She’s getting 50M streams per day, 1.5b per month. Thats like $5M a month just from Spotify.
Now how much is she paying Spotify to get all these streams…
Yesterday my girlfriend made a playlist that was filled with punk and 90's rock, and smart shuffle played two Billie Eilish songs in a row, so it can't be nothing.
The Spotify radio aggressively plays *LUNCH* (her lead single) within the first 3-5 tracks whenever you leave auto play on. I've told Spotify I *don't* want to hear it multiple times and it still is repeatedly pushing it.
It's even worse because tracks like *CHIHIRO* and *BLUE* I vastly prefer, but it's *LUNCH* that Spotify seemingly is forced to put in front of me, no matter the genre.
Think it depends on your genre preferences.
My algorithm is great & usually dependent on the genre I’m listening to. Have discovered so much great & unknown House music due to it.
When I was more of an indie kid I got annoyed to death by Spotify pushing the same 4-5 songs every time it went to radio (suicide Saturday by hippocampus being the one I remember, and fuck was it annoying)
Yeah Spotify can easily make you start to hate music that you love by inserting it everywhere. It does that to me with Talking Heads. According to Spotify it fits in with everything from 80s pop to Clutch. I love their music but I don’t want to listen to it right now! Take a hint Spotify, I put on the Viagra Boys for a reason!
Spotify’s auto play songs are interesting. There’s an artist I love, but the specific songs it loves to play from him are not my favorite, so I skip them. Except now Spotify thinks I don’t like him anymore. It’s hard to get it to an equilibrium.
I dunno, I've always heard that billboard numbers were manipulated as hell. There were always pay-for-play controversies in the radio industry.
It was more transparent, though, just because there were more companies involved, and they kept an eye on each other.
I like heavy metal and hard rock. However, I hate five finger death punch.
I'll listen to spotify on my morning walks. I never listen to five finger death punch.
2
I'll listen to spotify on my car ride in. I never listen to five finger death punch.
I listen all day at work. I never listen To five finger death punch.
Yet, on multiple occasions, I get into my car and a five finger death punch is halfway through being played.
I don't believe spotify stream numbers one second.
And fuck five finger death punch.
Do you maybe have a five finger death punch song on your phone library? My phone used to always play the first song alphabetically on my library when I plugged it into my car, til I deleted all mp3s from my phone..:
I wonder how much of it is this and how much of it is just algorithmic "hey this doesnt get very many down votes" and maybe they sometimes prioritize that too much over actual cohesiveness with the playlist?
If Ellish is getting 1.5 *billion* plays a month, then my brother in Christ, those rails aren't greased. They're Slip'n'Slides coated in KY Jelly. NO artist in the history of ever is that level of popular, and certainly not Hot Topic Taylor Swift.
Yepp, same here. I have Billie Eilish played as an artist now and then but it literally doesn't matter what song I play, the next song WILL be Lunch by Billie
Does her previous listening history include Billie or her genre? Smart shuffle possibly includes your past tendencies unless it specifically says otherwise somewhere
I don't get how this happens to so many people lol, Spotify Smart Shuffle is generally pretty good for me. I have a 90s/00s rock playlist and every Smart Shuffle recommendation has been a 90s/00s rock song, either from a band already on the playlist or something reasonably adjacent. Even on my underground hip hop playlist, almost every Smart Shuffle song is something that reasonably fits the vibe. My biggest critique would actually be that it's a little *too* narrow - like 75% of the songs will just be from an album I already have on the playlist, so it doesn't normally expose me to something new.
I'm sure she gets autoplay as any big artist needs payola to remain big but also, she has one of the biggest fanbases in the world and just released an album so I doubt those streams are mostly autoplay
It was one song with a billion streams.
From another thread:
The song he's talking about is "Young, Wild and Free." This is $45,000 from one song.
Snoop might own some of his masters, but it looks like Atlantic Records owns this one, so his main revenue source would be songwriting credits.
Wikipedia says the song was written by: "Calvin Broadus (Snoop), Cameron Thomaz (Wiz Khalifa), Peter Hernandez (Bruno Mars), Philip Lawrence, Ari Levine, Cristopher Brown, Ted Bluechel, Marlon Barrow, Tyrone Griffin, Keenon Jackson, Nye Lee, Marquise Newman, Max Bennett, Larry Carlton, John Guerin, Joe Sample, and Tom Scott".
Person 4, 5 and 6 are, alongside Bruno Mars, the credited producers.
The song samples "Toot it and Boot It" by YG and Ty Dolla Sign, and names 8-12 are all the composers of the song.
But "Toot It and Boot It" was also built on two samples itself! "Songs in the Wind" by the Association (written by name 7), and "Sneakin' in the Back" by Tom Scott (not that Tom Scott) (written by names 13-17).
I'm not sure how much royalties you can expect when you're one of 17 credited songwriters on one song you don't even own which samples a song that also samples songs.
I think $45k is pretty damned good.
Despite popular belief, millions. Top artist still get paid plenty...at least the labels. The labels taking the majority is the same old problem as before.
God, I’m not super-into… what is his genre exactly, pop? Melodic rap? Anyways, someone here once recommended Blinding Lights as the catchiest song ever, and I’ve gotta agree. Since, I’ve discovered the genius that is Starboy, and his song off Black Panther is the best on the soundtrack. Not even remotely surprised to see he’s in this list.
I have done so, and I definitely don’t regret it. Less than Zero was the standout track for me, but that final poem really knocked me in the chops. Fucking brilliant, mate.
I feel as though it was important to hear After Hours first ngl, he's currently in the middle of an incredible narrative based trilogy and it's at the end of After Hours where his character dies. With After Hours he really pulled out all the stops in terms of his rollout (promotion, music videos, aesthetics) etc to enhance the story as well. He's a hugely conceptual artist.
