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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

#61

Post by floor2 »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #39
MrJohz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not income directly for him, it's paid to his label, and that label will take their own cut. My impression is that the label takes the largest cut of all the people involved, but I'm happy to be corrected on that.

Not to forget that Weird Al is doing a lot of covers - so he is not the original composer of the song. Performers usually get paid way less (everybody can perform a cover of any song out there), but the composers get paid the lion share. I also doubt he gets $12 but probably lot more, the video is just intended to draw attention to Spotify's payout schemes.

Weird Al does not do covers. His albums are a mixture of parodies and fully original pieces. The parodies often use the same melody as the source work, but with original lyrics. Sometimes the music is itself parodied, and performed using an accordian or some other unique instrument.

In terms of creativity, artistic vision, lyrical difficulty or any other metric, Weird Al should be understood as an incredibly talented musician.

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

#62

Post by netrus »

ReptileMan wrote: post #37

I want a streaming service with following business model: I pay 10 dollars for unlimited streaming. Spotify gets 1 or 2. I listen only to taylor swift on repeat - she gets 8 I listen to only one song the whole month - then some obscure metal band from Finland gets 8 I listen to 40 bands equally - they get 20c each I listen to 1 band as 20 other combined - the band get 4$ all the rest split 4. Thats it Here is the kic…

If the pot size stays the same, you are just shuffling around between artists. So artists who are listened to by people who only listen to a bit of music benefit, and those listened to by people who listen to a lot of music get less.

I guess there are two groups of people who listen to a lot of music:

1) young people

2) people who like music a lot.

So bad news for Taylor Swift AND obscure bands only interesting to enthusiasts. Not sure that's better overall. I would prefer a system that is regressive, that pays more for the first 1k listens than the last 1k - but that's definitely not fair :)

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

#63

Post by MDGeist »

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 think your last bullet point is the one that sticks for me the most. If I only listen to independent death metal then why is my money going to Taylor Swift or Joe Rogan or whoever.

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

#64

Post by jwlstn »

jrajav wrote: post #50
happymellon wrote: post #28

> which is notoriously bad at paying musicians. The only thing I ever see are people comparing against the money that 90's rockstars used to be able to bring in from album sales. That ship sailed a long time ago, Spotify take everyone's money, substract a percentage for themselves and distribute the rest based upon number of plays. If you were a big artist it's probably worse because you aren't getting a sweet deal t…

I see your point, but it's mainly this part: > subtract a percentage for themselves Streaming platforms (let's not just pick on Spotify, though they also pay worse than others) just do this arbitrarily. They decide how much to skim off for themselves before graciously paying artists. This isn't how it works in basically any other industry where one group of skilled individuals create content that is then sold on some…

Spotify has never reported an annual profit in its entire existence.

If they were just deciding their cut "arbitrarily" they are doing a bad job of it.

The reality is labels have all the leverage and extract all of the profits because they have a monopoly on talent and content

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

#66

Post by gen3 »

sunbum wrote: post #42
ReptileMan wrote: post #37

I want a streaming service with following business model: I pay 10 dollars for unlimited streaming. Spotify gets 1 or 2. I listen only to taylor swift on repeat - she gets 8 I listen to only one song the whole month - then some obscure metal band from Finland gets 8 I listen to 40 bands equally - they get 20c each I listen to 1 band as 20 other combined - the band get 4$ all the rest split 4. Thats it Here is the kic…

What practical difference does it make with aggregation / averages for millions of users compared to your system?

The difference is that your streaming actually has an impact on payouts. If you listen to 10 hours of an obscure genre with small and up and coming artists, they will currently micropennies, since your streams are dwarfed by the kid that listened to 150hrs of Taylor Swift a month.

It’s stacked against indie artists, towards large artists that get the vast majority of plays (and who probably have record deals ensuring that the labels get their blood)

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

#67

Post by c0pium »

jrajav wrote: post #40
chipgap98 wrote: post #26

AFAIK Spotify doesn't pay per stream. They pay a percentage of revenue to artists that is divided based on streams of their music. Record companies and big artists negotiate these deals with Spotify. It seems like artists should be more angry with their labels about the deals that are negotiated than mad at Spotify.

Most artists these days self-distribute via platforms like Distrokid, not via a label. Distrokid just passes along streaming revenue, so they don't have any incentive to fight for it. And obviously, artists aren't in any position at all to collectively negotiate - you publish on Spotify, or you're unknown. The fault does, in fact, lie mostly with Spotify here.

According to the data I’ve looked at from Spotify, the big 3 labels are about 63% of their music, Merlin (which includes some actual small labels but also things like distrokid) is about 15%, and then there’s the rest. So the majority is the majors, but the other artists certainly could negotiate collaboratively if they wanted to.

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

#68

Post by bryanlarsen »

dylan604 wrote: post #34
happymellon wrote: post #28

> which is notoriously bad at paying musicians. The only thing I ever see are people comparing against the money that 90's rockstars used to be able to bring in from album sales. That ship sailed a long time ago, Spotify take everyone's money, substract a percentage for themselves and distribute the rest based upon number of plays. If you were a big artist it's probably worse because you aren't getting a sweet deal t…

Maybe I have a different memory of record deals, but I've never heard of a band that made money from album sales. This is why they are always touring. It's not to promote the album, but to make money themselves. That's why there are jokes about bands "coming out of retirement" to do a tour after so many years being because one of the members needs to make a payment for something or other.

It used to be the other way around. The bulk of income was from album sales, and touring was considered advertisement for the album sales. Many tours had to basically sell out completely before they would turn a profit. Arena tickets were $20 and significantly less for smaller venues.

Not surprisingly, the reason it was this way is because the label got most of the profit from the albums and the artists got most of the profit from touring. And since the labels were in control, they optimized for album sales. They loved it when a tour lost money, because then the artist owed them money.

I believe it was the 90s when tours started becoming more profitable than albums.

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

#69

Post by jl6 »

Spivak wrote: post #54
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…

It does create weird incentives though. You make more money not by people listening to your music more but buy the people that do listen to you listening to other artists less. I can already see the internet: "Don't listen to your discover weekly or new music friday it hurts the artists you like."

And so the diss track is finally justified.

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

#70

Post by bradley13 »

ikt wrote: post #8
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...

From a different article: Not 3 cents, a third of one penny per stream. By that metric, Weird Al would have earned a little more than $12, more like $350,000 but his point stands. https://gizmodo.com/weird-al-spotify-wrapped-artist-pay-1851...

Sure, but it's not all to keep. He is a business (or his label is). He has personnel expenses, production expenses, studio expenses, expenses, etc.. If he keeps 1/4 of that $350k, he's doing well. Multiply by a small number, maybe 3 or 4, to account for his other income streams.

He's a pretty well-known artist, one of the top X. He ought to be making a good living, and maybe he is - but I doubt he's getting rich.

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