Nicky Reardon
Appearances
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Is it just me or are body standards regressing? What was once this get slim fast supplements of the 90s has now become this rampant abuse of Ozempic. The jazzercise girl has become the pink pilates girl or this rampant return of trend dieting. Skinny Talk, 75 Hard, Winter Arc, Summer Glow Up Challenge, Beach Body Fat Burn.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Or, you know, I remember when everybody in like 2016 YouTuber era, when they were all moving to LA, it was like all doing SoulCycle. You know what I mean? Like there's always like a new thing that they do to convince you that, you know, this is some new thing you need to buy into to fix this problem that we have convinced you you have when you're just a normal girl.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
So why did these toxic body standards come back? What holds this cult of glow-up culture together in mainstream media? Well, that is exactly the question we set out to solve here today. Welcome back to Nicky and I. I'm your host, Nicky Reardon.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Also, I think it's very important to acknowledge, like, when you think about a lot of these creators, even when I just, like, went on, like, hashtag skinny talk, hashtag pink Pilates girl and researching for this video, why is that girl always skinny and white? You know what I mean? Like, it is pretty much all of the time.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And it's interesting that, like, it's not this, like, direct line of whiteness, but almost, like, selling you on this idea of, like, the idea of beauty is being as close to this
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
specific thin white girl as possible um or that this idea of like the way you should look is this person and oh my god they'll have to be all happen to be these skinny white girls like i don't know what it is exactly feel free to leave comments about like your theories about exactly as to why this is and why it has been marketed this way all the time both in terms of people participating in it but also the brands who like do this is so fascinating to me
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Because there is for sure some element of racial identity baked into this in some way. Or also I think maybe it's, this is just me spinning theories. Again, this is an opinion episode. Pretty much being white is like the only ethnicity where you don't have a culture at all.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
So like a lot of times like they kind of manufacture these ritualistic experiences or, you know, eating a certain way or doing a certain challenge or like doing a certain thing because they don't have any sort of like
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
cultural foundation that just is doing that for them already anyways do you know i'm saying like and again i don't really know i could be wrong these are just my theories another thing that i have really found fascinating when thinking about this is like why is gen z so motivated by hotness and why do we need a stupid fucking saying or slogan to convince us to do something that is good for us it's winter arc and summer glow up challenge and beach body burn then 75 hard like
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
What the fuck are you saying? What are you saying? You're just coming in with a new name for working out? Duh, duh. And wow, working out and eating right is good for you? This is not groundbreaking science, right? But being hot and selling this idea of new hotness is so monetizable. And it's fascinating.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And this week, we're really talking about this idea of glow-up culture, wellness, grind set, all of these things that I think are really essentially built off of the idea of trying to play into your own insecurities to... convince you that you have a problem and then sell you a solution to that problem.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
We live in a world where it is arguably more monetizable to be hot than it is to be talented or smart, right? Like at the very least, you could make the argument that like you have to be both in some way. But there are so many people who have built these massive careers. I think of really just like I look this way and you want to be like me. So do this thing that I'm doing.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And that's why this podcast does so well. I'm just kidding. It's because I'm talented, hot and smart. You know what I mean? Like it's just when you're the whole package, like things come easily to you. But on a serious note, like it is just so fascinating to me. And I think again, like a very fascinating thing that we're going to, and I want to make a video about this.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
I just haven't figured out how to do it yet. It's like this world that we live in is so based off of, quantity of attention over expertise. You know what I mean?
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like more people listen to some random hot girl that's like posting her gym routine that you follow and happen to like the content of, then people are listening to like an actual personal trainer or like an actual health professional or an actual thing. Like we kind of like don't care about credibility as a society anymore. We care about scale. We care about number of people paying attention. We
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Or maybe at the very least, like when there is a lot of people paying attention, we just have this subconscious tendency to assume that that makes it credible, which is not true. And again, not to say that every person who makes fitness content is not educated and smart about what they do. There are many incredible people out, incredible creators out there.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
But the fact that it's, like, not even really, I think, a thing discussed or, like, factored considered is so fascinating to me. And I think we've really seen this pendulum switch back and forth, again, this marketing of hotness with, like, corporations.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And the interesting thing also about corporations is, like, they only ever engage in some sort of social movement if it is to tokenize them for profit, right? Like we saw the great example of this was like all like the target pride stuff and how that used to be such a big thing for them.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And then Trump administration comes in and suddenly they're like toning down and I'm not going to do as much pride, blah, blah, blah, right? Like they don't actually take a stance. Their loyalty is to profit. And there are moments in culture where it's more profitable to be very accepting. And there's moments in culture where it's more profitable to be exclusionary.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And it's sad that we are in a moment right now where the very exclusionary, the very authoritarian, like the sort of like supremacist ideology is what is winning. And it's very sad. And something I just want to bring up and encourage to remember five years from now, the pendulum fucking swings back. Remember what they did this time and they will do it to you again.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like there is no loyalty in this. Again, we're seeing a DI initiative. It's another great example. You know what I mean? How it was so amazing. And you know, the 2010s and talking about how there was so much emphasis on diversifying the company, bringing in new perspectives, helping people of marginalized groups, helping handicapped people, helping veterans.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And how this is something that has plagued our society for a very long time, as I'll talk about the history of, but also like is really, really coming back in major ways. And really what's fascinating, I think, is that we're seeing this like repackaging of things that have already existed in the past. Right.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And then, you know, boom, oh no, now that's an issue. Now we're not going to do it anymore. Right. It's all about profit. and also just this idea of like selling hotness. What's fascinating to me about brands like Air One is they don't sell $30 smoothies. They sell status.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like you are getting a $30 smoothie and you feel good about yourself because you somehow know that like I bought a thing that other people cannot buy. This is exactly the same way that like, luxury bags have value, right? Like a Prada bag is not actually $2,000 worth of leather and raw materials. But by having the $2,000 bag, it means that there are less other people out there who have that thing.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Therefore, it feels more desirable, feels more exclusive to be doing that thing. And that's what's so fascinating to me about a Air One. It's like, they're the first brand to do this in food. It's not just a luxury item. They are selling you the idea of luxury with your basic needs, with your groceries, with your lunch, with your smoothie.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like that, it's such a fascinating thing, how they have like cultivated that. When again, like what you're buying is really, you're buying a water bottle, girl. Like you could pay $2 for it or $6 for it. Like that's up to you. It doesn't make you a better or worse person, but that has really worked on people. That it is a very big business and a growing business.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And also, again, talking about this idea of like exclusionary tactics. It's a sad like element of the human condition that when you tell other people that they, hey, like everyone else can't have this thing, but you can have it. That somebody else out there is like, wow, that makes me love it more.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
When it's actually just the same thing, whether they're 100 people could have it or 10 people could have it. Yeah. And that is really, really sad to me. I have this theory that the Pilates body became a status symbol because it is something that cannot be obtained through Ozempic.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And when you think about these people like Bella Hadid and the Kardashians, Hailey Bieber, they really monetized this idea of aspiration and selling you on the idea of being skinny and looking like them, dressing like them, having makeup like them. But once the idea of skinniness became commercialized, like you can literally...