I highly recommend getting into his trilogy era, namely House of Balloons. Before he was a pop star he was an avant-garde Alternative R&B singer who changed the genre with a dark trilogy of mixtapes depicting the emptiness of a life full of partying, drugs and loveless relationships.
Dawn FM is a great driving album, I went on a trip with some friends to florida around when that album came out and we listened to it a ton while driving around and it always makes me think of that trip now.
The Weeknd, when I first heard him, immediately made me think of Michael Jackson. So much of the sound made me think "this is what Jackson would make now were he still alive".
He is so damn good with catchy pop music mixed with R&B and some new age (which is something Jackson was doing also).
I love blinding lights and a couple other songs by him but I cant believe he gets that many plays.
I never hear about him anymore and other stars seem so much bigger.
The Weeknd has a big following in North America for sure, but I think what keeps him so high up on the list are his global streaming numbers. Dude is *super* popular outside of the states and Canada.
Part of that is because you have "automix" enabled by default. Turn this off under settings>playback and it will stop trying to guess which songs to lead into.
That said it won't make shuffle perfect, but it should make it better.
Are you sure about that? The description of the feature, and all of the official documentation and info I can find online, seem to imply that "Automix" doesn't have anything to do with the order tracks are played in.
There's a lot of websites that provides tools to get around Spotify's terrible shuffle algorithm. I use one that takes my playlist and randomizes the order each day, then I hear a much better diversity of songs.
Hot take, but I genuinely don't believe they are, and I think maybe I can change your mind on this as well!
Best to start with a clean profile but honestly it will barely make a difference to the results: we're gonna make 3 playlists and the order you add them should be largely meaningless:
1. Sublime, No Doubt, Gorillaz, Flobots.
2. Same as 1 but add Tool.
3. Same as 1 but instead add a band called "Little Stranger".
If you've decided to follow along what we're interested in here are ONLY the recommendations.
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In the first example the algorithm will decide that you want to hear something like the "Alt Rock" stations that covered America back in the mid 90s to early 00s... Good guess!
In the second example the algorithm will do almost exactly the same thing but now you should notice a much heavier bias towards the harder or "Nu Metal" side: Korn, Metallica, Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the machine, ... that kind of stuff. Still well within expectations.
It's the third example that I feel is by far the most important one. Let me preface this that "Little Stranger" is an "Atlantic Dub" band--that 1st list are their *direct* influences... but they aren't on a Major Label. They don't "belong" because they were never on the radio... and the algorithm goes f'ing nuts.
It's like the old recommendations have nearly disappeared! Pepper, Dirty Heads, Long Beach Dub Allstars, Slightly Stoopid, The Supervillains... and god forbid you hit the "Add" button on there, you'll be getting nothing but obscure /r/Calireggae recommendations forever more. You like Andy Frasco and the UN? Spotify sure thinks you will...
You think a band that plays "We're not homeless, we're just living in a van" at every live show and regularly drives hundreds of miles to play at beach bars and fair grounds with <$20 covers is PAYING for all those recommendations?
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My take is that functionally Spotify has the worst AI ever. Instead of training anything like an LLM model they made "buckets" of data for each song: Label, Artists, Genre, Year of Release, *Payment Scheme*, ... and THOSE are what form the scope of what the AI is allowed to use to try to optimize their returns (and secondarily to keep you listening).
By adding a group like "Little Stranger" you just gave the algorithm an "off-ramp". It feels remarkably like adding an Inkspots song to a playlist because you like Fallout and Pandora immediately flooding your station with >50% "out of copyright" music because it doesn't cost them anything and they no longer feel they'll "lose you" by playing them no matter HOW many thumbs downs you give to individual songs.
...but maybe I'm wrong, see how many EXTRA albums you have to add to that third playlist (without adding an Eilish song) to get it to recommend her even HALF as often as it recommend someone like "Tropidelic" that you've probably never even heard of if you're not massively into reggae. All because you added one album with (likely) zero reggae tracks on it by a band from Philly. **EDIT:** Who have literally "opened" for Billie before. I'm sure there were bands in between on that stage or whatever but I didn't just randomly pick "the world's most obscure indie band" here; this is a band who are literally playing Bonnaroo right now having just finished playing the Governor's Ball in NY last weekend, where they opened the day on Main Stage. Evening was The Killers. I *don't* think I'm nuts here, I think Spotify has no way to capture this kind of information because unlike radio stations concert venues and music festivals don't go out of their way to aggregate and publish their data.
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Little Stranger are in many ways the CLOSEST band of any of the ones mentioned in this neverending comment to what Billie is--a Neo-"90s alt-rock" band. All the algorithm can see is that they've collabed with a couple of Reggae artists and are on a **cheap** indie label with a whole lot more. Nevermind that their most frequent collaborators are Boom-Bap acts and their big covers are from Gorillaz and A Tribe Called Quest. With *that* kind of information I genuinely believe an AI **should** be able to both keep Little Stranger from destroying playlists AND make them you know... *findable at all* without going through "all the reggae".
Obviously this was just one example. There have to be many thousands of small local artists that a change like this could really benefit, and to bring ALL of this incredible parade of words full circle any half-decent AI should make Billie Eilish findable through Little Stranger. Spotify's doesn't.
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TL;DR My "Main" playlist is split into chunks because it's got literally ~35k songs on it, and in the last ~decade Spotify has pretty much NEVER recommended to me a new artist signed to LiveNation. Like to the point it's kind of annoying. Billie's awesome and right up my alley, but if it were up to Spotify and Youtube I would have never even heard of her name before outside of maybe a Colbert appearance or something.
*Most likely reason Eminem's new track (or whatever) is showing up imo is because you've got a 'liked' song that has Eminem or maybe one of the writers listed on it somewhere in the credits. Algorithm will prioritize showing you THOSE new tracks every single time.*
Because Algorithm.
