Spotify Is Eating the Entire Music Business?

[ghettosynth]

regarding used cds/vinyl.. i think the 30 yer old CD i buy or the 40 year old record.. is not taking money away from the artist..

Someone owns the rights to that music and you are not supporting the rights holders of whatever music you buy when you buy used.

i think it's helpful to be aware. to be informed about how all this shit works as maybe it will effect someone's decision about participating in it. some people are thoughtful in these kinds of things, some aren't, some accept things as they are and are indifferent "not my problem" mode of thinking. so it goes. good luck with all the things.

You should be more informed about the reality of making a living from streaming. I am actively supporting artists on Spotify. You are stealing from their pockets by buying used because it's convenient for you. I'm not saying that you shouldn't buy used, I am saying that you should climb down off that high horse and stop telling other people who are participating in the industry as it exists today that they shouldn't because you think that you're an expert.

[glokraw]

When Taylor Swift was a kid, she entered contests, won or placed in a few, and got noticed. Practiced the instruments, vocals and dance. Parents were very successful people, saw her potential, and they moved the family to a music center city, (another thing the whiner class are often loathe to do).

That's a whole different thing. That's an obsession with being successful/popular. I have none of that, my focus is completely on the music. If I had a choice between a billion dollars (which is what Tay-Tay is worth) and seeing music I like dominating the charts for the next decade, I would choose the latter every time. Which is to say that if I had Tay-Tay's money, I'd spend it all on making artists I like successful. I would not be charging $400 for the cheapest seats at my concerts or flying around in a private jet. I'd be putting up the money to make the tour happen, insisting on reasonable ticket prices and not caring if I covered costs or not.

We all have obsessions. I greatly enjoy mine. Hers happens to be music, and the fact that she is wildly successful and popular in some circles, just means she can employ a very large number of people, fund many charities, and make a lot of fans happy. I couldn't have picked her out of a police lineup until she hooked up with a relatively famous football guy last year, and I still wouldn't recognize any of her music, were I exposed to it. But I give credit where it's due. Now she is at a crossroads. Middle-age, maturity, and marriage are calling...with the clock ticking a bit louder each year. I'm hoping it's not a ticking timebomb.
Cheers

[revvy]

She’ll probably move onto a houseboat and post endless bollocks on KVR.

On topic: as a user with a family, Spotify family account is my best spent money each month. I’d pay double, if it meant more money to artists.

[vurt]

bones and taylor were on a chart together

next up is nouveauquill remix of shake it off. (im so hip and young i know a title)

[revvy]

I saw her 3-hour film

[Shabdahbriah]

bones and taylor were on a chart together

next up is nouveauquill remix of shake it off. (im so hip and young i know a title)

Actually, now that you mention it... that'd be kinda cool.

(you need a 'vanity-plate' for your scooter: "hipRthnU")

[vurt]

(you need a 'vanity-plate' for your scooter: "hipRthnU")

[ghettosynth]

On topic: as a user with a family, Spotify family account is my best spent money each month. I’d pay double, if it meant more money to artists.

Sure, I'd pay a 1000 times more. No, wait, 10,000 times more! Cause I love artists, no not like that, more a platonic kind of love where we never even talk about each other's jiggly bits.

Actually, I wouldn't, but you knew that. Here's the thing, many people wouldn't spend double, in fact, not even a few dollars more. In fact, I'd wager that most would leave and go elsewhere. This is a two-sided network problem and balancing what you charge against maintaining your market-share is important. If you go too extreme, you will just allow someone else to take your customers, and your artists, and then the artists will lose more than if the subscription cost remained the same.

So, it doesn't matter at all that a few people would pay double, they won't get a chance for a long time to prove that it's not just virtue signaling because it would be a death blow to the network.

You can, of course, prove your dedication by not buying the family plan and, instead, buy individual accounts for all members of the family. This will increase the pool of money available to the artists without changing the actual streaming. The family plan, by its very design, exists to charge the consumer less money, hence pay the artists a lower payout, for the same number of streams.

So, it seems Drake made some many millions from streaming last year. To be clear, I couldn't tell if something was a Drake song if my life depended on it. I know he's a contemporary RnB artist, a genre I mostly loathe. But is that not enough? Is it not enough to make millions from streaming in a year?

