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2 things: 1. Saying "hey, you can just not list on Spotify" is naive. Unless you're a major artist, you don't have the market power to convince people not to u

2 things: 1. Saying "hey, you can just not list on Spotify" is naive. Unless you're a major artist, you don't have the market power to convince people not to use Spotify. Essentially every labor movement is about pooling the collective power of individuals to fight larger entrenched market owners, and that's what this boycott is about. 2. To me the main issue is not the payout percentage, but how it's divvied up. I believe this is still the case, but payouts are divvied up by averaging across all plays. But the total plays are dominated by large artists. A better deal for smaller artists is to allocate each individual subscriber's revenue based on what that subscriber listens to. For example, if I love Obscure Artist A, and 90% of my songs are Obscure Artist A, then Obscure Artist A should get 90% of my $15 or whatever subscription fee (minus Spotify's cut). But instead, Spotify says "Obscure Artist A only had .000001% of total plays, so they only get .000001% of total revenue" - it ends up being a better payout for the big names but a worse deal for all the smaller artists.

zpeti 1y ago
So someone needs to make a substack for music basically. That's what we are talking about here. Question is, do people think a certain artist or song is important enough to pay $5/month to individually? My sense is no, but perhaps...
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > someone needs to make a substack for music basically Isn’t this Bandcamp?
  - chrisldgk 1y ago
    It is. And it’s also the fairest platform for musicians pay-wise. Though Epic apparently acquired Bandcamp[1] recently (presumably to stuff its IP catalogue for Fortnite Festival, so who knows how long that will be true for. [1] https://pitchfork.com/news/epic-games-sells-bandcamp-amid-layoffs/ https://pitchfork.com/news/epic-games-sells-bandcamp-amid-la...
    - CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
      > Though Epic apparently acquired Bandcamp[1] recently The article you linked is about Epic selling Bandcamp, which happened relatively quickly after they acquired it. I guess they didn't find any use for it in the end.
- Notatheist 1y ago
  >Question is, do people think a certain artist or song is important enough to pay $5/month to individually? My sense is no, but perhaps... Abso-fucking-lutely! I pay $3.50 a month to listen to a madman with a mohawk rant about Formula 1. I doubt there's anyone who wouldn't pay their favorite artists $5 a month. On the flip side I would get to listen to three artists and every other artist would lose me as a listener. I don't feel anybody wins in that scenario.
fallinditch 1y ago
There was a study that looked at the economics of this [1]: user centric (UCPS) vs market centric (MCPS) payment system. In short: UCPS would transfer some revenue from the top artists to the middle rump of popular artists, but the small and obscure artists would not be affected much since they hardly make much in the first place. My take on this: of course the top artists should not be taking a disproportionate cut at the expense of the less popular artists, a UCPS is not a panacea but it would be an improvement. [1] https://legrandnetwork.blogspot.com/2021/02/user-centric-model-would-not-lead-to.html https://legrandnetwork.blogspot.com/2021/02/user-centric-mod...
- spwa4 1y ago
  I think the real issue that needs to be solved for this is how you will convince big artists to sign while giving up some revenue to less popular artists ... because you absolutely need them.
- hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
  Thanks so much for linking this, I think it's a great study. And I agree, I don't think it would be a panacea. But I think it would be a lot fairer, and would help a large selection of artists in that middle tier. For the most obscure artists, while the study says it has a "low impact" on them, they actually had the highest percentage increase, but since their royalties are already so low the euro amount increase was in the single digit euros. And again, that seems fair to me - if hardly anyone is listening to you, you're not going to be getting a big payout.
lambertsimnel 1y ago
> For example, if I love Obscure Artist A, and 90% of my songs are Obscure Artist A, then Obscure Artist A should get 90% of my $15 or whatever subscription fee (minus Spotify's cut). But instead, Spotify says "Obscure Artist A only had .000001% of total plays, so they only get .000001% of total revenue" - it ends up being a better payout for the big names but a worse deal for all the smaller artists. Why would the former pay obscure artists more? Are non-paying users more likely to listen to mainstream artists? Or do fans of obscure artists just play fewer songs each? Is ad revenue shared in the same proportions, but just lower per user? Is revenue really shared on the basis of plays, rather then playing time? If so, and if obscure artists make longer songs, does that contribute to their lack of revenue?
- dynm 1y ago
  It seems like if anything the current model would end up paying obscure artists more? (If you assume that people who listen to obscure music tend to listen to more music overall, which would be my guess.)
- yason 1y ago
  > Why would the former pay obscure artists more? I don't want the obscure artists to get more ― or less, for that matter. I want the artists I listen to to get my money, obscure or not. That's a simple transaction and has worked forever. If I buy a CD from artist X, I know I won't be supporting artist Y with my money, just X. If I then want to listen to Y, I can support them as well. But in any case Z won't be getting any of my money because they make noises I don't consider music.
  - BrenBarn 1y ago
    > If I buy a CD from artist X, I know I won't be supporting artist Y with my money, just X. That's not entirely true, since by buying X's CD you're also giving money to the label/publisher of that CD, who may be allocating that money to Y if Y is also one of their artists. However, overall I agree that the buy-a-CD model makes it more clear where your money is going.
