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Why Spotify Pays So Little

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Re: Why Spotify Pays So Little

#131

Post by niels_olson »

microtonal wrote: post #116
niels_olson wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I prefer non-lyrical trip-hop. I wouldn't know I have that preference without discovering it through Spotify. You're telling me I should now start buying those albums on iTunes if I want to actually vector money toward those artists? But I can get most of them for almost free on Amazon Prime. So why not just send money to the artist directly? I listen to Spotify and Pandora almost exclusively. Mainly Spotify. I pr…

I probably listened to 300 tracks of Emancipator a month on Spotify. At 0.00786 per play, that works out to 2.85. For the last 2 years: 2.85 24. That's $56.59.* I don't think most people listen to 300 tracks of any artist per month consecutively. Say you are doing 30 tracks per month on average by an artist, that's $5.66, less than buying three 10 track albums. I have hundreds of albums on CD (I'd guess ~500 or 600).…

I don't have to listen to it consecutively. But I listen while driving, while studying, while working. I certainly fall in the category of indie fan listening to a lot of music from catalog artists, not hit makers.

Re: Why Spotify Pays So Little

#132

Post by oliwary »

nharada wrote: post #130
Flimm wrote: post #58

Jack Stratton is correct in pointing out that less active users are subsidising active users. However, he then makes the leap that that means that less popular artists are subsidising the popular ones, which has yet to be proved.

I suspect that the paying users are more likely to listen to more obscure indie artists, simply based on the people I know who pay for premium. Anyone interested in listening to only top 40 likely won't see the value in paying $9.99 a month for it. Thus the less popular artists are bringing in the revenue but the big artists keep more money. That being said, there's no proof of this without data to back it up.

Do artists get payouts from free listeners as well?

Re: Why Spotify Pays So Little

#133

Post by kazinator »

pqomdv wrote: post #128
kazinator wrote: post #122

The proposition in the article only works because users pay a fixed monthly rate for unlimited listening, rather than a charge that is metered based on how much they stream. Jack Stratton's proposition is wagered on the proposition that the users who listen to his tracks are ones who don't listen to very much other stuff. His listeners pay $9.99 per months, but don't stream very much, and a big chunk of what they do…

3.5$ per user(!, or should I say a fan ) is significantly more than just negligible compared with fractions of a cent for every user. It is also more correct, your subscription is distributed to artists whose music you actually listened to. It repeat listens are accounted for, then it would be even more fair, since you usually listen more to your favorite artists. Currently the distribution just isn't correct. This i…

But if you're so talented and have such good fans, why would you need to put Spotify between you and those fans?

Re: Why Spotify Pays So Little

#134

Post by ignostic »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #112
ignostic wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now the payment is easy to understand why you were paid as you were. Listens * payment * .7 = my check. 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 understa…

SO that's what, a few gigabytes? Takes 30 seconds to download? Then run some stats, get some totals and compare it to your check. What's the problem? Its the 3rd Millennium, get with it.

> "Its the 3rd Millennium, get with it."

No need to be condescending. People can disagree with you without being technically stupid.

> "SO that's what, a few gigabytes? Takes 30 seconds to download? Then run some stats, get some totals and compare it to your check. What's the problem?"

I think you underestimate the complexity of a database that grows by 20 million records per month, but let's say you solve the technical, computational, and programming issues. It's still a bad idea.

Most of Spotify's customers can open and understand their Spotify payment today. Your customers are not database experts. Most people have rudimentary Excel skills at best. Talk down to them all you want, but they won't know what to do.

So what, they should all hire data analysts? To understand their Spotify invoice?? You know you're using technology wrong when you take something your customers currently understand intuitively, and alter it in a way that requires technology. I understand that you're trying to fix a problem, but you're actually introducing new problems that are far more significant.

Don't let the love of nuance override your customer's experience. That's how you build "perfect" products no one wants.

Re: Why Spotify Pays So Little

#135

Post by nmeofthestate »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #112
ignostic wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now the payment is easy to understand why you were paid as you were. Listens * payment * .7 = my check. 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 understa…

SO that's what, a few gigabytes? Takes 30 seconds to download? Then run some stats, get some totals and compare it to your check. What's the problem? Its the 3rd Millennium, get with it.

I want the broadband connection you've got.

Re: Why Spotify Pays So Little

#136

Post by weissadam »

I think the problem is that there is no distinction made between computer generated playlists (eg: Yoga Radio) and listener initiated streams.

Why not keep the existing royalty structure, but split the royalty pie based on user initiated streams and computer generated streams. If someone buys premium and only listens to Yoga Radio:

  30% Spotify
  70% Existing Yoga Radio Big Pool Royalty Structure
But if 50% of their listening is actual artists they have chosen (download to phone, click on artist/album or song/shared playlist from someone else/own playlist):

  30% Spotify
  35% Existing Yoga Radio Big Pool
  35% Direct cut determined by per-listener chart
Or if Mom signs up and only listens to her kid:

  30% Spotify
  0% Yoga Radio
  70% Direct cut determined by per-listener chart (all to one with love from Mom)
This not only rewards artists with loyal fanbases, but it also fairly compensates artists who compete in the mass market where people just listen to the radio and don't care.

Best of both worlds, no?

Re: Why Spotify Pays So Little

#138

Post by basseq »

rwissmann wrote: post #129
pdpi wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Yes, the article really missed this point. One could also mentioned some sort of tiered payout scheme or a non-linear minimum after a certain amount of plays plus a percentage above that. Likely something that Spotify will experiment with over the years.

If Spotify wants to send me a representative, scrubbed dump of their streams table (id, userid, trackid, artistid), we could run some interesting what-if scenarios rather than guessing.

It's an interesting trade-off: "punishing" artists with fans who only listen to a small amount of music, but who are dedicated to that artist vs. artists with fans who listen to a LOT of music.

My gut is that very few artists are getting "screwed", and those who are represent artists with very few streams (at which point the net revenues are very small and who cares about the difference between 2 cents and .7 cents). For most "edge cases" like the one in the article, there's a user on the opposite end of the spectrum who would balance them out.

That's my hypothesis, anyway.

Re: Why Spotify Pays So Little

#139

Post by jre »

ignostic wrote: post #108
vlunkr wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Right now the payment is easy to understand why you were paid as you were. Listens * payment * .7 = my check. 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 understa…

I am not sure which payment model I prefer, but I don't buy the technical reason against the OP's proposed solution.

I imagine Spotify already maintains a list of songs played by each user (to build their recommendation engine).

You could report to the artist using a histogram (bucket the listen by the percentage of user's listens they represent).

Also, Spotify could build a nice web interface that allows artists to understand their revenue stream, with various aggregated stats and graphs.

Re: Why Spotify Pays So Little

#140

Post by tormeh »

pdpi wrote: post #77
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…

> 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…

>unless indie fans listen to less music than mainstream music fans

That point is explicitly addressed in the post. Mainstream users listen more because mainstream users are gyms etc. that just let the top 40 run in shuffle 24/7.

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