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In big tech’s dystopia, cat videos earn millions while real artists beg for tips

61 points by hardmaru 5y ago

python_slayer 5y ago
art is supposed to be for art sake
mam3 5y ago
People spend more on pets than art in everyday life too
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  Much as I like cats, I've never heard of one with an estimated worth of $860m. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_paintings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_paintin... The best art isn't just a commodity or an object, it's an event with lasting cultural influence and impact. A culture that stops making that kind of art - because "the markets" decree that cat videos generate higher short term returns - needs to ask itself whether that's really such a great metric for assessing real value.
  - soco 5y ago
    Art market is also a money laundering scheme. I'm not saying art has no value, just that those $860m could mean in many cases also something else.
    - squarefoot 5y ago
      That is common practice, not just in modern art. Unknown soccer (and probably other sports too) players transfers are also used to launder money, or simply to move big amounts of money in ways that could raise questions if done through normal operations. Who defines a player's value? All it needs is building a fake career, have him score some nice goals, arrange some set up friendly matches and shoot videos that will make him look like a champ. Then nobody would complain when his transfer will be reported as amount X while in practice X/10 is the real transfer cost and the rest is money being moved under the table from A to B. That practice is harder to do in top leagues, but easier to conceal in minor ones, and still profitable.
  - nly 5y ago
    Funny cat videos can be shared and appreciated by millions instantly and share a common basis for conversation and internet/meme culture. It might seem shallow and pointless but it's the human impact that really makes it valuable. You can't lift the emotions of millions with a dozen pieces of art like the Salvator Mundi and the technical mastery of it can only be appreciated by those with an understanding of art. The closest everyday people can get is listening to the story of DaVinci, and dreaming a little.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dandellion 5y ago
    The price of the paintings is mostly a reflection that some billionaires have absurd amounts of money and need store it somewhere. The millions made by cat videos are a reflection that millions of people enjoy them and advertising companies are getting lots of money out of it.
  - berniemadoff69 5y ago
    closest youll get https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/fashion/whatever-happened-to-choupette-karl-lagerfeld-s-pampered-cat-1.4150067 https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/fashion/whatever-h...
  - toomuchredbull 5y ago
    I don't think Da Vinci ever saw that money...
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    Show me a an immortal cat, and it might be worth millions - artwork can exist millennia. Maybe a unique breed of cat would be worth millions, if they existed. Because cats are mostly fungible[0], and easily supplied, there isn't the exclusivity that would otherwise give them a high price tag. [0] There are rare, expensive breeds. But even there there is a limit to what will pay for basically a cat.
theontheone 5y ago
Same idea but described (last year) by Michael I. Jordan https://youtu.be/EYIKy_FM9x0?t=1502 https://youtu.be/EYIKy_FM9x0?t=1502
darkhorse25 5y ago
Cats are artists though...
mido22 5y ago
Two n half men ran for 12 years and firefly got dropped after 10 episodes, lets blame Google for this.
- me_me_me 5y ago
  Two n half men was great. And nobody like firefly xD Its all internal politics. Directors, producers, money people. Without the great shows die because 'numbers' and trash keeps on coming. Also a lot, a lot of people have terrible taste. And they stick to what they already know, even when its trash.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    It's all rigged. If you are a kitten trying to make it on youtube, you have to kiss the ring of some fat cat otherwise no funny video for you.
sadmann1 5y ago
Oh no the market has tastes that need to be catered to in order to make money and I don't want to cater to these tastes, clearly this is big techs fault
nly 5y ago
There is a lot of shitty software out there being sold for real money, while a lot of really good FOSS goes unmaintained and loveless. I think the underlying problem is the same. People assume they don't need to support good stuff, because it's good and therefore somebody else must be supporting it already.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Shitty software being sold for real money also comes with support, which FOSS does not.
  - marrs 5y ago
    No it doesn’t. You might get a refund or some stock advice, but don’t expect any help beyond that
- Chris2048 5y ago
  That's because of all the times someone has chosen FOSS and regretted it after receiving a smug "you get what you pay for".
dtech 5y ago
> Then again, given that Spotify’s annual revenues were last put at nearly £7bn while the per-stream rate it pays to artists is currently reckoned to be around 0.35p This is quite disingenuous. Spotify pays out about 75% [1] of their revenue as royalties. That's better than for example the App store. You can make the argument that they give too much to non-paying users or that subscriptions are too cheap, but comparing total revenue with payout per stream is utter nonsense. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/370618/spotifys-cost-of-goods-sold-share/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/370618/spotifys-cost-of-...
- greenmana 5y ago
  What would make me happy, both as a consumer and a musician, is that if I only listen to my favorite artist for the whole month, then 75 % of my monthly subscription money would go directly to said artist, and not Taylor Swift or what ever is the current "most popular pool".
  - magicalhippo 5y ago
