Spotify siphons yet more income artists should be getting into corporate coffers and Daniel Ek's bank account.
No music lover should be using Spotify. They are notorious for driving the downward trend in streaming payments to artists.
They are arguably worse than the worst of the old Music Industry we were taught to hate in "tech disruptor culture 1.0".
Bandcamp revenue goes straight to artists, largely. I got 89 out of 99 dollars paid on a release of mine.
I think the intersection of people that are upset about a free recommendation API being cancelled and people who want a music platform that pays artists fairly is essentially zero.
I have used Spotify Audio Features API to display albums and playlist on a radar charts showing acousticness, instrumentalness, energy etc. And to make recomendations (generate playlists) for similiar music based on these charateristics.
It has been fun project but now I am glad that I have never considered making anything serious out of it.
I did this project because my impression is that Spotify had been always trying to steer me not to music that I like but to music that Spotify makes most money of. It had always been paid promotions over user's tastes in music.
And I am not on Spotify anymore for years now. Apple Music have really tasteful recommendations and music curation.
On the API front, the endpoint that's being killed that was most interesting to me is actually their music analysis one. That was super-nerdy fun to fuck around with, I had a half-finished project on that with an old job. Totally interested in hearing of feature-parity alternatives I can run locally. I'd also thought I'd sometime get around to doing some network analysis with related artists too.
I honestly don't find Spotify's recommendations all that great. I definitely experienced a broadening (perhaps deepening) of my listening early on, but my experience has been that the recommendations are pretty shallow.
I find after throwing together a playlist with some stuff I like, it'll add a few more artists to my mental roster, then nothing. I'll get thrown around in the same loop with the same tunes and artists -- usually from the more famous albums.
I don't want to sound too much like the grouchy aging hipster that I am, but recommendations engines are just one of many ways of discovering music, and I feel like y'know, the old ways were better than just paying some company to do it for me. I'm talking here about being a regular on a local music scene, smoking weed with musicians, trading MP3s on the sneakernet.
Another thing where we just pay some money for "convenience", but are left with some hollow and empty algorithmic imitation of something we once loved.
Your LLM suggestion made me do a little sick in my mouth.
The cool thing that's gone now was the "Audio Features" endpoint ( https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/referenc... ). You could easily get some important values about every song, now you would probably have to run your own analysis for every song you're interested in. That's a lot harder and slower if you don't want to preprocess every single song available.
I stay on Spotify because it has an open source client spotify-qt.
I use Firefox on BSD which doesn't have DRM support so the web versions of Apple Music and Deezer don't work properly. On Apple it only plays the first 30 seconds of each song and I forget what the problem was with Deezer.
Also a real app is way nicer than a web interface of course. And with libspotify I can even change songs that play on my mobile and control it through home assistant.
None of the others allow third party clients or open source. Sure it's a niche reason but this is the reason I'm on Spotify and not somewhere else. I've tried other platforms for a month but it was crap.
I only listen to big artists anyway that are well compensated.
I got spotify a year ago because I needed an easy way to just put on some decent music from a playlist a friend sent me when I had people over. Since then I've realized that basically any song that I want to listen to is on there. Am I missing out on a better experience on some other platform? If so, which one and why is it better?
How can you say that? Spotify held a moment early on where it was built upon pirated mp3s. At that time it was the easy way to listen to anything for free.
I remember the time where there was no party without constant Spotify ads running over the speaker, that's the only type of free account I know of.
Other than that my point was how incomplete it is and always was. It could be nice as additional catalogue to my music, but for me it's missing to many of my favourite songs to use it as main driver.
Edit:// in Switzerland downloading music for private use is no crime. So the initial situation was different I guess.
And they didn't start with illegal MP3s. They did have an ad-supported free tier from the start though. But it was not illegal. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify
I think it's napster you're thinking of. That was an illegal sharing platform and now a mediocre paid service.
It might be Grooveshark that they're thinking of, it was notorious for quickly reuploading content that was taken down by DMCA requests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooveshark
Doesn't affect existing apps with extended mode access, for which you have to apply and be approved. Gives you a higher ratelimit so you can ship to production. Plenty of people (me included) build small widgets for themselves without bothering to apply for extended.
