There are better ways to support the artists whose music got you through 2024.
It’s that time again, when Instagram stories are clogged to high heavens with people sharing their Spotify Wrapped, a collection of data points outlining their listening habits for the year. These include top artists, most played songs and, most crucially, pinpointing the precise moment they pivoted from Rainy Day Banjo Folk to Indie Sleaze Metropopolis Art Pop, before settling on VanLife Hobgoblin With Herniated Disc Screaming Somebody Help Me.
Aotearoa on the whole was about as adventurous with their listening choices as you can imagine. Taylor Swift was the most streamed artist (guilty as sin) and The Joe Rogan Experience was the most streamed podcast (everyone go to your rooms) followed by The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett (and don’t you dare try and start a company from your rooms). Proving we are a proud nation of royal scandal queenies, our most popular audiobook was Spare by Prince Harry.
But while we all share the soundtracks to our triumphs and breakdowns of 2024, it’s worth remembering that there are more effective ways to support the artists whose music got you through this year. Everyone’s favourite billionaire Taylor Swift pocketed $100 million for being the most streamed artist in the world last year, but it’s much harder for smaller artists when Spotify itself reports that the average revenue for a song is $0.03 per month (and that’s before splitting it between the label, publisher, songwriter, etc)
As Dr Jesse Austin-Stewart told RNZ, Spotify Wrapped is a great marketing gimmick to drown out the negative headlines around the platform’s measly payments to artists. “When there’s so much discourse around the lack of royalties these streamers are paying artists, I guess Wrapped is a market point of difference to continue the conversation around Spotify, as opposed to other streamers, that’s more positive, when the press they’re getting for the rest of the year isn’t.”
Local musician James Milne, aka Lawrence Arabia, shared the reality of streaming revenue on his Instagram yesterday: “just a reminder that Spotify is an excellent tool for discovering new music but it doesn’t pay a wage.” Sharing his own Spotify Wrapped data, he revealed that having 877,000 streams, totalling over 44,000 hours, resulted in a total of $4739 income for 2024. “I’m not moaning about it, I just want to be transparent about it,” he wrote. “Many artists aren’t so lucky.”
Milne suggested that people use Spotify Wrapped as a reminder to support their favourite artists beyond streaming. He told The Spinoff that buying direct from the artist off platforms like Bandcamp is much more fruitful for artists, as is heading to independent record stores to buy their music. What also makes a big difference is buying upcoming tour tickets as early as possible. “It just makes it way less stressful when you can know well in advance that a tour isn’t going to lose money,” he said.
This advice from Milne comes at a moment where the local live music scene continues to be in a state of crisis. In October, the APRA AMCOS Year in Review report for 2024 revealed that while attendence to major concerts has grown 8.4%, local live music revenue is still below pre-Covid levels, with an estimated $600 million lost in income for artists in Aotearoa since 2020. The report also revealed a year-on-year decline in the percentage of local content consumed across all streaming services as a whole.
“We’re deeply concerned that an entire generation may miss out on seeing new and emerging acts perform live, and that those acts may lose the chance to launch their careers if the decline in live music continues,” Dean Ormston, CEO of APRA AMCOS said.
So while we’re all out here apparently blasting Taylor Swift, Prince Harry and Joe Rogan well into the wee small hours of our Bejewelled Fear Factor Apoplectic Abdication era, spare a thought for how you could better support your favourite local artists. With Christmas around the corner, maybe your friends and family might like a cool bit of merch, some vinyl or a CD, tickets or even a voucher to go towards a gig sometime in the future. And, get this, you could even get it… wrapped.