It's an interesting article, but the essential information is buried in the middle:
In my experience, it’s only when I get on an editorial playlist that my songs get heavily featured on algorithmic playlists like Discover Weekly.
So how do you get on editorial playlists? I sincerely have no clue. I've been on editorial playlists 16 times but I have no idea how to replicate that.
I find that this is true of many of these "I made X dollars per month doing Y!" articles: somewhere in the chain of events, there is a fateful intervention out of the control of the author that propels them to a higher tier of income than their peers who are otherwise following the same procedures.
Another thing I found interesting is that he earns $800 / month from a total of about 3 million listens. I wonder how this compares to the royalties from a radio play from a popular local radio station?
Comparatively, my dad has a moderately successful youtube channel, his most popular video has 18m views, and the next 3m. He has 66k subscribers. In an average month he'd earn ~£300 or so. Though usually quite a lot more around Christmas.
It's not that X, Y, Z is necessarily bad advice, just that obviously nobody really knows how to be successful with anything. The closest you get is to know things that improve/decrease your odds.
Great point. And speaking from insider knowledge, I can tell you that there are consultants you can pay anywhere from a little bit up to thousands per month who will get you tested/placed on different editorial playlists. The more you can get on, and the longer you can stay on them (there is no guarantee of staying on, they only keep you on if you gain traction), the more success you will have.
I’ve noticed this too. The title has an air of “this is how you can pull yourself up by the bootstraps” feeling that turns into a “just takeover your dads company” when you read the article
Spotify's discovery playlist is a double edged sword. My account is permanently screwed because I decided to listen to a lot of rain sounds when going to sleep for a few months while I had a puppy. Now ALL I get for recommendations are calm sounds. I don't actually listen to these during the day, I want my old stuff. I hate it and want to reset the discovery playlist, but seems I have no way of doing so aside from getting a new account?
Having absolutely 0 insight or parameter tuning on these recommendations algorithms, from feeds to Spotify playlists, is really a shame. Like imagine you had 0 control on your computer parameters or smartphone, and it was always guessing like “This resolution should suit you”, “I just turned the WiFi off, hope you like it”, or “I just dialed that friend you seem to like to interact with”. It’s not a technical problem, I know there must be advertising incentive to not allow settings, but still the result when you think of it is ridiculous, having to reverse engineer algorithms and create alternate profiles just to emulate lacking UI for parameters.
This is unfortunately a common problem and the only way to beat the algorithm is to turn it against itself.
Create few playlists and add songs you like to them and also be diligent about liking and unliking songs. These will heavily influence your recommendations and you should be able to get back on track.
LOL! Same shoe; I cannot escape the piano and other instrumentals I played during my wife's pregnancy months. I'm almost at a point of surrender that maybe my time with Deep House and Electronic music has reached an end. The Discovery Weekly was my only way of finding hot indie talent in the electronics world.
I think Spotify would do well to allow users to set a label of some sort on their listening. Like, there are times when you listen to your music for yourself in the car, and there are times when your phone is being used to power the speakers at a gathering. I don't know what the internals of the system looks like, but it seems like allowing users to maintain different profiles would be simple.
Spotify's awful discovery, and shuffle features for playlists are what keeps me firmly with Pandora.
Now that Pandora lets you make your own playlists, or listen to individual songs, and download for offline playback (on airplanes for example), I don't see any compelling reason to switch to Spotify these days.
Spam seems to be a growing problem too. If you follow (or even listen to) an artist, all someone needs to do is credit them on a song (or just squat on their name) for it to be eligible for Release Radar.
There are weird pockets of the Spotify database for this (e.g. "lo-fi beats" artists that churn out hundreds of tracks with many artists) and no way to send any feedback (they shut down Line-In, their metadata feedback a few years ago). Disliking doesn't work because Spotify will only remember you don't like one of the artists, not all of them.
65,000 listeners a month – $800 in revenue. 1.23 cents per listener per month. That works out to 14.7 cents per year. To earn a modest $50,000, you would need ~360,000 monthly listeners. This doesn't seem sustainable without outside sources of revenue.
Correct, this is why bands tour and sell shirts and other merch, and for most, work second jobs. As an anecdote, friend of mine is in two or three bands at any given time and bartends most nights he’s not playing shows.
Spotify makes it easier than ever for an artist to get their work out there, which is great, but it’s similar to the publishing world, where most authors who self publish do so into the void.
