Spotify Is Not Your Friend

Spotify is not your friend ☹  And it’s certainly not ours.

My band Hitstax spends a lot of time thinking about the stories we want to tell. More time, sometimes a lot of time, finding words to tell the story. There has to be rhythm in the words – scansion. There has to be a consistent rhyming scheme, but without ever compromising on meaning.

Then coming up with a melody that fits the words. Then realising that tune doesn’t work and coming up with another one. Then finding a second but related melody for the bridge if there is one. Then thinking about instrumentation that works with the melody, and even more important, brings the story to the front.

For example, ukelele and slide guitar to create a Hawaiian surf feel for Shadows in the Golden Sea – an allegory for life. Or clashing guitars and weird synths to make a heavy, strange, and sinister atmosphere for Inferno (based on Dante and not yet released). Or cello, piano and gentle choir to match the thoughtful, sombre mood of Silent Shore, based on Kenneth Slessor’s great Australian war poem Beach Burial.

This is the main reason we don’t have a “style” – because the story comes first, and every story is different. In doing this, I think we have created a couple of entirely new genres. There is nothing that sounds like our Western rock songs with Indian instrument and rhythm overlay like Build Again, and no, it’s not Bhangra. Nor is there anything that sounds like our heavy swamp rock, like Voodoo Call.

And then you stream these songs on Spotify and you can’t tell a flute from a goose fart, or a oboe from your elbow, because it sounds someone has dumped a wheelbarrow of mashed potatoes over the speakers. In the free version of Spotiface you can’t play the songs you want, you are drowned under ads, and you might as well forget about the music. It’s all mashed potato.

But the final straw is that Sloptify is simply not honest in reporting plays. We have run a couple of small Facebook promos. For Out Of My Way and Hey Honey Honey, likes were almost an exact match for plays. Some people played them and didn’t leave likes on FB. A few people left likes but didn’t play the song. But it evens out. Last week we ran a highly targeted promotion for Ran Chandi Ride Again, a patriotic song for India. Over 70,000 likes. 70,000! And over 400 positive comments. How many plays did Snotify record over that same period? 37. Not real, and not fair.

It’s not so much the money that bothers me. Spottibutt only pays 0.1 cent per play. 1,000 plays will earn you a dollar. $70 would be nice but whatever. It’s more that that number of plays in a few days would trigger algorithms that lift our other songs. Or that’s what they tell us.

Anyway, we have three tracks in the release timeline for Slagifly, but I think that will be it. No more. All of our releases will go to Soundcloud, and some of the other high definition services like Tidal. You can find all the songs I mentioned above on Soundcloud (except Inferno).