15 ms·

The ask is 1p/stream. I'm not sure that that's actually sustainable without a massive rise in spotify prices, given the proportion of free users and even paid u

• 101008 6y ago
  If this is not sustainable for the artists, how is this different than piracy? I'd say it is even worse, because people is paying but the money goes to a middleware company that is not paying the right price. It is like buying CDs from the street sellers.
  • Milner08 6y ago
    Right, but the money has always gone to a middleman, be it record companies or Spotify. If Spotify gets any more expensive I can guarantee people will go back to privacy, music will become less accessible and those niche bands that Spotify knows I may like will never get found. I understand the need to get paid more, but I am not sure killing Spotify is the solution.
    • meiraleal 6y ago
      > I understand the need to get paid more, but I am not sure killing Spotify is the solution. If Spotify doesn't compromise, killing it would be the only solution, but this union doesn't have the power to do that initially. But this will never work because you have a infinite stream of new musicians wanting to be listen without receiving money for that.
      • s0xTester 6y ago
        Killing Spotify would be terrible. New musicians want their work out there....without Spotify(or similar) it will be back to just blasting out your music for free online everywhere so you can get bug. Spotify at least gives them some revenue while they increase their fandom.
    • 101008 6y ago
      Those niche bands will put their music for free online until they are well known to get their fans pay for the music, as they did in the 90s and 00s.
      • Milner08 6y ago
        Its not about it being free online, its about discovery. Spotify is currently excellent for discovering new bands. TPB? Not so much.
    • moistbar 6y ago
      And what do you expect to happen to Spotify when the musicians leave for someplace that pays them appropriately?
      • SCHiM 6y ago
        The answer is piracy again. For a moment in time, piracy of movies and series was at a low point. Recently, with the fragmentation of all the different streaming services it's rising again.
        • moistbar 6y ago
          The real answer is that Spotify will melt under its own inadequacy and the new platform will thrive. You adapt or you die, and I would have no sympathy for Spotify if they couldn't adapt.
          • leesalminen 6y ago
            Presumably these new brands have to charge their customers more in order to pay the artists more, right? I’m about at the max of what I’m willing to pay for music per month...
          • Milner08 6y ago
            I don't care if its Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music or some new competitor. But if they get more expensive they will not win people over.
      • disgu 6y ago
        Musicians have complained in the past and threatened to leave and some have left... just to then come back.
        • kgog 6y ago
          I'm trying to come up with a word for that.. I think it starts with a M and ends with a Y and has a onopol in the middle somewhere.
  • illuminati1911 6y ago
    Clearly it is as artists are not starving and can pay for their rent, lifestyle etc. They just simply ”want more”, and who wouldn’t, but free market and supply/demand disagrees with them. If artists don’t like Spotify’s offering they can pull their music out of the service.
  • s0xTester 6y ago
    I mean....radio was never a money maker for acts. It was to get their name out their to make money elsewhere. Just kinda how the market is setup. I don't think it is unsustainable for artists. I fucking hate "exposure", but that is literally what radio/streaming is is. It is never a substantial revenue stream until you hit big. And with today's tech, radio had to become streaming. Paying a penny per stream is highly unsustainable for everyone. What would you suggest to fix it? I think the system is pretty decent all things considered. Now, Spotify could definitely be better at hyping and pushing new music/low creators....but other than that I don't think they're the enemy here.
    • tgv 6y ago
      Streaming isn't comparable to radio. If a penny per stream is unsustainable, perhaps we better go back to just radio. Hyping new music isn't going to do shit about revenue.
  • sparkling 6y ago
    > If this is not sustainable for the artists, how is this different than piracy? The difference is that every artist has a choice if his music lands on Spotify or not - and if he accepts the conditions offered. The main problem of many of these artists is that they signed bad distribution deals with their labels and are giving away a big chunk % of streaming revenues. That isn't Spotifys fault. Also, according to Spotifys latest financial statement, they are expecting a $200-300m operating loss for 2021, so i find it hard to argue that Spotify is being "too greedy" when they aren't even profitable.
  • efsavage 6y ago
    "sustainable for the artists" There seems to be some idea of what musicians "should" make that other professions don't benefit from. I would like to make the same money from making furniture as I do from writing code, but I can't. I could blame the furniture stores for not promoting me or taking too big a cut or any number of other factors, or I could accept the fact that I'm not an amazing woodworker. But I still make my art/craft because I enjoy it and it's important to me. There are plenty of ways for musicians to make a living, but I don't see a problem with the fact that spending a month or two a year recording an album is a privilege available to only the most talented subset of them.
    • Barrin92 6y ago
      > I could blame the furniture stores for not promoting me or taking too big a cut or any number of other factors not only could you but you should. Of course workers over the last few decades have internalised the mindset that they cannot use their power to bargain and that whatever they get is fair and they should just shut up, which is why we tolerate corporate middlemen eating our lunch. I don't know if a penny per song is realistic or whatever, but going up against Spotify and record labels and trying to negotiate as much compensation for artists as possible collectively is exactly what they ought to do. Also, on the other end, as consumers we need to stop whining when we have to pay twenty bucks instead of ten bucks per month to compensate artists who we spend listening hours to every single week.
