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Edit: just to bring this up a bit higher in the thread, replies like from u/kgermino, u/dtech, and u/anonymoushn are saying that popular artists rack up their n

by lucb1e 6y ago

Edit: just to bring this up a bit higher in the thread, replies like from u/kgermino, u/dtech, and u/anonymoushn are saying that popular artists rack up their number of plays from background noise (my wording, not theirs) whereas niche artists won't have that advantage. A bar or coworker might play a popular playlist a ton of times as background noise whereas your niche artist will have some dedicated people listening to it that don't rack up a meaningless play count. This causes money to flow from subscribers listening to this niche artist to the more popular artist. That's a problem to which I see various solutions, like only including active clicks on songs or artists in the revenue distribution model, or indeed changing the model to be per user instead of by aggregate number of plays. So it's not really that it's unfair to pay artists more that are played more, it's that because of the way some people use Spotify, plays are racked up for reasons other than because their music is so great. </edit> It effectively works in the way you describe, but aggregated instead of per user. So instead of splitting your £15 into 4, it splits Spotify's total revenue (minus service fee) among the artists listened to. If 100 million users listened to artist A and 50 million to artist B, and those are the only two artists listened to, then they get 100/(100+50)=67% and 50/(100+50)=33% of the revenue, respectively. Listening to certain artists still gets them more money. So I'm not sure why you say that most of your money goes to a popular artist instead. Other people's money goes there because they listened to it, yours doesn't really if you look at an individual subscriber's level. It's a bit like electricity: you can purchase green power but of course they don't dig new cables to get you exclusively green power, they just pay the wind/solar/hydro farms instead of the coal farms for the part of the power that you used. (Some notes I made for myself to make sure I got this straight, figured I could share them: If you listen only to artist A and 999 other people listen to artist B (everyone plays an equal number of tracks), then £15×1000=£15000 goes into the pot, and your artist will get 1/1000×15000=£15 and the other one will get 999/1000×£15000=£14985. Even in aggregate, it should work out, but please correct me if I went wrong somewhere!)

