6 ms·

I think that's unlikely. If I am not mistaken, the EU directive will not be implemented for another two years.

jasode 7y ago
Is there an advantage for Spotify to allow 2 more years of copyright-infringing uploads that they have to clean up later? Is there another plausible reason for Spotify shutting down direct uploads that's unrelated to copyrights?
- sk0g 7y ago
  Yeah, they could build an in house alternative to the YouTube algorithm to detect dupes/ infringing material. Spotify please hire me so I can work on this, tack.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    How would this benefit Spotify? The few people it would attract wouldn’t be worth the cost. According to other posters, it’s barely used.
    - sk0g 7y ago
      Maybe it doesn't, but I was planning to use it soon! I'll have to pay a small sum to do the same now, but that's not a big deal.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Unrelated question. As an indy artist, why use Spotify? More than likely people wouldn’t discover your music and you lose the direct relationship with your listeners. Isn’t it better for small artists to get “1000 True Fans” who would be willing to pay $x than to get a few more fans that would pay you indirectly $x/10000?
        sk0g 7y ago
        I don't actually care about the money. I have a full time job as a software engineer, this is more for me to have something to be proud of (performance at work, to me at least, isn't as important as leaving a tangible mark on someone, or brightening up people's evenings). Spotify is the biggest music streaming platform, and having something I created, or played a part in creating, be on the platform, would be a personal accomplishment. It's just an item on my bucketlist, really. In a similar vein, I want to see somoene sing along to a song I write at a gig :) Eventually the algorithm might even drop the songs in people's discovery queues, etc. But for fanbase interactions, I think local gigs + a Facebook page is the most important, to be honest. Then you tour and people should be able to discover you on their streaming platform of choice. I haven't heard of 1000 True Fans, will look into what that is actually.
  - Tharkun 7y ago
    How can they possibly know whether the artist licensed their samples? Or whether the artist is paying the original artist royalties for the use of their music?
    - sk0g 7y ago
      I was more thinking a sort of hash value for the song, to prevent reuploads. Sample detection would be hard, considering sample pack reuse would have to be dealt with!
  - zimpenfish 7y ago
    > Spotify please hire me so I can work on this, tack. I know some people who are working on something like that with the added benefit* of being on Ethereum if that interests you... :)
    - sk0g 7y ago
      I'd definitely be keen to hear more about this at least! I've been thinking about hash values for song sections, and then proving ownership by claiming a sequence of hashes. Could help ensure you aren't subconsciously ripping other music off, and make finding 'related' songs easy (covers, remixes, etc).
      - wolco 7y ago
        But changing some aspect would change the hash value
        zimpenfish 7y ago
        That, there, is the hard part of the problem. You can go with acoustic hashes (like Chromaprint[1]) but even that's not 100% reliable in the face of small changes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AcoustID#Chromaprint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AcoustID#Chromaprint
    - Sargos 7y ago
      What is the project name?
  - simias 7y ago
    Youtube is built around letting random individuals upload their videos, it makes a lot of sense for them to implement clever automated filters, contentID etc... And even then it doesn't seem to work that well since I very often see videos popping up of Youtubers complaining about abusive demonetization and false-positive flagging. On the other hand I strongly suspect that the overwhelming majority of the music streamed by Spotify comes from "the industry" instead of artists uploading their own songs themselves. Implementing complicated filters (and playing the arms race game against people trying to work around them) is probably not worth it for them.
