 Wow, what's up everybody once again, it's Bram and Shawn and today we gotta ask a serious question. Is Spotify a finessent artist? Are they really out here putting that work on artists? And why am I asking this question in the first place? Well, let's get into that. For one, this goes back to something that a lot of different topics in music seem to lead back to and that would be none other than Drake. If you guys didn't know back when Drake dropped his scorpion project, Spotify got accused of some things. So let's start here. If you take a look at this picture right here, you would notice this looks like a Spotify current screen capture and Drake is on pretty much every single playlist. This was taken by a user and they were calling Spotify out for aggressive Drake marketing when that project dropped. Other artists had similar stories. It was actually an incident where people were actually claiming that they wanted to get off of Spotify. They wanted their money back. They wanted to end their accounts. And why was that? Well, there were cases like a person who listens to nothing but heavy metal and he was like, why are y'all pushing Drake down my throat? Why are y'all advertising Drake because it's supposed to show me types of music that I like. I listen to no types of music similar to Drake. That's wild, right? But that's not even the reason that I'm talking about this finesse question. The more interesting part about this situation as a whole is this, a quote from digital music marketing news. Why is Spotify a platform with approximately 160 million users and 70 million paying subscribers unable to beat Apple Music, a site with 45 million paying only subscribers with perhaps five million more trial users thrown in? So what are they really saying here? Well, let's get down into the nitty gritty. From the fact that Spotify has like 160 million active users, whatever that means, they don't really get too clear into that. However, we know that they have about 75 million paying subscribers. Apple Music, on the other hand, has about 45 million paying subscribers. That means Spotify has almost doubled the amount of subscribers as Apple Music when we talk about the paying subscribers. However, the day that Scorpion dropped, it got 160 million plays or streams on Apple Music, but only 130 million streams on Spotify. That's 30 million less on a platform that's supposed to have double the amount of subscribers. To some people, it sounds like a finesse. It sounds like Spotify is cooking the books. Y'all act like y'all have more users than y'all actually do. To some people, that might mean that they just don't have the type of listeners that like Drake type of music. But at the end of the day, I think one thing can be very clear. The quality of the audience, the engagement. Because for now, it's looking like Apple has more engaged users. People who actually are looking for the music actively because they didn't have a campaign that was pushed down. People's throw in the same way that Spotify supposedly was doing. This goes back to something that artists have to remember again and again because people look at 130,000 subscribers and say, oh man, this person has a lot of subscribers or a lot of followers versus this other person who might have 50,000. When the person who has 50,000 might have a far higher quality audience and fan base. They might be real fans versus these fake followers or something like that. If you have real quality and real engagement at the end of the day, it's going to show. It's cool for the vanity, that superficial stuff, but we all know it's not real at the end of the day. And then the other thing that it actually shows is no matter how much you actually advertise to the wrong fan base, you're going to be wasting your time. So in those situations where they were pushing Drake down, people who love other types of genres that don't care for Drake at all, they were working against themselves. So you have to be advertising and putting yourself in front of the right audience. Those things sound simple. Some of you guys have heard that and get it again. But now there's an example of a huge company well known that so many of you guys know and you see that it works for everyone. The same principles apply. It's cut and dry. Now my question to you guys is, do you feel like this is a finesse? Do you feel like Spotify might have some ghost accounts? Are they as official as a lot of people make them seem? What I think is over time, we need to actually watch out for scenarios like this. See if this is a topic that keeps bubbling up. Do you constantly see Apple Music outperforming Spotify? Should artists focus more on Apple Music than Spotify? I would love to know you guys thoughts or maybe you're just in an area where Apple Music is more relevant than Spotify or vice versa. But I would love to know your thoughts as always and really quickly before I hop up out of here. Don't forget you guys to the end of the year. Every Sunday at the very least, I'm answering the questions that you guys hit me up with in my inbox. So all of my followers on IG, make sure you guys are answering or asking questions because I'll be answering them whether it's through video, straight through DM. I don't know. We'll see if we can get that started. Now if you liked this video, go ahead and hit the like button. If you like it, you might as well share it and if you're not subscribed, you know what to do. Hit that subscribe.