Recent times have seen a few bands and artists take their catalogues off Spotify. Recent sentiments among (admittedly small) parts of the listening public have indicated a desire to boycott the app entirely. This has been covered by media outlets and social media a lot over the past few months, but most public opinion seems to have ignored quite an important question: “Does this even matter in the grand scheme of things?”, or otherwise framed, “What’s it to me?”

So, let’s talk about it from our specific location in our scene. First, context!

Moral Grounds

This year’s instance started in June when Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek and his investment firm were main players in a €600-million funding round for a company called Helsing that makes AI-driven ‘stuff’ for defence and military uses. Ek had also been part of a previous funding round worth €100 million for the same company in 2021. Soon after, artists began leaving. Deerhoof left quickly, Xiu Xiu and King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard shortly after, and then, Kadhja Bonet and Godspeed You! Black Emperor among a bunch of artists primarily in indie and niche spaces. While not being, you know, chart-topping pop-stars, they have brought the topic into focus; and it’s gathering steam given that Massive Attack have just asked to have their music removed.

Of course, while this isn’t much in terms of raw streaming numbers, some fans have doubtless cancelled their subscriptions and followed the music. King Gizz, to wit, has their discography available on Bandcamp under the ‘name your price’ model.

This has happened before. Neil Young and Joni Mitchell pulled their music in 2022 in protest of the Joe Rogan podcast saying misinformed things about COVID. Both returned late last year. Thom Yorke did something similar in 2013, but his projects have been available for a while now. Taylor Swift removed her catalogue from Spotify and other freemium platforms in 2014 citing low payouts and ‘devaluing’ of music in general. Whatever other reasons there might have been behind this (and her music was back on these platforms in 2017), it represents a case of a huge, current pop artist moving away. At the time, it inspired this blog post, which is... interesting reading.

Some artists have never been on streaming to begin with; most of Joanna Newsom’s discography and Death Grips’ ‘Exmilitary’ are good examples. That should be enough background for now.

If You’re An Indie Artist In India...

You most probably cannot afford to care ‘in this fashion’. Harsh words, yes, but streaming does too much for the non-film, non-commission artist in our country to make such actions viable in terms of, well, career health. The timeline of streaming in India coincided with the mobile data boom (India is still in the top 10 countries with the cheapest data rates), investments into diverse live events, international labels picking up interest in the country, and international acts visiting us far more often (it helped cause some of the above). This makes no 'direct' impact on an artist's financial stability whatsoever, but it is a core part of their public identity: 

- If an artist is label-backed, that label probably has deals with streaming services, and the label is their avenue for other revenue-generating options brought about through things going viral or through crossover success abroad. Some genres have done better than others in this area, mostly hip-hop or the musical kingdoms of Punjab, Tamil Nadu and the like. If you stream really well, you are sell-able.

- If an artist is fully independent, streaming is obviously not a revenue source but an advertising platform. It is merely a place to provide access for listeners and potential fans who can come from social media, maybe an ad, or one of the streaming services’ outreach programs like playlisting or artist spotlights (which they often do very well). There is no inherent value in this unless it becomes a statistic that can be shown to event organisers, labels and so on as a measure of engagement and therefore worth investing in. Essentially, the hope is that revenue can come from everywhere besides people enjoying the music (the product) they’re listening to.

- If an artist is just starting out, well... where else are you going to go, boss?

If You’re A Listener In India...

You mostly don’t care, and truth be told, you mostly never have. Harsh words, yes, but our country’s consumption habits don’t lie.

Apple Music started in India in 2015. Spotify launched in 2019. It has been just about a decade since indie music went from a somewhat paid (at a much smaller scale) model to what we have today. There has been such a sudden shift that the very act of listening has taken on a different cultural significance. Besides YouTube (which has forever been the biggest music platform in the country and still is by a big margin today), pre-streaming indie artists did have physical sales and paid digital downloads. The few consumers from that era are probably the lion’s share of those still consistently buying music today. On the other hand...

India generates more than a trillion streams yearly. According to this EY-FICCI report, we have about 175 million active users, out of which 10.5 million are paid subscribers. You can do the math – that is 6%. The most difficult part of this is understanding that for most of the people who make up these numbers, streaming was their first major exposure to indie artists, and their first method of consumption right after radio, their parents' collections and the odd TV spot. These are listeners who have almost always heard music ‘for free’, and the medium has simply changed. The perceived value of the art has, like, sort of, not. Not really.

So, when the vast majority of music lovers are not paying the monthly fee of one or two lunch thalis that premium plans on streaming apps are asking for, they are never going to care when a few artists leave one platform, no matter what the reason. It would take Indian artists who ‘boomeranged’ (became popular abroad and therefore also popular here at home – we do that a lot) to even begin to change minds. They will continue to spend their hard-earned money on the first three lines of festival lineups (the ‘big font’ club) and not spring for things like physical, merch or smaller gigs unless they are part of the tight-knit community that our scene is made up of. For the moment, these people are managing to keep things afloat, and it is heartening to see new fans join in (comparative) droves.

A Moral Epilogue

Just to be clear, there are moral grounds to support artists taking a stand against world events. Every tech company, label, streaming platform and so on has done plenty of things to merit distrust, boycotts and the like. And while Spotify in in the news for this at the moment, let’s be clear that if you think that there are many reasons for artists to leave every platform altogether, you are echoing a sentiment that many seem to have.

Anyway, it’s something to think about while your next playlist is on shuffle while you’re working. We all have our own stuff to deal with. It’s always been that way.