
How Spotify and Discover Weekly Earn Me $400/month - steve-benjamins
https://www.stevebenjamins.com/blog/spotify-and-discover-weekly
======
DontGiveTwoFlux
In college about 5 years ago, I heard a presentation from some recording
industry people who worked at a studio. They saw Spotify as the reason their
industry would still exist in five years. I think at the time total recording
revenues were still declining, but the streaming growth was really picking up.

Spotify has brilliantly convinced many people to spend $120 per year on music.
The average CD-buyer spent much less than that. It's become normal and
acceptable to have a subscription to this stuff. It was hard to imagine in the
early 2000s when so many pirated their music for free.

~~~
mfoy_
It has always been, and always will be, about convenience first.

Pre-Spotify and pre-bandcamp, getting music you could play on multiple devices
was _hard_. Piracy was the only reliable way you could have the same songs on
your walkman, your mp3 player, your phone, and your computer.

Bandcamp is nice, in that it offers DRM-free music in high quality, but
Spotify offers raw, unadulterated _convenience_.

And Convenience is King.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
I’ve given up trying to understand this. For me, buying a physical disc,
transferring the files to my computer, and either putting them into Dropbox or
transferring them via VLC to each of my devices is so easy.

Amazon music downloads & Bandcamp downloads are even easier.

What’s _not_ easy is needing to manage a subscription account, log in on
multiple devices, and either manage caching music local to the device (and
frequently needing to clear items out of the cache to switch with other items)
or always use cellular data services to stream music.

I obviously cannot argue with massive consumer trends, but personally I do not
understand how anyone thinks streaming services are more convenient. I cannot
empathize with any use case where streaming would be more convenient.

Whether I’m discovering new music, sharing music, making playlists, or
anything else, the absolute number one thing I need is the raw music files.
Convenience starts & stops with that.

~~~
yikes_burger
let's compare:

> _For me, buying a physical disc_

physically drive to a store, find the cd, purchase, etc. or buy online, wait
days for it to arrive, etc.

> _transferring the files to my computer_

hook phone up to computer, extract files, load onto dropbox, and then finally
have access

vs.

> _manage a subscription account, log in on multiple devices_

you literally click one button. that's all. And you login once and never
again. no more difficult than logging into dropbox.

> _either manage caching music local to the device_

again, one button. on your spotify playlist / album there is a "download"
button. click it. boom. done. listen all you want, without internet.

> _absolute number one thing I need is the raw music files_

you and about 1% of people. no one else does, hence why spotify is a billion
dollar company and cd's are obsolete.

~~~
LAMike
You forgot the part where you have to find a computer with a CD drive

~~~
Insanity
I had this issue some time ago. My grandparents had some pictures their
friends shared via CD. They asked me to show them and print them, but neither
me nor my wife had a laptop with a CD drive with us..

------
carpo
I bet you'll get some new interest from this being on the front page of HN
too. I just listened to a bunch of your songs and really liked them :)

I love Discover Weekly and get excited every Monday morning when I start work
and remember there's a new playlist with music I'll probably like. I created a
separate playlist called "Discover Favourites" and when I hear a song I like I
put it in there, and it's got hundreds now. I've found so many artists I never
would have heard of.

------
driverdan
This is a great counterpoint to people complaining about how little they make
from Spotify.

One thing that stuck out to me:

> Because you can only submit one song, it’s best to space out releases. That
> way you can have ten singles considered by Spotify editors— rather than one
> single from an album for an entire year.

I've wondered why so many artists were releasing a ton of singles on Spotify.
This seems like a gameable system.

~~~
dyeje
Is it though? The author makes $400 a month, that's not even close to being a
living. Mis metrics and revenue match up with my own experience with Spotify
and they are very difficult to achieve. Now imagine that your musical project
has 4 people instead of 1, now it's $100 a month per person. Except just
kidding, because you'll need to pump all that money (and personal money from
members) back into the band to keep things growing.

~~~
driverdan
It's a success because he considers it to be one. Also he's earning more money
from his music on Spotify than he was through other means.

He explicitly says he's not trying to earn a living from it.