And when one is building this kind of a music server, please support your favourite artists!
Ideally, if they have a Bandcamp or something similar, where you can directly buy their tracks and albums from them, do that. Usually this means that you can get access to high-quality FLACs and whatnot, but it will also mean that more money will go directly to the artists (usually money going to the record label and whatnot is unavoidable even with this, but there will still be fewer people in the middle).
And well, if that's not a thing, then at least try to buy the tracks from somewhere, so that they at least see some return on their efforts. Maybe physical CDs and the like. The point is just to be able to support your favourite artists!
Your suggestions are fine, but if you really want to support your favorite musicians, you should attend their concerts and buy merchandise there. They personally get far more profit from ticket sales and merch sales than from selling music directly. And of course, the concert experience is something way beyond just listening to a track from Bandcamp or a CD.
Uhm, is that actually true? How is the $10 I spend on a digital album on Bandcamp not 90%+ profit for the band? Sure, maybe the overpriced T-shirt has a bit more profit as a raw number, but realistically, I'm going to buy a band's merch the one time I see them every 3-5 years (assuming they stay together and tour for that long). If they release music more frequently, I would suspect buying a digital album is more sustainable long term.
I think this is also why you see bands like Weezer releasing more niche EPs/LPs. Heck, look at jam bands like Phish or Dave Matthews who release every single live show online as a separate album for fans to also buy to relive the experience they had at a particular show. The hardcore fans will buy the music, so it's in the band's best interest to "keep shipping" and record as much as possible.
This is a myth unfortunately. Unless you are a really big name artist - or a mod-level or above artist doing a show in your home town - the economics of live and touring for most musicians mean they are more likely to lose money than make money.
Imagine a band with four or five members doing a 20 date tour in 1000 cap venues where tickets are $40 each. Maths looks good, right? $40,000 a night! $800k for the tour, and then you can sell a bunch of merch an easily make $1 million. Great!
No.
A touring band might sell out every night of the tour but more likely it’s going to be 70-80% occupancy. So let’s call it 75%. Suddenly that $800k drops to $600k.
But then you need to pay the venue/promoter a big chunk of that. Depending on what the promoter is providing that could be as much as 40-50%
Let’s go with a conservative 40%.
You’re down to $360k now.
But you’ve still got to pay all the costs of the tour.
A 20 date tour probably means 25 days on the road, at least.
A tour bus that could fit 4 or 5 people plus tour manager (yes, you need one) and a tech/roadie/sound engineer to get the set up right in each venue (let’s say you’ve got one person who can do all of this) is going to cost $1500 a day for the vehicle. Add in mileage, which is often about $5+ per mile. So that 20 date tour with 25 days on the road, and 4000 miles (coast to coast) will cost you maybe $57.5k for the tour bus and driver and mileage. (Gas, insurance etc are covered by the per mile charges that tour bus operators charge). You’re going to need to park the tour bus during the day. That’s maybe $200 a day. More in some cities.
You’re down to $300k now.
But wait - no one has been paid yet!
The tour manager will easily cost $450 per day or more - and there will be days require for planning (“advancing”) the tour and wrap up days. So the 25 date tour might need 5 days advancing and two days post-tour admin. That’s $14400, so call it $15k.
Your technician will cost about the same. Maybe less, but you want someone who can do three things, so let’s call your manager plus tech/sound engineer $30k.
We are down to $240k now.
At this point it’s worth mentioning that the artist’s manager and billing agent commission on the “gross” - the entire amount the artist gets before costs - the $360k fee from tickets after the promoter’s share. Those commissions are typically 20% to manager and 15% to agent. So we need to deduct another $126k.
That gives $114k left.
None of the band members have been paid yet.
But, also, they need a support act for each show. If each support act gets $500 then that’s another $10k gone. $104k left.
Everyone needs a per diem! 7 people on the road, plus driver. They all need coffees, water, laundry, dry cleaning, gym passes, cough medicine, whatever, plus a “buy-out” for meals. So let’s make sure everyone has $60 a day for the buy-out and another $20 for incidentals. $16k. $88k left.
