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Spotify, the company best known for paying artists almost nothing for their music.
by kj99 3y ago
Spotify, the company best known for paying artists almost nothing for their music.
- Hamuko 3y agoDoesn't like 70% of the stream revenue go towards licensing the music?
- kotaKat 3y agoSpotify, the company best known for playing fair only when it's advantageous for themselves.
- fsflover 3y agoThis doesn't make them wrong in this case though.
- V__ 3y agoA bad messenger doesn't necessarily mean the message is wrong.
- kj99 3y agoWhen it's only the bad messengers who are shouting loudest, you should pay attention.
- saintfire 3y agoI've see this message every day from different people/groups. People think the opinions of giant corporations means they're somehow more valid so it hits every single form of media. So really, its news outlets that are shouting louder.
- COGlory 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
- proteal 3y agoTo be fair, consumers mostly don’t want to pay artists much money either. The consumers who do want to pay have plenty of avenues to directly support their favorite artists. Spotify is a music distribution tool that modern artists use to leverage their popularity into fiscal gains. Paying per stream is an antiquated business model at this point.
- klodolph 3y ago> Spotify is a music distribution tool that modern artists use to leverage their popularity into fiscal gains. This is a skewed way of looking at it, that highlights the positive and ignores the negative. It’s a lot harder to turn musical talent, productivity (writing & performing songs), and popularity into money than it used to be. Spotify is a big part of that change—and yes, it probably would have been a different company if it weren’t Spotify, but so what? In our history, it’s Spotify.
- flohofwoe 3y agoBesides a handful popular artists not making as much as they used to during the golden age of MTV and CDs, have things really changed that much for the rest? Music business was always extremely hit driven.
- klodolph 3y agoSmaller / medium bands have it rough compared to, say, the 2000s. Music isn’t just hit-driven. There used to be more house bands, more bands who could make a living from tours, that sort of thing. These days, musicians try to find an audience on Spotify and social media and make money doing performances, selling merch, and going on tour, but the amount of revenue you make from that kind of work is a lot less.
- jncfhnb 3y agoSeems like an unlikely claim given that much wider variety of small artists making it work now than before
- micwag 3y agoApple pays out roughly the same percentage to developers as does Spotify to artists. As Apple pays almost nothing to developer the DMA seems a step in the right direction.
- klodolph 3y agoWhen you stream a song, it’s Spotify who controls both the revenue and the revenue share. Spotify gives you 70% of some amount of revenue, and Spotify determines how much that revenue is, in the first place. If you put an app in the App Store, at least you get to determine the price point—you get to determine whether you want to charge up-front, make an ad-supported app, or rely on IAPs. Spotify doesn’t let you set the price of your song.
- Hamuko 3y agoIsn't that just because it's a fundamentally different business? It's not like you can freely set what price your album and songs are if you put it on iTunes Store for sale.
- klodolph 3y agoI was comparing the App Store, which lets you freely set prices. iTunes Store does offer you some control, within certain limits. You can set the “price tier” for different songs, which is why you see some songs for 69¢, some for 99¢, and most for $1.29. If you’re a prog-rock band who put out an album with 20-minute songs, one song per side, then you mark the songs as “album-only” and set the price for the album (or at least the price tier). Or you can divide the song into segments and let people buy those as individual tracks. I’ve seen both approaches.
- kevingadd 3y agoYes, and in Apple's awesome new pricing model, "free" is no longer a price you can choose as a developer because you owe an install fee per install/update no matter what, unless they generously decide to exempt you from it. You can choose any price you want as long as it's Expensive. The end result is more gamification, more exploitative monetization, more dark patterns, and more gambling games.
- ZoomerCretin 3y agoThey have to make a profit. If I recall correctly, Apple Music pays artists more and is cheaper, which is only possible because they take a loss. That's anticompetitive behavior, especially considering they charge their competitor Spotify an additional 30%. Apple Music is available on the Google Play store. It does not pay Google their 30%, because they have a link in their app allowing users to pay Apple directly.
- adrr 3y agoThey pay 70% of their revenue to artists. What percentage do you think they should be paying to artists so people don’t consider it nothing? Or should they just jack up their subscription rates?
- stavros 3y agoNot to artists, to labels. Labels are massive companies, and everyone there needs to be paid from stream money.
- adrr 3y agoLabels own the copyright to the recordings that Spotify is streaming.
- stavros 3y agoAnd yet they are not artists.
- adrr 3y agoAnd is it Spotify’s fault that some artists use labels? Spotify does allow artists to self publish and not use labels.
- nickthegreek 3y agoYour argument was built upon the premise that Spotify pays 70% to artists. You were show to be wrong and now appear to be trying to move the goalposts.
- adrr 3y agoIt pays artists that don’t use labels 70%. Saying Spotify doesn’t pay artists is rooted in ignorance because most major artists use labels and don’t own the rights to the recordings.