The Pocket Gods, an indie band campaigning for fairer Spotify royalties, will sell a single copy of their final album for £1 million.
The band have released albums of just 30-second songs since 2015 to highlight the lack of fair royalties from Spotify and other streaming services. Their final album – Vegetal Digital – will have only a single digital copy available for sale for £1 million.
This money will be used to fund the band’s own streaming platform, which will pay artists and songwriters 1p per stream (500 times more than what the band currently receives from Spotify, which is £.002).
This news comes after the band’s latest album, “Daniel Ek is not the anti-Christ, he’s just a very naughty boy!” was banned from Spotify for being offensive to Spotify.
Talking about the current state of streaming services, The Pocket Gods’ frontman, Mark Christopher Lee, said
“It’s time we stopped moaning about Spotify and how unfair the current streaming system is for artists and songwriters and did something positive. What I want is for artists and songwriters to be valued by their listeners and to be fairly compensated for their life-changing craft. We are heading to a soulless world without organic music to a world dominated by AI-generated algorithmic playlists. I vision a world where musicians, artists and songwriters will change the world for the better we must pay them fairly.”
The band plans to release their 76th and final album on September 1st 2022, with 10 new songs (not 30 seconds long), and one copy will be sold digitally with the artwork for £1 million. The entire catalogue of their music will be removed from Spotify at the same time.
The album will also include behind-the-scenes video footage, high-resolution photos, and all the lyrics accompanied by artwork. In addition, a personalised message will be recorded by the band for the owner. This will all come in a wooden personalised flash drive.
The band was formed in 1998 and has been recognised by Guinness World Records as the most prolific band of the digital age.
Leave a Reply