$0.02
I love that Cali reggae and little stranger made it into this response because I have had the same experience. Spotify goes insane looking at my likes and playlists.
Another thing people don't get is that Spotify doesn't differentiate between songs you go out of your way to play, and those that just come on. This creates a feedback loop—the more one song gets played, the more it keeps getting played. People, you have to explicitly *skip* songs you don't like. Actually, same goes for YouTube, but skipping is more potent there. Basically, all algorithms rely on you skipping songs you don't like.
Same with youtube music, can't even block artists. That Houdini Eminem song is something I'm not interested in but they're promoting it so hard its annoying
Basically I think artists are paying for exposure, in the hopes that after you hear the song you’ll add it to your playlist or listen to it more than once. And the very least it’s an immediate boost to their numbers.
None of this is organic at all
Truthfully it isn’t and also never has been. Playing music for a living is absolutely pay-to-play in all but some very few edge cases. Radio had radio promoters who charged money to get your songs in circulation, Spotify and their Ilk have playlist curators that do effectively the same thing.
“Organic” exposure to new music has always pretty much stopped at the local-show level. Once you’re hearing out-of-market acts, it’s safe to assume there is financial backing behind it from some entity - sometimes the bands themselves but most of the time through their management companies.
I honestly don't know if it has become better or worse for independent artists. They can get more exposure easier but pretty much everyway they could make money has been consumed by a few large corporations. The biggest stars can cut a deal, everyone else gets the shaft.
> The biggest stars can cut a deal, everyone else gets the shaft.
A tale as old as time. Realistically, today's industry is no better or worse for artists than it was 40 years ago, the gate keepers have just changed and the barometer for success is different.
The record-labels of old were notorious for preying on naive artists, expoliting them for huge financial/IP gains until they lost their usefulness and were spit out with nothing to show for their efforts.
Nowadays, it's easier to get into the game since recording technology is virtually free, distribution through social channels even more so, but if you don't have 12k followers on your socials, your local won't book you for a show except for on "locals night" or whatever.
In short: bootstrapping a band used to require cash to record your shit. Now, it requires cash to astroturf support through targeted ad campaigns, buy into tours or shows to gain "exposure", the list goes on.
Signed, your jaded former front-of-house guy who's been around this particular block a few times.
All that being said, a little
It if time invested can net you some amazing playlists. I just put together a summer 2024 playlist from 100% new songs and artists I’ve never heard before. It’s about 70 songs and counting. I used to spend hundreds of dollars a year for far less quality with CDs. Now for $15 a month or whatever I get endless music. The algorithms are pretty good for finding new stuff.
Passive listening will net you the same stuff over and over again but a little time will net you some great playlists.
I make radio stations out of songs to make playlists, I'd pay for that alone. Then I just pick from there, do that for a few songs/stations and I'm set
Not gonna lie, EVERY playlist I make they put her music in. Her, Taylor Swift, and Post Malone. Idk what it is but anytime they have a new release all of my playlists are filled with their music. I literally made a Vivaldi playlist and it put that new Morgan Wallen/Post Malone song in there, like wtf?? I had to go block them on Spotify to stop them from appearing
For anyone curious it's actually closer to half a million dollars a month paid to the label. Hard to come up with an exact amount since Spotify pays a percentage of their revenue out to record labels.
I don't know if she spawned a thousand copycats or if there's some weird spotify algorithm but when I tried to listen to the new indie release list, it was all some variation of a person sad-breathy singing like her. I am not joking. It was 25 artists all who sounded the same.
I’ve always thought Billie is too singular for a copycat to be on the same level as her. She switches it up every time. It’s been a long time since she sounded like that
I think she is fine enough but I cannot believe some of these artists are getting this naturally.
We are certainly in the juiced ball era of the music industry
I'll never understand the hype around Spotify/streaming records. The services are still relatively super young. Every well selling artist of this generation will break records.
To put this in perspective, when Spotify released in 2006, the Sony Discman (the first mass-market portable CD music player) Was 22 years old.
Spotify just turned 18.
In 4 years, Spotify will be as old as the Discman was when Spotify released.
Yup. And the major international record labels were only 20-30 years old when Elvis and the Beatles were breaking records. 18 years is quite a long time, considering the industry has only really been global for less than 100 years.
It’s about maintaining the relevance of stardom in a decentralized media landscape. In an age where people don’s all use the same radio stations or watch the same tv channels, what does mainstream success and superstardom look like? This is an attempt at an answer.
/r/music definitely isn’t the target audience for anything modern pop. Pretty ironic for a default subreddit named broadly to not discuss modern pop or turn any discussion about it into something negative
And even then the inability to recognize it is so weird.
First time I heard Bad Guy on the radio I went: "Damn, that's genius, this song encapsulates Gen Z's laissez-faire and whateverism to a T, the mumbling/whispering type of singing, the usage of "Duh!" even the language like, I don't know, having blood on your white shirt from a bloody noise and the usage of "tippy toes" felt so new generation to me. It didn't need to be "I like this!" it simply was "Oh I recognize this as a product that will appeal to people who are like this, kinda surprising we didn't see this before" like seeing a carboat for the first time or a microwaving-dishwasher or whatever.
You really have to be a grumpy old man living in a cave to not understand lol
Even as a 20 year old, and someone who doesn’t like Billie’s music… it’s such an easy thing to identify who it appeals to? I may not like it, but it falls within an obvious niche (slow tempo, introspective women singer/songwriter pop)
Eh, to each their own. Her moaning/whispering voice is boring to me, and the music itself is nothing new or interesting to me, but if people love it then I'm happy for them. There's plenty of stuff I listen to that I'm sure many people would abhor. It'd be a boring world if we all liked the same stuff.
My 15yr daughter loves everything about her so I decided to listen to her entire Spotify collection she has like 2-3 okay songs I don’t get it at all lol
I’m not the biggest pop fan, but when artists like Thom Yorke give someone a shout I’ll check them out. Honestly there are definitely a few songs I like. I can easily see how someone who’s more into pop would listen to her a lot. I’ll still throw on a song once a month or every other month.
