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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, a

by 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.
      - anonymoushn 6y ago
        When I buy a Mechina album on Bandcamp, my money does not go to Nickelback instead. Can you explain how this system currently used by Bandcamp is unfair? If I wanted to get the same behavior from Spotify, I would need to leave devices streaming at all hours, because I am competing for amount of streams against restaurants and gyms that buy a single Spotify subscription and leave it on constantly.
        lucb1e 6y ago
        > I am competing for amount of streams against restaurants and gyms that buy a single Spotify subscription and leave it on constantly Yeah, there's a reason that that's illegal, but it being illegal doesn't change reality, so you're right. I hadn't considered this in previous comments until u/kgermino pointed it out in [1]. I see your point better now. I still stand by that "more listens resulting in more money" isn't necessarily bad, but that the way of counting who gets actively listened to might need revising. Another solution to the problem is the (let's call it) Bandcamp model. I'm not opposed to that, I'm just wondering if that will solve any issues, given that I perceive the problem not as "we should pay per subscriber listening to an artist instead of per number of plays" but instead "we should not pay for illegitimate plays." It does also make me wonder if Spotify considered this and, if yes, why they rejected it. I guess more popular artists are more important to Spotify's survival and therefore they can demand more money under the guise of it being all fair? It's quite an allegation but that's the only thing I can think of. But then, I've been wrong before :) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25025522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25025522
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    An availability model might make more sense (at least for personal accounts), where the first listen in a week counts and the rest of the week doesn't. Or month, or 24 hours, or whatever. I'm just thinking about CD sales vs subscription. If you buy, the artist gets paid once, not for how much you listen to it. So the above just moves in that direction.
- YetAnotherNick 6y ago
  I think making use of this condition will undercount the payments of niche artists. I think in general, a listener of niche artist will listen to more song, thus if charges of user are grouped then the niche songs will likely be paid less.(No data, just based on what is more intutive to me)
  - dtech 6y ago
    I doubt that. I think you massively underestimate the amount of people just listening to the top 40 in the background non-stop. I've also seen a gym just putting popular music on repeat with Spotify. That should be at least 10.000 streams per month. Not hard to make that skew the numbers even if it's somewhat rare.
kgermino 6y ago
As someone else said, it’s tied to how many songs you listen to. Hypothetical: I mostly listen to Spotify during workouts so I only have about 200 streams a month. My coworker has a top 40 playlist running all day so they have over 2000 streams a month. If we each pay $11 their artists will get $20 while mine will only get $2. I.e. even though I never listened to a top 40 song, the artists I listened to will only get $2 from my subscription, the rest will go to the artists my coworker follows
- lucb1e 6y ago
  So should we play based on manual clicks on individual songs or artists, rather than plays from playlists? Or perhaps exclude only popular playlists, or public playlists in general? I see what you're saying in this scenario, but in general more listens resulting in more money doesn't strike me as unfair. I'm also not opposed to doing it the way others are proposing (dividing individual subscribers' money among their played artists instead of aggregating it and doing it by number of plays). I guess that would be one way of solving this issue, even if it's not the underlying problem. In your scenario the underlying problem seems to be that someone plays generic garbage as background noise all day and thereby generates plays that a niche artist whose listeners really love their music wouldn't generate. That's a separate problem, though perhaps changing the revenue distribution model would indeed be the best way to solve this issue.
- dtech 6y ago
  Don't forgot the workplaces, bars and other businesses like gyms playing the top40 on repeat throughout accruing a massive amount of streams. It's not allowed but I've seen it happen quite a few times.
anonymoushn 6y ago
I pay $15 and listen to Gay Bar by Electric Six once. You pay $15 and listen to Bad Romance by Lady Gaga five thousand times. We are the only Spotify users.

by lucb1e 6y ago

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.
    - anonymoushn 6y ago
      When I buy a Mechina album on Bandcamp, my money does not go to Nickelback instead. Can you explain how this system currently used by Bandcamp is unfair? If I wanted to get the same behavior from Spotify, I would need to leave devices streaming at all hours, because I am competing for amount of streams against restaurants and gyms that buy a single Spotify subscription and leave it on constantly.
      - lucb1e 6y ago
        > I am competing for amount of streams against restaurants and gyms that buy a single Spotify subscription and leave it on constantly Yeah, there's a reason that that's illegal, but it being illegal doesn't change reality, so you're right. I hadn't considered this in previous comments until u/kgermino pointed it out in [1]. I see your point better now. I still stand by that "more listens resulting in more money" isn't necessarily bad, but that the way of counting who gets actively listened to might need revising. Another solution to the problem is the (let's call it) Bandcamp model. I'm not opposed to that, I'm just wondering if that will solve any issues, given that I perceive the problem not as "we should pay per subscriber listening to an artist instead of per number of plays" but instead "we should not pay for illegitimate plays." It does also make me wonder if Spotify considered this and, if yes, why they rejected it. I guess more popular artists are more important to Spotify's survival and therefore they can demand more money under the guise of it being all fair? It's quite an allegation but that's the only thing I can think of. But then, I've been wrong before :) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25025522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25025522
- maxerickson 6y ago
  An availability model might make more sense (at least for personal accounts), where the first listen in a week counts and the rest of the week doesn't. Or month, or 24 hours, or whatever. I'm just thinking about CD sales vs subscription. If you buy, the artist gets paid once, not for how much you listen to it. So the above just moves in that direction.
YetAnotherNick 6y ago
I think making use of this condition will undercount the payments of niche artists. I think in general, a listener of niche artist will listen to more song, thus if charges of user are grouped then the niche songs will likely be paid less.(No data, just based on what is more intutive to me)
- dtech 6y ago
  I doubt that. I think you massively underestimate the amount of people just listening to the top 40 in the background non-stop. I've also seen a gym just putting popular music on repeat with Spotify. That should be at least 10.000 streams per month. Not hard to make that skew the numbers even if it's somewhat rare.

kgermino 6y ago

As someone else said, it’s tied to how many songs you listen to. Hypothetical: I mostly listen to Spotify during workouts so I only have about 200 streams a month. My coworker has a top 40 playlist running all day so they have over 2000 streams a month. If we each pay $11 their artists will get $20 while mine will only get $2. I.e. even though I never listened to a top 40 song, the artists I listened to will only get $2 from my subscription, the rest will go to the artists my coworker follows

lucb1e 6y ago
So should we play based on manual clicks on individual songs or artists, rather than plays from playlists? Or perhaps exclude only popular playlists, or public playlists in general? I see what you're saying in this scenario, but in general more listens resulting in more money doesn't strike me as unfair. I'm also not opposed to doing it the way others are proposing (dividing individual subscribers' money among their played artists instead of aggregating it and doing it by number of plays). I guess that would be one way of solving this issue, even if it's not the underlying problem. In your scenario the underlying problem seems to be that someone plays generic garbage as background noise all day and thereby generates plays that a niche artist whose listeners really love their music wouldn't generate. That's a separate problem, though perhaps changing the revenue distribution model would indeed be the best way to solve this issue.
dtech 6y ago
Don't forgot the workplaces, bars and other businesses like gyms playing the top40 on repeat throughout accruing a massive amount of streams. It's not allowed but I've seen it happen quite a few times.

anonymoushn 6y ago

I pay $15 and listen to Gay Bar by Electric Six once. You pay $15 and listen to Bad Romance by Lady Gaga five thousand times. We are the only Spotify users.