Sawtooth blog

Posted on Mar 19, 2025 at 08:39 by scott truitt

I could write volumes (and already have) about the insights Mark Mulligan shared in his post on LinkedIn yesterday (this post is a response, and I even used the same title to anchor it). I want to focus on three things that resonated most: 1. When you read artist-centric licensing, you should translate that to UMG and Spotify-centric licensing, as “UMG and Spotify get richer, and the rest, well, who really cares?” See the shocking number Mark Johnson shared on LinkedIn yesterday about the effe

Posted on Mar 17, 2025 at 09:17 by scott truitt

Spotify likes to tell its story about the democratisation of music and money, but its strategy of rewarding only those at the top hides in plain sight. Last week’s Loud and Clear report noted that 12 million artists uploaded music to Spotify in 2024, but only 0.6% generated more than $10,000 in royalties. Let me be clear: artists who generate $10,000 in royalties do not earn $10,000 in income. They likely receive a tiny fraction of that after all their costs. And even if they did earn $10,000

Posted on Jan 27, 2025 at 13:54 by scott truitt

Duetti’s 2024 music economics report prompted a nonsensical, fact-free retort from Spotify on Friday, and I’ll bet that was because of these two damning details: 1. Spotify lost a meaningful 2% market share to YouTube, including a 17% shift in electronic music alone in 2024. That’s at odds with the story it tells investors about its runaway growth. 2. Spotify paid 14% less per stream since 2021, even after increasing subscription fees by 20%. That’s at odds with the story it tells artists and

Posted on Jan 2, 2025 at 09:06 by scott truitt

Enshitification was my favourite word last year, but I only recently realised that it is hiding deeper and darker truths about the concentration of wealth and power. Now that I see it, it’s everywhere, and I want you to see it, too. The idea behind enshitification is simple: as platforms gain users (aka customers and partners), the service, experience, and value they receive degrade while the costs of using the platform increase. That fact alone is awful and a reason to rebel. But there’s

Posted on Aug 22, 2024 at 11:59 by scott truitt

Cory Doctorow’s enshittification thesis describes how platforms exploit their markets by luring consumers (with low prices) and businesses (with mass adoption) into an inescapable trap. Once we’re hooked, they reduce their costs, increase ours, and extract all the profits. You may also know this playbook as “Privatise the profits. Socialise the costs.” Enshittification harms more than the people and companies using their services. We all pay the price. When Spotify gives away music for free o

Posted on Aug 15, 2024 at 08:13 by scott truitt

Spotify’s mission to reduce its royalty payments to music creators is widely known. But I’m seeing more music lovers realise the hypocrisy in raising prices while slashing their commitments to our favourite artists and flooding their service with cheaper content. Simply put, they want more money from us to pay less to artists so they can keep more for themselves. That’s their path to profitability. It’s also the precise definition of enshitification. Their moves are especially relevant with sp

Posted on Jul 23, 2024 at 07:07 by scott truitt

I’ve worked in startups and studied the game over my 30+ years in tech. I know the inevitable ups and downs all too well, but they hit differently as a founder. Of all the posts and think pieces I’ve read since starting my journey, this 13th century(!!) poem from Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, or Rumi for short, translated by Coleman Barks, resonates with me most: This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an

Posted on Jul 12, 2024 at 19:49 by scott truitt

This lightly edited quote about tuning an F1 race car from Jamie Allison, newly reinstalled Mercedes technical director and key influence behind their recent successes, perfectly applies to building software in 2024: It took Mercedes too long to realise that the rules introduced in 2022 “required a different set of skills and a different way of interacting with each other.” “The car is the outcome of the institutional approach to designing it. Being competitive requires valuing the right thing

Posted on Jun 4, 2024 at 09:13 by scott truitt

I was shocked to see Spotify’s Daniel Ek start a recent tweet with: “Today, with the cost of creating content being close to zero, people can share an incredible amount of content.” As I thought about it more and reflected on their numbers from 2023 (32% global market share, $15 billion in revenue, and a staggering $576 million loss), I realised that cheap content is their only path to profitability. I’m still surprised to see him say it so plainly. Here’s their problem: whether you listen to

Posted on May 30, 2024 at 09:13 by scott truitt

Companies collect and analyse our data. We have benefitted from free or cheap access to everything—creativity, community, knowledge, and so much more. We have lost just as much in the tides of change. All are true. But we’ve been desensitised from, “Sure, you can use my data to improve your service,” to “Okay, fine, sell my data so others can more effectively target me with ads,” to “You’re learning to write and speak like me?” and “You’re replicating my life’s work and rendering humanity obsol

Posted on May 29, 2024 at 09:13 by scott truitt

What happens when AI-generated content perfectly mimics the best artists—like Scarlett Johansson—and the cost of acquiring creative assets goes to zero? Sam is about to learn what “just because you can doesn’t mean you should” means. It’s time we all recognise that what passes for innovation these days is the same kind of theft and abuse as the first three decades of the internet. This Faustian bargain, where everything of value is free or dirt cheap, has enormous costs. I can’t name a single

Posted on May 28, 2024 at 09:13 by scott truitt

Am I the only one who struggles to reconcile my love of music and my favourite artists with the tiny amount of money I spend on my streaming subscriptions and the even smaller amount that goes to them in the end? How do you show your love when your support is indirect at best and wholly diluted at worst? How is any of this sustainable?