How is listening to Spotify different than pirating music from non-popstar „grade” artist perspective? They get fractions of pennies for their music on Spotify anyways.
How is listening to Spotify different than pirating music from non-popstar „grade” artist perspective? They get fractions of pennies for their music on Spotify anyways.
They got fractions of pennies for pre-streaming online sales and CD sales too. There has never been money in recorded music for all but a minuscule sub-1% of musicians. If you were so lucky as to...
They got fractions of pennies for pre-streaming online sales and CD sales too. There has never been money in recorded music for all but a minuscule sub-1% of musicians. If you were so lucky as to be signed with a record label, giving you the rare opportunity of recording an distributing music...it would go down something like this:
You would get cents on the dollar for music sales, fractions of cents for radio
The cost of producing and distributing the music would be taken out of your royalties. You'd get an advance, and they'd give you a bill for the studio time, and your royalties would have to surpass that initial amount before you'd ever see another check...and most would not.
Before streaming, far fewer artists even had the opportunity to widely distribute music for people to listen to. Record labels were (and still are) highly selective at choosing acts, optimizing for the lowest common denominator. Now anyone can get on DistroKid/LANDR/Tunecore and put their music on every major streaming service, right in the same market as the 1% musicians, where everyone can potentially listen to it.
The corollary is simple supply and demand: music is worth even less because there's far more for it. This is a massive win for art, democratizing human expression, not so much for people who want to be bourgeoisie intellectual-capital holders.
Personally, I'd rather offer more people the opportunity to have their music heard than to fixate on how much money the most financially successful get out of it.
It’s interesting to consider that perspective from a broader historical lens. I remember a handful of times reading articles or watching videos about the rise of recording, where they would point...
It’s interesting to consider that perspective from a broader historical lens. I remember a handful of times reading articles or watching videos about the rise of recording, where they would point out John Phillip Sousa’s claims of it ruining the music industry. But if we look at how it changed what it meant to musicians, it very much did. Live performances have become very scarce, and the number of people who would learn how to play an instrument has dwindled. The record companies grew huge profits on a tiny number of musicians and left the everyday performers out to dry.
Arts program are also cut in schools. When instruments are expensive and your most famous musicians don't actually play them, they become so much rarer overall. I don't know that recording is the...
Arts program are also cut in schools. When instruments are expensive and your most famous musicians don't actually play them, they become so much rarer overall. I don't know that recording is the key reason for that particular drop.
There were several major shifts over the past century, which radically changed the markets for professional musicians, and they each brought major new cultural additions with them. Before...
There were several major shifts over the past century, which radically changed the markets for professional musicians, and they each brought major new cultural additions with them.
Before recording, songwriters sold sheet music and rolls for player pianos. Then they started cutting records as phonographs spread.
Radio started out with massive AM stations that broadcast nationally. Eventually, the big three stations (NBC, CBS, ABC) pivoted to television...and the smaller local radio scene grew, bringing with it the rise of Rock and Roll, as the smaller operations and DJ culture were more willing to take risks and aim for the growing youth culture. (Now, of course, radio has reconsolidated and nicked back toward inoffensive mediocrity.)
In the 70s and 80s, Disco and House made club DJs a thing, which drove an increase in average song length and caused the rise of the 12" single, as DJs wanted longer dance tracks to work with and the larger format discs offered better sound quality. Hip hop also grew out of the dawn of the discotheque, as the two-turntables-and-mixer setup was popularized.
Even before streaming services were mainstream, iTunes selling tracks individually and the rise of YouTube heavily drove the shift to releasing singles more frequently instead of pop artists focusing on albums, as frequency increased audience engagement.
I'm not defending Spotify at all but the way it was explained to me is that Spotify is a net good for smaller artists. Because of Spotify and music streaming in general, smaller bands now get way...
I'm not defending Spotify at all but the way it was explained to me is that Spotify is a net good for smaller artists. Because of Spotify and music streaming in general, smaller bands now get way more exposure than they would have in the past. Even though there is less money to go around, in general, smaller bands these days are more capable of making music be their actual job than ever before. I'm sure they're making the bulk of their money from touring but the exposure they get via the algorithm gives them a reach that they never could have enjoyed in the past.
Being paid in exposure was a joke about people not paying artists fairly, it wasn't supposed to be the goal. There has been increasing amount of alarms from recording artists that it's getting...
Being paid in exposure was a joke about people not paying artists fairly, it wasn't supposed to be the goal.
There has been increasing amount of alarms from recording artists that it's getting harder and harder to support oneself making music because of these royalty schemes. There is actually plenty of money to go around... it's just not going around. Spotify and the like are hording it.
I can't remember all the Fantano videos where he covers this but here's the one where he covers James Blake's comments on the matter. And I just pay attention to Fantano, this has been a heavily covered subject in music press for years now. It's consensus among artists, large and small, that streaming services are not paying a fair share and thus are especially limiting new and smaller artists.
