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The other issue that has been raised a number of times is that I believe the revenue is still divided up based on overall listens across the platform, which mea

The other issue that has been raised a number of times is that I believe the revenue is still divided up based on overall listens across the platform, which means it's dominated by artists who feature heavily in popular playlists and automation-driver radio/recommendations. These listens are often passive and should not be considered as valuable as those of someone listens only a few hours a month, but spends all of that time listening to specific artists (indie or otherwise). Basically the argument is that if I spend $9.99 on a Spotify sub, the entirety of that cash (minus Spotify's cut) should be directed to the actual artists I listened to. Here's an articulation of this perspective from 2014: https://medium.com/cuepoint/how-to-make-streaming-royalties-fair-er-8b38cd862f66 https://medium.com/cuepoint/how-to-make-streaming-royalties-...

natdempk 6y ago
I agree and I think this is really the key demand that they should have organized around. Splitting up the revenues based on what you actually listen to is really how things should work from a fairness perspective to artists. It also is likely more compatible with heavier listeners than their demand of 1c per stream. To put that number into context, I listen to ~1000 songs per month on Spotify and I pay $2.50 for Spotify each month using a family plan. I'm not sure how the economics of 1c per stream are supposed to work out there. Soundcloud has already gone in the direction of paying out based on what you actually listen to, and it would be great to see Spotify and other platforms follow suit. See http://fanpoweredroyalties.com/ http://fanpoweredroyalties.com/ for more details on Soundcloud's implementation.
anchpop 6y ago
If there's two groups of people, one who listens to pop music for 10 hours a month and one who listens who indie artists for 20 hours a month (which could easily be the case if their recommended playlists are mostly indie artists as mine is), then switching to the model you propose would reduce how much money indie artists make, right? It seems more fair to me that artists would get a set amount of money per stream, rather than the amount they get being dependent on how many other songs their listeners listened to.
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  I think the argument is not that it's the 10 vs 20 hour listeners, but rather the 10-40 hour listeners (workday) vs the 700 hour listeners (radio playing in the corner of a breakroom somewhere). The 700 hour listener has no audience and no human curation, and yet it's got 10x the influence on who gets paid by Spotify. The article I linked also makes a really good point about this model motivating artists to encourage listeners/fans to listen to whole albums rather than single songs— right now if you're playing Spotify for revenue, the only thing that matters is landing your songs on popular playlists where they will get hundreds of thousands of passive plays. The incentives there are not really aligned to what anyone wants long term out of music.
  - babelfish 6y ago
    Right, but artists don't care whether you're listening to their music actively or passively. Whether you stream 10-20 hours or 700 hours, 1 stream is 1 stream. I don't see why this should affect the payout
  - edoceo 6y ago
    Doesn't Spotify say "don't play at work"? Seems it shouldn't be on in the break room
  - Closi 6y ago
    It’s not inherently clear to me that one play should be paid more than another play. In fact, having a different fee per play dependent on the user is a pretty opaque and unclear metric. “How much are 1 million plays worth? It depends on your audience - if your listeners listen to lots of music you get paid less per play, and you will just have to trust us to compute an appropriate fee for you correctly.” No matter how you cut these things there are pluses and minuses . You seem to think that Universal should get paid less for a single Katy Perry stream played from a global playlist compared to a small indie song streamed in a private playlist, and while that’s a valid opinion it’s not intrinsic or even self evident to me.
