If you're worried your favourite artists aren't earning enough money from music streaming, a new tool called Eternify is here to help you (and them).
Eternify bills itself as "a simple tool that offers a powerful, artist-centred alternative to typical modes of music streaming". It is basically an engine that leverages Spotify's catalogue and provides a way for users to ensure their favourite artists receive extra pennies without having to do anything.
For an artist to receive royalties from a Spotify play ($.005 per play, roughly), their track must be played for at least 30 seconds. As such, the Eternify engine will play songs in increments of 30 seconds on a loop, in order to keep generating money for a particular artist. You, the user, get to pick the artist (you're welcome, Carly Rae Jepsen).
Eternify has supposedly been put together by a band called Ohm and Sport, which has a website describing itself as "the world's first band in beta". Ohm and Sport's is using the site, and presumably the tool, to promote its first single, a dreamy, synth-pop song with hints of drum and bass called "Air Tonight". "As young musicians, we've been deeply discouraged by music streaming's growing reliance on algorithms and curation as a means for hyper-contextualised, endlessly novel, endlessly diversified listening. As streaming becomes inseparable from music discovery, already-miniscule royalty payments are spread far too thinly for artists to benefit."
Many artists out there are still not happy with what they are being paid, and believe streaming services are cannibalising their album sales. Taylor Swift famously pulled all of her music from Spotify on the grounds that she was not being fairly compensated.
While many of the world's biggest artists have taken a stance in a similar way, smaller bands have creatively gamed the system, just like Ohm & Sport. Last year US band Vulfpeck made about $20,000 after releasing an album of 10 silent songs on Spotify named Sleepify. The band asked their fans to stream it on repeat in order that they would have enough money to go on tour -- offering fans free tickets in return.
It's clever, creative and great publicity, but how does Spotify feel about these shenanigans? While it pulled Sleepify from its service the month following its launch, citing an unspecified violation of its content policies, Eternify might not suffer the same fate. "We welcome any legitimate means to help artists get their music discovered in Spotify and to be fairly compensated. With this in mind, we're currently trying to contact Eternify to check that their app follows Spotify's terms of use," Spotify tells WIRED.co.uk.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
