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-Ahh, do you remember when music was special? When the survey question "how many discs of music have you bought in the last year?" was actually still a thing? Well, I don't. I grew up in a transitional period where everyone had discs, but music storage shifted more and more towards USB drives. So for anything that already existed, you would turn towards your trusty disc rack that had way too many disc cases in it than you could count, but for anything new you would download the digital album, move it onto a 2GB stick, plug it into your car and hope the radio gets the song order correct, otherwise it would be twenty button presses just to get to track two. Good times.
+Spotify is a music licensing and streaming service from Sweden founded in 2006, a time dominated by peer-to-peer filesharing using applications such as Limewire or Kazaa. Limewire and Kazaa were programs that let two and more users send files to each other directly, making it possible for users to very easily share audio between users, directly, //for free//. While this was great the users, it came with multiple drawbacks that Spotify would later solve. For example, of these drawbacks was that filesharing is rather risky business. You do not know who is sitting on the other end of the connection, and you do not know the exact contents of the file you received. While you could see the file name, file extension and the file size, any information beyond that was hard to ascertain, and the user always risked malware intrusion. **Secondly**, filesharing like this is illegal because it constitutes piracy. As an end user, you were at risk of getting sued yourself (though that happened much less than they wanted you to believe), but much more problematic was that Limewire and Kazaa were going to be shut down over copyright lawsuits. Therefore, programs like these were only temporary solutions.
-But there was a problem - Corporations were bleeding money to piracy, and there is nothing corporations hate more than bleeding money. So, a solution was needed. Pirating is illegal, but how can corporation get people to actually care about this? Turns out, the answer was simple: Cater to people's laziness. For just a small fee every month you can listen to music legally, wherever you go! No more of that "actually having the music on your device" crap, that only takes up storage space and as an iPhone user you'd have to buy a more expensive phone to fit all your files (or you have a phone from //any// competitor that just lets you insert a multi-terabyte SD card, but even that would still involve getting an SD card). Instead, to listen to your music you now only have to press the "On" button on your mobile data toggle. Or you download the music anyway (which again takes up space in your storage) and you get to listen to that music as long as you keep paying the monthly small Spotify fee. Just amazing.
+Spotify provided a convenient alternative: For the low low price of nine dollars and ninety-nine cents, you could listen to all the music for free, legally, and on-the-fly. One of the particular advantages of this is that, fundamentally, users don't //want// to pirate. In the same way that commuters don't //want// to fare dodge, it is often a hostile environment (ie. things cost too much) that would compel people into doing it anyway. However, if users can find a way to listen to their music and make sure the artist gets paid, that would be ideal. Spotify offered all that at a reasonable rate. This was in part because music production, so far, required expensive storage mediums such as CD's. But with Spotify, you could now listen to virtually all the music. Whether you listened to 20 songs from what would be just one CD, or 500 songs from 500 different CD's, you were still paying the fixed price of 9.99, and you wouldn't have to go through the hassle of either switching around CD's or downloading all these tracks manually, which was always kind of risky with Limewire or Kazaa. In many respects, Spotify was objectively cheaper and a natural evolution for both the consumer and the industry. ....and the industry.
-And... people fell for it! Now, Spotify is ubiquitous and it would be weird not to use it to listen to your music through Spotify. It's just amazing. Honestly, for as much shit as I give to Spotify - I seriously have to express my respect for how you've been able to completely conquer and monopolize/monolithize an industry and getting users so apathetic about anything that isn't immediately their problem. I mean, surely there couldn't be anything wrong with Spotify, right?
+====== 1. Monetization ======
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+See me? Yeah, it is time for your monthly payment. If you can afford it.
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+So, back in the day you would have bought a disc, a digital album, a cassette or even a record. This could have been a ~15€ purchase and then you'd stick that into the playback device of your choice and you'd be good to go. These 15€ would go to the label of the artist, who has a contract with the artist regulating their payout. In general, a label needs to balance its spending on manufacturing (CD's or cassettes cost money), employees, equipment etc. with their spending on the artist. This hasn't changed today (except you don't pay for CD's or cassettes anymore), but with Spotify in the mix it's now a bit more complicated. Consider this example: Instead of buying a disc, you now pay 13€((12.99€, as of September 15, 2026)) to Spotify and listen to Artist A exactly one time. Then, you log off and don't use Spotify for the rest of the month. At the end of the month it's payout time: First things first, Spotify takes a 30% cut for the amazing service they provide you with. The remaining 70% are distributed to the artists/their labels in a way very intelligently designed and calculated by Spotify.
