Spotify has gone too far.
The music streaming juggernaut has been profiting off the music of top Aussie artists for years, while the musicians themselves have been left holding chump change.
Of course, this isn’t exactly news to anyone. The issue has been intermittently cropping up since pop empress Taylor Swift pulled her music from the streaming service back in 2014, and Jay-Z & pals launched their new, artist-owned streaming service Tidal the very next year, which promised to generate more revenue for artists (but actually didn’t really and then frankly ended up being a right old clusterfuck).
But now, a new and cutting-edge voice in the Australian journalistic arena has taken the investigation into this streaming-led poverty epidemic to new heights.
Freshly-squeezed ABC comedy series DAFUQ? examines hard-hitting news stories that make you say – yup – “DAFUQ?”, and one recent segment has examined what happens when Aussie musicians attempt to survive for a month off their Spotify income alone.
Watch in horror as a raft of familiar faces, including Eskimo Joe‘s Kav Temperley, singer-songwriter Abbe May and Will Stoker of Will Stoker and the Embers (a.k.a WILL FROM THE BACHELORETTE AUSTRALIA) are pushed to the very edge, after music streaming royalties leave them fully povo.
View the heart-rending consequences in the footage below.
Meanwhile, all 6 episodes of DAFUQ?‘s first season are available, in full, right now on ABC iView.
Watch: DAFUQ?
https://youtu.be/hkXebkzfTnI
