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'Weird Al' Roasts Spotify's Artist Payout System in Year-End Wrapped Video

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Re: 'Weird Al' Roasts Spotify's Artist Payout System in Year-End Wrapped Video

#141

Post by crazygringo »

lux wrote: post #140
crazygringo wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this matters at all. Whether royalties are calculated per-play-per-user or per-play-per-all-users, I don't see any evidence there's any meaningful difference at all. Most people who subscribe to Spotify listen to lots of different stuff -- that's the entire point of streaming. Virtually nobody is listening to one song a month, or 2 albums per month. They listen to playlists and radio and their 8,000 lik…

"Rounding errors" like these always favour the larger players. It's a form of slowly extracting money that should have gone to smaller artists and instead gets funnelled into the pockets of major label artists who arguably don't need it, at the expense of smaller artists and especially niche genres that don't have the same mass appeal as pop music. That's a group that's severely lacking representation in the discussi…

> "Rounding errors" like these always favour the larger players.

I don't see it -- how?

> requiring each song to have 1k streams _per year_ before qualifying for monetization

Each stream is ~$0.004. It doesn't seem unreasonable at all to require a song to hit $4 per year -- or $0.33/mo. -- to qualify. There is some level of overhead involved here, after all. These are ludicrously small amounts of money.

Also how does this "help line the pockets of majors"? It's all just going back into the same pot of revenue that gets shared the same as before. So proportionally it's helping the artists with smaller songs still over 1K streams just as much.

And even if it's $40M, that's just 0.3% of Spotify's overall revenue. Proportionally, it's pretty irrelevant.

Re: 'Weird Al' Roasts Spotify's Artist Payout System in Year-End Wrapped Video

#142

Post by lux »

crazygringo wrote: post #141
lux wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Rounding errors" like these always favour the larger players. It's a form of slowly extracting money that should have gone to smaller artists and instead gets funnelled into the pockets of major label artists who arguably don't need it, at the expense of smaller artists and especially niche genres that don't have the same mass appeal as pop music. That's a group that's severely lacking representation in the discussi…

> "Rounding errors" like these always favour the larger players. I don't see it -- how? > requiring each song to have 1k streams _per year_ before qualifying for monetization Each stream is ~$0.004. It doesn't seem unreasonable at all to require a song to hit $4 per year -- or $0.33/mo. -- to qualify. There is some level of overhead involved here, after all. These are ludicrously small amounts of money. Also how does…

This isn’t per artist, it’s per song, which means an artist might put out an album and only the single gets widespread play and if the few thousand plays the rest receive all fall just under 1k they’d be discounted to unpaid plays. Remember, for smaller artists every dollar counts. Most have already seen their revenues from music drop by 90-95% since Spotify ate the industry, so why should they be so willing to accept that the first 1k plays are worth $0.00 and the next are only worth $0.003 or less.

This is also compounded by their refusal to adopt a user-centric payment model where the artists you actually listened to that month are the ones your money goes to. Look at comparisons others have published and you’ll see how their current model siphons money from smaller artists towards major label artists (I’m discretely typing this in bits from our local chamber orchestra’s AGM and can’t look up facts for you atm).

With this change, it ensures that even moving to a user-centric model they’ll still be able to underpay smaller artists. It’s not so alarming on its own, but it ensures they can continue to keep the status quo even if they give in to pressure and adopt a user-centric payment model by being able to not have to pay for much of their catalog.

Re: 'Weird Al' Roasts Spotify's Artist Payout System in Year-End Wrapped Video

#143

Post by cwsx »

xavxav wrote: post #2

I'm not familiar with the structure of stream payouts on Spotify, but if 80 million streams gives 12 dollars, that means Taylor Swift's 26.1B streams give ~4k? I knew the rates were bad but damn...

I'm a completely unknown artist with 4 songs on Spotify, mostly released during 2020. In total I'm at 54388 plays, which has earned $42.41. This is across all platforms, though Spotify is 95% of the plays.

I'm not sure if Spotify has dropped their payout per play since 2020 but I'm likely at the lowest payout rate and I'd say it's not terrible (although it's not great). You also get paid more for Spotify premium streams, which afaik was the majority of my streams.

Re: 'Weird Al' Roasts Spotify's Artist Payout System in Year-End Wrapped Video

#144

Post by squigz »

crazygringo wrote: post #107
emilecantin wrote: post #38

I think a better payout structure for Spotify would be to go per-user. For example, for each subscriber a given amount from their subscription plan is earmarked for payouts. Let's say about 4$ per user. We divide that amount by the number of streams the user had that month, and we simply pay that amount to the artist. Examples: - I only listened to one song this month? The full 4$ go to that artist. - I listened to 2…

I don't think this matters at all. Whether royalties are calculated per-play-per-user or per-play-per-all-users, I don't see any evidence there's any meaningful difference at all. Most people who subscribe to Spotify listen to lots of different stuff -- that's the entire point of streaming. Virtually nobody is listening to one song a month, or 2 albums per month. They listen to playlists and radio and their 8,000 lik…

> Most people who subscribe to Spotify listen to lots of different stuff -- that's the entire point of streaming. Virtually nobody is listening to one song a month, or 2 albums per month.

Considering the asks you're making, I imagine you'll have no problem substantiating this?

Re: 'Weird Al' Roasts Spotify's Artist Payout System in Year-End Wrapped Video

#145

Post by ds42 »

lux wrote: post #142
crazygringo wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Rounding errors" like these always favour the larger players. I don't see it -- how? > requiring each song to have 1k streams _per year_ before qualifying for monetization Each stream is ~$0.004. It doesn't seem unreasonable at all to require a song to hit $4 per year -- or $0.33/mo. -- to qualify. There is some level of overhead involved here, after all. These are ludicrously small amounts of money. Also how does…

This isn’t per artist, it’s per song, which means an artist might put out an album and only the single gets widespread play and if the few thousand plays the rest receive all fall just under 1k they’d be discounted to unpaid plays. Remember, for smaller artists every dollar counts. Most have already seen their revenues from music drop by 90-95% since Spotify ate the industry, so why should they be so willing to accep…

But the artists never made any money in the first place. Spotify allowed for the insanely long tail of no-play artists to get a platform to begin with, paying a nominal fee seems like not that big of a deal, considering the same folks would never have gotten any exposure.

Re: 'Weird Al' Roasts Spotify's Artist Payout System in Year-End Wrapped Video

#146

Post by lux »

ds42 wrote: post #145
lux wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t per artist, it’s per song, which means an artist might put out an album and only the single gets widespread play and if the few thousand plays the rest receive all fall just under 1k they’d be discounted to unpaid plays. Remember, for smaller artists every dollar counts. Most have already seen their revenues from music drop by 90-95% since Spotify ate the industry, so why should they be so willing to accep…

But the artists never made any money in the first place. Spotify allowed for the insanely long tail of no-play artists to get a platform to begin with, paying a nominal fee seems like not that big of a deal, considering the same folks would never have gotten any exposure.

Artists had plenty of thriving platforms to get their music out digitally before Spotify came along. The difference is almost every one of them paid better or let you sell your music. Spotify has accounted for artist music revenues dropping by ~90% and has done almost nothing to help smaller artists that they weren’t already getting elsewhere. They grew in popularity due to offering listeners endless playlists. Sadly, Songza was killing it in this area too and could have been a serious Spotify competitor until Google bought it and ruined it almost overnight.
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