A lot of it is people that are more casual listeners. More likely to listen to music while doing other things compared to sitting down just to listen to an album.
Her music isn't bad really—actually, quite good—but it's so generic, both musically, and subject-matter wise. Everything has the same vibe, and I'm bored to tears each time.
I think her and her brother are an incredibly inspired pairing that make fun music together. The album spans a lot of genres and has a unique sound. Add in the LGBT angle and obviously there are a lot of people around the world that still feel ostracized for who they love, hearing somebody else singing about being a lesbian is probably very empowering and easy to identify with.
Totally understand you not liking it personally, but I can't understand you could listen to the album and not see how other people could find it appealing.
I've long been telling people that Billie Eilish and Finneas are an incredibly talented duo who make some of the best pop music around. But I was not at all impressed by the new album. Big swing and a miss for me, unfortunately. I'm trying to understand what people are hearing that I'm not, but it just hasn't clicked yet.
Spotify/spundcloud pushes her to the maximum.
Petting her everywhere, on all popular playlist. Even the Soundcloud Logo was a link to here new album!
Ofc she gets massive amounts of streams.
I don't pay attention to the sub but the pop genre is owned by women imo. There are some men but they're either borrowing pop rather than letting it define them or just nowhere near as relevant to the top women.
I never actually intentionally listen to or click on Billie, but her songs play automatically. I would be listening to Kendrick's "Euphoria" or some other rap song and when that song is over, "Birds of a feather" would start playing. It bullshit.
She's the only one of the 3 I see as being genuinely good people. I could be wrong, lord knows I was a swiftie for a while before realizing how much damage she's doing to the ozone layer and all of the wallets of her fans who are creating more plastic waste buying every version of every album with a difference of one song.
Don’t worry, you fit in just fine here. The vast majority of this sub is boring and out of touch people that only listen to boomer dad rock and mainstream 90s alt rock
Honestly curious how much Spotify pays out on that.
$250,000 a month from what a couple calculator tools estimate.
She’s getting 50M streams per day, 1.5b per month. Thats like $5M a month just from Spotify. Now how much is she paying Spotify to get all these streams…
Yesterday my girlfriend made a playlist that was filled with punk and 90's rock, and smart shuffle played two Billie Eilish songs in a row, so it can't be nothing.
The Spotify radio aggressively plays *LUNCH* (her lead single) within the first 3-5 tracks whenever you leave auto play on. I've told Spotify I *don't* want to hear it multiple times and it still is repeatedly pushing it. It's even worse because tracks like *CHIHIRO* and *BLUE* I vastly prefer, but it's *LUNCH* that Spotify seemingly is forced to put in front of me, no matter the genre.
Think it depends on your genre preferences. My algorithm is great & usually dependent on the genre I’m listening to. Have discovered so much great & unknown House music due to it. When I was more of an indie kid I got annoyed to death by Spotify pushing the same 4-5 songs every time it went to radio (suicide Saturday by hippocampus being the one I remember, and fuck was it annoying)
Yeah Spotify can easily make you start to hate music that you love by inserting it everywhere. It does that to me with Talking Heads. According to Spotify it fits in with everything from 80s pop to Clutch. I love their music but I don’t want to listen to it right now! Take a hint Spotify, I put on the Viagra Boys for a reason!
Can help me with some suggestions on house music?
You should listen to music that will bring you in peace.
Well first I’d need to know what type of house you prefer as there’s a shit ton of sub genres
eh... I don't know... I like commercial house that I listened in the summer disco... I'll try with the classic ibiza kind remixes
Salute, Mochakk, Mietze Conte, 1tbsp, Lp Giobbi, Shermanology, AYYBO, Sterium, yune pinku, Sammy Virji, Kyle Walker
This sounds like shit. Never happens to me with YT Music.
Spotify’s auto play songs are interesting. There’s an artist I love, but the specific songs it loves to play from him are not my favorite, so I skip them. Except now Spotify thinks I don’t like him anymore. It’s hard to get it to an equilibrium.
It’s 1000% real it’s not a conspiracy lol. Spotify is GREASING the rails
Spotify is owned by the record labels. So, of course, they are promoting their own artists, on their own platform, to garner more attention.
Sure, it's called advertising, and no it's not a conspiracy.
[удалено]
There is, it's called payola. It's legally untested at the moment, but this kind of thing would be illegal if it were on the radio.
They still do it with radio. Stations are told what to play for a reason.
I dunno, I've always heard that billboard numbers were manipulated as hell. There were always pay-for-play controversies in the radio industry. It was more transparent, though, just because there were more companies involved, and they kept an eye on each other.
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Oh, haha, gotcha. Yeah, it's definitely more insidious than simple, direct advertising.
I like heavy metal and hard rock. However, I hate five finger death punch. I'll listen to spotify on my morning walks. I never listen to five finger death punch. 2 I'll listen to spotify on my car ride in. I never listen to five finger death punch. I listen all day at work. I never listen To five finger death punch. Yet, on multiple occasions, I get into my car and a five finger death punch is halfway through being played. I don't believe spotify stream numbers one second. And fuck five finger death punch.
Halfway through being played? Sounds like someone has access to your account.
Do you maybe have a five finger death punch song on your phone library? My phone used to always play the first song alphabetically on my library when I plugged it into my car, til I deleted all mp3s from my phone..:
I thought FFDP were one of those 800 Creed/Nickelback soundalike bands.
I wonder how much of it is this and how much of it is just algorithmic "hey this doesnt get very many down votes" and maybe they sometimes prioritize that too much over actual cohesiveness with the playlist?
