From Queen Kwong in ‘Why Quitting Spotify Won’t Help Indie Musicians,”
“indie artists like me can’t afford tо ignore and abandon Spotify, nо matter how much we despise it. If I want tо book a live gig, a promoter will check my streams first. If I want tо get label interest, A&R will glance at my numbers before deciding іf I’m relevant enough tо even respond to.”
This is also true for social media – some media outlets won’t feature you if you don’t have a big enough social media following. See, they think when they publish your feature, then you’ll share it with your big social media audience.
Which is fun, since we all know barely 5% of anyone’s audience will see that feature from the band’s social media feed.
But then, with Spotify numbers – they can be fudged, right? You can artificially boost those numbers. Make a song called “lofi-beats playlist” and hope for the best.
I wrote this a few years ago:
Right now Spotify is for the masses. Easy to consume. It’s a never ending buffet, and while your music is on the menu, you’ll never make enough to buy groceries for the week.