We’re seriously all gonna keep doing this Spotify thing?

5:09pm Sat Oct 5, 2019

Lemme see if I’ve got this straight:

If I pay a third party somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 plays worth of royalties for access to Spotify‘s monopoly, operating as a global 24/7 on-demand radio station with virtually no competition, then I can keep my work buried in obscurity and simultaneously become an uncompensated advertiser for them in order that my niche audience can bankroll the royalties paid predominantly to artists they don’t listen to.

Is that about right?

Anonymity in the shelves of the superstore or anonymity on the street?

Maybe it’s too much to ask people to take 40 minutes to listen to an album that took over two years of my life to make. Maybe it’s too much to ask for 40 seconds to download and open one track that isn’t on Spotify.

Maybe we should throw our trash out of the car window. Maybe we should keep voting for criminals to write the laws.

And if I refuse? Am I giving up?

Or are we fighting back?

I don’t fight fascists because I will win. I fight fascists because they are fascists. — Chris Hedges