The Real Reason So Many Musicians Are Frustrated By Spotify

Joe Weisenthal (0:11)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal. Unfortunately, my colleague Tracy Alloway is out today. I'm kinda disappointed, actually, a little bit, because even though Tracy and I have been doing the podcast for several years now, there are some things I still don't know about Tracy. I don't really know what kind of music she's into, for example. I've gone to karaoke with her a couple of times, so I know a little bit about what she likes to sing, I think, but in terms of what she listens to, I actually don't know. I was gonna ask her.

As for myself, you know, like I'm 41 years old, so I have very cliche tastes, I would suppose. I like a lot of old indie rock, and I'm not very good on keeping up with new music by and large. Pretty much, if I discover new music, it's often courtesy of the algorithm that Spotify serves up to me. But I don't really know about how it all works and how the industry works and who benefits from this current system. And I've always wanted to learn more. It's particularly interesting now because of course we've had a number of artists take their music off Spotify, notionally sort of in defiance of Joe Rogan's role there, but also I think there's been a lot of musician frustration with Spotify and other streaming platforms, the new economics of music, that long precede any of the current drama.

So in light of all that, I want to learn more and I'm very excited about our guest because he writes a lot about the economics of the music business and how it all works and where the money is and so forth. But also beyond that, he was a member of one of my favorite bands. And so this is personally very enthusiastic.

I'm gonna be speaking with Damon Krukowsky. He was the drummer of the indie rock band, Galaxie 500 and currently part of the duo, Damon and Naomi. Damon, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.

Damon Krukowski (2:15)

Thank you for having me.

Musicians don't get asked about business very often. I'm really grateful for the opportunity.

Joe Weisenthal (2:22)

Well, you write a lot about business and I guess that's why we could have this sort of music slash business conversation.

Why do you write about business? Why is it, there are a lot of musicians who probably are frustrated with the economics of the music industry, but you write quite a bit. You've written books, you have a sub stack, you have a newsletter about it. Why is it important for you to write about music?

Damon Krukowski (2:50)

Yeah, it's a question I ask myself pretty often. So yeah, I started a sub stack. It's called Dada Drummer Almanac and my Twitter handle is Dada Drummer. That's where that came from. I started writing about the business of music very accidentally. It's the same way that I had to pay attention to the business of music accidentally, which is from being a musician. And you just end up at the other end of so many contracts and so many deals and so many accounting reports that you either, I guess, at a certain point, quickly, early on, decide I'm never going to pay any attention to any of this and turn it over to someone who convinces you that they are, or you start reading all that stuff. And there actually are a surprising percentage of us that do read all that stuff.

Some just out of necessity, because if you don't have a manager, or you elect not to, or you don't trust your manager, or your manager cheats you, I mean, you know, there's so many ways that musicians end up having to look, finally, at, even if they didn't want to, at what the hell is going on. And once you take a look, well, it's a big business, and so it's got a lot to learn. It takes a time for you to learn how this came to be, because musicians tend to be, they come in very young, many are not in the business very long, and the business is oriented toward the next set of musicians that are coming, you know, not you. You're always, you're just a temporary talent for an industry that has set itself up to deal with a revolving door of talent. And so, you know, things are not explained to you. It's kind of like, who can bother? Who, you know, why bother explaining something to a band? They're only going to be around at best, you know, a few years, a few albums, whatever, we're going to make our money and move on. So just get what you can.