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
pay $1,500 a month for an Ozempic thing, then they had to find a new way to exclude you. So the way they did that is now the Pilates girl, the clean girl, where it's about this new look. Again, the goalpost always moves.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
They have to convince you that something about you is inadequate so that you look to them for inspiration so then they can sell you a thing to be like, hey, you can be closer to me, more like me if you have this, if you buy this, if you do this. And that is the underlying theme of it all. It's so, so terrifying. And with this rampant rise of Ozempic, we really have no idea
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
body positive role models in a way that's scary and I don't say this to like try and comment on these people's bodies but I think it's interesting to think about right like I'm gonna look at somebody like Oprah for an example when she was like really coming up and was getting big and all this like I feel like one of the cornerstones of her brand was that she was not like this hyper thin girl.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
She had a very, like, she's a little curvy. She had a very normal body. Like it wasn't super thin. It wasn't super big. It was just like, like, I really think she was just like, looked like the way most of her audience looked. And that felt so exciting, especially in that time, like cable television.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like I think one of the best examples in current culture is like the Ozempic craze and this sort of like heroin chic look and hyper thin, like it feels so reminiscent of the nineties and two thousands. And like, How also I think like TikTok has perpetuated this and selling you products and this lifestyle idea, blah, blah, blah.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Um, so much so that she literally at one point was like on the board of directors for Weight Watchers. She was like, like a very, very big thing. And she pushed it all the time and talked about this importance of building a healthy lifestyle, blah, blah, blah. And then she took Ozempic, lost all the weight, and now is not on the board.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
She got fired from the board of Weight Watchers for it, I believe. And then is now like endorsing Ozempic left and right, which again is a very like class thing. Like not $1,500 a month for Ozempic is insane. That's a lot of money. Also, I think we've seen this even, too, with, like, music artists.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
I think two big examples are Meghan Trainor and Lizzo, which were two people who really blew up and, like, I think the ethos and story of their music and community was, like, being a plus size woman and being so proud of it and feeling hot and creating music that other girls who look that way heard and also felt hot.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Um, and then they both lost a ton of weight and they don't look like that anymore. Again, like I'm not trying to be mean. I'm what I'm saying is I think young people have lost their representation. There is no more body positive representation in the culture, barely at all. Um,
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And if you are somebody who really felt all this confidence and seen for the first time by listening to that music by watching somebody like Oprah, and then all these people don't look like that anymore. Like and you're a 15 year old girl, like I feel like that has to be so isolating in a world where you are already so isolated.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And again, like I'm not trying to be mean, I'm happy that they're doing what makes them happy. It is their body, it is their choice. Like they are allowed to do that. And it's also a very sick and twisted thing about women in media is like, you know, people are going to hate them when they're fat and then they get skinny and people hate them for being skinny.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And it's like, okay, well, you know, what am I, what do I do? You know, like I, I very much sympathize with that problem. Um, and again, that's why I'm not trying to comment on their bodies. I'm trying to like talk about this idea of representation. Like A young girl, young person has none of that anymore, it really feels like.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And a great example of this we're starting to see is with surgeries, not even just this idea of things like Ozempic. There was a big drama with Remy Bader, who is known, huge creator, for making plus-size fashion content and doing very honest reviews of it, of the brand's, of the clothing, being super realistic about it.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And then she lost roughly 130 pounds in a year through this bariatric procedure known as SADIS, which is a surgery that removes about 80% of the stomach and reroutes part of the small intestine to promote weight loss.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Then apparently she didn't, I guess, didn't talk about it at all in her content and reportedly was even deleting things and comments or blocked users that were asking about it until recently she went on a podcast with Kourtney Kardashian. or Khloe, Khloe Kardashian, and then talked about how she had had this surgery.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Again, like, I don't, I am happy that she did what was, what she felt was best for her. It is her body. It is her choice. It's literally not my body. Like, it doesn't matter. What I'm trying to talk about is like, I imagine that you are just a, you know, a young girl or a young person out there who,
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
I compiled a lot of research and things that I think I want to talk about and will be very, very interesting. So with that, don't forget to subscribe to the channel. 94% of the people who have watched any of these videos did not hit the subscribe button. So, hey, check. You probably forgot or these are getting hit in your recommended feed. So please, please help me out. Support me.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
is not only hitting puberty and anxious and hormonal and having experiences with boys for the first time and figuring out what you look like and all these things, but now it's like, oh, even this one person who I used to watch the content of because they were so able to speak to the experiences I have, I just... It's just they're just not like that anymore.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like, I think that that feels so isolating to these people. I think that's really what I'm trying to say is, like, I fear for the youth who isn't having a person to, like, look up to and a person to tell them it's okay and figure out their own journey and navigation through that.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And, again, like, to talk about myself for an example, like, when I was in high school, I used to be, like, over 250 pounds. Let me put a picture up here. Like, I was very – I was, I was big and I had a lot of struggles with late. I've a lot of, had a lot of struggles with eating disorders. This is a different video for a different time, but it took me years to lose that years.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
I'm talking about, I think like, I don't think I really got like skinny skinny until like college, I guess. Um, And then my rate fluctuated up and down a lot. And then the pandemic came around and I gained like 50 pounds. Like, you know what I mean? But I felt lucky to have doing that in that time because there was elements of culture.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
There was movies and actors and musicians and things that like, made me not feel isolated for being that way. It felt like I had this healthy idea of who I was. I knew that I wanted to lose weight and I found a consistent way to do that where I was going to the gym four times a week and I wasn't killing myself. I wasn't starving myself. It was healthy. It was healthy.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And I fear that like, if I, you know, were exactly that way now and exactly the culture we live in now with this ozempic craze, with this pink bloody stuff, you know what I mean?
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like, would I still have been able to have that experience or would it have been so overwhelming and so exclusionary to me that it would have made me even more anxious and even more afraid of these things like the gym, which already give me so much fucking social anxiety. I hate the gym. I hate it. I hate it. I've hated it always. I hate it now. And I'll hate it until the end of fucking time.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
I would, I don't know if I'd have been able to do with that at 16 years old. I really don't. And also other weird things. I think we're starting to see this thing as like things like veneers. You know what I mean? Like it was so fascinating to me, like Amy Lou Wood from the white Lotus. Like everybody was talking about her teeth so much.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And like when she was like a cast and all this, and I'm like, I think that the reason this is even a topic of conversation for you people is it's actually been such a long time since you've seen an actor without veneers. You forgot that not everybody has perfectly straight teeth.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And these sorts of things I see appearing more and more and more and more often, which makes it so the bodies that we are all born into versus the bodies that we see on billboards and TV screens and phone screens are getting further and further apart.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Um, and then we, I think we're 400 followers away, 64 followers away on Spotify from hitting 10 K. So please, please, please be a homie. You can listen to this on your car, right to work. We can listen to the pod at the gym. Everything is posted here is posted there. Um, and it would really, really help me out.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And that is a really terrifying thing for young people, for young boys and girls who like are again already hate their body, already anxious, all these things. Like I fear for them, which kind of brings me to my overarching problem with wellness and glow up culture is that wellness is focused on telling you what to think, not how to think.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
You see this all the time with like billion dollar morning routine and then 75 hard and that random Saratoga water guy. Like they are telling you, you have to wake up at 4 a.m. Then you have to go to the gym at this time. Then you have to read this amount of pages of the book. But like the real value of these things is just discipline and consistency, right?
