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Earlier quoted context omitted.
No it doesn't, Spotify provides line-level accounting for every stream to the rightsholders. What they then do to account to artists could be anything.
Doesn't matter. Do they provide line-level accounting for ad revenue? Do you know what percentage of TOTAL revenue gets paid to artists?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you elaborate a bit? Do you think it's because of copyright issues, or because labels don't want Spotify to become a popular distributor that publishes exclusively to itself?
I doubt copyright issues had an impact here. There is always a much larger perspective the labels have over the industry than what we can talk about here. Ultimately, it is about control. Every decision from the ads you hear to the choice of music you get in your Discover Weekly playlists (or any made by Spotify) come from the influence of label control over the company (and industry). Songs that appear or can be hea…
I've always thought Spotify could be the Steam of music: To bring artists and listeners together, but I now believe Bandcamps done more in that regard and Spotify might end up being a data harvesting tool for the labels.
The submitted article doesn't mention it but my guess at connecting the dots is that it's related to EU Article 13's stringent requirement of "upload filters"[0]. Yes, Spotify's direct uploading "gave opportunity for small artists to share their talent" -- but that same mechanism also made it too easy to upload copyright infringing content. Since Spotify does not have a machine learning AI copyright filter like Youtu…
Spotify has internal fingerprinting stuff that can handle this easily enough. The shutdown is entirely due to pressure from the record labels. It's a shame; this was a surprisingly difficult product to get off the ground, and a lot of folks put in heroic efforts to make it work.
I'll admit I don't know about Spotify's inner workings but my understanding is that Spotify itself does not have its own fingerprinting algorithm. Instead, they rely on their distribution partners like DistroKid and CD Baby to use fingerprint services and prevent copyright violations. (DistroKid and CD Baby license the fingerprint algorithm from Audible Magic[1]. Google also initially licensed Audible Magic software before they wrote their own version of ContentID.)
I'm also not sure audio fingerprinting technology is enough. Even though Youtube's ContentID is a state-of-the-art algorithm with the largest fingerprint database, Google was still afraid it wouldn't be enough to satisfy the EU which is why they fought the passage of Article 13.
Maybe the EU Article 13 isn't the sole reason but it certainly gives more ammunition to copyright holders to use against Spotify's catalog of potentially unlicensed content and copyright violations.
>The shutdown is entirely due to pressure from the record labels.
Ok, let's say that the primary reason was pressure from the record labels. We need to dissect that "pressure" into smaller concepts.
To add precision to the discussion we can separate 2 different types of entities:
- record labels[2] : Universal, Sony, Warner, and EMI
- distribution partners[3] : DistroKid, CDBaby, EmuBands, etc
Look at the webpage[3] of non-record-labels that are distribution partners and they mention "protecting against infringement" and "infringement" -- 4 times. Also, Spotify's blog post[4] again mentions "protect artists from infringement".
For Spotify to offer direct uploads, they'd have to manage the extra logistical hassles of policing copyright violations that was previously outsourced to DistroKid & CD Baby.
I agree that record labels (Universal/Sony/Warner) can exert pressure... but what exactly is that pressure about? I believe it's preventing copyright infringement from crowdsourced random uploaders. If it's not about "protecting copyrights" but some other reason that's keeping record labels happy, what's that "other reason"?
[1] https://www.audiblemagic.com/
[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=biggest+record+labels
[3] https://artists.spotify.com/guide/your-music
[4] https://artists.spotify.com/blog/we're-closing-the-upload-be...
I’m not familiar with the process, but could there also have been a fraud aspect (not copyright) to this that wasn’t worth the effort required to prevent? Upload “songs”, generate lots of listens, get paid.
Nothing wrong with it, just lack of foresight on the uploaders' part.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The unreliability of distribution brokers as artist allies.
Where has this come up? Not all distributors work direct with artists. Bandcamp is proprietary, for profit and seems to have strong artist allies.
An artist can jump ship to another distribution broker, but there are a lot of downsides such as losing play counts and breaking links.
Can any of the distribution brokers be trusted to act in an artist's interest indefinitely? There's just an inherent problem with that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>Since Spotify does not have a machine learning AI copyright filter like Youtube's ContentID If true, this is worrying. It basically gives a handful of companies a monopoly over a potentially wide range of things. It is unreasonable to require everyone to meet a standard that relies on cutting edge technology.
Is it worrying? I see it as an opportunity to create and use a competing service.
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I'm really sorry to hear that google ads got even more, and now they're going to complain about a monopoly. Things like GDPR also make it harder to start a competitor, as paperwork and red tape always do; I have not personally worked on GDPR for any thing, but know some one who does and it's a nightmare. If stringent government regulation got you here, maybe it will be less of that, not more, that gets you out.
If stringent government regulation got you here, maybe it will be less of that, not more, that gets you out. Yeah, we see how fantastically that one worked with the Boeing corporation and their newest flagship plane, The 737MAX.
The only reason this same issue didn't happen to Airbus is because the plane was high enough to give the pilots time to troubleshoot:
> The Alpha Protection activated forcing the aircraft to pitch down, which could not be corrected even by full back stick input. The crew eventually disconnected the related Air Data Units and was able to recover the aircraft.[1]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where has this come up? Not all distributors work direct with artists. Bandcamp is proprietary, for profit and seems to have strong artist allies.
TuneCore changing its pricing structure a number of years ago is probably the classic example. An artist can jump ship to another distribution broker, but there are a lot of downsides such as losing play counts and breaking links. Can any of the distribution brokers be trusted to act in an artist's interest indefinitely? There's just an inherent problem with that.
Surely that's an issue solved by the market, if there is a distributor that is reliable & fairly priced then people will move to use and stay with them. I think the current issue is that a lot of the big name distributors are marketers first, distributors second.