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'Weird Al' Roasts Spotify's Artist Payout System in Year-End Wrapped Video
- xavxav 3y agoI'm not familiar with the structure of stream payouts on Spotify, but if 80 million streams gives 12 dollars, that means Taylor Swift's 26.1B streams give ~4k? I knew the rates were bad but damn...
- erellsworth 3y agoI'm pretty sure it was hyperbole.
- nkozyra 3y agoWait, hold on, you're telling me Weird Al was doing some sort of joke here?
- randomdata 3y agoAn artist with clout no doubt negotiates a much higher rate.
- boldslogan 3y agoI guess if spotify sues him for libel, then it will be documented the actual payout... which is probably higher than 12$ but lower than 80M$...
- nkozyra 3y ago> I guess if spotify sues him for libel Obviously this would be a terrible case against a known humorist making an obvious joke, but can you imagine how horribly that would backfire?
- matsemann 3y agoTrying different calculators online, 80 million streams estimates to about $200k in royalties paid out. Probably wildly inaccurate based on different deals etc., but probably in that order of magnitude instead of nickels. How that is distributed to the artist I guess is up to the label.
- ikt 3y agoit's not possible to calculate exact payout because the payout is 70% of every dollar spotify generates so that obviously fluctuates day to day, then you have ad tier vs premium tier and then i read that the payout goes through another calculation based on what total percentage of streams you have out of the total and then depending on the label how much they pass on
- ikt 3y agoFrom a different article: Not 3 cents, a third of one penny per stream. By that metric, Weird Al would have earned a little more than $12, more like $350,000 but his point stands. https://gizmodo.com/weird-al-spotify-wrapped-artist-pay-1851059636 https://gizmodo.com/weird-al-spotify-wrapped-artist-pay-1851...
- jkubicek 3y agoIf that's how much he earns, I'm not sure his point does stand. If he's making $350k from Spotify, I'm guessing he makes about that much from all the other streaming services combined. $700k in income from what is essentially an advertisement for your tours and merch feels like a pretty good deal.
- jjulius 3y ago$700k regardless is a good chunk of cash, but can you blame an artist for asking, "Whoa what the fuck?" if that's still a lot less than they would've made in a time before Spotify existed?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- steve1977 3y agoIs it though? Someone might listen to your tracks on Spotify because it’s included in the flat rate, but would have never bought a CD or record of you. And then those records had production costs and needed to be put in stores etc. Yes, at the peak of CDs, there was more money to be made. But I’m not sure if the difference is really that big.
- jjulius 3y ago>Is it though? >But I’m not sure if the difference is really that big. I'm struggling to understand why so many musicians - countless numbers, from nearly every genre, with all different sizes of fan bases - have been complaining about Spotify reducing their income if the difference wasn't "really that big".
- kredd 3y agoTaylor Swift is also a fun example as she refused to be on Spotify for some time because of “artists get paid pennies” reason. But then she signed some deal eventually to increase payouts basically for everyone. Now it’s been a while, and Spotify is way more used nowadays, so I’m not sure where the power balance is anymore.
- rchaud 3y agoArtists of TS' popularity can cut side deals with Spotify, same way Spotify cuts deals with Google Play to play less than what other app developers pay. Also, I think TS owns her record label and the master tapes, so royalties would accrue directly to her company. https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/20/23969690/google-spotify-android-billing-commission-secret-deal https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/20/23969690/google-spotify-...
- madeofpalk 3y agoWeird Al is something of a commedian, so when $12 was probably an exaggeration for commedic affect. Like a joke.
- occz 3y agoThe numbers are obviously not accurate.
- cwsx 3y agoI'm a completely unknown artist with 4 songs on Spotify, mostly released during 2020. In total I'm at 54388 plays, which has earned $42.41. This is across all platforms, though Spotify is 95% of the plays. I'm not sure if Spotify has dropped their payout per play since 2020 but I'm likely at the lowest payout rate and I'd say it's not terrible (although it's not great). You also get paid more for Spotify premium streams, which afaik was the majority of my streams.
- redundantly 3y ago[flagged]
- dbalatero 3y agoSince when has "deserves" ever been part of the equation?