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
It does not matter if you go to the gym at 4 a.m. or 9 p.m. as long as you finish the workout. It does not matter what you eat as long as you are having a calorie deficit and getting some good nutrients, right? Like you can have a salad. You can have chicken. You can have this thing. You can have that thing. You can have an acai bowl. You can have a smoothie. It does not matter. It does not.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
You do not. It's not. You can have this cleanse to lose eight pounds in two weeks. You can do it in a thousand different ways. Do you have discipline? Do you have consistency? Are you creating a lifestyle that supports this result, right? But it is not monetizable to say that. It is monetizable to tell you about how,
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
you got to have this one specific smoothie and then they partner with a protein product brand or you got to have this one specific workout class or a workout routine and they're selling you the routine or there's, you know, it's an overarching again, let's subculture and lifestyle where they're working out at the aloe gym and then wearing that two piece set that happens to be $150 like it's,
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
is not monetizable to give you the truth. It is monetizable to sell you this elevated fiction. And that's terrifying. It's terrifying. And honestly, I feel this way very often about like spirituality sometimes. Like you cannot manifest your way out of a lack of discipline. You can make the vision board. You can say the affirmations.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
But none of that is going to replace you actually having to do the fucking work. Like write that first paragraph. Go to the gym. Post the video. Whatever it is, everything you want in life is a result of discipline and consistency. You need the discipline to start and the consistency to finish. And if you get 1% better every day, in 100 days, you will have what you want.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And that is not because of some fucking vision board or some affirmation you said in the mirror, but because you worked for it. As you should. And be proud of yourself. Like, this is why people talk about imposter syndrome all the time. It's because you're going and talking about how it was from your vision for work. Like, no, you went to the gym fucking 25 times this month. That's incredible.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And then, oh, they're coincidentally selling you a course on how to do that. They have a partnership with some fitness brand. And of course, you just have to get that matching workout set, the yoga mat, the standing club, and of course, the $300 a month gym membership. your body has become a product. They have to convince you to hate something about yourself so that you see it as a problem.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
So with that, let's dive in to the cult of wellness and also just this toxic body standards making a comeback. Big disclaimer I want to talk about with this video is that my goal of this is not to be commenting on people's bodies or telling anybody how they should look or shouldn't look or what they should do or shouldn't do. But in order to accurately talk about this topic and the way it has
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Be proud of that. Own that. It is not a fucking manifestation. You know what I mean? Like, this is my issue with this whole thing of spirituality. And I don't think it's a coincidence that at the same time there is this increased discussion of things like manifestation and spirituality. there's also this increased discussion of imposter syndrome. Like I think that these things are linked.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
I think that people are constantly looking at things outside of ourselves to validate some sort of feeling, whether that's accomplishment, whether that's a lack of accomplishment, whether that's self-esteem, whatever. Yeah, you might've wrote it down on a vision board, but at the end of the day, like you fucking worked hard for it and be proud of that. Be proud of that.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
You don't need to like talk about the affirmation or whatever, which brings me to like my closing arguments for this. And I would like to make it very clear. Fitness is a good thing. It is a great thing. It is important for your physical health. It is important for your mental health. And even just having things in your life that build routine is so important. However, the...
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
problem with it, my problem with it, and I hope the takeaway from this video, is that we keep pushing these one-size-fits-all ideas. Whether that be the in-body type or manufacturing this subculture to feel like you need to be XYZ or to be that girl.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
It is doing these things in the wrong way or at the very least taking 1% of the equation and telling you that's why the problem was solved when it was one of many, many factors. Many, many, many, many factors. Especially when it's things, I mean, I even talk about things like this in like skincare. You see this all the time too when it's like, that is so genetics-based. It is just genetics-based.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like someone might look at me and be like, oh my God, Nick, you have great skin. I had to go on three full rounds of Accutane for three years, right? It was miserable. I was peeling my skin off like a lizard, right? You might think I look great and I could tell you my skincare routine, but most of that is because I did fucking Accutane. It was a hormonal imbalance that like needed to be corrected.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And I had to go through three full treatments of it, three nine month cycles of it, and that fixed it. But on the surface, you might be like, oh my God, wow, I need a skincare routine, right? That is not correct. And it would be very monetizable for me to tell you my skincare, right? Like I can make a video like that. You know, I can talk about this product and that product and blah, blah, blah.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
But like that is not real. That's not the truth. It's just what makes money. And I do like in concessions I would like to make to this idea of like fitness culture and wellness and culture. I do really understand the idea of trying to make it a collective experience to make it feel more tangible and relatable. And I do think that works for a lot of people.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
I mean, even just friends I have, I know who are like really struggling to working out and they got into some sort of group fitness class and that really motivated them to go. And they love the idea of like going with a friend and now it's this, you know, creating this idea of a third space, which is a very rare thing in our culture right now and blah, blah, blah.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
But that also creates exclusion, right? Like, and if you are... If you are creating one group, it means that there's somebody outside of that group. And that is this, I think, thing we need to balance and talk about and be cognizant of. Another pro, I think, is in these sorts of things like a 75 hard, where it really tells you what to think, not how to think.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
I think the vision of those types of things is they're like, yeah, this is a ridiculous challenge, but my goal is that you do it for 75 days and like maybe you discover three things that you actually really enjoyed. Maybe you really actually got into a habit of reading 10 pages a day and that was awesome. Or you really got into a habit of waking up at 7 a.m. and you love that.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And that at the end of it, it's okay if you don't do the other things because you found these two things that really, you know, improved your life in a positive way. I get that. I think the fear of it is, again, with trying to make this idea of like altering your body a viral challenge,
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
is that when you create this like all-encompassing package, people become so overwhelmed by the idea of it that they just shut down altogether, right? If they're like, oh, like I did one gym routine, but like I'm not going to have time to make it to the second gym appointment of my 75 hard challenge.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
infiltrated the media we consume and the content we consume and all these things, I'm going to reference some people as examples. My intention with this is not to belittle them or make commentary about their bodies or what their weight loss journey or fitness journey is, but it is to kind of show why I think this has become a mainstream thing.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
So like I also don't need to read the 10 pages or I only drank half a liter when I was supposed to drink a full liter of water. So blah, blah, blah. Do you know what I'm saying? Like humans are momentum-based creatures, right? And the way we get into things is build a ramp. It is very easy, right?
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like you could have not working out in two years and you could give, you could do five pushups right now. And then tomorrow you could do seven, six pushups. And the next day you could do seven pushups. And the right, like, And you build the ramp until it's... Doing 100 push-ups is easy, and then maybe it's not... It doesn't feel like an issue to, like, pick up a dumbbell or whatever, right?
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like, people... We cannot go zero to 100. And so much of these challenges and these ideas are based off of that. This idea of, like, you haven't worked out in so long, so now try 75 hard. We're going to throw you into the most insane deep end of it. Like, working out twice a day, drinking all this water, not eating this and that, not drinking at all, reading all the time, blah, blah, blah.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
All these things that, like, are the challenge. And that has... turn people away from just creating a consistent lifestyle that works for them. And that leads me to my final point. It's like, you need to find something that works for you.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
That can be a class, that can be swimming, that can be hiking, that can be joining a run club, that can be playing basketball with your friends, that can be having a friend over where your meal prep together every Sunday, whatever it is, like It needs to be for you. It needs to be doable for you. And it needs to be consistent for you.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
You know, if that means that you haven't been in the gym in a long time and you're like, I have so much anxiety about getting back in the gym. I hate my body right now. Like, okay, great. Your goal for this week is I want you to go to the gym three times. You're going to get on the treadmill for just 15 minutes and then leave. That's it.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And then after you do that for a week or two weeks, you're going to realize, okay, just the idea of like going to the gym is not as scary anymore. Like I've gotten over that anxiety. Now let me like do 15 minutes on the treadmill and then 50 minutes of like, you know, some equipment of something. And then, okay, and then just being in that sort of equipment zone is less scary to you.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And then you blah, blah, blah, right? That is literally what like exposure therapy is. It is psychologically proven that you can get over fears and anxieties and mental blocks by... taking them into these tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny increments, and then just increasing all the time over time. It's also like how you build muscle, even biologically, right?