  - Gigachad 1y ago
crossroadsguy 1y ago
I just want to understand this a bit more clearly. So I have never even opened Swift’s page on Spotify — let alone played a song (if there are fans here, please don’t come after me). I pay for Spotify. So did you mean to say the largest portion of my monthly fee goes to Taylor Swift?
- BrenBarn 1y ago
  That is correct.
- ViewTrick1002 1y ago
  The difference is: 1. Put all money in a big pot and pay out depending on all streams. 2. Put your money in a pot and pay out depending on your streams. Do the same for all users. The total sum of money stays the same. If your audience listens to more music than the average Spotifier then you will get paid less using method 2. All in all the difference isn’t massive.
- Gigachad 1y ago
  No, you pay Spotify, and then Spotify pays artists per stream they received. “Your” money goes in to a pool at Spotify where it can’t really be traced further. If you listen to more music than the average listener, those artists get paid out more than what you put in, and if you listen to less, they get less. But on average it all levels out anyway. Unless people who listen to a particular artist on average stream less music entirely. Which doesn’t seem to be the case.
  - 63stack 1y ago
    You said "no" but your explanation says yes
    - Gigachad 1y ago
      It doesn’t though. There is no transaction between you and Taylor Swift. If you listened to less music than the average person then some of your fee went to the people who listened to more music, and the other way round if you listened to more music. Which is going to average out in the end anyway, while massively simplifying the accounting. Spotify can also tell artists exactly how much they are getting paid rather than having to wait for the end of the billing period to work it out. Only to come to roughly the same amount anyway. There is no tracing routes with a pooled fund. Only inputs and outputs. And the outputs would seem to be pretty much identical in the pooled system vs individual pools per user.
ViewTrick1002 1y ago
The only difference is that you bet that your audience listens to less music than the average Spotify user. Some will make less. Some will make more. In the end the pie stays the same: ~70% of Spotify’s revenue.
bko 1y ago
That revenue model makes no sense. How would paying an artist on the relative user plays make any sense? So basically there is no direct relationship with number of plays and revenue? You need to abstract that part out. Artists should be paid some amount per stream. Is there a market that actually uses a system like that? It just seems convoluted. It sounds like just some idea someone made up to back into paying some artists more in favor of others. And I'm not even sure it would have the desired effects. I'm sure Swift is on a lot more playlists that Spotify pushes than Obscure Artist.
- jemmyw 1y ago
  It makes sense because each user is paying. I would like the my personal payment to Spotify to be split between the musicians I listen to, and none of it to go to Taylor Swift. Yes, it wouldn't be a direct relationship between number of plays and payout. It would instead be a direct relationship between user payment and payout. >Is there a market that actually uses a system like that? Yes, physical media. Number of streams shouldn't necessarily be directly related to payout anyway. If you purchase a CD the artist gets that payment once, and you can listen to it as many times as you like.
- hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
  I don't understand the argument about paying all artists a fixed amount per stream when customers aren't paying a fixed amount per stream in an unlimited subscription model. If I listen to artists X, Y and Z, it makes a lot more sense to me that the only people who get paid from my subscription money are artists X, Y and Z. As opposed to the situation we have now, where, as a sibling comment points out, if I never listen to Taylor Swift the largest portion of my subscription fee still goes to her.
Yizahi 1y ago
On a very very large average, and assuming that Spotify pays out now in precise proportion to the total plays (just as you wrote - if 0.1% of plays, then 0.1% of payouts), then changing to your proposed system would literally change nothing. Average number of plays in total versus average number of users listening to an artist would be exactly the same statistically, starting from several tens of thousands of users, and Spotify has millions of them.
- hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
  > then changing to your proposed system would literally change nothing. That's simply wrong. Another commenter posted a study that looked at exactly this question, https://legrandnetwork.blogspot.com/2021/02/user-centric-model-would-not-lead-to.html https://legrandnetwork.blogspot.com/2021/02/user-centric-mod... . It's not an enormous change, but on Spotify the top 10 artists would have their income reduced 12.5%, to be redistributed to lower tier artists.
  - Yizahi 1y ago
    I mean, the article is likely correct, but only if the current distribution of royalties in Spotify isn't proportional to the play count (which was presumed in the top comment). And it is totally believable that Spotify adjusts them to entice bigger names to the platform. But if the distribution would have been equal, then there will ne zero difference with the user based distribution. Because it would be the exact same number counted differently. User A listens to artists 1, 2, 3 in a 50%, 25%, 25% proportion on a 15$ sub (same below) User B listens to artists 1, 2, 4 User C listens to artists 4, 5, 6 So by current system, artist 1 has 4 plays, 2 has 2 plays, 4 has 3 plays, 3 and 5 and 6 have 1 play. So 1 gets 15$, 2 gets 7.5$, 4 gets 11.25$, and 3,5,6 all get 3.75$ If we recalculate to the per user scheme, then from user A, 1 gets 7.5$, 2,3 get 3.75$. From B, 1 gets 7.5$, 2,4 get 3.75$. And from C, 4 gets 7.5$, 5, get 3.75$. Sum it up and we get 1 get 15$, 2 gets 7.5$, 4 gets 11.25$, 3,5,6 get 3.75$. It's very basic arithmetic, from shuffling numbers and then summing them up differently, the total won't change. So what needs to be changed is a skew artificially made towards big names, that is the real root cause.

