Daniel Ek earned more from Spotify in the past 12 months than any artist has ever earned on the platformSpotify CEO and founder Daniel Ek earned more money from the platform in the past 12 months than any other artist ever has, reports royalties accountant Hunter Giles — and Ek’s closest executives aren’t far behind him, either. Taylor Swift, Drake, Billie Eilish, Ed Sheeran, and literally any other megastar you can think of, haven’t been able to top the $345 million dollars Ek has roughly made since last year.

READ MORE: “Enough’s enough”: deadmau5 threatens to pull music from Spotify following Daniel Ek “cost of creating content” comments

In his IC Newsletter, Giles breaks down the cashout values of Spotify executives’ shares, and equates those earnings to the number of streams each exec would need to gain to accrue the sum. Giles adds that he made the comparison using the “generous” value of $0.003 per stream and “assumed 100 per cent control over the IP in the comps ([which is] never the case).”
Daniel Ek takes the top spot, cashing out a total of $345 million in shares since July 2023, which is equal to gaining 115 billion streams, hypothetically making him the number-one top-streamed artist of all time on the platform. As a comparison, Statista reports that Taylor Swift is the most-streamed real artist on Spotify, with 76 billion all-time streams as of April 2024.
Second place to Ek is Martin Lorentzon, co-founder of Spotify, whose shares are valued at $166.8 million — equal to 55.6 billion streams. This would hypothetically make him the ninth most-streamed artist of all time. Alex Norström, co-president at Spotify, is third in the ranking with a share value of $26.4 million, equal to 8.8 billion streams and placing him at 185 in the most-streamed artists of all-time.
Giles’ comparison was inspired by an MBW article reporting on Lorentzon’s recent cash-out of $85.8M in shares and the recent news that songwriters are set to face $150 million in royalty cuts from Spotify in 2024.
However, Giles says his analysis is not intended to vilify or shame the executives at Spotify. “I personally don’t think that Ek and the Gang are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ as people,” he says, “and the point of this isn’t to shame them…The bad actor here imho [in my humble opinion] is the same as always: misaligned incentives that fail to appropriately share the wealth amongst stakeholders, AKA late-capitalism. These people are just doing a good job of hitting the misaligned marks, and I don’t feel it’s true or useful to think of them as evil geniuses out to steal money from artists.”
Daniel Ek hasn’t taken home a regular salary since 2017, according to Spotify’s filings, and Fortune reckons he was “probably one of the worst-paid major tech CEOs last year” but did receive $ 1.4 million in “other compensation.”
In other recent news, Ek confirmed in July that a new “deluxe” tier of Spotify is set to arrive soon, complete with high-resolution audio quality.
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Cobra Fuzz plug-in from Safari Pedals Safari Pedals' latest software effect packs a versatile range of sounds into a simple and intuitive GUI.

OpenAI has a ‘highly accurate’ tool to detect AI content, but no release plansThe company expressed worries that its detection system could somehow “stigmatize” the use of AI among non-English speakers.

From golf to hunting, a new crop of startups want to make these experiences even betterCOVID-19 pushed people to take up outdoor activities. Now, startups are helping companies and consumers keep up with demand.
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Your ESP32 As A USB Bluetooth DongleUsing Bluetooth on a desktop computer is now such a seamless process; it’s something built-in and just works. Behind that ubiquity is a protocol layer called HCI, or Host Controller Interface, a set of commands allowing a host computer to talk to a Bluetooth interface.  That interface doesn’t have to be special, and [Dakhnod] is here to show us that it can be done with an ESP32 microcontroller through its USB interface.
The linked repository doesn’t tell us which of the ESP32 variants it works with, but since not all of them have a USB peripheral we’re guessing one of the newer variety. It works with Linux computers, and we’re told it should work with Windows too if a HCI driver is present. We might ask ourselves why such a project is necessary given the ubiquity of Bluetooth interfaces, but for us it’s provided the impetus to read up on how it all works.
We can’t find anyone else in our archive who’s made a Bluetooth dongle in this way, but we’ve certainly seen sniffing of HCI commands to reverse engineer a speaker’s communications.

Soundspear Updates Formula and Makes 50+ Audio Effects FREE
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All The Air Ducting Parts You Could Ever NeedIf you have ever planned an air duct or dust extraction system for your shop, you’ll know just how difficult it can be to accommodate all but the simplest of arrangements. Off the shelf systems are intended for use in home heating or other domestic systems, and offer little flexibility of choice. Of course you could 3D print an adapter or two, but [Fabian] has taken it to the next level with a comprehensive library of 3D-printable pipe system adapters and accessories. We’re not sure we’ve seen such a complete collection.
The pipes are mostly at 125 mm diameter, with the full array of elbows and joints, alongside adapters for fans and smaller pipes, and different splitter options. It becomes particularly interesting in the accessories department though, because he’s also made a set of smart addons, packing ESP32s for sensors, and even valves.
It sometimes shocks us to go into hackerspaces and see nothing in the way of extraction around tools that really need it. Airborne smoke and particulates are a proven hazard, and thus we like this project a lot. If you don’t have adequate ventilation or extraction on your bench, consider printing yourself a solution. Take a look at how one hackerspace did it.