- redundantly 3y agoYeah. I forgot this. I also forgot how much she's liked in the middle aged, white male demographic, so I'm not likely to get much sympathy here on HN.
- AlexandrB 3y agoThe best thing about Taylor Swift is how she managed to fuck over the PE firm that bought the rights to her music[1][2]. This is a more effective "fuck you" to the money side of the industry than many more lyrically principled groups have managed to achieve. Her music is... ok. It's the pop music industry, so I'm not sure what you're expecting here. But it's nice to see a pop star with a spine and some business sense. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/17/taylor-swifts-masters-sold-by-scooter-braun-to-private-equity-firm.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/17/taylor-swifts-masters-sold-b... [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/taylor-swift-says-she-s-re-recording-her-catalog-after-n1247954 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/taylor-swift-says-she-s...
- Eumenes 3y agoThe infantilization of adults in the West continue to rise. Child like obsession with teen idols, Disney, Legos, Funko Pops, Marvel movies, video games, etc. Consumerism is rampant. The number of engineers I work with in their 30s who fit this stereotype is truly bizarre. When we hang out at an offsite, I feel like I'm spending time with my teenage cousins.
- dylan604 3y agoWhen a mediocre artist has a following so much larger than an artist you deem exceptional, you’re going to see mediocrity all the time. See Kardashians. You getting upset about it is something you can control. People talking about something you do not like is not.
- dylan604 3y agoOkay, I finally don’t feel so bad. I’ve finally seen someone else using a phone older than mine. Of course, this looks like they used a second phone they had in drawer to playback the video while probably recording with their latest gen device
- chipgap98 3y agoAFAIK Spotify doesn't pay per stream. They pay a percentage of revenue to artists that is divided based on streams of their music. Record companies and big artists negotiate these deals with Spotify. It seems like artists should be more angry with their labels about the deals that are negotiated than mad at Spotify.
- dfxm12 3y agoThere's plenty of anger going around, especially when you consider the major labels own almost 20% of spotify.
- jrajav 3y agoMost artists these days self-distribute via platforms like Distrokid, not via a label. Distrokid just passes along streaming revenue, so they don't have any incentive to fight for it. And obviously, artists aren't in any position at all to collectively negotiate - you publish on Spotify, or you're unknown. The fault does, in fact, lie mostly with Spotify here.
- apwell23 3y ago> Most artists these days self-distribute Not the artists with "most" streams. Record labels still dominate the market.
- c0pium 3y agoAccording to the data I’ve looked at from Spotify, the big 3 labels are about 63% of their music, Merlin (which includes some actual small labels but also things like distrokid) is about 15%, and then there’s the rest. So the majority is the majors, but the other artists certainly could negotiate collaboratively if they wanted to.
- jwlstn 3y agoSpotify literally has never turned an annual profit because labels extract all of the $ due to the monopoly they have on content. Artists should be mad at the labels THEY entered into contracts with, not spotify.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- happymellon 3y ago> which is notoriously bad at paying musicians. The only thing I ever see are people comparing against the money that 90's rockstars used to be able to bring in from album sales. That ship sailed a long time ago, Spotify take everyone's money, substract a percentage for themselves and distribute the rest based upon number of plays. If you were a big artist it's probably worse because you aren't getting a sweet deal to pull you onto a label (which we would then have you bitching about in the music press every week), or your a smaller artist and don't make much off it because you don't get the plays but you would have never seen the big money from tape/CD sales anyway. I've also seen people argue that they never see the sort of money that they would get with a single play from BBC Radio, completely misunderstanding that BBC radio would probably never play their song, there is a much smaller bandwidth for playing music. Per person listening to your song, it works out not far off a play on Radio 6.
- dylan604 3y agoMaybe I have a different memory of record deals, but I've never heard of a band that made money from album sales. This is why they are always touring. It's not to promote the album, but to make money themselves. That's why there are jokes about bands "coming out of retirement" to do a tour after so many years being because one of the members needs to make a payment for something or other.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoIt used to be the other way around. The bulk of income was from album sales, and touring was considered advertisement for the album sales. Many tours had to basically sell out completely before they would turn a profit. Arena tickets were $20 and significantly less for smaller venues. Not surprisingly, the reason it was this way is because the label got most of the profit from the albums and the artists got most of the profit from touring. And since the labels were in control, they optimized for album sales. They loved it when a tour lost money, because then the artist owed them money. I believe it was the 90s when tours started becoming more profitable than albums.