- the_mitsuhiko 7y ago
  > Is there another plausible reason for Spotify shutting down direct uploads that's unrelated to copyrights? It's a service very few people use that costs them money to maintain and support. You already need to go through cdbaby and similar services for all other distributions and being just on spotify instead of all of them is not very appealing.
  - jasode 7y ago
    >It's a service very few people use that costs them money to maintain and support. I'm not a Spotify expert so I'm not understanding why independents artist without labels "costs money to maintain support" that isn't already spent to enable the labels to upload their artists' songs. Let's say a Universal Music Group[1] representative logs into Spotify's system to upload Justin Bieber's latest 4-minute song. (Spotify has spent money on their backend system to enable this upload workflow.) Why does it cost more to Spotify to let the unknown-Joe-Blow-not-signed-to-a-label upload his 4-minute song? [1] https://www.umusicpub.com/us/Artists.aspx https://www.umusicpub.com/us/Artists.aspx
    - zimpenfish 7y ago
      > Why does it cost more to Spotify to let the unknown-Joe-Blow-not-signed-to-a-label upload his 4-minute song? Unless I'm mistaken, Spotify would get the new Bieber automagically via an ERN (Electronic Release Notification) delivery which contains asset links, artist, meta, rights information etc. Since that's from a trusted* source, it can be ingested as-is and everyone is happy. For independent uploads, there's almost certainly several steps of human review and possibly interaction - which costs money and time.
      - nske 7y ago
        If that was the case they could have just passed some handling fees to the indie artists -that would still be much more reasonable than the fees that the artists would have to pay to a publisher. I think the record companies -still in the process of understanding and adjusting to the new business model that Spotify established- pushed for this, one way or the other, to ensure that Spotify doesn't become a competitor like Amazon became to book publishers.
- Xelbair 7y ago
  Remember what happened with GPDR. There was also a two year period to adapt. Everyone scrambled to do it in last week, or last few days. there could be plenty of reasons: it didn't bring them expected revenue, that team was allocated something with higher business priority while the feature itself required updates etc.
  - srj 7y ago
    Part of the reason for the GDPR scramble is that it deferred specifics to each country's data regulator, and some of that guidance was still being issued shortly before the deadline.
- danielscrubs 7y ago
  Yes. To obtain tagged data to train models. Just like all big companies become leaders and push juridical boundaries.
- Anarch157a 7y ago
  Fraud[0] comes to mind. By requiring the artist to be signed with a label, Spotify can more easily police this kind of behavior. [0] https://qz.com/1212330/a-bulgarian-scheme-scammed-spotify-for-1-million-without-breaking-a-single-law/ https://qz.com/1212330/a-bulgarian-scheme-scammed-spotify-fo...
- magicalhippo 7y ago
  > Is there another plausible reason for Spotify shutting down direct uploads that's unrelated to copyrights? My immediate thought on reading the headline was that they didn't want to deal with a ton of individuals w.r.t. payouts and etc. Company to company transactions are always easier, so restrict it to labels.
tanilama 7y ago
Two Years aren't exactly that much of an extension.
dangerface 7y ago
You are mistaken, it's in effect today but EU members and businesses have UP TO two years to implement it. Why would Spotify wait until they are sued to do something about it?

