Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Justice at Spotify

unionofmusicians.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 405 posts

Re: Justice at Spotify

#201

Post by mattnewton »

stephenhuey wrote: post #181
smachiz wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, ignoring all other costs isn't great. Their revenue per subscriber is also substantively lower - including free users, discounted EDU users, and family memberships. Excluding free users, it's probably ~$5 per user. That being said, Apple Music pays .75p/stream, Tidal is 1.25p/stream. They can probably figure it out.

If they cannot pay the artists more, a long-term freemium plan might not be a great business model then. If free users are seriously cutting into profits, should they change the free plan to a limited free trial? I was around in the 80s 90s and we didn't really have free cassettes and CDs and radio paid studios & artists with ad revenue. Spotify is well known enough now that it could be argued an unending free tier m…

This doesn’t make sense to me, it’s not that they are eating into profits, it’s that they are eating into average margin; they presumably still at least break even on free users. And I would bet dollars to donuts that those free users are not going to convert to paid when piracy, YouTube videos, and free trials of other services exist.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#202

Post by whywhywhywhy »

You willingly handed over your work to Spotify, you signed the contracts, now you're unhappy with the deal.

Spotify is a recent creation and it was nothing without musicians yet they willingly went forward with it even though it was obvious what would happen and now the obvious has happened they want a better deal.

It's hard for me to muster up sympathy, they could have collectively stopped Spotify from happening but they willingly became part of it.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#203

Post by mattnewton »

mrgreenfur wrote: post #196
stephenhuey wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they cannot pay the artists more, a long-term freemium plan might not be a great business model then. If free users are seriously cutting into profits, should they change the free plan to a limited free trial? I was around in the 80s 90s and we didn't really have free cassettes and CDs and radio paid studios & artists with ad revenue. Spotify is well known enough now that it could be argued an unending free tier m…

Totally agree. Maybe spotify should look like an app store with fees in the 30% range at the top end (shopify/apple/steam). Their role is very similar: distribution and discovery. They probably could wi points giving better payouts per stream to smaller artists too, like steam does. Hopefully competition will force it down too (eg epic vs steam vs apple). We might need open access to back catalogues and not exclusive…

The App Store for music exists many times over and users (including myself) prefer a lower cost streaming model. There is simply too much cheap or free music out there now for me to value it at iTunes singles prices.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#205

Post by Aissen »

emilecantin wrote: post #34

They only hint at this, but I think a user-centric distribution model would be much better: define a percentage split (let's say 30% for Spotify, 70% for artists), and split that percentage of revenue between the artists THAT THE USER LISTENED TO. I think that they currently use a global split, which over-represents "users" like stores, gyms, etc.

Indeed, it would be much more interesting. Deezer might be on track to implement it in France (not sure when?) but a recent study (in french) gives a lot of information on its potential impact:

https://cnm.fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/CNM_UCPS_SyntheseF...

Re: Justice at Spotify

#206

Post by kangaroozach »

The model should be like Medium.

Allocate peoples monthly membership in accordance to their listens.

If one month I listen to 100 streams of Bob Dylan and thats it, then he should get my entire $7.00 instead of just a few cents for my small amount of streams.

https://qz.com/1660465/the-way-spotify-and-apple-music-pays-...

Re: Justice at Spotify

#208

Post by aksss »

frabjoused wrote: post #171

Would it really be the end to ask consumers for 50% more Spotify Premium to solve the problem? I would personally be willing to pay more and feel music is undervalued. I can't imagine they would lose 50% of their subscription base.

I’ve said before that I’d give up Netflix before Spotify, so yeah maybe. But something would have to give out of principle. I think the better solution in this musician/label/distributor mess is the label takes less. That has costs and would change how discovery works, but frankly maybe for the better.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#209

Post by anoonmoose »

curryst wrote: post #140
lettergram wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be honest, you aren't required to use a record label. Record labels just advertise, which definitely blow up some musicians. In contrast, take the rapper Tom McDonald, his music actually hit the top 100 charts[1][2] and he's not signed to anyone. Just him and his girlfriend creating music. Was trending as the #1 download on iTunes for a couple weeks, etc. Artists make a deal with the devil, make more money, the…

In fairness, Tom MacDonald gets a lot of external publicity from conservatives; he's mostly a right-wing political rapper. I've seen a big rise in conservative rappers on YouTube. I've got a conspiracy theory that the GOP is funding them like a record label. If so, it's a sweet deal for artists. The GOP cares far more about cultural effects than they do the money from the music.

Yeah, Chance The Rapper is a more organic and less political example of a rapper making it without a label.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#210

Post by breck »

falcolas wrote: post #159
breck wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everyone who threatens to stop creating content if they can't enslave ideas, were to stop creating content, the world would be a better place. The idea that people would stop creating is absurd. I work in Cancer Research and the absolute least contributing people in the medical industry are the ones obsessed with patenting and copyrighting their work, which is usually garbage and of frivolous value compared to the…

> the world would be a better place. Really? Sounds pretty terrible to me. Few books. Few videogames. No movies. No TV shows. Most of the internet obliterated. Any content that is created is copied and regurgitated so much you'd be hard pressed find out who actually created it. I personally like consuming entertainment. I work with the creative side of my brain all day long, and being able to go home and turn it off…

> Really? Sounds pretty terrible to me. Few books. Few videogames. No movies. No TV shows. Most of the internet obliterated.

This is such bullsht. First of all, the fcking Internet is public domain tech (DARPA, Web). Second, the evidence is overwhelming that people will create vast amounts of content without any idea enslavement rights. According to your logic we wouldn't have janitors cleaning rooms if they couldn't collect a toll in perpetuity.

> Any content that is created is copied and regurgitated so much you'd be hard pressed find out who actually created it.

Here's a hint: no one. You created zero of the 25 letters you used in that comment, zero of the punctation marks, zero of the 184 words. You strung some words together in a unique arrangement, but you are piggybacking on a vast amount of effort which you contributed effectively zilch too. And you think your contributions deserve special treatment? What a f*cking joke.

> Is it worth re-iterating that all of the open source licenses is supported by copyright protections?

I don't support licenses. Licenses are for losers. Public domain is the only game that matters. Keep in mind that the tool we are using to communicate was made public domain by Tim Berners Lee.

Post reply on HN