Spotify's Phony War On Bots
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- čas přidán 31. 05. 2024
- The reason all my music was deleted is actually terrifying.
Cameos by @CurtissKingTV and @Weaverbeats in the beginning.
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0:00 - All of my music was banned
4:15 - This isn't uncommon
5:08 - The history of digital distro
10:28 - Fake fake streams
13:12 - Truth Bombs
15:32 - MuSiC iS LiKe FoOtBaLL RiGhT? - Věda a technologie
Spotify not paying out royalties until someone hits a threshold, is completely illegal in Australia.
🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺
Spotifys policy is universal (here in the states too)
very interesting, I'd like to check it out
do you have any reference to that?
Spotify really angers me. They complain about Apple and yet when Apple released an open API so music services or apps can tap into AirPlay2 (for multiroom streaming to non-Apple devices, and HomePods, and AirPort Expresses of which I have several) way back in 2018, they are yet to implement it. People on the spotify forums have been clamouring for it for years. My podcast app supports it even. Spotify said they would do this a few times, but here we are nearly 6 years later. So Spotify forced me to use Apple Music instead. Which sucks for them, and it sucks for me. Also, their Mac app when installed runs at launch on every startup. It used to by default use the microphone to listen to audio in your environment to know what song is playing nearby (even from the radio in the room!) luckily they no longer do this - however it's super invasive still. If you're not signed into a spotify account, you CANNOT disable launch of the app at login every time the computer boots. You have to be signed into a spotify account and only then can you access the settings, and hidden under advanced you'll find allowing spotify to launch minimised at startup, and you set that to no, to stop it loading. Just very user hostile.
@@darwiniandude At least on windows you can disable any app launching on startup from the startup apps tab in the task manager, is there nothing similar on mac?
This is literally the plot of Rush's 2112 album, where high priests control all music and decide what everyone gets to hear.
It's worse than that. The high priests of music have set up an elaborate scam where they defraud the people submitting music for inclusion, and then pay them a pittance if anything. And have now gotten to the part where they randomly excommunicate some of those people and keep the money they were owed.
The high priests made a mistake this time, because they did it to someone well respected with a lot of people to raise a stink. But they pulled out a fig leaf to cover their sin and it will all go away in a minute or two.
OH YES WE KNOW
IT'S NOTHING NEW
IT'S JUST A WASTE OF TIME!!!
Good call. One of the greatest pieces of music ever!
I have often viewed modern times as analogous to the hardships of medieval times.
But, _this_ time it’s not about religion per se - it’s about “the economy”. Rather, the model of economy that we are taught to be the only correct one for decades.
The issue is simply our _faith_ in that economic model - however you’d like to name it.
So, no priests. Just banks, CEO’s and nearly every politician. We are not smarter than we were 600 years ago, are we…? 😅
Yup. The problem in our real
world version of that is that many, many people are complicit with the gatekeepers/"priests" as long as the priesthood is censoring in favor of their preferences. It keeps getting worse because people say "well it's okay to give them power to decide if it's in alignment with my worldview," thus creating the issue and it ultimately comes back around to bite them back too.
Actually it's a step further than that, art itself is seen as something that doesn't serve "the average" in the 2112 universe
Spotify erased all my music after 5 years and hundreds of thousands of plays claiming fake streams. CD baby offers no solution. Thanks Benn for speaking up. Something has to change.
Agree. So sorry this happened to you. Same here, my entire catalog was taken down in 2021 [by another distributor] for "fraudulent activity", but I never paid for any promo. They eventually reinstated my account and paid me my earnings (which they were going to keep) and said I could reupload my music but I lost all faith in the system. Now I just sell through my website and, fortunately, I do other things like production, mixing, synchs and film/tv work. I never knew others were having this issue until the wave of complaints lately. Thanks for posting this video, Benn. Definitely sharing!
Oh no... Im gearing up to start to put music out for the first time, and Watching these videos and getting informed about distrokid and tunecore and how they are moving had me thinking that cdbaby was the only option i should use to avoid all of this. Now reading this comment my heart sank. I have no idea what to do now. I dont think its wise to do direct to consumer yet as a completely unknown artist either...
This is all very discouraging
@@aje-olokunsChile I hear your concerns but I would try to focus on the positive. This news is out there now and many higher profile artists are trying to make changes, attorneys and politicians are jumping on this as well, and Benn and James Blake along with a few others are trying to work on new distribution methods and platforms. It might take a little time before things are "fixed" but consider working on your art a bit more, creating a social media presence, starting a YT channel, learning the ins and outs of the music business and making more music. You can always release on Bandcamp as well and start creating a fan list so that in the future you can sell direct. There's a lot you can do to prepare yourself for a long term career in this business. Wishing you the best and good luck! :)
@@aje-olokunsChile well maybe look into voice swap which is being made by the guy who made this video to avoid this stuff
@@aje-olokunsChilewatch til the end
There's only one question I want Spotify to answer, which is:
If they "know" the streams are botted, then why not just remove the streams and the bots?
I'm guessing the answer is the labels won't be happy to see their numbers reduce. And I'm also guessing 100% of the bots are from free ad-supported accounts, so keeping the bot numbers helps them sell to advertisers.
Didn't instagram do something like this, where they removed a bunch of bot-likes maybe 5 years ago or so? The outcry from the sweatshop-bikini advertisers -- I mean influencers was so great, that they actually reinstated some of those likes back.
Soundcloud. Never ever subbed once to Spotify. Why the hell.
Dingdingding! It's all a fuckin scam
Spotify should go to prison for it
Governments forget what the law is all about
Righteousness
Spotify is there to make software execs rich. Not to help artists.
we went from "get your name out there to mybe be able to live from your art" to "get you name out there, so when the middleman screws you over you have enough media attention to get your request heard." this is straight up criminal. i'm having my fingers crossed for all the artists who go through this struggle with their digital distro.
@@LuxLucidOfficial you trying to blame this on me now? hahahaha
this is the world we've built. look around you, every sector, every industry work like this, now
@@SKYENCE what?
@@SKYENCE oh you're asking me if everybody cared enough to do something, would anything change? Obviously yes "hahaha" wow what myopic selfishness, you are probably a child...
