So, you love indie music. You want to support artists. Welcome to Indie Music Center! You're in the right place. So, what do you do to help those musicians? You stream their songs, thinking you’re helping. But here’s the ugly truth. Spotify isn’t helping indie artists. It’s actively screwing them over.

Before we even talk about money (or the lack of it), let’s start with the newest disaster. Fake AI albums are stealing streams and royalties from real musicians, and Spotify is letting it happen.

Fake artists. Fake albums. Real money

Imagine being an artist and waking up one morning to find a brand-new album on your Spotify page. Except you didn’t release one. The songs aren’t yours. The music is some AI-generated trash with your name slapped on it.

That’s what happened to multiple artists recently. Some fake "distributor" uploaded random AI slop, tagged it under real bands, and Spotify just let it sit there. Fans thought they were listening to the real artist. Some probably streamed it. The scammer got the money. The artist got nothing.

And when musicians tried to get their stolen identities back? Spotify’s response was basically, "Not our problem. Talk to your distributor".

It took weeks to get fake albums removed. In some cases, months. Meanwhile, Spotify had already sent off royalty payments to whoever was behind the scam.

It gets worse.

Spotify is filling its own playlists with fake artists to avoid paying real musicians

If you think all this AI scamming is bad, wait until you hear what Spotify itself is doing. A multi-year investigation found that Spotify has been secretly filling its own playlists with fake artists. The company has been working with a network of production companies to create what they call "perfect fit content" (Google this and you'll fall from your chair): generic background music that gets uploaded under hundreds of fake artist names. You’ve probably seen these playlists before. "Ambient Relaxation", "Cocktail Jazz", or even "Bossa Nova Dinner." These are now almost entirely made up of fake artists whose music was created in bulk by small songwriting teams.

Why? Because Spotify doesn’t have to pay these fake artists real royalties. Instead of supporting working musicians, Spotify floods its playlists with royalty-free filler music to keep more money for itself.

A Swedish production company even admitted that it employs 20 songwriters who have created over 500 fake artists. That’s one company. There are many more.

Meanwhile, actual indie musicians are struggling to get a single playlist placement.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek is getting richer while artists get nothing

Since July 2023, Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek has sold off $345 million worth of his personal stock in the company. If an indie artist wanted to make that same amount of money from Spotify streams, they would need 115 billion plays in one year. That’s more than Drake, Spotify’s most-streamed artist of all time, has accumulated since his music first appeared on the platform.

On the other side of the spectrum, let’s look at Takuya Kuroda, a jazz trumpeter with over 157,000 monthly listeners. His most popular song has been streamed 25 million times over 10 years. That should be life-changing money, right?

It’s not. That number of streams equals about $59,500... of course, before management, labels, and distributors take their cut. After all the commissions, he probably sees around $2,500 to $3,000 per year for that song.

Meanwhile, Daniel Ek tweets things like "creating content costs close to zero."

Now Spotify wants indie artists to give them even less than peanuts

Right now, a single stream pays around $0.003. That means your favorite indie artist needs over a million streams just to cover the costs of a recording day in a professional studio.

Starting this year, Spotify is changing the rules again. If a song doesn’t get at least 1,000 streams in a year, it earns nothing. Not one cent. All that money gets redistributed to bigger artists.

Let me translate. If an indie musician releases a song and only 999 people stream it, Spotify keeps the money. But if an AI-generated scam album gets botted up to 10,000 plays, the scammer gets paid.

This isn’t a mistake. It’s how Spotify works by design.

Your monthly subscription doesn’t go where you think it does.

You might be thinking, "Well, I pay for Premium, so at least my money helps indie artists."

Nope.

Your subscription money doesn’t get split between the artists you listen to. It goes into one big pool. Then Spotify divides it based on total streams. Since major label artists rake in billions of plays, they take the biggest chunk.

It doesn’t matter if you only listen to indie music. Your money is still funding Drake’s latest generic playlist filler.

What real support looks like

Over the years, I’ve received hundreds of CDs from indie musicians. Not from labels. Not from PR agencies. From the artists themselves. Some of these records are limited runs, sometimes even burned and printed by hand. This is how much music means to them. They’re willing to spend time, effort, and money to make something real and send it out into the world.

And yet, I’ve also seen the other side of this. An artist who released a masterpiece EP in 2021 had to remove it from streaming platforms. Not because it wasn’t good enough. Not because they changed their mind about the music. But because streaming doesn’t pay the bills and they actually had to pay to keep their own music online.

Yes, that’s the reality. If an artist uses a distributor like DistroKid or TuneCore, they have to pay an annual fee just to keep their songs available. If they can’t afford it, their music disappears. Meanwhile, some scammer uploads AI slop and gets paid.

I still have that EP. It’s sitting on my shelf. But it makes me sick to think that people who loved that music can’t hear it anymore, just because the system is built against independent artists.

How to actually support indie artists

If you want indie musicians to survive, you need to go beyond just streaming their music. Here’s how to do it properly.

Use Bandcamp. This is the only platform where artists actually get a fair cut. When you buy a song or album, the musician gets 80 to 85 percent of the money. On Bandcamp Fridays (the first Friday of each month), they get the full amount. That’s infinitely better than what Spotify pays.

Join their Patreon. Many artists offer exclusive content, early access to songs, or even personal chats for their supporters. Even a few bucks a month can make a huge difference.

Buy merch. T-shirts, vinyl, stickers, or whatever they’re selling. Merch is one of the few ways indie musicians can actually earn enough to keep making music.

Go to gigs. If they’re playing near you, show up. Bring friends. If they do livestreamed shows, tune in and support them directly.

Share their music. Don’t just stream it. Post about them. Add their songs to playlists. Tell your friends. A personal recommendation means more than a thousand streams.

Spotify isn’t going anywhere, but indie artists will if we don’t do better

I’m not telling you to delete your account and start buying cassette tapes. I get it. Spotify is convenient. But convenience is exactly why artists are getting crushed. If you love an indie musician, don’t just stream them and move on. Please go the extra step. Buy a song. Grab some merch. Send them a message. They’ll actually respond. Spotify doesn’t care about indie artists. But you can.