The tour - and all the gear - hasn’t been insured yet, and the band and crew don’t have insurance for medical emergencies while touring. Let’s say that’s going to cost another $3k total.
And then everyone needs flights and cabs at the end of the tour to get home. They’ll have excess luggage and instruments. So let’s call that $1500 each. Another $10k.
That’s means there’s $75k left.
The band needs to rehearse and build their live show. So that’s probably a couple of weeks rehearsal, planning, etc. So that’s a 40 day commitment.
Five people, 40 days, $75k. Each band member walks away with $15k - or $375 a day.
But how often are you going be doing a tour of that scale? Once a year probably. And touring is gruelling.
If you’re playing bigger venues with higher ticket prices there is more money - but costs can also scale.
To make $75k from bandcamp you need to sell maybe 10,000 $10 albums.
To make $75k from streaming you’d need maybe 18-20 million streams.
And you can do that without the crippling costs of touring.
Sure, if you’re on a label you’re going to get a lot less.
But touring isn’t a magic money tree, and it’s hard work.
> As we continue to review the experience provided on Spotify for Developers, we've decided to roll out a number of measures with the aim of creating a more secure platform.
I'm sorry but more secure platform to what extent exactly?
They're breaking tooling because someone might know what I'm listening to? This is so frustrating along with getting a Spotify update almost every morning.
I think you are talking about "Get Featured Playlists", which is more geared towards Spotify created playlists, which is under the 'Browse' tab in Spotify.
> Third party integrations continue to play an important role in the way users can experience the Spotify experience through third party apps. We evaluate the set up of our platform on an ongoing basis and remain committed to ensuring it provides the best possible opportunities for developers, artists, creators and listeners.
Has the same ring as "we value your privacy. That’s why we and our 739 partners want to track everything you do, link it to your real ID and sell it off to anyone willing to buy."
Spotify announced they have shut down several API endpoints, effective immediately. They have grandfathered in existing apps that have extended mode Web API access.
Spotify siphons yet more income artists should be getting into corporate coffers and Daniel Ek's bank account.
No music lover should be using Spotify. They are notorious for driving the downward trend in streaming payments to artists. They are arguably worse than the worst of the old Music Industry we were taught to hate in "tech disruptor culture 1.0".
Bandcamp revenue goes straight to artists, largely. I got 89 out of 99 dollars paid on a release of mine.
If I had bought a CD every 2nd month for 10 years I would have had 60 albums. That is about what Spotify costs.
Spotify has been making the music field even more winner takes it all than the old status quo.
> arguably worse than the worst of the old <insert industry> we were taught to hate in "tech disruptor culture 1.0"
Always has been (meme)
Whatever happened to "app fairness"? Oh, right -- Fairness For Me, Not For Thee.
Spotify pays 70% of revenue to music rights holders.
They aren't profitable.
They are: https://www.statista.com/chart/26773/profitability-developme...
Maybe, for the first time ever.
Though historically when Spotify has come close to making a profit, record labels see it as an opportunity to demand more or pull out.
Small bands can't have fans revenue from recordings in the same way as before, since they share pot with Tailor Swift and bot farms.
It doesn't matter if its 70 or 99.99%.
Good to point out and I’m with you but… fwiw…
I think the intersection of people that are upset about a free recommendation API being cancelled and people who want a music platform that pays artists fairly is essentially zero.
So yeah
I have used Spotify Audio Features API to display albums and playlist on a radar charts showing acousticness, instrumentalness, energy etc. And to make recomendations (generate playlists) for similiar music based on these charateristics.
It has been fun project but now I am glad that I have never considered making anything serious out of it.
I did this project because my impression is that Spotify had been always trying to steer me not to music that I like but to music that Spotify makes most money of. It had always been paid promotions over user's tastes in music.
And I am not on Spotify anymore for years now. Apple Music have really tasteful recommendations and music curation.
This is very sad, and another nudge away from Spotify for me.
I remember the API being a motivator for signing up, and I've hacked together a few toys with it over the years.