@@LuxLucidOfficialmkay. breathe deep and maybe read again. i absolutely don't know what you're on about.
The fact that content someone created, outside of scam and shit thrown at the wall, can have "negative value" is just insane...
The music industry is even more fucked up than the gaming industry...
capitalism, baby!
Ever host a minecraft server nobody played on? Server use costs money. If it doesnt make money, a business actively needs to get rid of it. How is this confusing? Buy real music. Download it. Keep it (for real)
@@x0360No, corporatism, NOT capitalism.
@@weschilton i don't know man, maybe we should hear this x0360 guy out so we can laugh at his fascist and or communist ramblings on a Better Future For Music Creators
@@weschilton Exact same outcome. You can't have "corporatism" without the logical progression from capitalism. It's capitalism and it will always end up in what you call "corporatism".
This kind of shit is why I always refuse to use Spotify and try to buy from the artist directly as much as possible
Yep CZcams music or actually physical media, so CD, DVD you own
@@annieinwonderland CZcams stamp out any music on videos, they are obsessed. Even background music in the car: Banned!
My friends always get frustrated with me on this topic, because I refuse to use any of those mainstream services. The closet I get to that is bandcamp, otherwise I'm buying the stuff and slapping it on my own streaming box.
Same, wish I could give more than one like.
@@G-ra-ha-mI listen to music all the time on CZcams, including background in the car. You need to become a subscriber, though.
I can so relate with your story differently & unfortunately. 4 platinum albums, 19 “real radio” top 40 singles, 13 Grammy nominations, millions & millions of airplay worldwide. And then … nothing but nothingness. My music sites bugged with invisible scripts, play counts wiped, it’s a rigged game. Thank you for sharing your story & speaking out.
Im a son of polish immigrants. Some of my most favorite nostalgic songs that I've heard growing up in the car are all wiped CLEAN off Spotify, maybe only with some crappy live version. I am so thankful I have it all in my dad's 25 year old CD pouch
What were some of those albums? 😢
I wish there was an alternative to Spotify. Most of my stuff that I actually want is on CDs although there's a few things that I recently found on Spotify that I like need to track down. Are you Spotify as a dip my toe in the pond see if I like some thing. But I also use it as an oh you wanna hear that song and I don't want to hear that song with the ads playing over a giant sound system between bands.
Yeah I'd rather own music than pay rent to some corrupt digital landlord for the privilege of listening to it. Same with movies. Maybe I'm a cave man but I just prefer not having to depend on internet access, subscription fees, and the whims of inscrutable megacorporations, or inscrutable AI algorithms, just to listen to some music or watch a movie.
@@delta-9969I forgot to mention I also have blue race Blu-rays and DVDs if I think it's good and worth Rewatching more than once and I can afford it. The only probably maintaining some sort of disc playback device and breaking copy protection to back up my DVDs and violating the DM.C.IA. I was talking to somebody who thought I was crazy and insane for saying that piracy is on the rise in and that's terribly unethical but the fact is it is. Why because the marketplace is not supplying demand in a reasonable way. And FYI half Polish, so this thread caught my attention also.
We're heading for everything's a subscription which is really freaking out the conspiracy theorists. There's all sorts of reasoning behind it but it couldn't be that we have money loving corporations that need to satisfy their board.
I buy all my music, put it on my own streaming server and have a daily backup to google drive just in case there is a fire or my server breaks beyond repair.
Seems like it would actually be better to just share music peer to peer, then set aside ten bucks a month and donate it to the artists you listened to.
this is the way.
This is what I do. Stick with just the payment platform as the only middleman if possible
Works for me. I would be 100% OK with "subscribing" for a tenner a month to increase the songs in my personal library by a dozen.
it doesn't seem that way, it is that way
That is better
This is another example of the sociopathic nature of corporate law.
please make a distro platform. I would honestly pay for it. I love your ethics and your ideals benn.
By the time it’s all over we’re gonna be playing acoustic instruments in a garage with a cassette tape recorder, hoping to get on AM radio.
Just imagine the helplessness if CZcams censored your voice after having all your albums disappear from all the other platforms. These tech companies have way way way too much power.
Apple has a bigger GDP than most countries. No person or company should have that much power.
Then payola comes back into use. How else are you going to get airplay?
My CZcams views dropped by 90% within a year - I have the feeling my channel is being shadow-ghosted as even most of my subscribers didn't know I'm still doing up to 5 videos a week - just with different content. OK, the algorithm is really dumb - if you watch a video on ONE topic, it spams you with similar content and shows you more stuff from totally unrelated channels than from the one you subscribed toas you really, really liked them. But still ... there's nothing I can do, I can burry my dreams (and maybe move on to TikTok 😵💫). Great.
You mean like how music began 😂
AM? But, video killed the radio star.
Then internet killed the video star.
Then streaming killed the internet and live performances.😢
AM stations are disappearing.🤔
This might be my biggest motivation for releasing my music on physical media types. You can't just delete 500 vinyls with a single click on a button. And I like the thought that, once i'm gone my music still exists as sign that I once existed on this planet.
Have you seen benns video on vinyl? 😅
@@DJDiskmachineLOL, yes I have, which is a good reason not to do it for sure. I guess i'm screwed either way.
Theres also these things called CDs you know
That doesn't matter when no-one seems interested in hearing the music in the first place. Or can't find it. Or said musicians cannot advertise in spaces where they get accused of self promotion etc etc. The challenge of GETTING ATTENTION remains.
Exactly. Why I purchase my DAW and music software. I don't do subscriptions on my music tools. I have multiple cd burners and I make hard copies of all my recordings, not depending on "the cloud" for storage. I print small batches (50 - 100) of CD's for each of my original music releases. Don't even get me started talking about CDBaby. I have one album released with them. I can't sell any copies of it because its available everywhere for free.
And they wonder why music piracy is rampant...
Somebody does need to sue Spotify and the big distributors. There should be a check and balance system for these companies. They say “suspicious activity” when you’re on a bunch of playlists because they suspect that you paid to be on playlists, yet the major labels all have deals with Spotify to get their music on the Spotify editorial playlists. So they’re essentially doing they same thing they’re taking people down for
You need to able to prove that in court , or else anyone can accuse anyone.