    For that there's Bandcamp.com I got Spotify, but it's a family plan due to my SO. I buy just about all the music from Bandcamp anyway.
    - greenmana 5y ago
      Bandcamp is nice, I've also bought many albums there. Streaming stuff I mostly listen on Tidal these days, so I can imagine I get the best possible (lossless) sound quality and don't have to think I'm downgrading from CD's to Spotify when it comes to that. Not that it's a huge or even a noticeable difference in many cases... but the revenue model seems better on Tidal for the artist.
  - monsieurbanana 5y ago
    Sure, as long as your favourite artist doesn't receive money from anyone who doesn't listen to him. All the money from a small percentage of people or a small percentage of money from everyone is the same.
vagrantJin 5y ago
A few months ago I was doing research with a youchuber friend of mine and I noticed my country's highest grossing videos are comedy sketches with these pre-pubescent teens. Funny enough, most people with access to the internet are not teens since its prohibitively expensive. So who watches these videos? Head scratch. Working, grown men and women. Huh? So no. Cat videos and memes and makeup tutorials will rule the internet till the end of its days.
readflaggedcomm 5y ago
No mention of ads, which supported the periodicals mentioned. Direct payments from the audience bypass advertisers who object to your audience and content. >Whatever their failings, the best of the organisations and companies that kept the show going – from publishers, through record labels, to old-fashioned TV channels – worked on the basis that the mainstream success of their biggest attractions would help subsidise less bankable talent, and also allow adventurous, driven people to take chances. Hard disagree, but at least artists have the choice to disintermediate now. That's not dystopian, because the system of modern patronage from nobility isn't being razed but competed with by the tips the author already acknowledged.
lrem 5y ago
So, the complaint here is that Spotify, already paying 75% of its revenue in royalties, dared to set up a way to tip your money directly to the artist. Who, presumably, gets about 80% of the money you put in. Instead of adding that to the royalties, out of which the artist would get between 13% and 20%[1]? How exactly is the Spotify's move dystopian? [1]: https://medium.com/soundeon/what-is-the-typical-revenue-split-between-labels-and-artists-for-streaming-royalties-8812fbafed23 https://medium.com/soundeon/what-is-the-typical-revenue-spli...
- batty_alex 5y ago
  The author is criticizing the trend of adding “tipping” and putting the onus on users to pay artists on platforms. The article is raising a flag about the trend
  - lrem 5y ago
    Is the dystopian bit the part where the record labels don't get their 80% cut?
- jbverschoor 5y ago
  They don't pay 75% of their revenue in royalties.
  - lrem 5y ago
    The top comment used https://www.statista.com/statistics/370618/spotifys-cost-of-goods-sold-share https://www.statista.com/statistics/370618/spotifys-cost-of-... as the source for the claim. Do you have anything else than "because I said no"?
    - jbverschoor 5y ago
      Because I said no.. and because I read the financial statement. The spotify Q1 financial statement https://investors.spotify.com/financials/default.aspx https://investors.spotify.com/financials/default.aspx https://s22.q4cdn.com/540910603/files/doc_financials/2021/q1/f3a5d6f7-4036-4117-9913-c35194e1371a.pdf https://s22.q4cdn.com/540910603/files/doc_financials/2021/q1... Page 4: > Revenue 2,147 1,848 > Cost of revenue 1,599 1,376 So 74%, but cost of revenue is: Page 32: Cost of Revenue =============== > Cost of revenue consists predominantly of royalty and distribution costs related to content streaming. We incur royalty costs, which we pay to certain record labels, music publishers, and other rights holders, for the right to stream music to our users. Royalties are typically calculated monthly based on the combination of a number of different elements. Generally, Premium Service royalties are based on the greater of a percentage of revenue and a per user amount. Royalties for the Ad-Supported Service are typically a percentage of relevant revenue, although certain agreements are based on the greater of a percentage of relevant revenue and an amount for each time a sound recording and musical composition is streamed. We have negotiated lower per user amounts for our lower priced subscription plans such as Family Plan, Duo Plan, and Student Plan users. In our agreements with certain record labels, the percentage of revenue used in the calculation of royalties is generally dependent upon certain targets being met. The targets can include such measures as the number of Premium Subscribers, the ratio of Ad-Supported Users to Premium Subscribers, and/or the rates of Premium Subscriber churn. In addition, royalty rates vary by country. Some of our royalty agreements require that royalty costs be paid in advance or are subject to minimum guaranteed amounts. For the majority of royalty agreements, incremental costs incurred due to un-recouped advances and minimum guarantees have not been significant to date. We also have certain so-called most favored nation royalty agreements, which require us to record additional costs if certain material contract terms are not as favorable as the terms we have agreed to with similar licensors. > Cost of revenue also includes credit card and payment processing fees for subscription revenue, customer service, certain employee compensation and benefits, cloud computing, streaming, facility, and equipment costs, as well as the amortization of podcast content assets. Amortization of podcast content assets is recorded over the shorter of the estimated useful economic life or the license period (if relevant), and begins at the release of each episode. Cost of revenue also includes discounted trial costs. So assuming "predominantly" means between 50% and 60% (otherwise it would've been specified and used for marketing communications), they're spending about 44% on royalties. The other 30% is easily "spent", rather allocated, on: "credit card and payment processing fees for subscription revenue, customer service, certain employee compensation and benefits, cloud computing, streaming, facility, and equipment costs, as well as the amortization of podcast content assets" This is in line with the "Apple spends pays twice as much royalties with Apple Music".
