Spotify Wrapped dropped on Wednesday, meaning that everyone from artists to Exclaim! staffers shared their rankings of their most-listened-to music of 2024. Now, Mount Eerie's Phil Elverum is here with a reminder: Spotify plays artists terribly and isn't worth celebrating.
On his Instagram Story (as viewed by Exclaim!), Elverum shared a post by the union United Musicians & Allied Workers. It takes the format of Spotify Wrapped but contains the following message: "Spotify has DEMONETIZED 80% of songs on the platform and still plays $0.003 per stream. We need the Living Wage for Musicians Act NOW to ensure that musicians are paid fairly for our work. Monthly streams required to make $15/hour: 800,000."
A second slide points out that Spotify has now largely replaced curators with AI while reminding everyone about that regrettable time CEO Daniel Ek claimed that the cost of creating music is "close to zero." See the Instagram post below.
During a recent interview with The Needle Drop about the new album Night Palace, Elverum said, "I don't want to retreat into my crusty punk, idealistic, opting-out-of-everything way. I put it on the streaming services, even though I'm really anti those fuckers."
Meanwhile, Elverum's excellent album Microphones in 2020 — which Exclaim! ranked as his best-ever song — isn't available on streaming services.