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'Weird Al' Roasts Spotify's Artist Payout System in Year-End Wrapped Video

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21–30 of 146 posts

Re: 'Weird Al' Roasts Spotify's Artist Payout System in Year-End Wrapped Video

#21

[flagged]

Since when has "deserves" ever been part of the equation?

Yeah. I forgot this.

I also forgot how much she's liked in the middle aged, white male demographic, so I'm not likely to get much sympathy here on HN.

Re: 'Weird Al' Roasts Spotify's Artist Payout System in Year-End Wrapped Video

#22

[flagged]

I've got my own opinions, as a musician, about Swift and her music, and in point of fact we are probably on the same page (despite me being that middle aged white guy that you stereotyped as liking her).

But man, does this take feel... whiney.

Re: 'Weird Al' Roasts Spotify's Artist Payout System in Year-End Wrapped Video

#24

[flagged]

I’m sick of seeing Taylor Swift referenced as anything more than a mediocre preteen icon, but we all have to deal with things we don’t like.

Obviously, her appeal is wider now than mere "preteen". For example, Taylor Swift has also become, inter alia, an LGBT icon, and that has been the context of most Mastodon mentions of her I have seen. Since HN and Mastodon have similar demographics, it isn't surprising if she gets mentioned occassionally in these parts.

Re: 'Weird Al' Roasts Spotify's Artist Payout System in Year-End Wrapped Video

#26
AFAIK Spotify doesn't pay per stream. They pay a percentage of revenue to artists that is divided based on streams of their music. Record companies and big artists negotiate these deals with Spotify. It seems like artists should be more angry with their labels about the deals that are negotiated than mad at Spotify.

Re: 'Weird Al' Roasts Spotify's Artist Payout System in Year-End Wrapped Video

#27
post #2

I'm not familiar with the structure of stream payouts on Spotify, but if 80 million streams gives 12 dollars, that means Taylor Swift's 26.1B streams give ~4k? I knew the rates were bad but damn...

Weird Al is something of a commedian, so when $12 was probably an exaggeration for commedic affect. Like a joke.

Re: 'Weird Al' Roasts Spotify's Artist Payout System in Year-End Wrapped Video

#28
> which is notoriously bad at paying musicians.

The only thing I ever see are people comparing against the money that 90's rockstars used to be able to bring in from album sales.

That ship sailed a long time ago, Spotify take everyone's money, substract a percentage for themselves and distribute the rest based upon number of plays.

If you were a big artist it's probably worse because you aren't getting a sweet deal to pull you onto a label (which we would then have you bitching about in the music press every week), or your a smaller artist and don't make much off it because you don't get the plays but you would have never seen the big money from tape/CD sales anyway.

I've also seen people argue that they never see the sort of money that they would get with a single play from BBC Radio, completely misunderstanding that BBC radio would probably never play their song, there is a much smaller bandwidth for playing music. Per person listening to your song, it works out not far off a play on Radio 6.

Re: 'Weird Al' Roasts Spotify's Artist Payout System in Year-End Wrapped Video

#29
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a different article: Not 3 cents, a third of one penny per stream. By that metric, Weird Al would have earned a little more than $12, more like $350,000 but his point stands. https://gizmodo.com/weird-al-spotify-wrapped-artist-pay-1851...

If that's how much he earns, I'm not sure his point does stand. If he's making $350k from Spotify, I'm guessing he makes about that much from all the other streaming services combined. $700k in income from what is essentially an advertisement for your tours and merch feels like a pretty good deal.

$700k regardless is a good chunk of cash, but can you blame an artist for asking, "Whoa what the fuck?" if that's still a lot less than they would've made in a time before Spotify existed?

Re: 'Weird Al' Roasts Spotify's Artist Payout System in Year-End Wrapped Video

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sick of seeing Taylor Swift referenced as anything more than a mediocre preteen icon, but we all have to deal with things we don’t like.

Obviously, her appeal is wider now than mere "preteen". For example, Taylor Swift has also become, inter alia , an LGBT icon, and that has been the context of most Mastodon mentions of her I have seen. Since HN and Mastodon have similar demographics, it isn't surprising if she gets mentioned occassionally in these parts.

shall we ask this reply person to explain to someone from the 1980s who listen to Joan Jet and Lita Ford what part of his or her explain response makes any clear logic at any time of day...
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