There have been suggestions that how the money is divided should be changed. A per/user model would divide the money that each person pays by the songs that they stream. I'm in support of this as an idea. I don't think that any portion of my money should fund Drake or Swiftie nonsense. I would also like to see more fairness in terms of length. I stream Eliana Radigue and Brian Eno more than any other artists. Even in terms of actual plays, but in terms of length, probably 50 to 100 times what I stream other artists. These artists who create longform compositions are penalized by the per/song stream payout. I would prefer to see it structured as per/minute of streaming after a fixed level of commitment to the track, say two minutes. So, you listen to less then two minutes and the artist gets nothing, but, if you listen to more than two minutes the artist gets royalties for each minute. Songs that are less than two minutes have to be listened to in their entirety and the per minute royalty rate is based on the current average song time adjusted for the current average required completion time, all rounded up to the next minute.

Whoo, got that off my chest. Say it with me now, the first suggestion may or may not happen and my suggestion will never happen.

The problem with any of this is that it dramatically increases the costs to compute payouts and this will increase costs with little benefit to artists. The first idea has been studied and it would, assuming payout costs remain the same (unlikely), indeed drop the pay to top performers, by about half, yAY! However, it would only marginally increase the pay to smaller artists because there's no magic that you can do when you're not actually getting people to listen to your music. The gigantic tail of posers will still be lucky to be able to buy a bag of crisps with their annual earnings. Second, there's a fixed pool of money coming in and that long tail is going around the block more than a few times. That payout problem is a big problem.

The average person just doesn't comprehend the difference between a million streams and a billion streams. This is a huge difference in popularity. Any attempt to talk about redistribution of royalties from the popular to the less popular is going to be met with strong resistance from major labels and streaming services. I'm not telling you anything that you don't know here, but, any such proposition is going to be cast as unfair and in a particular ideological light. It's dead on the ground, it's a non-starter.

[glokraw]

A per/user model would divide the money that each person pays by the songs that they stream. I'm in support of this as an idea....

I would also like to see more fairness in terms of length....

These artists who create longform compositions are penalized by the per/song stream payout.

A layered per-song and per minute payout, with a minimum time threshold as you mentioned, seems fair, and shouldn't change the lifestyles of the rich and famous very much, with honest competition giving every artist a fair accounting and just reward. This would encourage maintaining standards at the high end, while motivating some lesser-known artists to step up their game.
Cheers

[revvy]

On topic: as a user with a family, Spotify family account is my best spent money each month. I’d pay double, if it meant more money to artists.

Sure, I'd pay a 1000 times more. No, wait, 10,000 times more! Cause I love artists, no not like that, more a platonic kind of love where we never even talk about each other's jiggly bits.

Actually, I wouldn't, but you knew that. Here's the thing, many people wouldn't spend double, in fact, not even a few dollars more. In fact, I'd wager that most would leave and go elsewhere. This is a two-sided network problem and balancing what you charge against maintaining your market-share is important. If you go too extreme, you will just allow someone else to take your customers, and your artists, and then the artists will lose more than if the subscription cost remained the same.

So, it doesn't matter at all that a few people would pay double, they won't get a chance for a long time to prove that it's not just virtue signaling because it would be a death blow to the network.

You can, of course, prove your dedication by not buying the family plan and, instead, buy individual accounts for all members of the family. This will increase the pool of money available to the artists without changing the actual streaming. The family plan, by its very design, exists to charge the consumer less money, hence pay the artists a lower payout, for the same number of streams.

So, it seems Drake made some many millions from streaming last year. To be clear, I couldn't tell if something was a Drake song if my life depended on it. I know he's a contemporary RnB artist, a genre I mostly loathe. But is that not enough? Is it not enough to make millions from streaming in a year?

There have been suggestions that how the money is divided should be changed. A per/user model would divide the money that each person pays by the songs that they stream. I'm in support of this as an idea. I don't think that any portion of my money should fund Drake or Swiftie nonsense. I would also like to see more fairness in terms of length. I stream Eliana Radigue and Brian Eno more than any other artists. Even in terms of actual plays, but in terms of length, probably 50 to 100 times what I stream other artists. These artists who create longform compositions are penalized by the per/song stream payout. I would prefer to see it structured as per/minute of streaming after a fixed level of commitment to the track, say two minutes. So, you listen to less then two minutes and the artist gets nothing, but, if you listen to more than two minutes the artist gets royalties for each minute. Songs that are less than two minutes have to be listened to in their entirety and the per minute royalty rate is based on the current average song time adjusted for the current average required completion time, all rounded up to the next minute.