+When you listen to music from Artist A, your "listen" is thrown into the pool of //all// listens out there. This means that if you listen to Artist A once, and you are Artist A's only listener, Artist A will get paid the same as every other Artist on Spotify that had only one listen. Even though you paid the price of what could have been a full CD from Artist A, they now get 0,004€((Based on various sources that claim an average rate of 0,003 to 0,005 per play.)) and the remaining <wrap lo>12,99€ - 30% - 0,004€ ≈</wrap> 9,93€ now go to Taylor Swift((This is a joke on the basis that Taylor Swift is the most streamed businessperson on Spotify, which means that she will get the largest cut. I am using "Taylor Swift" here as a stand-in for all the largest and large creators on the platform.)).
+The way this works is that the total amount of money collected from end users is, at the end of the month, distributed to all artists equally, proportionally to their share in plays. This isn't about how many plays they got in absolute terms, it's about how many plays they got in comparison to everyone else. Example: If 30% of all plays in a month go to Taylor Swift (completely made up number), she will get 30% of the available money. So, regardless of how much you play Artist A, 30% of your money put into the platform //will// go to Taylor Swift. Trying to change this, for example by inflating Artist A's numbers (which is mathematically impossible to do legally)((Even if you go out of your way to listen to your favorite artist a lot to bolster their numbers. Not only would 1000 listens or 10,000 listens barely make a dent in the overall percentages, you as someone trying to help are still competing with listeners from other artists, who do the same thing. Proportionally, you're just cancelling each other out. And, funnily enough, that doesn't even matter because you will //never// outcompete stream farming bots who can inflate stream numbers at unimaginable rates.)). Spotify has - of course by "accident" - created a [[zero-sum]] game that will make everyone pay the big ones while small artists are fighting over the scraps. And the cool thing about //not// being one of the big artists is that it is essentially impossible to become one, because to do that you would have to the percentage of plays of other artists. If Artist A does somehow win, then that by design means that other artists will get (proportionally) less plays((And sure, they may get more plays in absolute terms, but that means nothing if you still get less of a share.)). If you, as an artist, become successful, you are doing that by increasing your proportional share of plays, which necessarily comes out of the share of plays of everyone else.
+You can imagine this as trying to sell books from your garage, but you only get 0,004€ per book sale - not because your books are shit, but because Amazon just sells //more//. Your books are perfectly fine and you could easily sell them - depending on the book - for between 5€ and 50€ but, because you only sell 3 books, you can only sell them for 0,004€ per book because, on the same day, Amazon sells 5 Million books (I don't know what the real number is). You would be a big winner if Amazon only sold 2 books themselves, but as long as your sale volume is as low as it is, you have to accept selling a 25€ at 0,004€.
-====== I <3 Capitalism ======
+In music terms, this means that even if you are a local legend and hold concerts in your hometown with a few thousand listeners from your community, that still only puts you ahead of 0,00000245% of artists on Spotify. Therefore you get paid like a 0,00000245%.\\
-So, back in the day you would have bought a disc, a digital album, a cassette or even a record. This could have been a ~10€ purchase and then you'd stick that into the playback device of your choice and you'd be good to go. So imagine now, you pay 13€ bucks and listen to Artist A exactly one time. Then you log off and don't use Spotify for the rest of the month. Then it's payout time: First things first, Spotify takes a 30% cut for the amazing service they provide you with, and then the remaining 70% should go Artist A, right? That's the fair thing to do, but Spotify is smarter than that.
+Making Spotify a zero-sum((ie. capitalistic)) game means that it is - by design of the structure - impossible to win.
-So.. about Spotify and paying fair royalties. When you listen to music from Artist A, your "listen" is thrown into the pool of //all// listens out there. This means that if you listen to Artist A once, and you are Artist A's only listener, Artist A will get paid the same as every other Artist on Spotify that had only one listen. Even though you paid the price of what could have been a full CD from Artist A, they now get 0,004€((Based on various sources that claim an average rate of 0,003 to 0,005 per play.)) and the remaining ((70% from 12,99€) - 0,004€) now go to Taylor Swift((This is a joke on the basis that Taylor Swift is the most streamed businessperson on Spotify is Taylor Swift, which means that she will get the largest cut. I am using "Taylor Swift" here as a standin for all the largest and large creators on the platform.)).