vosper 5y ago
Another article bemoaning the plight of the “genuinely creative” and blaming tech because for people’s preferences. Look: the barriers to entry have gone way, way, way down - especially for music. It’s never been cheaper to create or consume music. And, it turns out, people are interested and entertained by a lot more than just music! If you’re a musician trying to make money then your competition is all content creators. Sorry you’re not so special anymore, but the radio era is long over.
- toomuchredbull 5y ago
  It's interesting because lots of creators have a lot more opportunity because the gatekeepers are gone. Someone like Lil Nas X for example, probably would have never been discovered before.
- lostandbored 5y ago
  As an aspiring writer, the Internet has made it possible for small publishing houses to carve out niches, and made self-publishing more possible. While there is increased competition, it has allowed many writing voices to be heard that would have not been heard pre-internet.
- poisonborz 5y ago
  This. Paintings, handycraft, documentaries, investigative reports, all become content, createable by anyone - and for the better. Society/tech just needs time to adjust on how to better reward quality content and make it filterable from low-effort noise (subjective!).
  - HKH2 5y ago
    Relative ranking systems (like on Criticker) should solve that. The people who like low-density videos will get served more of them, and those who don't will not. That said, I understand that people like absolute ranking systems because they're reflective of what is popular.
- shantara 5y ago
  It is the same complaint you hear from people posting their art, music, videos, games online. “Why isn’t my creation discoverable among hundred thousands others?” “Why don’t storefronts and catalogues highlight my product?” These people fail to realize that lowering barriers to entry applies not only to them, but also to everyone else equally. You are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic.
thinkingemote 5y ago
A fun idea about cats on the internet. Toxoplasma is a real brain parasite that infects us, and cats and rats. It changes behaviour of the host to want to spread. Human males are meant to be more risky when infected, for example. It infects rats to make them less afraid of cats. We get it from cats. Maybe cats are less afraid of us? There's data that suggest that a third of all people are infected. Perhaps these are cat lovers. Perhaps when we are infected we promote and show off our cats so that other humans get infected. Thus cat videos and pictures on the internet are a by product of the Toxoplasma brain parasite.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  Reminds me of this: https://xkcd.com/1664/ https://xkcd.com/1664/
- yreg 5y ago
  >There's data that suggest that a third of all people are infected. Perhaps these are cat lovers. Sounds like something that would be both extraordinary and easy to find a correlation if it was true, no?
- newsbinator 5y ago
  > Are Cats Responsible for “Cat Ladies”? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-cats-responsible-for-ldquo-cat-ladies-rdquo/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-cats-responsi...
MattGaiser 5y ago
Most people are willing to pay the same for a cat video and the typical song. Nothing. But the cat video has far more universal appeal and can make the money up in micro value per user.
michaelt 5y ago
The price of Spotify is incredibly reasonable for consumers, if you listen to it a lot. If you're paying $10 a month to listen to music 8 hours a day, a 3 minute long song costs you $0.002 per play. And that's ignoring people sharing accounts. Presumably Spotify's economics rely on customers who don't listen all that often - i.e. people who don't wear headphones at work.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  What's completely unreasonable though is that we have to pay Spotify execs with this money for something that should be a public service based on free software and p2p infrastructure. A little less than two decades ago before HADOPI was adopted in France, a considerable share of the population/parties were defending a "global license" that would have legalized filesharing and instituted a tax on Internet access to finance arts. Basically, spotify-netflix-as-a-public-service. I'm not saying it's the best model ever, hell i'm for abolishing money entirely. I'm just pointing out alternatives were imagined and are entirely possible. Compared to a private corporation profiting from the situation and dictating what music will/won't be available tomorrow (i used spotify before i lost some songs i loved due to their contracts expiring or whatever), such a system would be much better.
  - throwaway316943 5y ago
    > Compared to a private corporation profiting from the situation and dictating what music will/won't be available tomorrow In a publicly funded version of this you just have the government deciding what will and won’t be available. Look at the existing cultural departments of national governments, they’re full of arbitrary decisions made by bureaucrats. At least with the current model, if someone comes up with a better way to get paid while giving artists and consumers a better deal they’ve got a chance of displacing the existing model, when you legislate something into existence it’s nearly impossible to renovate it.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      > you just have the government deciding what will and won’t be available That's not how Bittorrent works, fortunately, but i see your point. I'm not a fan of government either. I stand for the abolition of government and copyright at the same time (among other things). I'm merely pointing out that alternative proposals do exist (most people are not aware) and it's really disgusting that a private company is making business out of people trying to access culture... and gets to decide what albums to remove at what time. > if someone comes up with a better way to get paid while giving artists and consumers a better deal they’ve got a chance of displacing the existing model That's not how monopoly works. In a capitalist economy, you basically need a billion euros (or at least 1% of that) on the table before you can try and maybe change something. Otherwise, other companies will not even start talks for a contract with you. See copyright mafia, telecoms/ISP mafia, large retailers mafia, social netowrks / advertisement mafia, etc... Hell, even for running a simple mail server it's so hard to reach gmail.com or outlook.com users ;)
