Thanks Spotify! - April 2019 Copper Feast Blog

Thanks Spotify!

This month's blog has been written to the sounds of Never Not Never Not Never Not, the debut album by Rosie Tucker. Have a listen it it here. It's a beautiful mix of indie rock and folk and a record that fans of Snail Mail and Squirrel Flower.

Hi everyone, and welcome back to the blog for April. Just wanted to say a massive thanks to you all for the support you guys gave us in the Pseudo Mind Hive pre-order, it's been overwhelming and I'm dead proud to have the guys on board as part of Copper Feast Records. I'm still trying to catch-up with everything and I've got a list as long as my arm of things to do. This includes finalising the brand new artwork for T-Rextasy's Prehysteria, for which the order is now in with pressing fully underway, as well as updating the webstore with a bunch of amazing new stock as part of a soon-to-be-announced partnership with perhaps my favourite record label out there...get hyped.

Anyhow, onto this month's blog in which I'll be getting stuck into a rant on streaming services, and how live shows and merch are the most important way you guys can support your favourite bands and artists.

So last week I saw a great Instagram post online (below) and it's actually about as truthful as it can get when it comes to supporting your favourite artists. I'm sure there are people out there that said "Wait, what?! That can't be true." Well guess what guys. It is.

Having made Right Shitty's debut album Bachelor of Arts available across all of the streaming platforms last year, I've seen first hand how poorly artists are remunerated for their work. Spotify in particular are terrible, with them paying around £0.003 per stream from a paying customer. Other platforms are better, but not by much. You'd literally have to be Taylor Swift to make any kind of living from streaming alone. Take a roughly average UK salary of £30,000 per year, you would need 10,000,000 streams therefore to make that amount. Take your average 3 minute song, and you're talking around 500,000 hours of listening to make an average income in this country. To add even more context to this example, there's not a single King Gizzard song on Spotify with anywhere near that number of streams, and they're splitting money between 7 band members as well as having to cover production costs on their music!

This really makes you consider how bands much smaller than King Gizzard are supposed to survive and support themselves as musicians. Which brings me back to the above image.

It really is hugely important that musicians, especially independent musicians, and in fact us smaller labels too, receive as much support through purchasing your favourite bands and labels merch and tickets. Of course, there's a lot to be said for digital music, but why not consider purchasing your favourite artists album on Bandcamp, where proceeds are around 85% of the sale price to the artist - a great way to support your favourite independent band!

Going back to vinyl sales too, one record would genuinely be equivalent to around 5000 track streams. You'd have a gorgeous physical copy to keep and play to your hearts content, while also being safe in the knowledge that you're supporting artists and labels in a way that streaming simply cannot do.

And yet Spotify are buying podcast companies and renting ultra-swanky new offices - go figure? Oh and have you seen this claim they've filed against songwriters alongside Amazon? They literally have no shame.

I could go on and on but unfortunately in this day and age, we as labels and artists have little choice but to put music out on streaming platforms as it is still perhaps the most frequently accessed platform out there for people listening to music, and an opportunity for exposure that us independent's simply can't miss out on.

Thanks for having a read guys. As always, every ounce of your support is massively appreciated here and means that Copper Feast goes on for a little while longer!

Oh and one other tiny bit of news...Copper Feast is one year old next week! By way of a little thank you and celebration, use the code BIRTHDAY at the checkout for 20% off any Copper Feast releases (Not including pre-orders)!

Have a great month

Callum

#vinyl #recordlabel #musicindustry #spotify #rockandroll