Former AMON AMARTH drummer Fredrik Andersson says that it’s “hypocritical” of singer Johan Hegg to complain about payouts from music-streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.
In a recent interview with Australia’s Wall Of Sound, the Hegg said that the music-streaming companies “are not paying the artists nearly enough.” He added that “one of the dangers” of bands not receiving “a fair amount of money” is that “it’s gonna be difficult for new artists to have the opportunity to do this full time. If you can’t make enough money from doing it, how are you gonna be able to do it? People sometimes forget that, yes, it is a passion, it’s art, but it’s also a job, and artists need to pay their bills as well,” he said.
Now, Andersson took to his Facebook page to respong. He wrote: “While I feel it’s quite hypocritical of the man, who recently basically said I do not deserve to get paid as much as the other members, complaining about not getting enough money I think he fails to realize that it’s an enormous privilege to even get paid for the music, not a right. And historically, these few decades of musicians getting wealthy are quite unique.”
Andersson was fired from AMON AMARTH in March 2015, just as the band was preparing to enter the studio to begin work on its Jomsviking album.