Realistically now, the only benefit Spotify provides over my MP3 collection is that it's better organised.
Why?
Iiuc this is just about APIs for the recommendation engine
It’s never been easier to generate recommendations (eg via LLMs and other routes)
The core functionality otherwise remains unchanged in the API
On the API front, the endpoint that's being killed that was most interesting to me is actually their music analysis one. That was super-nerdy fun to fuck around with, I had a half-finished project on that with an old job. Totally interested in hearing of feature-parity alternatives I can run locally. I'd also thought I'd sometime get around to doing some network analysis with related artists too.
I honestly don't find Spotify's recommendations all that great. I definitely experienced a broadening (perhaps deepening) of my listening early on, but my experience has been that the recommendations are pretty shallow.
I find after throwing together a playlist with some stuff I like, it'll add a few more artists to my mental roster, then nothing. I'll get thrown around in the same loop with the same tunes and artists -- usually from the more famous albums.
I don't want to sound too much like the grouchy aging hipster that I am, but recommendations engines are just one of many ways of discovering music, and I feel like y'know, the old ways were better than just paying some company to do it for me. I'm talking here about being a regular on a local music scene, smoking weed with musicians, trading MP3s on the sneakernet.
Another thing where we just pay some money for "convenience", but are left with some hollow and empty algorithmic imitation of something we once loved.
Your LLM suggestion made me do a little sick in my mouth.
The cool thing that's gone now was the "Audio Features" endpoint ( https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/referenc... ). You could easily get some important values about every song, now you would probably have to run your own analysis for every song you're interested in. That's a lot harder and slower if you don't want to preprocess every single song available.
Musicbrainz Picard + PlexAmp is a pretty good solution.
Picard sets _all_ the metadata on the music and PlexAmp uses it to create playlists with the OpenAI API.
Nice, thanks for the rec. I'd seen beets as well which also looks good.
Spotify is definitely the lowest hanging fruit for culling on my subscription list. The API was very much part of the value proposition.
I don't believe it's even that good a deal for artists. I heard the mighty Snoop Dogg makes like USD 40K a year off it or something stupid like that.
Apple Music and Tidal play multiple times more to artists.
People are staying on Spotify just because of inertia and because "everyone" is there, not because it's the best at anything any more.
I stay on Spotify because it has an open source client spotify-qt.
I use Firefox on BSD which doesn't have DRM support so the web versions of Apple Music and Deezer don't work properly. On Apple it only plays the first 30 seconds of each song and I forget what the problem was with Deezer.
Also a real app is way nicer than a web interface of course. And with libspotify I can even change songs that play on my mobile and control it through home assistant.
None of the others allow third party clients or open source. Sure it's a niche reason but this is the reason I'm on Spotify and not somewhere else. I've tried other platforms for a month but it was crap.
I only listen to big artists anyway that are well compensated.
I got spotify a year ago because I needed an easy way to just put on some decent music from a playlist a friend sent me when I had people over. Since then I've realized that basically any song that I want to listen to is on there. Am I missing out on a better experience on some other platform? If so, which one and why is it better?
Sound quality is better and they pay artists more. That's about it.
UI quality is a subjective thing.
It never was. The idea of using a limited catalog as the sole source of my music content is like assuming Netflix is all you need on a TV.
How can you say that? Spotify held a moment early on where it was built upon pirated mp3s. At that time it was the easy way to listen to anything for free.
I remember the time where there was no party without constant Spotify ads running over the speaker, that's the only type of free account I know of.
Other than that my point was how incomplete it is and always was. It could be nice as additional catalogue to my music, but for me it's missing to many of my favourite songs to use it as main driver.
Edit:// in Switzerland downloading music for private use is no crime. So the initial situation was different I guess.
Spotify is from Sweden, not Switzerland.
And they didn't start with illegal MP3s. They did have an ad-supported free tier from the start though. But it was not illegal. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify
I think it's napster you're thinking of. That was an illegal sharing platform and now a mediocre paid service.
It might be Grooveshark that they're thinking of, it was notorious for quickly reuploading content that was taken down by DMCA requests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooveshark
Citation needed.