zpeti 1y ago

So someone needs to make a substack for music basically. That's what we are talking about here. Question is, do people think a certain artist or song is important enough to pay $5/month to individually? My sense is no, but perhaps...

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> someone needs to make a substack for music basically Isn’t this Bandcamp?
- chrisldgk 1y ago
  It is. And it’s also the fairest platform for musicians pay-wise. Though Epic apparently acquired Bandcamp[1] recently (presumably to stuff its IP catalogue for Fortnite Festival, so who knows how long that will be true for. [1] https://pitchfork.com/news/epic-games-sells-bandcamp-amid-layoffs/ https://pitchfork.com/news/epic-games-sells-bandcamp-amid-la...
  - CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
    > Though Epic apparently acquired Bandcamp[1] recently The article you linked is about Epic selling Bandcamp, which happened relatively quickly after they acquired it. I guess they didn't find any use for it in the end.
Notatheist 1y ago
>Question is, do people think a certain artist or song is important enough to pay $5/month to individually? My sense is no, but perhaps... Abso-fucking-lutely! I pay $3.50 a month to listen to a madman with a mohawk rant about Formula 1. I doubt there's anyone who wouldn't pay their favorite artists $5 a month. On the flip side I would get to listen to three artists and every other artist would lose me as a listener. I don't feel anybody wins in that scenario.

