I think from an advertising revenue pov, it makes sense for Spotify to treat this as a problem. Spotify has an incentive to attract advertisers to spend money on ad space in their ad supported audio content. Part of the value is having ads placed in spaces with a high probability o"viewability" which is basically saying that when the ad was delivered, did it deliver in an environment where someone saw it or heard it. Regular podcasts probably have a high viewability because listeners are more actively engaged. White noise “pod casts” probably have a low viewability because the whole point is for it to put users to sleep and be background noise. So I think there’s probably a challenge for Spotify to increase the value to advertisers by demonstrating white noise machines aren’t eating up their ad dollars. And there’s a challenge with the content producers of non white noise to be compensated fairly for having higher viewership generating content than white noise.
They’re paying Joe Rogan $200M to be the exclusive home of his conspiracy disinformation bullshit, and they’re more concerned about forest_stream_with_gentle_rain_3.mp3?
Couple of things. What are White Noise Podcasts?. Spotify only started to offer Podcasts (got annoyed them pushing them in the recent UIs) a while back didnt they?. Imagine many people who use podcasts for any length of time actually use another service or app (in my case Podcast addict and now Antennapod). I used to use Spotify premium for music only. Thanks for all the recommendations further down for alternatives but how many offer mainstream music/download purchase etc?
White noise podcasts are usually an hour or more of literal white noise.
Many people have been using Spotify for podcasts since they were introduced to the platform in 2015. The app has features specific to podcasts, and why wouldn’t you want all your audio entertainment in one place?
why wouldn’t you want all your audio entertainment in one place?
Your desire to have a product function in a specific way does not magically reprogram the product to meet your expectation. This is a classic IT end-user issue.
Here is program X, which does Y
I want the program to do Z and will attempt to use it for that purpose despite the developer warning not to do that thing
Spotify podcasts are not sleep aides. They’re going to enforce it if you don’t get the hint.
why wouldn’t you want all your audio entertainment in one place?
Because Spotify is known to track and sell your listening habits. It’s fine (for me) that they track that I listen to AC/DC right before Ghostly Kisses. Music is music. A person’s podcasts can get a lot more personal. Politically, emotionally, and religiously personal. I don’t like to be profiled.
I don’t understand how people listening to podcasts could possibly cost a podcast platform money. It feels an awful lot like if people consume your product actively and you lose money then maybe you just shouldn’t be a business.
I assume they mean something like “we have to pay white noise podcast creators when the money could have instead ended up in our coffers or paid to record labels”
i’m guessing Creator money as the 10$ you pay is split depending of the time you listened too each artist. And also as they are podcasts and have constant sound changes, the file could be heavier than usual, which costs more bandwidth to send, or at least more place to store
From reading the article, it sounds like Spotify itself doesn’t get directly affected. Instead, the record companies and advertisers are upset. The record companies, because the shared pool of royalties that gets paid out is now getting split with white noise creators, leaving them a smaller share of the pie. The advertisers, because most people listening to white noise are using it to fall asleep or just keeping it on in the background, and therefore nobody will be listening/paying attention when the ads come on.
Tough titties for them, you may say, but if they don’t like it, they may take their respective balls and go home. That would seriously impact Spotify, since without the music, most users will quickly lose interest, and the advertisers are a large part of their revenue stream. If they don’t do something, they could end being a streaming service predominantly for white noise, which would be far less profitable.
It should also be taken into account that a lot of the white noise hits were not organic, but the result of a problem with how Spotify set up their algorithm.
Ah thanks for taking the time to explain. This makes sense.
I think this article is a little disingenuous. the record companies aren’t losing money, they’re losing market share. Many users simply weren’t listening to their music. Whether they were listening to the white noise is irrelevant. They WEREN’T listening to Taylor Swift, even accidentally.
I’m guessing this will cause Spotify to put time limits on playback (if they haven’t already)
Hilarious, they’re getting ad revenue and engagement, that’s all they should worry about and keeping Joe Rogan pumped full of his not-drug drugs so he doesn’t go totally fucking nuts.
As someone who doesn’t listen to much music, and just listens to the same mainstream music I did in the 90s, there isn’t much familiar music on bandcamp.
