They hardly ever have enough stream plays to cover the recording cost. Imagine for example a classical music ensemble. The amount of money a musician with a small but loyal fanbase can earn via direct donation is potentially much larger than via the stream revenue itself. This is nothing less than a revolution! Finally there is a way to express your gratitude towards an artist by giving her or him money directly. On April 22nd the news was out: Spotify added an “Artist Fundraising Pick” to the artists pages, that can be enabled in the “Spotify for Artist” back office. The road to offer a ‘donate to this artist’ button was free and it was fueled by the desperate need for money by artists. … Until now! End of March we learned that Spotify was no longer limited by contracts. But unfortunately contracts stood in the way. Of course it would be ideal to have a donation button right in the app that offers access to the music of your beloved artist. This button reminded us of Eelco Grimm’s attempt to bring a ‘Karma button’ to the Spotify user interface. The idea was to offer a relieve to musicians who lost most of their income because all concerts are cancelled to help defeat Covid-19.

Last month we posted a blog about the initiative by the Dutch label TRPTK to add a ‘Buy this artist a coffee’ button to their artists’ web pages.

Spotify artist