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Justice at Spotify

unionofmusicians.org

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Re: Justice at Spotify

#161

Post by kgog »

disgu wrote: post #109
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.

Wait - how are you responsible for the fact that the artists sign away their rights to shitty big labels that take the majority of the money that work generates? How are you responsible for dumb decisions musicians make?

I bet you also think grocery workers are dumb for agreeing to work while demanding better working conditions and fair pay.

They are not dumb decisions. An indie artist HAS to sign with labels if they want to make it in the industry. That's the way it's been and we've accepted for decades that that's the way it will be.

Mistreating workers is not okay. Workers joining the status quo to make a living is not dumb. Calling them "dumb" online is deplorable, however.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#162

Post by justynadorsz »

toyg wrote: post #35
jmercouris wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll have to enlighten me. What are the better ways? Why should you not own copyright to that which you produce?

> Why should you not own copyright to that which you produce? You don't want to use that line of argument, since authors and musicians are among the very few categories of workers with that privilege. As much as I agree with you (and actually think that privilege to be expanded to all workers), you won't find any solidarity from the common public on that line.

This is interesting. I didn't know that most people were against copyright.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#163

Post by core-questions »

disgu wrote: post #108
cratermoon wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And Spotify is already paying out 75% of it's revenue to royalty holders Realize that the royalty holders are not the musicians, but typically the major labels. The musicians get virtually nothing.

The fact that they're showing up at Spotify's offices then shows even more why they're not making money. They seemingly don't understand the business they're in... at all. They sign shitty contracts that leave them with "virtually nothing" and then complain to someone who is not responsible for them having "virtually nothing".

> They seemingly don't understand the business they're in... at all.

Do you know any musicians? Like, real musicians, for whom music is their life and their life's work, not dabblers?

Typically these are not shrewd business types. They don't hold a lot of negotiating power; if they're lucky enough to get a chance with a label deal they often don't push back on the terms very much at all. Labels are notoriously predatory in this regard, particularly mainstream large companies.

All they want is a fair shake. They see themselves and their fellow artists being screwed continually, while people that have nothing to do with their hard work, long nights, and passionate effort make money off their backs. For every artist that learns, there are ten more willing to take their place just for a tiny sliver of a chance at popularity.

The solution here is to do whatever we want to continue the slow work towards destroying mainstream labels. Indie labels still offer a reasonable value proposition in terms of the promotion and recording work they do in exchange for a share of the proceeds; mainstream labels don't. Like most media industries, they're headed by parenthetical elites, cosmopolitan types who have no loyalty to anything but profit, and will squeeze out every drop no matter the impact to the actual working artists.

Fuck 'em. Don't listen to mainstream music. Support indie artists and labels; buy direct wherever possible. If anything, the protest should be to make it trivial to directly host your music with Spotify for a nominal hosting fee, so that all revenue can go direct to the artist, rather than having to go through a 3rd party service.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#164

Post by kgog »

disgu wrote: post #111
moistbar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what do you expect to happen to Spotify when the musicians leave for someplace that pays them appropriately?

Musicians have complained in the past and threatened to leave and some have left... just to then come back.

I'm trying to come up with a word for that.. I think it starts with a M and ends with a Y and has a onopol in the middle somewhere.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#165

Post by shados »

Barrin92 wrote: post #121
disgu wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify is not the corporate middle man. The big record companies are. Any musician is free to not put their music on spotify and to not sell the rights to a record company. They can then let you stream a song for $50 on their website. It's also absolutely ridiculous that you champion those who want to make more money while also saying that everyone on the other end who wants to spend less should "stop whining".

I champion people who produce things, be that artists, software developers, woodworkers or anyone else who builds stuff. Spotify and labels are both distributors and middlemen who profit from the work of others, it's consumers and large platforms that squeeze creators with their greedy mindset of 'as much as possible, for as little money as possible'. It's long overdue that we move away from this sleazy consumer mind…

Except almost everyone can produce things. You have to produce things people want. Not only that, you need to find the people who want your stuff, especially if its niche.

Yes, I'm a highly paid software engineer. The people who created the company I work for are, however, far better paid.

There's nothing stopping me from quitting and building my own business and selling the software I produce. I have the funds to seed my own startup, so that's not even an issue. That's a shitload of work though, even if I hire people to handle the individual parts. Very quickly I'll be spending more time running a business, finding customers, marketing, dealing with legal crap, etc, than I will producing software. I can also produce software, stick it on github and hope for the best, but there's countless people who do that for shits and giggles (and for free).

Distribution, logistic, and those "middlemen" actually do a lot of work to link the product with the customers. Sure, there's parasites in the middle, organizations that just take licenses and shifts them around without doing anything. You can absolutely make a case to cut those off. But the orgs/software that link products directly to customers who want said products generate tremendous value, and it's often a lot harder to do than produce the good in the first place.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#166

Post by frabjoused »

disgu wrote: post #109
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.

Wait - how are you responsible for the fact that the artists sign away their rights to shitty big labels that take the majority of the money that work generates? How are you responsible for dumb decisions musicians make?

Why don't you become a musician and try to make it before laying it out like this? They hardly have another choice. Do you immediately assume 95% of artists are entrepreneurial fools?

Re: Justice at Spotify

#167

Post by mattnewton »

jessriedel wrote: post #158
kle wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Spotify doesn’t seem like a monopoly that has pricing power; they are in tight competition with multiple streaming services like Apple Music and amazon close behind and catching up. There are some sources that have Apple Music already with more paid subscribers than Spotify, and Spotify definitely can’t pay a penny per stream of their free ad users.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/653926/music-streaming-s...

https://www.businessofapps.com/data/spotify-statistics/

Re: Justice at Spotify

#168

Post by haneefmubarak »

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.

Well for instance, I'm on a family plan (6 people total for $15) and I stream a full workday+ daily. I know lots of people who do the same, where they have a lot of "background music" time and then a little active listening.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#169

Post by ampdepolymerase »

jsiepkes wrote: post #81
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 the 90's (Napster, Kazaa, etc.) has proven people are simply not going to pay that kind of money for the product (music). The music industry also seems a bit like a "winner takes all" market where there are a bunch of top grossing artists which make an insane amount of money and a much, much larger part which can't make a decent living out of it.

Almost every major internet content industry is winner takes all. That is just the nature of power law distributions. Ask your average social media influencer how much they make. Also your average YouTuber/Twitch streamer. It is not unique to the music industry, just that the music industry is older and has more inefficiencies in the form of middle man that don't contribute much in value production but still takes a large cut.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#170

Post by pietrovismara »

barbazoo wrote: post #66
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…

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.

> 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.

In general, price competitiveness on the market is based on some form of workforce exploitation.

I know it's not a zero sum game and so on, but someone is paying the difference on the discounted price you are offered.

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