JI00912 5y ago
In big tech’s dystopia, political propaganda trying to pass for journalism earns millions while real research and reporting is barely funded.
dr_dshiv 5y ago
If everyone in the US paid an extra $100 per year in taxes, akin to a subscription fee, how would that money be equitably distributed to local journalists, small-time musicians and other "important" cultural contributors that can't get paid in the present economy? Seems easy to game, but open to ideas.
- throwaway316943 5y ago
  Easy, just give the cash back to the person and tell them to spend it on whatever they want.
libertine 5y ago
>The 21st century’s digital dazzle conceals age-old tricks. In keeping with the ways that charity has always been used to smooth over questions of fairness and exploitation, the new vogue for ad hoc donations seems designed to distract us from a handful of tech players getting ever-more wealthy, while the people on their platforms who would like to enrich the culture with something more substantial than cat videos are living increasingly impossible lives. I think this article tries to make a complex problem into "fair/unfair" situation. In my point of view, the "problem" is globalization itself. Everyone thought it would be the most fair thing ever. We would have access to more people and more things that were made all over the world, and we would see a boom of diversity. In reality globalization simply makes large players even larger, funneling the majority of the wealth and resources to few players. That's why there's a handful of tech players getting-ever more wealthy. Everything compounds on a global scale, they can run businesses at loss, have access to unlimited capital, hoard every competitor, making them even more bloated and large. Yet this is funny because within the artists industry, the exact same thing is happening. The big popular artists are getting most of the attention/wealth, probably at a scale never seen before. The Beatles have never reached so many people, and that's taking away from other artists - so it's not just cat videos. Why aren't artists complaining that other artists are taking away from them? At least radios had to manage a pool of time, now people can listen to the same artists, everyday, in a loop. Should popular artists have a pool of time that gets empty after so many streams? Which brings me to the point of: reach. Just because you can reach more people doesn't mean that everyone would have the interest/attention to invest their time to listen to music. Maybe the cat videos time was spent watching commercials in the 90's, or reading through a SEARS catalog in the 70's. The difference is that now it's funneled to few media companies. So the question shouldn't be if it's offensive to have tip jars that help struggling artists, or if watching cat videos is culture decay... maybe should be, is globalization good for culture? Is globalization a fair and balanced system?
- Chris2048 5y ago
  > the people on their platforms who would like to enrich the culture with something more substantial than cat videos What are these things? There are many who don't want to "enrich" at all, so much as forcing their values (often their ego-centric self-worth) onto others via harassment. If your efforts enrich the lives of others, they should be seeking you for that benefit. If that isn't the case, you either need to advertise your wares more, convince others of your values more; or, maybe rethink your initial value proposition (maybe you are creating something valuable if the market isn't agreeing). There are a lot of caveats to this but it's such a fundamental of how capitalist societies are supposed to work (ideally, on paper, anyway) that any diligent discussion should at least address the issue. If the situation goes unaddressed, I assume ignorance or malintent. > That's why there's a handful of tech players getting-ever more wealthy That's the argument of tech monopolisation. An important subject, but that doesn't seem to be the issue this article's framing appears to address. The implication of this article is that cat videos "should" get less than "real artists", for some subjective value of "real". This begs a lot of questions. But without addressing them I'll simply state: tech platforms reduce the barrier to global reach, are there are just enough competing tech platforms to be competitive (this is an issue to watch out for though) - Hence platforms such as YT (before it began actively censoring channels/videos and hence publishing vs providing its content) only make things fairer. Art has a good few decades head-start in content creation, so why are they losing a content war to youtuber amateurs? I suspect the real answer is: the most successful artists had some kind of monopoly, as such their content quality has been diverging from their audience for some time. It's a similar question to "Why so little public funding for the arts?", and "Why do the Arts need so much funding?", and "Why isn't it the Arts job to find willing funders?".
rasse 5y ago
Ok, so there's such a thing as _real art_.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  I didn't realize youtube is an art channel, I thought it was for cat videos.
Glavnokoman 5y ago
And I do not see it as a problem. Apart from the title which makes me wonder what makes an artist "real".
truth_ 5y ago
> real artists Who decides that?

