Spotify = war crimes. What now?

If this is your first time confronting the suckiness of online music streaming, no worries! War robots aren’t the only thing making Spotify a stain on the larger stain that is the music industry ;)

A brief history:

Before streaming, there was Napster — a peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing network, one of the first of its kind. On Napster (and similar networks) users had the ability to upload/download all sorts of files and share them across the internet at will; images, PDFs, and, most notably, MP3 files. Users began uploading their CD collections to P2Ps — often to share with friends and family, sometimes to contribute to the community at large. 

P2P networks were extremely effective as a means of cultural dissemination. However, the music industry wasn't having it. Because money.

And since the uploading/downloading of copyrighted material technicallyyyy constitutes an act of piracy (roll my eyes,) starting in 2003 the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed lawsuits en masse against individuals who had distributed or downloaded music off of P2Ps. In the first round of lawsuits, they sued 261 individuals, most of whom settled to pay a minimum statutory fee of $750 per song they uploaded/downloaded. :O. Within the proceeding months, the RIAA sued 11,195 more individuals, often offering them the option to destroy pirated files and pay ~$3 per song as a settlement. Very few decided to go to court, and those who did were ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages. 

The defendants in these cases — often students, parents, and people of the working class — clearly could not afford these fees … and it’s not like the RIAA was looking to collect this money and pay it out to their artists. No. These lawsuits were clearly a scare tactic to control consumers into complacency and ultimately make more money for big music.

And it worked! Spotify was invented as a remedy for consumers not wanting to pay for music; A subscription-based online music streaming service — more convenient than a CD collection, cheaper than a potential lawsuit — that puts an entire world of music on your computer (and later, your smartphone.) Streaming quickly became the dominant mode of music consumption across the globe, and has remained that way ever since. 

Year after year, Spotify grows only more powerful, and the future of music looks more and more bleak. The app is riddled with algorithms and AI technologies used to boost their business partners’ products and make the corporation, not artists, more money. They’ve introduced features that encourage users to endlessly consume hours of music they never consented to, essentially coercing them to outsource the deliberation of their tastes to robots (again, for money.) The more power Spotify wields over the music industry, the more they stifle independent voices, flatten the tastes of popular culture, devalue the artform, harm the well beings of artists and consumers … all the while they’ve played dumb — posing itself as the streaming service “for the artist” while compensating their artists with pittances. Don’t be fooled, Spotify is evil on all accounts! 

In the wake of the company’s more blatant cruelties, many indie artists are reevaluating their involvement with the platform. Some names have resolved to remove their catalogs off Spotify completely; King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Xiu Xiu, and Deerhoof, for some. A virtuous action, yes, but not one many small artists feel they are in a position to follow — Spotify is their sole source of outreach, how they measure success, a necessary means to avoid disappearing into the ether with other promising artists who couldn’t “get with the times.” 

So, what's next?

How do we, as artists and consumers, overcome this technology we’ve come to depend on?

Some consumers are opting to use other streaming services with similar business models. Apple Music, for example, hosts a majority of the same music, and even pays out artists slightly more per stream than Spotify. It isn’t enough, however. And who’s to say Apple won’t change its business model after gaining yet another monopoly? They, too, shall not be trusted. 

What music really needs is to flip the streaming model on its head ~~~~~ We need a creative solution!

Some things to consider:

1. Consumers will not (readily) pay more for music

• except for the select few who engage w/ crowdfunding, buy physical media, go to shows, etc.

2. The solution will need to provide an equal level of convenience to steaming services, and cannot pose too much friction to “endless streams” of music

• this could possibly take the form of user generated playlists, rather than algorithmic suggestion, because

3. it must be algorithmless

• to address the flattening of culture and usurpation of our time/well beings at the hands of big tech!

Some platforms use limited streaming models, like Bandcamp, where users can stream a song/record/podcast for free a certain amount of times, until being required to pay an amount (set by the artist) to add that song/record/podcast to their collection … definitely a step in the right direction. However, Bandcamp does not allow users to create and share playlists publicly, which may be a huge potential downside. 

If you know of any services which may check each box^, please pass that info my way and/or leave it in the guestbook for all to contemplate!

And if you’ve yet to join Revolution iPod, today may be the day you reconsider ;) 

Ask not what streaming services can do for you, but what you can do against tech fascism 🤗

Happy summertime :)

<< LAST // NEXT >>