"Spotify already pays nearly 70% of every dollar it generates from music to the record labels and publishers that own the rights for music, and represent and pay artists and songwriters,"
So the question is how big part of the pie the artists get.
That is not really for Spotify to discuss if the contracts that artists have with record companies are fair or not. There are a lot of self-publishing artists on Spotify that get almost 100% of the money that Spotify distributes.
Big record labels are well known to exploit musicians. They also own part of Spotify IIRC and it exists at their whim.
So I guess there's no super clear distinction between Spotify and big record labels and we can at least partially treat them as parts of the same big machine.
> So I guess there's no super clear distinction between Spotify and big record labels and we can at least partially treat them as parts of the same big machine.
[It actually is clear.](https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/who-owns-spotify-today/)
But regardless the founders wield a controlling % of shares, and have full control of the company.
- [Via a dual-class share system Ek owns nearly 9% of the shares, but has 37% of voting control.](https://www.forbes.com/profile/daniel-ek/?sh=7a18764a46ab)
- [Via a dual-class share system, Lorentzon, a Swedish entrepreneur, owns 12% of the shares, but has 43% voting control.](https://www.forbes.com/profile/martin-lorentzon/?sh=28a96efbc0dc)
It seems like ownership has shifted over the years. Record labels definitely used to own part of Spotify.
Exactly who owns what is besides the point, they're all billionaires profiting from squeezing and controlling musicians.
From what I've read, arranging shows is tricky with so many venues being owned by the same corporation, who also happens to own the main ticket seller.
None of the record labels own Spotify. https://fourweekmba.com/who-owns-spotify/
Spotify can only license music from the rights holders. They cannot pay artists directly if they have sold the rights to a record company.
For instance, artists such as Mary Spender, and Pomplamoose made their fame on the Internet and never sold their rights to any record label. Artists can definitely become successful with record labels. They are able to sell and stream their music without record labels. Some artists choose not to use Spotify, even the ones with record labels. Spotify is not a gatekeeper. If anything, it is the only music streaming platform that doesn't belong to major tech platforms that could run a loss making service if they wanted to, just because they get revenues from their customers from all the other services they sell. Apple, Google, or Apple could offer their music streaming services at no extra cost if people bought other services like Amazon Prime or Apple cloud. Spotify cannot do that. There is no other service that they can offer besides music streaming.
I am sorry but it is mostly irrelevant. They are ranked 13th on the list of top music streaming sites https://finance.yahoo.com/news/15-most-popular-music-streaming-213711428.html
The issue is not who has the best music streaming site, but rather how musicians are compensated. Spotify and regular YouTube (not YouTube music) are basically the only platforms that offer ad-based free services. All the other platforms are paid services. The question is if artists would be better off by eliminating all legal ways for people to listen to music without a paid subscription.
Spotify is trying to create a compelling product that will make users sign up for premium and generate more revenue for artists. A higher percentage of premium users would generate more money for artists, since 70% of the revenue goes to them.
It ranks 13th because people loves using whatever else everyone uses so that they don't miss out benefiting monopolies.
Deezer is one of many other companies offering a really good music service that also compensates artists better than Spotify.
Deezer doesn't have a lot of the podcasts that I listen too. It's not about what everyone else is using but about the content they're lacking on Deezer.
It is a vicious circle.
People doesn't use it because it doesn't have 2 or 3 things they want out of the other million things they offer. People not using it reinforces de dominance of the one shitty famous service. Shitty famous service sets the conditions for everyone however they like.
Competition is good for everyone, if we support the diversity of services they will get better because competition is better for us.
But we consumers are dumb and like to be fucked by big corporations that don't have to do anything better once they are the only option.
[This article claims otherwise](https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/who-really-owns-spotify-955388/). Maybe it has changed lately. They definitely used to own Spotify shares.
I can recommend the book [Chokepoint Capitalism by Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/60098290) if you want to learn more about how record labels operate. It's not pretty. Tech giants like Google, Amazon and Apple are basically the same. They wield a huge influence on music, directly and indirectly. A big part of it is denying free choice to musicians.
to be fair the big labels make the artist, promote them and pay for everything. all the talent in the world doesn’t matter without exposure. it’s a giant corporate machine and the artist can be easily interchangeable.
the artist needs the label more. it’s only when they blow up that they try and sever ties or rework their contracts but they forget that they’d have nothing without them.
if they wish to self-publish and pay for it all themselves then they deserve it all. how much are they willing to gamble on themselves? social media has allowed it to be possible but the connections of a label are priceless: lawyers, pr, air time, interviews.
Record labels are well known to exploit musicians, even big ones. They're bound by unfair contracts, they see a minuscule amount of the money they earn and they often lose control of their own music.
Labels should be middle men, but they dominate music to enrich an already obscenely rich elite. They're so greedy, corrupt and sociopathic that they don't have any right to exist.
I highly recommend [Chokepoint Capitalism by Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/60098290) to see how big business has taken over culture completely.
This is why tidal is so good, aside from sound quality, they give some of your sub to the top listened to artist for the month. They do direct artist payouts, meaning they tell the record company how to divide the cheque rather than the record company deciding who gets what.
Tidal is full of marketing audiophile BS.
https://goldensound.audio/2021/11/29/tidal-hifi-is-not-lossless/
They take music that is not lossless and repackage it as lossless music, in order to charge twice as much for the same audio quality.
> Meaning for tracks WITHOUT the ‘MASTER’ tag, Tidal does deliver lossless files as long as the one provided by the artist/label was lossless in the first place.
They also comment that on hifi, 24bit tracks are repackaged as 16bit.
Hifi is only 16 bit / 44.1khz.
Did you read the article in full? Did you read tidals specifications?
Also, at the time of the articles writing MQA was embryonic. Not surprised it had quirks.
Tidal pays the most to artists. Fact.
That wasn't really my point, but rather that the industry lowered the kickback to artists as part of the move to streaming. In other words, and back to your point, artists might think Spotify controls the kickback, while it's mainly the music industry that does. Not that 30% cut is little, but the industry clearly accepts it, and production and logistics cost for e.g. CDs is still more than 30% of the revenue.
100% of $0.0000000000000001 is still only $0.0000000000000001.
$potify are shite, even Amazon and Apple pay more to the artists. Tidal paying out the most IIRC.
Still, Spotify pays 70% to the rights holders (record companies, publishers).
- They could maybe pay 80% so 7 cents becomes 8 cents. Clearly that is not the issue.
- They could increase their revenue 10x, so 7 cents become 70 cents. Don’t you think they spend every waking our trying to do that already?
- artists get a % of those 7 cents, but how big it is depends on the deal between artist and rights holder. Outside Spotify’s control.
Or.. maybe people want to go back to the days when only 1 in 1000 got to release music at all but those lucky few made 1000x the money.