61 points by hardmaru 5y ago

python_slayer 5y ago

art is supposed to be for art sake

mam3 5y ago

People spend more on pets than art in everyday life too

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
Much as I like cats, I've never heard of one with an estimated worth of $860m. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_paintings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_paintin... The best art isn't just a commodity or an object, it's an event with lasting cultural influence and impact. A culture that stops making that kind of art - because "the markets" decree that cat videos generate higher short term returns - needs to ask itself whether that's really such a great metric for assessing real value.
- soco 5y ago
  Art market is also a money laundering scheme. I'm not saying art has no value, just that those $860m could mean in many cases also something else.
  - squarefoot 5y ago
    That is common practice, not just in modern art. Unknown soccer (and probably other sports too) players transfers are also used to launder money, or simply to move big amounts of money in ways that could raise questions if done through normal operations. Who defines a player's value? All it needs is building a fake career, have him score some nice goals, arrange some set up friendly matches and shoot videos that will make him look like a champ. Then nobody would complain when his transfer will be reported as amount X while in practice X/10 is the real transfer cost and the rest is money being moved under the table from A to B. That practice is harder to do in top leagues, but easier to conceal in minor ones, and still profitable.
- nly 5y ago
  Funny cat videos can be shared and appreciated by millions instantly and share a common basis for conversation and internet/meme culture. It might seem shallow and pointless but it's the human impact that really makes it valuable. You can't lift the emotions of millions with a dozen pieces of art like the Salvator Mundi and the technical mastery of it can only be appreciated by those with an understanding of art. The closest everyday people can get is listening to the story of DaVinci, and dreaming a little.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dandellion 5y ago
  The price of the paintings is mostly a reflection that some billionaires have absurd amounts of money and need store it somewhere. The millions made by cat videos are a reflection that millions of people enjoy them and advertising companies are getting lots of money out of it.
- berniemadoff69 5y ago
  closest youll get https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/fashion/whatever-happened-to-choupette-karl-lagerfeld-s-pampered-cat-1.4150067 https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/fashion/whatever-h...
- toomuchredbull 5y ago
  I don't think Da Vinci ever saw that money...
- Chris2048 5y ago
  Show me a an immortal cat, and it might be worth millions - artwork can exist millennia. Maybe a unique breed of cat would be worth millions, if they existed. Because cats are mostly fungible[0], and easily supplied, there isn't the exclusivity that would otherwise give them a high price tag. [0] There are rare, expensive breeds. But even there there is a limit to what will pay for basically a cat.

theontheone 5y ago

Same idea but described (last year) by Michael I. Jordan https://youtu.be/EYIKy_FM9x0?t=1502 https://youtu.be/EYIKy_FM9x0?t=1502

darkhorse25 5y ago

Cats are artists though...

mido22 5y ago

Two n half men ran for 12 years and firefly got dropped after 10 episodes, lets blame Google for this.

me_me_me 5y ago
Two n half men was great. And nobody like firefly xD Its all internal politics. Directors, producers, money people. Without the great shows die because 'numbers' and trash keeps on coming. Also a lot, a lot of people have terrible taste. And they stick to what they already know, even when its trash.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  It's all rigged. If you are a kitten trying to make it on youtube, you have to kiss the ring of some fat cat otherwise no funny video for you.

sadmann1 5y ago

Oh no the market has tastes that need to be catered to in order to make money and I don't want to cater to these tastes, clearly this is big techs fault

nly 5y ago

There is a lot of shitty software out there being sold for real money, while a lot of really good FOSS goes unmaintained and loveless. I think the underlying problem is the same. People assume they don't need to support good stuff, because it's good and therefore somebody else must be supporting it already.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
MattGaiser 5y ago
Shitty software being sold for real money also comes with support, which FOSS does not.
- marrs 5y ago
  No it doesn’t. You might get a refund or some stock advice, but don’t expect any help beyond that
Chris2048 5y ago
That's because of all the times someone has chosen FOSS and regretted it after receiving a smug "you get what you pay for".

dtech 5y ago

> Then again, given that Spotify’s annual revenues were last put at nearly £7bn while the per-stream rate it pays to artists is currently reckoned to be around 0.35p This is quite disingenuous. Spotify pays out about 75% [1] of their revenue as royalties. That's better than for example the App store. You can make the argument that they give too much to non-paying users or that subscriptions are too cheap, but comparing total revenue with payout per stream is utter nonsense. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/370618/spotifys-cost-of-goods-sold-share/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/370618/spotifys-cost-of-...

