The Pocket Gods are selling one copy of their final album on vinyl priced at £1 million.
Since 2015, the rock band have been releasing albums of 30 second songs to bring to light the lack of fair royalties from Spotify, Apple Music and other music streaming platforms.
The group plan to use the money made from selling the LP, ‘Vegetal Digital’, to fund their own streaming platform NUBPLAY, which guarantees to pay artists and songwriters at least 1p per stream, which is 50 times the amount Spotify pays.
In a public statement, Pocket Gods frontman Mark Christopher Lee said: “We started releasing just albums of 30 second songs back in 2015 and being ‘inspired’ by an article by U.S. music professor Mike Errico who asked why artists weren’t just writing 30 second songs as this is when Spotify pays out a royalty in full and as artists don’t get paid much from streaming – why write longer songs!”
The band’s campaign of releasing 30 second songs allowed them to win countless Guinness World Records, with their last album having 1000 songs, each 30 seconds long and still holds the world record.
Mark added: “We’ve finished with the 30 second songs we did them in a rebellious punk spirit to force streaming companies like Spotify to pay artists and songwriters better.
“We’ve had success in terms of meetings with Spotify but in order for real change we need to make a stand and by setting up our own service we guarantee to pay artists at least 1p per stream. £1 million I guess is small change to the likes of Spotify but by making a stand we hope others will come on board and help create a fairer future for artists, songwriters musicians.”
Their musical campaign and £1 million album are featured in their new film ‘Inspired The 30 Second Song Story’, which was inspired by Peter Jackson’s Beatles film ‘Get Back’.
Mark said: “It’s mad what’s happened with the 30 second songs as since Spotify changed their rule (thanks to us) to allow 30 second songs on official playlists, K-Pop artists such as BTS, Jung Kook and V are using our 30 second songs on their playlists in order to boost their own streams… it’s a crazy situation (perfectly in the rules) that we never expected… hence we now have fans all over the world and particularly in South Korea!”
‘Vegetal Digital’ will be available at the band’s local record shop Empire Records in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England, for one lucky fan to purchase.