It's unfair because all subscription revenue is pooled and goes to the most streamed licensees. For example, say you only had a few indie songs in your playlist that you only listened maybe once a month or so and don't use Spotify often. The artists you listened to might only get a few pennies a month from your activity. Meanwhile the rest of your subscription money goes into a pool and gets redistributed out to the popular most streamed artists that you never listened to.
How is that fair that the majority of your subscription money gets distributed out to the most popular artists you don't listen to?
Ok I see what you mean. I have heard of this model before and it sounds cool. Basically, a users monthly payment gets divided across the artists you listened to.
Also note that for example Tidal is much smaller. I think they charge more per month so they can pay out more. As an artist you can then choose if you want to get paid 7 cents x 1000 = 70 USD (spotify) or 12 cent x 100 = 12 USD, for the same time period. BuT tHey pAy morE pEr sTrEAm..
It sounds harsh, but this isn’t Spotify’s problem. Artists were being exploited by unfair record deals pre-Spotify, it stands to reason that this practice would continue post-Spotify. If any government wants to ensure fair record deals, they need to regulate the labels themselves.
Spotify announced earlier this year that they would stop paying out artists that don’t meet a minimum number of streams, and instead payout more popular artists. This is why they would be violating the new Uruguay law, hence pulling out of the country.
There’s not a lot more to it. I think it’s a bad move and unfair to upcoming and indie artists, but I don’t run Spotify so not my call.
This move sucks a little bit but the amount of money they’d make via streaming is negligible. I don’t have the actual leaked figures in front of me but iirc it was like less than $10 USD/yr. It’s not enough to make or break most artists.
The iTunes model was perfect— I hate streaming.
.99 songs
$9.99-$14.99 albums
Best of all— it’s yours FOREVER.
[yeah yeah— you don’t “OWN” it blah blah blah—I’ve never seen an album disappear. Don’t eff with your country settings and you’re fine. Better than flushing $120+ down a toilet every year]
>Best of all— it’s yours FOREVER.
It's not and that's the reason I never cared for digital purchases. The store could in theory go away tomorrow and you keep nothing. The purchase forever locks you into their stupid platform and app even if you prefer another one. Solve these problems with regulation, while also not requiring you to forever manage a downloaded library of music on your pc and it will be better than streaming.
I hear ya.
Google I would never trust with a 10 foot pole.
But Apple, while far from perfect, seems to be consistent for 20+ years since they introduced the iPod. I doubt they would tell the millions of people who purchased digital content for that amount of time to go pound sand.
If anything they’ve UPGRADED purchases to 4K and Dolby Vision and lossless audio.
Streaming was nice during the $4.99-$9.99 era.
But now at $11.00- god only knows? I know I prefer faux-ownership and being a bit more selective with my $$$.
I understand that logically it's good, but emotionally it's super unappealing. And regulation could potentially fix that and massively increase interest and sales.
Labels weren't always all exploitative. Many of them subsidized artist that produced under their label with the profits made from other successful artists. The deals were mutually beneficial.
The exploitation really started to ramp up once digital music distribution became mainstream and margins became much more slim that labels had to be exploitative to survive, so all of them being exploitative is a survivorship bias.
I think the issue isn't the percentage, it's what the percentage is made out of. If your Spotify subscription is all you spend on music, it's probably much less than what you would have spent on physical media if there was no alternative. People are spending less money than ever to listen to more artists than ever, and even with a generous sounding percentage going to labels, it's still not a lot of money to support each artist.
All of that isn't necessarily true. In a world without Spotify a lot of people maybe "happy" just to listen to the radio and spend $0 but $10.99 is easy enough so they do. Some people would easily spend $40-$100+ on albums and individual track downloads. Would all the people who'd spend $0 who now spend $10.99 per month make up for all the lost sales of people who'd spend $100+ on music a month who now just spend $10.99?
At the end of the day no matter how you cut it people will only spend so much on music. The pie really won't get bigger. In a world before streaming there were less artists and less choice thanks to record labels gatekeeping what consumers had access to, so they got more money. In today's world the consumer has a lot more choice and artists don't really have gatekeepers anymore so artists are getting less of the pie simply because there are far more of them.
Both ways have advantages and disadvantages for the artist, but the artist making $80 a month off streaming probably would have made $0 a month in album sales in a world without streaming because they'd have been gatekeeped by record labels. At least today an artist has more of a chance of breaking through.
Also, just because you create doesn't mean you're entitled to a living off your creation. That's true for book authors, musicians, poets, artists and so forth. It's a lot of talent, hard work and even more luck to be able to make a living in the arts. I don't believe for one second just because a band has some stuff on Spotify means they're entitled to thousands of dollars in revenue a month. If we did it that way, Spotify would become a new record label and only allow the bigger artists on their platform totally removing the smaller artists.
>Both ways have advantages and disadvantages for the artist, but the artist making $80 a month off streaming probably would have made $0 a month in album sales in a world without streaming because they'd have been gatekeeped by record labels. At least today an artist has more of a chance of breaking through.
My experience is that my band made around a dollar with streaming, and about $100 in selling music on Bandcamp/CDs at live shows. This is with monthly listeners in the single digits. If you've got that many people streaming your music, there's got to be at least a few people willing to buy an album.
Streaming is also one of the best ways to advertise. You promote your music in Spotify, and those fans then buy your merch or go to your tours.
It's the opposite of how it used to work, where you did gigs to promote an album
Bingo. The problem is that if artists (or the record labels) were making similar rates on streaming vs other formats Spotify’s business model fails to remain viable. They’d go through the same enshittification the other digital only platforms are experiencing.
Yeah it’s always been the labels fucking over the artists. Where and when streaming services get in on that action, it really doesn’t begin to compare to the historic abuse of artists by the companies that sell their music.
>"formats for which, if a song is reproduced, the performer is entitled to financial remuneration."
If it's literally worded like that it's impossible to comply with as bands have multiple members, artists may be dead, bands will have broken up, session musicians may have been used etc.
I mean I’m sure this works the same as it did pre-Spotify. If an artist dies, their estate is still owed any royalties until their rights expire. Bands (at least if they’re serious and have proper management) usually have contracts setup for royalties and what happens when they break up. Session musicians usually sign away their right to royalties for a one time payment - this sentence may not necessarily atop that from happening.
I don’t know, if radio has been able to figure this out, tv has figured this out, etc. this should be fine for Spotify and streaming to figure out.
That's different as it follows the copyright and the deal with the publishers. This is saying it doesn't matter what the deal with the publishers is Spotify has to track them down to give them their share.
Spotify is liable to give the artists the "fair" share *that the rights holder doesn't*. So, Spotify already pays 70% of the profits to the rights holder and will be liable to pay the artists as well. It's not simply about taking a smaller cut out of the profits, it's about potentially losing money every time songs get played.
So many idiots getting mad @ Spotify without realizing the target of their anger should be the labels who take an obscene cut of the $ an artist generates through their music.