+====== 2. Consolidation of power structures ======
+Another thing about Spotify is that people like its algorithm. We get music recommendations from Spotify, which has a pretty big influence over what kind of music people listen to. Now, I'm an outstanding observer, and I see how much people rely on the algorithm, a program designed and deployed by Spotify, giving them a lot of power over what people listen to. It makes me think... Isn't it convenient how Spotify is structured in a way to benefit big artists and, with its algorithm, also gets executive control over who the biggest artists are in the first place? Like, it just so happens that Spotify went out of its way to create a monetization "system" that works like an oligarchy and with its recommendation system also has a major, if not overwhelmingly large, say in who becomes an oligarch? And here is a little, dark secret that you may not even want to know - if they control who most people listen to... they also control who will //not// be listened to. So, uh, any bets on who we think is **not** going to get recommended a lot by the algorithm? Because, I think I have the hunch that Spotify will like to use its algorithm to reinforce the rigid and hostile monetization structure.
-The way this works is that the total amount of money collected from end users is, at the end of the month, distributed to all artists equally, proportional to their share in plays. This isn't about how many plays they got in absolute terms, it's about how many plays they got in comparison to everyone else. Example: If 30% of all plays in a month go to Taylor Swift (completely made up number), she will get 30% of the available money. So, regardless of how much you play Artist A, 30% of your money put into the platform will go to Taylor Swift - unless you try to play music from Artist A so many times that Artist A's share of plays begins to eat into other people's shares, which is mathematically impossible to do. That's cool, isn't it? Spotify has - totally non-accidentally - created a [[zero-sum]] game that will make everyone pay the big ones while small artists are fighting over the scraps. And the cool thing about //not// being one of the big artists is that it is essentially impossible to become one, because to do that you would have to the percentage of plays of other artists. If Artist A does somehow win, then that by design means that other artists will get **proportionally** less plays((And sure, they may get more plays in absolute terms, but that means nothing if you still get less of a share.)).
+Because, ultimately, this isn't so much about the exact names of the oligarchs at the top as it is about keeping the total number of oligarchs low. The goal is closing the door behind yourself so that the top keep earning a lot more than anyone else.
-You can imagine this as trying to sell books from your garage, but you only get 0,004€ per book sale because Amazon is selling the other 99,999999999% of books that are being sold, overall. So even if you are a local legend and hold concerts in your hometown with a few thousand listeners from your community, that still only puts you ahead of 0,00000245% of artists on that platform. Therefore you get paid like a 0,00000245%.\\
+The invisible loser is, always, the local legend, the community rock band or even just renowned bands from your state (especially those). Ask any //actual music person// who is passionate about their work and wants to immerse themselves and others with their artistic way of self-expression - nobody, **nobody** likes Spotify. The only reason they use it is because they have to. If you don't, you get overrun by the monopoly and eventually have to close down.
-Making Spotify a zero-sum((ie. capitalistic)) game means that it is - by design of the structure - impossible to win, and upward mobility is limited, regardless of the loyalty of a niche community((Even if you go out of your way to listen to your favorite artist a lot to bolster their numbers - listeners from other artists do that as well. Proportionally, you're just cancelling each other out. And, funnily enough, that doesn't even matter because you will //never// outcompete stream farming bots who can inflate stream numbers at unimaginable rates.)).
-====== I <3 Big Brother ======
-But it gets better! How do we listen to music on Spotify? We get music recommendations, right? Isn't it convenient how Spotify is structured in a way to benefit big artists and, with its algorithm, also gets execute control over who the biggest artists are in the first place? Like, it just so happens that Spotify went out of its way to create a monetization "system" that works like an oligarchy and with its recommendation system also has a major, if not overwhelmingly large, say in who gets listened to a lot? And here is a little, dark secret that you may not even want to know - if they control who most people listen to... they also control who will //not// be listened to. So, uh, any bets on who we think is **not** going to get recommended a lot by the algorithm? Because, I think I have the hunch that Spotify will like to use its algorithm to reinforce the rigid and hostile monetization structure.
-Because, this isn't so much about the exact names of the oligarchs at the top, as it is about keeping the total number of oligarchs low. The goal is closing the door behind yourself so that the top keep earning a lot more than anyone else.
+====== 3. Loss of ownership, loss of control and prisoners in walled gardens ======
+As much as Spotify is designed to not compensate small artists, it is also problematic on a societal level. Spotify puts a price tag on not just listening to music that month, but on listening to music at all, for as long as they can keep you tied to their platform. The problem here is that having 12.99€ in a month for music is a //privilege//, not the norm.
