Spotify artists earn $167 per 1 million plays. • Hacker News Board

Re: Spotify artists earn $167 per 1 million plays.

#21

Post by DrJokepu » Sun, Nov 22, 2009, 1:41 PM UTC

Let me clear up a few misconceptions here. Is that one million plays worldwide or one million plays in Sweden? The population of Sweden is about 10 million people, I really doubt that a single track accumulated as much as one million plays so quickly.

And if the number is worldwide, why do they expect STIM (Swedish Performing Rights society) to pay for it? Of course they won't, STIM only collects royalties for performances in Sweden! Every country in the world has its own performing rights collection society. For music played in the United Kingdom, she gets paid by PRS, in France it's SACEM etc.

Artists usually don't have the "performing rights" for a music. The person who gets the performing rights royalty payments after a music is the composer. Lady GaGa received that paycheck not as an artist/performer but as the composer of that track (along with Nadir Khayat). She is not the only composer of the track so she only gets her share of the payments. The article has huge factual mistakes.

Re: Spotify artists earn $167 per 1 million plays.

#22

Post by DrJokepu » Sun, Nov 22, 2009, 1:50 PM UTC

malloreon wrote: post #7

Can payment agreements like this be used in court during filesharing lawsuits to show that if RIAA members are willing to value music at $167 per million plays there's no reasonable way they can argue that each mp3 someone shares is worth the thousands of dollars they sue people for? I recognize that these are apples to oranges, but there must be some reasonable conversion. Artist gets X amount per Y plays, and given…

Typically, payment agreements such as this are blanket agreements. Spofiy agrees to give X% of its revenues to the musicians (indirectly) and in exchange it can use their music. This is not a fixed fee as it varies with Spotify's revenues. If Spotify can't get any revenue for a year, the musicians won't get paid at all for that year. RIAA is a recording industry association (dealing with mechanical rights) while the article is about paying composers (which is performing rights) so it's not like "RIAA members" valued these tracks to anything. Also RIAA is American where Spotify is not present at the moment.

Re: Spotify artists earn $167 per 1 million plays.

#23

Post by tjogin » Sun, Nov 22, 2009, 2:04 PM UTC

malloreon wrote: post #7

Can payment agreements like this be used in court during filesharing lawsuits to show that if RIAA members are willing to value music at $167 per million plays there's no reasonable way they can argue that each mp3 someone shares is worth the thousands of dollars they sue people for? I recognize that these are apples to oranges, but there must be some reasonable conversion. Artist gets X amount per Y plays, and given…

Comparatively, if the same song were to be played in a radio show with a million listeners, she'd have earned not even half of what she got from Spotify.

Comparisons with the CD model are misguided, because the CD business model was an exception, made possible only because of technical limitations.

Re: Spotify artists earn $167 per 1 million plays.

#24

Post by des » Sun, Nov 22, 2009, 2:05 PM UTC

ahlatimer wrote: post #14

I believe they got their numbers wrong for the investments in Spotify from the record labels. I seriously doubt Spotify is valued at around 50,000 euros. Artists are generally short changed when it comes to this sort of thing, whether it be selling music or streaming it. Artists make the bulk of their money in ticket and merchandise sales. It would be far more interesting to see how much the record companies are maki…

re:their numbers, Spotify's valuation is closer to $1bn. But wired implies the labels got ownership in exchange for advances on future royalties: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/ka-shing-spotify-inve...

And I can't find a primary source, but the consensus seems to be that Sony paid 30,000 kroner in cash for their share of Spotify, which jibes with the figures in the OP: http://www.p2pnet.net/story/26736

Re: Spotify artists earn $167 per 1 million plays.

#25

Post by jasonlbaptiste » Sun, Nov 22, 2009, 2:52 PM UTC

DrJokepu wrote: post #21

Let me clear up a few misconceptions here. Is that one million plays worldwide or one million plays in Sweden? The population of Sweden is about 10 million people, I really doubt that a single track accumulated as much as one million plays so quickly. And if the number is worldwide, why do they expect STIM (Swedish Performing Rights society) to pay for it? Of course they won't, STIM only collects royalties for perfor…

This is an important point and fact that needs to be looked into more. If she only received $167 for her portion of Sweden's 1 million plays, the article is way off. OR does Sweden;s STIM cut the check for the aggregate plays for all nation's since that's spotify's home base?

Re: Spotify artists earn $167 per 1 million plays.

#26

Post by DrJokepu » Sun, Nov 22, 2009, 3:50 PM UTC

jasonlbaptiste wrote: post #25

DrJokepu wrote: post #21

Let me clear up a few misconceptions here. Is that one million plays worldwide or one million plays in Sweden? The population of Sweden is about 10 million people, I really doubt that a single track accumulated as much as one million plays so quickly. And if the number is worldwide, why do they expect STIM (Swedish Performing Rights society) to pay for it? Of course they won't, STIM only collects royalties for perfor…

This is an important point and fact that needs to be looked into more. If she only received $167 for her portion of Sweden's 1 million plays, the article is way off. OR does Sweden;s STIM cut the check for the aggregate plays for all nation's since that's spotify's home base?

