Summary
Spotify has announced another price hike for subscribers in the United States. CEO Daniel Ek sparked an online backlash with a post on X (formerly Twitter) that suggested the music millions of subscribers pay to listen to was "content" that had little value. Within the next 30 days current subscribers will be notified of the change, and the price hike will go into effect.
According to research firm Antenna, fewer than 1.5% of Spotify subscribers switched providers in April. Average churn rate – the proportion of people who switch from it – stays at around 2% throughout the year. Unlike TV and movie streaming, where we're fairly flighty, people tend to sign up for a music service and then stick with it.
Me. I'm anti-IP. Just pirate. Nobody deserves money for playing music. If they can manage to get money out of it, great, good for them. But nobody morally owes them access to a job as a musician. I'd love to demand the world organize it in a way I could make an income sharing my opinion online, and that some people were under physical threat to not do something that could reduce my income if they did it verses the behavior that would help me have a career sharing my opinion online. Because society is advanced by my opinions damn it, so I need incentives to share them. And if you jeopardize my income you are a bad person and should feel bad.
With infinite reproducability people can just put out contributions to the arts when they feel like it (plenty people will) and humanity can infinitely enjoy it without limits. Humanity's need for the arts is resolved. If someone puts something out into the world they put it out in the world and it lives there on it's own. Just like this opinion. I can't be upset about what anyone does with it because I put it out there. My view is if you put music out there you have not given yourself licence to be mad about anything ever related to it. If you were going to get mad at the world for what it does with it that's your fault for sharing something with the world. And you can avoid the cost of being upset by recognizing that when you share something with the world the reality is the the world is going to do whatever the fuck it wants with it.
And the funny thing is that if the effective results of copyright go up or down with time then the supply of musicians will just increase because the available base is twenty fold the number who do it professionally at least. It's not like veterinarians or lawyers where there isn't a large number of people already trained but who happen to not be using their professional skills. Getting to the funny part is that it doesn't matter what policy is or what company does this or that. Because the number of active musicians is going to scale almost instantly to any incentive the amount the average amount musicians make is going to be the same no matter what. So you really aren't hurting their income when you pirate. Maybe fewer total professional musicians would exist, but you aren't hurting their income. Neither is spotify or any external force as much as they think it is. Musician pay is static because supply is elastic.
So I take the least diplomatic position possible. Fuck Spotify. Fuck musicians. You don't owe either of them money. You don't owe either of them favorability. Just listen to their music and don't pay anyone.