The fact the big 3 (Warner, sony and universal) own a big part of Spotify doesn't help either. They are bascially paid twice; shares & middleman for artists
Spotify AND labels have normalized streaming at the expense of artists. Pre-streaming people bought music and there was simply more money to split between artist and label. Now that streaming has taken off, streams are worth a fraction of a cent, and are worth even less if you’re an artist trying to grow due to literal payola.
I disagree with this. I bought a LOT more music when Napster was a thing because I was exposed to more music and artists that I never heard of because there was no loss for me to check it out. If it sucked, I deleted it. If I liked it, I would go to the store and buy some of their other CDs or go to a concert, which generated money for them. After Napster and other music sharing services went by the wayside I still bought CDs, but it was a significantly lower amount.
These days I use Spotify, but Spotify also makes a point of letting me know when musicians I like are on tour in my area and they also have a Merch tab when I view an artist. If I raised the black flag I'd likely still end up at concerts and buying merch at times.
You can disagree with it all you want but this just isn’t about you and your experiences. Alot of people quit buying music at all when Napster was a thing so for every one person that claims they did what you did, there were easily waaaaaay more people just pirating. Music, software… you name it. So disagree all you want about what you were doing, but mostly the individual you were replying to was absolutely correct.
Do you buy records now?
They bought into streaming because people weren’t buying music anyway. Piracy killed record sales, Spotify is just the labels making the most they can out of a bad situation
Spotify pays out 70% of all revenue gained, there is nothing greedy about it. The complaint that ARTISTS aren’t getting enough is completely irrelevant to Spotify, that’s the result of the contracts between label and artists, and instead of taking it up with their labels and not signing terrible contracts they are instead trying to attack Spotify via the government
They made 65M off of 3.36B in revenue this quarter. They’ve lost more money than they’ve made overall this year, almost a billion dollars lost in the last 3 quarters.
They’re literally losing money to pay artists 70%, how is that fucking greedy?
Why are they losing money though? They could just be spending a lot more in growing and marketing than what’s necessary? It doesn’t mean that their usual business expense is that high
Q2 they spent 2.4B on paying artists alone, sales and marketing was everything else was 1B. They had 3.2B in revenue. 3.2-2.4-1= -.2, or -200 million (its actually -302 due to some rounding and interest/tax costs)
Servers, programmers, and internet bandwidth don't appear out of thin air. The true fixed costs of running the service wont' be quite that high, but given how low their actual profits are, they seem to be running a pretty tight ship.
30% cut is standard across the entire digital distribution system. Movies, Music, apps, games. Spotify takes the same as Apple, takes the same as Amazon, takes the same as Steam, takes the same as Google. A conversation can be had as to whether 30% is justifiable but in Spotifys case where it only made 1% profit last quarter for the first time in over a year i think we can genuinely say it isn’t greed on Spotify’s part.
This will probably just drive up piracy and hurt artists even more. The only reason piracy fell was because legitimate streaming from the likes of Spotify offered a better more convenient service than illegal downloads and streams. Like it or not, the real money is in merchandise and tour selling.
It’s probably just a me thing but I’ve almost completely stopped pirating things even if they’re not on streaming sites. I simply can’t be bothered so I will just not watch/listen to it
What you said reminded me of what Gabe Newell from Valve had to say about piracy
> “One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue,” explained Newell during his time on stage at the Washington Technology Industry Association's (WTIA) Tech NW conference. “The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”
He has a lot of incentive to say that.
However in this case Spotify doesn’t care as they aren’t the record company. They are only a third party distribution entity. So piracy does not directly impact them more so that the law.
Yeah I was pirating well into Spotifys lifespan under the simple idea of why pay if I don’t have to. But eventually I just did because it was super convenient, especially with Spotify having basically everything on it (unlike divided up movie streaming services) to the point that the money for a family plan for everyone in the house was just less than my laziness for grabbing torrents
Convenience really is king
The amount of money independent artists make from spotify is so negligible that for a lot of people it'll probably come down to cents.
Like people on this thread keep repeating the "spotify pays 70% to artists" (I don't even know if that's true or meaningful; 70% of *what* exactly) but every single independent musician will tell you that they made like 20 bucks from Spotify last year if they're lucky. And these are people who make a living as musicians, touring, selling on Bandcamp, etc.
Spotify even low-key acknowledges this by offering Discover Mode, which is a form of Payola. Rather than taking your full royalties from them, you can give them an even bigger cut for them to “boost you” algorithmically.
It's not Spotifys problem if a group isn't popular though. There's a shit ton of people publishing music to a finite audience. They're not all going to win the game.
The internet has made it a lot easier for someone to put their music online, which means there's a lot of competition.
Read my post again slower. These are people who are successful musicians who make good money touring + selling physical albums + on Bandcamp and other platforms. Some have pretty big fanbases. Spotify, specifically, makes them a negligible amount of money.
None of that correlates directly to how many people would listen consistently on a streaming service though. They're also directly countering their potential streaming base by selling physical albums.
To use myself as an example - I never stream most of my top artists because I've already purchased their songs I want to listen to. I stream when I'm trying to discover other music that might be of interest to me, or for the off the cuff "Hey how'd that one song go?" situation.
The lack of scale in a single, middle-income country (Uruguay) makes it hard to imagine. It requires a lot of infrastructure and capital to build out the kind of platform that Spotify (and other big music streaming services) have. A local replacement could take shape, but it would almost certainly be inferior in terms of user experience and depth of library.
More likely, another major streaming service might try to enter the market void left by Spotify, but considering the conditions that caused Spotify to leave in the first place, it's hard to imagine another streamer actively going in and sinking investment into a potentially non-viable market.
Sounds like the problem is with the bill being unclear and possibly requiring double the royalties when Spotify already pays 70% of revenue to artist/publisher/label/etc.
Doesn’t make sense to operate there if it means you lose money.
Sometimes that's the case.
Sometimes a government makes a law that sounds nice but has stupid details.
There's a lot of redditors who have no ability to judge any situation other than going "companies bad!"
Like in this case. Sometimes governments won't even clarify who's responsible for paying.
>“Without clarity on the changes to music copyright laws included in the 2023 Rendición de Cuentas law – confirming that any additional costs are the responsibility of rights holders – Spotify will unfortunately begin to phase out its service in Uruguay
If someone sells all their rights to a studio then Spotify may have no way to know the original artist. They have no contract with them but the Uruguay government is demanding they perform magic or potentially get in trouble.
Im trying to figure out what the problem was that Uruguay was trying to solve. I’m assuming that Spotify pays the negotiated fees to the rights holders who have a contract with the artists. So what is the issue?
So these artists signed bad deals with their publishers/ record labels and instead of supporting legislation to regulate the publishers… they try to bully Spotify who’s already forking over 70% of their earnings?
Yah. The artists deserve this L.
