Wow. This is certainly a take. Two things:
1. Spotify has had a policy for a couple years now of not paying artists who generate less than 1,000 streams per year PER song. So if I get 999 streams on each of my 50 songs every year, I get nothing from Spotify.
2. Major labels own major stakes in Spotify. They are one and the same.
Ad. 1, I’m not saying Spotify is perfect, though in this case I would not be surprised if the algorithm was mandated by the record labels as the industry standard.
Ad 2, you’ll be surprised to hear the labels only held cumulative 20% stake up to the IPO and all of them subsequently wound it down. Their stake is now insignificant.
However, they had, have, and will always have, enormous leverage due to licensing-they’re monopolists and Spotify can either agree to whatever the terms are, or shut itself down.
Imagine if Netflix never started producing original content. They’d be at mercy of others or, more probably, already dead. Music doesn’t work that way and Spotify can’t just generate a bunch of pop hits to avoid paying the labels. They are trying to do that with podcasts.
Spotify here is the victim as much as the artists.
Considering the currently don’t pay small time artists a dime so they can funnel more money to the record labels that own them, they are still a piracy outfit.
"The average ancient historian led troops, tutored a prince, governed a province, advised a king, made a fortune, fell from favor, was exiled, and buried 7 of their 10 children. The average modern historian passed a few tests then wrote a book on their laptop next to their cat." so good!
No, his hatred is quite general, directed at various groups which I belong to some of. One time I remember well, for example, is when he posted a video of himself dumping poo on No Kings protesters (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna238521). If a friend or relative responded to some political dispute with a video of them pooping on me, I’d be pretty scared.
If your biggest fear is that Trump is going to come and poop on you, you are very well protected and safe! And any stress you have is totally self inflicted.
My biggest fear is that the kind of insane person who threatens to poop on me might do other, much worse things. It's not likely to ever happen, but doing what I can to stand against Trump seems like an effective way to minimize the risk. I celebrate when he fails, I'll celebrate when he croaks, and I hope that dancing on his grave one day will help future political movements learn what you and your favorite dictator-in-chief couldn't.
I feel like you’ve learned a strange, distorted version of the concept of “main character syndrome”. There’s a number of main characters who the Trump administration has gone out of their way to immiserate, and it’s entirely reasonable for fear that you might be next to motivate your politics. Trump doesn’t care about me personally yet, and presenting as many obstacles as possible to the causes he cares about will help keep it that way.
Couldn’t make it past the first paragraph without a bunch of lies and half-truths. There’s plenty to criticize about this admin. No need to exaggerate and obfuscate.
Which characterizations do you disagree with, specifically? It’s possible you just haven’t been following the news. In fact the second paragraph provides a reference to support one of those characterizations.
Alternatively, it’s possible you’ve normalized some of the behaviors in question in your mind, so that seeing them described bluntly is shocking to you.
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