British rock band The Pocket Gods have announced their new album will feature 1000 tracks, each 30 seconds long. The band wants to draw attention to the unfair payment system of the streaming platform Spotify.
Spotify’s streaming model provides that a stream is counted as such if the song has been played for at least 30 seconds. The provider has long been criticized for the low payment for the artists’ streams.
In fact, artists on the platform only earn around EUR 0.004 per call as royalties. Surviving from streaming alone is therefore impossible, especially for smaller bands and solo artists. Instead, the millions go primarily to a few large musicians and record companies, while the rules of the payment model seem to be changing the music business forever. Because more and more artists are releasing shorter and shorter songs. The reason for this is clear: you want or need to generate more streams in less time.
The Pocket Gods were inspired for their idea by an article by the New York music professor Mike Errico, who argued in “the i” magazine that Spotify’s specifications for what is considered a stream mean the end of the three-minute pop song in the long term could.
Mark Christopher Lee, lead singer of The Pocket Gods, says he read the article and wondered why he should write longer songs when he could get the same low pay from Spotify for just 30 seconds.
“We wrote and recorded 1,000 songs for the album, each just over 30 seconds long. The longest lasts 36 seconds. It aims to raise awareness about paying artists fairly,” Lee added of the album-making process.
One song on the album is therefore also called “0.002” and refers to the payment that the band receives per stream. The band used to get £0.007 (about €0.008) per stream, now it’s only £0.002 (about €0.003).
The band’s new album, titled 1000×30 – NOBODY MAKES MONEY ANYMORE, already refers directly to the payment system of the streaming service in the title. The Pocket Gods are well aware that they could provoke a deletion of their content by Spotify, the band said.
Worthless album
The Pocket Gods aren’t the first to use streaming service payment methods in their music. Last year, the Berlin artist and musician Valentin Hansen published a similar project that poses the question of the value of music in the streaming age. Hansen divided the 8 songs on his debut album into 30 pieces, each exactly 29 seconds long.
Since the songs are not rated as a stream by Spotify due to their shortness, the album entitled CRISIS (THE WORTHLESS ALBUM) is probably a “worthless” album in the best sense of the word. The work deals with similar questions that The Pocket Gods now take up in their new release. In the meantime, Hansen’s album has also been released on vinyl.
Surprisingly, while The Pocket Gods believe their pay fell in part because Spotify bought out Joe Rogan’s controversial podcast, they are unwilling to succumb to the criticism leveled at the streaming service for the past few weeks about Spotify’s handling of misinformation. connect.
Despite the lousy pay, Spotify is an important musical resource and enables indie bands to release music independently without a major record label, according to the band. They also believe in the right to free speech.
Spotify was recently asked by several hundred scientists and medical professionals to remove the podcast by American comedian Joe Rogan from the platform because it was spreading misinformation about the corona pandemic. After Spotify failed to comply with this request, the musician Neil Young publicly announced his withdrawal from the platform. Several well-known musicians such as Joni Mitchell and David Crosby have since followed Young’s request.
The Pocket Gods had already dealt musically with the royalties from Spotify in their song “Spotify Give Us More Money This Christmas” in 2019. The band has released 74 (!) albums since 1998. Apparently they have a lot of humor: Their 73rd album is called THE DIFFICULT 73RD ALBUM.