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After announcing increased prices, Spotify to Pay Songwriters About $150 Million Less Next Year
(www.billboard.com)
this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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It's not really just Spotify. I'm a hobbyist music producer. I uploaded my entire catalog through Distrokid about two years ago. Distrokid serves just about every streaming service. It costs $20 a year for the most basic package. I've got ~8 million listens according to Distrokid, and that nets me about $40 US. So, I made my money back. Not bad for 20 years of work. Haha!
I don't really care about the numbers, like I said, I'm a hobbyist. I make music because I enjoy making music. It would never be my career unless I dropped everything and struck out touring trying to make it in an industry that traditionally chews up and spits out hopefuls. I'm not exactly the age or attractiveness that most people expect in a touring musician, either.
I'm in a similar boat, but I never feel fully satisfied to release a song (probably cuz I am a hobbyist and I suck lol).
But regardless, I think there is an element of selling your soul to Hollywood to really make it big, and I just don't have that kind of commitment at this point in my life. I like relaxing and anonymity.
There's never a better time to put yourself out there! I resisted it for twenty years. My most "successful" release is one of my least polished tracks. I recorded it just out of university on a Pentium with a stolen microphone, pirated software, a freebie guitar, and a ZOOM 505. It's got 4 million listens and is responsible for half my income. By comparison, I've released stuff that I think sounds like it was professionally recorded in a studio that no one listens to.
It's funny like that, isn't it?
You catch lightning in a bottle in 5 minutes using Reaper, then spend 100x the time on another song that just vanishes.
Peaches most popular song was a tape recording off the sound desk in a German bar.
Yep.
Another one of my most popular tracks is an atonal hour-and-twenty-minutes of cubic spline curves, granular synthesis, and other assorted noises I programmed in Csound.