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EU says music streaming platforms must pay artists more

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Re: EU says music streaming platforms must pay artists more

#11

Post by atoav »

happymellon wrote: post #4
atoav wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with spotify (from my perspective as a musician in a small band) is that unless you are the most popular music act there is spotify money is nothing . Even a somewhat popular act that is played on national radio and plays on festivals will often earn more selling shirts on a single tour than they will with a year of spotify. The bigger you are the more you earn per stream and the small ones will earn next…

So you want Spotify to increase prices so that you get more money from your 10 listeners? Because that's basically what you are asking for. There are millions of artists, and the number increases daily. Unless you charge more per user the pie is just getting split between more people. What you say is exactly the same as people were saying with every other medium. I have £10 to spend on entertainment this month, perha…

Why do you assume I want anything here?

I just stated what is. Per stream the small guy gets less than the big guy. If anything the question here is why a big act gets more per stream than a small act – and what effect this ultimately has for the art that is created. There is many ways of slicing the cake without making the cake bigger. The biggest actor in the streaming business saying small acts can suck it is a statement, sure. But unless you want only corporate-created music you should remember that all artists start small and rooting for the big guy gives you nothing.

For small bands the whole thing means they have to rely more on merch, gigs and fans that actually buy things – you do streaming because it is convenient for people and you often cannot afford not not being visible on those platforms, not because it gives you any meaningful revenue.

Society doesn't owe me or my band shit, neither does Spotify. But they are not the good guy here.

Re: EU says music streaming platforms must pay artists more

#12

Post by jimmydroptables »

happymellon wrote: post #4
atoav wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with spotify (from my perspective as a musician in a small band) is that unless you are the most popular music act there is spotify money is nothing . Even a somewhat popular act that is played on national radio and plays on festivals will often earn more selling shirts on a single tour than they will with a year of spotify. The bigger you are the more you earn per stream and the small ones will earn next…

So you want Spotify to increase prices so that you get more money from your 10 listeners? Because that's basically what you are asking for. There are millions of artists, and the number increases daily. Unless you charge more per user the pie is just getting split between more people. What you say is exactly the same as people were saying with every other medium. I have £10 to spend on entertainment this month, perha…

To explain more clearly why people are saying spotify payments are unfair and what they want instead:

Lets say I pay $10 for spotify premium and listen to nothing else on spotify except my favorite {indie band}. If spotify is paying out 70% to artists, both me and surely the {indie band} would prefer that my $7 (after spotify takes $3) go directly to the {indie band}. This would be fair, as I would know that listening to my favorite artists directly supports them (also nice incentive to buy spotify premium).

What spotify is doing instead (AFAIK), is basically taking the $7 and giving $6.99999999 to {top artist on spotify} because {top artist on spotify} has 100 millions of streams and listeners and giving $0.000000001 to {indie band} because it has maybe 1-3 listeners and 10 streams.

But wait, it's even worse after recent spotify changes, because now they can just go ahead and give {top artist on spotify} the whole $7 and give the {indie band} absolutely nothing if it doesn't hit the 1000 listens for a song threshold.

That's not fair because if you are pooling everything together and then going solely based on percentages of listen counts, its easy to game the system with bot farm listeners. [1]

I understand this likely won't change, because if spotify doesn't bend over backwards to please the big labels of top artists with these obviously skewed systems where big labels get everything and small artists get nothing, the big labels would just pull their catalogue out of spotify and kill it.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et8R5i5UEjY

Re: EU says music streaming platforms must pay artists more

#13

Post by Arnt »

edgyquant wrote: post #9
happymellon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The music union they belong to should help with a most favoured nation clause. But it's not going to make the slightest difference. This is exactly what everyone whinged about in the 80/90's when no one made money on album sales but they made money touring and selling teeshirts. There was never any money in albums for artists, and to use Beyonce as the example since you brought her up https://parade.com/1138672/jessi…

This isn’t a response at all to the comment you replied to. Regardless, it should be a standard payment per stream

It is a response, in a way… it says that Beyonce too earns little of her income from streaming sales, just like the small fish do. It says that while there may be something unfair about streaming rates, it's not as unfair as the small fish think, and… does it imply that it's therefore okay? Not sure.