If they're losing money, it's likely due to their questionable financial decisions, such as the massive amounts spent to get Joe Rogan exclusively on their podcast platform.
If they're losing money, it's likely due to their questionable financial decisions, such as the massive amounts spent to get Joe Rogan exclusively on their podcast platform.
Do you happen to have numbers comparing the amount spent on Rogan (and other podcasts) to the amount going to musicians? Actually, a breakdown of money going to rights holders from Spotify...
Do you happen to have numbers comparing the amount spent on Rogan (and other podcasts) to the amount going to musicians? Actually, a breakdown of money going to rights holders from Spotify compared to the amount that actually reaches the musicians would also be helpful.
Not the same guy, but Spotify is a public company and thus you could find this info on their investor relations page. You'll have to parse through a lot of data, but it's there.
Not the same guy, but Spotify is a public company and thus you could find this info on their investor relations page. You'll have to parse through a lot of data, but it's there.
The amount spent on the Rogan deal is certainly less than payouts to all musicians, but he might be paid more than even the highest paid musicians on the platform. Taylor Swift currently tops that...
The amount spent on the Rogan deal is certainly less than payouts to all musicians, but he might be paid more than even the highest paid musicians on the platform. Taylor Swift currently tops that list and is estimated to have earned just over $300M, which could be ultimately less than Rogan's deals.
The amount spent directly on Rogan doesn't capture the overall effect, though. Money spent on Rogan is basically marketing money to promote podcasts on Spotify, and the overall strategy for Spotify with podcasts is to increase subscribers with the Rogan exclusive, increase ad revenue on the platform from podcasts as well as pay out less to music artists by getting users to listen to podcasts instead of music. How good of a decision it is financially for Spotify depends on all of those things.
I'm sure there's a bell curve there, however that marketting niche also is often filled by pirates. Last I checked, music pirates buy far more music than non-pirates, even in the pre-streaming...
I'm sure there's a bell curve there, however that marketting niche also is often filled by pirates.
Last I checked, music pirates buy far more music than non-pirates, even in the pre-streaming days.
It turns out that having a music addiction means having free (or virtually free) access to the entirety of music just feeds into that addiction, making it even more likely you'll just buy some random indie artist's home-burned CD so you can upload it to the music sharing site or even just to own it.
I'd love to see something like Resonate (which is dying/dead for a lot of bureaucratic reasons) make it big. I feel that would fill both the "I want cheap access to discover music" and "pay artists a lot more."
I wonder if smaller bands would get way more exposure than earlier in the past if p2p music streaming was not illegal and there would be a legal p2p streaming service. E.g. we have a band, they...
Because of Spotify and music streaming in general, smaller bands now get way more exposure than they would have in the past
I wonder if smaller bands would get way more exposure than earlier in the past if p2p music streaming was not illegal and there would be a legal p2p streaming service.
E.g. we have a band, they createe CC-licensed music and put all of their music to torrent website and/or Peertube instance. So the music is freely available to listen to and download. Besides, the band sells their CDs and plays concerts since I'm sure as you do, that the band is making the bulk of their money from touring. Wouldn't that be fantastic?
I've said this here before in a similar discussion: I honestly would rather you pirate my stuff than pay some tech bros for it while I get basically nothing. I have to pay for you to be able to...
I've said this here before in a similar discussion: I honestly would rather you pirate my stuff than pay some tech bros for it while I get basically nothing. I have to pay for you to be able to listen to it, too.
I don't disagree with you that its a bad deal for artists. For me, the value (I have a Youtube/YT Music) is in discovering new things. I could pirate all the things, but I wouldn't know what to...
I don't disagree with you that its a bad deal for artists.
For me, the value (I have a Youtube/YT Music) is in discovering new things. I could pirate all the things, but I wouldn't know what to pirate. I even tried budgeting the cost of a music service toward buying new albums (so that I would own them instead of just renting them), and I just ended up buying a lot of albums that didn't hold my interest long term.
I think they lost their point halfway through their comment, but I can see what they may have been trying to say. Spotify is the "social mediaization" of music. Most people putting content on...
I think they lost their point halfway through their comment, but I can see what they may have been trying to say.
Spotify is the "social mediaization" of music. Most people putting content on Spotify will never be noticed or even make money, but if you aren't on Spotify, it's unlikely that you will ever get famous. Even the big artists aren't getting rich of Spotify. The money is made on tour. Spotify is just another platform to get popular and build a fanbase.
Artists are hoping that the algorithm might bless them one day and make them millionaires, but I don't think they actually expect to make a living from streaming royalties.
I think it's important to note that in terms of music streaming, it is not just that it has replaced traditional music ownership for most people, but also radio. The "buy music you like" model...