> Of course that’s not enough to support a full-time artist but that’s not
> what I’m trying to be. I don't tour, I don't sell merch and I'm not on a
> label. I just want to make music and Spotify is making that possible.

~~~
dyeje
Sorry, I should have been more clear. The 'Is it though?" is in response to
saying it's a great counterpoint to people complaining about how little they
make from Spotify. The author isn't trying to make a living of Spotify, but
many people are. Spotify revenue isn't even close to enough for them even if
you're extremely successful getting listeners like the author has been.

------
Fogest
I used to love the Discover Weekly, but now that I use Spotify most days when
going to the gym any of my auto generated playlists like discover weekly kinda
suck. I usually put on random gym playlists like the popular "Beast Mode" one.
While I like this music for working out, I definitely don't normally enjoy
listening to rap, hip hop, and EDM music however this is what most workout
music consists of.

I wish I could have playlists that get ignored from Spotify's recommendation
engine. Because I totally get it, Spotify thinks I'm into that kind of stuff
so it's what I use Spotify for the majority of the time, however I have such a
hard time finding new music to listen to on there :(.

~~~
michelb
This is the main reason why recommended content just doesn’t work for me.
Youtube, spotify, and many other services try to be clever but are just really
dumb.

~~~
asdff
It falls on its face when you are just outside the typical use case. Sometimes
I'll throw on an album and listen to it all the way through, or just really
listen to one particular artist for a few weeks. Then the recommended content
falls on its face as it doesn't know how to handle someone binging Grateful
Dead one week and Kendrick Lamar the next.

------
Zelphyr
Apple should have bought Spotify. They could've renamed it "Apple Music" if
they wanted but they should have otherwise left it alone. They could've even
gotten rid of the ad-supported stuff and made it subscription only, I
personally wouldn't have cared.

But my point is that Spotify is everything Apple Music should be. I'm an
avowed Apple fan owning and using many of their products and services for
decades so when I say Apple Music is terrible it's not coming from a place of
otherwise disdain that some have for Apple. Frankly, the whole iTunes and
Apple Music teams should be embarrassed with what they continue to release.
And if the Podcasts app isn't part of those teams it should be, because it is
every bit as bad.

I hate to be negative but a spade needs to be called a spade in this case.
Apple needs to be called out on those shoddy products.

~~~
chottocharaii
When in an early iteration of Apple Music, the app ‘accidentally’ erased all
of my music library except that which I’d explicitly bought from the iTunes
Store; they burned me as a customer forever.

------
css
This is pretty awesome to read, and the charts are really telling.

> For an indie artist like me, the major difference between Apple Music and
> Spotify is Discover Weekly. Apple Music has no equivalent.

This is just not true, Apple Music sends you 3 different personalized weekly
playlists, two of which from Music you do not already have in your library. I
have discovered tons of indie artists (many with < 100 followers on Twitter)
through these playlists.

~~~
steve-benjamins
Thanks for pointing that out— I just updated the post with a note about that!

~~~
Flenser
Any idea why you're not getting featured on those playlists?

~~~
steve-benjamins
None. Would love to know why but it's honestly all a black box to me.

------
m348e912
It's gatifying as a spotify user to think maybe someday soon there could be a
population of artists that make a reasonable living uploading their own music
and sustaining their efforts without the need for merch, marketing, or touring
-- instead just quietly subsisting on doing something they love doing.

~~~
brlewis
That seems unlikely to ever happen. Corporations have always been better than
artists at maximizing their share of revenue. If such a population started to
develop, Spotify would probably lower their percentage payout.

------
WhompingWindows
I'm glad Spotify has opened up as a new revenue stream for musicians but it's
a laughably small amount of revenue for how much work it is to compose/record
hours of original music. Live music is still king for making money.

As an amateur pianist myself, $400 isn't a lot of money per month. I can pull
$100/hr in an afternoon at a classy gig playing Classical/Jazz/Folk/Pop, you
do that once per week and you're well over the $400 total for the month,
without all the long history of recording/mixing/mastering/promoting that OP
has done. This has allowed me to focus much more heavily on my musicianship
and expanding my repertoire, rather than on recording tech/marketing. My
ceiling for income is much lower this way-- I can't/don't want to find enough
gigs to solely perform...but that's why I code to pay the bills.

~~~
vthallam
The thing about recorded songs or videos is, the income compounds and has a
chance to grow exponentially over time. The same is not true for you going
around and playing music.

------
astrowilliam
I make about $200/month thanks to Spotify listing my podcast. Their
partnership with Anchor.fm has really helped push my pod forward because the
new features on anchor, since the acquisition, have helped me pinpoint an
audience.

[https://open.spotify.com/show/0jW7nOHQNi1Xlr3v7UMi2p](https://open.spotify.com/show/0jW7nOHQNi1Xlr3v7UMi2p)

------
wesleyfsmith
As an artist I totally loved this! Especially you talking about just wanting
to make songs when you get home in the evening, not hustle on every single
front. $400 a month is admirable for music creation!

------
p_roz
This is a great example of the opportunity created by ‘the long tail’ of web
platforms. I’m glad that people can make money making music and that listeners
have so much more choice. Very insightful.

------
toastking
They bring up something interesting which is how streaming has changed how
music is made. Albums are now shorter with more songs, that nets more plays
and more money. They also focus on singles instead of full albums, which gives
more opportunity for "playlisting". It's an interesting, albeit concerning,
effect that technology is having on art.

