Spotify Wrapped Flex

Articles

Dec 1

This numbers game is not for you and it’s fine.

Another year, another day where your feed is flooded by Spotify’s Wrapped Numbers. It’s the time when many artists and producers share their year’s stats on Spotify with their followers. How many streams, how many listeners, how many hours, how many countries, etc. It’s the same day where you will probably feel sad because your numbers are way lower compared to the numbers you see online and when you calculate the money all these other people are getting from streaming, you’ll feel even worse while you check out that your last paycheck from Spotify was 6€.

I understand that and I support you. But let’s see this with a different perspective and analyze why this whole Spotify Wrapped thing sucks and it’s the epitome of why streaming platforms like Spotify also don’t make an actual contribution to arts.

Art cannot be counted in numbers. Or not?

Art in general is not something that you can count if it’s good or bad. I think it’s self-explanatory that a song that has 1 billion streams does not objectively mean that is a “better“ song than a song with 10 streams. But platforms like Spotify don’t really care because they don’t give a f%#K about music or art. They only care about money and that is definitely something you can count.

That was made crystal clear a few weeks ago when Spotify decided that in 2024 they will stop paying for any songs that didn’t get more than 1.000 streams during the year. If you see that as an individual, it doesn’t make any actual difference for you. If for example, you have a song with 800 streams you would get something around 800*0,003 = 2.4€. So yeah, you won’t become poor for not getting that 2.4€. But for Spotify that makes a ton of difference since the tracks that will stop generating money for artists are approximately 2/3 of the total tracks on Spotify.

So let’s see what this means. It is said that there are more than 100.000.000 songs on Spotify. So 2/3 of that would be around 66.000.000 songs. Let’s say that those songs have on average 200 streams. How much money will Spotify make?

66.000.000*200*0,003 = 39.600.000€! Not bad right?? For a company that reported that they made 34.000.000€ in the Q3 of 2023, an additional jump-start of around 40.000.000€ for 2024 is certainly not bad.

I think that now you understand why this was such a sneaky move. They are literally crowd-funding their profits from the artists bringing people on their platform without even asking them.

Spotify Wrapped Controversy

First of all, I want to say that I really don’t have any problem with people sharing their stats through Spotify Wrapped. I’m genuinely happy for artists that I support who had a good year and more people discovered their music.

My problem with Spotify Wrapped is about representation and the constant need to bring more numbers for Spotify. 100.000 listeners for an Ambient artist is definitely not the same as 100.000 listeners for a Pop or Trap artist. Spotify Wrapped celebrates numbers that can be compared when in reality the quality of those numbers is completely different. For example, an artist who makes noise music and has 10.000 listeners in his city would probably fill a venue playing a live show. At the same time, a Rapper with 10.000 listeners is probably a nobody since it’s a much more popular genre and a well-known local rap artist would have +1.000.000 listeners.

All of the above are completely irrelevant to Spotify since it does not care about any kind of representation and diversity in arts and music. if Spotify could make more money by promoting only a couple of genres and a few artists, it would do just that. Oh wait… That’s already the case. :)

Numbers are comparable by nature and Spotify Wrapped promotes that comparison between artists and that’s, by nature, a bad thing. There is no comparison in art because every piece of art is unique and incomparable to another one. But as you push artists to play the numbers game, more and more of them will actively try to be more algorithm-friendly and attract more listeners, more streams, etc.

I mean 90% of the music out there is trash. And the trashier, easier, and catchier it is, the more numbers it gets. And Spotify just loves that. They have over-simplified their artist payments to the point that it is just a matter of large volumes of streams and listeners that you can then flex on your social media with your Spotify Wrapped.

The misconception of how artists survive.

Streaming platforms and their leader, Spotify, gave music to the masses for next to free. I remember spending a ton of money buying tapes and records as a kid and now I have all the songs in the world for 12.99€ a month. Less than the cost of an LP back in the 90s.

- That’s good, right?

- It depends.

Making a record has become extremely easy and accessible in the past decade. That resulted in an abundance of recording artists that make music. A tiny portion of them “made it” and can make a decent living out of their art. But 99.99% are struggling to make a minimum wage. That is somewhat reasonable but Spotify certainly makes things even more difficult. They make money out of all those starving artists and in return they give them pennies. And from 2024, those pennies are going to be even less. The whole streaming rights and payments program desperately needs regulations and a massive restructuring.

As I said, it’s not only a numbers game. Numbers matter, but the quality of those numbers is just as important and as we speak there is not a single qualitative metric on how artists get paid. You just need 30” streamed and you have a stream and listener. That’s it. And it costs Spotify 0.003€.

Conclusion

I wrote this whole thing in one take so it might be a bit rough. So my overall advice would be the following.

For artists: Do the thing that genuinely makes you happy and don’t compare yourself to others. If you consistently do your best and you are happy with what you put out in the world, you will eventually get what you deserve. I strongly believe in that. I would never be happy if I “sold out” just to make a bit more money so I try my best and everything else is out of my control. Be happy with others’ success and let envy and jealousy out of your life. We are all in this together and at least in the electronic music community there is a lot of support for each other.

For music lovers: Try to actively support the artists you love in any way you can and you feel comfortable with. You need to understand that for you to enjoy a piece of music someone has spent a few thousand euros to make a studio and countless hours to make that piece of music you love. If you rely on Spotify to pay him fairly, you are mistaken. Imagine that if you support an artist with 1€ it is equal to listening to his/her track 333 times. There are platforms like Patreon, Bandcamp (RIP), and others where you can support the artists you follow. We did that back in the 90s and 00s when we bought records for 15-20€ each. It’s a bit unfair to think that listening to a track on YouTube for free is the same thing, right?

Not everyone will make a living out of music, it is not something the universe owes to anyone. But it’s sad seeing people who can actually do that and share the gift of music with the world struggle and sometimes give up because the whole system that is created for profit is living like a parasite from their art.