      • disgu 6y ago
        Spotify is not the corporate middle man. The big record companies are. Any musician is free to not put their music on spotify and to not sell the rights to a record company. They can then let you stream a song for $50 on their website. It's also absolutely ridiculous that you champion those who want to make more money while also saying that everyone on the other end who wants to spend less should "stop whining".
        • Barrin92 6y ago
          I champion people who produce things, be that artists, software developers, woodworkers or anyone else who builds stuff. Spotify and labels are both distributors and middlemen who profit from the work of others, it's consumers and large platforms that squeeze creators with their greedy mindset of 'as much as possible, for as little money as possible'. It's long overdue that we move away from this sleazy consumer mindset and start valuing creators.
  • FireBeyond 6y ago
    > I'd say it is even worse, because people is paying but the money goes to a middleware company that is not paying the right price Because of contracts the _artists_ signed, not the consumer.
• 3saryHg6LP2e 6y ago
  Let's do some back-of-the-envelop calculations: Let's say people stream for 4 hours a day on average. 4 * 60 = 240 minutes Let's say a song is 3 minutes. 240 / 3 = 80 streams == 80p/day 80p * 30 days per month = 2400p 2400p == £24 So that would be ~2.4x increase in price for end users without including Spotify cut or taxes. Doesn't seem possible to me.
  • kjakm 6y ago
    It's also still remarkably cheap for unlimited access to all the music ever recorded.
    • falcolas 6y ago
      Nit: It's nowhere close to all the music ever recorded. It's barely most of the mainstream artists.
    • 3saryHg6LP2e 6y ago
      Will consumers pay that price is the question?
    • Macha 6y ago
      That ship sailed in the 90s with widespread music piracy. The market simply doesn't value digital copies of recorded music that much anymore. Spotify was an increase in artist revenues as prior to that most people were paying nothing for their music, be it bittorrent in the 00s, cd copying in the 90s, or recording radio to tape in the 80s.
    • iterati 6y ago
      I'd just go back to torrenting at that price.
    • Hamuko 6y ago
      The problem is that people don't care about "all the music ever recorded". They mostly care about a very limited selection of music. And if Spotify starts costing like $45 a month, how many people still think it's worth it? You can buy like four albums off of iTunes for that and then listen to them as much as you want.
• kdowns 6y ago
  There is also the issue of fraud. Click/Stream farms are already soaking up the artists pool of revenue, and this change would incentivize it more. Justin Bieber recently asked his fans to go to sleep with his new song on repeat, and I'm sure other artists/labels are looking at ways to game the system as well. In my opinion there needs to be a way to pay artists based on first time streams from new accounts.
• brobdingnagians 6y ago
  I listen to far more than 1000 tracks a month, but quite a few of those are duplicates; though the music changes every month. With that listening pattern, it wouldn't make sense for me to pay for 1p/stream. If the prices increased enough to offset a 1p/stream, I'd jump ship and buy used CDs again, since that would become more cost effective, even with buying a CD a month or so. There are cheaper substitutes to music listening, even if it would be less convenient to discover new music.
• robkop 6y ago
  Taking a look at their most recent financial statement we can do some quick calculations. (All figures in million euros) Revenue Cost of Revenue Profit Premium : 7135 5126 2009 Free (ads): 745 739 6 Overall : 7880 5865 2015 Now currently the claim is that they are paying out $0.0038 per stream and we want to raise that to $0.01 which would be a 2.63 multiple. For spotify free that would mean that they just have to include 2.63x more ads, this is doable but I'm sure it would hurt adoption and maybe people would move from the platform. For spotify paid they could cut down their profit margin and pay 39% more per stream than they currently do (ignoring that they have more than 2B eur in other business expenses currently). But even after that they would still have to raise their prices by a multiple of 1.91. This would mean they would have to charge about $19.10 a month to not loose money on licencing in the US market.
  • nindalf 6y ago
    This is good analysis. Small quibble with the last part - we don't know how much the price charged to consumers needs to increase to be able to afford $0.01 a stream. Any increase in price will see a drop in subscribers, dropping revenue. An increase in price could reduce revenue, making it harder to afford the increased payout.
    • rsstack 6y ago
      Since the cost is linear to number of streams, it only matters if the premium subscribers that drop have a lower average streams/month rate than the average premium subscribers. This assumes, like the post two levels above me, that Spotify don't need the profits for anything and just need to break even.
    • FalconSensei 6y ago
      On the other hand, when you think about take-home pay for the artists, more people listening, even if paying less for individual streams, can mean more money. Isn't one of the strengths of the internet the fact that it's easier to scale and reach a wider audience, thus having more money in the end?
• path411 6y ago
  Imagine if Youtube creators started trying to get $0.01 per play. This is just a little crazy. Spotify and competitors successfully captured a LARGE number of people who were not paying anyone at all. There has already been a large increase in friction on streaming music the past few years, this will just be a nail in the coffin pushing everyone to go back to pirating.