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Ty Segall would rather give you his music for free than have you listen to it on Spotify

By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 15 March 2017

Ty Segall has said that his latest album, ‘Ty Segall’, is not on Spotify because he’d rather just give it away for free than earn the meagre royalties he gets from the streaming service. Also, the label that released it, Drag City, doesn’t put anything on the streaming platforms.

“With Spotify and all those streaming services you don’t get paid anything”, he tells Esquire, slightly misleadingly (you definitely get paid something). “You have to be like Madonna or something to actually make a real royalty from that. You make better royalties off YouTube than Spotify. Apple Music is the same”.

That YouTube pays better royalties than Spotify or Apple Music certainly isn’t the official line of the YouTube-dissing music industry, nor any artist accountants I’ve ever spoken to. But, hey, I haven’t got Ty Segall’s royalty statements to look at, so who knows? And I suppose you’ll definitely make better royalties from YouTube than Spotify if you don’t put the record on Spotify.

He continues: “The truth of the matter is I [wouldn’t] have [a] problem with any of those things if they paid better … but they don’t, they totally rip off artists. So I don’t want to be a part of it. But YouTube and all that stuff, free music – totally cool, go for it. I’d rather have the music [be] free than get ripped off by Spotify, personally”.

“It’s just funny to me I’ve heard people say, ‘I don’t have the money to buy your album, man. Why isn’t it on Spotify?'” he adds. “And I want to just be like, ‘Here’s the album for free, dude. I don’t know'”.

Ty Segall also released an album called ‘Ty Segall’ back in 2008, which is on Spotify. As are a lot of his other albums. But whatever you do, don’t listen to any of them on there.