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Justice at Spotify

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Re: Justice at Spotify

#151

Post by ArkanExplorer »

Eridrus wrote: post #27

So I wanted to try put this into perspective since "a penny per stream" is intentionally meant to sound insignificant. This seems like it would roughly double Spotify's costs: https://www.republicworld.com/technology-news/apps/how-much-... And Spotify is already paying out 75% of it's revenue to royalty holders: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/spotify-pr... So unless you believe that Spotify is bad…

Are there any figures on the % of overall Spotify revenue taken by platform owners ie. Apple and Google?

Re: Justice at Spotify

#152

Post by 3saryHg6LP2e »

Firadeoclus wrote: post #143
3saryHg6LP2e wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's do some back-of-the-envelop calculations: Let's say people stream for 4 hours a day on average. 4 * 60 = 240 minutes Let's say a song is 3 minutes. 240 / 3 = 80 streams == 80p/day 80p * 30 days per month = 2400p 2400p == £24 So that would be ~2.4x increase in price for end users without including Spotify cut or taxes. Doesn't seem possible to me.

It seems extremely unlikely to me that Spotify users stream 4 hours per day on average. I suspect it's less than one hour.

It's a fairly arbitrarily number sure, but I think it could be representative. During the working week I listen to music almost all the working day, when I as commuting that adds on another couple of hours.

Even if it's 2 hours a day it would still represent an increase in costs.

Another poster put it better: for $9.99 per month you would be able to pay for 999 streams, I am sure a typical user can easily exceed 999 streams in a month.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#154

Post by m-p-3 »

Seems like the artists are barking at the wrong tree. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for artists getting their fair share for something they created.

Spotify has to deal with the record labels because they own the licensing rights, there isn't much Spotify can do about it themselves.

The only thing I could see Spotify doing is to become a label themselves, and giving a bigger slice of the piedirectly to artists under them. But that could also bring some consequences, like becoming Spotify-exclusives, etc.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#156

Post by shados »

kfwerf wrote: post #103
barbazoo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes me sad to time and time again learn that the low prices of services I love are unsustainable and instead subsidized by treating someone unfairly downstream. I wish I could be told what the ethical price for something is and I might actually pay it. And if that price is too high, then maybe that service shouldn't exist in the first place.

I think it is sustainable if we can cut out the middle man, the royalties go mainly to labels and less so to artists. E.g. if an artist doesnt use a label on Spotify im sure his revenue will be higher and the current price would be sustainable. I think the royalties that go to labels are unsustainable

Doesn't services like Spotify make that easier?

AFAIK while you need a distributor and can't just upload your stuff like you can on Youtube, there's a bunch of them that seem to give the artists everything.

If the artist choose to go with a label that takes their royalties, that's on them. If they do it because they want the visibility and services, that has a cost.

Music is a field where a lot of people do it just for fun, and it's quite saturated. Supply (as in diversity of products) way outweigh demand.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#157

Post by jsiepkes »

wilde wrote: post #58
Eridrus wrote: post #27

So I wanted to try put this into perspective since "a penny per stream" is intentionally meant to sound insignificant. This seems like it would roughly double Spotify's costs: https://www.republicworld.com/technology-news/apps/how-much-... And Spotify is already paying out 75% of it's revenue to royalty holders: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/spotify-pr... So unless you believe that Spotify is bad…

Spotify doesn’t want to take the risk, but there’s probably money on the table from all the small gyms, coffee shops, etc that should be paying commercial rates.

I don't know about other countries but in the Netherlands companies already pay an additional fee which ends-up with the royalty holders [1]. Meaning you have to pay a special license fee when playing music in venue's such as stores, cafe's and even a common office work space.

[1] https://www.bumastemra.nl/en/everything-for-music-users/type...

Re: Justice at Spotify

#158

Post by jessriedel »

kle wrote: post #105
Eridrus wrote: post #27

So I wanted to try put this into perspective since "a penny per stream" is intentionally meant to sound insignificant. This seems like it would roughly double Spotify's costs: https://www.republicworld.com/technology-news/apps/how-much-... And Spotify is already paying out 75% of it's revenue to royalty holders: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/spotify-pr... So unless you believe that Spotify is bad…

While I agree more money should be sent towards small artists and I really hate to see myself defending a giant tech company, the demands of "x per stream" always makes me a bit confused. Since spotify already pay out the vast majority of their revenue, there is not really much more room for increase there, at best 5-10% which likely wouldn't settle the case. Reasonable suggestions would be that either: 1. labels sho…

Maybe the artists think consumers should pay more. If Spotify wasn't a quasi-monopoly, it would seem silly for artists to demand consumers pay more only on the Spotify platform, but since Spotify is, the argument is at least prima facie reasonable?

Re: Justice at Spotify

#159

Post by falcolas »

breck wrote: post #148
falcolas wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An artist isn’t entitled to having their work funded unless someone voluntarily funds it. Then we simply never get their work. Some people would absolutely continue to create for the fun of it, but they'll remain the minority. Movies you'd watch in a Theater? Completely gone. Commercially funded TV shows, gone. A vast majority of books, written by full time writers and researchers, gone. And I'll also posit that mo…

If everyone who threatens to stop creating content if they can't enslave ideas, were to stop creating content, the world would be a better place. The idea that people would stop creating is absurd. I work in Cancer Research and the absolute least contributing people in the medical industry are the ones obsessed with patenting and copyrighting their work, which is usually garbage and of frivolous value compared to the…

> the world would be a better place.

Really? Sounds pretty terrible to me. Few books. Few videogames. No movies. No TV shows. Most of the internet obliterated. Any content that is created is copied and regurgitated so much you'd be hard pressed find out who actually created it.

I personally like consuming entertainment. I work with the creative side of my brain all day long, and being able to go home and turn it off with some relatively mindless entertainment (my form is a combination of books and videogames). I'd hate to come home one day and only have a zero budget, poorly tested, game to play, or a book that I've already re-read enough to quote it by memory.

> And no modern epic is significantly better than Ἰλιάς.

Pure opinion. And in any case, there's only one Iliad. There's hundreds of other "modern" epics out there - many of which I find more entertaining, though they are not as literarily significant.

> the open source code powering top public domain projects

Is it worth re-iterating that all of the open source licenses is supported by copyright protections?

> All of us are putting grains of sand on top.

Which obviously has its own value, as aptly demonstrated by the entertainment industry as a whole being valued in the trillions of dollars.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#160

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Eridrus wrote: post #27

So I wanted to try put this into perspective since "a penny per stream" is intentionally meant to sound insignificant. This seems like it would roughly double Spotify's costs: https://www.republicworld.com/technology-news/apps/how-much-... And Spotify is already paying out 75% of it's revenue to royalty holders: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/spotify-pr... So unless you believe that Spotify is bad…

According to one source [1], Spotify users stream on average 25 hours a month. Assuming an average song is 3 minutes [2], that's 500 streams per month. Going with the $9.99 per month rate, users pay about $0.02 per stream. Currently, the artists see only $0.0038 per stream, or less than 1/5th of what Spotify makes.

I think that with a 50% profit margin, Spotify should be very happy. Of course, it's not that easy / straightforward, all conditions and caveats apply, etc etc.

[1]: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/spotify-statistics/ [2]: https://www.music-jobs.com/uk/article/news/news-pop-songs-ar...

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