It's a simple power play , u can't afford a team of lawyers like they do. To win in court u probably need to be an insider who knows how they operate and be able to provide strong evidence at least!
In general atm plays/views/likes is an utterly exploitable system that needs to be removed because of non-transparency! Ppl that promote those promote shady business tictacs. "Life isn't fair" ...that doesn't mean you shouldn't try! ; ) I bet you wouldn't like to hear in court a judge tell you "so what life isn't fair" but it gets thrown around like a sex toy.
Good news! You can't. You literally cannot sue them, because they've paid for their own separate legal system called "arbitration" and the real legal system said "sure, that seems legit, case dismissed."
“Poor people just can’t write music” LOL.
The music industry is more open minded about this. Something like “Actually, poor people write the best music, which with sufficient evil we can make money off while keeping them poor, and thus able to make more great music.”
Also, as a gen-X developer, I apologize for helping to create the cultural tire fire that we now constantly warm ourselves with today.
It's true. I'm poor, and all of my music sucks.
@@unduloidNO its the other way around. You're poor BECAUSE all of your music sucks. 🤣
FWIW, I think Steve Jobs had a point. Remember, that presentation was quite a while ago...
My first brush with digital music distribution was mp3 period calm. (Modified slightly, of course, so as not to anger the sentinels.) I was super excited to find it, but that excitement didn't last very long, because it was filled with amateurs and their 4-track Tascam tape mixers singing into a Radio Shack mic and uploading it in 96kbps MP3.
I DID find _some_ cool stuff there, and even ended up buying a CD in the last year of some band that I had discovered there in the late 90s. But most of it was ... uhm ... let's just say "aspirational."
Apple was trying to prevent becoming Atari after the video game crash of 84. They were trying to convey to users that this was professionally recorded music -- the stuff you would find at the store, on a CD, just without having to peel that permanently-bonded sticker off the top before you could play it. At that time, it would've been reassuring, if not critical, to know that it wasn't just a library of songs live from open mic night.
And BTW, that Adiemus album is fantastic.
loool. yes bro nice one! all Oppressive forces in the world evil etc stylize themselves this way "we create opportunity by enforced suffering". strangely it is kind of true. though i'm not crazy about the dynamic 😅
@@unduloid I resemble this remark.
They are working toward a world where the only music we are allowed to have access to is this same shit they feed us on the radio.
and banning Tiktok is a big step in that direction
😂, friend, the internet is completely open…keep ya head up and make 🪄
@@johnviera3884sorry buddy. The Chinese communist party spyware that is TikTok needs to go.
@@johnviera3884 music was fine before ShitTok, it'll be fine without ShitTok
@@ItsWesSmithYo oh boy.... you realllly shouldn't learn what ISPs have been doing for decades now with bandwidth and traffic restrictions
Ironic given how much Spotify relies on bot-generated content.
Thanks for putting this out there so publicly. This is basically what Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow’s book ‘Chokepoint Capitalism’ covers. Parasitic middlemen companies have entrenched themselves in every part of the culture and arts economy.
They don't have to. They only do it because we let them.
@@thewhitefalcon8539”We” have nothing to do with it, but our elected officials have everything to do with it.
You know they gon cap mans fa dis right?
You just blew my mind when you said your alias was the flashbulb. I remember back in early middleschool when we still used mp3 players and psps I had a computer class and remembered finding this album on it named soundtrack to a vacant life. I remember scrolling through it and really enjoying it but never really knowing who the artist was and and then I started watching a handful of your videos feeling that sense of familiarity up until you said what your alias was. Crazy how a decade later I end up being pulled back into your content through a different platform other than music lol
yea was a trip, hadn't heard that name in a longggg time, got randomly recommended this video too
what a trip, I feel so oddly connected to him for this reason. I could still pick up a guitar and play Steel For Papa like I had just learned it yesterday.
Thank you for the breakdown of how thoroughly corrupt the music industry is. I’ve used CD baby in the past because I was told I had to if I was going to be taken seriously as a musician. I didn’t make any money because I was just in a little pop rock group playing local shows. The most money I made was from selling merch at these shows. I became disenchanted very quickly with the whole music dream. Everything is about money, money, money. It sucks the joy and life out of making art.
The greedy leeches are infuriating.
Same here. Released one CD through CDBaby. I have regretted it ever since.
You complain that it is about money but that is what it is about with you as well. "The most money I made was from selling merch at these shows." Why sell merchandise if it isn't at all about making money?
@@jimlovesgina my point was that if there was any money to be made at all, it was made at the shows selling CDs. It’s just a fact, not really something to get contentious about. Besides, what am I going to do - not sell physical media? Not have cool graphic shirts printed? That was a fun and exciting process of being in a “real” band.
Artists are allowed to earn a living just like everyone else.
This happened with my label, and our partner labels too. They removed full albums of all streaming services. RouteNote said that this a deal they have with Spotify.
Since we are so small we have nothing we can do but reupload the albums without the problematic songs. THERE IS NO PROBLEMATIC SONGS, WE ARE GETTING NUKED BY SOMETIHNG WE CANT DO SHIT ABOUT. JUST DELETE THE BOT STREAMS ITS NOT SO DIFFICULT SPOTIFY.
Always appreciate being sampled in a Benn Jordan video.
Now to send the bill for royalties
Yo Weaves. Sup. o/
I can't watch a Benn video without thinking about the horrible eyebrow accident he was in
@@fenexj lame
With the way your wheels spin, I can't imagine you ever get any sleep. With that being said, it makes your channel second to none !
Your distribution slogan should be "You can rest easy knowing that I never fucking do" 🙂
Holy sh*t the BT - Somnambulist in the background at 5:25 triggered a core memory
Good to see you here valentin!😊
Steve jobs shows his "racist" samples and every cheers 🙄 lolllll
Decades ago many people had a vision of a future in which creatives could make a modest yet reasonable living for their efforts. Over the years I have had hopes for what I had began to call the “creative middle class” even as I watched the Internet consistently fail to provide tools and services that might help establish such a thing. With this news, It’s so sad to see that dream dismantled so completely.
2 weeks ago I got a mail that all my life's work was taken down from all platforms...
