Before we begin today' s episode, I' d like to apologize,
as the audio you' re listening to this week may not be the usual
one. Perhaps you hear from the background a little noise, and I am
recording around a chimney a burning fire to withstand the cold days of February of
the year two thousand twenty- four. But hey, I' m getting
the taste of recording immobility next to a wood. Warm. Hottie, hottie.
Here, rubbing the tapes, I' m back to being George of
the present. Well, the Jorge of the past when you' re listening
to this, but the Jorge of the present, because I am the one
editing the chapters that he records last week to this is my usual audio and
it is that I forgot to comment that this same Friday we have the second
ponda in Madrid of this two thousand twenty- four and that you can still
do with your tickets to come to see Sayonar Baby live. And now you
do. I' m leaving today' s episode and I' m going
back to that warm fireplace where you could hear me. We welcome you to
the other side of the microphone, the microphone, a project by Jorge Marín
Nieto in which you will find your daily ration of metapodcasting, casting with news,
events, tools or episodes of opinion in just ten minutes. Ten minutes,
ten minutes. Today is 27 February of the two thousand twenty- four
and I welcome you to the episode nine hundred and thirty on the other side
of the microphone, a perfect episode to continue exploring together all the ins and
outs of podcasting with a new news, recommendation, tool Council and, in
short, everything that crosses my path of the metapodcasting that surrounds me. I
am Jorge Marín and as every day, in just ten minutes, I want
to talk to you in this case of Spotify, since it has made a
decision that will serve me to reflect a little bit on its relationship with podcasting
and why we should be a little bit careful. This episode comes to you
thanks to the sponsorship of the fife Cast platform, an audio platform or podcasts
of exactly five minutes, to which you can join entering Fifks, to which
you can join if you enter Fifecast? It is either to upload your content
there, or to discover a lot of creators who already upload their episodes or
part of their episodes to this platform. Many to this platform Many, I
hope many thanks to the colleagues of Fifecass for their support. Month by month
on the COFFY platform, as I was saying today, I want to talk
to you about Spotify, because lately it has made a decision that well,
maybe it doesn' t directly affect us, because it' s mostly more
intended for audio or music creators. Now you will see what I mean,
not so much about podcasts, but it will serve as an example, because
to reflect a little on the role of this great company in podcasting in recent
months, years and above all, in the coming months. And this news
came to me thanks to the news letter of three by three, a news
letter focused on the creation of digital audio, to which you can subscribe also
in the notes that you find in today' s episode. In addition to
this subscription, you can find the original news, rather, the original press
release that Spotify published about these changes. And it' s that Spotify is
going to stop paying for artificial streaming. What do you mean by this artificial
streaming thing? Well, it' s that Spotify has decided to introduce from
this year, two thousand twenty- four, a substantial change in its pay
- per- play model to the songs they listen to on their platform.
It aims at two objectives. To improve little is to improve the income of
artists and record labels and to combat the bad practices of those who use bots.
And sound tracks to generate artificial revenue. These modifications are the following that
tracks, songs, tunes, that good audio files that have less than a
thousand reproductions in a year, will not receive royalty payments. But in return,
that money is going to be used to improve the payment of tracks that
get more than a thousand listeners. If you have less than a thousand listeners,
you won' t get anything. If you have more than a thousand
listeners, you' ll get a little more. In addition, a fine
of$ 10 will be imposed for each violation on stamps or distributors with songs
whose reproductions are 90 percent fraudulent by bots. Finally, a new third rule
is that sound tracks in quotation marks must last at least two minutes to receive
royalties, that is, to receive rewards, to receive a financial reward,
and each reproduction will be worth twenty percent of what a song' s play
is worth. According to the original or official information that Spotify distributed, these
changes will not have a major economic impact. Only a zero comma five percent
of the profits are affected by tracks with less than a thousand reproductions, something
like forty million dollars. The context of this good news, then, is
that the situation of the music industry let' s say it' s even
better compared to other cultural industries, directly, in this case it' s
very good. But, however, income growth is beginning to slow down and
the price of recovery seems quite high. Recordings with Warner and Universal at the
helm raise the need for a new income- sharing scheme, but Spotify platforms,
the first of them, present lean or directly lost profits. The redesign
of royalty distribution with artists at the center involved in disir and Spotify is an
attempt to respond to these demands, although it will not be enough. Dismissals
in Universal, for example, for two thousand twenty- four, show a
clear situation. Let' s say a recalculation, a readjustment. In all
this, the rate of growth decreases, the new income- generating scheme does
not appear and the new players in the value chain are not willing to increase
payments. Here they bring us a graph that, indeed, shows us how
this creation of new income is slowing down and this distribution, because every time
it is, I would not say in decline, but if we say,
it has stagnated, the meaning of these changes has stagnated. Well, then,
the new payment system that Spotify brings reveals the present and future risks of
the music industry on the digital stage. On the one hand, that turnover
is growing, okay, but hardly anyone is happy. Neither the artists,
for whom the European Union calls for better and greater retribution, nor the giants
of record companies, let alone the audio platforms. Be it here, no
one' s happy. The flow of money doesn' t satisfy all the
stralabones of this digital audio chain. On the other hand, the uncertainty about
the eruption of artificial intelligence, its use to create songs that add up to
reproductions outside the mayes scheme and the frauds of automated reproductions are erected as a
bleeding wound of this entire model of the music industry, not to say of
the sound industry, because here we are not only talking about songs, but
also about sounds, like the one I told you about a few weeks ago
of people raising white sound, white noise to help other people sleep clear this
white sound. This white noise is very easy to generate and, as it
has many reproductions, because there are many people looking for it. That makes
people who barely work take enough money and to fight them precisely because they have
created new schemes like these. Spotify' s responses seem a little shy,
but you don' t guess a solution either. Let' s say bottom
line. The only thing clear is that the labels are determined to seek new
income from other sources. Of course this helps me to tell you if this
is happening with the musical artists that are affected by the changes that Spotify has
made or that Spotify is going to make to, on the one hand,
cover their backs, but, on the other hand, to prohibit other people
from taking advantage of the tools that have predisposed them to also generate money.
