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This indie band is selling an album for £1 million to fund an “ethical music streaming service”

England’s Pocket Gods have long been railing about what they believe is unfair payouts by Spotify. All streaming services only pay once a song has run 30 seconds. Therefore, Pocket Gods believe, why bother writing songs longer than that? This has been their philosophy since 2015 and the result has been hundreds of short songs.

There’s now a new plan. From the press release:

The band who have been releasing albums of just 30 second songs since 2015 to highlight the lack of fair royalties from Spotify and other streaming services are set to release their final album called Vegetal Digital – of which there will be only one vinyl copy for sale for £1 million. The only copy will be on sale at their local records shop in St Albans – Empire Records. This will also be the only place fans will be able to hear the album.

The band will then use this money to fund their own rival streaming platform – NUBPLAY which will guarantee to pay artists and songwriters a minimum of 1p per stream (which is 50 times the rate that the band currently receive from Spotify which is £.002).

You gotta admire Pocket Gods for being fighters, right?

Alan Cross

is an internationally known broadcaster, interviewer, writer, consultant, blogger and speaker. In his 40+ years in the music business, Alan has interviewed the biggest names in rock, from David Bowie and U2 to Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters. He’s also known as a musicologist and documentarian through programs like The Ongoing History of New Music.

Alan Cross has 39154 posts and counting. See all posts by Alan Cross

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