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In almost every discussion of musician income and Spotify that I've, two entirely different questions seems to get conflated together: 1. How big is the pie?
by munificent 6y ago
In almost every discussion of musician income and Spotify that I've, two entirely different questions seems to get conflated together:
1. How big is the pie?
2. Who gets what share of it?
Here in this thread, almost everyone is saying that the total pie for music isn't that big compared to the number of people making it today. As production costs get lower and lower, more and more people can be become musicians and that pie gets sliced into smaller and smaller pieces. Meanwhile, there are only so many hours in the day one can listen to music, so demand is relatively fixed. I agree with others that this is maybe unfortunate, but is basically just reality. Just like writing and working in zoos, occupations that have massive intrinsic reward are rarely compensated well financially.
But there's an entirely separate question. Given some pie of whatever size, are companies like Spotify getting a fair share of it relative to musicians? It's sad if musicians can't make a living can't make a living off their music. But theatre actors and poets rarely do either. But it seems wrong that at the exact same time, businesses are raking in billions of dollars off that exact same music.
We aren't outraged that poets are underpaid because there simply is no money there. There isn't much money to go around in music, but even so, the distributors are taking almost all of it and leaving little for the actual musicians.
- aclimatt 6y agoAbsolutely right. It seems almost every other thread here is missing the crux of the article, which has nothing to do with some alleged musician-listener supply-demand issue. Rather: Graham Davies, CEO of The Ivors Academy said: “This survey is further demonstration that the song and the songwriter are undervalued. Too much streaming money is going to the major labels, this is an outdated model and needs reform.” The survey results come amid an ongoing government inquiry into the impact of “the business models” operated by the likes of Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and Google Play. It doesn't sound like musicians are (necessarily) arguing that we should pay more than $10 to stream their music. Or that they should get more than their share of the pie relative to other artists. It's that musicians' share of the $10 as a whole should be way more than it is now, and Spotify + labels should get less. And that's a fair claim to make that's worth talking about.
- satyrnein 6y agoActually, that quote is "musicians" fighting over share. In this case, a songwriters' group (Ivors Academy) is complaining that performers (via labels) get too big of a share. This fight has been going on since recorded music began and has nothing to do with Spotify or any recent development.