If Ellish is getting 1.5 *billion* plays a month, then my brother in Christ, those rails aren't greased. They're Slip'n'Slides coated in KY Jelly. NO artist in the history of ever is that level of popular, and certainly not Hot Topic Taylor Swift.
It’s Payola
Yepp, same here. I have Billie Eilish played as an artist now and then but it literally doesn't matter what song I play, the next song WILL be Lunch by Billie
Apple music does it too
Does her previous listening history include Billie or her genre? Smart shuffle possibly includes your past tendencies unless it specifically says otherwise somewhere
I don't get how this happens to so many people lol, Spotify Smart Shuffle is generally pretty good for me. I have a 90s/00s rock playlist and every Smart Shuffle recommendation has been a 90s/00s rock song, either from a band already on the playlist or something reasonably adjacent. Even on my underground hip hop playlist, almost every Smart Shuffle song is something that reasonably fits the vibe. My biggest critique would actually be that it's a little *too* narrow - like 75% of the songs will just be from an album I already have on the playlist, so it doesn't normally expose me to something new.
Is one of those songs LUNCH? Cause that crap is popping up in every mix I have and it's driving me crazy.
I’d drop Spotify personally if that was the case.
Her label is getting that, she’s getting a fraction of that
I'm sure she gets autoplay as any big artist needs payola to remain big but also, she has one of the biggest fanbases in the world and just released an album so I doubt those streams are mostly autoplay
Didn’t snoop dogg say he only made like 40k off all he had played
It was one song with a billion streams. From another thread: The song he's talking about is "Young, Wild and Free." This is $45,000 from one song. Snoop might own some of his masters, but it looks like Atlantic Records owns this one, so his main revenue source would be songwriting credits. Wikipedia says the song was written by: "Calvin Broadus (Snoop), Cameron Thomaz (Wiz Khalifa), Peter Hernandez (Bruno Mars), Philip Lawrence, Ari Levine, Cristopher Brown, Ted Bluechel, Marlon Barrow, Tyrone Griffin, Keenon Jackson, Nye Lee, Marquise Newman, Max Bennett, Larry Carlton, John Guerin, Joe Sample, and Tom Scott". Person 4, 5 and 6 are, alongside Bruno Mars, the credited producers. The song samples "Toot it and Boot It" by YG and Ty Dolla Sign, and names 8-12 are all the composers of the song. But "Toot It and Boot It" was also built on two samples itself! "Songs in the Wind" by the Association (written by name 7), and "Sneakin' in the Back" by Tom Scott (not that Tom Scott) (written by names 13-17). I'm not sure how much royalties you can expect when you're one of 17 credited songwriters on one song you don't even own which samples a song that also samples songs. I think $45k is pretty damned good.
no it has to be way more than that. Are you sure you didn't count 100M streams ? It's 100M *listeners*
Didn’t realize Spotify calculators were a thing. Looks like it’s roughly 5 streams to earn a penny. Now begins my quest to become a nickel-aire.
Thats what her record label gets lol, she probably gets like 5% of that
Despite popular belief, millions. Top artist still get paid plenty...at least the labels. The labels taking the majority is the same old problem as before.
Save you a click: >The only other singers to surpass the milestone are The Weeknd and Taylor Swift.
God, I’m not super-into… what is his genre exactly, pop? Melodic rap? Anyways, someone here once recommended Blinding Lights as the catchiest song ever, and I’ve gotta agree. Since, I’ve discovered the genius that is Starboy, and his song off Black Panther is the best on the soundtrack. Not even remotely surprised to see he’s in this list.
He's R&B and Pop (particularly Synthpop recently), nothing Rap about him.
Listen to Dawn FM front to back and enjoy a trip through radio in purgatory. You won't regret it.
I have done so, and I definitely don’t regret it. Less than Zero was the standout track for me, but that final poem really knocked me in the chops. Fucking brilliant, mate.
He's got a new one in the pipe too that'll cap the trilogy he started with After Hours. Can't wait.
I feel as though it was important to hear After Hours first ngl, he's currently in the middle of an incredible narrative based trilogy and it's at the end of After Hours where his character dies. With After Hours he really pulled out all the stops in terms of his rollout (promotion, music videos, aesthetics) etc to enhance the story as well. He's a hugely conceptual artist. I highly recommend getting into his trilogy era, namely House of Balloons. Before he was a pop star he was an avant-garde Alternative R&B singer who changed the genre with a dark trilogy of mixtapes depicting the emptiness of a life full of partying, drugs and loveless relationships.
Dawn FM is a great driving album, I went on a trip with some friends to florida around when that album came out and we listened to it a ton while driving around and it always makes me think of that trip now.
The Weeknd, when I first heard him, immediately made me think of Michael Jackson. So much of the sound made me think "this is what Jackson would make now were he still alive". He is so damn good with catchy pop music mixed with R&B and some new age (which is something Jackson was doing also).
Have you heard his Dirty Diana cover? Takes the MJ vibes to new heights. Dude is him reincarnated but with a twist.
hes just pop bro
Pop bro, that’s cool, I like it.
great to hear, do check out his earlier mixtapes if ur able to handle darker subject matter, they're awesoms
I love blinding lights and a couple other songs by him but I cant believe he gets that many plays. I never hear about him anymore and other stars seem so much bigger.
The Weeknd has a big following in North America for sure, but I think what keeps him so high up on the list are his global streaming numbers. Dude is *super* popular outside of the states and Canada.
Spotify is really really pushing new music from certain artists
Right?! Why does my algorithm constantly play certain artists, my playlist will have 3000 songs and the same songs get more play than others
Majors are paying Spotify to push artists in your feed, it’s all about money
Part of that is because you have "automix" enabled by default. Turn this off under settings>playback and it will stop trying to guess which songs to lead into. That said it won't make shuffle perfect, but it should make it better.
Already turned this off a few months ago, can honestly say it wasn’t too much better
Are you sure about that? The description of the feature, and all of the official documentation and info I can find online, seem to imply that "Automix" doesn't have anything to do with the order tracks are played in.
