Why Spotify Pays So Little • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Spotify Pays So Little

#81

Post by krschultz » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 5:52 PM UTC

genericuser wrote: post #66

His proposition may sound simple to him, but it really isn't. It becomes very hard to ensure you are being paid properly in his proposed scenario, I would personally expect it would create even more controversy, or extremely long payment records every month for artists. For instance say we have 500 paid users. Lets call them user1 through user500. Each user listens to the same number of songs a month as the value fol…

This is a very good point. I'm sure that Spotify could encode the rules and accurately calculate what each artists was owed under such a model, but it would be far more complicated to communicate to people.

There are already a bunch of assumptions in the payment model, do you pay per track? (In which case, the artists could game it by sticking in 30 second intro tracks and things like that). Do you pay per minute? (In which case, artists can increase their revenue by putting in dead time in "bonus tracks").

It would be an interesting experiment for Spotify to calculate what the payouts would be given the proposed scheme, and compare the differences.

Anecdotally, the people I have met that work at Spotify are a lot more sympathetic to the indie artist and non-Top 40 music than the average person listening to Spotify. There is a reason they keep building ways to discover non-Top 40 music. I'm sure they are interested in making things better for these types of artists.

Re: Why Spotify Pays So Little

#82

Post by tptacek » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 5:53 PM UTC

6stringmerc wrote: post #79

tptacek wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: how much do you actually know about Steve Albini? Are you a Big Black fan? Are you at all acquainted with the Chicago punk scene he's from? Have you read anything else he's written, for instance about any band not from that scene? Or, for that matter, any of the story of his business relationship with the labels? And you know how he makes his money, right? (hint: not by touring Shellac). (I am an un…

I've followed him enough, can't stand his music because it sounds like noisy, barely competent shit to me and I know he makes his money just like Timbaland makes his money - getting paid on the back-end for production work. I can safely assume that most everybody has NOT read that article based on the ridiculous notion that somehow the music industry has changed its principles and methods since my family got started…

I can't tell whether you're talking about Albini or Lowery here.

I think Albini is shackled to view of the industry that rejects anything that doesn't sound like The Jesus Lizard. For a good example of this: read the very long thread on the Electric Audio message board where his fans try to find a hip-hop track he'll like.

Re: Why Spotify Pays So Little

#83

Post by genericuser » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 5:54 PM UTC

ianlevesque wrote: post #80

genericuser wrote: post #66

His proposition may sound simple to him, but it really isn't. It becomes very hard to ensure you are being paid properly in his proposed scenario, I would personally expect it would create even more controversy, or extremely long payment records every month for artists. For instance say we have 500 paid users. Lets call them user1 through user500. Each user listens to the same number of songs a month as the value fol…

The royalty reporting is this complex already anyway. It's really crazy.

Please provide an example. As the examples I have seen of artists showing their Spotify payments do not support this assertion.

Here is a link to one such example I have seen which has each song paid at the same amount per play. This has made the number of items on the payment record to simply be the number of different songs which were played by that artist. http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/B...

Re: Why Spotify Pays So Little

#84

Post by vinceguidry » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 5:55 PM UTC

joshstrange wrote: post #67

vinceguidry wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Agreed, I finally admitted last year that I was tired of maintaining my own MP3 library. If a subscription service could get me out of that chore, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But the music I listen to is crazy all over the place, and if the service doesn't have even one of the songs I want, then it's worthless. Even if I can upload mp3s, now I'm back to maintaining an mp3 library. If I switch services, I have to eith…

I'm hitting this point right now. After years of maintaining an mp3 collection I jumped ship to Spotify to try it out and loved it. It was great that I no longer had to spend any time to get access to the music I loved. Also community playlists were awesome (Especially the Top X Hit playlists that were updated monthly). Spotify even supported Last.FM, I was in heaven... Until Spotify didn't have that 1 song, or that…

I've got some plans. Right now I've got all my music on Google Play, having moved it from iTunes last year, which was painful, but not too bad. I eventually want to write some Ruby software that will hold all the metadata in a sqlite database replicated to Dropbox. That way I know what the tracks are. I'll seed the DB, hopefully by hooking into a Google Play API that hopefully exists.

Then I want to grab all the files and put them on S3 or something and store the links in the db. Then it's a front-end problem, I'll need a command line interface and then one day I'll make a GUI. I could also find tracks that exist only, say, on YouTube, and store links to those too.

Then I'll be able to use it as a music player and store no music on my local machine.

Then the biggest pain in the ass becomes syncing to my portable devices, which is the only reason I haven't done this yet. I would hate to have to maintain two libraries at the same time. So I have to think my way through that. Though I'm sure I could write a syncer that would work much better than Google Play's, I haven't bothered to sit down to do it yet.

