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Justice at Spotify

unionofmusicians.org

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Re: Justice at Spotify

#211

Post by disantlor »

kangaroozach wrote: post #206

The model should be like Medium. Allocate peoples monthly membership in accordance to their listens. If one month I listen to 100 streams of Bob Dylan and thats it, then he should get my entire $7.00 instead of just a few cents for my small amount of streams. https://qz.com/1660465/the-way-spotify-and-apple-music-pays-...

This seems almost too simple & good to be true. The counter points in the linked article mention that its too "computationally expensive" to calculate the payments, and the additional management costs could outweigh the benefit to smaller artists... how could that possible be true?

Re: Justice at Spotify

#212

Post by Milner08 »

101008 wrote: post #41
Milner08 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but the money has always gone to a middleman, be it record companies or Spotify. If Spotify gets any more expensive I can guarantee people will go back to privacy, music will become less accessible and those niche bands that Spotify knows I may like will never get found. I understand the need to get paid more, but I am not sure killing Spotify is the solution.

Those niche bands will put their music for free online until they are well known to get their fans pay for the music, as they did in the 90s and 00s.

Its not about it being free online, its about discovery. Spotify is currently excellent for discovering new bands. TPB? Not so much.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#213

Post by Milner08 »

moistbar wrote: post #87
SCHiM wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is piracy again. For a moment in time, piracy of movies and series was at a low point. Recently, with the fragmentation of all the different streaming services it's rising again.

The real answer is that Spotify will melt under its own inadequacy and the new platform will thrive. You adapt or you die, and I would have no sympathy for Spotify if they couldn't adapt.

I don't care if its Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music or some new competitor. But if they get more expensive they will not win people over.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#214

Post by Hamuko »

Galanwe wrote: post #26

The problem here is not the platform itself (Spotify). It'd the overall concept of needing a middle man to distribute your work. I believe blockchain can be a good remedy for unnecessary middlemen. Audius [1] is a good example applied to the music industry. [1] https://audius.co/

Blockchain is the snake oil of the Internet age. No matter what ails you, blockchain is the cure.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#216

Post by mschuetz »

kjakm wrote: post #33
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's also still remarkably cheap for unlimited access to all the music ever recorded.

For all music ever recorded, maybe. But Spotify doesn't even have half of what I'm regularly listening to - a regular annoyance - let alone half of all music ever recorded.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#217

Post by UnpossibleJim »

NopeNotToday wrote: post #173
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 / st…

How much of Spotify's revenue goes towards songwriters, labels, distributors, publishers, as opposed to the artist?

I tried to look into what radio paid out to these same people as a comparison, but the information I found seemed to be purposefully obtuse:

https://soundcharts.com/blog/radio-royalties

I couldn't actually find out what was paid, but it did look to be that, artists weren't really paid. It was song writers and publishers who were paid. Performing artists, however, only generated word of mouth which generated ticket sales - so far as I could garner.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#218

Post by Aissen »

disantlor wrote: post #211
kangaroozach wrote: post #206

The model should be like Medium. Allocate peoples monthly membership in accordance to their listens. If one month I listen to 100 streams of Bob Dylan and thats it, then he should get my entire $7.00 instead of just a few cents for my small amount of streams. https://qz.com/1660465/the-way-spotify-and-apple-music-pays-...

This seems almost too simple & good to be true. The counter points in the linked article mention that its too "computationally expensive" to calculate the payments, and the additional management costs could outweigh the benefit to smaller artists... how could that possible be true?

It's one of the demands, the "user-centric" model. It's mostly because the major record labels (who have the top artists) might see a reduction of revenue. But even that was disproved in a recent french study:

https://cnm.fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/CNM_UCPS_SyntheseF...

Re: Justice at Spotify

#219

Post by johbjo »

cratermoon wrote: post #73
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…

> 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 three or four major media companies/rights holders correspond to roughly 75% of streams on Spotify, and probably the entire catalogue of music pre 2010. This gives them the bargaining power to influence playlists, recommendations, and so on. This is what they mean by payola. They can use this to launch new artists.

Independent artists don't like this.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#220

Post by path411 »

pietrovismara wrote: post #170
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.

> 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.

There is plenty of money and it is sustainable, it's the curse of the middle man taking all of the money. If an artist uploads their own songs to spotify, there's plenty of money for the artist.
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