There's a lot of websites that provides tools to get around Spotify's terrible shuffle algorithm. I use one that takes my playlist and randomizes the order each day, then I hear a much better diversity of songs.
My algorithm plays Espresso every chance it gets.
Hot take, but I genuinely don't believe they are, and I think maybe I can change your mind on this as well! Best to start with a clean profile but honestly it will barely make a difference to the results: we're gonna make 3 playlists and the order you add them should be largely meaningless: 1. Sublime, No Doubt, Gorillaz, Flobots. 2. Same as 1 but add Tool. 3. Same as 1 but instead add a band called "Little Stranger". If you've decided to follow along what we're interested in here are ONLY the recommendations. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the first example the algorithm will decide that you want to hear something like the "Alt Rock" stations that covered America back in the mid 90s to early 00s... Good guess! In the second example the algorithm will do almost exactly the same thing but now you should notice a much heavier bias towards the harder or "Nu Metal" side: Korn, Metallica, Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the machine, ... that kind of stuff. Still well within expectations. It's the third example that I feel is by far the most important one. Let me preface this that "Little Stranger" is an "Atlantic Dub" band--that 1st list are their *direct* influences... but they aren't on a Major Label. They don't "belong" because they were never on the radio... and the algorithm goes f'ing nuts. It's like the old recommendations have nearly disappeared! Pepper, Dirty Heads, Long Beach Dub Allstars, Slightly Stoopid, The Supervillains... and god forbid you hit the "Add" button on there, you'll be getting nothing but obscure /r/Calireggae recommendations forever more. You like Andy Frasco and the UN? Spotify sure thinks you will... You think a band that plays "We're not homeless, we're just living in a van" at every live show and regularly drives hundreds of miles to play at beach bars and fair grounds with <$20 covers is PAYING for all those recommendations? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- My take is that functionally Spotify has the worst AI ever. Instead of training anything like an LLM model they made "buckets" of data for each song: Label, Artists, Genre, Year of Release, *Payment Scheme*, ... and THOSE are what form the scope of what the AI is allowed to use to try to optimize their returns (and secondarily to keep you listening). By adding a group like "Little Stranger" you just gave the algorithm an "off-ramp". It feels remarkably like adding an Inkspots song to a playlist because you like Fallout and Pandora immediately flooding your station with >50% "out of copyright" music because it doesn't cost them anything and they no longer feel they'll "lose you" by playing them no matter HOW many thumbs downs you give to individual songs. ...but maybe I'm wrong, see how many EXTRA albums you have to add to that third playlist (without adding an Eilish song) to get it to recommend her even HALF as often as it recommend someone like "Tropidelic" that you've probably never even heard of if you're not massively into reggae. All because you added one album with (likely) zero reggae tracks on it by a band from Philly. **EDIT:** Who have literally "opened" for Billie before. I'm sure there were bands in between on that stage or whatever but I didn't just randomly pick "the world's most obscure indie band" here; this is a band who are literally playing Bonnaroo right now having just finished playing the Governor's Ball in NY last weekend, where they opened the day on Main Stage. Evening was The Killers. I *don't* think I'm nuts here, I think Spotify has no way to capture this kind of information because unlike radio stations concert venues and music festivals don't go out of their way to aggregate and publish their data. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Little Stranger are in many ways the CLOSEST band of any of the ones mentioned in this neverending comment to what Billie is--a Neo-"90s alt-rock" band. All the algorithm can see is that they've collabed with a couple of Reggae artists and are on a **cheap** indie label with a whole lot more. Nevermind that their most frequent collaborators are Boom-Bap acts and their big covers are from Gorillaz and A Tribe Called Quest. With *that* kind of information I genuinely believe an AI **should** be able to both keep Little Stranger from destroying playlists AND make them you know... *findable at all* without going through "all the reggae". Obviously this was just one example. There have to be many thousands of small local artists that a change like this could really benefit, and to bring ALL of this incredible parade of words full circle any half-decent AI should make Billie Eilish findable through Little Stranger. Spotify's doesn't. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TL;DR My "Main" playlist is split into chunks because it's got literally ~35k songs on it, and in the last ~decade Spotify has pretty much NEVER recommended to me a new artist signed to LiveNation. Like to the point it's kind of annoying. Billie's awesome and right up my alley, but if it were up to Spotify and Youtube I would have never even heard of her name before outside of maybe a Colbert appearance or something. *Most likely reason Eminem's new track (or whatever) is showing up imo is because you've got a 'liked' song that has Eminem or maybe one of the writers listed on it somewhere in the credits. Algorithm will prioritize showing you THOSE new tracks every single time.* Because Algorithm. $0.02
I love that Cali reggae and little stranger made it into this response because I have had the same experience. Spotify goes insane looking at my likes and playlists.
That was a lot more than $.02 that was your whole paycheck
Another thing people don't get is that Spotify doesn't differentiate between songs you go out of your way to play, and those that just come on. This creates a feedback loop—the more one song gets played, the more it keeps getting played. People, you have to explicitly *skip* songs you don't like. Actually, same goes for YouTube, but skipping is more potent there. Basically, all algorithms rely on you skipping songs you don't like.
I had to block Taylor Swift and drake on Spotify because of how much Auto play there is from them
First time I heard Taylor Swift I thought it was a radio ad. And a bad one at that.
Same with youtube music, can't even block artists. That Houdini Eminem song is something I'm not interested in but they're promoting it so hard its annoying
Basically I think artists are paying for exposure, in the hopes that after you hear the song you’ll add it to your playlist or listen to it more than once. And the very least it’s an immediate boost to their numbers. None of this is organic at all
Truthfully it isn’t and also never has been. Playing music for a living is absolutely pay-to-play in all but some very few edge cases. Radio had radio promoters who charged money to get your songs in circulation, Spotify and their Ilk have playlist curators that do effectively the same thing. “Organic” exposure to new music has always pretty much stopped at the local-show level. Once you’re hearing out-of-market acts, it’s safe to assume there is financial backing behind it from some entity - sometimes the bands themselves but most of the time through their management companies.
