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>"And Spotify is already paying out 75% of it's revenue to royalty holders' "Royalty holders" is not even an actual term. Copyright holders are the owners of m

>"And Spotify is already paying out 75% of it's revenue to royalty holders' "Royalty holders" is not even an actual term. Copyright holders are the owners of master recording - often a record company. Streaming services license entire catalogs for a fixed price for a fixed period of time. Streaming service don't pay record labels royalties. Royalties of which there are two in the context of streaming are a) performance royalty and b) a mechanical royalty both of which are paid out to the publisher and songwriter. >"So unless you believe that Spotify is bad at business and there's an extra ~75% of revenue Spotify could pull out of a hat, this is basically impossible to satisfy without cratering the total revenue by doubling prices, which is probably not in artist's interests." The whole argument that the current predominant streaming model is the only viable business model is flawed. This seems to presume that the "pro-rata" distribution model that Spotify uses is the only distribution model. There is an alternative model that many artists are pushing for which is a the "user centric' distribution model. In that model the calculation of payments is based on the listening habits of each individual user. A simplified examples is that I only listen to one artist in a given month. In the user centric model the entire 10% of record labels 70% usually allocated to the artist cut is paid to that artist rather than those streams being calculated as percentage of all songs streamed from that one of the big 3's record label's massive catalogs.

Eridrus 6y ago
> There is an alternative model that many artists are pushing for which is a the "user centric' distribution model. In that model the calculation of payments is based on the listening habits of each individual user. A simplified examples is that I only listen to one artist in a given month. In the user centric model the entire 10% of record labels 70% usually allocated to the artist cut is paid to that artist rather than those streams being calculated as percentage of all songs streamed from that one of the big 3's record label's massive catalogs. Then they should push for that specifically, but it would not change the average rate paid per stream, but rebalance payments away from artists which are listened to by heavy music users towards artists which are listened to light music users.
- bogomipz 6y ago
  They push for whatever they feel is right. I was simply pointing out that Spotify's distribution model is not the only one. It also has nothing to do with "heavy users" vs "light users." A heavy user can listen to the same artist or same small handful of albums.
  - Eridrus 6y ago
    > It also has nothing to do with "heavy users" vs "light users." A heavy user can listen to the same artist or same small handful of albums. Currently, a heavy user (i.e. above average) controls the distribution of more money to artists than a below average user since they control the amount of money in proportion to how they stream. A user-centric model that splits the revenue from a user means that those who listen to more music will generate less revenue to each artist per stream, and those that listen to less music will generate more revenue per stream. An above average user that listens only to the same artist provides more money to artists now than in a user-centric revenue model.

Eridrus 6y ago

> There is an alternative model that many artists are pushing for which is a the "user centric' distribution model. In that model the calculation of payments is based on the listening habits of each individual user. A simplified examples is that I only listen to one artist in a given month. In the user centric model the entire 10% of record labels 70% usually allocated to the artist cut is paid to that artist rather than those streams being calculated as percentage of all songs streamed from that one of the big 3's record label's massive catalogs. Then they should push for that specifically, but it would not change the average rate paid per stream, but rebalance payments away from artists which are listened to by heavy music users towards artists which are listened to light music users.

bogomipz 6y ago
They push for whatever they feel is right. I was simply pointing out that Spotify's distribution model is not the only one. It also has nothing to do with "heavy users" vs "light users." A heavy user can listen to the same artist or same small handful of albums.
- Eridrus 6y ago
  > It also has nothing to do with "heavy users" vs "light users." A heavy user can listen to the same artist or same small handful of albums. Currently, a heavy user (i.e. above average) controls the distribution of more money to artists than a below average user since they control the amount of money in proportion to how they stream. A user-centric model that splits the revenue from a user means that those who listen to more music will generate less revenue to each artist per stream, and those that listen to less music will generate more revenue per stream. An above average user that listens only to the same artist provides more money to artists now than in a user-centric revenue model.