Whatever you think about Spotify, there is something wrong in the world when a guy, who can write some computer code can make more money in a few years than an artist during his whole life. I don’t want to deny that genius should not be rewarded (computer science is kind of Chinese to me) but why society would put a higher price tag on a computer application than on a whole catalogue of classic rock’ n’ roll songs? But, according to the Daily Mail, this is what is happening: the co-founder of Spotify, Daniel Ek, 30, who is now as rich as Mick Jagger, 70. And he did it only in a few years, as he has earned £190 million ($304 million) in just six years.
Sure the guy is a computer genius, he could understand computer language at 5, and started a website business at 14! Still I am sure Jagger could write a song when he was just a teenager.
Everyone knows about Spotify, the platform that allows you to stream almost any song that exists for free (with adds) or for a modest fee (no adds) on computers, iPhones and Androids, and the Swedish company has now reached 3 million paying subscribers and 10 million active users. Plus Spotify has now a deal with Facebook (the US company has invested $15 million in the music streaming company), allowing people to access Spotify via their Facebook page, even making easy to embed a Spotify playlist. Furthermore, it is very probable Spotify will soon dominate the world, overtaking Apple’s iTunes, either making it disappear or forcing it to change. And this means that Ek will double, triple his fortune in the following years if this tendency isn’t reversed! And why would it reverse?
So artists got more and more screwed up by Spotify, while their founders became richer and richer,…Jagger will survive but what about all these artists who will never receive more than a few dollars from the streaming service while seeing Spotify’s CEO and guru are getting richer? Why couldn’t they review the system and pay the artists more? if the system were fair they should receive a fair amount not the ridiculous 0.0001 cents per stream or whatever insane amount they get. Spotify has turned theft legal.
But I would like to get some explanation about this. According to numerous reports, Spotify had never made any profit, and his co-founder is a millionaire? In any case, Forbes magazine just declared him the most important man in music and honestly I find this totally ridiculous, Spotify and Ek are nothing without the music created by artists during decades and decades of music! It’s just an app, not art, and when society values more its businessmen than its artists, when society is more concerned by making money than appreciating true beauty and emotion, I worry.
Iman Lababedi adds: Spotify made the major labels PARTNERS in the streaming service, it is up to the artists to renegotiate the deals with the record labels. In the 1990s, the indie labels signed distribution deals with the majors. A no brainer at the time, it is killing them today. The indies need to organize and renegotiate their distribution deals.