We got the streams... now what?

Buy Hit It While It's Hip ft. Jade Kenji on Bandcamp

My band Monstress had some recent success with our track release 'Hit It While It's Hip ft. Jade Kenji'. We managed to hit 7000 streams in 7 days, which then turned into 15,000, and now we're up to 30,000 and counting. It's our most successful track yet on Spotify. I can try and figure out why this track has had better success over the other ones, but then we'd be asking questions like, "what is good", "what is popular", "what sells", etc. I think in light the latest news about our beloved streaming service Spotify, these are not the right questions to start with.

It came out that the Spotify CEO has been investing a bunch into AI war weapons, using AI to make music that they can then use on their platform, ultimately pushing artists out of editorial playlists, etc. Jade Kenji, who featured on the track has recently suggested I read Liz Pelly's Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist. From what she told me, it seems like Spotify's greatest weakness is silence. I'm not surprised.

I need to read it of course, and do more research on Spotify and streaming in general, but all of it has me thinking that maybe we should be transitioning away? Spotify has greatly cheapened music. It's not just small artists, but big artists. However, nobody cares that a big artist only made $40,000 in one year (I think this was Snoop Dogg) over their streams because to an independent artist, that is basically a salary. It's understandable that we laugh in their faces and ask that they kindly shut their cringe mouth, but their complaints bring up an important point. In the past you had to have a label you bowed down to in order to push you out into the world and provide you with social and financial success. The beauty of the latest technology, is that anyone with a bit of money can produce and record from their home, and then pay a small (albeit stupid) fee to get it on streaming platforms. No more needing a label to get your music in a CD store (thank you Sanity for your service). However, now all your getting if your song gets a million streams is social capital. Sometimes, not even that, sometimes the opposite depending on how the world wants to receive your work. I'm sure there are benefits to having higher streams; get the bigger and better gigs, people show up to your gigs, people buy merch, etc. I thought that this was the way to go, so I made merch for my band and I'm trying to get us the bigger gigs by pushing the online content. However so far, I am seeing little return because the fact still remains, Spotify has cheapened music. People don't, and probably will never want to pay for music again the way they used to. It is a pessimistic view of the world, but it is one that I can't ignore.

I don't want to believe it, so I'm going to try a little experiment. I'm going to take us back to CD's, burn a bunch with some Monstress tracks (some unreleased), and try to sell them at our gigs. Let's see what happens.