That's $800/month for a tiny artist that would otherwise be making about $0/month.
> I don't tour, I don't sell merch and I'm not on a major label. I'm just a small indie artist making music in my evenings— and Spotify is making that possible.
> This doesn't seem sustainable without outside sources of revenue.
The reality for most creators, really. There's way more supply than demand and you have to contend with power laws.
The top ~1% of books, movies, games, music, youtube videos, twitch streams, HN threads, etc, always dominate. Capturing ~80% of attention/money. The distribution falls off rapidly with a long tail, which is unsustainable for most.
As far as I know, even famous indie artists you listen to and whose concerts you go to often have to work day jobs. Most are working class. There's not a lot of money being a musician.
I pay for Google Play Music which is similar to Spotify. I wish I knew how much of my money was going to which artists I listen to, but I suspect the result is disappointing. $10 a month is far more than I would spend on music otherwise and if even half of it went to artists I listen to, then I'd be supporting them reasonably well IMO. It should add up decently. I kind of doubt that it does.
I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action lawsuit by the artists for the conflict-of-interest the labels have with Spotify. Sony, Universal and Warner Music all owned stakes in Spotify and it was against the interests of artists to offer Spotify content in exchange for razor thin royalties.
He's doing this part time. A full-time music producer could easily make more/better music, especially if she is not touring. For perspective, an electronic artist I admire, Zhu, was once producing an entire song every single week. There is, however, no substitute for 'talent.'
> Plus I think asking listeners to listen to a full-length album don’t make sense in our attention-starved world. Asking listeners to listen to a single song might just be a more realistic ask.
This is why I love listening to albums, because it flies in the face of throwaway/hyper-consumable media. Spotify, with its algorithmic playlists and singles focus, bolsters the throwaway consumption of music, but many artists also enjoy the long tail of revenue from album streams. If an artist creates an album with lasting appeal, they can smooth out the initial spike of physical sales with a long slow burn of revenue.
> I worried that readers would not trust this arrangement [affiliate links] when I first started. But in practice it hasn't been a big issue. In fact, readers ask me which links to click to ensure I get my commission. Honestly, negativity about my business model is more likely to come from a community like Hacker News than it is from my readers.
I made a surprising find on Spotify not so long ago. One of their curated playlists - Techno Bunker [1] - algorithmically mixes from track to track, like a fairly competent DJ, and it does it even if you turn on shuffle. There may be others, but this is the only one I've found so far.
This is amazing, and I'm surprised this isn't noted down in the playlist description, nor anywhere else. It doesn't simply crossfade, it matches beats up much like a human would. This is insanely neat and such a nice find.
I am not hearing this -- I'm hearing 1 to 2 seconds of silence as one song ends and the next song starts.
In my spotify preferences I have "Crossfade" disabled, but there is now a new setting that I haven't seen before: "Automix -- Allow smooth transitions between songs in a playlist". This is enabled.
His comment on albums is interesting. It seems like he's given up on getting press, so albums don't make as much sense for him, but music critics are still the major driver for who gets listens in the non-pop music space. I don't see albums disappearing for that reason. I also enjoy listening to albums much more than singles, but that could just be me.
You can imagine my astonishment when someone I know, a deejay and producer, came to me several months ago, at a club, with the very unexpected answer of 'how to run more Ubuntus on one box' ?!
Because... he wanted to have them subscribe and then click and play a list of alter-ego-monikers of himself, who release to unknown probably ghost-audience in Spotify
Making money in the way - without releases, without gigs.
And it is exactly 600-800$ per month he cited as the amount he made from one alter ego with several albums.
Somehow I'm sure there are others out there doing the same.
I'm leaving for folks here to imagine and comment how relevant would soon Spotify be for indie artists that will be competing with such Spotify click-botnets...
With great power comes great responsibility, Spotify Data Scientists.
If discover weekly is truly that impactful a decision made by a model to include or not include a song could determine whether or not an indie artist can pay their rent that month.
Not quite iris dataset classification.
Edit: I should clarify that I only mean that this impact raises interesting questions and DSs (I am one) should pay close attention to the impact of their models.