Whoo, got that off my chest. Say it with me now, the first suggestion may or may not happen and my suggestion will never happen.

The problem with any of this is that it dramatically increases the costs to compute payouts and this will increase costs with little benefit to artists. The first idea has been studied and it would, assuming payout costs remain the same (unlikely), indeed drop the pay to top performers, by about half, yAY! However, it would only marginally increase the pay to smaller artists because there's no magic that you can do when you're not actually getting people to listen to your music. The gigantic tail of posers will still be lucky to be able to buy a bag of crisps with their annual earnings. Second, there's a fixed pool of money coming in and that long tail is going around the block more than a few times. That payout problem is a big problem.

The average person just doesn't comprehend the difference between a million streams and a billion streams. This is a huge difference in popularity. Any attempt to talk about redistribution of royalties from the popular to the less popular is going to be met with strong resistance from major labels and streaming services. I'm not telling you anything that you don't know here, but, any such proposition is going to be cast as unfair and in a particular ideological light. It's dead on the ground, it's a non-starter.

Yeah, I tell ya, Spotify family account is my best spent money each month. I’d pay double, if it meant more money to artists.

[osiris]

The used CD analogy is obviously from a Gen Z person. And tell us how you feel about mixtapes. (A mixtape (alternatively mix-tape, mix tape or mixed tape) is a compilation of music, typically from multiple sources, recorded onto a medium. With origins in the 1980s, the term normally describes a homemade compilation of music onto a cassette tape, CD, or digital playlist.) We used to gift these to other people sometimes and nobody got paid for that.

[Shabdahbriah]

Hmmm... may be of interest to some:

https://youtu.be/lX-ae_iRnqU

[Lazarus451]

regarding used cds/vinyl.. i think the 30 yer old CD i buy or the 40 year old record.. is not taking money away from the artist..

Someone owns the rights to that music and you are not supporting the rights holders of whatever music you buy when you buy used.

I see zero problems in this. It's still the same record. I'm not sending money to Ikea, if I'll find a used table form my relatives.

Edit. Fixed quotes

[ghettosynth]

regarding used cds/vinyl.. i think the 30 yer old CD i buy or the 40 year old record.. is not taking money away from the artist..

Someone owns the rights to that music and you are not supporting the rights holders of whatever music you buy when you buy used.

I see zero problems in this. It's still the same record. I'm not sending money to Ikea, if I'll find a used table form my relatives.

Edit. Fixed quotes

Nor do most of us but dayjob couldn't resist admonishing those using Spotify that the artist isn't getting anything from our streams. So, I pointed out his hypocrisy in justifying his own self-serving music consumption habits while having the audacity to criticize those of us spending actual cash money to subscribe to a platform that has helped to democratize music.

In other words, if you argue that others shouldn't be using Spotify because it doesn't pay the artist enough then you have absolutely zero business justifying the purchase of used CDs because it helps you keep your music costs low.

[ghettosynth]

Hmmm... may be of interest to some:

https://youtu.be/lX-ae_iRnqU

That's a lot of words about that 1000 streams threshold. Honestly, I wish that you could set boundaries of artists streams in search. I would like to exclude "artists" with too few and too many streams. One of the most useful search criteria on Youtube is the "over 20 minutes" filter which helps me to filter out so many short form videos. It's not that long form videos are always better, but there are far fewer of them and so it's a better way to find things like interesting conference talks.

Honestly, I think that 1000 streams is too low. I think it would be better to set the threshold to monetization per artist and if you don't have, for example, at least one million total streams and an average of 1000 listeners per month then you should see Spotify as a promotional tool only. I don't think that I'm following any artist, including the ones mentioned earlier in this thread whom I'd never heard of that don't meet that threshold. Even the more than horrible band "punk" band I referred to earlier in this thread meets this threshold.

This is a serious problem on Bandcamp where this a metric assload of drek that you have to sift through to find the gems. I think that it's completely reasonable to say that there is a cost to write you a (virtual) check for payout and that's a complete waste of time to payout three cents.

BTW: If you think that somehow that 1000 streams is something and you should be paid more than three cents, you're going to have to come up with a compelling argument. I haven't heard one yet.