I think it's important to note that in terms of music streaming, it is not just that it has replaced traditional music ownership for most people, but also radio. The "buy music you like" model does not encompass much of how people use music streaming. I listen to a lot of songs on Spotify or YTM that I wouldn't really buy, because I don't love them like that, but I like enough to listen to for variety's sake. So the "you should just buy music from artist" is not really a 1-1 mapping - most people just aren't going to. Exposure is important, in the end.
For the smaller artists, the only thing I'd like to see Spotify do is offer a way for customers to make direct payments - basically, patreon within Spotify (and the incentive for them is that they would get a cut, of course). I don't think small artist are ever going to make their fortune from casual listeners like I described - but it'd be nice if they had a way to more heavily monetize hardcore listeners.
So if I understand correctly, if you pay for the cheaper "basic" plan that doesn't include Spotify's god awful audiobook implementation, the artists still get the same amount? Why would anyone...
So if I understand correctly, if you pay for the cheaper "basic" plan that doesn't include Spotify's god awful audiobook implementation, the artists still get the same amount? Why would anyone choose an audiobook plan at that point?
Right but there's no way to have a Premium unbundled plan. It's with ads (which is why they're probably ok paying more), audiobook only, or no ads + audiobook. Unless I'm missing a premium no ads,...
Right but there's no way to have a Premium unbundled plan. It's with ads (which is why they're probably ok paying more), audiobook only, or no ads + audiobook.
Unless I'm missing a premium no ads, no audiobook option.
But if I'm correct that's why people will have the "bundle", because they don't want ads. And Spotify just found a way to make it they pay artists less then.
Edit: if I'm wrong and Basic doesn't have ads, if they don't offer a family plan or two (or more) basic plans cost more than a family that's the other reason people will maintain their "bundle"
From Variety, it looks like there'll be Free, Premium, and Premium + Audio Books, which will see the change. The current model offers 15 hours of audio books per month, and extra money needed to...
From Variety, it looks like there'll be Free, Premium, and Premium + Audio Books, which will see the change.
The current model offers 15 hours of audio books per month, and extra money needed to go beyond, so it looks like they just want to shift to cash up front for people who want audiobooks.
The new tier is separate from the royalty change which is its own bad decision, for artists at least.
Got it, wonder if I can do the "Premium" w/o audio books but + family? This is dumb and I don't like spotify this much so who knows, I may ditch it for a while. Partner listens to a lot more music...
Got it, wonder if I can do the "Premium" w/o audio books but + family?
This is dumb and I don't like spotify this much so who knows, I may ditch it for a while.
Partner listens to a lot more music than me so he might keep it. (Unfortunately right now we can't put it on the Roku TV because between Roku and Spotify there is ZERO protection from jackass on a campus wifi network taking it over. It's really annoying. Anyway...)
Unless I misunderstood something, it actually sounds like the basic plan actually will be paying artists more than the premium plan. The article says that Spotify is able to pay less royalties on...
Unless I misunderstood something, it actually sounds like the basic plan actually will be paying artists more than the premium plan. The article says that Spotify is able to pay less royalties on its premium plan by bundling audiobooks + music. And then at the bottom of the article, it says
The new ‘Basic’ music tier will not be considered a bundle. Instead, it will be a standalone subscription that will pay the agreed headline mechanical rate to songwriters and publishers.
which sounds like they would be paying the normal, non-bundled rate for customers on the basic plan? So that's even more reason to use the basic plan if you don't want audiobooks.
The rate is not per-stream. Streaming services put all of their revenue, from subscriptions and ads, into a pot. Spotify sets aside something like 70% of their revenue for paying royalties to...
The rate is not per-stream. Streaming services put all of their revenue, from subscriptions and ads, into a pot. Spotify sets aside something like 70% of their revenue for paying royalties to rights holders (note that artists signed to labels are not rights holders). This is then divided into shares based on how many plays each rights holder received in a month. (So the easiest way to boost the payout most artists get would be to evict Taylor Swift.)
What's happening with the audiobook change is that, instead of an effective separate subscription for audiobooks, more plans are going to have audiobooks without a proportional price hike, which means the amount of money going into that pot for music royalties will be lower.
That being said, I'm not interested in listening to someone read a book that I can read many times faster myself, so I'll have to look and see how I can avoid paying extra for something I have no intention of using.
So if they put 70% of their revenue aside and then share it proportionally based on plays, what's with the 15% number? I get the audiobook vs music thing, that part makes sense.
So if they put 70% of their revenue aside and then share it proportionally based on plays, what's with the 15% number?
I get the audiobook vs music thing, that part makes sense.
https://www.billboard.com/business/streaming/spotify-2023-royalties-payouts-9-billion-labels-publishers-1235603302/ The 15% is the federal CRB's legally-set "headline mechanical royalty" rate,...