Well I'd looked it up and apparently international royalty payments for performing rights are collected by the collection society of the composer's home country. So if you reside in the UK and someone listens to your music in Sweden, ultimately you will get your cheque from PRS UK. As far as I know Stefani Germanotta (known as Lady GaGa) resides in the United States which means she must be a member of ASCAP, so I don't really understand how could she get a cheque from STIM at all.

Re: Spotify artists earn $167 per 1 million plays.

#27

Post by rick888 » Sun, Nov 22, 2009, 4:03 PM UTC

tumult wrote: post #18

ewjordan wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only money I've ever made off of music is doing live gigs. Give your music away for almost nothing (or dirt cheap) and then play your own shows. This is The Problem for the record industry - there's an almost infinite supply of very talented musicians that are thrilled to do exactly what you suggest. That makes it extremely difficult to buy the argument that we won't have music anymore if people aren't willing to…

It's strange to me that some people seem to believe that artists would stop making art without economic incentive. As if somehow, the prospect of being financially rewarded is the differentiator between creating art and not. As long as you are making enough money to be comfortable (or maybe not, for some artists!) there's no amount of money you can offer someone to make them a better artist. Yet another similarity be…

It's selfish to me to think that Artists want to work for free. I've heard the same argument with software piracy. The only reason people here don't care that much is because most of them have SaS (software as a service) businesses/startups, which can't be pirated.

Actually, now that I think about it. I don't know why I even care about artists not making sales. I don't see too many of them fighting it, so, I guess I will download their music illegally too and join the fun. They will soon see that anything that can be digital, will be shared, and they can't make money on it. Hopefully, they enjoy having a 9-5 the rest of their lives and never being able to go full-time as a musician. Then, the will see the error of their ways, but I doubt the selfish people in this world will even care.

Re: Spotify artists earn $167 per 1 million plays.

#28

Post by Dilpil » Sun, Nov 22, 2009, 5:32 PM UTC

ewjordan wrote: post #11

tumult wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only money I've ever made off of music is doing live gigs. Give your music away for almost nothing (or dirt cheap) and then play your own shows. Record sales as a way to profit probably should never have existed. I would not be surprised if music historians in the future look back on the 20th century record industry as an aberration that existed only in the time when live performances stopped being the singular w…

The only money I've ever made off of music is doing live gigs. Give your music away for almost nothing (or dirt cheap) and then play your own shows. This is The Problem for the record industry - there's an almost infinite supply of very talented musicians that are thrilled to do exactly what you suggest. That makes it extremely difficult to buy the argument that we won't have music anymore if people aren't willing to…

Might I add that there are plenty of people on the production side who are thrilled to make overproduced pop music, and that type music would not vanish either.

Re: Spotify artists earn $167 per 1 million plays.

#29

Post by Tichy » Sun, Nov 22, 2009, 6:41 PM UTC

arnorhs wrote: post #13

I can't believe people are still using these terms, like 'making 0 dollars off of pirate bay' -- That's like saying a free newspaper doesn't earn any money from giving the paper away. It's a argument people often make that are so entwined in the thinking of "selling music" like it was a physical thing... This kind of thinking needs to stop. Artists have more ways of making money today then they ever did, because they…

"Selling live shows, selling merchendise, selling music in a form that makes it a "collectable", even music for films etc..."

Many of which are not really making music, though. What if you simply want to make music? You might as well say "musicians can get paid for doing TV commercials for facial creams" - maybe they can, but I doubt it is what they had in mind when they went into music.

In fact, if I was looking for a cleaning lady, and Bjork as well as some unknown woman would apply, I would probably prefer Bjork. So in that sense "musicians can make money by becoming room cleaners".

Re: Spotify artists earn $167 per 1 million plays.

#30

Post by biznerd » Sun, Nov 22, 2009, 7:34 PM UTC

alex_c wrote: post #12

To put that in perspective, $167 for 1 million plays is the equivalent of a CPM of $0.16 for an ad-supported web site. A bit on the low side, but $0.16 is in the right ballpark for a site with low-quality traffic. I think the question is: is there any reason to expect music to be "worth" more than other types of online content?

Flashing "You're the 1,000,000 visitor to this site!" and fake "You have 1 message waiting" 468x60 banner ads pay more than $.16 CPM. Many of these ads appear on low-quality sites where the visitor spends less than a minute on.

Meanwhile, the typical song is longer than 3 minutes. The user also must actively find the artist and seek out the song (rather than say mindlessly clicking a link from Digg because they're bored.)

Comparing a pageview to a song play is not a good analogy.

On a side note, I'm starting to get tired of all the anti-media view on YC. Group-think is very dangerous. There are a lot of insightful comments here but I make myself take everything with a grain of salt because of the social dynamics of the community.

The article mentions that the top artist was Lady Gaga. Why didn't Lady Gaga start self-publishing on Lulu.com? She would have been able to keep ALL her CD and concert revenue. Information wants to be free!

Contrary to the popular belief here, record companies DO add value. Gaga signed with Def Jam at the age of 19 after L.A. Reid heard her (who is responsible for building the careers of Mariah Carey, TLC, OutKast amongst others). She cut her teeth on writing and producing music for established artists before going out on her own.