Spotify pays 70% of their revenue to music rights holders.
Unfortunately, this breaks a lot of custom python programs I was using to facilitate music discovery and to generate playlists for myself.
It doesn’t affect existing apps
> Applications with existing extended mode Web API access that were relying on these endpoints remain unaffected by this change.
> These changes will impact the following Web API applications:
- Existing apps that are still in development mode without a pending extension request
- New apps that are registered on or after today's date
Most people writing small scripts were probably using an API key with development mode.
Doesn't affect existing apps with extended mode access, for which you have to apply and be approved. Gives you a higher ratelimit so you can ship to production. Plenty of people (me included) build small widgets for themselves without bothering to apply for extended.
Any great discoveries you mightn’t have made otherwise?
Are any alternative APIs (non Spotify) available for the functionality being deprecated in this notice?
Not any good ones unfortunately! Great opportunity for someone to make one while other platforms are still scrapeable.
You don’t need to scrape other platforms. LLMs are already probably pretty darn good at this.
Can LLMs analyze song features (danceability, instrumentalness, speechiness, tempo)?
Godspeed to all the OSS Adversarial Interoperability reverse engineers! APIs should be a digital human right.
De-enshittify by any means necessary!
Companies are going to continue to enshittify as long as customers refuse to leave them. There's no incentive not to.
People who want to do stuff like making custom apps or scripts that use these APIs should instead be building their own music servers.
And when one is building this kind of a music server, please support your favourite artists!
Ideally, if they have a Bandcamp or something similar, where you can directly buy their tracks and albums from them, do that. Usually this means that you can get access to high-quality FLACs and whatnot, but it will also mean that more money will go directly to the artists (usually money going to the record label and whatnot is unavoidable even with this, but there will still be fewer people in the middle).
And well, if that's not a thing, then at least try to buy the tracks from somewhere, so that they at least see some return on their efforts. Maybe physical CDs and the like. The point is just to be able to support your favourite artists!
Your suggestions are fine, but if you really want to support your favorite musicians, you should attend their concerts and buy merchandise there. They personally get far more profit from ticket sales and merch sales than from selling music directly. And of course, the concert experience is something way beyond just listening to a track from Bandcamp or a CD.
Uhm, is that actually true? How is the $10 I spend on a digital album on Bandcamp not 90%+ profit for the band? Sure, maybe the overpriced T-shirt has a bit more profit as a raw number, but realistically, I'm going to buy a band's merch the one time I see them every 3-5 years (assuming they stay together and tour for that long). If they release music more frequently, I would suspect buying a digital album is more sustainable long term.
I think this is also why you see bands like Weezer releasing more niche EPs/LPs. Heck, look at jam bands like Phish or Dave Matthews who release every single live show online as a separate album for fans to also buy to relive the experience they had at a particular show. The hardcore fans will buy the music, so it's in the band's best interest to "keep shipping" and record as much as possible.
This is a myth unfortunately. Unless you are a really big name artist - or a mod-level or above artist doing a show in your home town - the economics of live and touring for most musicians mean they are more likely to lose money than make money.
Imagine a band with four or five members doing a 20 date tour in 1000 cap venues where tickets are $40 each. Maths looks good, right? $40,000 a night! $800k for the tour, and then you can sell a bunch of merch an easily make $1 million. Great!
No.
A touring band might sell out every night of the tour but more likely it’s going to be 70-80% occupancy. So let’s call it 75%. Suddenly that $800k drops to $600k.
But then you need to pay the venue/promoter a big chunk of that. Depending on what the promoter is providing that could be as much as 40-50%
Let’s go with a conservative 40%.
You’re down to $360k now.
But you’ve still got to pay all the costs of the tour.
A 20 date tour probably means 25 days on the road, at least.
A tour bus that could fit 4 or 5 people plus tour manager (yes, you need one) and a tech/roadie/sound engineer to get the set up right in each venue (let’s say you’ve got one person who can do all of this) is going to cost $1500 a day for the vehicle. Add in mileage, which is often about $5+ per mile. So that 20 date tour with 25 days on the road, and 4000 miles (coast to coast) will cost you maybe $57.5k for the tour bus and driver and mileage. (Gas, insurance etc are covered by the per mile charges that tour bus operators charge). You’re going to need to park the tour bus during the day. That’s maybe $200 a day. More in some cities.
