Spotify doesn't make profit from music streaming, despite having over 400M monthly active users, because it pays two-thirds of all its revenue to the rights holders.
Spotify doesn't make profit from music streaming, despite having over 400M monthly active users, because it pays two-thirds of all its revenue to the rights holders.
Despite being the king of music streaming, Spotify is struggling financially, but why?
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So this is why the podcasts are absolutely crammed full of ads?
It frustrates me that I get ads after paying for premium, but the way they weasel out of it is the tagline "unlimited ad free music"... And I guess, podcasts ain't music.
Still, I'm glad they're paying 2/3rds to rights holders. I'm an indie musician, historically a lot of my music was released on labels so they've creamed a good amount of my royalties. I feel like there's a lot of misunderstandings about how much people earn from Spotify (ie publisher / label is often getting a lions share leading to low return for the artist). People see "0.003c per stream" and assume Spotify are taking the piss as it's technically a low number. But, taking 1/3rd is a damn sight better than what the digi retail sites like beatport take (50/50 with the label, who then splits that 50/50 with the artist).
You can self release and self promote on spotify, which imo although there's still a power imbalance, it's a better deal for the artist if you go indie. Meanwhile the labels & publishers seem to go unmentioned when it comes to lack of artist revenue.
They can't really control the fact that podcast producers put ads in their podcasts, no?
I'm not talking about those, I'm fine with that... In some cases they're quite entertaining. I'm taking about the ones Spotify inserts seemingly at random, occasionally in the middle of a joke or sentence. Three at the start, three at the end, three at some random point in the middle. I just fast forward them.
What country are you in? I listen to hours of podcasts every day and have never seen Spotify insert ads into them.
Of course you've never seen them inserting ads, they're not a visual medium!
(sorry sorry sorry)
I'm in UK, the land of gray skies and bad jokes
Interesting. I'm across the pond.
I wonder if it's only specific podcasts?
Almost everything I listen to is from NPR or APM or PRX. There are plenty of ads, but they're burned into the podcasts just like on every other platform.
Maybe Spotify is inserting ads into the podcasts that they paid high amounts for? They spent, what, a billion dollars on exclusivity deals?
Might be. I pretty much only listen to comedy podcasts.
I noticed listening to one from the start that there were no adverts at all, neither inserted or from the creators. By episode 9, Spotify was inserting them, by episode 12 they were doing their own sponsorships (which is fair enough).
I guess we know nothing about how it works, wouldn't surprise me if there's some sort of toggle switch that the creators can activate with a share in revenue of any ads Spotify injects