SPOTIFY IS ABUSIVE TOWARDS MUSICIANS BOTH RICH AND POOR, AND HERE IS WHY

• 1. On November 26, 2020, I personally released a controversial audio recording of Jim Anderson, a Spotify Inventor (described as “The man who built out the system architecture of Spotify”). Since it was released, Digital Music News released a report about the story. And so did Business Insider, along with many other media outlets as well. The story is also included on Wikipedia in the “Allegations of Unfair Artist Compensation” section on the page titled “Criticism of Spotify”. The prominent Spotify Inventor was abusive to me and to all of the other musicians in the room on June 14, 2019 at the NYC Sync Summit at Les Poisson Rouge, and I caught it all on tape. Just search “Spotify Inventor Calls Musicians Entitled” to hear it for yourself on Youtube.

• 2. Spotify is abusive towards celebrities who speak out on behalf of the entire music community. Spotify tried to stop the streaming rates from increasing just recently, and when celebrities spoke out against it, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek attempted to discredit and blame the celebrities by claiming they only make albums once every 4 years and that they need to work harder. Meanwhile, that’s a flat out lie. There are 100 people on that list of celebrities who spoke out. On that list you’ll find the names of incredibly famous people who are working harder than ever. This one really gets me heated because I’m a massive fan of everyone on that list. So in short, Daniel Ek employs passive aggressive covert abuse on his victims in order to protect his incredibly one-sided and close-minded opinion.
• 3. Spotify owns an online marketplace called SoundBetter, and even though Daniel Ek just spent literally one billion dollars on “moonshot bets”, Spotify can’t seem to afford a staff for their platform SoundBetter so the music professionals can be protected from financial and psychological abuse. Instead, the platform has an F on the Better Business Bureau website, and Spotify chooses to uphold the harshest terms that I have ever seen in my life, for no good reason. Spotify is willing to be abusive to the professional musicians of the world who are working hard to make ends meet. The abuse comes in the form of avoiding, ignoring, and withholding protection from the music professionals who are getting financially and emotionally abused on the site and are in need of help, and it’s all for literally no reason. They could easily do the right thing, but they simply don’t care enough to, and it is the most disgusting thing that I have ever seen a company do in my entire life. I care about people a lot and I don’t have to know someone personally to care about them. I care about all of the music professionals on all of the online platforms. I also work full time on another site that protects the artists completely. So it is something that I have become insanely passionate about. I’ve gone back and forth about whether to say something about it for a long time, but I realized that if no one ever says anything, nothing will ever change. With that said, below is an example of the kind of abuse that hard working musical service providers have to endure while working on SoundBetter (while the Spotify / SoundBetter staff does nothing to stop it). Here are screenshots of an active client (Michael Dante) on SoundBetter who deleted his abusive public comments off of the SoundBetter Facebook page (but I took a screenshot of them before he deleted them). He calls me a “mental tart”and more.

Above is an example of the kind of abuse you can expect to receive if you work on SoundBetter because Spotify doesn’t care about protecting musicians who work on their platform. This is a random abusive client (who hired someone on SoundBetter — he never hired me personally) who was being abusive in plain site on the SoundBetter Facebook, while Spotify did nothing about it whatsoever.

As you can see here, Spotify’s platform Soundbetter (that Spotify owns and controls with their own Spotify personnel from “Creator Support”) has an F rating on the Better Business Bureau website.

• 4. There is a very inspiring solution that can be found within the idea of revamping the infrastructure to be more interactive (with new video features as well), but Spotify refuses to look in the mirror and face their own shortcomings. Spotify is abusing the entire music industry when they imply that the possible is impossible. The only thing that seems to be impossible is getting Spotify to care about people. And as for Spotify’s reasonings about why they choose to show up in court to block the streaming rates from increasing — all of those math equations that they use are meaningless when applied to the idea of a revamped infrastructure because you wouldn’t have to even start with a rate change — you would just add a marvelous marketplace and a whole lot more interaction. I have a whole list of things I came up with for that idea, it is so inspiring to me!!

In conclusion, this is what I have personally observed when it comes to Spotify’s abusive behavior towards musicians both rich and poor. There is also a very real solution that could solve the problem of artist compensation — revamp the infrastructure to be more interactive, fun, engaging, and just everything you could ever want. If you need ideas, let me know because I already have a very long list.

My new idea doesn’t even need to touch streaming rates or raise the price at all, and I can see a shimmering rainbow of ideas for it that is wildly creative, dynamic, and fun.

Pop culture as we know it could be better than ever before, but only if we take a stand against the falsehoods, the heartlessness, and the passive aggressive covert abuse. In other words, Spotify needs to stop abusing musicians, and they also need to stop abusing show business!!

If Daniel Ek wants to discredit celebrities using lies, we should be like karma and discredit Daniel Ek using the truth. Daniel Ek’s recent statement about the musicians who spoke out is simply false, and that is the truth.