They’re paying Joe Rogan $200M to be the exclusive home of his conspiracy disinformation bullshit, and they’re more concerned about forest_stream_with_gentle_rain_3.mp3?
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It costs them $38M and earns them $200-300M in return
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I don’t understand how people listening to podcasts could possibly cost a podcast platform money. It feels an awful lot like if people consume your product actively and you lose money then maybe you just shouldn’t be a business.
The article doesn’t really make it clear. Why do these cost the platform money?
I assume they mean something like “we have to pay white noise podcast creators when the money could have instead ended up in our coffers or paid to record labels”
Yeah that means the headline makes no sense
i’m guessing Creator money as the 10$ you pay is split depending of the time you listened too each artist. And also as they are podcasts and have constant sound changes, the file could be heavier than usual, which costs more bandwidth to send, or at least more place to store
From reading the article, it sounds like Spotify itself doesn’t get directly affected. Instead, the record companies and advertisers are upset. The record companies, because the shared pool of royalties that gets paid out is now getting split with white noise creators, leaving them a smaller share of the pie. The advertisers, because most people listening to white noise are using it to fall asleep or just keeping it on in the background, and therefore nobody will be listening/paying attention when the ads come on.
Tough titties for them, you may say, but if they don’t like it, they may take their respective balls and go home. That would seriously impact Spotify, since without the music, most users will quickly lose interest, and the advertisers are a large part of their revenue stream. If they don’t do something, they could end being a streaming service predominantly for white noise, which would be far less profitable.
It should also be taken into account that a lot of the white noise hits were not organic, but the result of a problem with how Spotify set up their algorithm.
Ah thanks for taking the time to explain. This makes sense.
I think this article is a little disingenuous. the record companies aren’t losing money, they’re losing market share. Many users simply weren’t listening to their music. Whether they were listening to the white noise is irrelevant. They WEREN’T listening to Taylor Swift, even accidentally.
I’m guessing this will cause Spotify to put time limits on playback (if they haven’t already)
I don’t really see the problem. People like to listen to the stuff and Spotify provides it and pays the creator. Seems like everything is working as intended. Looks like it’s just greedy people getting annoyed that they can’t get even richer.
Yeah it’s only a problem because audio consumption is generally a zero-sum game.
Yeah that is true from a monetary perspective. But even then, if people would rather listen to white noise then I guess that’s just how it is. Greedy people will be greedy tho.
I can understand, though, that someone who actually puts effort into producing music is kind of pissed if someone who simply uploads noise gets as much money per stream.
If someone is genuinely mad that people would rather listen to white noise than their music then they should start working on making something better than white noise
It’s not a competition for airtime, but a competition for money.
Exactly the point, any artist with actual talent wouldn’t and shouldn’t be concerned about someone making white noise. If they did, they are just pumping trash to make money and are not that different from what they hate.
You don’t seem to understand how Spotify works. There’s a fixed cake size that then gets shared between artists. If someone is just using Spotify as an overnight noise generator, the generator artist essentially siphons money away from actual artists.
It’s perfectly understandable that artists don’t like that. Especially given the already very low Spotify payouts.
I really don’t get this weirdly hostile stance here. Is gaming a system now somehow a noble act in itself? The same people who grin at the stoopid artist peoples here will become furious when Amazon uses perfectly legal tax evasion tactics. But that’s of course something completely different, because suddenly you are a victim.
I think from an advertising revenue pov, it makes sense for Spotify to treat this as a problem. Spotify has an incentive to attract advertisers to spend money on ad space in their ad supported audio content. Part of the value is having ads placed in spaces with a high probability o"viewability" which is basically saying that when the ad was delivered, did it deliver in an environment where someone saw it or heard it. Regular podcasts probably have a high viewability because listeners are more actively engaged. White noise “pod casts” probably have a low viewability because the whole point is for it to put users to sleep and be background noise. So I think there’s probably a challenge for Spotify to increase the value to advertisers by demonstrating white noise machines aren’t eating up their ad dollars. And there’s a challenge with the content producers of non white noise to be compensated fairly for having higher viewership generating content than white noise.
it’s better than most of the stuff on Spotify
I feel like someone listening to white noise wouldn’t simply replace it with Ed Sheeran if the white noise was not available.
