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This week, The Spotify fall out - Let’s go -
So a buddy of mine hit me up and said that Spotify would be gone soon due to cancel culture. To which I said they all have an expiration date. I also said that with 60,000 pieces of content being placed on the platform a day….yeah A DAY; it’s going to be a hard sell to just dissolve them in a day or two. Moreover, indie artists usually don’t cherry pick the digital stores that a CDbaby or Tunecore puts them in - even though they can. So if we go back a little bit, I think the majority at large knows about the Joe Rogan incident and his multiple use of the N word on his podcasts. But what you might not know is that Spotify pays Joe Rogan 100,000,000 to do his podcasts. Now since Spotify was basically built on the backs of the music rights holder, you would think they get a nice percentage too right? According to Business Insider, Spotify pays rights-holders between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream on average. So Spotify, a Swedish based tech company, takes over the music business, leads all the other streaming companies in market share (31%) and pays podcasters hundreds of millions. This is not the first of a Spotify boycott. Artists have been asking for more of the money that Spotify gives away for a few years. This however is something different. Rogan says he was taken out of context. I mean if you heard any of his podcasts with his constant use of the N word (I won’t share them here) there was nothing to take out of context. He said what he said. This in my opinion will shed a light on how Spotify does business and who they do business with. There is a running list of major artists leaving Spotify, however, and again just my opinion, until the Drake's, Kanye's, Nikki’s, Kelly Clarkson's, and Lincoln Park's of the world pull out, there will still be Spotify…..at least for a while - but giants do fall. There are a lot of metaphors you can attach to this, the one that comes to my mind is “pride goeth before destruction.” Spotify seems very prideful in their not wanting to get rid of their 100,000,000 investment right now. However, like I told my buddy, companies do have expiration dates especially in the music and media business, remember Blockbuster?
This week's #IAOTW - Independent Artists Of The Week is Jazz Becuzz Arts Center - Dallas based arts center that does everything from music lessons to music events featuring grammy award winning Dallas based artists.
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