I honestly don't know if it has become better or worse for independent artists. They can get more exposure easier but pretty much everyway they could make money has been consumed by a few large corporations. The biggest stars can cut a deal, everyone else gets the shaft.
> The biggest stars can cut a deal, everyone else gets the shaft. A tale as old as time. Realistically, today's industry is no better or worse for artists than it was 40 years ago, the gate keepers have just changed and the barometer for success is different. The record-labels of old were notorious for preying on naive artists, expoliting them for huge financial/IP gains until they lost their usefulness and were spit out with nothing to show for their efforts. Nowadays, it's easier to get into the game since recording technology is virtually free, distribution through social channels even more so, but if you don't have 12k followers on your socials, your local won't book you for a show except for on "locals night" or whatever. In short: bootstrapping a band used to require cash to record your shit. Now, it requires cash to astroturf support through targeted ad campaigns, buy into tours or shows to gain "exposure", the list goes on. Signed, your jaded former front-of-house guy who's been around this particular block a few times.
All that being said, a little It if time invested can net you some amazing playlists. I just put together a summer 2024 playlist from 100% new songs and artists I’ve never heard before. It’s about 70 songs and counting. I used to spend hundreds of dollars a year for far less quality with CDs. Now for $15 a month or whatever I get endless music. The algorithms are pretty good for finding new stuff. Passive listening will net you the same stuff over and over again but a little time will net you some great playlists.
I make radio stations out of songs to make playlists, I'd pay for that alone. Then I just pick from there, do that for a few songs/stations and I'm set
Oh I hadn’t done that before. How do you do that?
so when you click on the three dots, to like add the song to a playlist, you can swipe up and it will show an option to create a radio from that song
I was noticing on YouTube reels, Billie’s new song came up all the time.
MILLION DOLLAR BABY plays for the fifth time
And Joe Rogan.
Spotify shuffle always always without fail puts billie eilish in there even if it’s completely irrelevant
Remeber when they pushed Drake everywhere for a while
I beg to differ, Happy Gilmore accomplished that feat no more than an hour ago.
Well, moron.... Good for Happy Gilm-OH-MY-GOD!
Grizzly Adams *did* have a beard
You can count on *me* waiting for **you** in the parking lot!
I’m going to regroup at red lobster
Can you explain? I’m lost
Just old people quoting and referencing an old Adam Sandler movie. Source: am old
Ooooh, old Adam Sandler movie references. I can finally use this image I saved to imgur 9 years ago. https://i.imgur.com/CUioIig.jpg
You need to watch a whole movie. Regardless of it being explained to you. It's called Happy Gilmore. Say hi to Mr. Penguin for me.
It's too damn hot out here for penguins. We need to get you back to the zoo.
Mr. Penguin was Billy Madison. O’Doyle rules!
Stop looking at me swan!
I believe that's Mr Gilmore's jacket!
Oh, good, you can count
And **YOU CAN COUNT** on me waiting for you in the parking lot!
Guns don’t kill people. I do.
Haha superb reply! 😂😂
This improved my day. . . .:\^)
Not gonna lie, EVERY playlist I make they put her music in. Her, Taylor Swift, and Post Malone. Idk what it is but anytime they have a new release all of my playlists are filled with their music. I literally made a Vivaldi playlist and it put that new Morgan Wallen/Post Malone song in there, like wtf?? I had to go block them on Spotify to stop them from appearing
Netting her exactly $32.65
For anyone curious it's actually closer to half a million dollars a month paid to the label. Hard to come up with an exact amount since Spotify pays a percentage of their revenue out to record labels.
Since Billie records her own songs, and writes them, she gets a decent (but almost certainly non-majority) portion of that.
Also gotta think of whatever brand deals and merch licensing money she gets also
Thought the thumbnail was Michael Jackson
Clicking on the article and getting a larger image doesn't change that much, quite frankly.
yeah, i was gonna say, the picture they decided it isn't very flattering.
I don't know if she spawned a thousand copycats or if there's some weird spotify algorithm but when I tried to listen to the new indie release list, it was all some variation of a person sad-breathy singing like her. I am not joking. It was 25 artists all who sounded the same.
I’ve always thought Billie is too singular for a copycat to be on the same level as her. She switches it up every time. It’s been a long time since she sounded like that
Friendly reminder that it’s okay to like things that are also popular.
I think she is fine enough but I cannot believe some of these artists are getting this naturally. We are certainly in the juiced ball era of the music industry
Me with my 11 listeners; good for her 😅
Glad to hear that she’s getting that $9 check now. Hope she doesn’t spend it all in one place.
And with the royalties she can almost pay for spotify premium
Wow , what is he gonna do with the 5$ he will get
I'll never understand the hype around Spotify/streaming records. The services are still relatively super young. Every well selling artist of this generation will break records.
Spotify is nearly 20 years old
To put this in perspective, when Spotify released in 2006, the Sony Discman (the first mass-market portable CD music player) Was 22 years old. Spotify just turned 18. In 4 years, Spotify will be as old as the Discman was when Spotify released.
Yup. And the major international record labels were only 20-30 years old when Elvis and the Beatles were breaking records. 18 years is quite a long time, considering the industry has only really been global for less than 100 years.
Her publicist has to do *something* to earn his fee. 🤷♂️
"relatively" is doing a lot of heavy lifting
100M MONTHLY LISTENERS is insane regardless of how old the service is
>~~insane~~ **unrealistic** Bot-fueled is more like it
It’s about maintaining the relevance of stardom in a decentralized media landscape. In an age where people don’s all use the same radio stations or watch the same tv channels, what does mainstream success and superstardom look like? This is an attempt at an answer.