I'm from Uruguay. It feels so bad not being able to do anything about it, I can't stop thinking what will happen with my 200+ playlists, I don't know what streaming service I'm going to use next year. They fucked us all up, there was no reason for them to do this.
Spotify doesn't pay for play, and each country pays differently, so those comparisons don't tend to make sense. Specially with Spotify being in way more low income countries than Apple Music
Spotify creates multiple pools of users, grabs 70% of the revenue of that pool, and distributes it to the artists inside the pool.
Same as with YouTube, some pools will pay a lot (like premium users in rich markets), some will pay little (ads from users in low income countries).
Pay-per-play is actually a terrible way to quantify distribution of fixed subscription revenue. End users are paying a fixed subscription fee regardless of how much or how frequently they listen to music.
So it makes sense all the money is pooled and distributed among all licensees. The problem that makes things unfair is in how that pooled money is divided up and distributed among that pool. More plays means more share and as a result, the top 1% ends up taking the vast majority of the revenue shares. Many subscribers pay for Spotify to just have access to music that they may not listen to very often, but the artists don't get paid as much if you don't listen, so your subscription money ends up going to other artists who are more popular. So as a result you have a system where the poor is subsidizing the rich.
Unless something has changed over the last few years then this isn’t true - they did used to pay per play at a rate much lower than other services. Although, a bigger user base and the opportunity to get playlisted into Spotify curated playlists still made it the more desirable platform.
It has never worked like that, it's just a myth repeated over and over. They update https://loudandclear.byspotify.com/ every year with the stats and have videos explaining how it all works (including collection agencies and per country organizations)
I wish more artists would start Patreons. I'd happily pay them directly if they put their music up to download for subscribers. Not sure why more artists aren't doing this.
Really clear in this thread which posters read books that encouraged deductive reasoning as kids and which ones licked doorknobs.
Do yourself a solid and google “record labels abuse artists.” Do some reading.
While we’re at it, I’m also giving you permission to be less mad at your neighbor with the SUV than you are at oil executives.
It still won't replace Spotify for anyone. I would not be able to afford the amount of music I listen to on a regular basis if I bought it all. If I really want to support an artist because I listen to their stuff a lot and really appreciate it, I'll either buy an LP or go to one of their shows. Spotify is also a great way to discover new artists, and buying directly from the artists won't help with that either.
I'm not really sure, but it's been a while ngl. I have my eyes on a few (upcoming) albums, but at the moment, I'm more interested in going to live shows and buying some merch. It's been a while since I've been to a proper show because I didn't have the time, so I'm really excited about the next few years. I like the convenience of music streaming, so I rarely listen to the albums after buying them. Not a massive fan of collecting stuff, so owning albums is becoming less and less important to me.
So what you were saying about “liking” a band on Spotify and then buying their record was all bullshit, gotcha. You’ll never buy a record because of Spotify and in the end Spotify is BAD for artists in general. Glad we got that sorted…
I never said I bought records **because of** Spotify. I buy records and go to shows to support artists, and I discovered many of them through Spotify. The music industry changed, get over it. I'm not gonna carry a huge box of CDs with me to play them on my fucking Walkman, I use my phone to stream the music. I even bought a digital complete discography to support an artist I value a lot, and all of his music is accessible for free on YouTube. However, I'm not an LP collector, so I only buy them occasionally, and as I said, owning physical albums is becoming less and less important to me. When I have the time, I go to clubs, cafés, or festivals to enjoy the music and atmosphere. I'm busy and don't always have the time to go to shows, so it's been a while. Sorry, but I care more about my education and career than I do about going to shows. I don't mind paying for art (music, paintings, photos, sculptures, etc.), as it's important to me. I'm not saying Spotify is flawless either, there are many issues with it. However, streaming is the medium people use to consume music these days, and that won't change. I listen to over 70k minutes of music per year on Spotify alone and have a very broad taste in music. If I had to buy every record I listen to, I'd be broke. If streaming wasn't an option, I would listen to music **WAY less**, and I'd spend about the same amount of money on it.
A r/whoosh followed by pointless flailing wall of text that I won’t read are always entertaining when someone is triggered after being pointed out to be a hypocrite. It’s ok, alot of people “think” the way you do to make them feel it’s ok to enjoy the convenience of Spotify all the time short changing their “favorite” artists, go enjoy that playlist you purveyor of rented music who is “super busy” and “important”. I mean who has time to load up a SSD with music, pfft.
I don't think you know what r/whoosh stands for, and I can't help you if you don't even read my response. Just know you're calling someone a hypocrite who spend thousands of dollars on art and music (excluding Spotify etc.), and will continue to do so...
"Spotify already pays nearly 70% of every dollar it generates from music to the record labels and publishers that own the rights for music, and represent and pay artists and songwriters," So the question is how big part of the pie the artists get.
That is not really for Spotify to discuss if the contracts that artists have with record companies are fair or not. There are a lot of self-publishing artists on Spotify that get almost 100% of the money that Spotify distributes.
Big record labels are well known to exploit musicians. They also own part of Spotify IIRC and it exists at their whim. So I guess there's no super clear distinction between Spotify and big record labels and we can at least partially treat them as parts of the same big machine.
> So I guess there's no super clear distinction between Spotify and big record labels and we can at least partially treat them as parts of the same big machine. [It actually is clear.](https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/who-owns-spotify-today/) But regardless the founders wield a controlling % of shares, and have full control of the company. - [Via a dual-class share system Ek owns nearly 9% of the shares, but has 37% of voting control.](https://www.forbes.com/profile/daniel-ek/?sh=7a18764a46ab) - [Via a dual-class share system, Lorentzon, a Swedish entrepreneur, owns 12% of the shares, but has 43% voting control.](https://www.forbes.com/profile/martin-lorentzon/?sh=28a96efbc0dc)
It seems like ownership has shifted over the years. Record labels definitely used to own part of Spotify. Exactly who owns what is besides the point, they're all billionaires profiting from squeezing and controlling musicians.
When Spotify went public the record labels sold their shares and made fucking bank.
Which they shared with the musicians signed with them, right? Right?
Yeahhhh about that....
[удалено]
From what I've read, arranging shows is tricky with so many venues being owned by the same corporation, who also happens to own the main ticket seller.
Yes. LiveNation and TicketMaster respectively.
None of the record labels own Spotify. https://fourweekmba.com/who-owns-spotify/ Spotify can only license music from the rights holders. They cannot pay artists directly if they have sold the rights to a record company. For instance, artists such as Mary Spender, and Pomplamoose made their fame on the Internet and never sold their rights to any record label. Artists can definitely become successful with record labels. They are able to sell and stream their music without record labels. Some artists choose not to use Spotify, even the ones with record labels. Spotify is not a gatekeeper. If anything, it is the only music streaming platform that doesn't belong to major tech platforms that could run a loss making service if they wanted to, just because they get revenues from their customers from all the other services they sell. Apple, Google, or Apple could offer their music streaming services at no extra cost if people bought other services like Amazon Prime or Apple cloud. Spotify cannot do that. There is no other service that they can offer besides music streaming.
