The Dark Side of Spotify

With cassettes and CDs long gone and vinyl only spinning on the record players of the ironic or the outdated, digital music has taken over. Whether purchased on iTunes or streamed on Pandora, the accessibility and portability of this format has captured the market.

Spotify, the Swedish music-streaming import founded in 2008, has gained tens of millions of paying and non-paying members. Known for its expansive catalogue of over twenty million globally licensed songs, Spotify offers its users total freedom in their music listening experience. However, with great freedom comes great sacrifice.

There are many downsides to the listening service, besides the constant annoying ads for the free users. Spotify perpetuates the success of already famous and popular artists, even while giving them no substantial compensation, and makes it even harder for new artists to gain attention, listeners, or any form of a profit.

In a November 2012 article on the music blog Pitchfork, musician Damon Krukowski of the musical acts Galaxie 500 and Damon & Naomi discussed the payment he has received from Spotify. For 5960 plays, the songwriters collectively made $1.05 (thirty-five cents each). On this scale, it would take 47,680 plays to equal one LP sale.

Many disregard these incredibly low values, either arguing that it the service is better for the artist than illegal streaming, or saying that it merely harms the greedy, heartless record companies. In both these cases, the money is in fact going to the streaming companies. Services like Spotify are focused on the growth of the corporation, not the growth of the music industry; they look out for themselves and not for the evolution of a cultural cornerstone.

Artists barely make more money than they would have if their work was being illegally downloaded, and when record companies are hurt, so are musicians. The companies are wounded, so they play it safe--focusing on big acts, hesitating to take chances on young artists, and avoiding envelope-pushing perfomances. Famous Top 40 acts are able to survive. They do not need the revenue from Spotify and are kept on by the struggling record companies. It is the young, fresh artists, the ones who drive the progression of music, who suffer.

Counterintuitively, Spotify’s freedom also stifles its listeners. After first downloading the application, the round green icon displayed on the computer screen, one is overwhelmed with the vast selection of tunes. The most popular songs and albums are displayed, giving the user a quick link to the latest Timberlake or Rihanna hits. Other than that, one is left to sift through millions of songs. This makes searching for the songs one already knows the easiest way to find music.

Unlike Pandora, which takes a requested song or artist and creates a mix of music, some known to the listener and some unknown, Spotify users are left to fend for themselves (this is disregarding the rarely used Spotify Radio function--a poor man’s version of Pandora.) After creating a couple of playlists during the exciting first few weeks post-application download, listeners often stick to what they know, replaying the music they are familiar with. Accessibility leads to repetition. Once again, unknowns are left undiscovered, with no one searching through millions of songs for a hidden gem. People stick to the music they already know, mindlessly clicking through old favorites.

The ease of Spotify makes the listening experience careless. No thought goes into a free click, as does the purchase of a song on iTunes or, heaven forbid, a physical record. The experience of mulling over a purchase, saving up an allowance for a band’s new release, thinking before listening, is gone from Spotify.

In exchange for saving 99 cents, Spotify changes the music industry from a place for exciting talent to flourish to a stage for the same old American Idol bred, sugar coated pop hits to showcase their singles. Music is taken for granted; the simple click of the mouse leaves the listener mindless, boring, and unadventurous. Even while making songs so accessible, Spotify is harming their foundation, endangering the artists who produce them and numbing the people who listen to them.