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If a content creator subscribes to Spotify as a user and streams non-stop his own music, he will receive from Spotify more than the cost of the subscription.
Repeat that a few times, and download here and there tracks from other random artists to cover your tracks, and the schema may work.
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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…
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I'd counter that by saying that the sharpest elbows always outperform the sharpest minds financially. Income and genius have rarely had a strong correlation. Instead I'd look at a mixture between greed, conscientiousness and that feeling of never being content as drivers of income. Also of course the field in which you're in as one could argue that each field has its own "total addressable market".
Interesting assertion you have made because every peer review source I have ever seen on the issue finds a clear correlation between wealth and intelligence. Could you provide any sources for your claim that income and genius rarely have a strong correlation?
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Just set aside your "everyone plays an equal number of tracks" condition, because that isn't what happens.
I think making use of this condition will undercount the payments of niche artists. I think in general, a listener of niche artist will listen to more song, thus if charges of user are grouped then the niche songs will likely be paid less.(No data, just based on what is more intutive to me)
I've also seen a gym just putting popular music on repeat with Spotify. That should be at least 10.000 streams per month. Not hard to make that skew the numbers even if it's somewhat rare.
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.
"If Madonna has a more successful album, then she will get more money."
Now imagine situations in which this statement is true but Madonna does not have a more successful album. There are plenty of situations in which she can earn more money without better albums which is exactly what the entire submission is about.
Madonna's revenue increases when more people get a Spotify premium account even when those new users don't listen to Madonna.
There are large differences between users. Some users listen to 2000 streams per month, others listen to 200 streams per month. There might be "crazy" people who listen to Madonna songs on loop 24/7.
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It also works the other way, though. If someone else listens to 1 song of artist A once a month and you play artist B more than once a month, a larger chunk of the total will be going to artist B. And in aggregate things will work out, since an average listener will listen to a random song an average number of times. Broken down to an individual level you can claim that a smaller artist gets less but if that artist's…
When I buy a Mechina album on Bandcamp, my money does not go to Nickelback instead. Can you explain how this system currently used by Bandcamp is unfair? If I wanted to get the same behavior from Spotify, I would need to leave devices streaming at all hours, because I am competing for amount of streams against restaurants and gyms that buy a single Spotify subscription and leave it on constantly.
Yeah, there's a reason that that's illegal, but it being illegal doesn't change reality, so you're right. I hadn't considered this in previous comments until u/kgermino pointed it out in [1]. I see your point better now.
I still stand by that "more listens resulting in more money" isn't necessarily bad, but that the way of counting who gets actively listened to might need revising. Another solution to the problem is the (let's call it) Bandcamp model. I'm not opposed to that, I'm just wondering if that will solve any issues, given that I perceive the problem not as "we should pay per subscriber listening to an artist instead of per number of plays" but instead "we should not pay for illegitimate plays."
It does also make me wonder if Spotify considered this and, if yes, why they rejected it. I guess more popular artists are more important to Spotify's survival and therefore they can demand more money under the guise of it being all fair? It's quite an allegation but that's the only thing I can think of. But then, I've been wrong before :)
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Just set aside your "everyone plays an equal number of tracks" condition, because that isn't what happens.
Isn't that fair though? If artist A gets played a million times and I don't listen to them but I play artist B twice that month, shouldn't artist A get most of that money? If artist B was so great I'd play them more often and they'd get more money.
I'm just thinking about CD sales vs subscription. If you buy, the artist gets paid once, not for how much you listen to it. So the above just moves in that direction.
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It doesnt make up for the difference
Why not? Ads are enough to pay the licensing costs for radio stations, which have higher distribution costs and worse economies of scale than Spotify.
> Spotify’s Premium subscriptions, which still account for the majority (~90%) of its revenues, grew by 17% to reach €1.76 billion in the quarter https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/29/spotify-users-are-streamin...
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It doesnt make up for the difference
Your comment implies the ad-supported users are responsible for revenue loss. In my mind, decisions like giving Joe Rogan 100 million dollars are more likely culprits.
Edit: That's the first I hear of that deal, and that's insane. Not a podcast I listen to, and I don't want to use any of the user-tracking, user-inlocking podcast players.
A subtle disadvantage of the Pro Rata model is that content creators in the platform can trivially exploit it. If a content creator subscribes to Spotify as a user and streams non-stop his own music, he will receive from Spotify more than the cost of the subscription. Repeat that a few times, and download here and there tracks from other random artists to cover your tracks, and the schema may work.