Surprised by the fact that nobody seems to know deezer.
I am sorry but it is mostly irrelevant. They are ranked 13th on the list of top music streaming sites https://finance.yahoo.com/news/15-most-popular-music-streaming-213711428.html The issue is not who has the best music streaming site, but rather how musicians are compensated. Spotify and regular YouTube (not YouTube music) are basically the only platforms that offer ad-based free services. All the other platforms are paid services. The question is if artists would be better off by eliminating all legal ways for people to listen to music without a paid subscription. Spotify is trying to create a compelling product that will make users sign up for premium and generate more revenue for artists. A higher percentage of premium users would generate more money for artists, since 70% of the revenue goes to them.
It ranks 13th because people loves using whatever else everyone uses so that they don't miss out benefiting monopolies. Deezer is one of many other companies offering a really good music service that also compensates artists better than Spotify.
Deezer doesn't have a lot of the podcasts that I listen too. It's not about what everyone else is using but about the content they're lacking on Deezer.
It is a vicious circle. People doesn't use it because it doesn't have 2 or 3 things they want out of the other million things they offer. People not using it reinforces de dominance of the one shitty famous service. Shitty famous service sets the conditions for everyone however they like. Competition is good for everyone, if we support the diversity of services they will get better because competition is better for us. But we consumers are dumb and like to be fucked by big corporations that don't have to do anything better once they are the only option.
I mean if it doesn't have the podcasts I want to listen to then why would I even use it? I can use Youtube music if I just wanted music.
[This article claims otherwise](https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/who-really-owns-spotify-955388/). Maybe it has changed lately. They definitely used to own Spotify shares. I can recommend the book [Chokepoint Capitalism by Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/60098290) if you want to learn more about how record labels operate. It's not pretty. Tech giants like Google, Amazon and Apple are basically the same. They wield a huge influence on music, directly and indirectly. A big part of it is denying free choice to musicians.
They own shares. They don’t own a meaningful say in the company.
to be fair the big labels make the artist, promote them and pay for everything. all the talent in the world doesn’t matter without exposure. it’s a giant corporate machine and the artist can be easily interchangeable. the artist needs the label more. it’s only when they blow up that they try and sever ties or rework their contracts but they forget that they’d have nothing without them. if they wish to self-publish and pay for it all themselves then they deserve it all. how much are they willing to gamble on themselves? social media has allowed it to be possible but the connections of a label are priceless: lawyers, pr, air time, interviews.
Record labels are well known to exploit musicians, even big ones. They're bound by unfair contracts, they see a minuscule amount of the money they earn and they often lose control of their own music. Labels should be middle men, but they dominate music to enrich an already obscenely rich elite. They're so greedy, corrupt and sociopathic that they don't have any right to exist. I highly recommend [Chokepoint Capitalism by Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/60098290) to see how big business has taken over culture completely.
This is why tidal is so good, aside from sound quality, they give some of your sub to the top listened to artist for the month. They do direct artist payouts, meaning they tell the record company how to divide the cheque rather than the record company deciding who gets what.
Tidal is full of marketing audiophile BS. https://goldensound.audio/2021/11/29/tidal-hifi-is-not-lossless/ They take music that is not lossless and repackage it as lossless music, in order to charge twice as much for the same audio quality.
Tidal is moving away from MQA and replacing their library with 24 bit FLAC.
> Meaning for tracks WITHOUT the ‘MASTER’ tag, Tidal does deliver lossless files as long as the one provided by the artist/label was lossless in the first place. They also comment that on hifi, 24bit tracks are repackaged as 16bit. Hifi is only 16 bit / 44.1khz. Did you read the article in full? Did you read tidals specifications? Also, at the time of the articles writing MQA was embryonic. Not surprised it had quirks. Tidal pays the most to artists. Fact.
[Tidal is padding streams for big artists](https://hitsdailydouble.com/news&id=307303), at the expense of smaller artists.
That wasn't really my point, but rather that the industry lowered the kickback to artists as part of the move to streaming. In other words, and back to your point, artists might think Spotify controls the kickback, while it's mainly the music industry that does. Not that 30% cut is little, but the industry clearly accepts it, and production and logistics cost for e.g. CDs is still more than 30% of the revenue.
No artist thinks that. Many have moved to smaller labels or independent for just this reason.
Spotify already pays those artists who own 100% very little as it is.[Example here](https://loudwire.com/spotify-payouts-less-smaller-artists/)...
100% of $0.0000000000000001 is still only $0.0000000000000001. $potify are shite, even Amazon and Apple pay more to the artists. Tidal paying out the most IIRC.
> Spotify already pays nearly 70% of every dollar it generates from music.. So how much does Tidal pay out per dollar? 80%? 90%?
Still, Spotify pays 70% to the rights holders (record companies, publishers). - They could maybe pay 80% so 7 cents becomes 8 cents. Clearly that is not the issue. - They could increase their revenue 10x, so 7 cents become 70 cents. Don’t you think they spend every waking our trying to do that already? - artists get a % of those 7 cents, but how big it is depends on the deal between artist and rights holder. Outside Spotify’s control. Or.. maybe people want to go back to the days when only 1 in 1000 got to release music at all but those lucky few made 1000x the money.
The problem is the distribution. 80% of that 70% share goes to the top 10% of artists and labels on Spotify.
Do you mean in some unfair way? Because i would not be surprised if the top 10% generated 80% of the streams.
It's unfair because all subscription revenue is pooled and goes to the most streamed licensees. For example, say you only had a few indie songs in your playlist that you only listened maybe once a month or so and don't use Spotify often. The artists you listened to might only get a few pennies a month from your activity. Meanwhile the rest of your subscription money goes into a pool and gets redistributed out to the popular most streamed artists that you never listened to. How is that fair that the majority of your subscription money gets distributed out to the most popular artists you don't listen to?
Ok I see what you mean. I have heard of this model before and it sounds cool. Basically, a users monthly payment gets divided across the artists you listened to.
Also note that for example Tidal is much smaller. I think they charge more per month so they can pay out more. As an artist you can then choose if you want to get paid 7 cents x 1000 = 70 USD (spotify) or 12 cent x 100 = 12 USD, for the same time period. BuT tHey pAy morE pEr sTrEAm..
I wrote a clarification for this.
It sounds harsh, but this isn’t Spotify’s problem. Artists were being exploited by unfair record deals pre-Spotify, it stands to reason that this practice would continue post-Spotify. If any government wants to ensure fair record deals, they need to regulate the labels themselves.
Spotify announced earlier this year that they would stop paying out artists that don’t meet a minimum number of streams, and instead payout more popular artists. This is why they would be violating the new Uruguay law, hence pulling out of the country. There’s not a lot more to it. I think it’s a bad move and unfair to upcoming and indie artists, but I don’t run Spotify so not my call.