You’re down to $300k now.
But wait - no one has been paid yet!
The tour manager will easily cost $450 per day or more - and there will be days require for planning (“advancing”) the tour and wrap up days. So the 25 date tour might need 5 days advancing and two days post-tour admin. That’s $14400, so call it $15k.
Your technician will cost about the same. Maybe less, but you want someone who can do three things, so let’s call your manager plus tech/sound engineer $30k.
We are down to $240k now.
At this point it’s worth mentioning that the artist’s manager and billing agent commission on the “gross” - the entire amount the artist gets before costs - the $360k fee from tickets after the promoter’s share. Those commissions are typically 20% to manager and 15% to agent. So we need to deduct another $126k.
That gives $114k left.
None of the band members have been paid yet.
But, also, they need a support act for each show. If each support act gets $500 then that’s another $10k gone. $104k left.
Everyone needs a per diem! 7 people on the road, plus driver. They all need coffees, water, laundry, dry cleaning, gym passes, cough medicine, whatever, plus a “buy-out” for meals. So let’s make sure everyone has $60 a day for the buy-out and another $20 for incidentals. $16k. $88k left.
The tour - and all the gear - hasn’t been insured yet, and the band and crew don’t have insurance for medical emergencies while touring. Let’s say that’s going to cost another $3k total.
And then everyone needs flights and cabs at the end of the tour to get home. They’ll have excess luggage and instruments. So let’s call that $1500 each. Another $10k.
That’s means there’s $75k left.
The band needs to rehearse and build their live show. So that’s probably a couple of weeks rehearsal, planning, etc. So that’s a 40 day commitment.
Five people, 40 days, $75k. Each band member walks away with $15k - or $375 a day.
But how often are you going be doing a tour of that scale? Once a year probably. And touring is gruelling.
If you’re playing bigger venues with higher ticket prices there is more money - but costs can also scale.
To make $75k from bandcamp you need to sell maybe 10,000 $10 albums.
To make $75k from streaming you’d need maybe 18-20 million streams.
And you can do that without the crippling costs of touring.
Sure, if you’re on a label you’re going to get a lot less.
But touring isn’t a magic money tree, and it’s hard work.
Counter point, from a small touring punk band, Direct Hit!: You Don't Have to Lose Money on Tour https://www.vice.com/en/article/you-dont-have-to-lose-money-...
Have you ever heard of Direct Hit!? I think they squarely fit in the mid-level or below.
Of course that depends somewhat on the venue and the cut they take of ticket and merch sales too.
>Companies are going to continue to enshittify as long as customers refuse to leave them.
True but—
Also going to remain the case as long as customers refuse to pay for things they appreciate
PlexAMP is awesome
> As we continue to review the experience provided on Spotify for Developers, we've decided to roll out a number of measures with the aim of creating a more secure platform.
I'm sorry but more secure platform to what extent exactly?
They're breaking tooling because someone might know what I'm listening to? This is so frustrating along with getting a Spotify update almost every morning.
Long time ago, spotify allowed us to create, modify our playlists through end points. Now, it's impossible.
When did this stop being supported by Spotify?
https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/referenc...
https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/referenc...
https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/referenc...
I think you are talking about "Get Featured Playlists", which is more geared towards Spotify created playlists, which is under the 'Browse' tab in Spotify.
> Kills API
> Third party integrations continue to play an important role in the way users can experience the Spotify experience through third party apps. We evaluate the set up of our platform on an ongoing basis and remain committed to ensuring it provides the best possible opportunities for developers, artists, creators and listeners.
Read that as: Hell yeah, we're gonna enshittify.
Has the same ring as "we value your privacy. That’s why we and our 739 partners want to track everything you do, link it to your real ID and sell it off to anyone willing to buy."
Spotify announced they have shut down several API endpoints, effective immediately. They have grandfathered in existing apps that have extended mode Web API access.