Spotify to Pay Songwriters About $150 Million Less Next Year With Premium, Duo, Family Plan Changes
www.billboard.com
Spotify will potentially pay songwriters about $150 million less in U.S. mechanical royalties next year after bundling its plans with audiobooks.

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.

  • Churbleyimyam@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    7 months ago

    What are your thoughts around generating traction with a torrent? I have two friends who are both sitting on their albums and thinking about how best to release them. I hope to release something one day too and refuse to use the likes of spotify on principle.

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      7 months ago

      hmm, if you do release them, it would be prudent to release them with related material, throw in a txt file with some additional little trivia facts or tidbits, as well as some links to places to buy your material, or even donate directly to you. Oh also you should probably throw in some interesting stickers or prints or something, things that aren’t clothing and CDs can be interesting sometimes.

      If you want to do a multi platform release, do an exclusive release on the torrents, i.e. throw in some extra unreleased material, or a second mixing/mastering of a track or something. Throwing something in to make the listeners feel appreciated is always good.

      Obviously generate some public attention for it, you’re probably only going to attract existing torrent users, but drumming up some sort of conversation around music rights, supporting artists and all that is going to be a good idea. Notably, since you’re the artist putting it up, you have the rights over it, so it’s perfectly legal. If you want to get really funny you can openly license it, so that way people can torrent it without “technically” breaking the law. Though that’s not explicitly required i don’t think. Naturally the most obvious way is to title a song “pirate this” or something lmao. “exercise to the user” as us TMC players would say.

      yeah im pretty much out of ideas here lol, hopefully that helped.

      • unreasonabro@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        7 months ago

        These are some decent suggestions, I’ma try this with our old albums. aside from tpb what are good options, sitewise, for this? no links just names pls, if you’d be so kind

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          2·
          7 months ago

          idk much about clearnet trackers, so you’d probably wanna go ask around in the piracy instances (dbzer0 is a prominent one, though it’s my root instance, so i’m biased lol) for some information on that. But one very real option that you have is just posting the magnet link in the clearnet, since it’s not copyrighted material (well, you own the copyright, and you legally allow it to be distributed as such, so it’s not like the government is going to whack you upside the head or anything) Makes it easy to get and disseminate, though you would benefit from having it on trackers obviously. Though one really cool thing, is that trackers are pretty autonomous, so chances are if you release it, and it gets significant enough traffic over the clearnet, or attention from nerds like me it’ll probably make its way to trackers organically. I make no guarantees but if you give me a shout i can have a look into spreading it onto i2p as well. (you should probably mention that somewhere in the thing so that way people pick up on it)

          Oh and uh one other little thought, you can always put a little tidbit in there like “feel free to send us a few bucks, or share this song with your friends” to promote natural growth of it. There’s about as much flexibility to it as you can imagine.

          oh and a final note if you aren’t familiar, probably worth being careful about tracker IP leeches, they often just nab ips that visit public trackers and yeet them to ISPs on the regular, shouldn’t get you in trouble since its your own material, but they don’t care, and the ISP will just send you a cease and desist saying “hey don’t do this” or in extreme cases, yeeting your ass. Again, check out the piracy instances, they have useful resources for this stuff.