It also has an old school music store with high quality, DRM free FLAC audio files (which are great for preserving/protecting your investment in audio/reconverting indefinitely to the “best” format for your devices for years to come) as well (and you get discounts in the music store for having the subscription).
I like Bandcamp. You can keep music you buy from it drm free. They do writeups on genres and cities and stuff that are (or at least feel like they are) written by real people.
It’s less of a brainless recommendation algorithm than Spotify , but I like my music to be a little more intentional anyway so it works for me.
I know when I buy anything from creative people I enjoy it gives me warm fuzzy feelings to know that most of the money I’m paying is actually going to the artists themselves and it really seems BandCamp gives the artists a decent deal. According to their site artists get around 82% of what you pay (much better than the fractions of a cent they’d get from you streaming their song elsewhere) and that’s not counting BandCamp Fridays (first Friday of the month) when they give the artists 100%.
That’s the issue i find with recommending Bandcamp unless people are looking for small bands or indie artists (its also great for game soundtrack albums etc).
If you just want to listen (you can download for offline listening) have a look at Radio ParadiseIf you just want to listen and like prog then MorowBoth of these will give you masses of new stuff to listen to.
I have used Jango on android for around 10 years. Tonnes of artists, no ads. You just have to listen to the occasional independent artist and accompanying voiceover.
I’ve always used YouTube Music (well, Play Music before the brand change). It may be terrible though and I don’t even know it since I’ve never tried anything else. Suits my purposes though. No ads and download as much as I like.
In similar news, does anyone have a good replacement to Stitcher? Only a few days left and I’m really upset. First RiF now Stitcher. It’s been a bad summer.
Im a big fan of Pandora. I like listening to lots of different genres and discovering random music and the pandora app is pretty good for that. I have channels for everything from bossa nova to classic country to alternative and they do a great job of recommending stuff that I would never find on my own. It runs through android auto and on my pc so I basically have it playing all the time.
Are there any trust-worthy and reliable cracked Spotify APKs which you can recommend? I only want to know because I want to avoid downloading them accidentally.
Spotify bleeds money just like all the other streaming services and is kept alive by dumb investors that think, it will be someday profitable. Maybe they should stop trying to push so hard for podcasts and focus on their core business.
It’s kind of funny how the modern narrative around music streaming never mentions record labels, who in all honesty are the ones who always have been screwing over artists.
I don’t really see the problem. People like to listen to the stuff and Spotify provides it and pays the creator. Seems like everything is working as intended. Looks like it’s just greedy people getting annoyed that they can’t get even richer.
Yeah that is true from a monetary perspective. But even then, if people would rather listen to white noise then I guess that’s just how it is. Greedy people will be greedy tho.
I can understand, though, that someone who actually puts effort into producing music is kind of pissed if someone who simply uploads noise gets as much money per stream.
I don’t. Art is subjective, YouTubers talk about this all the time where 2 YouTubers will do a video on the same topic and for what ever reason 1 will do way better despite being made worse than the other video. People watch what they want to watch
If someone is genuinely mad that people would rather listen to white noise than their music then they should start working on making something better than white noise
Exactly the point, any artist with actual talent wouldn’t and shouldn’t be concerned about someone making white noise. If they did, they are just pumping trash to make money and are not that different from what they hate.
You don’t seem to understand how Spotify works. There’s a fixed cake size that then gets shared between artists. If someone is just using Spotify as an overnight noise generator, the generator artist essentially siphons money away from actual artists.
It’s perfectly understandable that artists don’t like that. Especially given the already very low Spotify payouts.
I really don’t get this weirdly hostile stance here. Is gaming a system now somehow a noble act in itself? The same people who grin at the stoopid artist peoples here will become furious when Amazon uses perfectly legal tax evasion tactics. But that’s of course something completely different, because suddenly you are a victim.
I think it’s true that they’re taking advantage of the way the system works, but I think the reason people are hostile to the music labels is because the music labels are famously terrible to artists and consumers. Can’t really blame people for gaming a system that has been historically gamed by rich businesses to stack the deck in the favor anyway.
