Def Leppard: Spotify Is Worse Than Napster

From an interview with Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen CTNow…
CTNow: I’ve noticed that much of the Def Leppard catalogue is not on Spotify or other streaming services. Can you comment on that?

Phil Collen: I love what Taylor Swift has done. I have a friend who is a songwriter, and he had a song that got over a million plays on Spotify, and he received 12 pounds, about $18-$19. That really sums it up.
It’s bad, if not worse, than the whole Napster thing and downloading when it started.

Again, a CEO from [Spotify] would make an amazing profit, whereas the artist is taken advantage of.  I’m not a fan of that.  I don’t know where we stand in the future, but perhaps it would be good to do something else.  When they show their true colors, you go, ‘Well, it’s the same old story again,’ like some old blues guy getting $50 and actually owing his whole catalogue for life to someone who’s ripped him off.  It’s a little like that.

It happens all the time with artists, Michelangelo or whomever, back in the day.  William Blake died penniless doing brass etchings, living on someone’s floor.
A businessman will probably think an artist is just content with the art.  It’s a bummer getting ripped off.

Source: Digital Music News
Image credit: Creative Common