Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Justice at Spotify

unionofmusicians.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 405 posts

Re: Justice at Spotify

#321

Post by cameroncairns »

curryst wrote: post #140
lettergram wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be honest, you aren't required to use a record label. Record labels just advertise, which definitely blow up some musicians. In contrast, take the rapper Tom McDonald, his music actually hit the top 100 charts[1][2] and he's not signed to anyone. Just him and his girlfriend creating music. Was trending as the #1 download on iTunes for a couple weeks, etc. Artists make a deal with the devil, make more money, the…

In fairness, Tom MacDonald gets a lot of external publicity from conservatives; he's mostly a right-wing political rapper. I've seen a big rise in conservative rappers on YouTube. I've got a conspiracy theory that the GOP is funding them like a record label. If so, it's a sweet deal for artists. The GOP cares far more about cultural effects than they do the money from the music.

It wouldn't be the first time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUNuNilqrDQ

It's hard to find a reliable source here but there was right wing folk music being made to combat the threat of communism in the 60s.

https://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/01/janet_greene_th.html

Re: Justice at Spotify

#322

Post by Eridrus »

ArkanExplorer wrote: post #151
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…

Are there any figures on the % of overall Spotify revenue taken by platform owners ie. Apple and Google?

None. Spotify doesn't use any of the platform mechanisms for monetization that take fractions of revenue. This is why you have to sign up on the web for Spotify.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#323

Post by dimgl »

herbturbo wrote: post #309
tschwimmer wrote: post #242

The hard truth in music (and in many creative industries) is that there's a huge oversupply (many musicians are willing to make music for free or very cheap) and demand has a low willingness to pay. The result is that there isn't much money to be made for musicians. In my mind, there's really no way around this fact. You can argue (as these folks are) that Spotify could take a smaller cut and give more to musicians.…

Yeah I think it's easy for up and coming musicians to blame Spotify for their financial woes, but as someone who was an aspiring musician in the 90s I can tell you it was no picnic back then. Everyone I knew was broke, so the only way to make a record was to get signed, and that involved playing shows in front of A&R people which meant finding venues etc - all on your own dime. If you did manage to get signed and get…

I realize this is tangential, but I'm currently making a video game. Is the video game industry similar? I worry that I won't get much return on my investment...

Re: Justice at Spotify

#324

Post by [deleted] »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #195
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…

Isn't Spotify barely making a profit? I think the real issue here is that people just don't want to pay as much for music like they did during the golden age of the CD. Most Spotify users are still on the free tier. Blaming streaming companies isn't gonna change that.

[deleted]

Re: Justice at Spotify

#325

Post by Eridrus »

bogomipz wrote: post #240
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) performan…

> 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.

Then they should push for that specifically, but it would not change the average rate paid per stream, but rebalance payments away from artists which are listened to by heavy music users towards artists which are listened to light music users.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#326

Post by ksec »

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 that is 75% to Labels.

Why aren't these people targeting those labels?

Why aren't these people targeting others like Apple?

Or they want Spotify to operate as a Non-Profit because Apple is currently making Apple Music a Net Zero Profit business? ( Diluting there services revenue margin )

Re: Justice at Spotify

#327

Post by paxys »

tschwimmer wrote: post #242

The hard truth in music (and in many creative industries) is that there's a huge oversupply (many musicians are willing to make music for free or very cheap) and demand has a low willingness to pay. The result is that there isn't much money to be made for musicians. In my mind, there's really no way around this fact. You can argue (as these folks are) that Spotify could take a smaller cut and give more to musicians.…

Exactly this. You could remove 98% of music from Spotify and people would still gladly keep paying the $10/mo because they are there for Drake and Taylor Swift.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#328

Post by FalconSensei »

optimiz3 wrote: post #284
xorcist wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

IMO spending $10 a month on CDs is a different market, since you own an asset in perpetuity. Spotify would have to guarantee a perpetual license that expands your library access the more you pay in. Instead, Spotify rents access to a single large library (which is good enough for most but very different).

Exactly.

When I buy a CD, I have a physical good that is displayed on my shelf and it's going to stay with me for years, and which I can possibly re-sell.

$10 for Spotify gives me a month of listening to music. But after that is over, all I got is another $10 payment for the next month.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#329

Post by lettergram »

curryst wrote: post #140
lettergram wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be honest, you aren't required to use a record label. Record labels just advertise, which definitely blow up some musicians. In contrast, take the rapper Tom McDonald, his music actually hit the top 100 charts[1][2] and he's not signed to anyone. Just him and his girlfriend creating music. Was trending as the #1 download on iTunes for a couple weeks, etc. Artists make a deal with the devil, make more money, the…

In fairness, Tom MacDonald gets a lot of external publicity from conservatives; he's mostly a right-wing political rapper. I've seen a big rise in conservative rappers on YouTube. I've got a conspiracy theory that the GOP is funding them like a record label. If so, it's a sweet deal for artists. The GOP cares far more about cultural effects than they do the money from the music.

I don’t doubt there is some of that, probably from all sides frankly.

However, the major point is that you don’t need the distribution.

Louis CK famously released a comedy special online with a download and just asked people to pay and not copy and share. He said he made more money off that than any other special he’d done.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#330

Post by paxys »

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 is never going to happen because the top artists and their labels would never agree to it, and they are the ones bringing in the users.

> The research found that in the current system the top 0.4% of artists get around 10% of all revenue, but they would only get about 5.6% of revenue under a user-centric system

Post reply on HN