Is there an advantage for Spotify to allow 2 more years of copyright-infringing uploads that they have to clean up later? Is there another plausible reason for Spotify shutting down direct uploads that's unrelated to copyrights?

sk0g 7y ago
Yeah, they could build an in house alternative to the YouTube algorithm to detect dupes/ infringing material. Spotify please hire me so I can work on this, tack.
- scarface74 7y ago
  How would this benefit Spotify? The few people it would attract wouldn’t be worth the cost. According to other posters, it’s barely used.
  - sk0g 7y ago
    Maybe it doesn't, but I was planning to use it soon! I'll have to pay a small sum to do the same now, but that's not a big deal.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Unrelated question. As an indy artist, why use Spotify? More than likely people wouldn’t discover your music and you lose the direct relationship with your listeners. Isn’t it better for small artists to get “1000 True Fans” who would be willing to pay $x than to get a few more fans that would pay you indirectly $x/10000?
      - sk0g 7y ago
        I don't actually care about the money. I have a full time job as a software engineer, this is more for me to have something to be proud of (performance at work, to me at least, isn't as important as leaving a tangible mark on someone, or brightening up people's evenings). Spotify is the biggest music streaming platform, and having something I created, or played a part in creating, be on the platform, would be a personal accomplishment. It's just an item on my bucketlist, really. In a similar vein, I want to see somoene sing along to a song I write at a gig :) Eventually the algorithm might even drop the songs in people's discovery queues, etc. But for fanbase interactions, I think local gigs + a Facebook page is the most important, to be honest. Then you tour and people should be able to discover you on their streaming platform of choice. I haven't heard of 1000 True Fans, will look into what that is actually.
- Tharkun 7y ago
  How can they possibly know whether the artist licensed their samples? Or whether the artist is paying the original artist royalties for the use of their music?
  - sk0g 7y ago
    I was more thinking a sort of hash value for the song, to prevent reuploads. Sample detection would be hard, considering sample pack reuse would have to be dealt with!
- zimpenfish 7y ago
  > Spotify please hire me so I can work on this, tack. I know some people who are working on something like that with the added benefit* of being on Ethereum if that interests you... :)
  - sk0g 7y ago
    I'd definitely be keen to hear more about this at least! I've been thinking about hash values for song sections, and then proving ownership by claiming a sequence of hashes. Could help ensure you aren't subconsciously ripping other music off, and make finding 'related' songs easy (covers, remixes, etc).
    - wolco 7y ago
      But changing some aspect would change the hash value
      - zimpenfish 7y ago
        That, there, is the hard part of the problem. You can go with acoustic hashes (like Chromaprint[1]) but even that's not 100% reliable in the face of small changes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AcoustID#Chromaprint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AcoustID#Chromaprint
  - Sargos 7y ago
    What is the project name?
- simias 7y ago
  Youtube is built around letting random individuals upload their videos, it makes a lot of sense for them to implement clever automated filters, contentID etc... And even then it doesn't seem to work that well since I very often see videos popping up of Youtubers complaining about abusive demonetization and false-positive flagging. On the other hand I strongly suspect that the overwhelming majority of the music streamed by Spotify comes from "the industry" instead of artists uploading their own songs themselves. Implementing complicated filters (and playing the arms race game against people trying to work around them) is probably not worth it for them.
the_mitsuhiko 7y ago
> Is there another plausible reason for Spotify shutting down direct uploads that's unrelated to copyrights? It's a service very few people use that costs them money to maintain and support. You already need to go through cdbaby and similar services for all other distributions and being just on spotify instead of all of them is not very appealing.
- jasode 7y ago
  >It's a service very few people use that costs them money to maintain and support. I'm not a Spotify expert so I'm not understanding why independents artist without labels "costs money to maintain support" that isn't already spent to enable the labels to upload their artists' songs. Let's say a Universal Music Group[1] representative logs into Spotify's system to upload Justin Bieber's latest 4-minute song. (Spotify has spent money on their backend system to enable this upload workflow.) Why does it cost more to Spotify to let the unknown-Joe-Blow-not-signed-to-a-label upload his 4-minute song? [1] https://www.umusicpub.com/us/Artists.aspx https://www.umusicpub.com/us/Artists.aspx
  - zimpenfish 7y ago
    > Why does it cost more to Spotify to let the unknown-Joe-Blow-not-signed-to-a-label upload his 4-minute song? Unless I'm mistaken, Spotify would get the new Bieber automagically via an ERN (Electronic Release Notification) delivery which contains asset links, artist, meta, rights information etc. Since that's from a trusted* source, it can be ingested as-is and everyone is happy. For independent uploads, there's almost certainly several steps of human review and possibly interaction - which costs money and time.
    - nske 7y ago
      If that was the case they could have just passed some handling fees to the indie artists -that would still be much more reasonable than the fees that the artists would have to pay to a publisher. I think the record companies -still in the process of understanding and adjusting to the new business model that Spotify established- pushed for this, one way or the other, to ensure that Spotify doesn't become a competitor like Amazon became to book publishers.
Xelbair 7y ago
Remember what happened with GPDR. There was also a two year period to adapt. Everyone scrambled to do it in last week, or last few days. there could be plenty of reasons: it didn't bring them expected revenue, that team was allocated something with higher business priority while the feature itself required updates etc.
- srj 7y ago
  Part of the reason for the GDPR scramble is that it deferred specifics to each country's data regulator, and some of that guidance was still being issued shortly before the deadline.
danielscrubs 7y ago
Yes. To obtain tagged data to train models. Just like all big companies become leaders and push juridical boundaries.
Anarch157a 7y ago
Fraud[0] comes to mind. By requiring the artist to be signed with a label, Spotify can more easily police this kind of behavior. [0] https://qz.com/1212330/a-bulgarian-scheme-scammed-spotify-for-1-million-without-breaking-a-single-law/ https://qz.com/1212330/a-bulgarian-scheme-scammed-spotify-fo...
magicalhippo 7y ago
> Is there another plausible reason for Spotify shutting down direct uploads that's unrelated to copyrights? My immediate thought on reading the headline was that they didn't want to deal with a ton of individuals w.r.t. payouts and etc. Company to company transactions are always easier, so restrict it to labels.

tanilama 7y ago

Two Years aren't exactly that much of an extension.

dangerface 7y ago

You are mistaken, it's in effect today but EU members and businesses have UP TO two years to implement it. Why would Spotify wait until they are sued to do something about it?