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70% of Spotify's revenue goes to rights holders. That's not ripping off artists. Streaming royalties have been the largest segment of music rights holder revenu

70% of Spotify's revenue goes to rights holders. That's not ripping off artists. Streaming royalties have been the largest segment of music rights holder revenue for several years. The record labels negotiated these deals and had all of the power. Also, all music streaming services have effectively the same deals. Spotify does not have preferential treatment. Artists can distribute their music without Spotify. Spotify cannot distribute its app to iOS users without Apple.

TylerE 6y ago
That’s more representative of how the market has imploded. There were 900M CDs sold in the US in 2000. This year that number will be less than 25M
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  Imploded or transformed? Music consumption hasn't gone down. Consumption of physical media that I can't slip in my pocket has.
  - TylerE 6y ago
    Spending on music is vastly down. The RIAA publishes numbers - https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/ https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/ Inflation adjusted we are down by over half from the peak. Subscription revenue is less that 30% of peak CD revenue.
acruns 6y ago
Wouldn't that be the record companies though? I have heard Kanye is trying to get more money for artists but not really sure. I am puzzled why blockchain+streaming for music hasn't taken off. Artists would maintain rights and profits from what I can tell
- ticmasta 6y ago
  Traditionally payment & accounting has never been a problem in the music business, so I think blockchain would not really help. The underlying economics is what has changed dramatically. Distribution is close to free, but unlike the ~ $1 an artist might have seen out of a CD sale (before discounting for costs & advances) they now see sub-cents on a single track. You used to pay $15-20 for an entire album to get 2 or 3 good songs; now you only stream everybody's top tracks and pay less than that a month. So the artist gets a couple of pennies for the period when they are hot, then nothing.
- rblatz 6y ago
  Why would you put blockchain in this?
  - damnyou 6y ago
    For micropayments per stream, presumably.
    - rmah 6y ago
      Blockchain is not suitable for micropayments. The computing resource requirements are many orders of magnitude too high.
      - damnyou 6y ago
        A proof of work blockchain isn't suitable, but proof of work is one of many ways to reach distributed consensus.
ticmasta 6y ago
70% of an apple purchase goes to the app developer. That's not ripping off developers.
- christopherwxyz 6y ago
  Apple doesn’t charge itself a 30% fee when it competes with other developers for the same paying users.
  - sithlord 6y ago
    And you dont charge yourself what the lawn companies charge you to cut your yard. I don't really get your point.
    - christopherwxyz 6y ago
      Your example is faulty. No one pays you to cut your own lawn. People pay Apple to listen to Apple Music. People pay Apple to watch TV+. Other competitors have to pay 30% for every customer before they can even compete with their own product.
criddell 6y ago
Spotify is complicated because the big record companies are also big shareholders. They have a conflict of interest. Also 70% doesn't mean anything without actual numbers. If they lowered their subscription to $1 / month and gave 80% to rights holders it wouldn't be an improvement. I'd be more interested if they reported how many plays per month it takes to earn as much as you would in a minimum wage job. Edit: I was curious about the minimum wage question so I looked it up. Assuming $15 / hour for minimum wage it would take 750,000 streams on Spotify and 430,000 streams on Apple Music to earn the same in a month as you would working a minimum wage job. https://soundcharts.com/blog/music-streaming-rates-payouts https://soundcharts.com/blog/music-streaming-rates-payouts
- jeremiahlee 6y ago
  My understanding is that rights holders are paid by the percentage of all plays, not per play. Deezer is trying to fix this, but it requires the major labels to agree to the change. Deezer's user-centric payment system would apportion royalties based on an individual customer's play percentage instead of the total customer base's percentage. So if you only listen to 5 artists, all of your subscription's royalties would go to those 5 artists. More info on UCPS at https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/deezer-launches-initiative-for-user-centric-approach-to-distribute-royalties-883310/ https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/deezer-launches-initia... and https://www.deezer.com/ucps https://www.deezer.com/ucps

TylerE 6y ago

That’s more representative of how the market has imploded. There were 900M CDs sold in the US in 2000. This year that number will be less than 25M

shadowgovt 6y ago
Imploded or transformed? Music consumption hasn't gone down. Consumption of physical media that I can't slip in my pocket has.
- TylerE 6y ago
  Spending on music is vastly down. The RIAA publishes numbers - https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/ https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/ Inflation adjusted we are down by over half from the peak. Subscription revenue is less that 30% of peak CD revenue.

acruns 6y ago

Wouldn't that be the record companies though? I have heard Kanye is trying to get more money for artists but not really sure. I am puzzled why blockchain+streaming for music hasn't taken off. Artists would maintain rights and profits from what I can tell

ticmasta 6y ago
Traditionally payment & accounting has never been a problem in the music business, so I think blockchain would not really help. The underlying economics is what has changed dramatically. Distribution is close to free, but unlike the ~ $1 an artist might have seen out of a CD sale (before discounting for costs & advances) they now see sub-cents on a single track. You used to pay $15-20 for an entire album to get 2 or 3 good songs; now you only stream everybody's top tracks and pay less than that a month. So the artist gets a couple of pennies for the period when they are hot, then nothing.
rblatz 6y ago
Why would you put blockchain in this?
- damnyou 6y ago
  For micropayments per stream, presumably.
  - rmah 6y ago
    Blockchain is not suitable for micropayments. The computing resource requirements are many orders of magnitude too high.
    - damnyou 6y ago
      A proof of work blockchain isn't suitable, but proof of work is one of many ways to reach distributed consensus.

ticmasta 6y ago

70% of an apple purchase goes to the app developer. That's not ripping off developers.

christopherwxyz 6y ago
Apple doesn’t charge itself a 30% fee when it competes with other developers for the same paying users.
- sithlord 6y ago
  And you dont charge yourself what the lawn companies charge you to cut your yard. I don't really get your point.
  - christopherwxyz 6y ago
    Your example is faulty. No one pays you to cut your own lawn. People pay Apple to listen to Apple Music. People pay Apple to watch TV+. Other competitors have to pay 30% for every customer before they can even compete with their own product.

criddell 6y ago

Spotify is complicated because the big record companies are also big shareholders. They have a conflict of interest. Also 70% doesn't mean anything without actual numbers. If they lowered their subscription to $1 / month and gave 80% to rights holders it wouldn't be an improvement. I'd be more interested if they reported how many plays per month it takes to earn as much as you would in a minimum wage job. Edit: I was curious about the minimum wage question so I looked it up. Assuming $15 / hour for minimum wage it would take 750,000 streams on Spotify and 430,000 streams on Apple Music to earn the same in a month as you would working a minimum wage job. https://soundcharts.com/blog/music-streaming-rates-payouts https://soundcharts.com/blog/music-streaming-rates-payouts

jeremiahlee 6y ago
My understanding is that rights holders are paid by the percentage of all plays, not per play. Deezer is trying to fix this, but it requires the major labels to agree to the change. Deezer's user-centric payment system would apportion royalties based on an individual customer's play percentage instead of the total customer base's percentage. So if you only listen to 5 artists, all of your subscription's royalties would go to those 5 artists. More info on UCPS at https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/deezer-launches-initiative-for-user-centric-approach-to-distribute-royalties-883310/ https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/deezer-launches-initia... and https://www.deezer.com/ucps https://www.deezer.com/ucps