-The invisible loser is always the local legend. The community rock band. Even renowned bands from your state (especially those). Ask any //actual music person// who is passionate about their work and wants to immerse themselves and others with their artistic way of self-expression - nobody, **nobody** likes Spotify. The only reason they use it is because they have to. If you don't, the same thing will happen to you that happens to small, family-run businesses: You get overrun by the monopoly and eventually have to close down. Usurpation is the end game of capitalism.
+In the same way that small artists get fucked on Spotify, we get fucked when we put ourselves under the employement of another company. Admittedly, if you can buy a Spotify membership you may not be a Taylor Swift, but you definitely enjoy a good amount of [[privilege]]. That's good for you, but in this case the privilege is **required**. For many of us this problem is real. Very real. Some of us have to accept massive cuts in their quality of life if they want to do something as basic as listening to music through Spotify. And this may sound acceptable if you consider that Spotify is a service offered to you, but people have their entire music library on there. If you stop paying for Spotify for //whatever// reason, then that's it for you (Covid happens? Trump tariffs happen? Inflation? Price hike? Job loss? Healthcare/Surgery costs? Had to fix your washing machine? Just "didn't get as lucky and were born into a poor household"? Make your pick!). Even the music you downloaded is gone. You do not own anything on Spotify. When you submit yourself to Spotify, you accept that Spotify is in control of your access to music. If they don't like your face, or if you stop paying the membership fee for any of the three quadrillion possible reasons, you get kicked out.
+Spotify is a deliberately designed walled garden with no way of migrating to another platform easily. You do anything on Spotify that you care about - for example finding new music or creating playlists - then now that's it. You have to keep paying Spotify until the end of your life, 13€ per month. If you live another 60 years then you'll be paying 9360€ just to keep being allowed to listen to your music. Does any normal person ever get close to spending anywhere that much on music? My friend, you could buy a car from that and listen to music on any other platform instead. Subscription prices rack up fast. And if you fail to pay, at any time, for any reason, you're excluded from the party.
-====== I <3 Coercion ======
+And also, you will listen to music the way //Spotify// wants you to. So you will be using //their// audio player, regardless of whether you like it, you will //not// be getting access to the actual audio files to use them in personal/private projects, Spotify controls for you which music they allow or disallow on their platform, and if you want to do //anything// with their music you will use only the tools Spotify gives you to do it. If their tools don't allow you to do what you want to do, then you're just another subscription-paying customer. Spotify killed its external API's and 3rd party playback support. Everything is kept proprietary so that only Spotify has control over how their product is used((Which, to be clear, isn't inherently wrong, but makes the product inherently shitty.)). If Spotify changes their tune in the future and becomes more predatory to the consumers, either through monetization practices or restriction of functionality, then you can be outraged for a bit, but then you will go back to paying the membership again, because that's what you'll do anyway.
-Satirical, made up strawman person: "But, you know, who cares about local artists, right? Those are all pussies, anyway. If you don't make enough you're not working hard enough. They should improve their music and cut down on unnecessary expenses. Less Netflix, it's a distraction, anyway. **I** make enough money to pay for a monthly Spotify membership and I get all the service I want. I get the music I care about, I can listen to it at 256kbit/s as opposed to the peasantly 128kbit/s (and can definitely hear the difference), the music I listen to is only from people who actually made it as individuals, so I don't have to listen to the riffraff."
-The problem in reality is, unfortunately, that you and I are riffraff ourselves. The same structural mechanics keeping people from getting living wages on Spotify is why you and I are barely making any money in real life. If you can buy a Spotify membership you may not be a Taylor Swift, but you definitely enjoy a good amount of [[privilege]]. And, unfortunately, this privilege is //required//. Good for you that you, as a paying customer, don't have that problem, but for many of us this problem is real. Very real. Some of us have to accept massive cuts in their quality of life if they want to do something as basic as listening to music through Spotify. And this may sound acceptable if you consider that Spotify is a service offered to you, but people have their entire music library on there. If you stop paying for Spotify for //whatever// reason, then that's it for you (Covid happens? Trump tariffs happen? Inflation? Make your pick!). Even the music you downloaded, it's gone, you're //fucked//. You see, unlike a one-time purchase of a CD where you can just keep listening, not only do you have to pay Spotify a fee equal to the cost of a CD, but the money is also given to Taylor Swift //and// the CD is ripped away from you if you don't pay the next month.
+That reminds me, I have a story to tell you about how YouTube has been enshittified over the years but, because it is not a walled garden, people created tools to make it not shitty again. But Spotify is different. When Spotify enshittifies, and it's already on its way of doing that, the only option you have is to give up Spotify entirely, including all your playlists and everything, and restart form zero. Spotify by design offers no  inter-compatibility, and uses only proprietary standards //to make sure// that your way out of Spotify is as hard as it can possibly be.
