Tell Us What You Think

We have had a Distrokid account since October 2020.

We have 24 artists currently on our account.

We’ve paid in total so far to support artists on streaming services since 2020: $1155.

Total streams these 24 artists got since we had the account since 2020: 122,676.

Total amount we’ve received for 24 artists streaming since 2020: $222.13.

We received 0.0018 cents per stream for our artists since we had the account.

It’s only going to be worse in 2024. Spotify is further marginalizing independent artists who make up ⅔ of their platform. They will no longer pay us anymore until any of our tracks first reach 1000 streams per year, and they instead plan to funnel our money to the top artists who already receive better payment plans due to deals they make with those artists. I’m not sure the expense to keep our music on streaming compounded with the great disrespect these streaming companies have for us is worth the so-called exposure.

Perhaps we should go back to no longer supporting our music on streaming and close our Distrokid account. If an artist wants to have streaming, we can go back to them doing it on their own.

Our mission is not to help folks ‘break into” these exploitative systems, but rather work towards making them obsolete because we’ll have created a community and systems of support that allow us to make a living wage. We still often participate in these systems when we feel it currently makes sense for us at this time, but I am questioning if it is worth it now.

What do you think? Please let us know in the comments here.