Spotify doesn't make profit from music streaming, despite having over 400M monthly active users, because it pays two-thirds of all its revenue to the rights holders.

4realz@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 550 points –
Why Spotify Struggles to Make Money from Music Streaming
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When’s the last time you heard of anyone buying an individual song / album on iTunes?

I’m yet to hear a first time, and I remember when mp3s first became a thing.

You’ve never heard of someone buying music on iTunes?

Genuinely, never. It wasn’t that popular in my country.

I hear people buying music from Bandcamp everyday

R.I.P. Bandcamp

What happened to Bandcamp?

It was purchased by Epic Games a year ago, who recently sold it to Songtradr, a licensing platform for background/'mood' music. Songtradr only retained 50% of existing Bandcamp staff (the rest were laid off a few weeks after the sale AFAICT, with the worst affected departments including Bandcamp's editorial team and customer support. Epic Games handled the severance package, for some reason.)

People are pretty upset about the editorial team being laid off because it provided exposure for smaller/niche artists in a weekly publication. I've never checked it out personally checked it out because I never knew it existed - wishing I had now

Such a large layoff so quickly by the new owner feels like a sign of darker times ahead for Bandcamp IMO, seeing that it's apparently been profitable since 2012 (Wayback link, new owners have nuked this from the site?). No need to milk the cow even more when the bucket is full...