Casio introduce CT-S1-76 keyboard The CT-S1-76 delivers a 76-key version of the popular CT-S1, and uses Casio's AiX Sound Source technology to deliver faithful reproductions of a range of different instruments. 

Forget about Ethereum ETFs — Here's what you can do insteadSpot Ether ETFs were supposed to set the gold standard for ETH investing. Unfortunately, they still aren't allowed to offer staking.

Getting It Done: Last week in D.I.Y. & Indie MusicLast week, our tips and advice for independent, do-it-yourselfers covered how to promote music with Instagram Reels, how often to post on social media, and more.
The post Getting It Done: Last week in D.I.Y. & Indie Music appeared first on Hypebot.

REWIND: New Music Industry’s Last Week in ReviewCatch up on what everyone in the music industry was talking about last week, with MediMusic transforming healthcare; a report revealing songwriter stats, and more…
The post REWIND: New Music Industry’s Last Week in Review appeared first on Hypebot.

Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway sells half its Apple stockWarren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway cut its Apple holding by around half, to $84.2 billion, according to an SEC filing. While Apple remains the firm’s largest stock holding by far, Buffett had already reduced its stake by 13 percent earlier this year, hinting that he didn’t mind selling “a little Apple” for tax reasons. Berkshire Hathaway […]
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Steam Deck, Or Single Board Computer?With a number of repair-friendly companies entering the scene, we have gained motivation to dig deeper into devices they build, repurpose them in ways yet unseen, and uncover their secrets. One such secret was recently discovered by [Ayeitsyaboii] on Reddit – turns out, you can use the Steam Deck mainboard as a standalone CPU board for your device, no other parts required aside from cooling.
All you need is a USB-C dock with charging input and USB/video outputs, and you’re set – it doesn’t even need a battery plugged in. In essence, a Steam Deck motherboard is a small computer module with a Ryzen CPU and a hefty GPU! Add a battery if you want it to work in UPS mode, put an SSD or even an external GPU into the M.2 port, attach WiFi antennas for wireless connectivity – there’s a wide range of projects you can build.
Each such finding brings us closer to the future of purple neon lights, where hackers spend their evenings rearranging off-the-shelf devices into gadgets yet unseen. Of course, there’s companies that explicitly want us to hack their devices in such a manner – it’s a bet that Framework made to gain a strong foothold in the hacker community, for instance. This degree of openness is becoming a welcome trend, and it feels like we’re only starting to explore everything we can build – for now, if your Framework’s or SteamDeck’s screen breaks, you always have the option to build something cool with it.
[Via Dexerto]

Homebrew Relay Computer Features Motorized ClockBefore today, we probably would have said that scratch-built relay computers were the sole domain of only the most wizardly of graybeards. But this impressive build sent in by [Will Dana] shows that not only are there young hardware hackers out there that are still bold enough to leave the transistor behind, but that they can help communicate how core computing concepts can be implemented with a bungle of wires and switches.
Created for his YouTube channel WillsBuilds, every component of this computer was built by [Will] himself. Each of the nine relay-packed protoboards inside the machine took hours to solder, and when that was done, he went out to the garage to start cutting the wood that would become the cabinet they all get mounted in.
The entire build process is documented in the video, and is interwoven with short segments that go deeper into the various concepts at play. If you’ve never been able to figure out how a box full of relays can add numbers together, this might be the video that finally makes it click for you (no pun intended).
We were particularly impressed with [Will]’s determination to not let any modern technology sneak into his build. When researching other relay builds, he found that some of them relied on anachronistic components like the 555 timer or quartz crystals to generate the clock signal. That simply wouldn’t do, so he initially tried to put together a variation of the clock circuit that [Paul Law] used in his gorgeous relay computer. In the end he couldn’t quite get it working the way he wanted, so he went really old school and came up with a clock module that uses a motorized cam and microswitch to generate the necessary pulses.
In the era of the 10 cent microcontroller, when it’s often easier to write a few lines of code to get something working than figuring out how to do it with discrete components, this project is certainly refreshing. Especially when it’s coming from a younger maker. [Will] definitely came away from this build with several new skills under his belt and a new appreciation for concepts that many of us take for granted these days, and we’re looking forward to seeing what he comes up with next.

Zoom announce MS-80IR+ MultiStomp  Zoom have announced the release of the MS-80IR+ MultiStomp, the latest addition to their acclaimed series of multi-effects and modelling pedals.