Why I Stopped Using Spotify Premium
Kiran Kalsi reflects on the consequences of how we listen to music, as she looks back at the recent history of music streaming, as well as looking to its future
A few months ago, my Spotify Premium subscription ran out. I was cut off unhappily from the streaming service, which has been my convenient musical companion for the past years. Like 182 million others every month, I had access to a library of music that stretches back hundreds of years. Certainly, I took this all for granted.
Yet I wasn’t the first one to have left Spotify. In 2014, Taylor Swift famously removed all her music from Spotify in protest against the accessibility of artists’ music on its free version. This free version, which I and 236 million others are now condemned to, gives users limited access to the music library whilst being ad-supported. In the Wall Street Journal, Swift wrote that:
“Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album’s price point is”
It’s difficult to imagine that only two decades ago, the Internet wasn’t seen as something that could benefit the music industry. The Economist’s prediction in 1997 that the music industry would be slow to realise the full impact of the Internet could not have been further from reality. In part, this was due to pioneering figures such as Robin Bechtel — an executive at Capitol Records — who demonstrated how the power of the digital revolution could be married with the release of music. With the English rock band, Radiohead, Bechtel became the first person to release a full album online. The album, ‘Kid A’, was made available using an embedded player online and subsequently rose to number one on the Billboard 200 upon its official release by Capitol Records. Anybody who feared what the Internet held for the music industry was now converted as modern music release was born.
Capitol Record’s embeddable player which included the album as well as additional content Courtesy of Capital Records
Courtesy of Tribune Magazine
Today, streaming has become the predominant way we listen to music and the controversy has shifted to the business model Spotify uses to remunerate artists. Last year, over 156 musicians including Paul McCartney and Stevie Nicks signed an open letter to the government concerning the state of the music industry. The economic impact of streaming is increasingly seen as an unfair model to artists, who fail to see equitable compensation while streaming services boast profits; an issue that has become even more important during the Covid-19 pandemic, as musicians had to pause live performances.
Before the streaming economy, musicians would be paid a fixed price-per-song or album-sold amount. However, Spotify does not pay royalties to musicians directly. Instead, royalty payments depend on the individual agreements that musicians have with their record labels. The open letter seeks to change this through an amendment to the wording of the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. The amendment would liken streaming royalties to that of radio, which is seen to be a fairer formula of payment to musicians.
While still controversial, the future of Spotify seems resolute. I can’t imagine going out to HMV on the day of an album release, perhaps even to find that it is sold out. There is no longer a need for Rory Gilmore and Lane Kim to formulate an elaborate plan to get Lane the new Belle and Sebastian CD. The convenience of Spotify ensures its existence. Until a more artist-friendly solution is created, I think I may just have to buy my premium subscription again.