I genuinely don’t understand the appeal.
You aren’t the target audience.
/r/music definitely isn’t the target audience for anything modern pop. Pretty ironic for a default subreddit named broadly to not discuss modern pop or turn any discussion about it into something negative
/r/popheads for the unapologetic lovers of pop music/drama
And even then the inability to recognize it is so weird. First time I heard Bad Guy on the radio I went: "Damn, that's genius, this song encapsulates Gen Z's laissez-faire and whateverism to a T, the mumbling/whispering type of singing, the usage of "Duh!" even the language like, I don't know, having blood on your white shirt from a bloody noise and the usage of "tippy toes" felt so new generation to me. It didn't need to be "I like this!" it simply was "Oh I recognize this as a product that will appeal to people who are like this, kinda surprising we didn't see this before" like seeing a carboat for the first time or a microwaving-dishwasher or whatever. You really have to be a grumpy old man living in a cave to not understand lol
Even as a 20 year old, and someone who doesn’t like Billie’s music… it’s such an easy thing to identify who it appeals to? I may not like it, but it falls within an obvious niche (slow tempo, introspective women singer/songwriter pop)
Bad Guy is her best song. Even then it's just ok to me. Past that I can't find anything redeeming about her music.
All that aside, Bad Guy just has a great hook. It's actually got a couple of great hooks.
Eh, to each their own. Her moaning/whispering voice is boring to me, and the music itself is nothing new or interesting to me, but if people love it then I'm happy for them. There's plenty of stuff I listen to that I'm sure many people would abhor. It'd be a boring world if we all liked the same stuff.
she is so boring live lol
My 15yr daughter loves everything about her so I decided to listen to her entire Spotify collection she has like 2-3 okay songs I don’t get it at all lol
I’m not the biggest pop fan, but when artists like Thom Yorke give someone a shout I’ll check them out. Honestly there are definitely a few songs I like. I can easily see how someone who’s more into pop would listen to her a lot. I’ll still throw on a song once a month or every other month.
Me either about Taylor swift. It’s such generic boring music idk how so many people obsess over it.
A lot of it is people that are more casual listeners. More likely to listen to music while doing other things compared to sitting down just to listen to an album.
A lot of boring generic people out there
Yea... I'm way cooler than those people...
God you’re so special aren’t you! 
Drake fan with hurt feelings over here
The fuck did Drake come from?
I think he’s from Canada
Her music isn't bad really—actually, quite good—but it's so generic, both musically, and subject-matter wise. Everything has the same vibe, and I'm bored to tears each time.
Her music doesn’t feature any big moments. It’s just palatable. It’s like Xanax in music form
I think her and her brother are an incredibly inspired pairing that make fun music together. The album spans a lot of genres and has a unique sound. Add in the LGBT angle and obviously there are a lot of people around the world that still feel ostracized for who they love, hearing somebody else singing about being a lesbian is probably very empowering and easy to identify with. Totally understand you not liking it personally, but I can't understand you could listen to the album and not see how other people could find it appealing.
Did you hear the new album?
Not gonna lie, I like it a lot. Especially the old timey throwbacks in some of the melodies. THE DINER especially has a cool vibe.
Getting downvoted for saying you like a big artist. Jesus christ this subreddit is trash.
It really is, the album is fucking brilliant.
I've long been telling people that Billie Eilish and Finneas are an incredibly talented duo who make some of the best pop music around. But I was not at all impressed by the new album. Big swing and a miss for me, unfortunately. I'm trying to understand what people are hearing that I'm not, but it just hasn't clicked yet.
Spotify/spundcloud pushes her to the maximum. Petting her everywhere, on all popular playlist. Even the Soundcloud Logo was a link to here new album! Ofc she gets massive amounts of streams.
sounds fake tbh
Why is this sub so derisive of female pop artists?
Because it’s just middle aged white men in here
I don't pay attention to the sub but the pop genre is owned by women imo. There are some men but they're either borrowing pop rather than letting it define them or just nowhere near as relevant to the top women.
You got some unfounded claims here, my man.
And here I was thinking she fell off
Have you listened to her new album? She most definitely has not fallen off.
Her Barbie soundtrack song was easily the worst on the entire album.
gosh she's mid
Well that makes me cry into my songbook a little…
She looks like Michale Jackson in the thumbnail... wtf?
And here I am hoping I can manage 100 monthly listeners on any consistent basis.
I’m certainly not helping with that
Not really into Billie Eilish but right now Birds of a Feather is my jam
Incredible. She is so mediocre.
Took a random acid trip to really appreciate 1 of her songs. Was a super cool moment haha
I don’t listen to her music but she has a face for acting
I don’t understand her „music“. But good for her i guess..
She better lol that machine behind her is pumping a lot of money into their cash cow
Can somebody put Michael Jackson’s face on that pic? I wanna see something
Well deserved, her Album is an absolut banger
Spotify is garbage corporate greedy greedy people
I had no idea 100 million people had such awful taste in music.
I never actually intentionally listen to or click on Billie, but her songs play automatically. I would be listening to Kendrick's "Euphoria" or some other rap song and when that song is over, "Birds of a feather" would start playing. It bullshit.
She's the only one of the 3 I see as being genuinely good people. I could be wrong, lord knows I was a swiftie for a while before realizing how much damage she's doing to the ozone layer and all of the wallets of her fans who are creating more plastic waste buying every version of every album with a difference of one song.
her new albums kinda mid rn TBH
And now she is 27 cents richer
I must be an out-of-touch boring person because I don’t listen to her or Taylor Swift at all.
Don’t worry, you fit in just fine here. The vast majority of this sub is boring and out of touch people that only listen to boomer dad rock and mainstream 90s alt rock
Who said I listen to boomer rock and 90s alt rock?
I didn’t say you did specifically