Benn Jordan
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2023–2024
17:19 · 860K views · Jan 9, 2023
Benn Jordan argues that Spotify's business model undermines the music it sells, using streaming payout figures and the economics for artists and labels.
Commenters recommend it as an artist's informed explanation of streaming economics and why Spotify pays so little compared with alternatives like Bandcamp.
6 comments from Hacker News
Benn Jordan, aka The Flashbulb, made a recent video titled: "Why Spotify Will Ultimately Fail" (Because they are screwing artists, on whom they depend to generate streamable content.) As an example, he made 3x on Bandcamp vs Spotify for the same album. this video
This 17 minute video has a few streaming numbers: this video I don't agree with all his predictions and conclusions but you can watch it for the data and see if it applies to your business plans.
The magic word is "growth". For context, I find this artist's explanation of the situation helpful: this video
this video For those against clicking: 00:00:00 - 00:15:00 The author of the video argues that Spotify will ultimately fail due to the high cost of membership, the fact that streaming services pay independent musicians less than traditional music platforms, and the company's neglect of its only asset - its artists. 00:00:00 The author of the video argues that Spotify will ultimately fail because of the high cost of membership and the fact that streaming services pay independent musicians less than traditional music platforms. 00:05:00 The author of the video makes the case that Spotify will eventually fail because of its business model, which relies on rapid growth and unsustainable levels of value in the music industry. He argues that if Spotify's independent musicians were paid more fairly, the platform would be unable to survive. 00:10:00 The author of the video argues that Spotify will eventually fail due to the company's neglect of its only asset - its artists. The author believes that this neglect will lead to the eventual collapse of the streaming music industry as a whole. However, he also believes that this collapse will be hastened by the fact that for-profit companies are required to eventually pay their investors as little as possible. 00:15:00 The author of this video argues that streaming services like Spotify will ultimately fail because they rely on artificial scarcity (i.e. the notion that there are not enough songs available to listen to on the platform). They
I don’t use Apple Music on windows so can’t argue with the bad client experience, but Spotify isn’t exactly perfect either. To me the issue with iTunes and Spotify is the fact that to be a viable business the streaming model is going to squeeze all artists into making a between 1-2 grand for a million streams if they are that lucky. Tidal promises more money but once the realize those economics don’t work and get large enough they will follow suit. What has happened is also an unprecedented breach of contract for older artists out there without streaming provisions in their contracts. I only know of a handful of instances where the artists have addressed this but I know of at least 1 example of a major label contract that specifically says “in the case of unforeseen circumstances (streaming, mind beaming, any new unavailable technology) the artist will split the proceeds 50/50. This same artist is not getting 50% of the revenue and is in fact getting the same (awful) deal as everyone else. [0] What Spotify/Apple Music/Tidal have done is create the same hierarchy that existed in the days of physical media where they pour money into the top1% of artists and have effectively made everyone else much worse off. [1] Anyone can make and release music today but it was hardly democratized. They same forces in the record industry have figured out how to screw streaming up in their favor now too. [0] [LINK] [1] this video The 200 million subscribers of Spotify are subsidizing things like J