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Why We Will Not Recommend Spotify.

Why We Will Not Recommend Spotify.

Written by:
Mack

You may have noticed a little banner at the bottom of our articles letting you know that we do not link to Spotify. This is not because we don't enjoy the user experience that Spotify offers, or that we believe by suggesting alternatives we are somehow better than you. Spotify is a fantastic music discovery tool that offers useful features and insights. Unfortunately it was built with intentions that differ from our own, and operates in a way that is detrimental to the artists we love.

Spotify's CEO stated that in the beginning he didn't set out to make a music listening app, just that he wanted to sell ad space and music was a prime subject to take advantage of.

year over year artists complain about low stream payouts while the CEO makes this amount of money.

Spotify's CEO invests millions? in companies that are actively contributing to the war in Iran, and funding the Palestinian genocide in Gaza.

Spotify has introduced "marketing tools" such as "Discovery Mode" which are effectively a legal loophole to bleed artists dry of their own profits, something that was made illegal in 19?? under the name of ??. Discovery Mode is an opt-in service for musicians that promises their music will be recommended to a wider audience with the tradeoff being Spotify gets to take a larger cut of their streaming royalties. This only ends one way: anyone not using the tool will receive reduced visibility, while the pool of artists using the tool will only become more and more muddied, prompting Spotify to introduce a higher tier that takes even more revenue from artists, until every artist is simply generating free revenue for Spotify and battling for attention while doing it.

In conclusion, it is clear that the goals of Spotify as a platform do not serve the interest of Artists, but instead use this false motivation as a facade for a massive global advertising platform that earns money not only from listeners but also steals revenue from artists to turn record breaking profits year in and year out. This type of company strategy does not align with our values as artists and human rights advocates. While we do not blame you for using the most popular music streaming platform in the world, we will continue to advocate for alternatives in the space.

Note: We do not ever link to services like Spotify due to these reasons. Most of the music we cover is available on all platforms, yet we strongly urge you to consider alternatives, both for the sake of the artists we cover, and those that we don't.

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