales. Wonderwall sold 1,995,940 as a single making it x3 times platinum. The funny thing is it only reached number two in the UK charts; held off by the Simon Cowell produced drivel I Believe by Robson & Jerome. Its living proof that a glorified tea boy knows nothing about music but how to sell shoddy singles that’s bought by masses only to end up in a charity shop or a landfill. This shows music has vastly shrunk in sales compared to over twenty years ago. There is so much music we cannot digest and we now have the choice to no longer have to follow the top 40 which is sadly nothing but disposable fast food music.

This can be a rigged game for record companies, the established artists storm up the charts with no real opposition, the real songs are trampled underfoot by the juggernaut of big business; except it’s not big business, not even a fraction of what it was two decades ago. However, this could turn into a Gordon Gekko level of corruption from inside the music industry. Let’s suppose you’re a CEO of a record company and you want to ensure you have a number one single for your latest workhorse. You’ve spend ridiculous amounts on promotion and music videos; but it’s not enough is it? You want it to be a blockbuster with no competition for that “fabled” top spot. There is a loop hole in Spotify streaming that could be taken advantage of if you were a bold criminal; let’s face it most record company executives are. Spotify have a 30 second rule for a stream to count. So what is to stop any record company offering money for an employee to spend all day listening to the same song for thirty seconds to boost sales numbers? Nothing, if they were even bolder, why not have room full of employee’s doing that to boost the sales of your gilded turd of a single. I now feel like Leo Bloom, Gene Wilder’s character from the timeless classic The Producers. I’ve maybe given them the idea just now.

This is bleak for any music fan who wants to hear real, authentic artists and songs. Record companies will always have the advantage, the publicity, and size to make music and artists the way they see fit to make; sadly, it’s the musical equivalent of a Morris Minor. They are exceptions to the rule though. Gerry Cinnamon is embarking a on a UK tour with no major record company support, selling out venues on the strength of nothing but pure talent, drive and determination.

The music industry has now become a niche business now; profitable to a lucky few. It went from 20.7 billion in 2005 to 15 billion in 2015. If you want further proof of the shrinkage, let us look at 1994 back to back with 2014. The biggest selling album of 1994 was Ace of Base the Sign. Sales in the North American market were $3,808,000. The biggest album of 2014 was the Frozen soundtrack with an impressive $3,050,000 still 758 short of Ace of Base’s album, which is largely forgotten now. The second biggest selling album of 1994 was Counting Crows August and Everything After with a sales of $2,917,000. Beyoncé self-titled record had the second biggest selling album of 2014 with a surprising $716,000. It’s still a lot but not even close to Counting Crows numbers.

The problem with digital music is there is just so much of it readily available to you; trying to listening to three or more albums in one day is a challenge. I learned through this experiment with Spotify, music is meant to be consumed one album at a time; or you risk frying your brain. Digital music is just so constant and changing it can overwhelm you. There is just so much out there and growing every day, even now albums, singles, EP’s are being uploaded. It’s a never-ending stream; it might be bigger but its potency is diminishing.

Seven Days on Spotify or How I Almost Drowned in a Sea of Music

This was all part of an experiment I did that bloomed into something a whole lot more. I was apprehensive about starting Spotify as I thought it would cost money, after finding out it didn’t I promptly set up an account. When I was finally logged in a whole world of music awaited me.

The first thing I will say is the pros about Spotify. They had nearly every album I have been looking for in record shops for about a decade at a click of a button. The first test was the Caddy shack soundtrack, which to my delight they had. Out of my vast list of albums to find and own they didn’t have the following Neverland’s self-titled debut album from 1992, Psycho 2 and 3 soundtracks and the Red Hot Chilli Pepper’s song Set It Straight.

The entire stream of constant music was like a sensory overload; the only way I could cope with it all was to go with the flow. Through this I discovered many things; a remix of Bjork’s Human Behaviour that sounded better than the album version in my opinion, finally getting to hear the recorded version of Father’s Song by Prince from Purple Rain, William Shatner taking a ride on the Silver Machine and the 77 Halloween concerts of Frank Zappa. I was consumed by it, everything I wanted to hear was there awaiting me to click on it.

The main advantage of Spotify is the space it saves for a compulsive music lover. It was one of the reasons I finally considered getting Spotify, was the lack of space. To paint a picture, imagine a room that has the shadowy visage of the New York skyline made out of piles and piles of CD’s and you get the idea. I used to buy at least a few albums a day on my daily hunts in charity and record shops. I needed the space Spotify is the temporary answer.

Another redeeming feature is the fact you can take it anywhere on your phone, making I pods and possibly I Tunes seem like BBC Micro Computers by comparison. In addition, you can go premium for a fee and have no ads but I didn’t mind the ads.

Within the first few days, I figured this opens the playing field to new bands and artists then I looked at the streaming hits of the acts that have backing advertising etc to acts that barely have a thousand plays. In the constant stream of music, some bands I did enjoy listening to are barely a blip on the screen compared to the so-called hip and popular “Taylor Swift” & “Ed Sheeran” who have a ridiculous amount of streaming hits. However, having a closer microscopic look at the streaming side I discovered it doesn’t pay as well as you would think. BBC Radio One has £37.76 as the average payment per play. On Spotify’s payroll, it’s far worse; an extremist low-level pay. From January 2016, it is $0.00022288 per stream and that is just for the regular service. The premium numbers are $0.00066481per stream not much better.

 So if we use our maths skills it would take about 150,419 streams to earn $100. As Ed Sheeran is the most streamed artist on Spotify with around 3, 1 billion so far.  Working out his earnings on the regular streaming service, Ed earns $690,928, which is an insane amount of money for streaming, but it isn’t even in the ballpark for the money radio royalties has. So for the average band they will be earning a mere pittance off Spotify. They might be a vast torrent of music but there is a flaw. It seems only the popular radio artist’s benefit from the service; it’s an overgrown allowance for select artists on top of their airplay royalties.  It operates like a third world system of music; it only seems to benefit certain parties while  other less popular artists work barely makes them 50p. It should all be equal pay but then again screwing artists has never gone out of fashion.

Spotify makes its money from mainly advertising revenue and a paid subscription tier; advertisers pay money for exposure during songs of non-premium users for income. But ironically Spotify struggles to make money and many analysts have speculated the end of free streaming on not only on Spotify but YouTube as well, I don’t see this happening without a fight in the future.

The main thing Spotify can’t replace is actually owning the album, the joy of holding physical copy. With Spotify you can’t go over the liner notes soaking up the kernels of information contained in them; the instruments used, where and when it was recorded, the musicians involved, the personal thanks from the band, stories about the song, the lyrics to read while listening and the artwork. Spotify cannot give you the experience of that.

Despite the innovation of Spotify, it will take a lot of time for it to create a sustainable income that can help artists thrive and not just benefit the artists who have had millions in advertising to get them ahead of their “competition.” I noticed recently on buses Ads for Spotify, and I thought to myself. For a company that is supposedly losing money. Could they have not used the money to actually pay royalties to artists who needed it? Instead of plastering, All Saints & Phil Collins faces on the side of buses.

 For your cult, niche and new bands and solo artists the best way to support them is to buy the album physically, but most people sadly want it free. This musical sea may be vast, deep, and alluring but there is always a price to it.

Stuart Ritchie