Cradle Of Filth's Dani Filth has become the latest big name to slam music streaming service Spotify, saying that he "owes it" to his fellow musicians to not even possess a Spotify account because, "I want my bands to be paid because if they’re not paid, they’re not bands anymore.”
Filth’s railing against the increasingly dominant platform comes as part of a new interview with the Sonic Perspectives YouTube channel, in which he voices an increasingly widespread opinion that streaming – with the finger being pointed as Spotify in particular – is responsible for the decreasing amount of cash being invested into new artists and subsequently delivered to musicians.
See Kate Nash’s bum for further evidence…
Filth’s hot take comes hot on the heels of similar complaints from new artists struggling to make ends meet all exacerbated by the revelation that Spotify’s founder and CEO is now richer than any music artist that he hosts on the platform (and thereby any music artist in history).
"This is real. This isn't a Zoom background," he says pointing to his physical turntable and CD player in the background, at the 19 minute mark.
“I owe it to my brethren in metal and music not to have a f**king Spotify account because they don’t pay people. It’s not just them – it’s just platforms in general,” he said.
“I appreciate the fact that people could discover you from another band and whatever; I’ve heard it a million times. But I’m old school… I want my bands to be paid because if they’re not paid, they’re not bands anymore.
“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',” he explains. “'We’ll still be doing albums, but probably once every five years,’ because it just seems like daylight robbery.”
Streaming is 'killing music'?…
Taking an extreme angle Filth even goes as far as to compare streaming with straight-up shoplifting: "If you owned a delicatessen or a 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 peripheral thing and it's in the air.
"You can't physically touch music. But how do you expect bands to survive without that?"
Additionally Filth compares streaming directly with piracy. “In England, we used to have this whole advert they had before the movie starts where 'video piracy is killing the movie industry', and they even go to the point where they'd have this slamming prison doors, in IMAX quality sound. 'You're going to prison if you watch a bootleg movie.' I know back in the day they said ‘home taping is killing music,' but nowadays it's like a f**king free for all."
And it’s not the first time Filth has aired his disapproval of the service. In 2023, he dubbed Spotify "the biggest criminals in the world".
Speaking with Sakis Fragos of Rock Hard Greece, he said: "It's been deteriorating ever since… I think 2006 was the year that everything swapped from being comfortable for musicians – well, not necessarily comfortable, it was never comfortable – but [it went to] just being a lot harder with the onset of the digital age, the onset of music streaming platforms that don't pay anybody.
“Spotify are the biggest criminals in the world. I think we had 25, 26 million plays last year, and I think personally I got about 20 pounds, which is less than an hourly work rate."
After this story was originally published, a Spotify Spokesperson contacted us to query this latter point: “£20!? Spotify has paid out around a million dollars in revenue to Cradle of Filth’s rightsholders for fans’ streams of their catalogue," they tell us. "We’re disappointed to hear that Spotify’s payments are not making it through to the band.”
It’s not just you…
Earlier this month Bush’s Gavin Rossdale pondered: “Obviously, when I began, if you made something good, people might buy it,” Rossdale explained. “Now, if you make something good, people might stream it. I have two sons that are poised to make music their lives, and I couldn’t be more concerned for them.
“I’ve been a musician my whole life and I’m at a loss to explain to someone how to do it. How to build from the ground up, how to get a career in that? It’s just terrifying because how do musicians, how do young bands get paid? I can’t work it out. I don’t know.
“Maybe you get one song with loads of streams? And we know that Spotify barely pays,” Rossdale reckoned. “And whatever they do pay, the record companies make sure they siphon off most of it before it goes to the artist. So it’s the same deal – artists getting screwed, record companies making a fortune and getting all the money. So same shitty business, but if you love it, what are you gonna do?”
Spotify speak out
Our Rossdale story prompted Spotify to contact us directly, stating: “As Gavin correctly points out, streaming services do not pay artists or songwriters directly. They pay rightsholders, who in turn pay artists and songwriters based on their individual agreements. Once that revenue leaves a service like Spotify’s hands, how much money goes to artists and songwriters depends on their own contracts with their rightsholders.
"It’s a misconception that Spotify ‘doesn’t pay well’ – as we’ve proved time and time again. The $10B we paid out in 2024 and $60B all time is industry-leading and record-breaking - the largest contribution to the music industry.
"We’ve also seen the number of artists “making it” grow from hundreds competing to be in the Top 40 to hundreds of thousands vying to be among the top thousand. There are now over 66,000 artists generating at least $10k from Spotify payouts, and the number of artists generating at least $1M, $100K and $10K, has nearly tripled since 2017. Industry analysis suggests that these artists’ total overall revenue is x4 that when you take into account their additional revenue streams. The music industry is healthier than ever.”
“Healthier than ever”, or “daylight robbery”? It seems that with Spotify only just turning its first year of profit and having forged a bundled content deal with Universal Music Group that will effectively pay its artist even less, this chasm of opinion looks only likely to get wider.
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