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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)

#81

Post by dmitriid »

dtech wrote: post #67
dmitriid wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd also wish all these "studies" brought in the Big Four record labels into the equations [1] as they are the ones primarily responsible for this. [1] See "Consolidation", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry?wprov=sfti1

You can link to a header in a wikipedia article by using #Header name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry#Consolidation

I was posting from mobile and Wikipedia's otherwise excellent mobile app doesn't offer a way to share a link to a heading (or I haven't found it yet :) )

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

#82

Post by jonplackett »

judofyr wrote: post #19

It's quite fascinating to see the comments on this article as it's pretty obvious who clicked the link and who only looked at the title here at Hacker News. The article itself is called "Pro Rata and User Centric Distribution Models: A Comparative Study" and it's a study showing the difference between "pro rata" (what's happening today) and "user centric" (a user gives their money to the artists _they_ listen to). Th…

The reason for it is that if they didn’t the the big artists wouldn’t put their music on Spotify because they’d get so little money.

Correct me if I’m wrong but it looks like a smaller artists are essentially subsidising the larger ones.

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

#83

Post by cat199 »

dmitriid wrote: post #81
dtech wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can link to a header in a wikipedia article by using #Header name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry#Consolidation

I was posting from mobile and Wikipedia's otherwise excellent mobile app doesn't offer a way to share a link to a heading (or I haven't found it yet :) )

You can link to a header in a wikipedia article by using #Header name

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry#Consolidation

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

#84

Post by flavius29663 »

lucb1e wrote: post #17
jonplackett wrote: post #8

The algorithm for payment is dumb. If I pay £15 a month and only listen to 4 artists over that time (I’m very predictable) I want those 4 to get £3.75 each. But they won’t. Lady ga ha will get most of it.

Edit: just to bring this up a bit higher in the thread, replies like from u/kgermino, u/dtech, and u/anonymoushn are saying that popular artists rack up their number of plays from background noise (my wording, not theirs) whereas niche artists won't have that advantage. A bar or coworker might play a popular playlist a ton of times as background noise whereas your niche artist will have some dedicated people listenin…

"That's a problem" - why do you call it a problem? An artist (say lady Gaga) made a song that can be played on repeat in bars and not annoy customers, keep them entertained. Why is it implied that her music is of lower quality that niche artists?

"other than because their music is so great." There are multiple ways to measure music. One of them is how touched you are by it, to each his own - and this is why niche artists are "niche" - because there are so many unique ways to make special music.

There is value in music that appeases to everyone equally. You will never be able to play niche music in a bar for prolonged periods (unless it's a special bar).

This is kindof like the difference between a ferrari and an F150. The truck does it all for everyone. A single ferrari is more special and more expensive than a ford, but in the end, you cannot argue that Ford the company sells more cars than Ferrari, which is why they deserve a larger stock value.

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

#85

Post by lucb1e »

flavius29663 wrote: post #84
lucb1e wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: just to bring this up a bit higher in the thread, replies like from u/kgermino, u/dtech, and u/anonymoushn are saying that popular artists rack up their number of plays from background noise (my wording, not theirs) whereas niche artists won't have that advantage. A bar or coworker might play a popular playlist a ton of times as background noise whereas your niche artist will have some dedicated people listenin…

"That's a problem" - why do you call it a problem? An artist (say lady Gaga) made a song that can be played on repeat in bars and not annoy customers, keep them entertained. Why is it implied that her music is of lower quality that niche artists? "other than because their music is so great." There are multiple ways to measure music. One of them is how touched you are by it, to each his own - and this is why niche art…

> can be played on repeat in bars [...]. Why is it implied that her music is of lower quality that niche artists?

Well first of all, it's illegal. Spotify's TOS disallows you to play your 9,99 subscription for an audience of more than a usual household amount of people. If you're entertaining a dozen guests or more 365 days a year and for commercial purposes, your part should be quite a bit more than ten bucks a month.

And so I get that people are unhappy that their individual subscription money goes to the entertainment of restaurant guests, background noise for a workplace, etc. because of the way plays are counted.

> to each [her] own - and this is why niche artists are "niche"

Sure, I'm not saying that we should pay all artists equally right? Not like anyone above a certain (low) threshold of monthly playbacks should earn a minimum wage to support the niche ones. No, what people mind is that the money they pay to listen to artist B is instead sent to artist A due to a side effect of the revenue distribution model.

Artist A gets more playbacks not because they are better but because of, so to say, a runaway effect of being popular. Those popular artists would already earn enough if this distribution model would be on an individual user basis, but the current distribution system causes even less money to go to niche artists despite having plenty of fans listening to them. It makes it harder to earn money with niche music, which would be a negative effect on what I think you value as well: each can have their own.

Spotify doesn't seem to support your favorite artists as well as you might expect from paying for Spotify and knowing that the money goes to the artists behind the tracks you play.

> The truck does it all for everyone.

Erm looking that "F150" up on image search (I don't speak car and driver), it looks like a huge asshole car. If everyone would drive that we might as well pick up and leave this planet. Also I don't get what the comparison is trying to tell me.

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

#86

Post by iamacyborg »

flavius29663 wrote: post #84
lucb1e wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: just to bring this up a bit higher in the thread, replies like from u/kgermino, u/dtech, and u/anonymoushn are saying that popular artists rack up their number of plays from background noise (my wording, not theirs) whereas niche artists won't have that advantage. A bar or coworker might play a popular playlist a ton of times as background noise whereas your niche artist will have some dedicated people listenin…

"That's a problem" - why do you call it a problem? An artist (say lady Gaga) made a song that can be played on repeat in bars and not annoy customers, keep them entertained. Why is it implied that her music is of lower quality that niche artists? "other than because their music is so great." There are multiple ways to measure music. One of them is how touched you are by it, to each his own - and this is why niche art…

If I buy a Ferrari I don't expect Ford to get 90% of the money.

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

#87

Post by syrrim »

Why not have an a-la-carte model instead? Assuming many people only listen to a couple hundred songs per months, at Spotify's per stream rate of .3-.5¢, they would pay a lot less if they only paid for the music they were listening to.

I think the "user centric" model has potential for problems because artists would feel cheated that they don't get paid proportional to how many listens they drive. And why shouldn't they feel cheated? If someone is listening to an artist for hours a day, everyday, then that person is getting a lot more value out of the artist than a measly 7 bucks(/euros) per month. So it's natural for the artist to demand to be paid more. The issue is basically that the more money comes not from the person who's driving more listens, but instead from other users who are using the service far less.

The pro-rata approach basically exists to hides this unfairness, since paying for a streaming subscription feels like paying a fixed cost for a fixed service (access to a massive library). But there's potential for disruption, I think, via a service that exposes this unfairness through a-la-carte rates.

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

#88

Post by jonplackett »

westwing wrote: post #18
jonplackett wrote: post #8

The algorithm for payment is dumb. If I pay £15 a month and only listen to 4 artists over that time (I’m very predictable) I want those 4 to get £3.75 each. But they won’t. Lady ga ha will get most of it.

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.

Yes she can ask for it, and get it. But that isn't good. It means the smaller artists are subsidising her. She is taking money for listens to other people's songs. I don't mean to victimise Lady ga ga here of course. It's just that the bigger artists are only getting any decent money at all because the smaller ones get virtually nothing.
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