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Justice at Spotify

unionofmusicians.org

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Re: Justice at Spotify

#271

Post by ProofByAccident »

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…

>Actually, now that we're digital, the economies of scale of music are similar to software, in that they are massive

Is this the case? It seems that there's the fundamental limitation of 10 musicians not being able to record a song in 1/10th of the time. Certainly there are SOME economies of scale, but it seems a little incredible that music would be as "factory producible" as something like a bookshelf or a car.

> The advent of physical media and distribution control enabled them to form these cartels, and extract rents to enable luxurious "rockstar" lifestyles for a select few.

This seems incongruous with the rest of what you are saying. Yes clearly there is an entrepreneurial component of music, and absolutely eg. SoundCloud and BandCamp is enabling independent artists in new and important ways. That doesn't change the fact that massive financial institutions are rent-seeking the bejeezus out of the bulk of the industry in a way that (to me) would appear to hurt competition.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#272

Post by tebbers »

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…

I agree with this argument, and this is THE reason why I don't pay for a streaming subscription. I have no desire to see my money to go to the likes of Justin Bieber (who I don't listen to), whereas I would much prefer it goes to the smaller ambient and indie artists that I like to listen to while working.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#273

Post by Tenal »

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…

Do you have any idea how much bloat Spotify has that it can cut? Have you ever seen the NYC office? It's padded with hundreds of overpaid "creatives" poached from every NY agency who do nothing more than create unnecessary traditional marketing campaigns, all of which serve no one, while spending 80% of the day snacking on premium goods and watching insider music acts in their gigantic, swanky, luxury office space.

Source: Been there, seen it, a long time. Spotify needs to be nothing more than a functioning music utility. Instead their US offices are structured like a massive, bloated, 90's style agency party zone.

Trust me.

There is room to cut costs.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#274

Post by mdoms »

If it's a worldwide event maybe they should define what a "penny" is. I think it's USD$0.01 but honestly I could be off by an order of magnitude, I really don't know.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#275

Post by diddid »

If artists got a penny per stream, I'd create one song and set it up on repeat 24/7.

365 days * 24 hours * 60 minutes = 525600 minutes 525600 / 3 minute song = 175200 streams 175200 pennies / 100 = $1752

So I could pay 120 bucks a year and make 1752! I like the sound of that! And with the family plan, I could pay 1.5x the cost a month but get 5x the revenue!

Re: Justice at Spotify

#276

Post by jyrkesh »

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…

Price fixing? You can buy music directly from artists for any price you want. I do it all the time on Bandcamp and independent stores, for both digital and vinyl releases.

Piracy set the price at 0, Spotify pulled the price up from there, but there is literally nothing stopping consumers today from paying more for music except that they don't want to.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#277

Post by dublinben »

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.

The ethical way to pay for music is to actually buy it from a site like Bandcamp, instead of perpetually renting it from Spotify.[0] Expect to pay about $10 for an album.

Bandcamp usually takes a ~20% cut, but now has regular events where they waive their cut.[1]

It should be clear that $10/mo is not a sustainable price to pay to listen to any and all music ever recorded.

[0]https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/how-much-more-money-artists-e...

[1]https://isitbandcampfriday.com/

Re: Justice at Spotify

#279

Post by pwinnski »

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…

Is "charging so little you can't cover your rightful costs" bad at business? Then yes, I believe that Spotify is bad at business.

Hypothetically, my profit margin making widgets would be better if I could just pay my raw material provider half-price. I could pay them half-price, add, say, another one-third of that to cover other costs and overhead, and probably dominate the market since I could charge less for my widgets than any competitors who have to pay the full raw material costs.

Again, bad at business? Depends on who you're asking.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#280

Post by ProofByAccident »

jyrkesh wrote: post #276
geodel wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Price fixing? You can buy music directly from artists for any price you want. I do it all the time on Bandcamp and independent stores, for both digital and vinyl releases. Piracy set the price at 0, Spotify pulled the price up from there, but there is literally nothing stopping consumers today from paying more for music except that they don't want to.

>Price fixing? You can buy music directly from artists for any price you want.

I think you're missing my point. The opportunity to market direct to consumer does not negate the massive wage-setting power of a cartel which can buy up rivals, production talent, leverage radio, venue, and streaming contracts, etc.

Ex: wired.com/story/opinion-big-music-needs-to-be-broken-up-to-save-the-industry/

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