The Pocket Gods Protest Spotify Royalties With 1,000 30 Second Track Album

Indie band The Pocket Gods have released their new album, 1000x30 - Nobody Makes Money Anymore, which consists of 1,000 songs that are each approximately 30 seconds long – which is the length after which Spotify pays out a royalty in full.

The Pocket Gods' new 1000 song album was created to raise awareness of the lack of fair and transparent royalties from music streaming, also landing the band a spot in the official Guinness World Records for most songs on a digital album.

The band state that they earn around £0.002 from each stream of a song from Spotify.

“It used to be around £0.007, which was still a pittance, but since it became a listed company in 2018 it has reduced dramatically,” said the band, which are made up of Noel Storey (keys), Mark Christopher Lee (vocals and guitar), ex Searchers drummer Scott Ottaway, and Simon Herries on bass.

“The album is out now on Spotify and has gone viral around the world,” said the band’s vocalist and guitarist, Lee. “We decided to write 30 second songs as this is the length a song has to be to qualify for a royalty, so we thought, ‘Why write longer songs anymore?’ We have enjoyed adapting our craft to the 30 second format.

“We've released this album to make a statement against the pitiful royalty rates that artists and songwriters get from music streaming services,” he clarified.

“We want to encourage a debate into how we as a society value music. It's not just the likes of Spotify, though we do note that since it bought the rights to Rogan's podcast our royalty rate has decreased from £0.007 per stream to around £0.002 per stream, but us as consumers who've been used to getting music for free or very cheaply for years, this is just not sustainable in nurturing new talent and new music."

Check out the album of 30 second songs here, which includes Noel Gallagher Is Jealous Of My Studio, Liam Gallagher Is Jealous Of My Clever Turn Of Phrase, the bbc will introduce you as long as you're under 25, Racist Seaside Town They Forgot To Close Down, I'm A D List St Albans Musician Get ME Out Of Here, Day 46 of lockdown I bet they're having parties in Downing Street, didn't think I would make it to 1000, and more.

“We decided that by writing only 30 second songs we were giving Spotify the minimum to qualify for a royalty. By putting 1,000 of them on one album was making a statement and which has helped the cause gain worldwide media attention. We're calling on the likes of Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran and Noel Gallagher to join us and release just 30 second songs to highlight these issues.”

Lee recently contacted Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify on the issue, who arranged a meeting between Lee and Spotify's head of artists, Bryan Johnson to discuss.

Lee says that during the meeting Johnson said that the band’s 30 second songs were “innovative” and that songs in general were getting shorter due to the TikTok generation.

When asked about the issue of Spotify’s royalty rate, Lee says that Johnson answered:

“Spotify pays out 70% to rights holders and would now be bringing in gradual price rises around the world and that these would be passed on to rights holders.”

“They also said the usual streaming is just one slice of the pie argument,” said Lee. “I kept pushing, saying that maybe the consumer should be valuing and paying more etc, and that I would pay £20 a month if I knew the price rises would go directly to the artists. 

"They said they would pass the price rises on but that when it came to the UK and the US they would have to be careful as they were up against both Apple and Amazon, for who music is a loss leader and are tech and shopping companies, so if Spotify hiked up their prices their competitors wouldn't, and hence they would lose customers, so it's a complex issue.

“My other concerns are with the new Discovery mode they are trialling at the moment whereby unsigned artists can pay a commission (basically a reduced royalty rate) to gain access to playlists – effectively ‘pay to play’, which makes money out of people trying to make music,” Lee continues. “I put this to Johnson but he said it was no different than a band paying for Facebook or Instagram ads.

“I also put to Johnson that there were rumours in the industry that major labels and their artists get preferential treatment and rates from Spotify but he denied this, saying all artists were treated the same and were on the same royalty rates (concerns were raised to the UK parliament that this may be the case) – but he did say that obviously major label artists had the luxury of the marketing and advertising spend so were more likely to end up on playlists and in the charts.

“I said I just wanted a level playing field to know that if an unknown artist came up with the greatest song, it would get heard by humans and not AI bots and would get playlisted. I'm going to release a 30 second white noise single to pitch to playlists to see what happens…”