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
You lift 20 pounds, and then you lift 25 pounds, and you lift 30 pounds, blah, blah, blah, right? And these challenges, this wellness, this glow-up culture is not geared towards that. It's all like, this is how you're going to lose eight pounds in two weeks. And like, that's terrifying. It's also kind of unhealthy. So with that, this was the cult of wellness, the cult of glow-up culture.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
I hope that my point of like not trying to be belittling to anybody or anybody who enjoys these things. Again, this you do you, girl. You do you. I'm just saying like these overarching problems that I see as a culture and this regression of body standards, I think we're really moving towards. So please don't forget to subscribe. Follow me on Spotify. Please, please, please.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And I will see you all next week. Bye.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
This regression of body standards has become popular because there are popular people doing or exemplifying these things in this way. And this is also very much, like, I think an opinion episode. Like, I'm going to rant. I'm going to talk my shit a little. But, like, it's really me. It is Nikki's opinion. It is what I see, how these things make me feel.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And other people might not feel that way, and that is totally okay. Again, my goal is not to, like, tear anybody down, but hopefully to, like, challenge the way you think about this weird, again, like, cult of wellness and cult of glow-up culture. So I think in order to do this first is we really need to talk about this problem of the idea of like skinny and healthy being synonymous.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
It's a very interesting thing that has happened when health really has nothing to do with thinness. So what does it actually mean to be healthy? The World Health Organization defines health as, quote, health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely an absence of disease or infirmity. Two interesting things about this.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
One, I think it's very fascinating that in this whole, you know, discussion about wellness and hot girl blank, whatever, like, it is so much only about the physical, right?
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
It is about the way you look and being hot and feeling hot and making other people think you're hot so they want you and they desire you and health and really if we want to think what wellness is as a concept is so much more than that. You can be skinny and depressed. You can be...
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
curvy and happy like there's like there's no a it's not a or b and that is i think a really really scary slippery slope that we have fallen into with this also with this is also like something i'm like talk about this discussion of like bmi and how we like measure this concept of health as a thing. So BMI body mass index is literally a formula.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
It's just like weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared. I think that's it. Like that is literally what the formula is. Um, and then you get a number and they've said like, this is what healthy is and this is what obese is, blah, blah, blah. And what's fascinating is skinny does not mean healthy. You can be extremely skinny and extremely unhealthy.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like, yes, you could eat nothing but lettuce for seven days and your BMI would go down. However, you would be extremely malnourished. You would have no energy. You would be grouchy. Your pieces of your body would start to shut down. right? Like you would not be healthy while you would be skinny or these measures of what health is would look like you are being more healthy than you were a week ago.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
So then, oh, they just happen to sell a solution. It has trapped you in this never ending cycle. And this is the cult of glow up culture. It's veganism one month, then carnivore diet the next month. Soul cycle, then Pilates, then, oh my God, I want a dancer body like Tate McRae, but then, oh my God, I want to be skinny like Bella Hadid.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
You would not actually be healthy. Like in this conversation of skinniness versus health, there is no discussion of like nutrients and macros and like, are you getting a protein? Like, are you having a well-balanced diet, right? Like that is what health is. Health is a requirement for that. Like you need protein and
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
potassium and vitamin c and all of the salt like your body needs salt and like sodium like these are these are important things um and the way that people are really trying to sell this idea of health is this idea of skinniness and that is not true i mean again like it's nice if you want like if you want to look that way if that makes you feel satisfied and happy and confident go for it but also this idea of somebody being like well you are not super skinny therefore you are not healthy i
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Or the idea of somebody skinny is healthy. Great example of this, I have a friend. I won't say her name because I didn't ask her if I could tell this story. But she was born with a heart disease. Like she has had to get open heart surgery at least once in her life. I think multiple times and also had said by doctors like at some point later in years.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like she will have to get open heart surgery again. And she has an incredible body. Incredible. Literally, I've been with her. We're at the pool literally this past weekend. And I think three separate people came up to her and like compliment how good she looks.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
But it is because she has a lot of like metabolism issues and these issues with her heart and her issue with blood pressure and blood sugar and all of these things. So her body actually like cannot maintain mass.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And it's actually a very deep health problem that she has to be like very extremely conscious of and eat things and have a lot of protein and like eat certain snacks and eat certain amounts of sugar, blah, blah, blah, blah. And to 99% of the world, if you look at this girl and showed like a picture of her in a bikini, people would be like, this is healthy. She's she looks amazing.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
She's so healthy. And she's by definition, not healthy. Like she has a heart condition. She has a disability sticker on her car because like if she goes walking too long, like it's it is bad for her heart, right? So like, this is like this big misconception and like a scary thing of this idea of like,
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Thinness equals hotness and hotness equals health when these three are three completely separate things, which is terrifying to me. And another really fascinating thing about this is the ideal body type, in quotes, is always changing. And I'll give you multiple examples of this. From the 15th century to the 17th century during the Renaissance period, the ideal body was to be plus size.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
They called it plump a lot of the time because it showed that you were of higher social status than the peasants. You had more money to have excess food. You didn't have to work some job in the field or in the sun or labor anymore. that would cause you to lose weight.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
There was also these interesting like health things that like doctors at the time used to think about that like pregnant women should be as plump as possible because they have to give as many nutrients to the baby. So if somebody is trying to have a child or expecting child, they would eat all the time and blah, blah, blah. And like that was considered hot. That was the ideal body.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
This cycle never ends because solving the problem is not monetizable. Instead, they have to convince you it's sea moss, then bone broth, and it's this cleanse or that cleanse. They are trying to sell you on the idea of one thing being a solution to a lifestyle problem. when really all you need is a little bit of consistency and discipline.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
That is why in Renaissance paintings, you can look at these kings and queens and they are like very, they're plump. And that would not be the hot body standard of today, right? You swing to the 18th century or 19th century. This is when the corset era really, really brings in, right? It is so hourglass. It's not even just about like having a tiny waist. They would have these
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
massive train skirts like like six foot train dresses behind them and it was like to have this one specific shape it wasn't even necessarily about like thinness or thickness it was like you had to be both in this perfectly specific way and like we're gonna create these fabrics and literally like break your own ribs and do damage your organs to fit that and then think of the 20th century right in the 1920s we have the flapper that is like short hair it's very a lot more tomboyish but kind of still like pixie girl
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
completely different from any of the things we just talked about. Then in the 40s and 60s, we have this post-World War I, World War II era, where the ideal body type became this domestic woman. Think very Marilyn Monroe. Like, she's skinny, but she's voluptuous. She has a cinch waist, but is wearing padded bras and big dresses and an apron. And then you can go to the 70s and 80s.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
It's now the jazzercise era, right? It was like this lean and muscle-toned bodies were the ideal body. Then... 90s and 2000s, it's heroin chic, those low rise jeans, low, low, low rise jeans. And then 2010s, it's curvy, but fit, you know, the BBLs, but you have a flat stomach and the huge lips like think Kylie Jenner lip challenge.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Think Kim Kardashian with that paper magazine shoe where she's like popping champagne on her butt. And I also think of an interesting side note discussion is like, we really need to have conversations about the way we label some of these body types.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like the idea that people like labeled Kim Kardashian as like a curvy woman when she was just like a woman with a butt, but then perfectly thin and like every other way. It's like insane to me. And now in the 2020s, we are swinging back to this hyper thinness. Like the BBLs are quite literally getting removed. Yeah. Like, there are celebrities you have who are having their BBLs removed.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And you can even think this is, like, women. Like, the way straight girls love twinks now. Timothee Chalamet, Tom Holland, the boys from Challengers. Like, they love this, like, skinny rat boy. We are going back to heroin chic in this body center in a scary way. Like, there is somebody in your friend group who would scissor role model. Yeah. a woman that would do that with that man.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like, you know what I mean? Like they let the skinny tattooed boy is like the hot boy now. And you think in 2010s, like that was not what it was. You think in like the eighties and nineties or what the Beatles looked like versus what Michael Jackson looked like versus what like David Bowie looked like. Like these things are not,
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
unanimous they are not uniform they are ever changing um so because of that again you are chasing a standard that does not exist you are changing a goal post that is perpetually moving which begs the question truly like why do body standards change well when beauty standards masquerade themselves as health standards
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
They have to convince you to hate something about yourself in order to sell you the solution. You can be skinny, but you don't have a Pilates body. You can have a Pilates body, but your butt is flat. You can be curvy and thick, but then your waist isn't small. So what do they do? They find a way to monetize your agony with a new trend.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Get 1% better every day, and in 100 days, you will be where you want to be. But they don't do that, because there is a lot more money in making you chase this idea of a fictional body type, this subjective idea of perfection. And it's so sad to me to see these body standards regressing in our culture after we just had some years of really positive improvements.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
First it's Pilates, then SoulCycle, then Barry's Bootcamp, then you have to drink bone broth, or okay, great, you're skinny, but now you need to gua sha, or get your lymphatic whatever the fuck drained. Like, eat! is insane. And there's a reason all of these things cost money. They have to move the goalposts, so you have to keep buying in pursuit of this thing.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like, this cult of wellness is a marketing scam. It is a marketing scam. It is convincing you that you have something wrong with you, so they sell you a solution. That is what the entire thesis of it is. And it's so terrifying and very weird late-stage capitalism shit that, like, we're just cool with that.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
and love it and i've also convinced ourselves into being like this is not only normal but like optimal like that is optimal living you should have to spend hundreds of dollars a month on facials on a nice gym on a workout class on getting your things drained on getting like that's not normal that is not normal it's never been normal in history like we need to take a step back and reevaluate that and that is why glow up culture has become sort of repackaged body dysmorphia
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
They have to manufacture a new subculture, the pink Pilates girl or the hot girl, this or that, because by then defining that group, they can then isolate people from that group where they have to pay money to be accepted into that scubs culture, right? An average Pilates class costs $30 or $40 a session. $300 a month for a membership. An alley yoga mat costs $150.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Luxury gyms like Equinox cost $300 a month. And they are doing that to create this subculture of what you wear, right? It's not just the memberships and the classes. Then it's the Stanley Cup. Then it's the Lululemon leggings. Then it's the matching set from Aritzia. And it's fascinating is like this sort of idea of athleticism to create a class divide is not new, right?
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
One of the best examples of this is golf and tennis, fun fact, is that like during these times when we were desegregating and whatnot, there were these things where they tried to create like predominantly white spaces on purpose.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
One of the great examples of this, again, golf and tennis, where like they intentionally made it so in order to participate in something like golf, for example, you have to have a specific drafts code in this thing. You had to be a membership at this specific country club, blah, blah, blah.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
So the only people who could do that were like the people who already had amassed this wealth in some way, which didn't happen to be these people who were like recently desegregated, couldn't have access to a better education system, blah, blah, blah, right? Same thing with tenants.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like these, they have found ways to like bake in these norms of adding an aestheticism to a physical activity because then not only can they exclude people from it based on that, they get to monetize it more. They get to monetize it more. You got to buy the golf shirt. You got to buy the golf pants. And you have to buy shoes for this sport or different shoes for that sport.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
Like, this is a naughty new thing. I think what's fascinating is we have seen it recently make its way into one very women-dominated spaces. Like, this internet, this, like, wellness section of the internet is so, I think, very female-dominated. You know, when you think of, like, again, like these pink Pilates girls and the clean girl and all that type of thing.
Nicky at Night
The Death of Body Positivity & the Twisted Marketing of "Skinny"
And they found a way to do that not through sports but through these, like, group-based fitness activities I think is really what has boomed in the past like five years. And again, then it always has to change so that they can make you buy it all over again, right? Like the Pink Pilates girl will not be a thing in three years and it'll be something else.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
10 years ago, the music industry was on the brink of financial collapse. From 1999 all the way to 2014, music was in a 15-year downward spiral, hemorrhaging money, each year losing more money than the last. And all of this was for one major reason. piracy.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Um, in exchange for this industry standard for my reading was an 80, 20 split. I know that the real way it works is that everybody has like their own contract with their own label. Some people could be more, some people could be less. I think generally for like indie labels, it'll be like the, they get, cause they know they're smaller, they get a little less percentage, blah, blah, blah.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Um, I don't know. It depends on the label.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Yeah. So in exchange for this 80-20 split to the label, we're using that as an example. They give you the advance. They promote it. They do the marketing. They are helping with social strategy. They might give you PR. They might fund a music video. They are having connections to do things like touring, maybe they can get you on an opener for somebody else.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
They can be equipping you with songwriters, producers, dancers, or just other things that develop you as an artist. The idea is that you are giving this percentage of your
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
rights you're streaming to um have the incubator to be in this thing where you can develop as an artist and and where you are going to have every tool in the tool about all that support yeah and and and in many ways you can't do also there's like weird logistical stuff you know what i mean like like your favorite like your favorite artist isn't like sending a 1099 for streaming royalties for the songwriter that you use on one song like like the label is doing that for them right like there's like an actual genuine service being done through this system absolutely
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
However, in this video by Jelly Roll, which I found so fascinating, is when he talks about this idea of an 80-20 split, right? Let's say they give you $500,000 advance and you go and release an album that generates $500,000. You might be like, heck yeah. Break even on my first album, period. Yeah. And the answer is no. The way it works is the label would get 400K. The artist would get 100K.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
However, according to the advance, you still owe 500K. So the repayment comes from only your percentage. So you actually would get nothing. And your owing would come down to 400K. Even though your art generated... as much as it costs, in theory, to make for this thing. And in order to break even, for example, on a 500K advance or whatever, you would have to make $2.5 million.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
And how can we look at this to decide the best path forward for an industry as a whole? Well, that is exactly the question we've set out to solve here today. I am sitting down with Sam Duboff. He's the global head of Spotify for Artists, Marketing, and Policy, and here to answer some questions about exactly all of these topics here today. Sam, I'm so excited to have you on. Thanks for being here.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
And then after that, you'll start seeing your 20 cents on the dollar, essentially.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Why they aren't getting money. And I think that's what Jelly Roll was really talking about in his first label, that, like, he didn't understand, like... why didn't my music make money? And it's like, no, it did make money, it's just that's not how your agreement with the label works. Again, there's an interesting POV to both sides here.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
I think from the label's perspective is like, hey, we bear 100% of the risk. There is zero risk to you. If you make this thing and it flops, we don't get our money back, right? We are investing the money, we are giving you staff, two years of support, all the money they spend again on this marketing, promotion, development, whatever.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
And also I think another label POV is like, well if you do get famous, and it does work, the label spent all this money building a brand for you, and you get to leverage that brand however you want. Like at the end of the day it is, you know, if they're making Nicky Riordan the pop star, famous.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
