To Spotify or Not to Spotify

As both a musician and an avid music listener, I can empathize with both sides of the recording industry; the consumer and the producer. The listener wants to listen to the music they like as easily as possible, and the artist wants to be fairly compensated for their art. So what happens when one side is completely fulfilled at the expense of the other? What happens when the consumer has everything, and the artist, nothing?

Enter, Spotify.

When I first heard about Spotify, I was ecstatic. Pretty much every artist I'd ever want to listen to (save the Beatles,) unlimited playlists, radio, recommendations; all for merely $10 a month? AND I can access it all from my phone without losing any memory? Sounds like the best service I could possibly ask for. And I enjoyed that fantasy guilt-free; for a while. But pretty soon, I started hearing people talk about Spotify, and not in a good way. Other musicians didn't have Spotify, and some claimed it was bad for the artist. At first I didn't believe it. I didn't want to believe that my favorite music streaming service was screwing over the artists it represented. Unfortunately, that's when I stumbled upon this NPR article. The headline could almost tell the whole story: "How Musicians Make Money by the Fraction of a Cent on Spotify." The article tells of Spotify's low royalties while mixing in the personal tale of Erin McKeown, a musician who puts up her albums on Spotify. The exact figure she makes per play, she says, is $0.004. Many can tell that this extremely low, but some say, well, with all the people using Spotify, I'm sure she makes a decent amount of money. Think about it like this: a thousand people listen to one of her songs. That's a lot of people. If all those people listen to her song once, she gets $4. If a thousand people bought her song on iTunes, she would make closer to $500. 

Perhaps if I weren't a musician this wouldn't bother me so much, but I know how it feels to pour out your heart into a two hour show (in addition to countless hours rehearsing,) and get paid $30 in tips to split between five people. But I also understand the plight of the consumer; you shouldn't always have to take the moral high road while sacrificing convenience and ease.

And after all this, I will openly admit, I still use Spotify. But I can justify it. For one thing, many of the artists I listen to through Spotify are people like The Doors of Pink Floyd, and they certainly aren't taking any big hits by losing some money. However, the main way in which I can justify my use of Spotify is the fact that I support the artists I listen to through the service in different ways, in addition to streaming their music. If I listen to artist I really like on Spotify, I'll buy their album on vinyl, or I'll go to see their show. Take the band "The Main Squeeze" for example. I discovered them through Spotify this year, but instead of only streaming their music, I purchased their record so I could listen to it off the web, and I've already seen them live twice. Because of that, I think it's fair for me to use Spotify, but I still have a lot of misgivings. I'm always asking myself, should I be using Spotify, or am I just hurting the artists I love?