Rebooting the Ambient Rushton Podcast
After 20 years, It's Time to Try Something Different
Ambient Rushton Podcast
This past week, I moved the Ambient Rushton Podcast over to Substack. I had it hosted at another company for the past 10 years, and in the 10 years before that I self-hosted it.
Very soon, I’ll release Ambient Rushton Podcast 195, which will kinda sorta be a “test podcast” of me reading this post and should feature some of my music.
I call it a “test podcast” because I haven’t yet published a new podcast on the Substack platform. I don’t know whether it will go out to everybody who subscribes to this newsletter. I’m not sure what the new process looks like. But I’ll find out.
After Podcast 195, my plan is to make the Ambient Rushton Podcast more of a “talkie” podcast. In the past, the podcast has been music-focused, and it will continue to be, but I’d like to talk further about topics related to the arts. I might do some interviews.
Spotify Doesn’t Pay Artists Anymore
I know it’s been fashionable in the past decade for some recording artists to complain about the “per-stream” royalty rate that Spotify pays out. Well, Spotify never actually had a “per-stream” rate. That’s not how on-demand streaming royalties are calculated. That’s just how the media framed it. But at least, at the time, Spotify actually paid for all streams by all artists.
Things have changed. Today, or at least as of April 2024, Spotify has stopped paying artists whose tracks don’t achieve at least 1000 streams a year. I consider this to be a crime.
For emerging recording artists, or those who work in more niche genres, this is a deal killer. As far as I’m concerned, CEO Daniel Ek is a thief. Spotify is stealing from artists.
If you read Spotify’s explanation, they immediately conflate the issue of “not paying artists” with them having to deal “bogus streaming” by bots and scammers. If anything is going to cause more bogus streaming, it’s adding a threshold for artists to get paid.
What does Spotify’s inability to deal with bots and scammers have to do with not paying me and other artists for our work?
What happens when Spotify decides to raise the bar further? Very soon, only extremely popular artists will be paid. They will be paid from the income generated by smaller artists and the people paying for subscriptions. I guess the major labels and popular artists are OK with this.
Spotify has apparently decided to try to completely kill The Long Tail - the concept of selling a large number of different items which each sell in relatively small quantities, usually in addition to selling large quantities of a small number of popular items.
Separately, The MLC recently sued Spotify over Spotify’s refusal to pay proper mechanical royalties after Spotify decided to “bundle” audio books into their Premium plans. This supposedly created a loophole for Spotify to further screw recording artists, writers, and publishers. I hope Spotify loses.
Once again, I’d like to say: “Billionaires always need more money…”
What am I going to do about this 1000 stream threshold? A lot of my music will never reach that level, much less sustain that kind of activity even on Spotify.
As somebody who creates ambient and avant-garde electronic music, and field recordings, with a limited audience, the only thing I can do in the short-term is leave Spotify as a paying customer. I already subscribe to other streaming services, so I’ll transfer my listening to those sites. I have subscriptions to Pandora and Deezer, and, through other things, to YouTube Music, Apple Music, and Amazon Music.
I’m not going to remove anything from Spotify, but I’m done adding.
I’m also going to stop promoting any of my playlists on Spotify.
I will keep my podcast on Spotify. Nobody pays for podcasts unless you’re Joe Rogan. I have around 600 followers of this podcast on Spotify’s platform, at least according to the Spotify for Podcasters data.
Welcome, Spotify podcast listeners! Please think about changing your listening subscription to a company that hasn’t decided to quit paying artists. I highly recommend Pandora. It’s still artist-friendly.
I have more news to mention, but that will show up in next week’s newsletter.
Bye for now, Mark Rushton - https://www.markrushton.com - May 26, 2024.