greenmana 5y ago
What would make me happy, both as a consumer and a musician, is that if I only listen to my favorite artist for the whole month, then 75 % of my monthly subscription money would go directly to said artist, and not Taylor Swift or what ever is the current "most popular pool".
- magicalhippo 5y ago
  For that there's Bandcamp.com I got Spotify, but it's a family plan due to my SO. I buy just about all the music from Bandcamp anyway.
  - greenmana 5y ago
    Bandcamp is nice, I've also bought many albums there. Streaming stuff I mostly listen on Tidal these days, so I can imagine I get the best possible (lossless) sound quality and don't have to think I'm downgrading from CD's to Spotify when it comes to that. Not that it's a huge or even a noticeable difference in many cases... but the revenue model seems better on Tidal for the artist.
- monsieurbanana 5y ago
  Sure, as long as your favourite artist doesn't receive money from anyone who doesn't listen to him. All the money from a small percentage of people or a small percentage of money from everyone is the same.

vagrantJin 5y ago

A few months ago I was doing research with a youchuber friend of mine and I noticed my country's highest grossing videos are comedy sketches with these pre-pubescent teens. Funny enough, most people with access to the internet are not teens since its prohibitively expensive. So who watches these videos? Head scratch. Working, grown men and women. Huh? So no. Cat videos and memes and makeup tutorials will rule the internet till the end of its days.

readflaggedcomm 5y ago

No mention of ads, which supported the periodicals mentioned. Direct payments from the audience bypass advertisers who object to your audience and content. >Whatever their failings, the best of the organisations and companies that kept the show going – from publishers, through record labels, to old-fashioned TV channels – worked on the basis that the mainstream success of their biggest attractions would help subsidise less bankable talent, and also allow adventurous, driven people to take chances. Hard disagree, but at least artists have the choice to disintermediate now. That's not dystopian, because the system of modern patronage from nobility isn't being razed but competed with by the tips the author already acknowledged.

lrem 5y ago

So, the complaint here is that Spotify, already paying 75% of its revenue in royalties, dared to set up a way to tip your money directly to the artist. Who, presumably, gets about 80% of the money you put in. Instead of adding that to the royalties, out of which the artist would get between 13% and 20%[1]? How exactly is the Spotify's move dystopian? [1]: https://medium.com/soundeon/what-is-the-typical-revenue-split-between-labels-and-artists-for-streaming-royalties-8812fbafed23 https://medium.com/soundeon/what-is-the-typical-revenue-spli...

batty_alex 5y ago
The author is criticizing the trend of adding “tipping” and putting the onus on users to pay artists on platforms. The article is raising a flag about the trend
- lrem 5y ago
  Is the dystopian bit the part where the record labels don't get their 80% cut?
jbverschoor 5y ago
They don't pay 75% of their revenue in royalties.
- lrem 5y ago
  The top comment used https://www.statista.com/statistics/370618/spotifys-cost-of-goods-sold-share https://www.statista.com/statistics/370618/spotifys-cost-of-... as the source for the claim. Do you have anything else than "because I said no"?
  - jbverschoor 5y ago
    Because I said no.. and because I read the financial statement. The spotify Q1 financial statement https://investors.spotify.com/financials/default.aspx https://investors.spotify.com/financials/default.aspx https://s22.q4cdn.com/540910603/files/doc_financials/2021/q1/f3a5d6f7-4036-4117-9913-c35194e1371a.pdf https://s22.q4cdn.com/540910603/files/doc_financials/2021/q1... Page 4: > Revenue 2,147 1,848 > Cost of revenue 1,599 1,376 So 74%, but cost of revenue is: Page 32: Cost of Revenue =============== > Cost of revenue consists predominantly of royalty and distribution costs related to content streaming. We incur royalty costs, which we pay to certain record labels, music publishers, and other rights holders, for the right to stream music to our users. Royalties are typically calculated monthly based on the combination of a number of different elements. Generally, Premium Service royalties are based on the greater of a percentage of revenue and a per user amount. Royalties for the Ad-Supported Service are typically a percentage of relevant revenue, although certain agreements are based on the greater of a percentage of relevant revenue and an amount for each time a sound recording and musical composition is streamed. We have negotiated lower per user amounts for our lower priced subscription plans such as Family Plan, Duo Plan, and Student Plan users. In our agreements with certain record labels, the percentage of revenue used in the calculation of royalties is generally dependent upon certain targets being met. The targets can include such measures as the number of Premium Subscribers, the ratio of Ad-Supported Users to Premium Subscribers, and/or the rates of Premium Subscriber churn. In addition, royalty rates vary by country. Some of our royalty agreements require that royalty costs be paid in advance or are subject to minimum guaranteed amounts. For the majority of royalty agreements, incremental costs incurred due to un-recouped advances and minimum guarantees have not been significant to date. We also have certain so-called most favored nation royalty agreements, which require us to record additional costs if certain material contract terms are not as favorable as the terms we have agreed to with similar licensors. > Cost of revenue also includes credit card and payment processing fees for subscription revenue, customer service, certain employee compensation and benefits, cloud computing, streaming, facility, and equipment costs, as well as the amortization of podcast content assets. Amortization of podcast content assets is recorded over the shorter of the estimated useful economic life or the license period (if relevant), and begins at the release of each episode. Cost of revenue also includes discounted trial costs. So assuming "predominantly" means between 50% and 60% (otherwise it would've been specified and used for marketing communications), they're spending about 44% on royalties. The other 30% is easily "spent", rather allocated, on: "credit card and payment processing fees for subscription revenue, customer service, certain employee compensation and benefits, cloud computing, streaming, facility, and equipment costs, as well as the amortization of podcast content assets" This is in line with the "Apple spends pays twice as much royalties with Apple Music".

