Music

Spotify £0.002 payments to artists prompt rock group Pocket Gods to release 1,000 30-second songs


It could sound the death-knell for the three-minute pop song.

An indie band is to release an album consisting of a record-breaking 1,000 songs, each just 30 seconds long, in protest at the meagre royalties paid out by Spotify.

The under-fire streaming giant is facing more embarrassment with the release next Friday of 1000×30 – Nobody Makes Money Anymore by cult St Albans band, The Pocket Gods.

A challenge for the listeners as much as to the tech platforms that dominate music consumption, the album was directly inspired by an i article by New York music professor Mike Errico, who questioned the future of the traditional three-minute pop song.

Since Spotify counts a song as “streamed” after being played for 30 seconds, and the royalty paid is the same whether the listener plays the complete song or not, bands releasing three-minute tracks on the platform were in effect “giving away” the final two minutes and 30 seconds for free.

“I saw the article and it made me think, ‘Why write longer songs when we get paid little enough for just 30 seconds?’,” said Mark Christopher Lee, frontman of The Pocket Gods, who state that they earn around £0.002 from each stream of a song from Spotify.

The Pocket Gods new album cover details the economics of music streaming (Photo: Pocket Gods)

“We wrote and recorded 1,000 songs, each a shade over 30 seconds long for the album. The longest is 36 seconds,” Lee said. “It is designed to raise awareness about the campaign for fair royalty rates.”

The album is being uploaded to Spotify but the provocation means “we run the risk of being thrown off the platform”, he said.

A single from the record is called “0.002”. “We used to get 0.007p a play, still a pittance but that seems to have been cut since Spotify bought the Joe Rogan Experience podcast for $100m,” Lee said.

Creating 1,000 variations on a brief theme taxed the band. “Sometimes we start with a chorus and repeat it, others have a verse and chorus.”

“There’s not much room for manoeuvring. Audiences enjoy the songs live but it’s difficult for the band to get into a groove,” Lee admitted.

Rock’s most prolific outfit, The Pocket Gods, who formed in a Tower Records store in 1998 and once enjoyed John Peel’s patronage, have form.

The average length of a hit single

“Old Town Road”, the global country-rap smash by Lil Nas X, clocked in at a brisk one minutes and 53 seconds.

The average length of a number one single has plummeted by 38 seconds inside a decade.

Analysis of hundreds of hits over the past three decades found that introductions preceding lyrics averaged about 20 seconds in the mid-1980s, falling to just five seconds today.

Among their 74 albums are collections featuring 100 songs. Their 2021 album 500X30 Morse Code Days In Lockdown holds the current world record for most tracks on an album (446).

They attempted the world’s longest song last December with the festive Quantum Christmas, which would take five days to play in full.

The good news for Spotify, perhaps, is that the band will not follow the example of Neil Young and others who are removing their music from the platform in protest at anti-vaccine misinformation shared on Rogan’s podcast.

“Spotify is a great musical resource and it allows indie bands like us to upload our music without record companies,” Lee said.

“I also believe in free speech even though I’m a massive Neil Young fan so I don’t support the boycott. We just want to raise awareness of the royalties issue.”

Streaming also offers a technical solution to the challenge of a releasing the new album. “You can’t squeeze 1,000 songs on to two sides of vinyl,” Lee acknowledged.



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