    - mikepurvis 6y ago
Rule35 6y ago
Should is a big word, but it feels like Spotify could make us indie-lovers happy by rewarding the intentional listens with slightly more money. Perhaps giving them a cut of the next few recommendations. Even though I know that famous artists would get more of this than the indies, taking value from the long mid-catalog.
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  I think that's risky because then there's some process that puts you in one of the two buckets, and there's probably going to be a valley of suck between them, where you're big enough that you don't qualify for the indie special treatment, but not so big that you're raking it in like Taylor Swift. The nice thing about the proposal from the article is that in theory it should be something where everyone's incentives are aligned, since it rewards artists and genres for having fans who listen to their stuff a lot.
  - Rule35 6y ago
    Yeah, that's what I mean by the mid-catalog. People you didn't quite go intending to play, and not the headliners. To the degree that it's a fairness discussion though it always comes down to sorting into buckets (even if absolutely identical buckets) and arguing for some distribution. Good point. That's the sort of thing that warms the cockles of my artist-supporting heart.
tebbers 6y ago
I agree with this argument, and this is THE reason why I don't pay for a streaming subscription. I have no desire to see my money to go to the likes of Justin Bieber (who I don't listen to), whereas I would much prefer it goes to the smaller ambient and indie artists that I like to listen to while working.
tedunangst 6y ago
Spotify should charge by the minute so you turn it off when you're not actually listening.
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  They do kick you off after a while if you're a free account, but the marginal cost of the bandwidth for them is basically nothing. Anyway, it's 2021— who would accept a pay-per-time-listened Spotify in an age where Netflix, Hulu, Prime, and Disney+ are all all-you-can-eat for a similar price?
potatoman22 6y ago
Aren't your listens to an indie artist still driving up their listens across the platform? It's an interesting point that Spotify's algorithms probably drive more listens to popular artists, but I think overall listen-count it still the most equitable metric.
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  The point is that it's about valuing the content which actually makes or breaks people's decision to subscribe to the service. Spotify is convenient, but it wouldn't survive on top-40 content because people would just go back to their MP3s or listen to it on YouTube. I'm pretty sure that Netflix understands this, by the way— they know that deep-pocketed competitors like Amazon are going to eat their lunch if they try to do mass-appeal prestige shows starring A-list celebs, so they only do a few of those (enough to basically fill the homepage), while leaning hard into extremely niche content. Like, have you seen how many weird cooking shows there are on there? Or Hallmark Christmas movies? This is stuff that's harder to find elsewhere, and there are dedicated audiences on Netflix who are mostly or exclusively consuming it. If Netflix's internal accounting worked like how Spotify pays royalties, those shows would be instantly canceled in favour of new primetime-style sitcoms. But they aren't, and I think it's because there are pools of their subscribers who will cancel the service if there isn't a steady stream of the specific content they're interested in. Thus, their subscriber $$$ go directly to funding that content, rather than into a general pot that's broken up by raw viewership numbers.
  - RHSman2 6y ago
    Netflix understands this as they have become content creators.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