Re: EU says music streaming platforms must pay artists more

#15

Post by moogly »

happymellon wrote: post #8
Arnt wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, what he's asking for is a flat per-stream fee. So he earns as much from one stream as Beyonce does. She'll earn more because she has more listeners, of course.

The music union they belong to should help with a most favoured nation clause. But it's not going to make the slightest difference. This is exactly what everyone whinged about in the 80/90's when no one made money on album sales but they made money touring and selling teeshirts. There was never any money in albums for artists, and to use Beyonce as the example since you brought her up https://parade.com/1138672/jessi…

Meanwhile, Daniel Ek's estimated net worth is $3.5 billion[1]

[1]: https://www.forbes.com/profile/daniel-ek/

Re: EU says music streaming platforms must pay artists more

#16

Post by baxuz »

jimmydroptables wrote: post #12
happymellon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you want Spotify to increase prices so that you get more money from your 10 listeners? Because that's basically what you are asking for. There are millions of artists, and the number increases daily. Unless you charge more per user the pie is just getting split between more people. What you say is exactly the same as people were saying with every other medium. I have £10 to spend on entertainment this month, perha…

To explain more clearly why people are saying spotify payments are unfair and what they want instead: Lets say I pay $10 for spotify premium and listen to nothing else on spotify except my favorite {indie band}. If spotify is paying out 70% to artists, both me and surely the {indie band} would prefer that my $7 (after spotify takes $3) go directly to the {indie band}. This would be fair, as I would know that listenin…

Oh wow I did not know this. Are there any other services that have a fairer model?

If not, why is the EU singling out Spotify?

Re: EU says music streaming platforms must pay artists more

#17

Post by Guillaume86 »

baxuz wrote: post #16
jimmydroptables wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To explain more clearly why people are saying spotify payments are unfair and what they want instead: Lets say I pay $10 for spotify premium and listen to nothing else on spotify except my favorite {indie band}. If spotify is paying out 70% to artists, both me and surely the {indie band} would prefer that my $7 (after spotify takes $3) go directly to the {indie band}. This would be fair, as I would know that listenin…

Oh wow I did not know this. Are there any other services that have a fairer model? If not, why is the EU singling out Spotify?

Deezer tried with UCPS (user centric payment system) which was fair, but it seems it's gone, I don't understand their new system.

Re: EU says music streaming platforms must pay artists more

#18

Post by happymellon »

Arnt wrote: post #13
edgyquant wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t a response at all to the comment you replied to. Regardless, it should be a standard payment per stream

It is a response, in a way… it says that Beyonce too earns little of her income from streaming sales, just like the small fish do. It says that while there may be something unfair about streaming rates, it's not as unfair as the small fish think, and… does it imply that it's therefore okay? Not sure.

I didn't say it was okay.

I just said that they are blowing it out of proportion. Sure there might be scraps on the table that are going to the wrong people, but it's not the big differentiator.

Taylor Swift is now the first billionaire from just music. She rerecorded her music to ensure that she gets all the royalties. She is a massive outlier, and didn't make the majority through album sales or streams.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/monicamercuri/2023/10/30/taylor...

Yeah she didn't make it from clothing and whiskey, but less than half her worth is from music sales. It's touring and merch sales.

Bruce Springsteen made his billion from touring rather than album sales.

Re: EU says music streaming platforms must pay artists more

#19

Post by lastdong »

baxuz wrote: post #16
jimmydroptables wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To explain more clearly why people are saying spotify payments are unfair and what they want instead: Lets say I pay $10 for spotify premium and listen to nothing else on spotify except my favorite {indie band}. If spotify is paying out 70% to artists, both me and surely the {indie band} would prefer that my $7 (after spotify takes $3) go directly to the {indie band}. This would be fair, as I would know that listenin…

Oh wow I did not know this. Are there any other services that have a fairer model? If not, why is the EU singling out Spotify?

Bandcamp was known to be fairer (don’t know details) but has been acquired recently, and I read rules may change
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