Spotify doesn’t pay per stream. Here’s where your $12.99 actually goes, all the way to the artist. 0:00 Cold open 0:13 The sticker price 0:43 Spotify keeps about a third 1:20 The pool: why there’s no per-stream rate 2:03 The recording vs. the song 2:54 Label or distributor 3:34 One song, a million streams 4:17 Who actually gets paid 4:47 Every joint takes a cut Every number on screen is sourced. Sources below ↓

This is what finding new music should feel like. Every source, not one algorithm. One tap and it’s playing. FAST.

Meet Preamp. The gain stage for new music. It scans radio, blogs, charts, socials and scenes for artists gaining ground, and plays you what it finds. ◀︎ FAST. preamp.audio

Here's how Preamp actually works. Every dot in the constellation is an artist. Click one and you hear them. Follow who they're connected to, then who those artists are connected to, and three acts later you're somewhere you'd never have found on your own. It's all built from what's moving right now across radio, blogs, charts, socials and scenes. Link in the comments.

Scrolling a feed or a playlist is a tired way to find new music. Here's a new way we've been working on, and today it's live. It's called Preamp. New artists start moving in a lot of places at once: college radio, small blogs, regional charts, local scenes. Those places don't share an algorithm, and nothing is listening to all of them. Preamp is. It listens across all of them and plays you the artists gaining ground. FAST. No playlists to open, no queue. Tap, hear it, next. Follow one you like and let it take you on a journey to the next. One artist can open up a whole new scene. It's an iPhone app and a website that work together: the app for listening on the go, the site for the rabbit holes. The gain stage for new music.