Music costs nothing if you don’t pay musicians.

"Also, what are we creating now that will still be valued and discussed hundreds or thousands of years from today?"

Certainly not your vapid tweets, mate.

I don't like that all art is just "content." I can believe that the cost of creating "content" really is near-zero, but "content" isn't the kind of music I look for. I spend effort trying to appreciate the craft and understand it, so "content" kind of defeats the point.

I literally just cancelled my membership with that shitty company yesterday! It sucks, I've used it daily for almost a decade, but I just can't really deal with my money going to such publicly malicious and stupid executives any more. They can't just not be arseholes for like two seconds.

Anyway, I need some alternative... Does anybody use anything else that they prefer? 👀🤞

Maybe he's thinking about their darling, Joe Rogan, whose main cost at this point is probably enough weed for him and his staff and his guests on the regular while he just talks about stupid shit that he thinks makes him sound smart but really doesn't.

So the cost of making that content is close to zero. Unless, of course, you count the $250 million they paid him already...

I will keep repeating this over and over: Spotify hates artists. This douchebag CEO pays himself hundreds of millions for storing other's music on a server, but thinks musicians are such losers they don't deserved nothing. Fuck modern Internet, and fuck you especially Daniel. Your time is worth 15k a minute, but musicians should work for free so you have a "product" to sell? Fuck you loser, I will always be superior to you because unlike you, I can create things. You need me, I don't need you.

He's not wrong, the cost of making content is near zero, the cost of making art is not.

Apparently time is worthless now. Who knew?

While I get the desire for outrage and backlash, a generous reading of what he said would be something like "In the past, making music meant needing access to numerous instruments and equipment. Today, you can create the same kind of music with a cheap PC and some programs."

He's not attacking creativity or saying your time isn't valuable. He's saying the barrier to entry has dropped dramatically to the point that almost anyone that wants to create content, can.

Look at any medium and notice the wide array of tools now available to the average person. You can do Photoshop and video effects using entirely free programs for the most part. Or paying a fraction of what you'd have paid in the past for less features.

Under that reading, he's absolutely correct.

But yeah, Spotify sucks, I get that. They don't pay creators fairly. Absolutely. Don't disagree with that.

I guess I don't understand his point. Is he saying that making content is cheap (it's not) so artists don't need to be paid a lot? If content creation is cheap, why are they not the ones producing the music? It should be cheap for them to be their own label, right?

But shit, you would think the CEO of a company whose main product is streaming content would have some idea of the cost to produce that content. Recording studios do not exactly grow on trees and it's not like audio engineers are working for free. I guess I don't understand why he is paid so much since being an executive at a company does not require much expense.

This feels like an out of touch comment about AI tbh. I could be wrong but it'd make all of that make slightly more sense

As a bedroom producer who spent his children’s college money on analogue synths: go fuck yourself asshole.

The problem all around, IMO, is just how extremely broad the term content is. Content can be a complex hour-long video on a subject with amazing editing, or a beautiful piece of artwork, but it can also be a quick selfie at a club or any given platform's equivalent of shitposting.

Today they announced another price hike.

I mean, sure... I can pump out music all day every day and it cost me nothing to make.

It's not gonna be good music though. It's literally just going to be random notes and loops with no lyrics or actual instruments being recorded, strung together in a way that doesn't cause your ears to bleed. Hopefully.

But hey, if that's what Ek wants, he should make me an offer. 🤷🏻‍♂️

The value you provide to the world of music is less than zero, in fact it's a debt to society you will never repay, congratulations on the proof of concept that stealing can be both legal and profitable though.

commence enshittification, ludicrous speed GO

“Will this be on Quibi?” - Philomena Cunk

And CEOs are useless and not needed, a long with their big salaries.

Look, he's right, but he's also full of shit.

Music Production used to require expensive equipment and a dedicated studio. Now anyone with a few hundred dollars can make quality musical recordings in their living room. The monetary cost of creating musical content is extremely low compared to all previous eras of the music industry.

The issue here is that he is making an argument for raising costs while cutting artist revenue by making music appear to have little to no value. This is an extremely poor decision, since most people who enjoy music don't equate the value of the music they are listening to with the monetary cost it took to make it. It's also a crazy argument to devalue your product while raising prices.

Given that Spotify lines its pockets by shoving music from the highest bidder down their customer's throats (As everyone unwittingly listening to "Espresso" has surely learned over the past month), they clearly don't care about the small players getting exposure.

If you care about small artists, quit Spotify and start using Soundcloud and Bandcamp. Actually discover small artists instead of relying on the largest corporate music algorithm on the planet to spoon-feed you.