The problem with Spotify

[The Man]

Nigel Godrich and Thom Yorke just pulled a number of albums they were involved with (including Atoms for Peace, Ultraista, and Yorke's solo album) as a protest of Spotify's poor compensation of new artists. They are not the only ones to protest against poor compensation of internet radio sites. Robert Fripp removed all of King Crimson's material from several sites about a year ago; David Lowery of the rock band Cracker recently posted a statement of the meagre royalties he received from Pandora; and Damon Krukowski of Galaxie 500 posted a detailed dissection of the industry's rather sketchy practices with regard to streaming revenue.

Sasha Frere-Jones has a good write-up of the problems here. He also mentions his experience with his own band, where he barely earned enough to recoup the costs of recording the albums, and suggests that putting the recordings up for free on the intarwebs may help move some of the label's unsold stock by generating interest.

[Old Manus]

Meh, the amount of 'new artists' that I would never have heard of, let alone listened to, had I not come across them on Spotify probably numbers in the hundreds. I think the platform benefits new and niche artists a lot more than megastars like Thom Yorke. Great publicity for his new album though.