Why I don't link to my music on Spotify

Spotify have shown themselves to be a heartless corporate entity only concerned with increasing shareholder value at any cost.

Unless a musician generates a significant amount of streams (think in the millions) then they simply do not pay you at all. They don’t even pretend to. They jsut tell you you’re not important enough to bother with. Which is rich coming from a platform that relies on these people to create their content.

And couple that with the fact that their deals with the major labels have been pushing down artist royalites in favour of non-royalty based deals between labels and the platform.

They are abusing their position as gatekeeper to music for millions of people. They really add very little value and just collect money to sit beween artist and listner.

Oh yes, and they also support and promote the views of some extremely questionable people on their podcast platform. (Start with Joe Rogan and work your way down).

So no, I cannot recommend anyone use Spotify. I would actively recommend avoiding it if at all possible.

But yes, before you ask, I still distribute my own music on there. Why? The music I distrbute does not exist to make money, so lack of royalties does not hurt its prospects. I would just be harming my own music by removing it from Spotify out of spite. No one really cares if I’m on there or not, and the more people who are able to discover my music the better. If anyone can persuade Mr Sheeran or Ms Swift then that might be a different story.