5 ms·

Maybe they should pay their artists more, instead of their employees.

• peteretep 6y ago
  Who are Spotify’s artists? I thought the artists contracted with record labels
  • garbagetime 6y ago
    The people who make the music. Some don't have record labels, so it would be weird to not just talk about the artists.
    • peteretep 6y ago
      I thought Spotify didn’t contract directly with any artists?
      • dbbk 6y ago
        They don't
  • steverb 6y ago
    It is pretty straightforward to get your music on Spotify and all the other streaming platforms. No record label needed. There are very inexpensive services that will do all the leg work for you, but it take approximately 230 streaming plays on spotify to earn a dollar.
    • cabbageoverload 6y ago
      How many plays should it take to earn a dollar? I don't know anything about the music industry.
      • steverb 6y ago
        A radio play is around 9.5 cents per play. Assuming there are no royalty splits, then that would be 11 plays to earn a dollar. I think royalties of 1 to 3 cents per stream are completely reasonable. Subcent royalties are just platforms taking advantage of the content creators. Which is why most artists see all the streaming platforms as merely a way to advertise for live shows and merch. That's the only way to really make money without hitting Taylor Swift levels of streams.
        • peteretep 6y ago
          Going from your original numbers (which I didn’t check), a play current pays out just under half a cent (1/230), and you’d like Spotify to pay around 5 times that (avg 2c). Spotify distributes about 70% of revenue to rights holders so you’re asking Spotify to pay out ... 350% of revenue to rights holders? Spotify could almost certainly be charging more, but it’s already incentivised to maximise revenue, and it has competitors, so it seems like it’s probably found the market value of a play?
          • steverb 6y ago
            From wikipedia: "Spotify pays royalties based on their "market share"—the number of streams for their songs as a proportion of total songs streamed on the service." Regardless, Spotify is free to pay whatever they think is fair and artists are free to accept or reject that compensation as they will. But if you're an artist, Spotify (and the other streaming platforms, which mostly pay even less) are not going to be something that you can ever expect to be an income source.
        • benhurmarcel 6y ago
          Assuming your number of 1 cent/stream, and considering that 7$ out of the 10$ subscription pays for the music, that gives an average of 23 streams/day for a subscriber. That's about 80 minutes of music per day, down to 50 minutes or less if you're sharing the subscription.
          • 6y ago
• IndySun 6y ago
  Many people here are against copyright and thus by fault, royalties (of other peoples work, not their own), but as a hypothetical, I wonder the same. It appears the major labels sold their catalogues for a pittance and streaming platforms are 'making hay'. We could have been streaming The Beatles on an app called EMIMusic had they not been so slow on the uptake of the internet. As soon as all music is finally only made by people who have no monetary concerns, the end of revolutions will also be nigh.