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Justice at Spotify

unionofmusicians.org

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Re: Justice at Spotify

#401

Post by RHSman2 »

kfwerf wrote: post #103
barbazoo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes me sad to time and time again learn that the low prices of services I love are unsustainable and instead subsidized by treating someone unfairly downstream. I wish I could be told what the ethical price for something is and I might actually pay it. And if that price is too high, then maybe that service shouldn't exist in the first place.

I think it is sustainable if we can cut out the middle man, the royalties go mainly to labels and less so to artists. E.g. if an artist doesnt use a label on Spotify im sure his revenue will be higher and the current price would be sustainable. I think the royalties that go to labels are unsustainable

I would just like to know why there is a need for a distributor in Indie Spotify artists? Its an agent. This agent doesn’t do anything.

I make music, I own all rights, I upload to streaming service, I should get all cut from streaming service. What does said agent do?

Re: Justice at Spotify

#402

Post by RHSman2 »

As a musician one has to reconcile with the difference between the magic of emotional response and the utility of that. The bigger that utility the more the people who make money from it will pay you. In this day and age it’s the streaming and the Crowd.

It has always been like this but I think the gap is bigger now.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#403

Post by Closi »

qpiox wrote: post #382
Closi wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In any case, obviously the conversation is DOA if you start it from a foundational assumption that "a play is a play" That's not my foundational assumption, but I've also not heard a compelling argument that one play / minute streamed should be inherently more valuable than another play / minute streamed. It's also not clear how this value would be calculated, because I also don't think it's clear that proportion o…

> I've also not heard a compelling argument that one play / minute streamed should be inherently more valuable than another play / minute streamed. Here's a compelling irrefutable argument. Let's start the discussion from a couple of scenarios. These scenarios are not the definitive and complete set of use-cases, but are enough to prove a point. Scenario 1: User manually searches for a song and clicks play. Again the…

> Here's a compelling irrefutable argument.

That argument isn't irrefutable at all - let's break it down.

> Scenario 1 & 2 it can't be refuted that artists should be paid for the stream.

Agreed.

> [Scenario 3 & 4] So here, not all streams can be considered equal, since some had higher probability to be present in the playlist due to inherent algorithm biases.

Disagree on the implication here - I don't see why it irrefutably follows that an artist should be paid less for these listens just because its in an automatic playlist (assigned because it matches the same profile as a record I previously liked). What you have here is an opinion, not an irrefutable argument.

My personal opinion is that if you have a streaming service, a minute paid for a minute listened is about as fair as a metric you can get.

Why are my listens, which are mainly from automatic playlists based on my historical listening, less valuable than someone else's listens, just because they listen to cool obscure bands not on the playlists?

Re: Justice at Spotify

#404

Post by juancn »

falcolas wrote: post #68
juancn wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright and patents creates artificial scarcity. The things protected are not scarce, they are abundant. Ideas and information are easy to copy/reproduce. So we built a fake framework on top of something plentiful and cheap to copy, to make it more expensive so some people can make money out of it.

I agree, they're easy to copy and reproduce. But more importantly, they are not easy to produce in the first place. How do you suggest an author (artist, musician, etc) make a living, if it takes them 6 months of normal working hours to produce a book and they get an expected $0 of revenue from that book?

Donations and live performances as it used to work. Find a Maecenas.

Re: Justice at Spotify

#405

Post by RHSman2 »

jgeada wrote: post #129
RHSman2 wrote: post #63

It's just crazy. Musicians are getting the equivalent of an ad per stream. As a musician/composer that does it for the love I put it many, many hours on each song. Its frickin' outrageous that people get as good as nothing and it seems as the more successful you are the better the deal you get #pyramid Also, the CEO of spotify is just horrible.

The "work" that the artist did once is producing a lifetime of revenue by taxing everyone else's work. The artist isn't lifting a finger in the work that Spotify (or any other music platform) is doing. Why are they expecting to get more?

What? An artist’s work isn’t just once. They ‘lifted’ their fingers to get their skills and then created something unique. Just like coding well isn’t a nice thing but very few coders make anything of their own. They are the session musicians.
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