And then Nikki Ridley and the pop star in five years wants to do a brand deal, do movies, switch music labels, whatever that fandom is mine. And it will follow. It would follow me where I go. So that is why they're structured so heavily in this percentage skewed towards the label. Yep. And there's no right answer here.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Some artists, you see they win a Grammy and the first thing they do is they go up and thank their team. And there's some artists who have won a Grammy without any team at all. I don't think that there is a right answer. I think it is understanding this flow of commerce, essentially. You're $1. Let's make it $10 for easy math.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Your $10 goes to Spotify, which then only gets to keep $3 of it, essentially. $6.70 goes to the music label. Then out of the music label, that's $6.70. They are taking their cut, then also the royalty cut of like a brigade.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
producer and a songwriter um then there is the advance you know if you have to pay back in advance still there's also like whatever your contract percentage is yeah and then it like that is what you're seeing on the check that's right yeah streaming services are paying the label for the recording the publisher for the songwriter and then from there all the deals are different and yeah
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Excited to get into it. It's going to be good. I have many things to say, and I'm honestly very interested to hear your opinions on this topic. And I also would like to really commend, like, I really appreciate the transparency. I know that this is a very sensitive topic, and it has been very easy for many people in the past. from all sides of the industry to just not talk about it at all.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Totally. And this explained the big problem that I talked about at the beginning where people don't understand how can a label report that 77% of their all revenue comes from music streaming, yet an artist is complaining how less than 10% of their revenue comes from music streaming. Yeah. It's not that either one of them is wrong. They're both right.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
It is the structures of the contracts in the way the music business works on that side of the equation.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Yeah, and one of the really interesting things, again, I think really where Spotify sits between this rock and a hard place, all music streamers sit between this rock and a hard place, of you don't get to choose what the relationship with the artist and what their contract is. You also don't necessarily get to choose how much so-and-so gets X, Y, Z amount of streams or either.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
It is an intermediary in the flow of where this... value is going from the consumer to the artist. And I think the artist's perspective is like they see a check or whatever that from their label says, title revenue, and they're like mad that they didn't get as much, you know what I mean, or whatever.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
And it's like, well, yes, but it's like there's eight filters through that as like we just kind of outlined.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
And I would really like to commend you for being willing to sit with me and have an open dialogue about this. And I think that speaks a lot to both your character and the character of the company.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
With the invention of technology like Napster, LimeWire, MP3 players, jailbreaking your iPhone even, people were illegally downloading music left and right, giving nothing to the artists at all. And because all of that, music saw nearly a 70% drop, $9 billion in less than 10 years. However, all of that changed with the invention of one technology. Music streaming.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
And there's even other elements we haven't discussed, like, do you have a
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
manager does a manager take a percentage of the royalty fee you know what i mean if you're in a band how do you split it between if there's a band that is why i think also like when people discuss this it's as if there's one solution to this problem when what is interesting to me in my like again like researching this was it's like exactly so like some person might not have a band some person
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
might have a six-person band. Some person might be a completely solo artist, but they have a manager. Some person might be a solo artist, but they have a manager, and they have a label. Someone might have a merchant doing all those things, but they're an indie label, so they have a slightly higher percentage rate. It's so hard to just blanket problem, blanket solution, when I'm like, no.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
I think most of the solutions come from that contract that we are not allowed to see. You know what I mean?
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Interesting. And I'm glad this is exactly what I was about to say too. It's like, I think it's like the emphasis of like, you've got to really vet your team. And like plays a lot of emphasis and weight into that decision lens. You hire like the very, I mean, you know, like you always hear about like the Britney type stories of that's like the worst, worst case scenario.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
But again, like this idea of like the team and your relationship with them, how much value they are providing to you in exchange for what you are offering to them, the percentage you are offering to them. is like a very cost-benefit analysis you should think about very deeply, is what I'm trying to say.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Totally, totally. And understandably. Yeah. And understandably. And again, dude, like I am excited to talk about this, but it's also like, I'm not an expert. I'm not a lawyer. I've never worked at a music label. Like what I am saying is vetted and correct. But like, I, you know what I mean? Like, I'm like, there's layers that even I cannot empathize with or understand.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
This is also why this, you know, 67 cents on the dollar has made it. So for Spotify's first nine years of life, it was not profitable. It was a huge business, tons of revenue, but it was not profitable. Like it was, it was breaking even essentially more or less. And it was, um, this is a very common thing that happens in tech companies with like Twitter and Uber and blah, blah, blah.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Um, until this past year, Spotify hit profitability, which is exciting. But so when people are talking about like, as like, this is a big problem, um, It is.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Like, it is, Spotify's in a tough place where, like, 67 cents on the dollar is a lot and they don't have, you know, Amazon or Apple or, like, whatever, like, these other aspects of the business, like, to fund and invest in just we want to be in music.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
And it's cool to do that as the biggest figure, like to be like, we will be transparent about this as the biggest company. We would appreciate it if all the other companies were also as transparent, even though many times they aren't. That does not go like unnoticed and unappreciated. But something I'd really like to say is like, what exactly, before we dive into this all, like what is your role?
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Yeah. And also like to go off that, like this, you know, remaining 33 cents on the dollar is also like being used to hire the editors that are curating the playlist to get new music discovered. They are amazing.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
pioneer they're inventing technology like DJ and discover weekly to create algorithmic suggestions they are doing things like the Spotify single series or the Spotify green room series that's like highlighting new artists like a lot of the investment initiatives in music from Spotify are geared towards new talent which I think is cool yeah and again like talking about like where this cut is going
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
And I think that perfectly segues into the next question is like, where does that leave us now? In a perfect world, how does an artist make more revenue on Spotify than they're making today? Thinking of potential solutions that are hard, right? It's like, they could add more ads. That would increase the revenue pool. And they would pay that out to artists.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
But then it's like, none of the consumers want to experience more ads, right? They don't want ads on their music. Or it's like, you could... increase the subscription price to increase the payout price, but then that's more burden on the consumer.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Or is it like you could lower the quality of the products and make it have less editors and have less data centers to make how fast it is and to lower the cost of production. So that there's more money in the pool, right? Like, like that was like, what is interesting is like, I kept trying to like reflect on like, what is the solution?
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
And that I think is the real problem that no one is discussing is that it is a good thing that like 67 cents are going to the rights holders and the people who made the music and people want more. But that I'm not sure that comes from Spotify. Right. Like I'm not sure how making more ads makes that like a better experience or whatever. You know what I mean?
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
You know, like when does something come across your desk at Spotify versus Selena's desk, for example?
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
more than 10 million a year just from spotify a lot of them are generating way more than that and that's just spotify yeah and i also think it's important to realize that like streaming is not the only way an artist makes money no uh it's touring it's merchandise it's their brand whether you there are people like selena gomez who launched our own brands yeah a billion dollar brand yeah exactly like it you know but again like when you hear these like anecdotal pieces of information
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
It's also weird to me how they'll notoriously be like, this is how much money I made on blank company. And I'm like, okay, well, your music streaming is on 10 different things. You know what I mean? It'd be like me saying, this is how much I make for my podcast, but only telling you Spotify. It's like, no, it's a YouTube video. Most people are watching it on YouTube. You know what I mean?
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
It's a misrepresentation, I think, of the information and the way... Not that I think they're doing that on purpose, but it's like the way a consumer hears it. You know, like I would never tell somebody like this is how much I do this, how many views I got and like only be reflective of like one of the four out of five or four or five places that this is posted to.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
It's just like not an accurate representation.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Totally. And I hope that that is the takeaway from this episode for the people watching. Because like...