Part of me was just relieved, cause Spotify isn't worth it anyways... I'm just focus on building a community and selling directly to my fans...
What I ought to be doing in the first place, instead of chasing Spotify numbers
So it’s like the scheme in academia, except we don’t get paid royalties. But we pay to get papers published (or uni does) in high impact journal, while the same unis pay to the publishers so we can all access the research .
It's almost like the same group of ruthless parasites run all aspects of the media isn't it?
Damn. Wtf. Scams everywhere
And then itinerant scholars like myself who don't attend university and don't have alumni status can't access the research for a great many of the published scholarly works such as are published in peer-reviewed journals. For a brief while, the local university allowed me to access the electronic literature when I asked for a digital sign-in and showed that I was a citizen in the same state that publicly supported it. They've recently stopped doing that and require all potential clients of electronic databases to have either a current student status or an alumni status.
The access online typically runs about $40 to $70 per item for a one-time download.
Sucks big time.
@@rayphenicie7344 oh yes, I forgot about the peer review. Peer review is also unpaid labour, you get paid in prestige. Sorry you have a trouble accessing research. Even with a university account, I can’t access all papers if they have not been paid for by the university subscriptions.
I don't understand why such smart people choose such a stupid distribution model, rather than distributing their studies through open publishers like LibreTexts.
Unless the university forces you to publish exclusively through certain publishers. But that wouldn't make sense, because that would just cost them money.
The solution could be to develop a new music streaming platform based on the distributed network model (or federated model), like Mastodon and BlueSky. In other words, the artist controls their own server which would stream only their music and would be added to the collective available music on the service. The platform could charge a minimal fee for each stream that would provide for the costs of operation and would be non-profit. The artist would get 100% of the remainder.
Sounds annoying. I often listen music randomized. That'd mean switching servers every song and also subscribing to hundreds of servers sucks. And how will you find new bands without a recommendation service because everything is seperated into their own servers?
@@SyntheticFutureI don't think you understand how distributed networks work. They are technically separate, but this is invisible to the user.
Obviously, there could be programming that would randomly select from different servers and artists. You wouldn't have to "switch" between servers, just like you don't have to on Bluesky or Mastodon. You can just search for anyone you're looking for in the search box.
Who makes money directly from Mastodon, though? Who gets paid, where does the money go, how is it divided up? I don't think the locations where the files are stored or served from is the issue, especially since Spotify actually was P2P until 2014. The issue is that a lot of the legal rights to the music are owned by a few big corporations, so no matter how small your margins are... the big companies always want their share.
@@ehhhhhhhhhhI agree. If the musician is entirely independent, it would work fine, the cost of doing business would come out of the streaming pay. But most musicians are not set up that way. The contracts, shared ownership, writing and studio work royalties, producers, agents, etc. would make everything get sticky.
But if the platform were popular and artists could eventually extract themselves from those contracts to become fully independent, then it would work fine.
And while I don't fully understand Benn's situation, it seems like he would benefit from such a situation better than most.
And any new artists trying to make a name for themselves right now, who are not already entangled in the music biz, could benefit immediately as well. It would give them a free platform for making their name.
There already is something a little like that, a distributed network for music and podcast streaming, it's called Funkwhale. I think due to the nature of the thing, it's only allowed to publish music licensed under Creative Commons or similar (but tbh I think everyone should license their stuff under permissive licenses anyway). There is also no integrated payment, but I think having a way to give artists you enjoy money directly, and normalizing doing so might be more the way to go, and at least is already a big step up from where we're at.
We need a world wide boycott right at this instance. Time for independent musicians and underground music to grow a pair and pull their music from Spotify (can leave music on other streaming services for now). Let Spotify have their top 40 artists and AI crap for the plebs to consume. Pretty sure Spotify is worthless without lesser known artists, they need us more than we need them.
Artists have the ability to take control, it's insane how many of us involved in music are completely oblivious what is happening regarding Spotify/streaming, spread the word. Thank you Benn, you are an inspiration!
Beautiful episode. And I call your videos episodes since they’re truly written and constructed so effectively that they deserve the attention of an episode.
I just noticed the other day that one of my songs was added to a "scam playlist" (which I did NOT pay for or have anything to do with). This generated an unusual amount of plays and saves on this song for the short while it was there. I feel worried about Spotify removing my music. Any ideas what I should do? Should I tell Spotify? Or could that trigger a removal?
I'm sorry, there's literally no course of action anyone provides for you. It's utterly messed up. :(
Pretty sure that plays on your songs should be reflected by the playlists popularity, which means you should be fine. I think the issue was really having views that cannot be accounted for it or explained, urs are explained by said playlist even if the playlist is sketchy
@@BennJordan But this does bring up an even more concerning question, that of weaponizing bots and fake plays. Anyone can easily drop your stuff onto one of these playlists for whatever reason, and I could imagine a whole new industry of organized crime blossoming, holding you to ransom and threatening to destroy your career unless you pay a protection fee of some kind. Scary stuff.
@@fracnis6309and in steps a new middleman tier with insurance to protect against this
I love your profile pic btw
and lest we forget : all for an industry that laughed off digital distribution in a Homer Simpson manner ("the internet ? is that thing still around?") only 25 years ago. They just dropped the ball instead of developing their own distribution. Movie and TV companies sure paid attention to that lesson...
Thanks for finally giving me the push to just cancel my distribution deals after I already p much quit using those services as consumer. I realise now it was mostly the vanity of being everywhere and not what I started making music for in the first place.
I'm done with the fake nature of online streaming and I don't want to have anything to to with big corporations like WMG or Access Holding and I'm in the most fortunate position of doing music as a passion instead of a profession while also being able to upload the music to my own servers for people to just download them without any disgusting corporation making a profit off of my work without doing any good for my community or the world at large.
Wow! This is an incredibly good video! Thank you so much for all this information. Concise, compelling and easy to digest. Shocking to realize what an awful state streaming is in for independent musicians. I can only imagine the terrible feeling realizing your entire catalog disappeared. I am subscribing to your channel and I am very interested in the progress of your own distribution company efforts. Huge thanks.
This is why i only listen to mp3s on my own devices. Streaming services could take my favorite songs away overnight
this has happened to me multiple times and i’ve been doing the same as you because of it
Same reason I buy physical copies if possible.
