The first war of music was when CDs replaced vinyl and cassettes. The second war of music was MP3s + Napster. The third war of music is Spotify. Today, when Spotify sent me a “wrapped” email for “artists” I was curious what value they were going to tell me about. Yes, all of my music is on Spotify. Yes, I make ZERO dollars. Yes, I pay to have 5 artists’ music on Spotify. Yes, I lose money, giving you access to my creative product.

Here’s the hero of the email, getting me to “hope” for something positive about Spotify and my artist account.

Here’s what they were selling me.

Oh, let me guess, now I can pay Spotify more than I already do, to get promoted and still not get paid. Nice. And nope. The funny part was in their infinite loop that occurs when you go down the rabbit hole of their offer. Let’s first explore this amazing new opportunity.

The first sentence had me laughing. What does “meaningful metrics for music” mean? Let me show you a glimpse of my Spotify metrics, if I can find them. Please hold.

That’s interesting. If Spotify would pay artists ONE PENNY per stream, I would’ve made $7.50. Okay, so let’s look at my year for Buzzie.

And the grand total (drum roll) is, after four years of streaming …

So, sure, I’ll go pay Spotify to get me another hundred thousand streams and zero dollars. What does it take to buy reach these days? Is TikTok the new music panacea?

Maybe it’s my music. Perhaps I’m not that good. Sure, that’s possible. Or the songs. But that’s not the issue. Today 1% of artists on Spotify make actual rent money. Not mortgage money. That’s the .01%. I’m all about Taylor Swift being Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. But, I’m not okay with my favorite bands, working bands, bands with no other career options besides Starbucks, not getting money for their work.

Now, Spotify has started audiobook streaming. And the authors are about to take a bath, unless the laws are brought in to stop them. There’s little chance that the government even understands, much less cares about music. Look at how well the Ticketmaster investigations are going. There is no financial incentive to change the model. Neil Young can afford to pull all of his music off Spotify in protest. Taylor can afford to rerecord her back catalog to restart royalties separate from her early recording partners.

Let’s buy some music for the holidays. Go see a live show. Share a musician’s songs. Here’s my one bright point. I have a single song, a Radiohead cover, that is providing most of my reach. Last Flowers – Radiohead by Buzzie.

Merry Christmas, mfkrs.

Here is a social media version of this post for sharing, with music by Buzzie. SPOTIFY LIE on YouTube.

John McElhenney —  LinkedIn

Please check out a few of my books on AMAZON. 

Especially this one, about living a creative and human life of intention and joy. 100% human generated – with the exception of ai-assisted spelling.