Last Straw?
I am writing this statement in response to the recent revelations that Spotify is directly funding the military industrial complex, and while this wasn’t my ‘last straw’ in my decision to pull most of my music from the platform, it is a fantastic way for me to sneak in a quick ‘I told you so’ before actually doing it.
But first, a story
A while back, when I was still regularly posting to Threads, I used to see a lot of discourse about how terrible Spotify’s streaming model was for independent and smaller label artists, how difficult it was to get past the 1,000 play threshold within the required time to trigger payment, how regularly songs would get erroneously flagged for botted plays, etc. Invariably, there would be comments in reply talking about how actually it was ‘easy’ to get that many plays and anyone who couldn’t wasn’t trying hard enough or just wasn’t that good. Anyone who didn’t want to participate was just ‘bad at business’ since Spotify is the most popular streaming platform and that’s where all the people, and potential fans, are.
And it all made me feel terrible.
Because I’ve never gotten a thousand streams on anything, and I’ve been posting my music online since 2004. So maybe I was really that bad at what I was doing.
I spent the last year or two mulling over these things and came to the conclusion that I’m not bad at what I’m doing, but I’m also not compatible with the way things are set up right now for finding and keeping an audience online. More on that in another post, let’s stay on topic and share about how I plan to respond.
My 3 Guidelines
I could go scorched earth and completely pull my catalogue from Spotify, but I wanted to take a more nuanced approach to make it fairer for people I’ve worked with on original tracks and remixes, and individuals I know who still use the service.
- I’m going to remove all my songs from Spotify apart from Delighted and Glittering Dreams.
- If I have worked or will work with you on a collab or a remix, I’m happy for you to use whatever platforms you choose for release
- I will release no new music to the Spotify platform
This will be effective before the end of 2025.
My distributor unfortunately cannot take down releases from Spotify without removing them from all platforms, so it may take me some time to arrange that and re-release to the remaining platforms (if I decide to re-release). Please bear with me while I deal with these processes.
Alternatives
In the meantime, my music will still be available to listen to on all other major platforms including Bandcamp.
I understand that most of these large companies, that are so heavily involved in the way we consume music today, are going to be bad in some ways. In fact, I believe all of them would act as poorly as Spotify if they thought they could get away with it. Scratch that, they definitely are acting badly, but they’re hiding it a little better. (That’s why I’m also planning to leave more platforms and networks in the future. The main one will be Instagram, but that’s a process that’s going to take me a while, so again I’ll leave the details for a future post.)
Spotify is a little different in that it has successfully created a mythology of necessity that many independent artists are falling for, or are at least doing their best to participate in. The fact is, Spotify is NOT a necessity to be a successful working musician. What counts is the fans. The fans are what has always counted the most.
An Apology From Me
I must take this opportunity to apologise to anyone who has followed my music even so much as in passing before: I simply haven’t been paying you enough attention.
I should have been gathering you guys in for the party instead of focusing most of my energy sending invitations to people who had never heard of me. Yes, you’re suppose to promote your work to as wide an audience as possible, but I was doing that at the expense of engaging with the people who already wanted to see what I was doing.
By extension I’ve also been neglecting the music-making itself. There is something so paralysing about involving yourself in the social media hubbub. It was always telling me I wasn’t good enough because I had no visible success, and that if I just followed the rules right then I could become successful. Well, I tried following the rules but I got very little in return. And as is the case with anything scammy and culty, it’s never the fault of the rules or the product or the guide or the leader or the company: you just didn’t do it right.
So I’m done with all that. I know at this point I’ll never be a visibly successful musician, not by the standards most people ascribe to the title. I tried being a version of myself that would attract that kind of success, but it felt icky the whole time. I think maybe some of you enjoyed me trying out skits and characters, but it never felt like it was on my own terms. It was according to someone else’s rules, and that’s what made it feel like I was doing badly and not living up to what I was told I should be.
Instead I’m going to do it my own way, even if my own way ‘doesn’t work’, because then I’ll actually be happy doing what I’m doing, and more likely to complete and publish songs, which has always been the end goal.
Thanks
Thank you for reading this far. I hope I haven’t caused you too much inconvenience with this move, but I have to warn you I’ll be doing more and more inconvenient things as time goes on. Thank you for staying with me on the ride.
Love always,
Lucid
Wonderful essay. Good plan. I think there are certainly better ways of doing things than the ways they are currently done.
👏👏👏