- happymellon 3y ago
- ReptileMan 3y agoI want a streaming service with following business model: I pay 10 dollars for unlimited streaming. Spotify gets 1 or 2. I listen only to taylor swift on repeat - she gets 8 I listen to only one song the whole month - then some obscure metal band from Finland gets 8 I listen to 40 bands equally - they get 20c each I listen to 1 band as 20 other combined - the band get 4$ all the rest split 4. Thats it Here is the kicker - no aggregation and averages for millions of users - my money goes only to the people I listen to in whatever ratios.
- sunbum 3y agoWhat practical difference does it make with aggregation / averages for millions of users compared to your system?
- ReptileMan 3y agoThat then smaller artists would be drowned by the popular ones. If I listen only to Vision Of Atlantis this month for 1 hour - I want them (or their label) to get all of my money after the Spotify cut. if you aggregate them in a huge pool with teen girls that listen to Tylor swift on repeat - there is chance that the minutes I have listen to them probably won't be enough to get that.
- AlexandrB 3y agoI think it makes a big difference for the "long tail" who get almost nothing now, but could get a reasonable share of the dough if they could attract even a few hundred avid fans. For example, I listen to <1hr of music a day, but it's a lot of Canadian Indie bands. My plays are completely swamped by teenagers listening to T.Swift or whatever on repeat for 8hrs a day so the bands I listen to get $10/month from Spotify as a whole.
- gen3 3y agoThe difference is that your streaming actually has an impact on payouts. If you listen to 10 hours of an obscure genre with small and up and coming artists, they will currently micropennies, since your streams are dwarfed by the kid that listened to 150hrs of Taylor Swift a month. It’s stacked against indie artists, towards large artists that get the vast majority of plays (and who probably have record deals ensuring that the labels get their blood)
- emilecantin 3y agoI think a better payout structure for Spotify would be to go per-user. For example, for each subscriber a given amount from their subscription plan is earmarked for payouts. Let's say about 4$ per user. We divide that amount by the number of streams the user had that month, and we simply pay that amount to the artist. Examples: - I only listened to one song this month? The full 4$ go to that artist. - I listened to 2 albums by 2 artists this month, on repeat? 2$ each (assuming the same number of plays for each) - I listened to 399 tracks from one artist, and one track for another? 3.99$ to the first and 0.01$ to the second. - The gym next door is streaming Mariah Carey's Chrismas album on repeat? Their 4$ goes to Mariah Carey and mine still goes to the artists I enjoy. I think the current model of per-stream across the whole platform distorts the playing field towards more popular artists that play in commercial settings.
- dewey 3y ago> I think the current model of per-stream across the whole platform distorts the playing field towards more popular artists that play in commercial settings. Which is very much in favor of the actual people (Major labels) who needed to be convinced to license all their artists to Spotify in the first place. So not really surprising.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- WXLCKNO 3y agoI'm sure that smarter people than I will point out flaws in this model (aside from Spotify making less money lol) but I love it. It would be split into tons of artists for most people but a guaranteed chunk of the monthly would be nice.
- Spivak 3y agoIt does create weird incentives though. You make more money not by people listening to your music more but buy the people that do listen to you listening to other artists less. I can already see the internet: "Don't listen to your discover weekly or new music friday it hurts the artists you like."
- ted_bunny 3y agoRead it wrong, "Weird AI." Too much HN.
- morkalork 3y agohttps://twitter.com/alyankovic/status/1670113967497433090 https://twitter.com/alyankovic/status/1670113967497433090
- pastor_bob 3y agoIf he's mad he should pull his content like Joe Rogan and then come back only if they offered 300 million dollars.
- burnerburnson 3y agoSeeing megamillionaires complain that the common man only has to pay $10/month to listen to their music is getting pretty old.
