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Why is it that a “play” is defined by a discrete threshold line 30 seconds? Isn’t it way more logical to define some continuous relationship between amount of t

Why is it that a “play” is defined by a discrete threshold line 30 seconds? Isn’t it way more logical to define some continuous relationship between amount of time played and amount of money generated like it’s done on YouTube?

crazygringo 3y ago
Should a 6 minute song pay 50% more than a 4 minute song? Most people would think not. So you should pay by play, rather than per minute. YouTube is different because number of ads shown is roughly proportional to video length. Variance in video durations is much, much higher than variance in song durations. And 30 seconds is much longer than most people skipping through songs, and much shorter than most songs, and a nice round number.
- naniwaduni 3y ago
  ... why not? It's occupying 50% more listening time, isn't it?
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    I definitely wouldn't want the economic incentive to be for artists to make all their songs 10-20 minutes long... But more importantly, for popular music, song length doesn't correlate to work or effort, generally speaking. A 6 minute song doesn't take 50% more effort than a 4 minute one. (Other genres like classical are different though -- a 25-minute long symphonic movement obviously takes ~5x as much work to both write and record than a 5-minute one.)
    - naniwaduni 3y ago
      It does not seem especially obvious that the price of a product should depend on the cost of its input and not on the value of its output? We can quibble about whether "time that a user spends listening" is correctly what a streaming service wants to buy from an artist, but it doesn't seem like the reasonable metric.
    - ryandrake 3y ago
      > I definitely wouldn't want the economic incentive to be for artists to make all their songs 10-20 minutes long... Pink Floyd just read your comment and it looks like they’re headed back to the studio! Fingers crossed…
    - jrflowers 3y ago
      > Other genres like classical are different though -- a 25-minute long symphonic movement obviously takes ~5x as much work to both write and record than a 5-minute one. This makes sense. Every time I listen to 4’33” I am moved to tears and the thought of losing even a few seconds of that composition is abhorrent.
    - jstanley 3y ago
      But a song that is listened to a million times didn't necessarily take more effort than one that is only listened to once. The goal was never to pay commensurate to the effort that was put in.
    - kouru225 3y ago
      The economic incentive should be for you to create as much good content as possible. If you have a continuous relationship between time listened and money generated, then it doesn’t matter if you have one 40 minute song or 15 songs totaling 40 minutes.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- comprev 3y ago
  The business model of classical streaming company Primephonic was based on minutes streamed rather than first 30s units. The company became Apple Music Classical, so I guess it worked well?
djaro 3y ago
On YouTube I'd assume pay for music videos is generally similar, because music videos don't really have mid-roll ads (at least I've never gotten an ad in the middle of a song). Maybe due to post-roll ads people finishing the song could lead to extra revenue though.
cloudking 3y ago
This is why most new pop, trap, hip hop etc songs are only 2 minutes, more streams.

crazygringo 3y ago

Should a 6 minute song pay 50% more than a 4 minute song? Most people would think not. So you should pay by play, rather than per minute. YouTube is different because number of ads shown is roughly proportional to video length. Variance in video durations is much, much higher than variance in song durations. And 30 seconds is much longer than most people skipping through songs, and much shorter than most songs, and a nice round number.

naniwaduni 3y ago
... why not? It's occupying 50% more listening time, isn't it?
- crazygringo 3y ago
  I definitely wouldn't want the economic incentive to be for artists to make all their songs 10-20 minutes long... But more importantly, for popular music, song length doesn't correlate to work or effort, generally speaking. A 6 minute song doesn't take 50% more effort than a 4 minute one. (Other genres like classical are different though -- a 25-minute long symphonic movement obviously takes ~5x as much work to both write and record than a 5-minute one.)
  - naniwaduni 3y ago
    It does not seem especially obvious that the price of a product should depend on the cost of its input and not on the value of its output? We can quibble about whether "time that a user spends listening" is correctly what a streaming service wants to buy from an artist, but it doesn't seem like the reasonable metric.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    > I definitely wouldn't want the economic incentive to be for artists to make all their songs 10-20 minutes long... Pink Floyd just read your comment and it looks like they’re headed back to the studio! Fingers crossed…
  - jrflowers 3y ago
    > Other genres like classical are different though -- a 25-minute long symphonic movement obviously takes ~5x as much work to both write and record than a 5-minute one. This makes sense. Every time I listen to 4’33” I am moved to tears and the thought of losing even a few seconds of that composition is abhorrent.
  - jstanley 3y ago
    But a song that is listened to a million times didn't necessarily take more effort than one that is only listened to once. The goal was never to pay commensurate to the effort that was put in.
  - kouru225 3y ago
    The economic incentive should be for you to create as much good content as possible. If you have a continuous relationship between time listened and money generated, then it doesn’t matter if you have one 40 minute song or 15 songs totaling 40 minutes.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
comprev 3y ago
The business model of classical streaming company Primephonic was based on minutes streamed rather than first 30s units. The company became Apple Music Classical, so I guess it worked well?

djaro 3y ago

On YouTube I'd assume pay for music videos is generally similar, because music videos don't really have mid-roll ads (at least I've never gotten an ad in the middle of a song). Maybe due to post-roll ads people finishing the song could lead to extra revenue though.

cloudking 3y ago

This is why most new pop, trap, hip hop etc songs are only 2 minutes, more streams.