Music streaming services have been around for about a decade now and through their rise to becoming an incredibly popular platform for music listening, they’ve caused the music industry to change in a multitude of ways. By most accounts, they’ve been terrible for all but 1% of musicians, and although Spotify claims it cannot pay better royalties without going under, the platform is worth billions of dollars with plenty of investors and a large consumer base.
Like many things that big tech “invents” and ends up further corroding the world with, music streaming was supposed to be a solution. But for whom? In the early 2000s, file sharing platforms like Napster and Soulseek came on the scene and allowed for fans to freely exchange MP3 files. The music industry freaked out, with major labels fearing that their long-time exploitative empire was capsizing in the wild West of the web. The feeling among artists signed to those labels was mixed, however, with many explaining that having their music downloaded illegally made no difference because the labels weren’t paying them royalties from CD sales anyway.
Music streaming platforms claimed to put an end to piracy. They are a form of piracy, legitimized only by the fact that major records labels are profiting from this model. What difference does it make if a musician receives a fraction of a cent for each stream rather than nothing? The only musicians that can get by on streaming income alone are ones who are racking up millions and millions of plays. That’s such a small percentage, which mainly includes artists who have the backing of a major label that can invest plenty of money into marketing and promotion campaign. These are the same labels that own a part of Spotify and have a direct connection to ensure that these artists get their songs placed on popular playlists so that they can rack up tons of streams.
The emphasis that Spotify places on playlists creates another set of problems. Several writers have discussed how official Spotify playlists and the algorithms that make them promote a lean-back listening style. Spotify is very concerned with creating the best vibe for any activity that you do. Finding the appropriate soundtrack to your activities has long been something that informs listener selection, but there’s a difference when listener curation is removed.
You can take the time to build the perfect playlist, or you can select one of the ready-made ones on the app. Streaming services are claiming to be doing us a favour. They’re making things more efficient by doing the work of curation for you. But what good does that serve us, by removing the nuance of personal taste? Many of these playlists are designed to target as many potential listeners as possible. But in doing so, it excludes musicians taking risks in favour of the music that streams well, and often by design. These are songs that don’t stand out, instead blending into the background unobtrusively. Spotify wants us to listen to music the same way we “listen” to the hum of a refrigerator. It’s there in the background and we hardly notice.
The lean-back listening model has also changed how some music is being made. With the financial incentive rewarded by racking up many streams as possible, songs are becoming shorter to reward repeated listens or they’re constructed ambiguously so that they can be dispersed among the widest number of playlists. What some might celebrate as the dissolution of genre categorization is an attempt to appropriate as many musical aesthetics as possible. This music has the selling points of being vague rather than unique, and by trying to sound like everything all at once, it sounds like beige wallpaper. As one independent label owner explained to Liz Pelly:
“The more vanilla the release, the better it works for Spotify. If it’s challenging music? Nah…It leaves artists behind. If Spotify is just feeding easy music to everybody, where does the art form go? Is anybody going to be able to push boundaries and break through to a wide audience anymore?” (1)
The algorithms that dictate what music gets thrown at you often point towards this kind of music. Computers want things to make sense and so they’ll drag you towards the middle. You’re fed what is already racking up plenty of streams or what sounds like the music you already listen to. Independent musician and big-tech critic Zola Jesus explains that by having corporations and their algorithms dictate what music is pushed on listeners:
“You’re not going to find these weird amorphous connections to things and you’re not allowing art to live in this nebulous space. You’re kind of defining what it is and then you’re making decisions for the listener about what they’re going to like that [sounds] like that. And then that in turn ends up limiting or minimizing the exposure people have to types of music. And so, all these algorithms and everything that people think are widening the scope of art and allowing all this new stuff to come through because it’s random? It’s not, it’s actually minimizing it because a computer wants things to make sense. So everything is a 1 and a 0 so at some point you’re just going to have everything sound the same.” (2)
How is this model appropriate for independent artists that don’t have a direct connect to the powers that influence the platform? And how about the fact that plenty of musicians aren’t making their music with the intention of reaching as many people as possible? Artists with more niche or experimental sounds that have always existed on the fringes are only getting pushed further away from potential new members of their audience.
