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Pro Rata and User Centric Distribution Models: A Comparative Study (2017)

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Re: Pro Rata and User Centric Distribution Models: A Comparative Study (2017)

#41

Post by WJW »

kzrdude wrote: post #15
tyho wrote: post #2

On Spotify, the top 0.4% of artists are responsible for 9.9% of streams.

And premium users pay for everyone's streams. That's one of the conflicts, and the other is that those who listen to fewer plays get less influence than those who listen to many. So even if all the premium users prefer jazz (for example), their money will mostly go to whatever the free users prefer listening to. If spotify itself was seen as a market - I wouldn't say that this would be a very well-functioning market,…

Don't non-premium users get ads interspersed into their playlists to make up the difference?

Re: Pro Rata and User Centric Distribution Models: A Comparative Study (2017)

#42

Post by pbhjpbhj »

rullelito wrote: post #20
dustinmoris wrote: post #16

A fair model would be to charge users a pay-as-you-go rate for every minute listened. Someone who listens 20 hours a week should pay more than someone who listens 5 hours a month on Spotify. Just set a rate/minute and track each user's usage and bill them monthly. Then pay the same rate/minute (minus a super small commission %) to the artists of whom the music was streamed. This would mean that artists get a fair sha…

This sounds stressful and complex to track and charge for.. Also, I usually listens to books/podcasts while I sleep, and when not sleeping I usually relisten large parts of them since I often wander away with my thoughts. This sounds horrible from my perspective.

Why do you "listen" to books whilst you sleep, do you think it does something?

Re: Pro Rata and User Centric Distribution Models: A Comparative Study (2017)

#43

Post by kzrdude »

WJW wrote: post #41
kzrdude wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And premium users pay for everyone's streams. That's one of the conflicts, and the other is that those who listen to fewer plays get less influence than those who listen to many. So even if all the premium users prefer jazz (for example), their money will mostly go to whatever the free users prefer listening to. If spotify itself was seen as a market - I wouldn't say that this would be a very well-functioning market,…

Don't non-premium users get ads interspersed into their playlists to make up the difference?

It doesnt make up for the difference

Re: Pro Rata and User Centric Distribution Models: A Comparative Study (2017)

#44

Post by nkrisc »

dustinmoris wrote: post #16

A fair model would be to charge users a pay-as-you-go rate for every minute listened. Someone who listens 20 hours a week should pay more than someone who listens 5 hours a month on Spotify. Just set a rate/minute and track each user's usage and bill them monthly. Then pay the same rate/minute (minus a super small commission %) to the artists of whom the music was streamed. This would mean that artists get a fair sha…

Fairer, maybe, but then I'd just close my account because that's not what I, the consumer, want.

Re: Pro Rata and User Centric Distribution Models: A Comparative Study (2017)

#46

Post by marketingPro »

kzrdude wrote: post #27
rullelito wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm not sure what the point of this thread is.. Is it too little or too much?

The point is that there is too little connection between what you pay, what you listen to, and who gets paid for that. If we had more control here, the "market" would work better. Artists that make people pay for spotify and listen to their songs, would see benefits. Paying for music should be a positive feedback loop between buyer and producer of music, and spotify users and artists don't feel like they are in the l…

Not necessarily. I listen disproportionately to popular songs by popular artists most of the time.

If spotify gives me a recommended suggestion, it's probably worth it to the aspring artist over trivial payment.

The big money is shows.

Re: Pro Rata and User Centric Distribution Models: A Comparative Study (2017)

#47

Post by westwing »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #32
westwing wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The algorithm isn't dumb at all. Lady Gaga is relatively more valuable for the platform, so she can ask for a bigger slice of the pie. If all you wanted was a streaming platform that didn't have all these major artists on it, it could be provided for much less than £15.

> If all you wanted was a streaming platform that didn't have all these major artists on it, it could be provided for much less than £15. This sounds like economies of scale but backwards, which makes me suspicious of this claim.

It's more complicated than that. If economics of scale applied to music pricing, why do records cost all more or less the same?

A small act can't support itself from licensing fees alone either way, it would make sense to settle for less, or waive fees entirely, just to increase exposure.

Re: Pro Rata and User Centric Distribution Models: A Comparative Study (2017)

#48

Post by kgermino »

lucb1e wrote: post #28
maxerickson wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it does it by aggregated listens and not by artist, then other people listening to some other artist diverts their funds to that artist. If they did it per user, that wouldn't happen.

Can you make the math work out in a way that my funds are diverted to another artist? Because what you're saying sounds logical but when I try and compute it, as in the final paragraph of my comment above, it doesn't work out that way. But I could be wrong! Please try it and let me/us know what you find!

As someone else said, it’s tied to how many songs you listen to.

Hypothetical: I mostly listen to Spotify during workouts so I only have about 200 streams a month. My coworker has a top 40 playlist running all day so they have over 2000 streams a month.

If we each pay $11 their artists will get $20 while mine will only get $2.

I.e. even though I never listened to a top 40 song, the artists I listened to will only get $2 from my subscription, the rest will go to the artists my coworker follows

Re: Pro Rata and User Centric Distribution Models: A Comparative Study (2017)

#49

Post by danmaz74 »

dustinmoris wrote: post #16

A fair model would be to charge users a pay-as-you-go rate for every minute listened. Someone who listens 20 hours a week should pay more than someone who listens 5 hours a month on Spotify. Just set a rate/minute and track each user's usage and bill them monthly. Then pay the same rate/minute (minus a super small commission %) to the artists of whom the music was streamed. This would mean that artists get a fair sha…

What Madonna makes is proportional to the number of streams of her songs, so a more successful album will bring her more money.

Re: Pro Rata and User Centric Distribution Models: A Comparative Study (2017)

#50

Post by nemo44x »

swiley wrote: post #39
CyberRabbi wrote: post #33

Yet another manifestation of Zipf‘s law... why is this notable or surprising? This is just a natural phenomenon

Something a lot of people don't seem to know about spotify is that artists are compensated based on their position in the charts, not based directly on how many times their song was played. So if you only listen to obscure folk music, most (possibly all) of the $10 you're paying goes to artists you don't listen to. That's why some indie artists say they prefer piracy to spotify, it's almost the same to them.

I didn’t realize that. I thought they totaled every artists “played songs” for the month and distributed the proceeds along those lines.

How do they calculate the chart rankings?

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