Are you tired of hearing about how little money artists are making from streaming services like Spotify? Do you want to hear a story about a band that decided to take matters into their own hands and fight for change?
The story of The Pocket Gods and their fight for fair pay from music streaming services like Spotify is a powerful reminder of the challenges facing unsigned musicians today. Their creative approach of releasing 1,000-track albums of 30-second songs to maximize royalty payments is both inspiring and sobering, highlighting the harsh reality of the current streaming landscape for independent artists.
As a music PR company, we are proud to support The Pocket Gods and their mission to bring greater 
fairness to the music industry. Our work with them has been featured in several top publications, including Music-News, Hotpress & many more as we strive to amplify their message and raise awareness of the challenges facing unsigned musicians. We believe that every artist deserves to be fairly compensated for their work, and we are committed to using our expertise and resources to help bring about positive change in the industry.
‘Inspired The 30 Second Song Movie’ is a must-watch for documentary fans and for viewers passionate about the music industry. The film focuses on the journey of one band, ‘The Pocket Gods’ on a mission to challenge Spotify’s broken streaming system. Directed by the Frontman Mark Lee, himself, he aims to expose the struggles of being an indie band in the age of music streaming.
The story follows the journey of The Pocket Gods as they challenge the streaming system. As they realised that they could maximise Spotify’s pitiful royalties of 0.002 pence per stream with 30 seconds of music, they decided to release massive 100-song albums, with songs that only lasted 30 seconds. This culminated in their longest album ‘Nobody Makes Money Anymore’ comprised of a whopping 1000 thirty-second songs! The film looks at the media response to this development, from ITV news interviews, magazine articles, and even winning a Guinness world record!
Exposing the unfairness of the Spotify platform and exploring the struggles of finding an ethical alternative make this film an enlightening watch. The film includes the band playing their indie rock songs in the tongue-in-cheek 30-second format. Overall this is a story of a David versus Goliath battle between a small indie band and a music streaming titan.
This campaign led to discussions with Spotify founder Daniel Ek and meetings with their head of music. Spotify told the band that music streaming is just one slice of the Pizza and artists should look to make money elsewhere. The band’s campaign was seen as a David V Goliath battle, and they decided to officially end the campaign of 30-second song albums by releasing one final album of usual length songs with just one copy made on vinyl. The album is on sale in their local record shop in St Albans for £1 million.
The documentary details how the band will use the sale proceeds to fund an ethical alternative to Spotify which will pledge to pay artists at least 1p per stream – 50 times Spotify’s current rate. The documentary is a must-see for every musician, artist, and songwriter who wants to understand how to navigate the broken music streaming system and fight for change.
The film and its trailer are already available on Amazon Prime and are a great watch. Make sure to check it out!
skype – quitegr8