~~~
hnhg
Why is it any less natural than a vinyl album in the first place? For example
the concept of A and B sides is simply because there are two sides to a vinyl
record. I don't know much about the evolution of albums but I assume it's just
arbitrary and a result of the underlying technology plus consumer
expectations.

~~~
toastking
That's fair. It was mainly the constraints of the medium that lead to ideas
such as rock operas. Now that the constraints of physical storage are lifted
we've seen new concepts.

------
legohead
I look forward to every Monday to check out my Discover Weekly. Cool to hear
it's having a positive impact on artists.

------
ozzyman700
The insight to upload a single every 4 weeks is quite valuable. My songs are
all done with pocket operators/an op-1/tone.js, theres a small soundcloud
community that follows this type of dawless production but possible longer
form ambient tracks would do well on spotify.

~~~
svantana
I'm curious to know how you use tone.js in a creative way, as I have seen it
as a framework for developing musical apps, not a creative tool in itself.
Also, do you sync the hardware devices with js stuff, if so how?

~~~
ozzyman700
I have been at it for a very short period of time but I mainly think in terms
of what cycles can i make that will rarely repeat themselves and result in
interesting compositions.

Typically I start by defining a main loop, and then have a synth of my
choosing randomly select notes and timings. I listen to this randomness until
I realize what I don't like about it, then I change the parameter.

Something that helps is every time I instantiate a Tone object I make sure to
copy paste the entire params from the Tone API, that way the code itself is
the "knobs and buttons" I am used to fiddling with on a real synth.

This is a brian eno tip but I listen to the track at x2-x4 the bpm of what I
actually want the track to end up being, it makes protoyping faster while
still allowing complex composition.

I keep adding loops and chaining effects until I find something 'almost'
complete that needs a human nonrandom touch.

Then I connect my PC output to my OP-1, record the output onto a track, and
finish the song on my OP-1.

I plan on recording the midi output of my op-1 and feeding that into Tone so
that I can record some more complicated key movements without having to
literally program each key press and release. The path is OP-1
MIDI->MIDItoJSON->Tone.js

If you do know of a programming language/library/software like Tone.js but
more suited to generative audio I am 100% interested in this field. I am
looking to pursue creative coding once I am out of undergrad. I see it as an
easy way to stay away from RDBMS which make me feel a sense of corporate
dread.

~~~
svantana
Okay, nice! There are a bunch of langs/environments like chuck, supercollider,
MAX. What fits best is mainly about style and preference. A nice way to learn
about setups/approaches is to watch algorave videos.

~~~
ozzyman700
Thank you so much for that list of tech to check out! There are clear
limitations with tone.js (mainly me not understanding js syntactic sugar) .
I'll check out algoraves too thank you again!

------
eyeareque
It would be interesting to see the bump you get in listeners post HN front
page.

~~~
steve-benjamins
It's a nice uptick— I have ~60 real-time Spotify listeners right now (usually
it's around 25 this time of day).

~~~
scenestealreric
I love this article! Thank you for sharing, Steve. I have two followup
questions, if you have time to answer. I used CDBaby and got a deal on
uploading a full album, as long as it was under a certain number of tracks and
the tracks themselves were under a certain amount of minutes. It was a very
affordable way to get my band's music distributed throughout Spotify, Apple
Music, Google, Amazon, etc.

If I wanted to trickle out a series of singles leading up to the release of
our album to "prime the pump" on all platforms at once (like CDBaby), what
service can you recommend that might be the most affordable to do this?
Secondarily, what would happen when all these tunes are collected later to
become an album? Would we have to pay again and re-upload the same tracks?

Thanks in advance,Steve!

------
drexlspivey
For the machine learning enthusiasts, here is an old article on how Spotify
classifies songs into genres based on what they actually sound like (input is
a spectrogram) [https://outline.com/C3PVuU](https://outline.com/C3PVuU).

Most conventional methods used to recommend based on what other artists people
with the same taste as you like. This method is biased against newer artists
as there is no easy way to bootstrap them into the process. Their new
technique circumvents this problem and as a result new artists get more
exposure.

------
kaycebasques
I also use Discover Weekly (DW) as a listener fairly consistently and have had
some success with it. I believe Spotify mentioned in their S-1 how
transformative DW has been to music discovery at large. Side note: Spotify
keeps making small UI changes that don’t really seem to improve my UI usage.
The changes don’t even make it worse. They just keep moving everything
slightly. I’ve run into this a few times while trying to find DW.