kzrdude 6y ago
For this to make complete sense, we'd have to have statistics that proves that free users and premium users have the same listening patterns on average, and I don't think they do. Otherwise the fact remains that we who pay subsidize artists that are preferred by the non-paying users. For this reason, the following is the important difference: Other people's money goes there because they listened to it (Rebuttal: Many other people use free spotify, and didn't pay any money).
maxerickson 6y ago
If it does it by aggregated listens and not by artist, then other people listening to some other artist diverts their funds to that artist. If they did it per user, that wouldn't happen.
- lucb1e 6y ago
  Can you make the math work out in a way that my funds are diverted to another artist? Because what you're saying sounds logical but when I try and compute it, as in the final paragraph of my comment above, it doesn't work out that way. But I could be wrong! Please try it and let me/us know what you find!
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    Just set aside your "everyone plays an equal number of tracks" condition, because that isn't what happens.
    - Aachen 6y ago
      Isn't that fair though? If artist A gets played a million times and I don't listen to them but I play artist B twice that month, shouldn't artist A get most of that money? If artist B was so great I'd play them more often and they'd get more money.
      - anonymoushn 6y ago
        No, it's not fair that my subscription money is mostly allocated by other users' listening patterns, not by mine.
        lucb1e 6y ago
        It also works the other way, though. If someone else listens to 1 song of artist A once a month and you play artist B more than once a month, a larger chunk of the total will be going to artist B. And in aggregate things will work out, since an average listener will listen to a random song an average number of times. Broken down to an individual level you can claim that a smaller artist gets less but if that artist's listeners actually play more than the average number of songs an average subscriber plays, then they get a larger percentage instead. That seems like random variation to me. I'm not sure if it's unfair. If you think artist B is more deserving of your money than artist A despite B being listened to fewer times, then yeah this would be unfair. I'm just not sure why you would say that they deserve your money more than an artist that people listened to more often.
jasode 6y ago
>, and your artist will get 1/1000×15000=£15 and the other one will get 999/1000×£15000=£14985. The denominator of 1000 in your fraction is artists but the pro rata calculation in the paper has total streams as the denominator. If Spotify paid out by directly mapping userid to (unpopular) artist, and a user only listened to 1 track that month, that 1 artist of that 1 stream would receive the entire user's subscription revenue. (I.e. Assuming a rough calculation that Spotify pays ~70% of revenue to license royalties, that 1 artist would receive 70% of $15 which would be ~$10) But with the total streams aggregation, the more people listen to Lady Gaga / Katy Perry / Taylor Swift / etc, the more it makes the denominator bigger with popular streams. Therefore, the more it reduces income percentage of the unpopular artist. (I.e., that's why an unpopular unknown indie artist receives a fraction of a cent for each stream instead of $10.[1]) It's a calculation that favors artists of popular songs (streams). In contrast, I believe the Amazon's subscription for Kindle Unlimited payout is based on author's pages read without aggregating all other authors' pages into the denominator. Therefore, an Amazon's subscriber's revenue goes more towards the particular authors the subscriber read and is not affected by millions of others reading the more popular JK Rowling or Stephen King. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=spotify+indie+musician+payout+cents https://www.google.com/search?q=spotify+indie+musician+payou...
Renaud 6y ago
Currently, each played song will earn a fraction of a cent/penny to an artist (around 0.4 to 0.8 cent)[1]. If you played a single song during the month. That artist would only get that fractional cent. The remaining of your monthly fee will go to other artists you have never played and may have no interest financing. Most will be the popular artists du jour pushed by the records labels. They like the current system because -by definition- popular songs will be played a lot, probably in large part by free users (they are the majority anyway at around 55%)[1]. So popular streams always get the lion share of Spotify's revenues, mostly financed by those who don't listen to them. [1]: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/spotify-statistics/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/spotify-statistics/
flavius29663 6y ago
"That's a problem" - why do you call it a problem? An artist (say lady Gaga) made a song that can be played on repeat in bars and not annoy customers, keep them entertained. Why is it implied that her music is of lower quality that niche artists? "other than because their music is so great." There are multiple ways to measure music. One of them is how touched you are by it, to each his own - and this is why niche artists are "niche" - because there are so many unique ways to make special music. There is value in music that appeases to everyone equally. You will never be able to play niche music in a bar for prolonged periods (unless it's a special bar). This is kindof like the difference between a ferrari and an F150. The truck does it all for everyone. A single ferrari is more special and more expensive than a ford, but in the end, you cannot argue that Ford the company sells more cars than Ferrari, which is why they deserve a larger stock value.
- lucb1e 6y ago
  > can be played on repeat in bars [...]. Why is it implied that her music is of lower quality that niche artists? Well first of all, it's illegal. Spotify's TOS disallows you to play your 9,99 subscription for an audience of more than a usual household amount of people. If you're entertaining a dozen guests or more 365 days a year and for commercial purposes, your part should be quite a bit more than ten bucks a month. And so I get that people are unhappy that their individual subscription money goes to the entertainment of restaurant guests, background noise for a workplace, etc. because of the way plays are counted. > to each [her] own - and this is why niche artists are "niche" Sure, I'm not saying that we should pay all artists equally right? Not like anyone above a certain (low) threshold of monthly playbacks should earn a minimum wage to support the niche ones. No, what people mind is that the money they pay to listen to artist B is instead sent to artist A due to a side effect of the revenue distribution model. Artist A gets more playbacks not because they are better but because of, so to say, a runaway effect of being popular. Those popular artists would already earn enough if this distribution model would be on an individual user basis, but the current distribution system causes even less money to go to niche artists despite having plenty of fans listening to them. It makes it harder to earn money with niche music, which would be a negative effect on what I think you value as well: each can have their own. Spotify doesn't seem to support your favorite artists as well as you might expect from paying for Spotify and knowing that the money goes to the artists behind the tracks you play. > The truck does it all for everyone. Erm looking that "F150" up on image search (I don't speak car and driver), it looks like a huge asshole car. If everyone would drive that we might as well pick up and leave this planet. Also I don't get what the comparison is trying to tell me.

by lucb1e 6y ago

kzrdude 6y ago

For this to make complete sense, we'd have to have statistics that proves that free users and premium users have the same listening patterns on average, and I don't think they do. Otherwise the fact remains that we who pay subsidize artists that are preferred by the non-paying users. For this reason, the following is the important difference: Other people's money goes there because they listened to it (Rebuttal: Many other people use free spotify, and didn't pay any money).

maxerickson 6y ago

If it does it by aggregated listens and not by artist, then other people listening to some other artist diverts their funds to that artist. If they did it per user, that wouldn't happen.

lucb1e 6y ago
Can you make the math work out in a way that my funds are diverted to another artist? Because what you're saying sounds logical but when I try and compute it, as in the final paragraph of my comment above, it doesn't work out that way. But I could be wrong! Please try it and let me/us know what you find!
- maxerickson 6y ago
  Just set aside your "everyone plays an equal number of tracks" condition, because that isn't what happens.
  - Aachen 6y ago
    Isn't that fair though? If artist A gets played a million times and I don't listen to them but I play artist B twice that month, shouldn't artist A get most of that money? If artist B was so great I'd play them more often and they'd get more money.
    - anonymoushn 6y ago
      No, it's not fair that my subscription money is mostly allocated by other users' listening patterns, not by mine.
      - lucb1e 6y ago
        It also works the other way, though. If someone else listens to 1 song of artist A once a month and you play artist B more than once a month, a larger chunk of the total will be going to artist B. And in aggregate things will work out, since an average listener will listen to a random song an average number of times. Broken down to an individual level you can claim that a smaller artist gets less but if that artist's listeners actually play more than the average number of songs an average subscriber plays, then they get a larger percentage instead. That seems like random variation to me. I'm not sure if it's unfair. If you think artist B is more deserving of your money than artist A despite B being listened to fewer times, then yeah this would be unfair. I'm just not sure why you would say that they deserve your money more than an artist that people listened to more often.

