When Bloomberg reported that Spotify would be upping the cost of its premium subscription from $9.99 to $10.99, and including 15 hours of audiobooks per month in the U.S., the change sounded like a win for songwriters and publishers. Higher subscription prices typically equate to a bump in U.S. mechanical royalties — but not this time.
By adding audiobooks into Spotify’s premium tier, the streaming service now claims it qualifies to pay a discounted “bundle” rate to songwriters for premium streams, given Spotify now has to pay licensing for both books and music from the same price tag — which will only be a dollar higher than when music was the only premium offering. Additionally, Spotify will reclassify its duo and family subscription plans as bundles as well.
I typically like to just buy my music but the appeal of spotify, to me, is the algorithm and being able to play random singles and one offs from artists I would probably not ever hear a single thing from otherwise.
I like bandcamp a lot more than spotify for finding new music. A lot of it feels less soulless because it is (presumably) written by real people.
https://daily.bandcamp.com/essential-releases/essential-releases-may-10-2024 - timely https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/japanese-acid-folk-list - genre deep dive
Plus on a given album page, like https://castleratband.bandcamp.com/album/into-the-realm-2 , it has links to “Other people liked this”, and the genre tags. It’s pretty good for discoverability, though maybe not as smooth as the soulless algorithms of spotify.
Bandcamp sold to epic and then got sold to some other vultures so they might turn to shit, but until that happens it’s a good, profitable, seemingly equitable platform. Artists got a big cut, you got drm-free music. The idea seems solid, if you can avoid the “infinite growth at all costs” and “i’m gonna sell out, fuck you” traps.