- longtimelistnr 3y agoI’m sure he’s not hard pressed for money but i doubt he’s a mega millionaire. This should be seen as using a platform and audience to speak for those much smaller than him.
- itsyaboi 3y agoHe seems to have a net worth of ~$20M.
- jachee 3y agoThat’s still 980 short of “mega”.
- sgslo 3y agoI assume you're quoting ~$20M based on a search like this: https://www.google.com/search?q=weird+al+net+worth https://www.google.com/search?q=weird+al+net+worth Every one of those pages is absolute bunk with made up numbers. They're trying to drive clicks. Take a look at any of them and you'll notice quite quickly that they never cite any source.
- 3y ago
- spiffytech 3y agoI have a hypothesis I'd like feedback on: Per-stream rates are actually similar to the per-listen equivalent for CDs, and the revenue difference is because listeners have different behavior now that music is less scarce and is a la carte. In the CD era, artists earned more revenue because listeners had to buy whole albums, even if only a few of the tracks were worth listening to. People also listened to fewer artists, because listening to something new was expensive. Some napkin math: Say a CD costs $18, the artist gets 6.6% of that, it has 12 tracks, and you listen to the whole CD 30 times while you own it. That gets you $0.0033 per track listen. (Thinking of how I listened to CDs twenty years ago, an average of 30 listens feels like an okay estimate. Some albums more, some less.) Gizmodo reports Spotify pays $0.003 per stream. While there's some wiggle room in my CD calculations, I don't think they're off by e.g., 10x.
- brk 3y agoIn that era (when I spent some time in the music industry) it was common for labels to tell artists to not release 12 "Good" tracks. It was more like 3-4 Good tracks and then basically Filler tracks/B-side quality. But if you wanted the Good tracks, you had to buy the whole CD, and you might listen to the Good tracks 30 times, but the Fillers a lesser amount. This makes the per-track payment extrapolation from CDs somewhat challenging as these days users have more control over specific tracks, and artists can also do a track-only release as easily as a full album release if they want.
- boringg 3y agoThe funniest thing about Spotify was that so many people stopped downloading illegal content because all of a sudden they could legally pay for it and support artists. Now it looks like that supposed deal was a sham and the money doesn't make its way to the artists just the distributors and middle men (classic tech move). And yes, best way to support artist is live shows that aren't run by Ticketmaster.
- Madmallard 3y agotech companies are parasitic cancer
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- doublerabbit 3y agoCapitalism at it's finest.
- njl 3y agoSpotify actually has (at least) a few hundred pools of money; one of the pools might be "Free listeners in the US", one might be "Moldovan listeners who have Spotify as a bundle with this particular cell phone provider". A fixed percentage of that money is set aside for the rights holders for the performance (master rights) and the rights holders for the music (publishing rights). The allocated money is then passed to the rights holders, based on the percentage of listens they received within users in that pool. Individual rights holders can negotiate additional bumps, and Spotify has some exceptions for what needs to be counted. I know that the idea that money should go from a listener directly to the bands that user listens to, instead of splitting up the pool, feels like a pretty interesting one. Unfortunately, folks who listen to a lot of music tend to listen to smaller and more interesting bands as well. This change wouldn't necessarily result in more money in the pockets of smaller artists; it's not inconceivable at all that the rich would get richer. It's also worth mentioning that the average person who spent money on music at all, prior to the invention of streaming, spent far less annually than they spend on streaming now. I think artists are reacting to a lot of issues. The entire music industry is built around signing absolutely disgusting contracts with deeply talented and fundamentally naive 18 year olds who are effectively replaceable by the next new thing. This is compounded by the fact that most artists don't have a relationship with Spotify; they have a relationship with their record label who has a relationship with Spotify, and the label isn't really interested in giving an artist a full accounting of what they've brought in from Spotify. Finally, and most importantly, there is a real disconnect between the social impact of music and the actual size of the industry. There's a lot of money there, sure, but the music industry is like a professional sports league in terms of total revenue. A few superstars are going to suck up a lot of the money and not leave much for the bench players, let alone the folks three leagues down from the "show".
- vonrosen2000 3y ago[flagged]