vosper 5y ago

Another article bemoaning the plight of the “genuinely creative” and blaming tech because for people’s preferences. Look: the barriers to entry have gone way, way, way down - especially for music. It’s never been cheaper to create or consume music. And, it turns out, people are interested and entertained by a lot more than just music! If you’re a musician trying to make money then your competition is all content creators. Sorry you’re not so special anymore, but the radio era is long over.

toomuchredbull 5y ago
It's interesting because lots of creators have a lot more opportunity because the gatekeepers are gone. Someone like Lil Nas X for example, probably would have never been discovered before.
lostandbored 5y ago
As an aspiring writer, the Internet has made it possible for small publishing houses to carve out niches, and made self-publishing more possible. While there is increased competition, it has allowed many writing voices to be heard that would have not been heard pre-internet.
poisonborz 5y ago
This. Paintings, handycraft, documentaries, investigative reports, all become content, createable by anyone - and for the better. Society/tech just needs time to adjust on how to better reward quality content and make it filterable from low-effort noise (subjective!).
- HKH2 5y ago
  Relative ranking systems (like on Criticker) should solve that. The people who like low-density videos will get served more of them, and those who don't will not. That said, I understand that people like absolute ranking systems because they're reflective of what is popular.
shantara 5y ago
It is the same complaint you hear from people posting their art, music, videos, games online. “Why isn’t my creation discoverable among hundred thousands others?” “Why don’t storefronts and catalogues highlight my product?” These people fail to realize that lowering barriers to entry applies not only to them, but also to everyone else equally. You are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic.

thinkingemote 5y ago

A fun idea about cats on the internet. Toxoplasma is a real brain parasite that infects us, and cats and rats. It changes behaviour of the host to want to spread. Human males are meant to be more risky when infected, for example. It infects rats to make them less afraid of cats. We get it from cats. Maybe cats are less afraid of us? There's data that suggest that a third of all people are infected. Perhaps these are cat lovers. Perhaps when we are infected we promote and show off our cats so that other humans get infected. Thus cat videos and pictures on the internet are a by product of the Toxoplasma brain parasite.

rich_sasha 5y ago
Reminds me of this: https://xkcd.com/1664/ https://xkcd.com/1664/
yreg 5y ago
>There's data that suggest that a third of all people are infected. Perhaps these are cat lovers. Sounds like something that would be both extraordinary and easy to find a correlation if it was true, no?
newsbinator 5y ago
> Are Cats Responsible for “Cat Ladies”? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-cats-responsible-for-ldquo-cat-ladies-rdquo/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-cats-responsi...

MattGaiser 5y ago

Most people are willing to pay the same for a cat video and the typical song. Nothing. But the cat video has far more universal appeal and can make the money up in micro value per user.

michaelt 5y ago

The price of Spotify is incredibly reasonable for consumers, if you listen to it a lot. If you're paying $10 a month to listen to music 8 hours a day, a 3 minute long song costs you $0.002 per play. And that's ignoring people sharing accounts. Presumably Spotify's economics rely on customers who don't listen all that often - i.e. people who don't wear headphones at work.

southerntofu 5y ago
What's completely unreasonable though is that we have to pay Spotify execs with this money for something that should be a public service based on free software and p2p infrastructure. A little less than two decades ago before HADOPI was adopted in France, a considerable share of the population/parties were defending a "global license" that would have legalized filesharing and instituted a tax on Internet access to finance arts. Basically, spotify-netflix-as-a-public-service. I'm not saying it's the best model ever, hell i'm for abolishing money entirely. I'm just pointing out alternatives were imagined and are entirely possible. Compared to a private corporation profiting from the situation and dictating what music will/won't be available tomorrow (i used spotify before i lost some songs i loved due to their contracts expiring or whatever), such a system would be much better.
- throwaway316943 5y ago
  > Compared to a private corporation profiting from the situation and dictating what music will/won't be available tomorrow In a publicly funded version of this you just have the government deciding what will and won’t be available. Look at the existing cultural departments of national governments, they’re full of arbitrary decisions made by bureaucrats. At least with the current model, if someone comes up with a better way to get paid while giving artists and consumers a better deal they’ve got a chance of displacing the existing model, when you legislate something into existence it’s nearly impossible to renovate it.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    > you just have the government deciding what will and won’t be available That's not how Bittorrent works, fortunately, but i see your point. I'm not a fan of government either. I stand for the abolition of government and copyright at the same time (among other things). I'm merely pointing out that alternative proposals do exist (most people are not aware) and it's really disgusting that a private company is making business out of people trying to access culture... and gets to decide what albums to remove at what time. > if someone comes up with a better way to get paid while giving artists and consumers a better deal they’ve got a chance of displacing the existing model That's not how monopoly works. In a capitalist economy, you basically need a billion euros (or at least 1% of that) on the table before you can try and maybe change something. Otherwise, other companies will not even start talks for a contract with you. See copyright mafia, telecoms/ISP mafia, large retailers mafia, social netowrks / advertisement mafia, etc... Hell, even for running a simple mail server it's so hard to reach gmail.com or outlook.com users ;)