People play it for their babies at night so Ed sheeran is not missing any cut
That’s not the issue though. There’s a finite amount of money that Spotify pays out based on the amount of subscription fees it is bringing in. That $38 million would be divided up amongst all the other artists if it wasn’t being paid to white noise podcasts.
I’ve listened to some music that is only a few steps away from white noise- atmospheric black metal, dark ambient, etc. Stuff that many people would scoff at and not even call it music. But it was intentionally created, and put out there for people to listen to. Regardless of the quality or enjoyability of the music, it’s unreasonable to draw a line as to what is or is not “sound meant for other people to listen to”.
Just because someone has found a way to make “music” with less effort and doesn’t make it “not music”, regardless of what it sounds like. Hell, one of the most famous pieces of experimental/avant garde music “4’33” is literally silence from the performers and the “music” is the sounds of the environment you are experiencing it in.
If I want to listen to any of these things on Spotify, well, they better pay whoever the rights-holder is that licensed it to Spotify to stream at the agreed upon rate. Spotify, other artists, and (most importantly) their labels can whine all they want. These are the contracts they’ve agreed to and as a subscriber I’ll exercise my contractually-agreed-upon ability to listen to whatever is on the platform for as long as I want. Maybe I’m awake, maybe I’m not, maybe I’m subliminally absorbing the music while sleeping. That’s no one’s business but my own.
That $38 million would be divided up amongst all the other artists if it wasn’t being paid to white noise podcasts.
It would be divided amongst the record labels and distributed to artists as those labels see fit.
So it’s not the user getting screwed, not the artists getting screwed, but record labels ?!
Record labels are getting screwed over by indie artists in a new niche that has exploded
This is 100% a massive W
Hopefully in accordance with their contracts with artists
Yes, those famously equitable contracts with artists, we’ve all heard legends of their great generosity.
I mean, yes…unfortunately those contracts have always been very exploitative for all but the top music acts.
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Damn here I thought something that makes sense, like me using cracked APKs, was affecting their profits. Good good.
Are there any trust-worthy and reliable cracked Spotify APKs which you can recommend? I only want to know because I want to avoid downloading them accidentally.
This one is simple and easy to use. So be extra aware to avoid this one https://www.xmanagerapp.com/
…But, why?
I can download a white noise app for free, and never have to worry about any advertising at all. Why would I insist on listening to one that’s going to have irregular breaks to tell me that I should use Nord VPN, play Raid: Shadow Legends, or get therapy through Better Help? (Caveat: I actually use Nord VPN, and have for about six years, but I’m probably switching to Mulvad or Proton in a month.)
The wording is a little misleading. A “white noise” podcast isn’t just 80 hours of TV static, it might be a recording of a cafe, a bus station, nature, a storm, etc. not something that’s just generated on-device, meaning it’s gotta be streamed.
There are many free apps that can generate soundscapes like this.
Lol literal white noise is getting more plays than my music.
Spotify bleeds money just like all the other streaming services and is kept alive by dumb investors that think, it will be someday profitable. Maybe they should stop trying to push so hard for podcasts and focus on their core business.
Their core business is built on record labels that always want more and more money until Spotify collapses.
It’s kind of funny how the modern narrative around music streaming never mentions record labels, who in all honesty are the ones who always have been screwing over artists.
Tells you who is doing most of the “talking”
How is white noise costing this much money? Surely the bandwidth isn’t that expensive
And why does Spotify care if they’re paying out white noise creators from the same fun they pay music creators? It’s still time in service right?
I see you don’t speak capitalism. Allow me to translate: Spotify is not making (enough?) ads money on independent noise creators. Big record labels are not making any money on independent noise creators. These leeches are outraged that they cannot profit onto those paesants’ work, but they say it like they were losing money (that is not true) because they don’t want to sound like leeches.
How does this cost any money besides cost of bandwidth?
They pay the author, and white noise is streaming all night.
How is white noise even something that someone can have a license on?
Shouldn’t it be identical no matter where you listen to it and therefore impossible to get money from?
It’s not actually all white noise. It’s stuff like waves crashing, raindrops, etc.
News flash: providing a product costs money!
And the enshittification continues on unchallenged.