Ditto. I have never subscribed to a streaming music service, and never will. If I can't at least download the MP3/AAC for use on _any_ of my own devices: no sale.
Really wish there was an equivalent on the video side, but the movie and TV industry were both so paranoid of what happened to music, they wouldn't come within 10 miles of a meeting to talk about DRM-free distribution. And for that, there's AnyDVD and physical discs.
@@nickwallette6201i do miss friends sharing mp3s w each other via cd. what about soundcloud or bandcamp though? much less cooperate.
@@nickwallette6201 eh, can always get a vpn and pirate tv shows if you really need them offline, it's cheaper than streaming service. It's how we used to do it in the old days before all these new fangled streaming sites. If they don't want to offer you the service you desire so you can watch stuff offline without god awful buffering and low bitrates, then screw them
I love that you’re talking about this, especially for those of us that aren’t familiar with the industry.
🇺🇦
So I could ruin any musician's day just by setting a bot to play their songs?
You would probably ruin more than their day.
Likely not. If all requests came from a single IP it would just be discounted or blocked . You would need a bot network.
As an artist with music on Spotify, anyone can add my music to their bot-ridden playlist without my knowledge or consent. Spotify will respond by removing my music from their platform. What’s wrong with this picture? Obviously they’re going after the wrong people. Block the bots, ban the playlist owners, but don’t punish legitimate artists for what other people did with their music!
It seems obvious doesn't it? Yet, for some reason, the streaming companies can't figure that out.
We stopped having an actual economy in the 1970s. Now we're stuck with the Grifter Economy wherein everything in existence is a blatant scam perpetuated by a megacorporation. The music industry is now just another leg of that economy full of grifters.
Exactly. I'm still dumbfounded that so many Americans trusted Pfizer and Moderna. They are part of the stock market too. Main goal is exponential profit for its shareholders but somehow everyone thought" they care about my health"
I'm absolutely guffawed that America is even standing, how have megacorps managed to all agree to walk the fine line so perfectly between "300M people in America run out of money and are left on the streets" and "people can afford to buy quality products that last longer, and without having to pay 8 different corporation's some large cut of the product's profits"
it's refreshing to see someone on youtube mocking steve jobs
You don't watch enough "PC master race" youtubers :D
Thank you for all your work, this is IMO one of the most important pieces of info/opinion about the music industry I've seen in a long time.
This past year I've just been realising that despite being a musician/producer/engineer for over 15 years, I have NO IDEA how to fix any of this. Not even a super optimistic, idealised idea. You know things are bleak when even a cishet white dude from Europe doesn't get up to say "it's easy, just do BLANK".
I can’t imagine how difficult this might be for non English speaking artists that have their work removed. Not only do they have to deal with the shitty support. They have to deal with the language barrier too.
Man, this was a lot of great information to digest. Thank you for including my content along with it. Wishing you all the best with this new solution
Keep up the good fight!
@@BennJordan likewise 💪🏽
A non-profit distributor that isn't trying to squeeze every last penny out of artists isn't a solution, but it's a great stepping stone. Every artist should be able to derive income from their music (if they choose) without dependencies on middlemen or the whims of third parties.
It truly melted my brain and that’s saying a lot because I consume educating media like this at a consistently unhealthy level and this is the first time it’s been so numbing to the point where I nearly cognitively stalled several times I really need a nap now
Steve Jobs example of good music: That madrigal that was used in that bank advert in the 90s where the boy swims underwater to grab a pearl.
To be fair, Karl Jenkins is a pretty good composer. He's pretty intentionally inoffensive to the ears, but I'd argue he does it well.
I find it more ridiculous that it was in the category of "world music" (which is an awful genre name anyway, but still).
I'm so glad I bought your music from Bandcamp and downloaded actual non-DRM MP3 files that I can keep forever.
Didnt the guys of Bandcamp recently sell the company to some eh company
@@XMR02R Bandcamp sold to Epic Games, and then Epic sold them off to some random music company, but Bandcamp is still around and for now is doing business the same way as always. Who knows if the shoe will drop on that.
Daniel Ek is a thief. I boycott Spotify everyday by not listening nor downloading their app.
The point about most musicians spending more money on distribution than they make in royalties is so depressing, and infuriating.
Especially, as Spotify could've just opened the gates and let people upload directly. I mean, with something like Distrokid and flat fees, the outcome is pretty much the same.
Absolutely a scam. Very depressing. As, I feel like, most artists desperately feel like they need to be on Spotify. That is the cultural capital Spotify currently holds.
"artists desperately feel like they need to be "
And therein lies the crux of the problem, people seeking attention and validation and seek to use the music business as a vehicle to obtain it.
It has almost nothing to do with music.
Yeah, and something I've noticed is that a lot of people take not being on Spotify as a sign of not being "legit" in lack of a better word, one way or another; I still don't have any of my stuff there, but I guess it's only a matter of time before it can't be put off any longer. It's honestly depressing, and with every passing day I miss Myspace more... it was the perfect combination of social media and music streaming. Oh well, the internet (and even world) as a whole has changed so much that something like Myspace wouldn't work anymore, ironically people are no longer "ready" for it. Almost like we're devolving as a species...
@@axeman2638 I mean some people want their music to be listened to. Otherwise, why release music in the first place?
@@Akab it they want people to listen to it they can give it away. Stop lying, you want money and attention.
@@axeman2638 I admit, I don't work in the music industry... I find these comments odd, though. Maybe someone can clarify. How does a musician that produces recorded music for 10 hours a day make money to survive if they do not sell their music?
Trigger warning for anyone who cares about music and artists. Again.
BOTs 😂
Thanks so much for this video, this is exactly what happened to me and I’ve been struggling to find any answers about what was really going on, this clears it up a lot. Love your channel.
I'm so sorry you had to go through all of this. I can only begin to imagine how nightmarish it must have been. Thanks for sketching it out for us laymen.
The "Ownership Society" strikes again.
They own YOU and YOUR WORK.
