101–110 of 305 posts
My guess is that great albums got listened to a lot -- driving down the revenue "per play" but generating great word of mouth and lots of net record/cd sales. How much of that applies to Spotify?
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…
> A subsidy of popular music by indie fans That's an interesting problem — this is only true if indie fans listen to less music than pop fans. Imagine there are 10 users, 9 of whom only listen to pop, one only listens to indy, all of whom pay 10$. Now consider two scenarios: A. everybody listens to 100 tracks per month, or B. pop listeners stream 110 tracks per month, and the indy listener streams 10 track per month…
It becomes clear that the scheme suggested in the post doesn't make sense either... so I accidentally left "Everything is Awesome" on repeat all night and now this month indie band X gets 1c from me instead of $5, even though I still listened to their album 20 times like usual?
Major studios are bringing brands to Spotify, indies are draws but aren't big draws. They will put their stuff on Soundcloud and stream it for free to get ears to get concerts.
Artists who don’t like it or aren’t getting enough value — either through payouts or marketing - should simply opt out of the system (if they can; in many cases control might rest with their record label or another rights holder). Some artists never opted in (the last time I checked, this included AC/DC) or withdrew part or all of their collections (Taylor Swift).
I’ve watched the Spotify model appear in the ebooks marketplace, through services such as Oyster and Scribd. They target readers, and ultimately seek to ensure large payouts to investors, platform owners, and large publishing partners. Authors have largely been treated as an afterthought. Kindle Unlimited is even worse, demanding exclusivity and lowering sales of many authors.(1)
I believe the time has come for recording artists, filmmakers, authors, and other media producers to band together to fight unfair or predatory platform practices. Subscription services may be great for consumers, but they don’t pay enough to the people who are creating the products that draw audiences in the first place.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed that having fans play your music on mute would be just as - if not more - effective, and would work without creating a prime target for banning. But I think in this case it made for a very effective "statement", even if it could've been a more efficient hack.
At least for the desktop software, they detect if you turn the volume down quickly, and pause the commercial. Spotify has pretty rude behavior towards their free users, but I suppose they want to push everyone to subscribe.
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…
Why is this happening? Bugs the hell out of me too
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…
Having said that, the accounting doesn't have to be that complex:
1. When paying out an artist, list out the (anonymous) users who listened to their music on Spotify.
2. For each user:
a) Show the what percent of the user's total listening was spent listening to that artist. (e.g. 40%)
b) Multiply the amount the user paid by the percentage from (a). (e.g. $10/month * 40% = $4)
3. Sum all of the amounts from #2. (e.g. $4 + $3 + ... = $total)
Also, accounting would only be a problem for Spotify. 99% of artists would prefer this model, even if it meant more complex accounting.
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.
If the proposal were followed, all transparency is lost.
"Extremely long payment records" is quite an under-statement. Imagine sending a popular artist a 27-million line breakdown (you'd need a LINE PER LISTEN, and what % of a listeners listens that was). That's absurd, and STILL less transparent.
I understand the problem, but this is actually a pretty terrible solution. Future complexities build on existing complexity. I can't even imagine the monstrous data, business, and programming nightmares that would arise from breaking payment down in the proposed manner.
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…
Complex accounting isn't a good reason to pay artists unfairly. Having said that, the accounting doesn't have to be that complex: 1. When paying out an artist, list out the (anonymous) users who listened to their music on Spotify. 2. For each user: a) Show the what percent of the user's total listening was spent listening to that artist. (e.g. 40%) b) Multiply the amount the user paid by the percentage from (a). (e.g…
Keep in mind things would still need to be split per song also, as rights holders vary per song.
Do you really think giving every artist that many potential lines of accounting every month can be called simple?
+ Huge catalogue on-demand
- Lower quality
- Latency, dropped streams
- Monthly subscription
- Artists get next to nothing
- Player lock-in
Hard disk:
+ Zero latency
+ Highest quality
+ Artists get everything
+ Any player
- Device storage limitations
- Heavy file transfers
I never understood why streaming caught on to begin with.