No? Ik limited customer base means their usage would be split but the people on white noise podcasts aren’t looking for music. If there weren’t any they would go to youtube not for other music. People listen to white noise because it’s white noise, not actual songs. And the examples you provide are completely missing the point. I am not saying it’s something to be proud but to cut them off cause you think they are making easy money is definitely not something to be proud of either. This sort of thinking is simply corporate greed, that’s why I am opposed to it. The only reason I can see someone would be mad about is jealousy.
I can definitely understand that response, but people that feel that way are misconstruing the situation. Traditional podcasts and music are there for entertainment, and/or sometimes education for podcasts, and compete against each other for that. Most people listening to white noise are likely using it as a tool, not for entertainment, it isn’t beating out music as an option in most cases, they aren’t competing.
Yes, they are competing. Spotify only has a limited amount of money to distribute between artists and if “low effort” artists get more money, that means “regular” artists get less. It’s that simple.
My understanding was Spotify pays by the stream. Not out of some pool that is distributed based off a percentage of time spent listening compared to everything they have. Some quick Google searches show .003-.005 dollars per stream on average. Assuming Spotify will increase stream payouts if they don’t have to pay for “low quality” artists is like assuming a company will pay it’s employees more if they get a tax break. These streams are taking from Spotify, not other artists, because few people looking for white noise would choose these other artists if the white noise was unavailable. They would likely simply go to another app that does have white noise.
My understanding was Spotify pays by the stream. Not out of some pool that is distributed based off a percentage of time spent listening compared to everything they have.
From the article…
Universal Music Group’s CEO Lucian Grainge and Warner Music’s CEO Robert Kyncl have both voiced their displeasure at the fact that songs filled with noise are paid out of the same royalty pool shared by their superstars.
Spotify needs to get the money somehow first. They can’t increase prices indefinitely, and they can’t lower royalties indefinitely. That’s a rather simple calculation.
Why complain that your song has to compete with white noise, podcasts, and other people’s music? It’s obvious that your entertainment has to compete with other entertainment. If you can’t compete, just move to a “low effort” market…
If Spotify would move out white noise to its own platform or Spotify removes white noise and a different platform picks it up; I would pay less for a Spotify subscription anyways.
All of the money from subscriptions and advertisements is put into a big pool (minus a cut for Spotify), and every month it is divided up between each rightsholder based on the proportion of plays. So if you have a big chunk of track plays that are just generated noise playing over and over for hours, that’s a big chunk of that pool going to unoriginal/easily reproducible uploads instead of actual musicians. It’s basically a scam gaming the way the system works.
It’s also costly for Spotify. Even if the streams were in the form of, say, podcasts that were not allowed any sort of monetization, it’s still hours upon hours (per user) of data that has to be streamed…and it doesn’t compress efficiently. Compression algorithms seek to avoid noise, and deliberately generated noise will not compress well. So the amount of data being streamed is much higher per second than with music or speech.
Meanwhile, you can make an app that plays white/pink/whatever noise trivially. No waste of resources necessary.
Hard to tell if you meant it this way, but that’s a fault of the system and not of the creators and listeners using it.
If playing audio on a subscription service pays royalties, then creators who make that audio and listeners who pay for it should both be able to do so. It’s ridiculous to say that music is more valuable and deserves more of the money if people enjoy the “easy to make” white noise audio.
How easy something to make does not equate to its value. And many people would consider music easy to make also. It’s just silly for music labels to demand that their audio time be considered more valuable if people would rather listen to white noise.
That said, you’re right that there are more efficient and economical ways to provide that service. This is still a systems problem though. People view Spotify as a place to get audio, if streaming certain audio is wasteful, then Spotify should allow/require the app to cache that audio locally once the requisite length of audio has already been streamed. They can do this but for some reason aren’t.
This is actually a perfect example of “the customer is always right”. You can’t be mad that people want a certain product, instead you should start producing the product people want.
The most complicated factor here is Spotify’s algorithm producing certain outcomes. If people weren’t being suggested certain types of content, maybe they wouldn’t want it and would choose music instead of white noise. But again, that’s still not really any of the music label’s right to demand one way or another.
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