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Justice at Spotify

unionofmusicians.org

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Re: Justice at Spotify

#261

Post by xorcist »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #248
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…

No, I don't think you are. For years there's been a conflict broadly defined as "streaming rates paid to artists are irrationally low" vs. "streaming services aren't making money as it is"; the problem is that those aren't mutually exclusive positions. They can both be true at the same time. At least to me, this suggests that the real problem is that $8–10 a month for ad-free streams was too low a price point to set.…

> the real problem is that $8–10 a month for ad-free streams

Which sounds a bit weird to me. How many people used to spend more than $10 every month on LP or CD records. Probably many enthusiasts, but the average customer? Not a chance.

Yet artists say they get paid a lot less. The money must go somewhere.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#262

Post by Rule35 »

mattnewton wrote: post #201
stephenhuey wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they cannot pay the artists more, a long-term freemium plan might not be a great business model then. If free users are seriously cutting into profits, should they change the free plan to a limited free trial? I was around in the 80s 90s and we didn't really have free cassettes and CDs and radio paid studios & artists with ad revenue. Spotify is well known enough now that it could be argued an unending free tier m…

This doesn’t make sense to me, it’s not that they are eating into profits, it’s that they are eating into average margin; they presumably still at least break even on free users. And I would bet dollars to donuts that those free users are not going to convert to paid when piracy, YouTube videos, and free trials of other services exist.

I think Spotify is the first service to tempt me from piracy. Piracy doesn't handle discovery, or access across multiple devices, is a pain, and is actually (who knew?) illegal. Spotify handles all of those and won't get you arrested.

Youtube for music is simply worse than pirating and being caught.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#263

Post by Galanwe »

Hamuko wrote: post #214
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.

I get that you seem bored by the hype around blockchain, but that does not make anything blockchain related bad.

In this particular issue, I think blockchain is a great solution, as it allows to publish content, gather fees from listeners to artists, without the need of an intermediary.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#264

Post by ProofByAccident »

geodel wrote: post #253
ProofByAccident wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your example is a little specious in that a bookcase is very different from a song. The production of one has huge economies of scale, whereas a song doesn't. I agree that producing things competitively is important to improve overall efficiency, but with the music industry you really have a small cartel of massive labels dictating the terms for everyone else (ie. engaging in massively anti-competitive behavior). It…

> small cartel of massive labels dictating the terms for everyone else Only for those who sign with them. So this brings the question as what's stopping these musicians to make music independently and market using internet along the way avoiding these labels. It is not even the case that music can be listened only via monopolistic mobile app stores. I have used small independent service providers for tax filing, lawn…

> Only for those who sign with them.

I think generally the point of cartelization is to make it very challenging NOT to sign with them. Clearly many independent labels can thrive, and I can't imagine that it's impossible for an artist to start their own label. Nevertheless, when eg. sound and recording engineers can be aggressively poached by a major studio it's got to be challenging to go it alone.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#265

Post by throw_m239339 »

efsavage wrote: post #84
101008 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is not sustainable for the artists, how is this different than piracy? I'd say it is even worse, because people is paying but the money goes to a middleware company that is not paying the right price. It is like buying CDs from the street sellers.

"sustainable for the artists" There seems to be some idea of what musicians "should" make that other professions don't benefit from. I would like to make the same money from making furniture as I do from writing code, but I can't. I could blame the furniture stores for not promoting me or taking too big a cut or any number of other factors, or I could accept the fact that I'm not an amazing woodworker. But I still ma…

Comments such as yours are why I will not let my music be on Spotify as an artist. It's no different than piracy, the user is just paying Spotify for convenience of not having to search stuff on Soulseek themselves...

The fact that slapping some ads on my music on youtube made me earn more than being on Spotify says everything about how bad that deal is for any artist...

Re: Justice at Spotify

#266

Post by oh_sigh »

Justice would be paying out revenue on a per-streamer basis.

I pay $10/mo to spotify, lets say $7 makes it to artists. If I do 100% of my streams for Obscure Band X, shouldn't 100% of my $7 go to Obscure Band X?

Right now, I end up a large fraction of that $7 to Taylor Swift, the weeknd, drake, etc, and not the actual performers I listen to.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#267

Post by Aissen »

natdempk wrote: post #252
Aissen wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Is there a translation of this report anywhere?

Try https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&u=https:/... although it doesn't have graphics.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#268

Post by [deleted] »

efsavage wrote: post #256
ProofByAccident wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your example is a little specious in that a bookcase is very different from a song. The production of one has huge economies of scale, whereas a song doesn't. I agree that producing things competitively is important to improve overall efficiency, but with the music industry you really have a small cartel of massive labels dictating the terms for everyone else (ie. engaging in massively anti-competitive behavior). It…

> The production of one has huge economies of scale, whereas a song doesn't. Actually, now that we're digital, the economies of scale of music are similar to software, in that they are massive (and Spotify is a key enabler of that). > It seems weird to me that your pro-market ideology leads you to support what (to me) seems to be more or less wage-fixing for a labor supplier (musicians) Musicians have been largely en…

[deleted]

Re: Justice at Spotify

#269

Post by Rule35 »

mikepurvis wrote: post #199
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…

The other issue that has been raised a number of times is that I believe the revenue is still divided up based on overall listens across the platform, which means it's dominated by artists who feature heavily in popular playlists and automation-driver radio/recommendations. These listens are often passive and should not be considered as valuable as those of someone listens only a few hours a month, but spends all of…

Should is a big word, but it feels like Spotify could make us indie-lovers happy by rewarding the intentional listens with slightly more money. Perhaps giving them a cut of the next few recommendations. Even though I know that famous artists would get more of this than the indies, taking value from the long mid-catalog.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#270

Post by dwohnitmok »

xorcist wrote: post #261
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think you are. For years there's been a conflict broadly defined as "streaming rates paid to artists are irrationally low" vs. "streaming services aren't making money as it is"; the problem is that those aren't mutually exclusive positions. They can both be true at the same time. At least to me, this suggests that the real problem is that $8–10 a month for ad-free streams was too low a price point to set.…

> the real problem is that $8–10 a month for ad-free streams Which sounds a bit weird to me. How many people used to spend more than $10 every month on LP or CD records. Probably many enthusiasts, but the average customer? Not a chance. Yet artists say they get paid a lot less. The money must go somewhere.

> Yet artists say they get paid a lot less. The money must go somewhere.

I don't have any stats for this, but my first guess would be way more paid artists (before the internet, how many people could even hope to make money off music? Physical distribution vs digital distribution is a huge barrier).

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