JI00912 5y ago

In big tech’s dystopia, political propaganda trying to pass for journalism earns millions while real research and reporting is barely funded.

dr_dshiv 5y ago

If everyone in the US paid an extra $100 per year in taxes, akin to a subscription fee, how would that money be equitably distributed to local journalists, small-time musicians and other "important" cultural contributors that can't get paid in the present economy? Seems easy to game, but open to ideas.

throwaway316943 5y ago
Easy, just give the cash back to the person and tell them to spend it on whatever they want.

libertine 5y ago

>The 21st century’s digital dazzle conceals age-old tricks. In keeping with the ways that charity has always been used to smooth over questions of fairness and exploitation, the new vogue for ad hoc donations seems designed to distract us from a handful of tech players getting ever-more wealthy, while the people on their platforms who would like to enrich the culture with something more substantial than cat videos are living increasingly impossible lives. I think this article tries to make a complex problem into "fair/unfair" situation. In my point of view, the "problem" is globalization itself. Everyone thought it would be the most fair thing ever. We would have access to more people and more things that were made all over the world, and we would see a boom of diversity. In reality globalization simply makes large players even larger, funneling the majority of the wealth and resources to few players. That's why there's a handful of tech players getting-ever more wealthy. Everything compounds on a global scale, they can run businesses at loss, have access to unlimited capital, hoard every competitor, making them even more bloated and large. Yet this is funny because within the artists industry, the exact same thing is happening. The big popular artists are getting most of the attention/wealth, probably at a scale never seen before. The Beatles have never reached so many people, and that's taking away from other artists - so it's not just cat videos. Why aren't artists complaining that other artists are taking away from them? At least radios had to manage a pool of time, now people can listen to the same artists, everyday, in a loop. Should popular artists have a pool of time that gets empty after so many streams? Which brings me to the point of: reach. Just because you can reach more people doesn't mean that everyone would have the interest/attention to invest their time to listen to music. Maybe the cat videos time was spent watching commercials in the 90's, or reading through a SEARS catalog in the 70's. The difference is that now it's funneled to few media companies. So the question shouldn't be if it's offensive to have tip jars that help struggling artists, or if watching cat videos is culture decay... maybe should be, is globalization good for culture? Is globalization a fair and balanced system?

Chris2048 5y ago
> the people on their platforms who would like to enrich the culture with something more substantial than cat videos What are these things? There are many who don't want to "enrich" at all, so much as forcing their values (often their ego-centric self-worth) onto others via harassment. If your efforts enrich the lives of others, they should be seeking you for that benefit. If that isn't the case, you either need to advertise your wares more, convince others of your values more; or, maybe rethink your initial value proposition (maybe you are creating something valuable if the market isn't agreeing). There are a lot of caveats to this but it's such a fundamental of how capitalist societies are supposed to work (ideally, on paper, anyway) that any diligent discussion should at least address the issue. If the situation goes unaddressed, I assume ignorance or malintent. > That's why there's a handful of tech players getting-ever more wealthy That's the argument of tech monopolisation. An important subject, but that doesn't seem to be the issue this article's framing appears to address. The implication of this article is that cat videos "should" get less than "real artists", for some subjective value of "real". This begs a lot of questions. But without addressing them I'll simply state: tech platforms reduce the barrier to global reach, are there are just enough competing tech platforms to be competitive (this is an issue to watch out for though) - Hence platforms such as YT (before it began actively censoring channels/videos and hence publishing vs providing its content) only make things fairer. Art has a good few decades head-start in content creation, so why are they losing a content war to youtuber amateurs? I suspect the real answer is: the most successful artists had some kind of monopoly, as such their content quality has been diverging from their audience for some time. It's a similar question to "Why so little public funding for the arts?", and "Why do the Arts need so much funding?", and "Why isn't it the Arts job to find willing funders?".

rasse 5y ago

Ok, so there's such a thing as _real art_.

rsj_hn 5y ago
I didn't realize youtube is an art channel, I thought it was for cat videos.

Glavnokoman 5y ago

And I do not see it as a problem. Apart from the title which makes me wonder what makes an artist "real".

truth_ 5y ago

> real artists Who decides that?