natdempk 6y ago

I agree and I think this is really the key demand that they should have organized around. Splitting up the revenues based on what you actually listen to is really how things should work from a fairness perspective to artists. It also is likely more compatible with heavier listeners than their demand of 1c per stream. To put that number into context, I listen to ~1000 songs per month on Spotify and I pay $2.50 for Spotify each month using a family plan. I'm not sure how the economics of 1c per stream are supposed to work out there. Soundcloud has already gone in the direction of paying out based on what you actually listen to, and it would be great to see Spotify and other platforms follow suit. See http://fanpoweredroyalties.com/ http://fanpoweredroyalties.com/ for more details on Soundcloud's implementation.

anchpop 6y ago

If there's two groups of people, one who listens to pop music for 10 hours a month and one who listens who indie artists for 20 hours a month (which could easily be the case if their recommended playlists are mostly indie artists as mine is), then switching to the model you propose would reduce how much money indie artists make, right? It seems more fair to me that artists would get a set amount of money per stream, rather than the amount they get being dependent on how many other songs their listeners listened to.

mikepurvis 6y ago
I think the argument is not that it's the 10 vs 20 hour listeners, but rather the 10-40 hour listeners (workday) vs the 700 hour listeners (radio playing in the corner of a breakroom somewhere). The 700 hour listener has no audience and no human curation, and yet it's got 10x the influence on who gets paid by Spotify. The article I linked also makes a really good point about this model motivating artists to encourage listeners/fans to listen to whole albums rather than single songs— right now if you're playing Spotify for revenue, the only thing that matters is landing your songs on popular playlists where they will get hundreds of thousands of passive plays. The incentives there are not really aligned to what anyone wants long term out of music.
- babelfish 6y ago
  Right, but artists don't care whether you're listening to their music actively or passively. Whether you stream 10-20 hours or 700 hours, 1 stream is 1 stream. I don't see why this should affect the payout
- edoceo 6y ago
  Doesn't Spotify say "don't play at work"? Seems it shouldn't be on in the break room
- Closi 6y ago
  It’s not inherently clear to me that one play should be paid more than another play. In fact, having a different fee per play dependent on the user is a pretty opaque and unclear metric. “How much are 1 million plays worth? It depends on your audience - if your listeners listen to lots of music you get paid less per play, and you will just have to trust us to compute an appropriate fee for you correctly.” No matter how you cut these things there are pluses and minuses . You seem to think that Universal should get paid less for a single Katy Perry stream played from a global playlist compared to a small indie song streamed in a private playlist, and while that’s a valid opinion it’s not intrinsic or even self evident to me.
  - mikepurvis 6y ago

Rule35 6y ago

Should is a big word, but it feels like Spotify could make us indie-lovers happy by rewarding the intentional listens with slightly more money. Perhaps giving them a cut of the next few recommendations. Even though I know that famous artists would get more of this than the indies, taking value from the long mid-catalog.

mikepurvis 6y ago
I think that's risky because then there's some process that puts you in one of the two buckets, and there's probably going to be a valley of suck between them, where you're big enough that you don't qualify for the indie special treatment, but not so big that you're raking it in like Taylor Swift. The nice thing about the proposal from the article is that in theory it should be something where everyone's incentives are aligned, since it rewards artists and genres for having fans who listen to their stuff a lot.
- Rule35 6y ago
  Yeah, that's what I mean by the mid-catalog. People you didn't quite go intending to play, and not the headliners. To the degree that it's a fairness discussion though it always comes down to sorting into buckets (even if absolutely identical buckets) and arguing for some distribution. Good point. That's the sort of thing that warms the cockles of my artist-supporting heart.

tebbers 6y ago

I agree with this argument, and this is THE reason why I don't pay for a streaming subscription. I have no desire to see my money to go to the likes of Justin Bieber (who I don't listen to), whereas I would much prefer it goes to the smaller ambient and indie artists that I like to listen to while working.

tedunangst 6y ago

Spotify should charge by the minute so you turn it off when you're not actually listening.

mikepurvis 6y ago
They do kick you off after a while if you're a free account, but the marginal cost of the bandwidth for them is basically nothing. Anyway, it's 2021— who would accept a pay-per-time-listened Spotify in an age where Netflix, Hulu, Prime, and Disney+ are all all-you-can-eat for a similar price?

potatoman22 6y ago

Aren't your listens to an indie artist still driving up their listens across the platform? It's an interesting point that Spotify's algorithms probably drive more listens to popular artists, but I think overall listen-count it still the most equitable metric.

mikepurvis 6y ago
The point is that it's about valuing the content which actually makes or breaks people's decision to subscribe to the service. Spotify is convenient, but it wouldn't survive on top-40 content because people would just go back to their MP3s or listen to it on YouTube. I'm pretty sure that Netflix understands this, by the way— they know that deep-pocketed competitors like Amazon are going to eat their lunch if they try to do mass-appeal prestige shows starring A-list celebs, so they only do a few of those (enough to basically fill the homepage), while leaning hard into extremely niche content. Like, have you seen how many weird cooking shows there are on there? Or Hallmark Christmas movies? This is stuff that's harder to find elsewhere, and there are dedicated audiences on Netflix who are mostly or exclusively consuming it. If Netflix's internal accounting worked like how Spotify pays royalties, those shows would be instantly canceled in favour of new primetime-style sitcoms. But they aren't, and I think it's because there are pools of their subscribers who will cancel the service if there isn't a steady stream of the specific content they're interested in. Thus, their subscriber $$$ go directly to funding that content, rather than into a general pot that's broken up by raw viewership numbers.
- RHSman2 6y ago
  Netflix understands this as they have become content creators.

deleted 6y ago

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