Cradle Of Filth’s Dani Filth: “Spotify are the biggest criminals in the world…we had 26 million plays last year and I got about 20 pounds”
Dani Filth has expressed his concerns over the music industry’s consumer culture and how it’s now become an extremely “hard time” for musicians to earn a living.
The Cradle Of Filth frontman discussed his thoughts while in conversation with Sakis Fragos of Rock Hard Greece, noting how the music business has changed to cater to the consumer’s preference of having easy access to music, rather than purchasing material.
Speaking of the state of the industry from a musician’s standpoint, he says (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “It’s been deteriorating ever since… I think 2006 was the year that everything swapped from being comfortable for musicians — well, not necessarily comfortable; it was never comfortable.
“But [it went to] just being a lot harder with the onset of the digital age, the onset of music streaming platforms that don’t pay anybody. Like Spotify are the biggest criminals in the world. I think we had 25, 26 million plays last year, and I think personally I got about 20 pounds, which is less than an hourly work rate.”
Of how fans generally assume musicians to be financially stable, Filth laments: “For example, the other day my girlfriend…She’s got an ill cat; her cat’s very sick and needed a life-or-death operation. She’s a well-known tattooist, and she posted a thing online about… a GoFundMe for her cat, and she was gonna do a raffle and people could win a tattoo, et cetera, et cetera.
“The point of it is a lot of people were, like, ‘Why the fuck should we pay for your cat? You’re going out with a multimillionaire?’ And she was, like, ‘Excuse me, I don’t think you understand how the music industry works nowadays. One, he’s not a multimillionaire at all. Two, I’m my own person, and this has nothing to do with him.'”
Filth then goes on to elaborate on the misconception of musicians allegedly earning alot through their album sales, noting how in reality, particularly during a period of time where cost of living has increased, artists struggle more than the rockstar stereotype would have people believe.
“I think people just have this amazing ability to [believe] that when you have stuff out there, like physical product, that you’re earning a fortune from it.” he says. “They don’t realize you have so many people taking pieces of the pie — record company, management, accountants, blah blah blah blah; it doesn’t matter. If you’re not getting any money in the first place, there’s not much money to share around.
He concludes: “Yeah, the music industry is on its knees at the moment. I still enjoy making music — don’t get me wrong; I love it — but, yeah, the musician nowadays is finding a million things against them. It’s a hard time.”