It' s good for me to bring him to our land, to lure
him to the podcasting grounds. And it is that you will all remember Many
years ago, when Spotify and some other platforms like iTunes, took control of
the music industry, it was unthinkable that everyone, or almost everyone, would
listen to music streaming. Today, this is the usual. Nowadays it'
s normal. They have been made directly with the heel- based market,
based on bringing new tools and by bringing new improvements. It must be recognized
now. Almost no one buys CDs, or buys vinyls or revolution tapes.
No one consumes audio, let' s say, in an analog format.
Everyone consumes in digital format and especially in streaming. Of course, this has
made Spotify say not that it has a monopoly, but there are practically other
platforms Google Music, YouTube Music, Apple Music. Okay. Anyway, you
know what I mean isn' t a monopoly okay, but that' s
pretty much what' s going on with podcasts. If you remember, years
ago it was the great records that had the dominance of the music market and
now it wasn' t. Now all artists have to go through the hoop
of this these stream services Today, if you are an artist and you are
not in Spotify, you have it frankly very difficult. And this is what
has been going on for a while now with podcasts. Spotify, since it
started with its podcasting bet, has been implementing increasingly attractive improvements for podcast creators
and now the vast majority of us have our podcasts there. It doesn'
t mean we all stay there, but if we' re not in Spotify,
we have a little bit harder. This is what scares me and why
I bring this episode. Here now we have seen how Spotify has gone every
time we say. I don' t know if the word would be mistreating,
but I do neglect everything he offered musical artists. Unless you' re
a super pointer artist, it' s very difficult for you to make a
living just with Spotify reproductions. And of course, little by little, because
Spotify is cutting, It' s cutting, it' s cutting, it
' s getting worse And no and don' t hate to do anything but
assume it, because it' s what there is, what Spotify tells you,
it' s what you have to do. You can' t reveal
yourself and you can' t run away from this platform, because that'
s where everyone is. And this is what I want to avoid. As
for podcasting, now, fortunately, we still have many more sites to upload
our content from where to expose our content. But if we let Spotify keep
doing it with podcasting control in general, what will happen when it starts to
cut us off and on top. This is pretty funny, because Spotify just
literally gives us nothing to I don' t know eighty- five ninety-
nine ninety- five ninety- nine percent of podcast creators It' s us
who give away all our content there. While it is true that we can
take advantage of that exhibition and gain sponsorship and visibility, etcetera, etcetera,
etcetera. How many of you get paid by Spotify for reproductions, because I
think if you put on the table all the data from Spotify How many original
Spotify podcasts do they charge for uploading their content there, very little? How
many podcasts have signed a monetary agreement with Spotify, very little, to say
the least, except for its ten twelve fifteen annual creations. How many podcasts
are up to date in Spotify. It' s a crushing majority. That
' s why I want you to reflect a little bit before selling your content
in quotation marks for free to any of these massive platforms and, above all,
analyze the consequences that in the future, when they start making cuts,
and I' m not talking about economic cuts, but maybe, in a
while, if your episodes don' t have more than a thousand reproductions,
then maybe Spotify eliminates them directly at best. If your podcast doesn' t
have a hundred and five hundred zero subscribers. They only leave you six months
of history or one year of history, which is unthinkable for podcast content.
But if in the end Spotify decides to do it, we' ll see
how it decides to make these changes sorry, we' ll see it as
normal, because that' s what we have to stick to, because that
' s what the big dominant company has marked like this and I, personally
don' t want this to become a reality. That is why we need
to think very carefully about where we upload our content and what we do with
it. Just a reflection from this side of the microphone. Under my experience
throughout all these years, if you remember I told you a long time ago
about a sad episode with the blip TB company, which decided to completely eliminate
everything that had to do with podcasting on its platform. And many of us
were affected because we saw our podcasts literally disappear from the platform par excellence,
because I had directly seen podcasting there as it weighed heavily, cost him a
lot and didn' t think twice. Listen to all these podcasts are going
to disappear from here because blick Tv, as its own name indicates, was
more designed for the video and not for the audio. But, well,
I invite you to listen to this episode. I' m going to leave
it attached also the knots of the chapter for you to listen to and analyze
a new page of the podcasteral archaeology that I told you about a few weeks
ago and now I say goodbye. And as every day I go back to
that place where you are right now, across the microphone,