Hey guys let’s all revolt against Spotify! Let’s burn that shit to the ground because Neil Young is one of us! Joni Mitchell is one of us!!! Oh wait, what’s that? You hear that sound? That’s the sound of bewildered artists everywhere learning that digital distribution doesn’t give one single fuck about morals or ethics or whatever. Bands don’t get to distribute music a la carte, they don’t get to say hey Tunecore, Distro Kid, The Orchard, ADA, CD Baby, I’m taking a moral stand and want to exclude all the services that are exploiting artists or have bad moral compasses. Guess what they are all exploiting artists, they did that the second they stopped helping you make about 1$ per song for every listen. That was the old way wasn’t it? You sold a CD, a record, a cassette, an mp3 album for about 10$, sometimes more or less but that was the going rate and then overnight it went to less than a penny.
Let’s look at first the people who pretend to be heroes. I’m looking at you Bandcamp which I like to refer to as amateur hour. You don’t pay any bands for streams in a world where everyone is streaming music and doesn’t want mp3s anymore. So how are you helping the artists by paying them even less than the bigger shittier corporations? Because you let them sell their mp3s and other merch sometimes without taking a cut four times a year? How is this better or a solution? This is not the alternative anyone wants or needs for distribution of music. It’d be one thing if they actually had a service that allowed playlists and songs to be stored on their platform for quick access to listen while driving or exercising or while on the go, but alas that is not what they are about. They generously let you buy an antiquated solution from a small minority of bands.
Next let’s talk about Apple who has basically fucked us over and over and over. We all had iPods at one point, bought real tangible files and then they swiftly within a decade instead of making those mp3 players larger in storage and smaller in size or a component of our overpriced iPhones, they forced us to move to their streaming subscription services and made sure to fuck up iTunes. Without them there was literally no use for what we had spent a decade buying.
Do you blame these scumbag corporations? They learned it from the model of the major music label who has us buy albums on vinyl, then 8 tracks and reel to reel tapes, then cassettes and then the CD throughout the years. How many fucking times do I have to buy Abbey Road from The Beatles? How many times do I have to buy millionaire Neil Young’s Harvest Moon?
Is Spotify the bad guy? Well they have done no favors for the small artists and it’s been a fight to get every penny out of them. But fuck, if they didn’t build a well organized site that makes sense for the future. A site where the artist has a little bit of control over their own profile. Now you may be a fan of Apple Music or Tidal or whatever but if you were an artist on one of those services I can assure you that all of the services except Spotify basically tell you to go fuck yourself or don’t answer you at all if you have for instance listing problems with your band, or release or your album art is messed up or there are five bands with the same name as yours. Spotify has a very easy to use system, you email their content people and will you look at that, it’s fixed. They may be paying you shit but their product works and looks like it’s supposed to. You can make an artist profile and add a bio, links, playlists, etc. Now as a user am I pissed off that a hard working indie band makes fractions of what they used to make? Yes, for sure it sucks. But am I glad that at least one place on the internet exists where that artist has some control over how their music is delivered to fans? Yes, that is important to the fans. There is no easy answer and do I think by putting the screws to Spotify higher ups maybe they’ll reconsider some things? Well I’m sure they aren’t happy with this wave of bad press. But alas I’m finally getting to my point.
Do I hate Joe Rogan? Well I don’t really give a fuck about him or what he says because unlike 30% of this country I would not get my news or facts from someone who claims “hey I’m a moron who doesn’t know what I’m talking about but here’s my loud stupid opinion.” Is he as bad as Fox News and Newsmax, I don’t know, sometimes he can do a normal interview and seem almost like a human being which I’ve never seen from Fucker Carlson or Laura Ingraham. So unlike those entities Joe Rogan seems to be more entertainment and the ramblings of a stupid ape that other stupid apes enjoy. Do I think big links that identify misinformation about Covid should be everywhere around his podcasts that address that? Why yes I do. I think every website, podcast and blog should be fact checked and called out on bullshit. It’s not even that I care that morons believe stupid shit. For myself, I don’t have the time to fact check every single news article and honestly none of us would have to if Reagan didn’t get rid of the Fairness Doctrine but here we are now in the hell that old cowboy Ronnie created for us where 40 years later we’re all still explaining to rich assholes that trickle down economics don’t fucking work and they never did.
Now all that evil shit is plain as day to see. What’s not plain as day is Neil Young and Joni Mitchell are fucking millionaires who just fucked over all the small artists who can’t fucking do shit about being on Spotify and they made them, the small people, look like non-caring douches when in reality no small band really has a choice here. Neil, Joni, how about you fucking work with Spotify to make it better for the small artists and to force Spotify to incorporate fact checking into their podcasts. Instead, you’ve pulled your catalog, fucking your fans who already pay for those services that work for them, fucking musicians who have no choice and have to leave their catalog up there and you go off to your publicists and labels and do whatever the fuck you want because you are equally part of the problem. You just basically said fuck your music scene, we’re taking our ball and going home. Great thanks, can every asshole musician post some more Pro-Neil Young memes this week? Let’s praise the guy who is still a millionaire and made every small band feel guilty for having their album that a hundred people listen to up on Spotify. Hooray Neil Young, gee thanks!
Can I mention that in the music world there are so many disgusting, fucked up human beings that all have music on Spotify and every other service, radio, TV and every fucking where. So Neil and Joni didn’t give a fuck that Ted Nugent or Kid Rock or the tons of other shitbags are still on Spotify? They basically are worse than Joe Rogan and might have more fans. Marilyn Manson and other rapists still have every album of their catalog on every music service everywhere. For fucks sake, Lostprophets are still on Spotify and their singer tried to buy a baby to rape. At least Spotify only has one of their albums, where as Amazon has the whole catalog. So where are we drawing the line in the sand society and artists? How about we make it so no felons can distribute podcasts or music especially if they are still serving time? Give me a fucking break with it all. If we are going to police the internet and digital distributors than great but don’t judge the morality of every single user and subscriber because fucking Neil Young another millionaire has said so. Let’s fucking blast the shit out to Spotify’s ownership and try to bring about real change. But that would have been a lot easier with Neil Young and Joni Mitchell’s help rather them leaving the rest of us high and dry. Really, this is not a Spotify problem, this is a every distribution agency problem. I’m looking at you ADA, The Orchard, Tunecore, CD Baby, Distro Kid and all the others. How about collectively you say we are no longer delivering to your service if you don’t do these things that a majority of our artists want. Let’s start with just a little bit more money per stream, keeping rapists and baby rapists from promoting their music, letting podcasts spew bullshit consequence free? Huh? Can we maybe try something that actually fucking works?
Whatevs, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, nice symbolic gesture but you fucked the little guy and nothing is going to change.
- Eddie Templeton