Speaking of carving out a niche on Spotify.... If your kid ever asks Siri/Google/Alexa to play the poop song a few cents of royalties goes to Matt Farley aka the Toiletbowl Cleaners. It’s quite fascinating https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Farley
> According to Farley, one song that contains only the word "poop" repeated over and over generates $500 in streaming revenue every month as of 2018, likely in part because children request it from Alexa or other devices.[4][5][6] Farley earned over $23,000 in 2013 from his song catalog.
I feel Spotify makes it hard to listen to albums. I can queue up a song to play and it’ll then get back to my playlist, but if I play and album eventually it’ll reach the end and quit playing anything. Then I will have to stop what I’m doing and find something else to play.
I feel the UX could be improved and it might change listening habits similar to Discover Weekly
> Albums are big statements. Some of the most iconic releases in popular music have been albums.
On the contrary, most of the greatest contemporary hits was singles. I can't remember really bold and moving statements in the form of albums, except maybe "The Wall". Classic composers never wrote albums,their large forms were symfonies and opera - whole pieces of separate parts.
Albums was invented by vinyl/CD music industry and will die with them.
> In my experience, major label artists have an easier time getting on editorial playlists. ... But major label artists also only typically get 13% - 20% of streaming royalties… so there are still plenty of reasons to stay indie!
This is just like the tradeoff startups make when they choose to take VC.
Will giving up 80% of the company lead to the company being at least five times bigger? If so, then it seems worthwhile.
Very interesting read. I have never made any music but I am compelled by the idea of starting some time in the future. I have always thought that releasing music on Spotify was nothing that could ever bring in any revenue but it seems I was a bit wrong on that.
[+] [-] vannevar|5 years ago|reply
In my experience, it’s only when I get on an editorial playlist that my songs get heavily featured on algorithmic playlists like Discover Weekly.
So how do you get on editorial playlists? I sincerely have no clue. I've been on editorial playlists 16 times but I have no idea how to replicate that.
I find that this is true of many of these "I made X dollars per month doing Y!" articles: somewhere in the chain of events, there is a fateful intervention out of the control of the author that propels them to a higher tier of income than their peers who are otherwise following the same procedures.
[+] [-] VBprogrammer|5 years ago|reply
Comparatively, my dad has a moderately successful youtube channel, his most popular video has 18m views, and the next 3m. He has 66k subscribers. In an average month he'd earn ~£300 or so. Though usually quite a lot more around Christmas.
[+] [-] virgilp|5 years ago|reply
"We did X, Y, Z. Oh and we also got lucky".
It's not that X, Y, Z is necessarily bad advice, just that obviously nobody really knows how to be successful with anything. The closest you get is to know things that improve/decrease your odds.
[+] [-] JavaOffScript|5 years ago|reply
I do. Track down whoever at spotify controls those playlists and offer them money.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola
[+] [-] hammock|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheSoftwareGuy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jv22222|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m3kw9|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wilshire_nc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] volkk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tarsinge|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] njovin|5 years ago|reply
Create few playlists and add songs you like to them and also be diligent about liking and unliking songs. These will heavily influence your recommendations and you should be able to get back on track.
[+] [-] kleer001|5 years ago|reply
It reminds me of Cronenberg's "The Fly" where Brundle had to teach his teleporting pod to reproduce living tissue rather than interpret it.
[+] [-] faramarz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aeturnum|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steve_adams_86|5 years ago|reply
Great
[+] [-] Alupis|5 years ago|reply
Now that Pandora lets you make your own playlists, or listen to individual songs, and download for offline playback (on airplanes for example), I don't see any compelling reason to switch to Spotify these days.
[+] [-] rainforest|5 years ago|reply
There are weird pockets of the Spotify database for this (e.g. "lo-fi beats" artists that churn out hundreds of tracks with many artists) and no way to send any feedback (they shut down Line-In, their metadata feedback a few years ago). Disliking doesn't work because Spotify will only remember you don't like one of the artists, not all of them.
[+] [-] aczerepinski|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boplicity|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sharkweek|5 years ago|reply
Spotify makes it easier than ever for an artist to get their work out there, which is great, but it’s similar to the publishing world, where most authors who self publish do so into the void.
[+] [-] john-shaffer|5 years ago|reply
> I don't tour, I don't sell merch and I'm not on a major label. I'm just a small indie artist making music in my evenings— and Spotify is making that possible.
In other words, it's a hobby.