-Spotify controls who gets the money - Spotify controls who gets to be in a position of making money - Spotify controls your access to music. Don't like you? Kicked out. Don't pay their small monthly fee? Kicked out.\\
+EVEN if you read a page about Spotify online and decide "honestly, yeah, fuck this platform", you'll probably still think to yourself "well, but how am I gonna migrate away from it? There's no way to export your playlists and all", which may or may not ultimately make you think that it's not worth the drama. Every good platform has the kind of inter-compatibility needed to leave you with a choice and to give you the data you need to exist and function independently of the platform... but not Spotify((This is beginning to sound more and more cult-like, they make it hard to leave, too. Hmmmm...)).
-You got kicked out? Well bad luck for you, Spotify is a deliberately designed walled garden with no way of migrating to another platform easily. You do anything on Spotify that you care about - for example finding new music or creating playlists - then now that's it: You now have to keep paying Spotify until the end of your life, 13€ per month. If you live another 60 years then you'll be paying 9360€ just to keep being allowed to listen to your music. Does any normal person ever get close to spending anywhere that close on music? My friend, you could buy a car from that and listen to music on any other platform instead. Subscription prices rack up fast. And if you fail to pay, at any time, for any reason, you're now excluded from the party.
-And also, you will listen to music the way //Spotify// wants you to. So you will be using //their// audio player, regardless of whether you like it, you will //not// be getting access to the actual audio files to use them in personal/private projects, Spotify controls for you which music they allow or disallow on their platform, and if you want to do //anything// with their music you will use only the tools Spotify gives you to do it. If their tools don't allow you to do what you want to do, then you're a poor sucker. Out-of-line steppers get slammed. External API's are killed. 3rd party playback support is killed. Everything is kept proprietary so that only Spotify has control over how their product is used((Which, to be clear, isn't inherently wrong, but makes the product inherently shitty.)). If Spotify changes their tune in the future and becomes more predatory to the consumers, either through monetization practices or restriction of functionality, then you can be outraged for a bit, but then you will go back to paying the membership again, because that's what you'll do anyway. Or, you go the hard route of migrating to a different platform, which was //designed// by Spotify to be particularly difficult. No inter-compatibility, proprietary standards that others aren't allowed to use, no option at all to change your mind in the future. Once you're in the ecosystem, you're locked into it and if you want out, you will lose //everything//.
+====== 4. Piracy ======
+To executives, piracy is a variable to consider in business, not a matter of ethics where we are trying to "do the right thing" or "care about the artists" (right, as if they haven't designed a monetization model that goes out of its way to fuck them over). Remember, these are the same kind of people that would prefer people dying and paying for the resulting lawsuits, rather than paying for proper staffing, maintenance and safety checks. You know, unlike executives, people are conceptually actually willing to do the right thing (especially when you make it as convenient as Spotify does). People are willing to pay if companies get the pricing right. That's why Spotify is working, at least a little bit, to reduce piracy.
-====== I <3 Casus Belli ======
+Ultimately though, Spotify is another in a long list of companies trying profit at your expense, with the objective "Reduce piracy" being a literal stand-in for "maximize profit margins". Whatever good **you** think lessening piracy will do is **not** what Spotify is aiming for. You might think less piracy means artists get paid, but that is //not// the case with Spotify, //even// when it demonstrably //does// reduce piracy.
-Uh, what was the justification again? Right! Piracy!\\
-To be fair, it worked for a while - pay ten bucks a month and get “everything” instantly? Nice! Convenience killed piracy, or at least shoved it into the background. But think about it this way: To executives, piracy is a variable to consider in business, not a matter of ethics where we are trying to "do the right thing" or "care about the artists". Spotify is piracy’s corporate replacement: Same lack of ownership, same file restrictions, artists get fucked over, except now you’re paying rent to a gatekeeper who decides what music even exists on the platform. And piracy? Well, it is alive and well. It hasn’t died, it just mutated. People still pirate because Spotify locks away files, removes albums without warning, or doesn’t even carry half the music outside the mainstream. The only real difference is that back in the day you stole from the labels; now you pay the labels monthly, and the illusion of legitimacy keeps you from noticing that, functionally, nothing has changed. You still don’t own anything, but now you're paying money for the privilege.
+//If you want, continue reading on [[Spotify (Level 2)]]//