fallinditch 1y ago

There was a study that looked at the economics of this [1]: user centric (UCPS) vs market centric (MCPS) payment system. In short: UCPS would transfer some revenue from the top artists to the middle rump of popular artists, but the small and obscure artists would not be affected much since they hardly make much in the first place. My take on this: of course the top artists should not be taking a disproportionate cut at the expense of the less popular artists, a UCPS is not a panacea but it would be an improvement. [1] https://legrandnetwork.blogspot.com/2021/02/user-centric-model-would-not-lead-to.html https://legrandnetwork.blogspot.com/2021/02/user-centric-mod...

spwa4 1y ago
I think the real issue that needs to be solved for this is how you will convince big artists to sign while giving up some revenue to less popular artists ... because you absolutely need them.
hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
Thanks so much for linking this, I think it's a great study. And I agree, I don't think it would be a panacea. But I think it would be a lot fairer, and would help a large selection of artists in that middle tier. For the most obscure artists, while the study says it has a "low impact" on them, they actually had the highest percentage increase, but since their royalties are already so low the euro amount increase was in the single digit euros. And again, that seems fair to me - if hardly anyone is listening to you, you're not going to be getting a big payout.

lambertsimnel 1y ago

> For example, if I love Obscure Artist A, and 90% of my songs are Obscure Artist A, then Obscure Artist A should get 90% of my $15 or whatever subscription fee (minus Spotify's cut). But instead, Spotify says "Obscure Artist A only had .000001% of total plays, so they only get .000001% of total revenue" - it ends up being a better payout for the big names but a worse deal for all the smaller artists. Why would the former pay obscure artists more? Are non-paying users more likely to listen to mainstream artists? Or do fans of obscure artists just play fewer songs each? Is ad revenue shared in the same proportions, but just lower per user? Is revenue really shared on the basis of plays, rather then playing time? If so, and if obscure artists make longer songs, does that contribute to their lack of revenue?

dynm 1y ago
It seems like if anything the current model would end up paying obscure artists more? (If you assume that people who listen to obscure music tend to listen to more music overall, which would be my guess.)
yason 1y ago
> Why would the former pay obscure artists more? I don't want the obscure artists to get more ― or less, for that matter. I want the artists I listen to to get my money, obscure or not. That's a simple transaction and has worked forever. If I buy a CD from artist X, I know I won't be supporting artist Y with my money, just X. If I then want to listen to Y, I can support them as well. But in any case Z won't be getting any of my money because they make noises I don't consider music.
- BrenBarn 1y ago
  > If I buy a CD from artist X, I know I won't be supporting artist Y with my money, just X. That's not entirely true, since by buying X's CD you're also giving money to the label/publisher of that CD, who may be allocating that money to Y if Y is also one of their artists. However, overall I agree that the buy-a-CD model makes it more clear where your money is going.
- Gigachad 1y ago

crossroadsguy 1y ago

I just want to understand this a bit more clearly. So I have never even opened Swift’s page on Spotify — let alone played a song (if there are fans here, please don’t come after me). I pay for Spotify. So did you mean to say the largest portion of my monthly fee goes to Taylor Swift?

BrenBarn 1y ago
That is correct.
ViewTrick1002 1y ago
The difference is: 1. Put all money in a big pot and pay out depending on all streams. 2. Put your money in a pot and pay out depending on your streams. Do the same for all users. The total sum of money stays the same. If your audience listens to more music than the average Spotifier then you will get paid less using method 2. All in all the difference isn’t massive.
Gigachad 1y ago
No, you pay Spotify, and then Spotify pays artists per stream they received. “Your” money goes in to a pool at Spotify where it can’t really be traced further. If you listen to more music than the average listener, those artists get paid out more than what you put in, and if you listen to less, they get less. But on average it all levels out anyway. Unless people who listen to a particular artist on average stream less music entirely. Which doesn’t seem to be the case.
- 63stack 1y ago
  You said "no" but your explanation says yes
  - Gigachad 1y ago
    It doesn’t though. There is no transaction between you and Taylor Swift. If you listened to less music than the average person then some of your fee went to the people who listened to more music, and the other way round if you listened to more music. Which is going to average out in the end anyway, while massively simplifying the accounting. Spotify can also tell artists exactly how much they are getting paid rather than having to wait for the end of the billing period to work it out. Only to come to roughly the same amount anyway. There is no tracing routes with a pooled fund. Only inputs and outputs. And the outputs would seem to be pretty much identical in the pooled system vs individual pools per user.

ViewTrick1002 1y ago

The only difference is that you bet that your audience listens to less music than the average Spotify user. Some will make less. Some will make more. In the end the pie stays the same: ~70% of Spotify’s revenue.

bko 1y ago

That revenue model makes no sense. How would paying an artist on the relative user plays make any sense? So basically there is no direct relationship with number of plays and revenue? You need to abstract that part out. Artists should be paid some amount per stream. Is there a market that actually uses a system like that? It just seems convoluted. It sounds like just some idea someone made up to back into paying some artists more in favor of others. And I'm not even sure it would have the desired effects. I'm sure Swift is on a lot more playlists that Spotify pushes than Obscure Artist.

jemmyw 1y ago
It makes sense because each user is paying. I would like the my personal payment to Spotify to be split between the musicians I listen to, and none of it to go to Taylor Swift. Yes, it wouldn't be a direct relationship between number of plays and payout. It would instead be a direct relationship between user payment and payout. >Is there a market that actually uses a system like that? Yes, physical media. Number of streams shouldn't necessarily be directly related to payout anyway. If you purchase a CD the artist gets that payment once, and you can listen to it as many times as you like.
hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
I don't understand the argument about paying all artists a fixed amount per stream when customers aren't paying a fixed amount per stream in an unlimited subscription model. If I listen to artists X, Y and Z, it makes a lot more sense to me that the only people who get paid from my subscription money are artists X, Y and Z. As opposed to the situation we have now, where, as a sibling comment points out, if I never listen to Taylor Swift the largest portion of my subscription fee still goes to her.

Yizahi 1y ago

On a very very large average, and assuming that Spotify pays out now in precise proportion to the total plays (just as you wrote - if 0.1% of plays, then 0.1% of payouts), then changing to your proposed system would literally change nothing. Average number of plays in total versus average number of users listening to an artist would be exactly the same statistically, starting from several tens of thousands of users, and Spotify has millions of them.

hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
> then changing to your proposed system would literally change nothing. That's simply wrong. Another commenter posted a study that looked at exactly this question, https://legrandnetwork.blogspot.com/2021/02/user-centric-model-would-not-lead-to.html https://legrandnetwork.blogspot.com/2021/02/user-centric-mod... . It's not an enormous change, but on Spotify the top 10 artists would have their income reduced 12.5%, to be redistributed to lower tier artists.
- Yizahi 1y ago
  I mean, the article is likely correct, but only if the current distribution of royalties in Spotify isn't proportional to the play count (which was presumed in the top comment). And it is totally believable that Spotify adjusts them to entice bigger names to the platform. But if the distribution would have been equal, then there will ne zero difference with the user based distribution. Because it would be the exact same number counted differently. User A listens to artists 1, 2, 3 in a 50%, 25%, 25% proportion on a 15$ sub (same below) User B listens to artists 1, 2, 4 User C listens to artists 4, 5, 6 So by current system, artist 1 has 4 plays, 2 has 2 plays, 4 has 3 plays, 3 and 5 and 6 have 1 play. So 1 gets 15$, 2 gets 7.5$, 4 gets 11.25$, and 3,5,6 all get 3.75$ If we recalculate to the per user scheme, then from user A, 1 gets 7.5$, 2,3 get 3.75$. From B, 1 gets 7.5$, 2,4 get 3.75$. And from C, 4 gets 7.5$, 5, get 3.75$. Sum it up and we get 1 get 15$, 2 gets 7.5$, 4 gets 11.25$, 3,5,6 get 3.75$. It's very basic arithmetic, from shuffling numbers and then summing them up differently, the total won't change. So what needs to be changed is a skew artificially made towards big names, that is the real root cause.