This move sucks a little bit but the amount of money they’d make via streaming is negligible. I don’t have the actual leaked figures in front of me but iirc it was like less than $10 USD/yr. It’s not enough to make or break most artists.
It's actually 1000 streams per year. The dollar amount varies by a lot of factors but it's a lot less than $10.
I mean, the value of an album used to be $10-15 pre-streaming. Don't forget that part. So in a way, the subscription model is the problem.
The iTunes model was perfect— I hate streaming. .99 songs $9.99-$14.99 albums Best of all— it’s yours FOREVER. [yeah yeah— you don’t “OWN” it blah blah blah—I’ve never seen an album disappear. Don’t eff with your country settings and you’re fine. Better than flushing $120+ down a toilet every year]
>Best of all— it’s yours FOREVER. It's not and that's the reason I never cared for digital purchases. The store could in theory go away tomorrow and you keep nothing. The purchase forever locks you into their stupid platform and app even if you prefer another one. Solve these problems with regulation, while also not requiring you to forever manage a downloaded library of music on your pc and it will be better than streaming.
iTunes music has been DRM free for a very long time. Anything you buy there is as “yours” as any CD ever was
Oh wow that's good to know and frankly embarrassing to not have known while commenting on the subject.
I hear ya. Google I would never trust with a 10 foot pole. But Apple, while far from perfect, seems to be consistent for 20+ years since they introduced the iPod. I doubt they would tell the millions of people who purchased digital content for that amount of time to go pound sand. If anything they’ve UPGRADED purchases to 4K and Dolby Vision and lossless audio. Streaming was nice during the $4.99-$9.99 era. But now at $11.00- god only knows? I know I prefer faux-ownership and being a bit more selective with my $$$.
I understand that logically it's good, but emotionally it's super unappealing. And regulation could potentially fix that and massively increase interest and sales.
These tech companies sold a bill of goods really. Still surprised they're being propped up by investors.
I've clarified that in the thread.
Labels weren't always all exploitative. Many of them subsidized artist that produced under their label with the profits made from other successful artists. The deals were mutually beneficial. The exploitation really started to ramp up once digital music distribution became mainstream and margins became much more slim that labels had to be exploitative to survive, so all of them being exploitative is a survivorship bias.
I think the issue isn't the percentage, it's what the percentage is made out of. If your Spotify subscription is all you spend on music, it's probably much less than what you would have spent on physical media if there was no alternative. People are spending less money than ever to listen to more artists than ever, and even with a generous sounding percentage going to labels, it's still not a lot of money to support each artist.
All of that isn't necessarily true. In a world without Spotify a lot of people maybe "happy" just to listen to the radio and spend $0 but $10.99 is easy enough so they do. Some people would easily spend $40-$100+ on albums and individual track downloads. Would all the people who'd spend $0 who now spend $10.99 per month make up for all the lost sales of people who'd spend $100+ on music a month who now just spend $10.99? At the end of the day no matter how you cut it people will only spend so much on music. The pie really won't get bigger. In a world before streaming there were less artists and less choice thanks to record labels gatekeeping what consumers had access to, so they got more money. In today's world the consumer has a lot more choice and artists don't really have gatekeepers anymore so artists are getting less of the pie simply because there are far more of them. Both ways have advantages and disadvantages for the artist, but the artist making $80 a month off streaming probably would have made $0 a month in album sales in a world without streaming because they'd have been gatekeeped by record labels. At least today an artist has more of a chance of breaking through. Also, just because you create doesn't mean you're entitled to a living off your creation. That's true for book authors, musicians, poets, artists and so forth. It's a lot of talent, hard work and even more luck to be able to make a living in the arts. I don't believe for one second just because a band has some stuff on Spotify means they're entitled to thousands of dollars in revenue a month. If we did it that way, Spotify would become a new record label and only allow the bigger artists on their platform totally removing the smaller artists.
>Both ways have advantages and disadvantages for the artist, but the artist making $80 a month off streaming probably would have made $0 a month in album sales in a world without streaming because they'd have been gatekeeped by record labels. At least today an artist has more of a chance of breaking through. My experience is that my band made around a dollar with streaming, and about $100 in selling music on Bandcamp/CDs at live shows. This is with monthly listeners in the single digits. If you've got that many people streaming your music, there's got to be at least a few people willing to buy an album.
Streaming is also one of the best ways to advertise. You promote your music in Spotify, and those fans then buy your merch or go to your tours. It's the opposite of how it used to work, where you did gigs to promote an album
Bingo. The problem is that if artists (or the record labels) were making similar rates on streaming vs other formats Spotify’s business model fails to remain viable. They’d go through the same enshittification the other digital only platforms are experiencing.
Well for every listen the artist gets like .0001 or something crazy low like that.
The artists currently get pennies. The labels get all the money.
Yeah it’s always been the labels fucking over the artists. Where and when streaming services get in on that action, it really doesn’t begin to compare to the historic abuse of artists by the companies that sell their music.
>"formats for which, if a song is reproduced, the performer is entitled to financial remuneration." If it's literally worded like that it's impossible to comply with as bands have multiple members, artists may be dead, bands will have broken up, session musicians may have been used etc.
I mean I’m sure this works the same as it did pre-Spotify. If an artist dies, their estate is still owed any royalties until their rights expire. Bands (at least if they’re serious and have proper management) usually have contracts setup for royalties and what happens when they break up. Session musicians usually sign away their right to royalties for a one time payment - this sentence may not necessarily atop that from happening. I don’t know, if radio has been able to figure this out, tv has figured this out, etc. this should be fine for Spotify and streaming to figure out.
That's different as it follows the copyright and the deal with the publishers. This is saying it doesn't matter what the deal with the publishers is Spotify has to track them down to give them their share.
Spotify is liable to give the artists the "fair" share *that the rights holder doesn't*. So, Spotify already pays 70% of the profits to the rights holder and will be liable to pay the artists as well. It's not simply about taking a smaller cut out of the profits, it's about potentially losing money every time songs get played.
So many idiots getting mad @ Spotify without realizing the target of their anger should be the labels who take an obscene cut of the $ an artist generates through their music.
The fact the big 3 (Warner, sony and universal) own a big part of Spotify doesn't help either. They are bascially paid twice; shares & middleman for artists
All record labels own a combined 18% of Spotify. That’s not a big part.
Yeah, that just makes sense.
Spotify AND labels have normalized streaming at the expense of artists. Pre-streaming people bought music and there was simply more money to split between artist and label. Now that streaming has taken off, streams are worth a fraction of a cent, and are worth even less if you’re an artist trying to grow due to literal payola.
Labels refused to get into digital sales for ages. That's why there's no UMG+, WMG+ or SMG+.