[+] [-] 3pt14159|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Reedx|5 years ago|reply
The reality for most creators, really. There's way more supply than demand and you have to contend with power laws.
The top ~1% of books, movies, games, music, youtube videos, twitch streams, HN threads, etc, always dominate. Capturing ~80% of attention/money. The distribution falls off rapidly with a long tail, which is unsustainable for most.
[+] [-] Scoundreller|5 years ago|reply
But then again, saying the same thing about Youtube doesn’t quite sound the same.
[+] [-] notJim|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tgb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schoolornot|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thisisbrians|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] speedgoose|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schnable|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fuball63|5 years ago|reply
This is why I love listening to albums, because it flies in the face of throwaway/hyper-consumable media. Spotify, with its algorithmic playlists and singles focus, bolsters the throwaway consumption of music, but many artists also enjoy the long tail of revenue from album streams. If an artist creates an album with lasting appeal, they can smooth out the initial spike of physical sales with a long slow burn of revenue.
[+] [-] oht|5 years ago|reply
It's interesting to see him use SEO to describe algorithmic playlists. He would know, SEO is a huge part of his other business.
[1] https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/besting-the-competiti...
[+] [-] capableweb|5 years ago|reply
> I worried that readers would not trust this arrangement [affiliate links] when I first started. But in practice it hasn't been a big issue. In fact, readers ask me which links to click to ensure I get my commission. Honestly, negativity about my business model is more likely to come from a community like Hacker News than it is from my readers.
[+] [-] drcongo|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX6J5NfMJS675?si=...
[+] [-] Etheryte|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eminence32|5 years ago|reply
In my spotify preferences I have "Crossfade" disabled, but there is now a new setting that I haven't seen before: "Automix -- Allow smooth transitions between songs in a playlist". This is enabled.
I wonder if "crossfade" also needs to be enabled
[+] [-] colinmhayes|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] larodi|5 years ago|reply
Because... he wanted to have them subscribe and then click and play a list of alter-ego-monikers of himself, who release to unknown probably ghost-audience in Spotify
Making money in the way - without releases, without gigs.
And it is exactly 600-800$ per month he cited as the amount he made from one alter ego with several albums.
Somehow I'm sure there are others out there doing the same.
I'm leaving for folks here to imagine and comment how relevant would soon Spotify be for indie artists that will be competing with such Spotify click-botnets...
[+] [-] smeeth|5 years ago|reply
If discover weekly is truly that impactful a decision made by a model to include or not include a song could determine whether or not an indie artist can pay their rent that month.
Not quite iris dataset classification.
Edit: I should clarify that I only mean that this impact raises interesting questions and DSs (I am one) should pay close attention to the impact of their models.
[+] [-] leonardteo|5 years ago|reply
> According to Farley, one song that contains only the word "poop" repeated over and over generates $500 in streaming revenue every month as of 2018, likely in part because children request it from Alexa or other devices.[4][5][6] Farley earned over $23,000 in 2013 from his song catalog.
[+] [-] jdxcode|5 years ago|reply
I feel the UX could be improved and it might change listening habits similar to Discover Weekly
[+] [-] SergeAx|5 years ago|reply
On the contrary, most of the greatest contemporary hits was singles. I can't remember really bold and moving statements in the form of albums, except maybe "The Wall". Classic composers never wrote albums,their large forms were symfonies and opera - whole pieces of separate parts.
Albums was invented by vinyl/CD music industry and will die with them.
[+] [-] bambax|5 years ago|reply
https://www.stevebenjamins.com/blog/spotify-and-discover-wee...
Still it would be better if the posts had a date.
I have 14 "weekly" listeners on Spotify but I only started a month ago. Still, I'm short of ideas on how to grow this.
[+] [-] avipars|5 years ago|reply
Off-topic question: When a song gets covered/made into an instrumental version by a 3rd party on Spotify , who gets paid for the plays?
The original recording artist or the 3rd party?
[+] [-] tinman25|5 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00sy6_jv7Lc
[+] [-] michaelbuckbee|5 years ago|reply
I suppose this is peanuts compared to what a radio play is, etc. but strikes me as fairly reasonable?
[+] [-] jedberg|5 years ago|reply
This is just like the tradeoff startups make when they choose to take VC.
Will giving up 80% of the company lead to the company being at least five times bigger? If so, then it seems worthwhile.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ecmascript|5 years ago|reply
Really nice blogpost!