221–230 of 245 posts
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It's not that they don't deserve it, it's that it's ironic.
Yet they participate in society. Curious! https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/
Irony isn't a bad thing, it just is or isn't, and in this case it is. I was just trying to clarify that since someone said it wasn't.
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The new Fearless just dropped, it's not like the streaming numbers are going to equalize overnight. Can you link the data? Sounds like it's interesting
I just spent a few minutes looking for data, expecting something like a stock chart. I can't find almost anything -- even total stream numbers for an album or song are difficult to find. If you have a good source, I'm very interested.
Considering that it was released only 3 days ago it seems like the number of plays for the "(Taylor's Version)" is quite incredible.
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> How does such an obvious fallacy command such purchase among smart people? Swift is talking about "music" as an original work. Patel responds with an irrelevant point about digital copies of music. Obviously these are two different things! Yes, they are two different things. The problem is that artists (and record labels) want to get paid for the non-scarce thing: the copies, and not for the actually scarce thing:…
> The solution then would be to find a way to charge not for the copies, but for the time effort that the artist put into the production of the music. That's literally what charging for the copies does, though. People just want something for nothing. Claiming you want to "take the copy for free but pay separately for the time" when you aren't willing to pay for the copy so that there is some reimbursment for the time…
The degree of silliness to artificial scarcity becomes apparent when you try to apply it to any other labor. If an investigative reporter uncovers corruption at city hall, does he deserve a royalty every time you tell someone and hence copy the fruits of his labor? Does a meteorologist when you freely share his forecast? Should the doctor who invents a new surgical technique get a percentage every time it's used to save someone's life?
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Something similar happened recently with Dave Chappelle. He asked his fans to stop watching Chappelle Show on Netflix. This depressed the value of the asset low enough that he was able to buy back the rights.
Chapelle Show doesn't drive subscriptions. Holding out on any more comedy specials is what made them capitulate.
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Patreon seems like a very libertarian environment to me. I'm not sure how I could see it any differently.
A lot of the original libertarians were...socialists. The term today has been rebranded to mean strictly anarcho-capitalists but it originally included anarcho-communists and libertarian socialists.
Patreon is a world were value produced is both determined and rewarded by a free market of consumers choosing where to spend their money.
I do find it ironic that a socialists are at the top of the Patreon food chain and yet the comment:
> it's not ironic if you really understand socialism.
says I shouldn't. I'm looking for someone to explain to me why.
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I don't really see how this is possible for an independent artist unless I go the route of "Once this Kickstarter reaches $10k I'll release my song for free"
That's called a bounty and it's one of the open source software business models. It has a freeloader problem, though. An alternative is to drop price over time but give refunds/royalties to earlier buyers, so they always lay a little less than later buyers.
The alternative solution doesn't address the above commenter's problem that you shouldn't charge for copies of music, but for the creation of it in the first place.
[0] And yeah, I realize expecting a high bounty is kind of hypocritical for an indie musician. I've made maybe $50 from my music sales/streaming over the past decade, so why should I be asking a bounty bigger than a few dollars for any song? Well, because with the bounty model I'm setting a ceiling for what I can earn from my work, which doesn't exist on a pay-each-download model. Maybe over the next 10 years I'll only earn another $50 from music, maybe I won't, but I don't want to lock that in.
Also, I am going to make my music regardless of any sort of bounty. The payment is just for whether or not I release the music. Open Source projects typically use the bounty to pay a developer to work on the project. They don't develop an entire project and then withhold release until they get payment. Software doing it feels necessary. A musician doing it feels stingy. It just doesn't feel like a comparable model to me.
The thing is, Taylor's version sounds completely different. Did Ben Thompson actually look at streaming numbers? All her fans didn't flock to the new version. They listened to it, but it's so different that the old version is still consistently streamed likely by the same fans. Further, the new version isn't on some new platform or anything. It's not like Taylor Swift asked fans to fork extra money to listen to "Tayl…
That's nonsense. DRM is just DRM and there's no way to stop piracy. If one person can listen to the track, that person can copy the track end of story.
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> I pay about 10€/mo for Spotify. Consider not; the majority of that money just goes to Spotify. If, every month, you paid 10€ to a random artist you liked (or split 10€ between all of them), the artists would receive probably more than two orders of magnitude more money. (If I remember correctly, anyway.) Of course, this assumes you can get the music elsewhere. If Spotify's too convenient to give up, there are sever…
A quick google says that spotify pays at least $0.003 per stream to an artist. So your $10 pays for 3333 streams per month, or just over 100 a day. I probably don't average 100 streams per day, but I definitely average over 10. I'm not sure its as bad a deal for the artist as you may think. It's not two orders of magnitude bad, at least.
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> I pay about 10€/mo for Spotify. Consider not; the majority of that money just goes to Spotify. If, every month, you paid 10€ to a random artist you liked (or split 10€ between all of them), the artists would receive probably more than two orders of magnitude more money. (If I remember correctly, anyway.) Of course, this assumes you can get the music elsewhere. If Spotify's too convenient to give up, there are sever…
> the majority of that money just goes to Spotify Last I checked, Spotify's cut is 30%. That's a lot, but even with a significant error it's nowhere near the "majority." > If, every month, you paid 10€ to a random artist you liked (or split 10€ between all of them), the artists would receive probably more than two orders of magnitude more money. That's a function of how popular your favorite artists are and how much…
From what I understand the number of listens that month is pooled globally/in buckets for the purpose of distribution. So if you listen to your friend's band once and nothing else, and someone plays a 31 second song on repeat 83612x over 30 days nonstop, your friend's band gets {{payout rate}}*1. And the other artist gets {{payout rate}}*83612. Rather than both artists getting ~70% of their listener's $10 subscription.
And then the payout rate is a bit complicated because it comes from a variety of buckets. Some regions earn more/less than others, some account types (free trial, free with ads, family plan) earn less than others. Some specific labels or artists even get their own special buckets. 30% take overall is still correct. If you check their 2020 Q4 "Cost of Revenue" was about 73.5%, which is almost entirely royalties.
In practice though, I don't think it matters too much. I don't think many people listen to one artist exclusively. Or if they do, it's probably a pop or children's music artist getting many streams already. But in the rare case of some person listen to one specific relatively unknown artist as most of their streaming, I'm pretty certain that artist does not receive an equal majority of that subscriber's money.
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In theory things like YouTube and Patreon could provide that gap - but not sure it actually will.
Don't get me wrong, I like the internet. It is almost free to record and publish material now, which probably far outweighs the value that is captured by the fat cats.