The case against Spotify
The Rogan problem is a symptom of a bad business model
We’re going into our second week of Joe Rogan controversy, with more artists and creators leaving the platform in a slow drip. If you’re thinking about bolting, I fully understand — I started to worry a week ago, when the incredible Joni Mitchell pulled her music from the platform. But the problems have continued to balloon from there, and the current state of play calls Spotify’s entire business model into question
For the record, my gripe is not with broadcasting Rogan, exactly. I believe when he says he’s not trying to promote misinformation on his show; I think he’s genuinely dumb as rocks. Judging by his recent behavior upon getting COVID, he’s clearly fallen for dangerous misinformation himself. I also don’t doubt that he’s been a major vector for this misinformation in society at large. But at this point, I doubt getting him off spotify is going to get anyone vaccinated. The lies are out there, spread and legitimized, and people are making their own awful decisions. I left Spotify because this entire episode has been a betrayal of the idea that Spotify has been trying to sell.
When I first heard about Spotify, eleven years ago, it seemed like an incredible revelation. It was what all streaming services are: the promise of endless content on demand, a package of total entertainment. But unlike movie streaming services, which squabbled over exclusive film deals, Spotify had a chance of actually delivering on the dream of musical completion: any song, anywhere, on demand. Throughout the 2010s, artists experimented with exclusive streaming deals on Tidal or Apple Music; all of them have eventually cropped up on Spotify.
For all its faults, Spotify looked for a moment like it could genuinely provide the complete package for listeners. There would be no turf wars over specialty content, no bundles, no need for piracy. It was a digital dream without scarcity. When I signed up for Premium at long last, tossing out my collection of MP3s ripped from library CDs and YouTube videos, it felt like I wouldn’t be losing a thing.
But of course, that’s not what happened. Spotify pays musicians less than one-third of what other streaming sites deliver, and musicians have been vocal about the low pay. For a while, the tension between the streaming service and its content creators was only a PR problem. But it’s become clear now that it’s not sustainable. Musicians pulling their music from Spotify seem genuinely unconcerned about the bottom line, and Spotify appears to have little recourse or incentive to keep them.
The entire business of Spotify is built on music, but music is not their actual priority. Why? Music belongs to someone else; they have to pay out the nose for it. To turn a profit that justifies their aggressive growth, they need their own content. This is why they’ve been producing Spotify-exclusive podcasts and promoting them so heavily. While underpaying artists, they’ve put $100 million into Joe Rogan’s awful back catalog. Podcasts, which were previously freely distributed, have become the cornerstone of their profitability somehow. This was working for a little while, but now that they’re at a crossroads, with their catalogs at risk, they’ve made a clear choice: music is not their business.
This is a larger issue in Silicon Valley: everything needs to be turned into some sort of elaborate side hustle for a weird thing nobody asked for. Our social networks are really data-harvesting machines. Scores of phone apps are elaborate advertisements for Uber and Lyft, which are scrambling to find their own paths to profitability. Startups fail all the time because they can’t actually make any money.
In a startup-heavy economy, consumers are constantly subjected to the awkward teenage phase of critical tech services as they go through constant self re-invention.
In summary: Spotify started out as the business that would make music free. Instead, they’re making podcasts cost money.
So I’ve moved over to another site. It’s not more “ethical,” although the pay for artists is better, and the sound quality does seem to have a leg up. But at the end of the day, it’s a sustainable trade: I buy music, they give me music, they make money off of their music. It is not, in fact, too much to ask for a good product at a fair price.