We need somewhere to listen to music that’s safe. No ads, no algorithmic tweaking, no weird rules about payment. Something that’s just a music player, search and playlists that can only be made by listeners. Somewhere you can trust won’t throw away all your work. Where anybody can just listen to what they want without being used for their data. We’re tired of being exploited. We’re tired of our information being stolen and sold. We’re tired of ads. We’re tired of being told we did something wrong. We need to band together and create a place for artists to thrive. It’s the only way to be treated fairly at this point.
isn't that what soundcloud is? or did that go down the crapper too
welcome to the early internet. it still exists under layers of bullsh*t companies whose business models include convincing you it doesn't. independent artists or small labels can still run (or hire out) their own websites or streaming servers. distributed recommendation algorithms still need some work. payment is a problem of its own to tackle, but there are plenty of opportunities to cut out middlemen there right now.
No problems with ads if it encourage to pay for a subcription and that money goes straight to artists
Sounds like you just want your own library of music, just buy music physically or Bandcamp or where-ever else and just go full digital library. Literally no way for any third party or company to screw you in ANY form with that. It can be as simple as just having local files on your device as historically done, or something more involved like your own music server. I just run Navidrome on my PC and access my library where-ever with internet access. Even in cases where I don't have internet access I can just download it to my device from my server before hand.
I recommend a membership model. Users pay per month with no free, ad-supported option. Give them a free trial period or limited listening time each month until they pay the monthly membership fee. The membership fees are then distributed to the artists proportionately based on total listening time. Has anyone done that? This is similar to how Medium does things for writers, which I'm familiar with.
It could probably be done decentralized with some web 3.0 nonsense and crypto to totally cut out the middlemen.
Is selling your work to a company that is creating a machine learning database that will be sold to big tech companies really a better option than the broken system we have now though?
thanks for going into this in detail like this. pleas do more so others especially the younger ones can understand because people think its the normal and only way to get your music out please !
I've come to the conclusion that the only way to become wealthy in this life, is to be corrupt and greedy. Because those are the ones who control and corrupt every good thing in this world.
Wealth comes from labour, and no one's labour is worth $10k an hour. Getting rich necessitates someone else not getting all that their labour is worth.
oy vey!
Daniel Ek's analogy comparing musicians to football/soccer players was one of the most self-serving, cringe things I've ever heard. Couple that with his weird obsession about getting AI to be a big player on Spotify, and I've thrown in the towel on that whole mess. In fact, moving forward, my plan is to adopt the film industry model of releasing music on pay-only platforms for 6 months initially, and then release to streaming platforms.
For my last release, I had a one-month delay between releasing on Bandcamp and releasing on streaming platforms. For my next release, I'm going to do that again -- Bandcamp first, streamers a month later -- except that for Spotify, the delay will be 6 months to a year. Or I might just skip Spotify altogether.
@@MaximusNYC Skip altogether
love this video. Wow this is powerful. I sense this will send various shockwaves throughout the music making community and in the end force and encourage streaming platforms to up their game once again hopefully for more than just some positive PR but actually doing something incredible like empowering artist in the way they deserve to be
I really really like this, dude. I have no problem boycotting these corporate sociopaths for a good cause.
thanks for talking about this
So sorry to hear this! 😥 Good luck recovering the algorithms' favors.
I learned a lot from this video. Thank you for explaining such an in depth topic in an easy to understand way. I haven't seen this explained in such depth anywhere else.
Summary: The major labels continue to find more ways to profit from or exploit musicians regardless if they sign with them or not.
I fear the only winning move for musicians is to not play, and the world will lose as a result.
The music itself is the reward, if you give up any idea of making money from it and just get into the music you'll have a lot more fun with it.
@@axeman2638 this is such a moronic take I don't even know where to start refuting it from.
@@danieliroh Sounds like you are more interested in money and attention than music.
cant eat fun j@cķ@sś
@@axeman2638 No. Artists need to be able to live and live decently to make music. They make something we all find valuable. You sound exactly like the dozens of people who abuse their love of the craft as a tactic for exploiting the artist. They make it, people want it, and they should be paid what they deserve and they aren't. If you're expecting art and entertainment for free, you are entitled and don't appreciate it. You don't sound like an artist or someone who appreciates it at all. Don't consume any music or entertainment I guess, if it's not worth anything to you.
Very interesting video. I am a musician but I am old and don't care much about money anymore so I have not kept up with all the changes in the music industry since I chased that dream in the 80's. So much has changed...I had no idea how bad it has gotten. Late stage capitalism?
Creativity now has negative value.
So insightful.. and horrifyingly disturbing. If anyone is going to champion this injustice, it’s you Benn.
Happened to me too with Routenote, thanks for shedding light on he subject and good job for fighting this!
Damn dude. This is depressing. It seems like literally every system we have is completely corrupt and broken these days. It's always kinda been like that I'm sure, but this sucks and I'm sorry to hear what happened to you... and what's happening to all of us musicians...
thanks Ben. big effort here. what a horrifying ordeal. i can only imagine. It seems that, below a certain unknown threshold of popularity, this machine they've cobbled together thinks it is mostly just for the only compensation to be "promotion" of the artist. They truly do not believe these independent artists *should* be paid, but they do not come right out and say that. It goes back to the "editing" Jobs alluded to in that stage act. I wouldn't be surprised if that line came to him by way of talks with the labels themselves. So we've gone full circle. They are effectively editing out who receives compensation, which effectively means they are assimilating distro and streaming so thst the major labels once again possess full control of the entire industry. I am not read up on it but I am curious how much changes in digital services tax law, or any other 'regulation' may have driven this shady practice--or is it just pure predatory greed
Independent small artists tend to cost more money than they earn. So, that's what the term "negative value" means. That's one reason (but not the only one) why 73% of the musicians in Benn's survey paid more money in distribution fees than they received in royalties last year. Now, I do think there's something wrong with payout amounts, and wherr that cutoff line is, because too many middlemen and investors have their hands in that pie. Those people havr an even larger drag (negative value) on the system, but somehow those are the very people the system caters to. And also, the negative value artists actually DO pay the difference - they pay more to distribute the music than the profits they receive. Whereas, the negative value middlemen and investors keep taking and taking. Many of those investors (labels, for example) sure seem to have weaseled their way into that equity stake. And then, as owners, they gave themselves favorable terms.
