When Bloomberg reported that Spotify would be upping the cost of its premium subscription from $9.99 to $10.99, and including 15 hours of audiobooks per month in the U.S., the change sounded like a win for songwriters and publishers. Higher subscription prices typically equate to a bump in U.S. mechanical royalties — but not this time.
By adding audiobooks into Spotify’s premium tier, the streaming service now claims it qualifies to pay a discounted “bundle” rate to songwriters for premium streams, given Spotify now has to pay licensing for both books and music from the same price tag — which will only be a dollar higher than when music was the only premium offering. Additionally, Spotify will reclassify its duo and family subscription plans as bundles as well.
That’s how it always begins.
But on a more positive note, care to share the label or more about your experience about it? With regards to Bandcamp and more generally.
Sure, https://mysticspools.bandcamp.com/
Most of it is pretty fun- find music, reach out to artist, make a few tapes. We just do small runs of 25-100 tapes depending on how much will sell. The worst part IMO is order fulfillment, you either pay a third party a boatload or you DIY and packing 100 cassettes is a bit of a drag. Coming up with good art if the artist doesn’t already have something is quite difficult. The label is on a short hiatus for that reason, but I think we’ll do some more tapes now that some labels have dried up. There’s waxing and waning periods when it comes to these little micro labels, and I can tell people are feeling the economic squeeze.
The most fun part is mastering to tape and dubbing. I’ve got a Nakamichi Dragon and 3x NAD 6300, and I’ve dubbed probably 500-600 tapes across them all. Dunno what it is about tapes, but I really like em.