Twisted Sister's Dee Snider is featured in a new interview with Finland's KaaosTV discussing his recently released album, For The Love Of Metal Live! Snider also talks about his next solo album, which is currently in the works, and addresses the recent remark from Spotify CEO Daniel Ek that artists "Can't record music once every three to four years and think that's going to be enough..." which has drawn harsh criticism from artists around the world.

Snider: "As far as that Spotify bullet-head asshole goes, I really pay no attention. The exploitation of the artists has been going on forever - from the record companies, concert promoters, Spotify, and all these other avenues, they're just other versions. There's been the business people, and there's been the artists. And the artists are the creatives, the sensitive people, they're not very business-minded, and there's been non-talented, non-creative garbage that has stolen robbed and exploited the artist since the beginning of time, and it continues. I don't know that asshole's name; he says something like, 'Hey, you want to make more money? Put out more music,' like it's bottled Coca-Cola or something, like, 'Oh, we need more Coca-Cola. OK, step up production, make more bottles of Coca-Cola.'

Twisted Sister did not start seeing royalties from our album sales - over 10 million - until 1997. We broke up in 1987 and we never saw a penny from record sales until 1997 because we owed so much money. So this has been, and I knew this has been exploitation, it's been going on forever. So we fight, we do the best we can; hopefully, we get in a position to make a new deal, negotiate a new deal. But I don't expect business people to say, 'You know what? We got to give these creative people more money, we got to treat the artist with respect.' That will never happen."

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Ek recently made the following statement in an interview with Music Ally, which ignited justifiable backlash from artists and the media:

“It’s quite interesting that while the overall pie is growing, and more and more people can partake in that pie, we tend to focus on a very limited set of artists,” he said, referring to the reporting of views on streaming royalties. Even today on our marketplace, there’s literally millions and millions of artists. What tends to be reported are the people that are unhappy, but we very rarely see anyone who’s talking about… In the entire existence [of Spotify] I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single artist saying ‘I’m happy with all the money I’m getting from streaming.

Stating that publicly. In private they have done that many times, but in public they have no incentive to do it. But unequivocally, from the data, there are more and more artists that are able to live off streaming income in itself. There is a narrative fallacy here, combined with the fact that, obviously, some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape, where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough.” 

The artists today that are making it realise that it’s about creating a continuous engagement with their fans. It is about putting the work in, about the storytelling around the album, and about keeping a continuous dialogue with your fans.”

Check out the complete interview here.