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Justice at Spotify

unionofmusicians.org

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Re: Justice at Spotify

#231

Post by path411 »

Macha wrote: post #10

The ask is 1p/stream. I'm not sure that that's actually sustainable without a massive rise in spotify prices, given the proportion of free users and even paid users that listen to more than 1000 tracks a month. If spotify raises prices, consumers go back to piracy. I'm not sure this will have the effect they want. Let's imagine a radio station. Something medium sized, about a million listeners. They play a track. Are…

Imagine if Youtube creators started trying to get $0.01 per play. This is just a little crazy. Spotify and competitors successfully captured a LARGE number of people who were not paying anyone at all. There has already been a large increase in friction on streaming music the past few years, this will just be a nail in the coffin pushing everyone to go back to pirating.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#232

Post by donovanian »

falcolas wrote: post #149
ccsnags wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spending time on something people aren’t willing to pay for is always a waste of time, whether you’re writing a book or digging holes. We need to stop assuming that having no copyright means that the work cannot be monetized. It just can’t be monetized as if it was a physical object or service rendered. Vinyl records, tee shirts, patronage, book signings, lectures, anything that isn’t copyright dependent can be monet…

We had that once upon a time (the original version of Patronage), and it resulted in some, but not very much, artwork in the grand scheme of things. Nowhere near the amount we enjoy today with our spare-change subscriptions. Copyright also allows more creators to create without requiring them to be a live personality as well; to split their time between creating and hustling for money.

> and it resulted in some, but not very much, artwork in the grand scheme of things

I'm not sure I follow, my understanding is that patronage, say from the Medici family, led to a proliferation of art.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#233

Post by Hamuko »

tschwimmer wrote: post #221
Hamuko wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who has power over the record labels? Spotify. What power does Spotify have over record labels?

Distribution tends to be the hardest part of any supply chain and it doesn't seem like music is any different. Spotify owns distribution and has almost no competitors anymore (either online or offline) and the future is very clearly streaming. So the labels will end up depending on Spotify for revenue. In 2018, streaming revenue accounted for half of all label revenue[0], and that will only increase. [0] https://mash…

>Spotify owns distribution and has almost no competitors anymore

According to the statistics I have, Spotify has 34% market share while Apple Music has 21%, Amazon Music has 15% and others have 30%. That's hardly "no competitors".

Re: Justice at Spotify

#234

Post by csommers »

Then don’t put your band there. Oh wait: you’d be complaining about Bandcamp and no recognition then.

Not everything needs to be “justice”. Quit diluting words and actions.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#235

Post by meddlepal »

robbyking wrote: post #191
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.

I think this is the main thing most music fans (and young musicians) are forgetting: historically, musicians have never made money off of album sales, labels have. Musicians make the bulk of their money from touring and merchandise. Steve Albini does a good job of breaking it down here: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music . FTFA: > For the average band, a $250,000 advance (in 1993 dollars) is distrib…

Historically this model made a lot of business sense... it was hard to distribute before the internet. The record company took the product and marketed and sold it to a broader audience than the artist or band would ever be able to reach on their own. The artist in turn collected the money on the live performances which, if there product was successful, would yield good returns.

I don't know if it makes nearly as much sense in a world where you can just upload your music to YouTube and do direct marketing via Twitter/FB/TikTok.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#236

Post by johbjo »

Copyright and licensing is complicated, in the sense that a track has many different copyright holders, and the record companies usually make sure to own distribution rights by contract. The composers and artists might be powerless, even though they own the actual rights (which can not be sold or transferred). This partly the reason why the major labels hold so much power.

Here is a great source for learning more: http://copyx.org/lectures/

Re: Justice at Spotify

#237

Post by FireBeyond »

RHSman2 wrote: post #63

It's just crazy. Musicians are getting the equivalent of an ad per stream. As a musician/composer that does it for the love I put it many, many hours on each song. Its frickin' outrageous that people get as good as nothing and it seems as the more successful you are the better the deal you get #pyramid Also, the CEO of spotify is just horrible.

> Musicians are getting the equivalent of an ad per stream.

Except when I listen to an album, I'm often listening to 15 "ads" (tracks) in a row so I'm not really seeing the equivalence. Especially when there are albums I listen to in their entirety multiple times a month.

At least I use Tidal, which may have its faults but has historically paid out the most to artists.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#238

Post by notriddle »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #95
mchusma wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US Constitution set copyright originally as 14 years, extendable by another 14. This sounds about right. I think artists would not be dissuaded from working and would monetize the roughly the same with 20-30 year copyright terms.

That seems quite long to me. 28 years is half of the average lifetime. Producing a certain sequence of sounds entitles you to own those sounds until people not yet born are full adults?

That doesn't seem too awful. It basically means everything from the 80's or early 90's goes into the public domain.

After that much time, it's a crime keeping the copyright monopoly: it's either exhausted all possible profit, so there's no point, or it's been around long enough that everything after it is influenced by it, like season 4 and earlier of The Simpsons, and the original Star Wars movies.

In other words, that seems like a decent cut-off point to say that if you still want to hold copyright on them, then you're rent-seeking off of stuff that has kinda become "cultural identity" stuff, specifically because it's what people grew up watching and influenced by.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#239

Post by hellbanTHIS »

Hell they might already be paying a penny per stream to some major labels, and everybody else takes whatever's left over, we have no idea.

Maybe Drake's label demands a penny per stream for his new album or they pull it. And then somebody else who's on a tiny label gets 0.00000000001 cent per stream because that's all that's left.

They really need transparency, the labels will never be transparent so Spotify has to be. If nobody's transparent about these deals then there probably needs to be legislation.

That would be obvious anti-competitive behavior on the part of music labels if that's what's going on, and knowing them it probably is.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#240

Post by bogomipz »

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'

"Royalty holders" is not even an actual term. Copyright holders are the owners of master recording - often a record company. Streaming services license entire catalogs for a fixed price for a fixed period of time. Streaming service don't pay record labels royalties. Royalties of which there are two in the context of streaming are a) performance royalty and b) a mechanical royalty both of which are paid out to the publisher and songwriter.

>"So unless you believe that Spotify is bad at business and there's an extra ~75% of revenue Spotify could pull out of a hat, this is basically impossible to satisfy without cratering the total revenue by doubling prices, which is probably not in artist's interests."

The whole argument that the current predominant streaming model is the only viable business model is flawed. This seems to presume that the "pro-rata" distribution model that Spotify uses is the only distribution model. There is an alternative model that many artists are pushing for which is a the "user centric' distribution model. In that model the calculation of payments is based on the listening habits of each individual user. A simplified examples is that I only listen to one artist in a given month. In the user centric model the entire 10% of record labels 70% usually allocated to the artist cut is paid to that artist rather than those streams being calculated as percentage of all songs streamed from that one of the big 3's record label's massive catalogs.

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