Your Spotify Wrapped and InstaFests Suck, and Here’s Why …
I just can’t hold it back anymore. I just can’t hide my level of disdain.
Here’s the truth: All of your Spotify wrapped year end results and InstaFest lineups absolutely suck. Every single one.
It’s not so much that everyone has terrible taste – well, chances are that you probably do – but rather that anyone who values Spotify so highly as to proselytize the app that’s been killing music for more than a decade, somewhere in their confused heart, actually hates music.
And, chances are you don’t even realize it …
My personal beef with Spotify dates back about six years, right around the time I released my most recent album with Tres, an alternative rock trio I front in Los Angeles.
Back in 2016, as Tres was preparing to release our full length debut, we approached Spotify about creating a page just for our band, as is pretty standard. All we wanted was one easy-to-find page where we could direct listeners to our music, but instead, the company just completely ignored us, as they do most independent groups.
As a result, our music was co-mingled with every other group out there called Tres. No surprise, the album didn’t reach as far as we’d originally hoped.
The experience turned me ice cold towards the music streaming platform, even before I ever cashed the few dollars in royalties we earned from streams. The money Spotify pays independent artists is so insulting that it’s comical. They blatantly and constantly disrespect the art form that built the platform.
Now, before I take this tirade any further (and it will go further), let me point out that Spotify founder Daniel Ek has a net worth that is equal to that of Paul McCartney and Elton John combined.
Let that sink in for a moment.
This dude, who has basically pillaged the entire music business, drastically and irreversibly tearing an entire industry apart, is worth approximately the same as two of the greatest songwriters of all time.
Please tell me how this makes sense. You can’t.
Ek, who has also been using his fortune to invest in weapons research and development, has zero musical talent. Rather, he has a crafty legal team that convinced the music industry to sell what little soul it still had left in order to cash in on streaming.
This is not a guy who should be celebrated by artists. He should be shunned, severely shunned.
See, Ek doesn’t care about music. He looks at music as a commodity and a tool. Music was only good to him for the sake of buying into the podcasting world. And let’s face it, podcasting is not art (except maybe in Bill Burr’s case). It’s not even really a skill at this point. Any bozo with a microphone and an internet connection can shout obscenities for an hour at a time and hit the publish button. So, how is a guy like Joe Rogan worth more than $100-million, while a talented band from New York, San Francisco, or Austin earns .003 cents per stream?
Again, it makes no sense.
As much as this is a tirade, I’m not out here to shit all over Joe Rogan, and all the other podcasters who are overpaid by Spotify. They did what any reasonable person would do. They took the money offered to them and ran with it.
But why did they ever have that chance in the first place? Why are radio hosts, essentially, out here making more money than most recording artists will ever see in ten lifetimes?
It’s pathetic, for lack of a better word. It’s a downright shame that Spotify, as a company and brand, has devalued music so much that people don’t even really care anymore. They just want some nifty infographic to slap on their social pages to prove that they like some music.
And guess what? Almost all those lists suck because Spotify has mid-A.I.
Just yesterday, I popped on my weekly Get Up! Mix from Apple Music, one of roughly 200 personalized, custom playlists I receive from Apple annually.
Now, my playlists will almost inevitably be better than yours because curation relies on an A.I. algorithm, and my library and taste are impeccable. But, just consider that on one random Monday in late November, Apple Music placed bands like Mastodon, Slayer, Metallica, Danzig, Pantera, The Bronx, Suicidal Tendencies, Rage Against the Machine, AC/DC, Alice in Chains, Jane’s Addiction, Queens of the Stone Age, and Van Halen in one single playlist. Also, consider that it’s not all heavy metal, with artists like Dennis Wilson (Beach Boys), Roxy Music, and Beck also in the seamless mix.
Sure, this playlist clearly demonstrates that I’m a child of the early 80’s who digs on metal and hard rock, but it also displays my superlative taste. Not a single shitty song in the mix.
But I’m trying to make a point here (or am I?), and bragging about how much better I am than Spotify listeners probably isn’t the best way to do that. So, why not take the word of At the Drive-In and Mars Volta frontman Cedric Bixler-Zavala, who put out the following social media post.
Upon further review, it was actually Cedric reposting the Union of Musicians & Allied Workers, but we can focus on Cedric, since he’s more talented than me. He’s more talented than you. And, he’s definitely more talented than Daniel Ek.
So, why is it that a generational talent like Cedric and an entire class of musicians are getting paid peanuts compared to a guy like Joe Rogan, who can’t play any instrument? And yes, for the record, I do understand the answer is the number of subscribers Rogan brings in. It is an rhetorical question of course, but this argument isn’t rooted in logic at all. It’s based on guts and feelings, two things that Daniel Ek lacks, completely, along with empathy.
For younger generations, like the Gen Zs, they don’t even realize that the music industry cannibalized itself a decade or so ago. In this regard, Ek can’t be solely blamed. He had ready and willing co-conspirators in the music industry. But the results of this sinister partnership between music and streaming have basically almost made it impossible for Gen Z to have any idea what it really means to support and cherish a band. They just stream and stream and stream. The behavior has become automatic.
But for the millennials out there, plugging Spotify Wrapped lists on social media is basically just a way to say you don’t really care enough about music to support artists on platforms that are more conducive to helping them earn a living, like Bandcamp, which is the very best and most artist-friendly of all the music streaming platforms.
This tirade has now become more of a rant, and I don’t care much for rants. Better to try and make some sort of succinct point rather than continue to ramble. So here goes …
Yes, I am a frustrated musician who is unhappy with the way the most beautiful art form has been commoditized, valued, and then devalued. And yes, I’m bitter about how tech, Spotify in particular, leveraged a vulnerable and corrupt music industry, decimating an entire artistic ecosystem.
Clearly, I’m pissed off about the whole thing, and I blame most of it on Spotify and Daniel Ek. I also like to take shots at Rogan (he’s rich, he doesn’t care) and the entire podcasting genre (full of hacks, so I don’t care), and at the end of every year when I see all these “wrapped” lists and now the latest InstaFest trend, I have to point out that all that shit totally sucks.
Instead, just go out and buy a record, and support an actual band. Oh wait, that totally reminds me that the new 7” single from Laurel Canyon, recorded by Steve Albini, that I bought two months ago should be arriving any day now. And that’s way cooler than anything Spotify has ever done.
Take that one to heart.