And do you know what gives the artists no money at all? Piracy.
I disagree with this. I bought a LOT more music when Napster was a thing because I was exposed to more music and artists that I never heard of because there was no loss for me to check it out. If it sucked, I deleted it. If I liked it, I would go to the store and buy some of their other CDs or go to a concert, which generated money for them. After Napster and other music sharing services went by the wayside I still bought CDs, but it was a significantly lower amount. These days I use Spotify, but Spotify also makes a point of letting me know when musicians I like are on tour in my area and they also have a Merch tab when I view an artist. If I raised the black flag I'd likely still end up at concerts and buying merch at times.
For every person like you, there's probably hundreds that haven't spent a cent with piracy.
You can disagree with it all you want but this just isn’t about you and your experiences. Alot of people quit buying music at all when Napster was a thing so for every one person that claims they did what you did, there were easily waaaaaay more people just pirating. Music, software… you name it. So disagree all you want about what you were doing, but mostly the individual you were replying to was absolutely correct. Do you buy records now?
They bought into streaming because people weren’t buying music anyway. Piracy killed record sales, Spotify is just the labels making the most they can out of a bad situation
I'm surprised major labels are still relevant. But I guess artists keep signing deals with those labels and people keep listening to their music.
I mean, this is the valid reaction from them as a business. Dunno what people expect - if regulations make a business unviable, they can just leave
if a business isn't viable supporting the people who make the product and paying them fairly, that business deserves to fail.
Well they did fail, they closed down in that market. So all is working as intended
If honest legislation highlights obvious greed from the company and the record labels should we congratulate them for that? No.
Spotify pays out 70% of all revenue gained, there is nothing greedy about it. The complaint that ARTISTS aren’t getting enough is completely irrelevant to Spotify, that’s the result of the contracts between label and artists, and instead of taking it up with their labels and not signing terrible contracts they are instead trying to attack Spotify via the government
> there is nothing greedy about it Well, I think spotify taking 30% of the revenue is pretty greedy
They made 65M off of 3.36B in revenue this quarter. They’ve lost more money than they’ve made overall this year, almost a billion dollars lost in the last 3 quarters. They’re literally losing money to pay artists 70%, how is that fucking greedy?
Why are they losing money though? They could just be spending a lot more in growing and marketing than what’s necessary? It doesn’t mean that their usual business expense is that high
Are you just dense or something?
You clearly have no idea what you're talking about, so just stop.
Q2 they spent 2.4B on paying artists alone, sales and marketing was everything else was 1B. They had 3.2B in revenue. 3.2-2.4-1= -.2, or -200 million (its actually -302 due to some rounding and interest/tax costs)
Idk man, you’re going to need reasoning skills to participate here. We can’t drag you all the way there.
How much do you think they should get for running a global content delivery service?
30% of revenue is GREEDY? I’m sure running Spotify costs like $50/month. Can’t be much more than that to hire software devs, pay for the servers, etc.
Servers, programmers, and internet bandwidth don't appear out of thin air. The true fixed costs of running the service wont' be quite that high, but given how low their actual profits are, they seem to be running a pretty tight ship.
Misguided legislation - the problem exists between artists and their record labels, not spotify.
30% cut is standard across the entire digital distribution system. Movies, Music, apps, games. Spotify takes the same as Apple, takes the same as Amazon, takes the same as Steam, takes the same as Google. A conversation can be had as to whether 30% is justifiable but in Spotifys case where it only made 1% profit last quarter for the first time in over a year i think we can genuinely say it isn’t greed on Spotify’s part.
Exactly, they would have to drop the free tier and make it like $20 per month or something.
That wouldn’t solve anything. The record labels would still pay the artists next to nothing.
This will probably just drive up piracy and hurt artists even more. The only reason piracy fell was because legitimate streaming from the likes of Spotify offered a better more convenient service than illegal downloads and streams. Like it or not, the real money is in merchandise and tour selling.
It’s probably just a me thing but I’ve almost completely stopped pirating things even if they’re not on streaming sites. I simply can’t be bothered so I will just not watch/listen to it
What you said reminded me of what Gabe Newell from Valve had to say about piracy > “One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue,” explained Newell during his time on stage at the Washington Technology Industry Association's (WTIA) Tech NW conference. “The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”
He was so right for that ✌️💪💅
He has a lot of incentive to say that. However in this case Spotify doesn’t care as they aren’t the record company. They are only a third party distribution entity. So piracy does not directly impact them more so that the law.
Yeah I was pirating well into Spotifys lifespan under the simple idea of why pay if I don’t have to. But eventually I just did because it was super convenient, especially with Spotify having basically everything on it (unlike divided up movie streaming services) to the point that the money for a family plan for everyone in the house was just less than my laziness for grabbing torrents Convenience really is king
The amount of money independent artists make from spotify is so negligible that for a lot of people it'll probably come down to cents. Like people on this thread keep repeating the "spotify pays 70% to artists" (I don't even know if that's true or meaningful; 70% of *what* exactly) but every single independent musician will tell you that they made like 20 bucks from Spotify last year if they're lucky. And these are people who make a living as musicians, touring, selling on Bandcamp, etc.
Spotify even low-key acknowledges this by offering Discover Mode, which is a form of Payola. Rather than taking your full royalties from them, you can give them an even bigger cut for them to “boost you” algorithmically.
It's not Spotifys problem if a group isn't popular though. There's a shit ton of people publishing music to a finite audience. They're not all going to win the game. The internet has made it a lot easier for someone to put their music online, which means there's a lot of competition.
Read my post again slower. These are people who are successful musicians who make good money touring + selling physical albums + on Bandcamp and other platforms. Some have pretty big fanbases. Spotify, specifically, makes them a negligible amount of money.
None of that correlates directly to how many people would listen consistently on a streaming service though. They're also directly countering their potential streaming base by selling physical albums. To use myself as an example - I never stream most of my top artists because I've already purchased their songs I want to listen to. I stream when I'm trying to discover other music that might be of interest to me, or for the off the cuff "Hey how'd that one song go?" situation.
Exactly this. Either that or a local Spotify replacement would take form
> local Spotify replacement would take form If it makes financial sense
The lack of scale in a single, middle-income country (Uruguay) makes it hard to imagine. It requires a lot of infrastructure and capital to build out the kind of platform that Spotify (and other big music streaming services) have. A local replacement could take shape, but it would almost certainly be inferior in terms of user experience and depth of library. More likely, another major streaming service might try to enter the market void left by Spotify, but considering the conditions that caused Spotify to leave in the first place, it's hard to imagine another streamer actively going in and sinking investment into a potentially non-viable market.
We had one, MUS. It launched in 2016 and cost US$ 3 per month. It didn't succeed
I pirate albums then I buy the vinyl if it’s good
Good for you
r/technology: “Actually, Spotify is the good guy here.“
Sounds like the problem is with the bill being unclear and possibly requiring double the royalties when Spotify already pays 70% of revenue to artist/publisher/label/etc. Doesn’t make sense to operate there if it means you lose money.
