community.
by
Mia McGill
IG: @miarosemcgill Twitter: @miarosemcgill
Spotify, streams, and small artists: a look beyond your Discover Weekly mixes S
treaming services have been on the rise since the early 2000s with the introduction of trailblazers like Rhapsody and Pandora. Today, millions of people around the world flock to big-name providers like Spotify and Apple Music, as they boast some of the most expansive collections of tracks on the internet for a flat monthly fee. It seems almost too good to be true – for the consumer, that is. The reality for a majority of independent artists in today’s streaming market is minimal revenue and recognition, and the main problem with streaming is this: while it does increase overall accessibility to smaller
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Issue Four
artists’ music, the way it’s set up now is a rich-get-richer scheme in which a small percentage of top artists receive most of the streaming revenue while independent artists see little to no return on the hours of hard work put in to produce content. Since I don’t have much firsthand experience dealing with the headaches of the industry, I talked with a few friends and artists I’ve met over the years to get a better idea of the artist perspective. This ended up ranging from local bands with a smaller following to nationally touring acts with six–figure monthly listener counts.
Contrary to popular belief, artists don’t upload their music directly to most streaming or download services – instead, tracks first have to go through a distribution service. Sporting catchy names like Record Union and TuneCore, each service offers up a different set of quirks, from stream analytics reports to marketing tools like Instagram Story stickers. While most newcomers choose a user-friendly, simplistic host like CD Baby or DistroKid, many seasoned artists have settled comfortably on a more niche service that meets their specific needs. One of the major differences between services is fee structure, and each
