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I pulled the trigger on an Apple Music subscription this year because it pays artists better. Spotify still considers a penny per stream "entitled" according t

I pulled the trigger on an Apple Music subscription this year because it pays artists better. Spotify still considers a penny per stream "entitled" according to an exec giving one of the most absolutely tone-deaf AND nonsensical justifications for their choices ("we solved piracy by more or less adopting piracy's business model and legitimizing it!") [0] Apple stepped up to that level. [1] Revenue streams from recordings matter for supporting artists. There's still some issues with the economics of buffet streaming, but a penny a stream starts to at least approach the right magnitude. [0] https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/06/29/spotify-executive-entitled-pay-penny-per-stream/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/06/29/spotify-executiv... [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22387453/apple-music-artist-payment-rate-per-stream-vs-spotify https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22387453/apple-music-arti...

deadmutex 5y ago
> Apple Music subscription this year because it pays artists better. I wonder if this is a growth tactic. If Apple was more altruistic, one could argue that they would pay their App store 3rd party devs (by taking less of a cut via the App store) better too. So, I am going to chalk this up as a possible business decision for growth.
- fundatus 5y ago
  I am sure this is not about Apple being altruistic or caring about artists at all. All streaming services pay out about 70-80% of their revenue. It just happens to be that for Apple Music "money to be paid to rights holders" / "number of total streams" equals a slightly higher "payout per stream" than their main competitor. There are other players on the market that pay twice or even three times as much per stream compared to Apple Music.
rodgerd 5y ago
I used to use Tidal for the same reason, but the ongoing MQA debacle pushed me over to Music. I have to say that I preferred Tidal's recommendations.
Steltek 5y ago
I signed up for Google Play Music for the same reason, artist payout, long ago. It looks like Youtube Music is still the highest among the major brands. https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2021/09/why-youtube-musics-most-recent-figures-are-actually-good-news-for-artists.html https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2021/09/why-youtube-musics-m...
music_throwaway 5y ago
I really respect your decision to choose your streaming service based on how they each pay out artists. I work for an independent label and the most recent analysis we did shows that in the US, Apple was paying out roughly just under $0.007 (7/10 of a penny) / stream, while Spotify was paying out around $0.004. These rates go down as you bring a more international user base, depending on where in the world the music was consumed. Of those payouts, depending on the clout of the artist, they're typically only seeing their 15-20% royalty of those payout rates on the recorded music side (music publishing is a different story). So it's even worse than it seems! A big reason that Apple is able to pay out higher rates is they're fully a premium business model with no ad-supported tier (they have a free trial period though). Due to Spotify's ad-supported tier, artists are able to reach a more cost-sensitive consumer, but at a lower overall blended rate per stream.
- kenhwang 5y ago
  Do you have numbers for Tidal or Amazon Music? I'd guess they'd land somewhere between the two.
  - dole 5y ago
    # of Streams to make US $1: YouTube Music: 1,250 Pandora: 752 Spotify: 315 Amazon Music: 249 Deezer: 156 Apple Music: 128 Tidal: 78 Napster: 53 Source: https://hiphopdx.com/news/id.66835/title.t-pain-disrupts-music-twitter-with-streaming-payout-graphic https://hiphopdx.com/news/id.66835/title.t-pain-disrupts-mus... Original source: https://twitter.com/TPAIN/status/1476032631255060490 https://twitter.com/TPAIN/status/1476032631255060490 (not sure why this link isn't working)
    - music_throwaway 5y ago
      If I had to guess, T-Pain's #s are encapsulating more regions than the US - everything I calc'ed was US-only. It gets really bad when you look at rates in emerging countries so I find it helpful to be very specific about what data is encapsulated in these rates. Most importantly, while his title is not wrong, remember that this is not what it takes for an artist to make $1, it's how much money is paid out in aggregate for each recorded music stream. Artists make a smaller percentage of that amount, the label typically takes the lion's share.
callahad 5y ago
Deezer has been pretty staunch in their advocacy for "User Centric Payment Systems" (https://www.deezer.com/us/ucps https://www.deezer.com/us/ucps) where your monthly subscription gets proportionally split between the artists you stream, rather than being put into a common pool which then pays out based on global listening stats. They can't unilaterally move to UCPS without renegotiating licensing deals with labels, but they do decent advocacy work, including publishing a personalized dashboard at https://www.deezer.com/us/ucps/me https://www.deezer.com/us/ucps/me which, for me, opens with "Hi callahad, during December 2021 your Deezer subscription generated: 97% of royalties for artists I didn't stream, 3% of royalties for artists I did stream." It's apparently working, since seeing numbers presented that starkly prevented me from switching to Spotify (and got me to post this comment...)
fundatus 5y ago
If "payout per stream" is an important metric to you, then Apple Music is still the wrong choice though. Just like Spotify their payout per stream is still only mediocre. Tidal pays about twice as much per stream compared to Apple Music and Napster pays three times as much!

