A philosophical argument hit WordPlay T. Jay this week, largely based on the Joe Budden Podcast’s relationship with Spotify and a Twitter rant by Kanye West about content ownership.
The Joe Budden Podcast has come up on the end of a 2-year deal with Spotify, and Budden is leaving the popular streaming service for a few reasons, most of all because he feels the attention he has brought to Spotify is not being valued enough.
Spotify, when it agreed to the deal with Budden, was nowhere close to being a leader in podcasts, and Budden put in the work to bring a new audience to the streaming service. Budden says he brought a massive audience to Spotify, beating their metrics by more than 900 percent, and he didn’t realize at the time he was joining a game without knowing how it was going to be played.
His argument is that the people profiting from content like his, specifically when it comes to black artists and creators, are not the ones creating the value. Budden said he brought many new people to the platform, but his audience and the unique product did not get the return for his time and effort.
Instead, Spotify used his success to purchase other content, not recognizing the value he gave the platform to be successful in his market.
Budden also said he thinks black creators are not getting their due, while white creators have become more lucrative in an area he pioneered for others to have success.
“We are in a situation where black creativity is a commodity,” T. Jay said. “The Hip Hop style, culture and fashion are sought, and our creators are not getting the credit or compensation they deserve.”
This is proven by Budden, over the two years, remaining the lowest-paid on Spotify, despite the massive audience he brought to the table.
“Spotify enriched themselves by not paying their creators,” T. Jay said. “This is why we need to be in the position to own our own creative works and leverage it for our own gain.”
Tied into this argument was the rant on Twitter by Kanye West about masters and contracts, saying that corporations should be exposed for their predatory tactics, especially against minority artists.
Successful artists are expected to make enough for services like Spotify to profit, but even when they make more profit than expected, they do not get to share in the spoils.
“I’m glad Kanye is using his voice on his platform to bring attention to this, but he is not the first one to say it,” T. Jay said. “And, everyone is just paying attention now because ‘Kanye said it.’ He’s getting all the credit when people like Prince and Michael Jackson were screaming how companies were taking advantage of artists. Prince even changed his name to a symbol to take back his ownership.”
T. Jay said the takeaway from this conversation is that artists should be more mindful of their own value.
“We have value, and I don’t know when it was we decided to give that away,” he said. “It’s important for us to not be preyed upon and everything milked out of the creative process. We know we can make things work without these deals, and signing a deal is not the pinnacle of success. The pinnacle of success is our own value, creating an audience and partnering with larger companies while keeping our ownership rights.
“Why can’t we do this without only listening to Kanye? And, why can we not understand the value of our work and use it to dismantle the system?”