Sockpuppet Blog.

Why we’re at this point

The state of affairs for independent music distribution is a horror show. Every distributor I’ve used has been a nightmare to work with in some way, and has ended up costing me far more in my dealings with them than I’ve ever made back. I’ve made probably around $100³ in total over the past 20 years from streaming. It has cost me a lot more than $100 to make my music available on streaming⁴.

Meanwhile, the “best” month I’ve ever had on streaming was the month after Furality Somna, where I got a brief surge of interest on Spotify, but not enough of one to actually get any of the sustainable characteristics that one would expect. The people who listened to my stuff didn’t keep listening to it, my work never ended up in any recommendation feeds or popular playlists, and even with the amount of direct interest I got, I only ended up making around $7, which isn’t even enough to receive a payment from my distributor. And it only pays for about two months of distribution fees anyway.

I’ve also written extensively about the problems with streaming platforms and Spotify in particular, and that’s not an industry I really want to support right now. In addition to Spotify’s issues, I’ve also learned of reasons to distrust Apple Music and Tidal, for example their partnerships with Rekordbox which makes it so that DJs can stream artists' music into their mixes without materially supporting said artists beyond “exposure.”

I’ve also had great difficulty with getting my music onto streaming platforms to begin with these days. In addition to costing considerably more to get distribution than I can ever expect to receive in return, every distributor has succumbed to the problems with a glut of AI submissions, where they have lost all trust in musicians who haven’t already made it big, and provide Kafka-esque hoops to jump through to prove that my music was made by me. This isn’t entirely the fault of the distributors, but it is a symptom of a deeply broken industry.

I have also applied to many record labels but they only want to sign up-and-coming musicians, not ones with a deep catalog of what they see as unsuccessful releases, or they want people with a much larger social media presence and a fanbase which would be large enough for me to not need a label to begin with. I am not a social media darling (nor do I want to be), and I just plain don’t have it in me to try to get what they want of me.

So I’m focusing on what I have control over.

Where we are right now

At the moment, my plan is to do the following:

• Continue to focus on Bandcamp, Mirlo, itch.io, and the other storefronts that value creators and listeners, and evangelizing a return to people owning their own collections
• Switch to fully-self-managing the releases on my YouTube and Peertube channels, and hopefully at least keep my stuff available through YouTube Music in that way
• Focus on building my audience through live performances and commissions
• Continue to work towards a fair streaming future and other grassroots efforts like KVRR and TheIndieBeat

This isn’t permanent

If someone can point me to a fair, ethically-managed distributor that supports independent musicians (rather than using the promise of winning the lottery to keep us constantly buying tickets), I would certainly consider reuploading my catalog somewhere.

What do I think counts as ethical in this case?

• Charging an affordable, sustainable amount for the distribution and maintenance of the catalog (even if this means both an annual fee and a royalty cut)
• Providing reasonable tools for bulk import/upload of releases (rather than everything being an accessibility nightmare)
• Providing actual support to artists who need it, not copy-pasted brush-off responses
• Timely distribution of royalty payments, with regular (e.g. annual) lump-sum payments irrespective of minimum thresholds
• The ability to pick and choose which streaming platforms works go onto, and the ability to change this later (with takedowns and redistributions on a per-platform basis)
• Actually investigating claims of playlist fraud instead of categorically taking down entire catalogs based on a mere suspicion from a platform (and in the meantime, at most only suspending the suspected works on the suspected platforms, not a full takedown from every service)

None of these feel very likely to happen in the foreseeable future. But also, the entire streaming music industry needs to change for me to want to really participate in it, and I don’t see that happening either. Too much about how the industry works is based around the demands of the major labels in order to keep the major-label content available, even though their requirements ultimately end up working against their interests as well!

Alternately, if any of the streaming platforms were to allow artists to directly upload and self-distribute to them while still earning royalties⁵, that would be peachy.

One size does not fit all

I know many musicians for whom this path would not make any sense. Last night at an open mic I was talking about this with a friend, and he was very surprised to hear about my experiences with streaming vs. sales; he makes substantial amounts of money from streaming, and very little from Bandcamp (and what he pays to get his stuff on Bandcamp hasn’t paid for his Bandcamp earnings).

A big part of that is that he primarily records and releases covers of popular music. As a result, he ends up getting his audience from people looking for popular songs, and this led to a level of sustainability that works in his favor. This is also why Bandcamp has been a money pit for him, because mechanical licenses for purchase are significantly more expensive than those for streaming.

But by the same token, what works for other musicians has not worked for me. Why should I keep playing the game when I have 20+ years of experience telling me that it just plain isn’t worthwhile for me to do so?

Anyway. I do not need streaming in order to feel successful. So for now I’m opting out.

Maybe in the future this will change. But dealing with the stresses and frustration of streaming is the least important thing to me right now with everything else going on in my life.