deadmutex 5y ago

> Apple Music subscription this year because it pays artists better. I wonder if this is a growth tactic. If Apple was more altruistic, one could argue that they would pay their App store 3rd party devs (by taking less of a cut via the App store) better too. So, I am going to chalk this up as a possible business decision for growth.

fundatus 5y ago
I am sure this is not about Apple being altruistic or caring about artists at all. All streaming services pay out about 70-80% of their revenue. It just happens to be that for Apple Music "money to be paid to rights holders" / "number of total streams" equals a slightly higher "payout per stream" than their main competitor. There are other players on the market that pay twice or even three times as much per stream compared to Apple Music.

rodgerd 5y ago

I used to use Tidal for the same reason, but the ongoing MQA debacle pushed me over to Music. I have to say that I preferred Tidal's recommendations.

Steltek 5y ago

I signed up for Google Play Music for the same reason, artist payout, long ago. It looks like Youtube Music is still the highest among the major brands. https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2021/09/why-youtube-musics-most-recent-figures-are-actually-good-news-for-artists.html https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2021/09/why-youtube-musics-m...

music_throwaway 5y ago

I really respect your decision to choose your streaming service based on how they each pay out artists. I work for an independent label and the most recent analysis we did shows that in the US, Apple was paying out roughly just under $0.007 (7/10 of a penny) / stream, while Spotify was paying out around $0.004. These rates go down as you bring a more international user base, depending on where in the world the music was consumed. Of those payouts, depending on the clout of the artist, they're typically only seeing their 15-20% royalty of those payout rates on the recorded music side (music publishing is a different story). So it's even worse than it seems! A big reason that Apple is able to pay out higher rates is they're fully a premium business model with no ad-supported tier (they have a free trial period though). Due to Spotify's ad-supported tier, artists are able to reach a more cost-sensitive consumer, but at a lower overall blended rate per stream.

kenhwang 5y ago
Do you have numbers for Tidal or Amazon Music? I'd guess they'd land somewhere between the two.
- dole 5y ago
  # of Streams to make US $1: YouTube Music: 1,250 Pandora: 752 Spotify: 315 Amazon Music: 249 Deezer: 156 Apple Music: 128 Tidal: 78 Napster: 53 Source: https://hiphopdx.com/news/id.66835/title.t-pain-disrupts-music-twitter-with-streaming-payout-graphic https://hiphopdx.com/news/id.66835/title.t-pain-disrupts-mus... Original source: https://twitter.com/TPAIN/status/1476032631255060490 https://twitter.com/TPAIN/status/1476032631255060490 (not sure why this link isn't working)
  - music_throwaway 5y ago
    If I had to guess, T-Pain's #s are encapsulating more regions than the US - everything I calc'ed was US-only. It gets really bad when you look at rates in emerging countries so I find it helpful to be very specific about what data is encapsulated in these rates. Most importantly, while his title is not wrong, remember that this is not what it takes for an artist to make $1, it's how much money is paid out in aggregate for each recorded music stream. Artists make a smaller percentage of that amount, the label typically takes the lion's share.

callahad 5y ago

Deezer has been pretty staunch in their advocacy for "User Centric Payment Systems" (https://www.deezer.com/us/ucps https://www.deezer.com/us/ucps) where your monthly subscription gets proportionally split between the artists you stream, rather than being put into a common pool which then pays out based on global listening stats. They can't unilaterally move to UCPS without renegotiating licensing deals with labels, but they do decent advocacy work, including publishing a personalized dashboard at https://www.deezer.com/us/ucps/me https://www.deezer.com/us/ucps/me which, for me, opens with "Hi callahad, during December 2021 your Deezer subscription generated: 97% of royalties for artists I didn't stream, 3% of royalties for artists I did stream." It's apparently working, since seeing numbers presented that starkly prevented me from switching to Spotify (and got me to post this comment...)

fundatus 5y ago

If "payout per stream" is an important metric to you, then Apple Music is still the wrong choice though. Just like Spotify their payout per stream is still only mediocre. Tidal pays about twice as much per stream compared to Apple Music and Napster pays three times as much!