IOW, it's the usual situation - once somebody has internalized the ethics of capitalism, then you shouldn't trust them. It's possible to exist in capitalism without internalizing its ethics, but it's rare - most people who claim such are lying for profit, maybe even subconsciously. It's understandable and forgivable and will be our culture's downfall, because a time will come when that trust will be necessary for the culture to remain, but we won't be able to. For evidence, look at societies that quit without there being a decisive foreign invasion. In the past, culture often hinged on natural conditions that, when changed (prolonged lack of rains, for example) imploded society's power structure. Maybe we've outgrown these superstitions... or maybe money is the new rain?
@@GizzyDillespee It sounds bleak. Have you found a way to get by personally that you're okay with?
@@GizzyDillespee that "system" you allude to, based on Ben's research and certain previous articles regarding this topic, seem to be a carefully orchestrated fraudulent mechanism. We can easily draw parallels to corrupt shadow-government interventionism and inherently corrupt implementations, such as the IMF.
Why in the world are we renting music now anyway?
We are paying rent to spotify in order to access our music collections. This is crazy.
I'm this years old when I learned the Flashbulb, an artist I've on-and-off enjoying for two decades now, is Benn. I guess I never looked into it in more details.
I am really enjoying your new videos and the different topics. It’s a crime we are all suffering at the hands of those who have what seems to be everything
That second sentence is very true - for just about every aspect of life.
Which is a big reason why the bourgeoisie needs to be overthrown.
The world is not enough for these people, they want to degrade and humiliate you while living off your work.
@@slipknotboy555 Yeah "the bourgeoisie", yeah that's them, funny how so many of them have eastern european names isn't it cos i thought the bourgeoisie were french.
@@axeman2638 Bourgeois just means a ruling class who collectively own the means of production
@@moustachio05 Yeah, the bourgeoisie just refers to the capitalist class. And guess what, we have a global capitalist system. Don't know what this person is on about.
Apparently they're subscribed to Sargon of Akkad, though, so they likely just deliberately refuse to understand what it means.
This video made me re-examine what it was I've been paying for all these years (Tunecore, too) and it's this: I was buying credibility. The credibility of being available on a "major" platform without having to be signed to a major label, and the investment groups behind these companies knew it before I did.
Followup: the most money I've ever earned from royalties derived from plays on the local high school FM station. Who knew?
So... you were PAYING for "exposure"... Man, what a scam
Same, I've made pockets of cash here and there through radio play, sync, and Bandcamp. Spotify etc is just so the music is easily accessible. I'm struggling to justify it these days though...
@@rudeboyjohn3483 Yet another form of "Payola"... sadly it's rampant in the music industry.
Wow, i subbed to your channel a while ago because i liked a fue vids you had done.
I had no idea you were Flashbulb until i watched this.
LOVE your music bro been a fan for a long time.
Benn, I took your recommendation and stopped, I'm a singer and my voice responds to the emotional headspace and landscape...needless to say, over the last few years I've been doing a lot of singing to myself, but I'm not in your position or any of those other artists and I cannot for the life of me understand that without notice those actions were taken and how that must have felt. Your commitment to your art is inspiring me...
I only recently came across you through CZcams obviously but it's only recently that I've been playing the push the button game because I only recently found out how important that not only viewing time but time taken to push that like adds up to better algorithm optimisation for me and so you were there on my feed talking about FSD. More power to you there as well, that was an excellent piece of journalism.
Do it as an Artist Owned! It could get huge.
Then, when Big Corp wants to buy you out, you can reply that you’d love to run their offer by your 10 8 million partners
Which is what the purpose of Bandcamp is for
this is wild and there's deffinitely no need for distributers. it should be a free market where anyone can upload their content and the same algorithm aplies to everyone. like youtube and other social media. and the apple guy clip is just so distopian, same with their iphone store and locked devices without sideloading. i would never ever ever ever purchase anythingfrom that evil company.
the main reason i use yt umsic instead of spotify is cause there's tons of unreleased gems here also alternative live versions and so on, that never get to spotify. i also still download all the songs that i listen to on yt thousands at this point, cause sometimes they disappear here too. but what's good is i can just reupload it and put back to playlists like nothing happened
The distributors serve a useful function: I can upload my music to one distributor, and they then send it to many different platforms. This is much more convenient than having to upload it to each platform individually.
But when a streaming platform owns the distributor, there's an obvious conflict of interest. That shouldn't be allowed.
@@MaximusNYC deffinitely agree with the second part. but like for uploading to all platforms: if platforms had free apis available to anyone you could just write a script to do so. also in a few days someone woud make it into a simple to use GUI, opensource and free! there could be some reasonable daily upload limit
@@galzajcytmu6659My distributor also aggregates all my payments in one place, and lets me see a list of how much I made from each platform, and when. Payment aggregation is not something that can realistically be open sourced.
I'm not a musician but it's fascinating the way you're explaining this mess. I loved you in The Walking Dead too.
Thank you for making this video Benn. You convinced me that Spotify isn't needed and I do my best to support artists who I listen to often directly now. I was wondering if the survey data you collected might be released in some format? It's interesting and probably could catalyze further study in this clusterfuck you outlined.
this video made me remember about the talk I had with my friend around 5-6 years ago, about copyright low in general , and there was a topic about AI produced content, which goes something like "what if giant music company would just rent shit ton of compute for 24/7 music production and anything which has even close resemblance to this database could go under copyright infringement", after all music has limited amount of patterns, our voices even less, a full monopoly of several groups on majority of audio content, and if you want to do anything, you'll need to pay for a license, which is always an object to change, will there be a large amount of music producers left or there will be only "faces", "logos" and likable "patterns", like idol groups or digital personas. A full media control, inability to share content, and ultimate legal persecution, ain't no way we'll end up like this right, this is too stupid, right?
Nah, that's the next stage.
I seem to remember that someone had actually done something like this a few years ago, pre-AI.
@@paulbogan3400 Yep, some guys recorded all the possible combinations of notes and put them in the public domain. The idea was that a musician could write and play and monetize any of those combinations, but another musician (or more likely, a major) couldn't claim copyright.
Hopefully this helps relieve some of your worries: All AI-generated works have been declared public domain in the US by the US Copyright Office. That's because AI-generated work lacks sufficient human authorship, and copyright is meant to protect human effort. (In a similar case, a photo taken by a monkey was decided to be public domain.)