jasode 6y ago

>, and your artist will get 1/1000×15000=£15 and the other one will get 999/1000×£15000=£14985. The denominator of 1000 in your fraction is artists but the pro rata calculation in the paper has total streams as the denominator. If Spotify paid out by directly mapping userid to (unpopular) artist, and a user only listened to 1 track that month, that 1 artist of that 1 stream would receive the entire user's subscription revenue. (I.e. Assuming a rough calculation that Spotify pays ~70% of revenue to license royalties, that 1 artist would receive 70% of $15 which would be ~$10) But with the total streams aggregation, the more people listen to Lady Gaga / Katy Perry / Taylor Swift / etc, the more it makes the denominator bigger with popular streams. Therefore, the more it reduces income percentage of the unpopular artist. (I.e., that's why an unpopular unknown indie artist receives a fraction of a cent for each stream instead of $10.[1]) It's a calculation that favors artists of popular songs (streams). In contrast, I believe the Amazon's subscription for Kindle Unlimited payout is based on author's pages read without aggregating all other authors' pages into the denominator. Therefore, an Amazon's subscriber's revenue goes more towards the particular authors the subscriber read and is not affected by millions of others reading the more popular JK Rowling or Stephen King. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=spotify+indie+musician+payout+cents https://www.google.com/search?q=spotify+indie+musician+payou...

Renaud 6y ago

Currently, each played song will earn a fraction of a cent/penny to an artist (around 0.4 to 0.8 cent)[1]. If you played a single song during the month. That artist would only get that fractional cent. The remaining of your monthly fee will go to other artists you have never played and may have no interest financing. Most will be the popular artists du jour pushed by the records labels. They like the current system because -by definition- popular songs will be played a lot, probably in large part by free users (they are the majority anyway at around 55%)[1]. So popular streams always get the lion share of Spotify's revenues, mostly financed by those who don't listen to them. [1]: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/spotify-statistics/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/spotify-statistics/

flavius29663 6y ago

"That's a problem" - why do you call it a problem? An artist (say lady Gaga) made a song that can be played on repeat in bars and not annoy customers, keep them entertained. Why is it implied that her music is of lower quality that niche artists? "other than because their music is so great." There are multiple ways to measure music. One of them is how touched you are by it, to each his own - and this is why niche artists are "niche" - because there are so many unique ways to make special music. There is value in music that appeases to everyone equally. You will never be able to play niche music in a bar for prolonged periods (unless it's a special bar). This is kindof like the difference between a ferrari and an F150. The truck does it all for everyone. A single ferrari is more special and more expensive than a ford, but in the end, you cannot argue that Ford the company sells more cars than Ferrari, which is why they deserve a larger stock value.

lucb1e 6y ago
> can be played on repeat in bars [...]. Why is it implied that her music is of lower quality that niche artists? Well first of all, it's illegal. Spotify's TOS disallows you to play your 9,99 subscription for an audience of more than a usual household amount of people. If you're entertaining a dozen guests or more 365 days a year and for commercial purposes, your part should be quite a bit more than ten bucks a month. And so I get that people are unhappy that their individual subscription money goes to the entertainment of restaurant guests, background noise for a workplace, etc. because of the way plays are counted. > to each [her] own - and this is why niche artists are "niche" Sure, I'm not saying that we should pay all artists equally right? Not like anyone above a certain (low) threshold of monthly playbacks should earn a minimum wage to support the niche ones. No, what people mind is that the money they pay to listen to artist B is instead sent to artist A due to a side effect of the revenue distribution model. Artist A gets more playbacks not because they are better but because of, so to say, a runaway effect of being popular. Those popular artists would already earn enough if this distribution model would be on an individual user basis, but the current distribution system causes even less money to go to niche artists despite having plenty of fans listening to them. It makes it harder to earn money with niche music, which would be a negative effect on what I think you value as well: each can have their own. Spotify doesn't seem to support your favorite artists as well as you might expect from paying for Spotify and knowing that the money goes to the artists behind the tracks you play. > The truck does it all for everyone. Erm looking that "F150" up on image search (I don't speak car and driver), it looks like a huge asshole car. If everyone would drive that we might as well pick up and leave this planet. Also I don't get what the comparison is trying to tell me.