~~~
tartuffe78
You can just add Discover Weekly to your list of play lists if that is helpful
for you. I do that for DW and my Release Radar.

------
guyzero
This is great but I worry that it's like when Google was sending search
traffic to smaller blogs all the time... until they didn't. Everyone loves
free money but it sounds like it could dry up at any time at Spotify's whim
and there'd be no recourse and no explanation.

It is really great that Spotify is putting small to tiny artists into their
mass-market playlists. Enjoy it while it lasts.

~~~
soared
> Google was sending search traffic to smaller blogs all the time... until
> they didn't

Is this actually the case / is there data to back this claim outside of
generic google bashing? The sole reason I love my discover weekly is I find
music I've never heard of, and I can listen to my friend's discover weekly to
get new music from their genres. Only supplying big name music would defeat
the purpose.

------
mapleoin
A killer feature for spotify would be if they would tell each individual user
how much they are contributing to each individual artist they've listened to.
I think that could encourage users to subscribe to spotify and listen more to
small artists. I suppose this too could be gamed, but the benefit might
outweigh the risk.

~~~
nwsm
Like in dollars? I think it would just turn users off seeing how little
artists make off streaming.

------
soared
I would love to see an analysis of the artists I listen to on spotify. Last.fm
tracks all the songs I listen to so someone would just need to scrape that,
find info on each song/artist, and make some nice charts. I'd love to see
which artists I listen to that are very small/unknown and send them a thank
you.

~~~
richrichardsson
Just after New Year I got some email from Spotify about looking at stats for
exactly that kind of thing, it required giving access to a 3rd party (which I
revoked immediately after), which suggests to me that it's all data that you
can grab from the API.

------
erikschoster
This is interesting anecdotally but for those trying to make a living from
their music, I would argue direct subscriptions seem far more stable and
useful as part of your income. For example bandcamp or something like patreon,
where I can subscribe to some artist I really like for $1-3/month or something
and get access to everything they do. That's the closest model I've seen for
non-huge-industry folks making a living from recordings -- which is of course
usually supplemented by touring and a dozen other hustles. (for example
mastering or teaching)

IMHO overall it doesn't feel like the situation has changed all that much in
this era though. The same huge institutions remain magnets for a handful of
lottery-winners (big labels, funded orchestras, etc) and everyone else is
scraping by in myriad ways, though the ways are a bit different now.

------
numbers
Thanks for sharing with actual numbers! I'll check out your music too.

Discover Weekly is how I find a lot of new music similar to my music, I
_trust_ it more than most of the other playlists Spotify or Apple Music
create. So far, I've probably discovered 300-400 new songs using Discover
Weekly.

~~~
steve-benjamins
That's awesome— thanks!!

~~~
scarcely
Your welcome!

------
sylens
Very cool writeup. I'm a big fan of Discover Weekly as it turns me onto new
artists constantly.

------
eeeeeeeeeeeee
I find so much good music on Discover Weekly. It’s one of the big reasons I
stick with Spotify. I’ve tried all of the other services but none of them come
close. And I am fully in the Apple ecosystem but Apples recommendations are
not even close to Spotify.

~~~
lytedev
For what it's worth, Google Play's Radio system and "I'm Feeling Lucky" (a
terrible name for what it does in my opinion) works beautifully for me!

------
fourbits
Next figure out how to work the YouTube and YTM recommendation algorithm. I
know I'm not the only one paying for premium and actively discovering small
independent artists everyday through recommendations.

~~~
steve-benjamins
Oh interesting— I haven't been paying attention to the YTM recommendation
algorithm. I'll have to subscribe and see if I can figure it out.