Wait, you're paying them?
Thats like paying someone to allow you to work.
Uh, you pay every employer for the right to work. So yeah, that's just how capitalism works. (And in a lot of cases, you pay them a big percentage)
@senselessinductor7921, Not how it works at all. Pay flows from the employer to the employee (it’s actually a fundamental part of the definition of those two words).
@@brawndothethirstmutilator9848, Yeah, keep pretending you understand economics.
The employer doesn't have a giant pool of money, from which all moneys flows.
When you're a business owner, and you're ready to "expand" you seek to bring in somebody who will create more incoming cash flow. And you won't hire someone who brings just enough to cover their wage, you'll bring them in for a lower wage than the productivity gains that come with them.
So, in defacto chronology, in order to have a "job" you produce, and of that productivity, your employers takes their "cut."
The differentiation from rentiers is that rentiers produce nothing. And so it is a scarcity of the means or production, held by the owners, as a means to extract productivity in the form of "profits."
Amazing that you live in capitalism, and you don't even understand how it works. I find that ridiculous.
@@brawndothethirstmutilator9848 They know that. They're saying that they take a huge cut of the actual money you produce.
Ive watched a few of your videos and just now realized i saw you open for the Dillinger Escape Plan in Detroit on December 3rd, 2005. That show was very important to me.
Yay for musicians!! I thought about this situation/problem years ago. I'm happy a solution has been realized. I am not a music creator myself and don't listen to independent creations but support the freedom ,I pray you have found, to get compensation (nothing wrong with that at all, you deserve it) for your talent and it's about effing time to get rid of the monster that is distribution by the predators.
I LOVE that you held your sense of humour throughout this :).
soo... will we be able to use voice swap as a distributor?
Short Answer: If you make music using one of our vocalists, that will be an option rather than having to pay them a license fee.
Long Answer: Voice-Swap provided me with the business certifications to be approved by DSPs, and this allows me to experiment with the administrative side of things to see how much it would cost artists to have support and representation with distro rather than having to go through all of the stuff outlined in this video. So it's a giant step in that direction.
@@BennJordan Alright, that's cool!
But Benn Jordan starting a new music streaming service or distributior or hybrid would be even cooler 🥲
@@BennJordan If you started a distribution service, I would know I have the right guy running it, and I would upload all my music through it. Be the change ;-)
This is SO WELL DONE. Thank you for making this.
You know what? I've watched three of your videos and every single one of them has really grabbed my attention by the brainstem and been super worth my time. Subscribed.
I do have a Spotify sub, but I still go out and buy everything that I really like, and this shit right here is why. Every one of these "Physical media is dead" idiots are going to have a real bad day one day, and it's probably going to be soon.
Benn, you continue to be a boon to the people of this Earth that hang out in your sphere of influence. Thanks for the iceberg-level of effort you're putting into this (iceberg because clearly this video represents the smallest percentage of the work you're actually putting into this.) I know this has been a rough few months for you, so I wanted to put out this positive message of appreciation towards you as a person and the work you choose to do. I will be benefiting from your forthcoming distribution business, so I wanted to proactively show my gratitude to that effort in specific, and your existence in general.
the feeling that i get when I'm bored and a new benn jordan video drops is insane
I appreciate that you're covering this with other YT figures, Benn. It's a dizzying problem and it's pretty clear that, again, the current models just aren't going to work for most artists. Now there is this corporate overreach that is clearly outside of the law (which includes the manner in which any terms of services are created, updated, and enforced --- a separate matter that deserves serious scrutiny), and only laws that favour the artists will fix it. Self-governance doesn't work; we're seeing that play out here. Those of us who register our songs all have royalty rights societies in our respective countries. Maybe a class action from them to these services is one way to put a foot down?
my edits: some additional thoughts and cleaning up typos because I can't type for s**t :D
Benn, thank you for continuously sharing your experiences along your path in the music industry. I had a few unsavory experiences with Distrokid early on, and it’s really validating to hear how many others have experienced this too
i've already been somewhat aware of this, and can't wait to hear Mr. Jordan's take.
In an ideal world, we would not have digital distributors and platforms would have provided the means to upload music and utilize the already existing systems for paying royalties, automated or otherwise done by living human beings, that's what accountants are for.
The only necessary middleman is a streaming platform, a server that provides an interface for viewing files stored on it, across the internet. A glorified warehouse.
There are so many platforms and somehow they all bought into the grift of a digital distributor.
Why is it necessary to gatekeep artists and musicians? Because of the negative value apparently, which isn't the fault of the creators.
It comes down to politics, as it always does. When the system is failing, it's the fault of some person or some ideology.
What's next?
Choke point capitalism
Thanks for using your plattform for this! People needs to hear.
Love your content Ben. Thank you for all you do man
Waiting for this one after all (almost all) your tunes vanished from Spotify recently. Pleased they have since been reinstated!
Spotify paid around 27k$ to Pharrell for a year of streaming of "Happy" , freaking no 1 hit song. Absolutely ridiculous.
Music business is the worst joke ever.
Meanwhile, Daniel Ek has a net worth of 4.2 billion USD, and the co-founder Martin Lorentzon has a net worth of 5.8 billion USD, and meanwhile, Spotify isn't making a profit. I wonder why....🤯
CZcams pays artists $0.00164 per stream. That song has 1.2 billion views as of today, which is about $1.64 million, which is still not very good.
@@rayphenicie7344That sounds pretty decent, considering thats just one platform.
@@rBennich because it's in their best interest to do so. Musicians are effd in their behinds and not being paid for it - not a great deal...
@@rayphenicie7344 I wonder what his contract says about that... 😜
Hey I remember listening to your stuff since way back on tumblr, starting with Soundtrack to a Vacant Life ❤❤❤❤ thank you for your work my friend, pleasant running into you!
Thank you for this, Ben. Spotify hit me in a similar, albeit lesser, way this past month with zero communication. Trying to track down why this happened was like pulling my own teeth. While I'll continue to make music, it sure does kill a lot of the joy of sharing it with the world.
Great stuff as usual! How does band camp stand in that dreary landscape?