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The common suggested alternative payment system to fix the "unfairness" of Spotify's current splitting of the pie is "user-centric" payments: https://www.googl
by jasode 3y ago
The common suggested alternative payment system to fix the "unfairness" of Spotify's current splitting of the pie is "user-centric" payments: https://www.google.com/search?q=spotify+user-centric+payment https://www.google.com/search?q=spotify+user-centric+payment
It's easier to illustrate that idea with a more extreme example:
User 1 listens to nothing but songs from an obscure independent jazz artist and never any pop songs.
In Spotify's current payout system based on pro-rata streams count, most of User 1's subscription money will still go to popular artists on big record labels like Taylor Swift, Drake, Ed Sheeran, etc. The user-centric model wants 100% of User 1's money to go to that independent artist and 0% to Taylor Swift.
For the author's particular examples...
>Now let's take a different scenario.
User 1 listens to 90 songs by Ariana Grande.
User 2 listens to 10 songs by Billie Eilish.
>How should the money be fairly split? 50:50? 90:10? Something else?
Using "user-centric" model, 100% of User 1's payment would go to AG and 100% of User 2 goes to BE. From the perspective of the TOTAL SUM, this also means that 50% of the total pie goes to AG and the other 50% goes to BE.
>Imagine two users of Spotify. Both pay £10/month.
User 1 only listens to 900 ABBA songs.
User 2 only listens to 100 Beatles songs.
90% ABBA, 10% Beatles ?
50% each ?
Same math breakdown as AG and BE above.
- paxys 3y agoIt's pointless to come up with models like these because none of the top artists are going to keep their music on the platform if their payout is reduced to that degree. For any such unlimited usage model to work the low volume users always have to subsidize the opposite end.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- esafak 3y agoThe richest artists are going to leave the platform, and do what; start their own, go back to iTunes, or rely on concerts? I can't see that happening, but I'm sure Spotify is capable of estimating how the revenue attribution scheme affects artist- and consequently subscriber retention. I'm in favor of paying artists in proportion to time played; that's a granular vote by users.
- chrisco255 3y agoWhat's their alternative? Spotify has a near monopoly on streaming and we're not going back to FM radio. If fragmentation occurs in music streaming apps they'll end up with less overall streamers and revenue anyways. I suppose a middle of the road solution would be to allocate X% towards the user-centric pot and Y% towards a pool for overall. Maybe that's 50/50 or 80/20, I don't know. But niche artists seem like will continue to have a hard time unless they go viral under the current system.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoWhy wouldn't they? Top artists don't earn that much off of Spotify either; it's promotion (like radio is / can be) for their more direct and lucrative sources of income, concerts, album sales, merchandise, and others.
- satyrnein 3y agoRecord labels are the ones making the decisions, since they own the recordings. And they do make their money on Spotify.
- ethbr1 3y agoObvious issue with any theoretical allocation -- synthetic playback astroturfing. Unless a given distribution method is resistant to artificially playing nothing but obscure artists on fake user clients 24/7, done for financial incentive, it's a non-starter. Otherwise you end up with the Audible 60-minute silent book problem (if I'm remembering right?).
- satyrnein 3y agoFor anyone unfamiliar with the concepts, I also want to point that some of the Taylor Swift fan's money is also going to the obscure independent jazz artist, despite never listening to them. People sometimes assume that the user-centric model automatically favors the indie artist, but that's not really true. It favors artists whose fans listen to fewer streams per month than average, whether the artists themselves are popular or not.