~~~
fourbits
The YouTube music equivalent of Discover Weekly is probably the "Mixtape"
feature (with the main difference being repeats from your listening history
are allowed which is convenient in the case of the offline Mixtape feature). A
lot of my discovery comes from the new releases view on mobile and desktop.
Sometimes I'm one of the first people to view newly released songs from
artists I've never heard of. Which makes me think they can't be doing it all
by some sort of cross referencing of listening habits to recommend songs that
other people with similar tastes to mine liked. Maybe they do actually have a
complex neural network trained on my listening history that can do decently
well in deciding what I would like. I do actively like and dislike songs and
have been doing so for years so that may be why it's working so well for me.

------
brogrammer5
The main problem I have with discovery weekly now is that I primarily use
Spotify for the gym but during the day I like to listen to a work playlist
that mostly consists of non-vocal electronica.

So because I spend so much time listening to the work playlist it's began to
influence the music on my Discover Weekly which I used to use to curate new
hip-hop/metal music for the gym. It would be nice if Spotify gave you finer
control over the type of music that hits your Discover Weekly because it
really would suggest good music for me occasionally.

~~~
misterprime
Sounds like a feature "power users" would appreciate, such as Circles in
Google Plus, but most users would not spend the time to learn.

------
blckchrry
Everyone here is marveling at the thought that Spotify could launch someone's
career. But there is already a service that does this consistently and it's
called SoundCloud.

------
ghego1
Are you also on Tidal? I was looking for your music but I couldn't find it. I
actually prefer their service and I hear they pay 4x the artists compared to
Spotify.

~~~
steve-benjamins
Huh. Maybe I'm not Tidal. I'm going to look into this— thanks for the heads
up!

------
Miner49er
From my understanding, Spotify's recommendations have a major flaw - they're
based off other users' listening data. What this means is that if a song isn't
listened to by very many people it'll never be recommended, and many songs on
Spotify don't even have a single stream, let alone however many it takes to
get the data to make it a recommendation.

~~~
hbosch
Luckily, the author outlines the fact that many of Spotify's playlists are
curated by humans and when you submit an album to Spotify, you highlight a
single track for a human to listen to. It is very possible to catch the ear of
a human at Spotify and be placed on playlists, which is a spark that ignites
more listenership.

~~~
deegles
How does one land a job as one of these playlist curators?

~~~
plorkyeran
They have a few openings listed on their job site, such as
[https://www.spotifyjobs.com/job/content-programming-
manager-...](https://www.spotifyjobs.com/job/content-programming-manager-kids-
and-family-oy3n8fwg/)

------
karldanninger
Wow, this is pretty informative. Thanks for sharing.

------
xrisk
Anybody have stats on $ per stream? How does that number vary between
premium/non-premium and on the region you’re streaming from?

~~~
saaaaaam
Varies depending on how much of your audience is ad supported vs premium and
other variables (family plan, bulk deal through mobile operator, student deal)
but blended it’s safe to work on the assumption of ~$5 per thousand for
Spotify.

Higher for Apple Music as they don’t have a freemium audience.

------
pradn
I wonder if the $10/mo price of Spotify has anchored listeners to a low price
that Spotify can't get out of. Spotify will need to pull more money in to be
able to give musicians more money per stream. Even if they were able to
increase revenues, musicians will need to be able to claim a bigger part of
that pie.

~~~
firloop
This is an interesting point. Netflix has survived multiple price increases
over the years, but they offer content that isn't available anywhere else. I
think what will probably happen is one music streaming service will raise
prices and the others will eventually follow.

------
djhworld
Nice write up, I listen to my DW playlist quite a lot.

I wonder if this approach is fraught with risk though, in the sense that if
Spotify tweak the algorithm and suddenly his listener numbers drop. I guess in
his case the snowball effect is already in motion, but a tweak could curtail
that growth.

------
blk_r00ster
Congratulations on your achievement ! Do you have your content on Bandcamp ?

As people share on this thread, convenience is winning the game but there's a
rising market for other people that value supporting the artists directly.

Keep it up and great work!

~~~
tomcam
[https://listentobamboo.bandcamp.com/releases](https://listentobamboo.bandcamp.com/releases)

------
frogpelt
I'm interested how you record your music. I see on your website that you have
a producer. Do you record in a home studio? Pro Logic?

~~~
steve-benjamins
I record in my home and Stephen Kerr
([https://www.sjkaudio.com/](https://www.sjkaudio.com/)) produces my music.
Having a producer like him is hugely helpful to the sound— he brings so much
clarity and polish ...

------
z3t4
12% conversion rate is very good. I suggest using more sale channels and spend
some money on advertising.

------
maxaf
If Spotify is becoming for musicians what GitHub became for programmers, I say
that’s pretty damn cool.

