What is a Fair Music Platform?
Fair Music platforms can be defined by those which directly support musicians in a transparent manner. Ideally they are open-source collectives. In this article we delve deeper in to the good, the bad and the ugly in music distribution platforms, from the artist point of view.
The Good
I am sure there are some I’ve not yet discovered. If you know of any please do send me (Sam) a message on Mastodon.
The Bad
The following platforms, within the part of the music industry does not work on behalf of musicians, won’t be linked from this website if I can help it. Those which serve ads and trackers. No, thank you.
- Amazon Music
- Apple Music
- Deezer
- Soundcloud
- Spotify (read more below)
- Tidal
- Youtube Music
The Ugly
Once renowned for supporting underground music, allowing fans to buy downloads and physical media direct from artists and labels, and only taking a small fee themselves, Bandcamp has recently been through two large buyouts, with staff lay offs ensuing. It is neither open-source nor a collective. For these reasons I’d ideally like not to include it. However, I do understand that a lot of small and indie artists still rely on the platform and at present they do still get to take home a decent 80-odd percent of the sales fees, which is still a pretty decent return.
Hopefully in time more artists will be able to direct people to their profiles on the platforms listed at the top of this page.
What’s so bad about Spotify?
- None of the mainstream streaming services pay artists more than US $0.01 per stream. And that’s at the very top end, with a premium paying customer in a premium market. Spotify pay the lowest.
- Spotify changed their payout system in April 2024 to only pay artists for their streams once that track is streamed at least 1,000 times in a calendar year.
- Spotify CEO Daniel Ek invests in AI technology for the military industrial complex and Spotify hosts several podcasts that support it.
The info above is from a thread by Kydia which goes in to more detail.
Revenue Share
While Spotify pay from nothing to peanuts to indie artists, here’s how the recommended platforms compare:
| Platform | Artist Share (exc. payment processing fee) |
|---|---|
| Faircamp | Essentially 100% as it’s self-hosted. |
| Mirlo | Artist Decides: Anything from 100% to 0%. |
| Bandwagon | Currently 100% (Premium monthly fee to be introduced soon.) |
| Subvert | 100% |
| Ampwall | 95% – $10 per year subscription fee |
| Wavlake | 90% |
| Jam.Coop | 85% |
| Bandcamp | 85% |