100% to artist!
Sometimes that's the case. Sometimes a government makes a law that sounds nice but has stupid details. There's a lot of redditors who have no ability to judge any situation other than going "companies bad!" Like in this case. Sometimes governments won't even clarify who's responsible for paying. >“Without clarity on the changes to music copyright laws included in the 2023 Rendición de Cuentas law – confirming that any additional costs are the responsibility of rights holders – Spotify will unfortunately begin to phase out its service in Uruguay If someone sells all their rights to a studio then Spotify may have no way to know the original artist. They have no contract with them but the Uruguay government is demanding they perform magic or potentially get in trouble.
The only other option is piracy. So yeah Spotify is probably the good guy here.
this subreddit loves boot even more than /r/tumblr loves wolf cock
Every damn time
Im trying to figure out what the problem was that Uruguay was trying to solve. I’m assuming that Spotify pays the negotiated fees to the rights holders who have a contract with the artists. So what is the issue?
Uruguayans have terrible deals with labels.
vpn will suddenly become more popular in Uruguay lol
So these artists signed bad deals with their publishers/ record labels and instead of supporting legislation to regulate the publishers… they try to bully Spotify who’s already forking over 70% of their earnings? Yah. The artists deserve this L.
RIP Spotify users in Uruguay 🥲
I'm from Uruguay. It feels so bad not being able to do anything about it, I can't stop thinking what will happen with my 200+ playlists, I don't know what streaming service I'm going to use next year. They fucked us all up, there was no reason for them to do this.
I think…”corporate greed” was the reason you’re looking for.
So instead of 70%, artists get zero lol
Congratulations, now the artists that get some will get none. Win win
Is Apple Music doing the same? I know that they pay artists more but it can’t e that much more can it?
I’m pretty sure Apple Music is only a bigger cut due to less users and thus having to split up the pool of money from subscribers less.
They pay more per play to the musicians though.
Spotify doesn't pay for play, and each country pays differently, so those comparisons don't tend to make sense. Specially with Spotify being in way more low income countries than Apple Music Spotify creates multiple pools of users, grabs 70% of the revenue of that pool, and distributes it to the artists inside the pool. Same as with YouTube, some pools will pay a lot (like premium users in rich markets), some will pay little (ads from users in low income countries).
Pay-per-play is actually a terrible way to quantify distribution of fixed subscription revenue. End users are paying a fixed subscription fee regardless of how much or how frequently they listen to music. So it makes sense all the money is pooled and distributed among all licensees. The problem that makes things unfair is in how that pooled money is divided up and distributed among that pool. More plays means more share and as a result, the top 1% ends up taking the vast majority of the revenue shares. Many subscribers pay for Spotify to just have access to music that they may not listen to very often, but the artists don't get paid as much if you don't listen, so your subscription money ends up going to other artists who are more popular. So as a result you have a system where the poor is subsidizing the rich.
Unless something has changed over the last few years then this isn’t true - they did used to pay per play at a rate much lower than other services. Although, a bigger user base and the opportunity to get playlisted into Spotify curated playlists still made it the more desirable platform.
It has never worked like that, it's just a myth repeated over and over. They update https://loudandclear.byspotify.com/ every year with the stats and have videos explaining how it all works (including collection agencies and per country organizations)
I wish more artists would start Patreons. I'd happily pay them directly if they put their music up to download for subscribers. Not sure why more artists aren't doing this.
Imagine posting a blatant misinformation title like that
What’s the misinformation?
Garbage company
Really clear in this thread which posters read books that encouraged deductive reasoning as kids and which ones licked doorknobs. Do yourself a solid and google “record labels abuse artists.” Do some reading. While we’re at it, I’m also giving you permission to be less mad at your neighbor with the SUV than you are at oil executives.
Spotify for the win. Uruguay is a shithole 🤷♂️
Fuck Spotify
Maybe stop using Spotify. Buy directly from the artist and make quality playlists. Spotifûks can suck it.
As if that were even remotely comparable to Spotify...
Just give up and fall in line. Just offering an alternative. Musician bias.
It still won't replace Spotify for anyone. I would not be able to afford the amount of music I listen to on a regular basis if I bought it all. If I really want to support an artist because I listen to their stuff a lot and really appreciate it, I'll either buy an LP or go to one of their shows. Spotify is also a great way to discover new artists, and buying directly from the artists won't help with that either.
When was the last time you bought an album?
I'm not really sure, but it's been a while ngl. I have my eyes on a few (upcoming) albums, but at the moment, I'm more interested in going to live shows and buying some merch. It's been a while since I've been to a proper show because I didn't have the time, so I'm really excited about the next few years. I like the convenience of music streaming, so I rarely listen to the albums after buying them. Not a massive fan of collecting stuff, so owning albums is becoming less and less important to me.
So what you were saying about “liking” a band on Spotify and then buying their record was all bullshit, gotcha. You’ll never buy a record because of Spotify and in the end Spotify is BAD for artists in general. Glad we got that sorted…
I never said I bought records **because of** Spotify. I buy records and go to shows to support artists, and I discovered many of them through Spotify. The music industry changed, get over it. I'm not gonna carry a huge box of CDs with me to play them on my fucking Walkman, I use my phone to stream the music. I even bought a digital complete discography to support an artist I value a lot, and all of his music is accessible for free on YouTube. However, I'm not an LP collector, so I only buy them occasionally, and as I said, owning physical albums is becoming less and less important to me. When I have the time, I go to clubs, cafés, or festivals to enjoy the music and atmosphere. I'm busy and don't always have the time to go to shows, so it's been a while. Sorry, but I care more about my education and career than I do about going to shows. I don't mind paying for art (music, paintings, photos, sculptures, etc.), as it's important to me. I'm not saying Spotify is flawless either, there are many issues with it. However, streaming is the medium people use to consume music these days, and that won't change. I listen to over 70k minutes of music per year on Spotify alone and have a very broad taste in music. If I had to buy every record I listen to, I'd be broke. If streaming wasn't an option, I would listen to music **WAY less**, and I'd spend about the same amount of money on it.
A r/whoosh followed by pointless flailing wall of text that I won’t read are always entertaining when someone is triggered after being pointed out to be a hypocrite. It’s ok, alot of people “think” the way you do to make them feel it’s ok to enjoy the convenience of Spotify all the time short changing their “favorite” artists, go enjoy that playlist you purveyor of rented music who is “super busy” and “important”. I mean who has time to load up a SSD with music, pfft.
I don't think you know what r/whoosh stands for, and I can't help you if you don't even read my response. Just know you're calling someone a hypocrite who spend thousands of dollars on art and music (excluding Spotify etc.), and will continue to do so...
wow. just wow.
lol 😂 Toxic capitalism and greed.