Published
Mon, Feb 21, 2022, 15:00
- As controversy mounts around the streaming giant, more and more artists want out. But for various reasons—licensing, money, PR pressure—it's tougher than expected.
As controversy continues to circle around Spotify, more and more artists want their music removed from the platform. But why is it so hard?
Earlier this month, the US podcasting giant Joe Rogan was slammed by 270 medical professionals for helping spread Covid-19 misinformation on his hugely successful podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, which Spotify acquired for €100 million in May 2020.
This led to legendary musicians Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Nils Lofgren removing their music from Spotify. Since then, the platform has said it will add content-advisory warnings to podcast episodes discussing Covid-19.
The Joe Rogan saga was the latest in a string of controversies to hit Spotify. Last November, the platform's Swedish CEO, Daniel Ek, announced that his investment company was putting €100 million into AI defence technology firm Helsing, which deals with the British, French and German militaries.
Both these stories—plus the wider issue of low royalty rates—have caused dozens of artists and labels to think twice about having their music on Spotify. In January, Munich label Ilian Tape removed its entire catalogue, including all Skee Mask releases. But pulling the trigger is a big decision regardless of where artists stand on certain issues.
Copyright & licensing
For New Zealand producer Grouch, the difficulty lies in chasing the 36 labels to which he's signed, some of which own the copyrights to his music. "I've been paid by six labels so far," he told RA. "So I would need to get in touch with every single label to work out what's happening with contracts so I can try to take my music off the platform."
Grouch has around 66,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Despite having a presence on the platform, he doesn't use it and is hoping to work out a plan to reclaim rights to his work.
He added: "Spotify rips off artists and has questionable ethics. In fact, my Bandcamp page performs better than any other streaming provider and 90 percent of the money I make from a release comes from them."
Melbourne-based producer D-Sens told RA that he's stopped using Spotify as a customer and now uses Tidal, but he doesn't believe he has the clout to leave the platform as an artist.
"It's up to the labels and distributors to decide if they want to work with Spotify—I would totally support them if they chose to leave," he said. "But as a small artist, I won't put that pressure onto labels that support me because I know they need the exposure and I don't feel it's right to ask them for such a sacrifice."
Ambient producer Robert Rich told RA he "sacrificed" 60 percent of his releases to Spotify over copyright issues with labels. He said the experience warranted a "degree in copyright law to comprehend these things."
He added: "Unlimited free content is like replacing a room's oxygen with laughing gas. If they suck any more oxygen from it, the whole industry suffocates." To survive, he said it's critical artists reclaim control over their own distribution by reaching out to their audiences.
Another ambient artist, Dakini Records founder Makyo, has been having issues removing his music despite not even having an account with Spotify.
"It was mostly stuff licensed to CD compilations that they had no right to sell digitally, but they went ahead and had their aggregators place it on streaming sites anyway," he told RA. "They have no paperwork to show they have a licence to do this, but that doesn't stop them because the streamers don't check."
Makyo said he used a professional takedown request service for several years, but "never managed to get any takedown requests fulfilled by Spotify."
He added: "This is similar to the problem [Spotify] is having with speech issues right now: they try to argue that they're just a platform and have no responsibility for what people put out there."
That said, some artists have been more successful. Alessandro Cortini said he's "fortunate" to own the rights to most of his music. When RA first spoke with him a few weeks ago, he was in the throes of trying to remove the rest of his work from Spotify by speaking with the labels Mute, Dais and PIAS.
"I was able to take everything off Spotify," he recently told RA. "I'm just glad I was able to have this conversation with the labels."
Cortini has long had issues with Spotify and the way it "minimised the value of both the artist and the music." But he said it was "the latest drama" that gave him the "final push to jump ship."
Money & marketing
Cortini also said he previously relied on Spotify for about 50 percent of streaming royalties, which "helped to at least pay the bills." He added: "I really had to think about it before taking the plunge, but I sleep better knowing most of my music isn't being profited by Spotify."
Music journalist and Innerviews founder Anil Prasad said many artists see next to nothing in Spotify streaming revenues but still feel bound to the platform.
"Artists have a conceptual gun pointed at their heads," he told RA. "They're told if they don't deal with entities like Spotify, they won't have a chance of success in their music career. It's PR-driven psychological terrorism."
The role of major labels
But one electronic music label boss, who asked to remain anonymous, said the blame lies with major labels, not Spotify. "It's also not helpful to witch-hunt Spotify CEO Daniel Ek," they told RA. "Spotify saved the music business because it pioneered streaming when the industry was dying from illegal downloads."
They added: "So haters wise up. If Spotify goes, the real sharks driving down music values like Google, Amazon and now TikTok will win. And so would the major labels that have done a criminal job allocating revenues to artists."
But according to Prasad, there's only a fine line between free file-sharing sites like BitTorrent and streaming platforms like Spotify. In both cases, the artists have been sacrificial cash cows.
Prasad said artists got the bad end of the deal in 2008 when Spotify offered shares and financial incentives to major labels threatened by pirate downloads. Makyo, who has been calling for a Spotify boycott for eight years, told RA that major labels took their artists along but "locked them into shitty deals." He said there is "also no evidence" payout money was shared with artists.
Rich Bengloff, former president of the American Association of Independent Music, vouched for this in 2014. "A lot of the time, money that is paid outside of the direct usage doesn't end up getting shared," he said.
Prasad said major labels don't care about online and physical music sales anymore because streaming is what boosts the share price. "That's why they pound artists to promote streams, and then take the lion's share of streaming royalties," he said.
Music producer and Killing Joke bassist Youth told RA that when the major labels are also shareholders "there's no viable resistance to Spotify, even if everyone does hate them."
According to Music Business Week, the three major labels—Universal Music Group, Sony Music Group and Warner Music Group—made at least $20 billion in revenue in 2021. (This figure will rise—UMG has yet to release its latest numbers.) In terms of streaming, WMG's revenue rose by 24.3 percent year-on-year, while SMG's grew by 33 percent.
The next generation
But will artists leaving Spotify make a difference? And if so, how many artists will it take? Speaking to RA, Asian Dub Foundation's Steve Chandra Savale said part of the problem is too many young acts are dependent on the platform and others like it.
"It's up to this generation to not be over-reliant on them," he said. "It was easy for Neil Young, but we're not all in that position."
He added: "I've seen industry folk wave contracts at 18-year-olds who think 'wow' before signing their entire publishing rights away for life. It still happens a lot. We're fodder for that system. But it would take a mass movement to shift things, and then I'd start boycotting. Just like we saw with the anti-apartheid movement. That did make a difference."
RA approached Spotify for comment but received no response at the time of publication.
Photo: Sara Kurfeß
Update, February 21st: This story was updated at 3:50 PM GMT to include a mention of Munich label Ilian Tape, which removed its entire catalogue from Spotify earlier this year.