Re: Why Spotify Pays So Little

#85

Post by vlunkr » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 5:59 PM UTC

genericuser wrote: post #66

His proposition may sound simple to him, but it really isn't. It becomes very hard to ensure you are being paid properly in his proposed scenario, I would personally expect it would create even more controversy, or extremely long payment records every month for artists. For instance say we have 500 paid users. Lets call them user1 through user500. Each user listens to the same number of songs a month as the value fol…

Do you artists would prefer being underpaid to getting extremely long payment records? I really don't see the issue.

Re: Why Spotify Pays So Little

#86

Post by codyb » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 6:02 PM UTC

His final comment "and listeners should be to0.", I'm not sure I understand?

How does Terry's subsidization of yoga studios make any difference for Terry's listening experience?

Unless it's a very deep point in that Terry's subsidization, if it didn't happen, would cause more small artists to pop up onto the scene thus increasing the diversity of the catalog.

Re: Why Spotify Pays So Little

#87

Post by avn2109 » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 6:03 PM UTC

mortenjorck wrote: post #62

pjc50 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's an impedance mismatch here. The copyright holders are being paid per-play but the users are paying all-you-can-eat. That's always going to be an imbalance. The only way to "fix" that would be to charge "Terry" a cent per listen like a jukebox. This is a bit like being a vegetarian at a buffet and complaining about your admission fee paying for steak which all those other people are eating. It's true, but…

That’s not how Spotify works, though. According to the link above: Every time somebody listens to a song on Spotify it generates payments, but Spotify does not calculate royalties based upon a fixed “per play” rate. Unless there are some secret deals being struck for fixed per-stream royalties that Spotify isn’t admitting to publicly, every rightsholder gets a percentage of monthly revenue. Which sounds fair, until y…

>> "...assuming no secret deals..."

You're totally right on the merits, but it's worth noting that the big record labels are composed entirely of and built their empire solely upon unjust-seeming secret deals, and we have no reason to believe that they've stopped that modus operandi now merely because they're dealing with Spotify.

Re: Why Spotify Pays So Little

#88

Post by tracker1 » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 6:04 PM UTC

patmcc wrote: post #13

Why are light listeners like the example paying for Spotify? Shouldn't they just stick to the free version rather than going for premium? Following this suggested model, free users listening wouldn't help the artists at all - is that really desirable?

I can't speak for Spotify, but can for Pandora... I listen maybe 20 hours a month, and just got sick of the ads... That's all there was to it. I don't want to curate my music more than a like/dislike and it works for me.

That said, I don't like the model that's currently in use for online-only music stations... it's tough all around.

Re: Why Spotify Pays So Little

#89

Post by dublinben » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 6:05 PM UTC

kochthesecond wrote: post #17

tpeaton wrote: post #6

Spotify has been villified since the beginning, and I certainly want a more fair system to exist for artists. That said, has there EVER been a business model in the US that was profitable for artists? I don't think there was ever money in music for artists from album sales. The cost of distributing and promoting music is just more expensive than making an album.

Spotify has me and all I know spending 9x12=108 per year on just music. If anyone expected any of us to ever spend more than this, they are very wrong. Even if we go back to the golden days of CD sales, I doubt the average consumer spent more than this, but I might be terribly wrong. I'm sure I wouldn't.

The average consumer only spends $48 on recorded music per year.[0] At $100+ per year, services like Spotify are much more expensive for all but the most prolific music collector.

[0]http://recode.net/2014/03/18/the-price-of-music/

Re: Why Spotify Pays So Little

#90

Post by jmilloy » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 6:06 PM UTC

toby wrote: post #78

mortenjorck wrote: post #35

Like others in this thread, I naively assumed this was how Spotify already worked, and wondered why the payouts tended to be so low. Now it makes sense, and puts the numbers here ( http://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-explained/ ) in context. Realistically, it would be both hard to change structurally and a hard sell for major labels to give up what is effectively a subsidy of popular music by indie fans. Let’s take…

I'm a bit confused by the reasoning here. It's clear that light users are subsidizing heavy users, but why are we assuming that light users prefer indie bands and heavy users prefer pop music?

I think we're assuming that the many users who listen to indie bands spread their listening among many different bands (each use has a difference preference) whereas users who listen to top 40 all listen to the same artists.

There is also the idea that some "users" are businesses playing background music all day, and that they are more likely to all choose the same pop songs (which the most people are familiar with) and to play them all day everyday. Unlike a normal user who typically listens to a wider variety and for fewer hours a day.