Now, I can’t ignore the fact that music isn’t discovered only through algorithms. There’s still plenty of avenues to find out about new music from other human beings. College radio programs are still on air, writers are still blogging, DJs are still creating mixes, Soundcloud users are reposting tracks, and there’s plenty of forums, subreddits, Discords, and other online music communities where listeners can talk about the bands they love and share recommendations with each other.
Official Spotify playlists keep us on the platform instead of going to places where we can bond with others over the musicians whose works we admire. What does it mean if we’re too decision-fatigued to seek out music on our own and so predisposed to unconscious consumption promoted to us under the guise of efficiency and convenience? This streamlined efficiency that algorithm-informed discovery was supposed to create is only making us more alienated from each other, whereas holding onto current and developing new models of human-curated music discovery and listening offers opportunities to strengthen communities and empower musicians without subjecting them to potential exploitation by big tech and music capitalism.
When it comes to supporting independent artists in the present moment, one of the best ways of doing so is by purchasing their music. I think about certain albums and songs that impacted me in meaningful ways. I think of songs that inspired me to pick up instruments and discover my own practice of musical expression. I think of other songs that offered reassurance during challenging circumstances that I faced, or were the perfect soundtrack to fond memories that I shared with my family and friends. Fractions of cents coming from a stream doesn’t place an equal value on that, but buying an album or a piece of merch is a meaningful gesture that helps make it financially viable for an artist to continue making art.
If I’m streaming music, I’m just throwing most of my money towards shareholders, investors, and executives who built their empire by exploiting artists. These capitalists would have no business model if it wasn’t for the music for them to feed off. By using streaming platforms, I can’t help but feel like I am enabling this process to continue.
And yes, paying for music can be expensive and it’s not accessible for everyone financially. So why aren’t more of us envisioning futures with models where more musicians can thrive regardless of how accessible, niche, or experimental their discography is? We can’t just let stream counts and album sales dictate the value that a piece of music has. It goes well beyond that.
Music fans aren’t responsible for these injustices but we can turn away from these vultures. We can cut them out and get closer to the artist by purchasing an album or piece of merchandise on their website. We can rebuild our MP3 libraries. We can pressure elected officials to support the arts so that all musicians, venues and communities can thrive. We can turn away from big-tech corporate oligarchies and move over to artist-owned collectives like Ampled and Resonate. And we can tell the musicians whose work we appreciate that if they decide to step away from using streaming platforms, we will go with them.
Greg Saulnier, drummer of Deerhoof, once said,
“If you don’t bow down to Spotify, you might as well tell whoever runs the guillotine that’s above your neck to just let her rip. These streaming services are literally the only option for a music career nowadays.” (1)
It doesn’t have to be this way. Many people have begun imagining and building better futures. Here are some resources and alternatives to “Big Streaming.”
This is step by step process that rolls out how to stream your music collection without subscribing to a streaming service.
Ampled is a “Patreon-like platform for musicians, owned by its artists and workers. Ampled allows artists to be directly supported by their community without intermediaries or gatekeepers (and is collectively owned by its artists and workers).”
Buy Music Club is “a place for creating and browsing lists of independent music purchasable on Bandcamp.”
Resonate is a stream-to-own listening platform co-operatively owned by listeners, musicians, and workers
Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) “aims to organize music workers to fight for a more just music industry, and to join with other workers in the struggle for a better society.”
MUSICat is collaborative project between Rabble and several public libraries using open-sourced platforms to share local music and support artists in the community. Each involved library runs recurrent submission periods and commits to paying artists at least $200 for each album that is included in the collection. Click here to see if your local library is partnered with Rabble.
Speaking of libraries, Music lawyer Henderson Cole has proposed the creation of the American Music Library: a government-run tax-funded streaming service.
If you know of any other initiatives or projects working on creating a more equitable and sustainable model of supporting musicians and music communities, I’d love to hear about them and spread the word!
Works Cited