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
again like I'm saying like I don't I'm not the expert I'm I think I'm informed I'm an informed consumer not the CEO of a label but one of the things speaking of like transparency that I really want you to talk about because honestly it confuses me Spotify does not pay per stream that's right how so how do you calculate how much money people make
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
So if there's 100 billion streams in a year and I, Nicky Reardon, the artist, get... billion streams, I get 1% of whatever the total revenue is.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
yeah no that's pretty interesting and honestly even like me I'm like okay how do I compare that to YouTube revenue because like I'm pretty sure I wrote this down like YouTube monetizes in a different way YouTube is a CPM structure but like for me I'm pretty sure like a video of mine with like in order to make like $5,000 I'd have to get like 850,000 views and keep in mind that's like a 45 minute episode so comparing that to like a million streams for $10,000 like doesn't seem that crazy to me
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Okay. Is this why, like, when you see these, like, graphs that people make, you know what I mean? Like, how much of one stream is per each platform. And it's like, one, they're not right because no streaming service actually pays that way.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
They get a check with, like... $10,000 and 100,000 streams, and they're just dividing it.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
No, that, that's very, very cool. So in my mind, it's like Selena's side of the music is like the consumer facing side, how you're discovering music, how you're interacting, what's your new favorite song, what sort of music is popular, uh, Whereas yours is like the artist side of the music. Dealing with artists, dealing with the label, dealing with the publisher, blah, blah, blah.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
So it's like because there are more like there are more streams happening on Spotify in 365 days than anywhere else. That's right. So because of that, to attain 1% to get the one million, one billion dollars or whatever, you have to reach a higher threshold on Spotify.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
And stream share is the actual. I get what you're saying. Because the pot is the biggest. That's right. Yeah. Like you have the most amount of paid subscribers out of anybody. Exactly. So also to get 1% on Spotify versus 1% on anywhere else is more meaningful on Spotify. Exactly. Okay. That is super interesting. And you really just clarified a lot for me. Oh, good. It's really complicated.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Thank you. Yeah, no, it is really complicated. I can totally see why artists are confused, too. Well, I know. I also see why people, like, try and do these, like, breakdown things and, like, you know, like, try and compare, like, Amazon versus whatever and blah, blah, blah. But I also see now, like, after explaining it, why that doesn't make sense.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
I think another thing that's super interesting about this problem that, like, people really aren't thinking about is this weird issue. But I think it's worth talking about is, like, Did we devalue music too much? Did the fear of piracy, like I saw this one graph, I don't know why it's so funny to me, but it's like things that are worth $12, a Wingstop combo meal, a 12 pack of LaCroix,
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
a six pack of Duracell batteries, a carton of eggs in, in York city in front of the seats. And then like even Netflix, you know what I mean? It's like, like I pay $18 a month for Netflix and it's not even close to all the movies ever made from every global market through the history of time. Like, but then it's a delicate balance because then it's like,
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
hey guys know the economy's bad no cost of living is so expensive we're gonna up our subscription price so we can pay artists more because the consumer perspective they're like well the artists are already millionaires like why they don't need more of our money do you get what I'm saying there's some disconnect there there is no like I don't know how you win that that sort of thing but it is super interesting to me and I think
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
something we all need to think about. Is $12 for every song ever made in the history of mankind in every language across the world too cheap? And if you think no, then why are you paying more than that for Netflix? You know what I mean? I don't know. It's just a thing that I've been thinking about a lot after doing this research.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Yep, you nailed it. Okay, that's super, super interesting. When I have done this, again, this is like independent research from me. I have the laptop, Sam does not. And I think the way I want to structure this is like, I want to present the way I see this problem. And if I'm wrong, I want you to tell me that I'm wrong.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
And it's so weird because it's like... Somebody could yell at a streamer for not giving enough to artists. So then in order to accommodate for that, the streamer could increase the price of the service. And the headline of the article would not be Spotify pays songwriters more. The headline would be Spotify raises prices against consumers amidst decimating economy. Do you get what I mean?
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
And again, I empathize with all sides. I empathize as a consumer. Who does not want to pay more? Will we pay too much? There's way too many subscriptions for too many things. I empathize as the Spotify because you're like, I really want to reward and incentivize and benefit these hardworking, creative people.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
And I get it as the songwriter side of being like, well, I made all this music and I'm only getting this tiny little check. It is so... Right, that disconnect. No, I don't think there is a bad guy.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
I think it's, like, exactly, like, this disconnect of, like... And that's why I think it's, like, really, like, truly an industry problem, because I don't think a solution can come from any one intermediary. I think it has to be this, like, greater evaluation of, like, what is streaming as a business, right?
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Yeah. And another thing I was thinking about, too, is, like, I do genuinely believe that so much of this... like, globalization of music, there being cross-genre representation, there being young artists emerging, is because, like, when it costs money to discover music, you don't want to do it as often. Like, I am not... Like, if I have listened to...
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Spanish albums all the way through, if I had to pay $20 for it, I'd have been like, I am not gonna understand any of this anyways. You're not having my $20. But I was like, okay, a lot of people were talking about Bad Bunny, let me give it a try. You know what I mean? And that is how people discover. So there is this interesting paradox in all things too.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
I think you see this in a lot of the discussion from a creator's standpoint about monetization on TikTok versus YouTube. It's like, yeah, you make less money from TikTok, but the discoverability on TikTok is, like, astronomically higher.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
And, you know, if I'm right, then like we'll go through and we'll have a dialogue at the end about like why that is. Because I think what's very fascinating about this problem of streaming revenue is is I think the first big issue is this misunderstanding of the way that music streaming monetizes, like the way people actually make money off of music.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
So what you are... You are willing to sacrifice, like, this ad revenue because you understand, like, it is exponentially easier to get, like, a million views or whatever and grow an audience so you can then monetize in other ways.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Whereas on YouTube, it's like you would get paid ten times what you would on TikTok for those a million views, but, like, it's astronomically harder to get a million views, right? Interesting. So, like... I equate that problem, it's like, again, like the way I perceive it as a creator, but to this music industry thing, you know, of like, I don't think people would do that.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Like, they wouldn't pay for... these new genres and stuff like that. So it's like, it is a cool and good thing.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
And, and again, then that makes this other weird discussion to be had of like, are we in a world where music is a discovery tool? You know what I mean? Like is, is, is the world of music now like the, the,
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
You can build a world as an artist. Yeah, absolutely. And I think I learned a lot. Again, I don't know. I don't know the answer. I can't tell you if you should sign a record deal or not. I can't tell you if like what percentage is worth it. I think that there is this greater discussion to be had about the economics of streaming really is like what it is.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
This is an entire multi-billion dollar industry that is being not just done by one streamer, by multiple streamers, not just being done by one label, multiple labels. by songwriters, by producers, by artists. Like, there's so much more that goes into this. And my goal with this video, I hope you guys, like, took away, is that I want to paint the picture. I want you to come to your own conclusion.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
I don't know. This is up for you to decide. And I really... Sam, like, I really appreciate, like, you... did not need to do this. It would have been very easy to say no, you know what I mean? And, and not, and, and letting me say some things about like what I think is weird in this industry. I appreciate that. And, and it doesn't go unnoticed and, and appreciated.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
The first big assumption is that there is this idea that it goes from consumer to streaming platform to artist. And that is just not true at all. The way I found it is that it goes from consumer to the app store to the streaming platform to the music label or publisher to the artist. Spotify is never paying an artist directly.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Some of us do for a living actually. Yeah. That would be so weird. Yeah. That would be so weird, but thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. Cool. And I'll see y'all next week. Bye.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
