Indie-pop group The Pocket Gods have devised a novel approach to protest against Spotify. A company steeped in controversy at the moment, from the Neil Young boycott over Joe Rogan to more general claims of exploiting artists, the company aren’t at their most popular at the moment.
Whereas some people are taking their music off the platform, The Pocket Gods are going to do the opposite, by releasing a new album made of 1,000 tracks. You might think that’s a good thing for Spotify – the more music the merrier. But loopholes being loopholes, they know what they’re doing.
excited doing an interview with the I newspaper this afternoon about our 1000×30 album and campaign for fairer royalties from music streaming (and er Spotify)
— Mark Christopher Lee (@thepocketgod) January 31, 2022
Each track will be around the thirty-second mark in length. The act is in reference to how Spotify’s streaming model works. A stream is counted after a track has been played for 30 seconds, without which no revenue is generated. Inspired by an article from New York professor Mike Errico, which argued that this model will be the death knell of the three-minute pop song, The Pocket Gods began wondering why they bother with the rest of a song if all the money is in the beginning.
The Pocket Gods’ Mark Lee said “I saw the article and it made me think, ‘Why write longer songs when we get paid little enough for just 30 seconds?’“ The act is also meant to raise awareness for how little the service pays the artists who make the music it shares, with The Pocket Gods saying they receive 0.002p per stream. One song on the new album is called “0.002“ in reference to this. Lee said, “We used to get 0.007p a play, still a pittance but that seems to have been cut since Spotify bought the Joe Rogan Experience podcast for $100m.“
On Sky news this morning xx pic.twitter.com/PXkkdcibtB — Mark Christopher Lee (@thepocketgod) February 5, 2022
Despite his dislike for some aspects of streaming, Lee does concede that “Spotify is a great musical resource and it allows indie bands like us to upload our music without record companies“. As for Joe Rogan, he has no plans anytime soon to join Neil Young and his boycott, explaining “I also believe in free speech even though I’m a massive Neil Young fan so I don’t support the boycott. We just want to raise awareness of the royalties issue.“
If you’re a fan of long albums then you’re in for a good time. The 1000-track release will be called 1000×30 – Nobody Makes Money Anymore. It’s out next Friday and will almost definitely be available for Spotify streaming. An album with 1,000 songs is sure to have something worthwhile at any rate.
