Wildly disrespectful to any artist that ever lived. I’m all up for sharing alternatives that are good/better towards actual artists. Still evaluating my choices, but meanwhile this seems like the only and rather easy signal the streaming community can give as to spread the word if they agree (next to stopping your own subscription). Context: https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/22/spotifys-ai-bet-more-of-everything-less-of-what-you-want/
I don’t think that’s actually the case. Can you show any correllation between piracy rates and Spotify rates or Spotify artists counts?
All the histories of music streaming platforms I’ve read/heard have rarely mentioned piracy as a motivation at all, and never as a primary reason. Spotify got popular because it was free. It was free because it provided tons of user information to advertisers and music catalogues for targeting. Artists that weren’t part of the big music catalogues joined because of the huge user base.
Ask a musician and get back to me. You have no perspective or common sense.
So, no evidence for your claims, then?
Wow, you got back to me very quickly. So what did your musician friend say?
Ken Parks, CEO of Spotify, said “Piracy was sort of ingrained in that culture (in reference to pirating programs like Napster). But now Spotify is ingrained in that culture in a way that’s reduced piracy greatly. It’s removed the incentive to pirate.”
Spotify told British MPs in a parliamentary inquiry that raising its monthly subscription above £9.99 could “push users into piracy” using the piracy threat to resist price increases that would have meant higher royalties for artists.
Spotify was founded in 2008, a moment when the music industry had been devastated by online piracy. Revenue had already dropped from $14.6 billion in 1999 to $6.3 billion by 2008.
Spotify has since added filters that cut royalty payments to tracks that don’t reach a certain stream threshold, further adding pressure to smaller artists who had the least leverage to begin with.
The rise of piracy led directly to the creation and power of streaming services like Spotify. Need me to spell anything else out for you?
Edit: Waaaaaiting for a response!
All of my musician friends (3) do all their paid music creation live, and aren’t on Spotify. So, they couldn’t tell me their motivation for being on Spotify is; none of them have ever complained about piracy.
That’s not the evidence I asked for, those are canned statement from Spotify. Do you believe everything Spotify says? They have misled people about their motives before.
Still, thanks for an least engaging with the premise.