The reason why Spotify is not that interesting anymore.
PersonalI found a tipoff from Daniel Johansson blog in Musikindustrin (a really cool blog in my mind, unfortunate just in Swedish).
THE ODDS OF AN ARTIST BECOMING A ‘TOP TIER’ EARNER ON SPOTIFY TODAY? LESS THAN 1%.
It’s really interesting reading about how Spotify doesn’t want to be the gatekeeper but still act as the gatekeeper. Also that it’s still just 1% that makes the money as artists.
The perspective I have is that most money actually comes from the live side. In fact, it’s 50% is live and 25% is master and 25 is publishing in simple terms. So this 1% is mainly on the 25% master side. It comes down to a pretty low number. And I bet you that these artists that are in this 1 % are daily touring artists touring quite heavily.
In reality, that means to break an artist will be in the live section. Especially when the master side will be challenged by AI made songs that can pump out quite much music in big quantities (it’s already here and yes they will do good music, no doubt about that).
When Universal also sold Ingrooves you know that distribution and master side is not something they look as being big. At the same time as many others are doing painfully mistakes trying to lure percentages from smaller artists thinking that would build artists to the 1%.
At the same time, a totally new breed of gatekeepers is forming around the showcase festivals. I ‘m seeing it written on the wall that it’s here the next 1% is being built. Spotify is just a tool to bring in one of several income streams. It will be not the major one and not the gatekeeper they think they might be, that race is already over.