Spotify has long been under fire for their low payouts to artists (Charlie Benante was especially critical) and their CEO's generally crappy attitude toward the creation of art. Cradle Of Filth frontman Dani Filth expressed more of the same in an interview with Sonic Perspectives, saying he owes it to his fellow musicians not to have a Spotify account.
"I owe it to my brethren in metal and music not to have a fucking Spotify account because they don't pay people. And it's not just them — it's just platforms in general. And I appreciate the fact that from that people could discover you from another band and whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever; I've heard it a million times," said Filth.
"But I'm old school. I want CDs, I want vinyl, I want my bands to be paid because if they're not paid, they're not bands anymore. And I know so many people from big bands that since the pandemic have gone, 'You know what? I'm taking a proper job. So you'll see me less often. We'll still be doing albums, but probably once every five years,' because music — it just seems like daylight robbery."
Filth then addressed the idea that music is getting bigger and bigger, noting that it's really just the artists up top instead of the industry and smaller artists as a whole. It is worth noting that Spotify has been touting their payouts from 2024, noting that over 10,000 artists generate over $100,000 per year from Spotify alone.
"If you owned a delicatessen or a fucking supermarket even, people aren't allowed to just come in and help themselves to free produce, which is what people think they're entitled to do with music because it's a periphery thing and it's in the air. You can't physically touch music. But how do you expect bands to survive without that? Okay, yeah, sure, music's getting bigger and bigger.
"But that's because Taylor Swifts of the world and the Ed Sheerans, whom we've just done a song with, are everywhere. If you work in a delicatessen or you work at a building site and you've got the radio on, chances are you can hear one of those two or Beyoncé or whatever, or Megan Thee Stallion within fucking five minutes of putting it on. And it's kind of a mind control because you adjusted to that. You remember those songs 'cause that's all you hear."
A Spotify spokesperson has since reached out to MetalSucks after they ran their article, asking for the following quote to be included. So we're just gonna run it as well: "Spotify has paid out around a million dollars in revenue to Cradle of Filth's rightsholders for fans' streams of their catalog. We're disappointed to hear that Spotify's payments are not making it through to the band."