So that is like a really interesting thing. And when I was doing a lot of research about this there, something was very fascinating to me was I think we look at it from like two perspectives. The thing people are always talking about is consumer streaming platform artists. And I want to like first analyze the two players in this. I think they're missing.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
which is this idea of the app store and the actual technology, the phone you are streaming the music on, and also this sort of rights holder, whether that's a label, whether that's a publisher, whomever, starting with the app store side. Something I found very interesting in my research is that Apple, Samsung, and Google all take 30% of all transactions in the app store.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
This is commonly referred to as like an app store tax. Many companies have sued these platforms for this. One of the biggest being Epic Games, which is the gaming company that created Fortnite. Very big in the gaming world. Had a very heated discussion about this, kind of saying like, okay, it's ridiculous that like,
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
The idea was that if we just charge people a subscription, and for that one monthly fee, they get access to all of the music in the world, so much music, that it would actually just be kind of inconvenient for them to pirate every song one at a time. And to these people who are used to paying $20 for one CD, $12 for all the music in the world, didn't sound like that bad of a deal.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
somebody buys a skin or whatever in fortnight and for some reason whatever phone gets 30 like they were there was there was a heated legal battle about this and one of the big things that came out of this um was this law that was passed towards the forcing of stopping the force of in-app purchases so prior to this if you wanted to buy something on i don't know candy crush right you had to
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
pay for the thing inside of Candy Crush. Like, you had to give your credit card information in Candy Crush. Right, right, right. And Apple would take 30% of that. So, companies like Candy Crush were like, that's kind of annoying. What if we link them to our website instead? So, it wasn't through the App Store. Apple was like, no, no, no. We, like, are 30%, blah, blah, blah.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
So, they made it impossible to do this, like, from a technological perspective. And this was overruled in court. So, now... platforms are able to do this. It's also probably why next time you're a listener on your phone and you purchase something on your phone, it will open Safari or whatever.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
And that is, I think, this very, very first big piece of misunderstanding that people didn't realize that there's actually, in many cases, in many of the things you're spending your money on, on your phone, 30% of that to 15% of that is going to whatever the company of your phone is at all times.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
And it's annoying for the consumer. Like I have seen, both myself included, and I've seen people online, like it is annoying when the thing you're open tries to open Safari and then it's like not that. It'll just take you to like Instagram.com, not like the specific post. And you're like, well, I can't not log into my Instagram.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Like it is just an annoying piece of this business of technology that is not even just a music industry problem, I think is what's fascinating about it. It is a tech industry problem.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
And I think one of the big takeaways for me after researching this was that we're in this, I think, very weird era of technology progressing faster than like regulation and also like just understanding of what we're doing has developed because we live in this technological age, which is amazing for innovation, but has also just created confusion around a lot of these things.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Enter Spotify and the genesis of the streaming era, where every year since then, the music industry has grown. So much so that in 2024, the industry has been worth an estimated $29 billion, surpassing its previous peak in 1999.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
To accommodate, yeah. So that's what's really hurting. And it's interesting, too, that even when I was doing research, in places like the EU, they've decreased this. It's 17% in the EU. They can't do more than that. And I know that there's DOJ legislation, blah, blah, blah, which is so above my pay grade, so above Sam's pay grade. Couldn't tell you anything about the DOJ.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
But what I'm trying to say is that this is not something that just I deem as an issue. Department of Justice, the European Union, Epic Games. Like it is a thing that has been discussed for a long time. And with that, too, I think what's very fascinating just about the business of music streaming as a whole is if you think about like the biggest competitors in the space, they are Spotify.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
They are Apple Music. It is Google with YouTube music and then also just like any sort of Google phone and then Amazon with Amazon music. And when you compare Spotify to the rest of these competitors, while Spotify is the biggest in music streaming, Apple is the largest, most profitable company in the history of the world, worth $3.5 trillion. Google is the fourth, worth $2.2 trillion.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
And Amazon is worth $2.1 trillion. So Apple Music only makes up like 6% of Apple's total revenue. And what's very fascinating to me about like when I compare the Spotify experience to the Apple Music experience is that I think that there's a very large emphasis for them on like what the goal is, is to keep you a part of the Apple ecosystem.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
It's why when you have – if you had songs on iTunes from your iTouch as a kid, they're still in your Apple Music. If you – when you buy an iPhone, it's already downloaded on the thing. If they can send a push notification to over 2 billion devices or whatever.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Like, it is just interesting to me that if you're to look at the competitor analysis of, like, music streaming, Spotify is the only one who makes the majority of its business off of – streaming music, genuinely. And I think that there is probably a lot of emphasis as to why Spotify cares more for that reason.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
And even the largest labels in the world, like Universal Music, put in their 2024 financial report that 77% of all recorded music revenue came from subscription-based streaming. And Spotify, as the largest platform in the world,
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
The Spotify phone coming soon. Right. Yeah, you did not hear it here first. Yeah, you did not hear it here first. You didn't hear it at all.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
um but that is interesting honestly like as a as like a consumer i do think it's also why you see like there's a lot more emphasis from spotify as a company on things like wrapped and discover weekly and dj and you know because i think they are there's this understanding that like the soul of spotify is really in those sorts of tools and features that make it the primary music discovery tool of our generation
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Yeah. So that is like this interesting tech side of the industry. Yeah. Now I want to talk about the music side of the industry, right? As Spotify sits perfectly in between those two things. And really just like this concept of music licenses, the way it works. Like obviously, to nobody's surprise, Spotify does not own music.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
They license it from your favorite artists and their label and their publisher, blah, blah, blah. So because of that, for every dollar you make, 67 cents of it goes to the license holder. That's right. So whether that is that like the label, the publisher, et cetera. Yeah. And this is a very...
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
interesting thing one for spotify the idea that 67 of your revenue is not even uh cannot even cover cost it's just gone right like it's not it's just gone by the nature of even trying to exist in the space and because of that there is like a lot of emphasis on the way also um records deal deals work because again going back to something we talked about spotify does not pay artists spotify pays
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
paid out over 10 billion dollars to the music industry in 2024 alone despite all of this being true however there is a lot of discourse from artists saying that spotify doesn't pay artists enough so how does this make sense how can an artist be struggling when the music industry is more profitable than ever how can labels be reporting that nearly 80 of the revenue they collect comes from streaming yet artists are saying nearly none of the revenue they collect comes from streaming what is actually happening here how are artists getting paid
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Interesting that that's even true when it's an independent artist. It's not just the idea of... It is across the board, Spotify does not pay the artist directly.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It is the way that the streaming business works. So with that, I think I want to talk about first the record deal structure. Although, again, that doesn't apply to everybody. I think it applies to most artists. Because the concept of a record deal... is it starts with like, they give you a big advance. And then you sort of pay that advance back in royalties.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
And there is many good and downsides to being a part of a label. Also, I'm not an artist. So, like, can't give you my experience with a label. Like, it's not my choice. You know, I think it's a very, like, choose your own adventure. But the way, I think I want to break down the deal first before I, like, talk about, like, the pros and cons of that thing, right? And I'm going to use an example.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
There was this incredible video by Jelly Roll that I really loved where it, like, really broke this down well. So let's say they give you an advance, right? They're like, here is $500,000. We want you to cut your record. You're going to make the music. You got to turn it in in, let's say, two years, right? For starters, that $500,000 is a loan. Like, it is not... Here, blank check, $500,000.
Nicky at Night
How much does Spotify actually pay Artists?
The idea is, like, we are investing in you. You have this money so that you can quit your job, so that you can fund your music, so that you can spend your 40 hours a week either writing, practicing, making social content, promoting it. Like, however you do it is up to you. But the point of the money is to give you this ability to pursue this thing full time.