Joe Bonamassa reacts to controversial comments from Spotify CEO

It’s no secret that most artists are struggling to earn profits from their music in the streaming era.

The frustration over this reality reached a boiling point earlier this year when Spotify CEO Daniel Ek suggested that “the cost of creating content” is “close to zero.” The comment sparked a wave of angry reactions online as musicians contrasted the hard work they put into creating content with the low profits that content now generates—especially on streaming platforms like Spotify.

During a recent interview with Blues Rock Review, Joe Bonamassa described Ek’s remarks as the streaming CEO “buttering his own bread.”

“Spotify’s created a situation where the artist does need Spotify,” Bonamassa said, explaining that the kinds of people and organizations that advocate for artists’ best interests weren’t really involved in the conversation back when streaming platforms were initially created. In fact, record companies “love” platforms like Spotify, Bonamassa added, because costs typically involved with packaging and distributing music aren’t necessary when listeners can access an artist’s entire catalog by clicking a few buttons on their phones or computers.

“Artists never stood up and said, ‘Hey, wait a minute. We’re not doing this,’” Bonamassa said. “Because the minute you realize how powerful Spotify is is when all these soapbox artists get on there, and for one reason or the next, go, ‘I’m pulling all my music off of Spotify.’”

But that kind of grand gesture doesn’t work when the artist making it has already sold their work without retaining the rights to their masters, as so many musicians have historically done while signing record label contracts.

“The companies that own their masters or gave them a nine-figure check before the decimal point for their life’s work and they took the money and they cashed the check, then they go, ‘No, it doesn’t work that way. We need Spotify,’” Bonamassa explained. “And unfortunately, artists who don’t own their masters are at a disadvantage.”

With that in mind, Bonamassa has one main recommendation for his fellow musicians.

“I can only encourage them to own as much of your content as you possibly can,” he said. Even those who don’t own the masters to music they’ve already released can work on rectifying the situation by re-recording their music, a strategy recently made famous in pop music by Taylor Swift that a growing number of artists are similarly embracing.

“If you don’t own all your masters, I encourage you to re-record. Go back retroactively, re-record and then re-release and do a deluxe version,” Bonamassa urged, adding that artists are “not going to see any of those fractional pennies” that their music generates from streaming services “unless you do that.”

Ultimately, the problem boils down to the fact that listeners have grown used to paying small amounts for subscription services instead of paying for each individual song or album they want to hear. Bonamassa offered a hypothetical example to demonstrate why this new normal is so tough to reverse.

“If Starbucks gave away coffee 29 days out of a 30-day month and then said, ‘But on the 30th day we have to charge you,’ how many customers would they have on the 30th day? None,” he pointed out. “The thing with Spotify is, once you give away free samples, it’s very hard to charge.”