Update: Decade Canon Playlist, Spotify Rant, and November's MTVZ

We purposely kept the decade list as the top post for over 100 days in hopes that anyone would see it. We think a few people did, so that's good. Please share if you can!

We also made a playlist with all the streamable songs. Please follow!


Everyone hates Spotify now which is good. Despite its inherent evil, we will continue using Spotify because we use it the right way, which is sadly uncommon in 2020. We're pretty sure that 99% of current Spotify users do not use it in tandem with paid Bandcamp purchases, radio programming support, blogging support, vinyl and merch purchases, and (when it's not considered dangerous) paid show attendance.

We can proudly say that we assist some artists and labels through a multitude of support methods. We hope any of it has been helpful for the fans or artists. And so we still get to sleep at night, even though we use Spotify a lot, whereas the ugly asshole CEO of Spotify should be ashamed of himself for allowing such a horrendously flawed method of artist payout.

We weren't aware of this until 2 days ago, but Spotify's artist payout is allocated directly out of a fraction of their overall profit. A total dollar amount for all streams combined is determined by Spotify before they even begin looking at how many streams they accumulated. Payout actually has nothing to do with "per stream." It's determined by whatever amount Spotify is willing to hand out from their quarterly profits.

More info on this and other fun facts about Spotify were discussed on The Interdependence's recent Q&A with Joey and Mary from Downtown Boys.

So let's just say hypothetically, if one song on Spotify generated 50 billion streams, and if every other song on Spotify generated another 50 billion streams combined, then 50% of all of the artist payout would go towards one song, and all of the other songs on Spotify would split 50% based on the percentage they generated. In this hypothetical scenario, a very popular song or songs essentially wreck the payout curve. It's kinda similar to a teacher grading on a curve -- if the highest grade in the class was 75%, then anyone who got that 75% would get an A. But if a couple kids got 100%, it ruins the curve for everyone else.

And the best part: Meanwhile, the tech overlords get to continue building upon their empire, expanding their thinktank, pocketing the majority of their earnings, and keeping payouts far away from artists and actual content creators -- except for the 3 major labels, of course, who are totally on board with all of this.

Remember the Grammy Awards throughout the 2000s? Once a year, the asshole president of the recording academy would take up at least 5 minutes of air-time mid-way through the Grammy Awards to warn about the "dangers" of "stealing music" through file sharing, citing a lack of support for artists. As it turns out, this guy was 100% full of shit. Spotify seemed initially intended to remedy the inconvenience of file storage, but it actually solved the problem of how to ensure that billionaires continue getting rich from artististic works that they did not create themselves.

Yes, it's fucked. But there's good news. The good news is: if you're a music fan who regularly supports artists through a multitude of support methods, then you are not part of the problem!

We wish we could claim that MTVZ supports artists in any way. Perhaps one day, some influencer will discover and share MTVZ, helping it to flourish into the new standard for the modern era of TV programming and music exposure.

Apparently there are a handful of cool people on Youtube who fuck with MTVZ, and we thank every one of you for justifying our meager existance.

There's a newer one of these floating around somewhere, but in the meantime here is November's MTVZ: