5 ms·

There's gotta be some way to make a pay-only streaming service that would fairly compensate artists... What if, instead of being paid per play, artists were co

There's gotta be some way to make a pay-only streaming service that would fairly compensate artists... What if, instead of being paid per play, artists were compensated based on the number of unique visitors that played their music? So if one person plays one of their songs, they get paid (for instance) a whole dollar. If one person plays that song 5000 more times, the artist still only gets paid one dollar. But if 5000 different people play that song, the artist gets 5000 dollars. Once. I think this scheme would compensate artists much more fairly, like iTunes, while also providing the cloud hosting and flat monthly fee that attracts users.

facepalm 12y ago
How do you get one dollar per song and user, though? The users would have to pay for that. Since they probably listen to a lot of songs in a single month, it would become rather expensive.
- rthomas6 12y ago
  Would they, though? I listen to a lot of different music, but I also create playlists that I listen to most of the time. As an example let's take the average user that listens primarily to the top 40 hits and a few select albums from those artists. In one month how many new songs would they listen to on average? 10? 15? Framed this way, a dollar does seem too high, but not by much. I think $0.40-$0.50 per song would be profitable, but that's just a guess.
  - facepalm 12y ago
    To me spending 10$/month seems about right - in former times I would probably have bought one CD per month on average. However, I think what might confuse people in terms of perceived fairness is that with a flatrate, people might listen to a lot more music. But it is a tradeoff between people listening more but paying less per song and people listening less and paying more per song. It's a mistake to think "whoa, if I had sold as many CDs as people listened to my songs on Spotify, I should have received x million $$$." The reality is people probably wouldn't have listened as much without the flatrate. So in the end all that matters is how much money you receive, not how many times people listen to your songs. And what have you gained if you limit people to 10 songs per months vs thousands, if they spend the same amount of money? It is only an inconvenience for the audience.

facepalm 12y ago

How do you get one dollar per song and user, though? The users would have to pay for that. Since they probably listen to a lot of songs in a single month, it would become rather expensive.

rthomas6 12y ago
Would they, though? I listen to a lot of different music, but I also create playlists that I listen to most of the time. As an example let's take the average user that listens primarily to the top 40 hits and a few select albums from those artists. In one month how many new songs would they listen to on average? 10? 15? Framed this way, a dollar does seem too high, but not by much. I think $0.40-$0.50 per song would be profitable, but that's just a guess.
- facepalm 12y ago
  To me spending 10$/month seems about right - in former times I would probably have bought one CD per month on average. However, I think what might confuse people in terms of perceived fairness is that with a flatrate, people might listen to a lot more music. But it is a tradeoff between people listening more but paying less per song and people listening less and paying more per song. It's a mistake to think "whoa, if I had sold as many CDs as people listened to my songs on Spotify, I should have received x million $$$." The reality is people probably wouldn't have listened as much without the flatrate. So in the end all that matters is how much money you receive, not how many times people listen to your songs. And what have you gained if you limit people to 10 songs per months vs thousands, if they spend the same amount of money? It is only an inconvenience for the audience.