A couple years ago I thought music streaming services would start competing to provide the best artist services. It baffles me that Spotify et al don't have people in charge of helping artists make more money from their platforms, and aren't constantly highlighting how to do so.

Per-play rates should just be one piece of the conversation. Let artists use these platforms to market directly to their fans! Pandora's AMP is a decent start. All I can really do on Spotify is update my band's bio, image and social media links. That's not enough. /2

It would be such an easy win for these companies to let artists direct fans to other ways of helping them earn money -- merch, fan experiences, and so on. /3

Too Much Joy recently raised $20,000 through IndieGoGo to fund a new record. Do I have any way of telling our Spotify listeners about this, should they like to contribute? I do not. That's dumb, and unnecessary. /4

Seriously, that one change would likely bump our average revenue per Spotify listener from fractions of a penny to a dollar, or even more. How dramatically would artists' feelings about Spotify change if that were the case? /5

IndieGoGo tells me that our campaign earned us $3.08 per Facebook user. How ridiculous is it that my band earned more money in 2020 through Facebook than we did through an actual music service? /6

So, if you run a music streaming service, please put people in charge of Artist Services, give them a mandate and a dev team to find additional ways for musicians to earn $ through your platform, and then brag about it constantly. /fin