Slice of the pie

Musicians gained a lot of independence with the arrival of the internet, as well as a lot of competition

Given that Spotify offers very little financial return on investment for most musicians, you've got to wonder why it's being used to judge the success of local Australian artists.

This is the experience of Emmet Prime:

"He said the industry's emphasis on social media following, engagement and listeners on streaming services often made him feel like it was a "waste of time" to put so much effort into the craft of performing."

Peak industry association Music SA had used the Spotify metrics to evaluate which bands to include on a line-up:

"The artist has to be able to show that they're ready to maximise any opportunities that might come out of that, which includes a really strong media and social media presence, and for example, that is one of the criteria of being selected as a Scouted artist," said Music SA CEO Christine Schloithe.

To get any financial recognition from Spotify you need to stream past a threshold of a minimum number of times your content has been heard, but you also need to get past the number of phantom musicians whose content is crowding out original music.

Critics like Ted Gioia have pointed out there's an increasing number of shadow artists padding out the material on Spotify and it's not clear if it's a further inequity for musicians trying to be heard.

So it seems inappropriate for an organisation promoting music with South Australia to rely on a company that is not in the business of promoting these kinds of bands and musicians.

There probably are questions to explore on the role of metrics in decision-making for an organisation and it's here that Spotify looks like a potential benchmark.