You might have noticed the small note I add to the links on my homepage to the different streaming services that says “Please don’t use Spotify if possible”. Here’s the reason why.
Since April 2024, Spotify has started to not pay for songs that have been streamed less than 1000 times in the preceding 12 months. Their reason for this is nonsensical, and no other streaming service does (as of yet, August 2024) anything similar.
I’m a small artist, I do this as a hobby because it’s fun for me. But still, if somebody enjoys my music on a service and pays the service to access it, I’d like to get a fair share for my contribution to this experience. But as it is, I only have one song on Spotify that regularily gets more than 1000 streams per year. All my other songs for the last 12 months (08/2023-08/2024) amount to about 4000 streams total on Spotify – for which I’m not being paid. And this is the case for many other small artists on Spotify. Actually, the article linked above says that from now on, royalties for ca. 60% of the songs on Spotify wont be paid out.
Apart from this – in my view – unethical practice, Spotify also pays less per stream than many other services. So, if you want to use a music streaming service, think about wether it absolutely has to be Spotify.
To be clear: I’m fine with listeners using streaming services; I use one myself. But there are enough alternatives with similarily expansive catalogs out there that you can choose differently.
Still: the best method to support small and independant artists is to purchase their music, either from them directly or via more artist-friendly platforms like Bandcamp.
Why is my music on Spotify at all then, you might ask? Well, Spotify is still (as far as I can see) the most widely used service around. If I want my music to reach as many people as possible, a presence on Spotify is still necessary – but let’s change that.
So, here’s a selection of alternative streaming services you can use:
Phaneronaut 