Last year Taylor Swift chose to take all of her music off Spotify. Her reasoning behind doing this was because she feels Spotify doesn't pay artists enough for their music. Her argument is total nonsense for a couple reasons. The first reason is because Taylor Swift has an absolutely insane amount of money and all of her teenage fan buy every single one of her albums regardless of the quality of the music. Secondly, artists make most of their money by touring, since record companies typically get the majority of money from album sales. Also, if an artist's music is free to listen to it is easier for them to gain fans, who will then buy tickets to see them play live.
A great example of someone who understands this is Chance the Rapper. Chance does not have any of his music on Spotify, but all of his music is free to download from his website. Chance has made a career in music without ever selling a single album or receiving money from people streaming his songs. Doing this has not hurt Chance's popularity, either. He currently has over 1.2 million followers on twitter along with another 800 thousand followers on Instagram. Chance will also be the musical guest on the December 12 episode of Saturday Night Live.
It is possible to have a successful career by giving away music. It is beneficial to the artist to at least have a free way of listening to their music in order to attract more fans. It is also much better for artists to put their music on Spotify that way they will at least receive some money for their music instead of having people torrent their music and receive nothing for their work.
No comments:
Post a Comment