Through its licensing agreements with labels and publishers, Spotify pays out nearly 70% of revenue from subscription fees and advertising to music rights holders.
The 15% is the federal CRB's legally-set "headline mechanical royalty" rate, which is set to 15% of gross revenue. Music royalties are very complicated and there are different royalty types related to performance (including recording distribution) and use of a composition (mechanical royalties for songwriters). The 70% is a negotiated deal between record labels (and independent distribution services) that is agreed to encompass everything, and then the labels/distributors determine what they pay to the artists, proportional to any royalties they owe.
Spotify actually swings between being losing money and barely turning a profit, since that remaining 30% mostly gets eaten by their own expenses (engineers, server costs, credit card fees, etc)..
Ah ok, that was helpful. So that 15% is only one of three royalty categories. Overall, Spotify is paying 70% of their revenue to the music industry. That's a lot. If anything, we should be angry...
Ah ok, that was helpful.
Your total Spotify Royalty is your Master Use Royalty + Performance Royalty + Mechanical Royalty combined.
So that 15% is only one of three royalty categories. Overall, Spotify is paying 70% of their revenue to the music industry. That's a lot. If anything, we should be angry at record labels instead of Spotify.
Yep. They're cutting their way into live performances lately too, which is where artists have historically made most of their money. That's part of what's going on with the TicketMaster mafia: big...
If anything, we should be angry at record labels instead of Spotify.
Yep. They're cutting their way into live performances lately too, which is where artists have historically made most of their money. That's part of what's going on with the TicketMaster mafia: big venues have exclusivity contracts with ticketing agencies, so you need to work with them to be able to perform, and now labels are asking for the right to manage tours and take a cut. Not sure of the details, since that's all down to individuals' private contracts. Ticketmaster helps maximize the price of tickets (with fees and pre fixed like surge pricing), thus maximizing the labels' take.
Their "basic" non-free plan (that doesn't exist yet) would not have ads, though. The ads are only for their free plans. I'd imagine that they have to count ads in a similar way to subscription...
Their "basic" non-free plan (that doesn't exist yet) would not have ads, though. The ads are only for their free plans. I'd imagine that they have to count ads in a similar way to subscription revenue from a royalty perspective since that's the only revenue they're getting for those users.
I wasn't actually sure that would be the case with the addition of new cheaper "paid+ads" tiers on other streaming services. Sounds like it's correct. I don't need audiobooks, but I do need a...
I wasn't actually sure that would be the case with the addition of new cheaper "paid+ads" tiers on other streaming services. Sounds like it's correct. I don't need audiobooks, but I do need a family plan so we'll see what the tiers end up being.
People that care about artists would buy physical or direct from artist, then host on a media server. NIN, for example, have offered for you to be able to buy albums direct from their website...
People that care about artists would buy physical or direct from artist, then host on a media server.
NIN, for example, have offered for you to be able to buy albums direct from their website previously. They get the money, not a whole host of in-between companies.
I wonder if there is a way to transfer my family's premium bundle to the basic tier. We have zero desire or use for audiobooks and I don't want to be paying for them or giving less royalties to...
I wonder if there is a way to transfer my family's premium bundle to the basic tier. We have zero desire or use for audiobooks and I don't want to be paying for them or giving less royalties to the music artists.
I'm going to try and remember to look into it this afternoon, but if you find out if it's possible, let me know. I'd personally love a subscription tier that is just music and the app never tells...
I'm going to try and remember to look into it this afternoon, but if you find out if it's possible, let me know.
I'd personally love a subscription tier that is just music and the app never tells me about audiobooks or podcasts.
I just looked on the site and I don't see the new plan yet nor do I see the price hike. I think it may not be available yet. If I find out more I'll report back here.
I just looked on the site and I don't see the new plan yet nor do I see the price hike. I think it may not be available yet. If I find out more I'll report back here.
Well, I don't use Spotify or similar, so listening to artist means either stumbling across video on some music TV channel or specifically looking for it on Youtube or buying the CD. If CD is not...
Well, I don't use Spotify or similar, so listening to artist means either stumbling across video on some music TV channel or specifically looking for it on Youtube or buying the CD.
If CD is not available anymore (sold out), then maybe second hand if I really want to (no money for artist) or nothing (again, no money for artist). If the CD is not available at all and also no FLAC online buy option available, then once more - no money for artist.
If you meant availability as regional lock in Spotify, I can't run into one, but I can see CD available and streaming not... However stupid that is.
There's something about this I'm not understanding. So that seems to be saying that the royalty rate for streaming is about 15% of subscription revenue. But then, they say So which is it? 15% or 70%?
There's something about this I'm not understanding.
Under the CRB settlement, the headline royalty rate for standalone music streaming services is set to increase gradually over a 5-year period. This started from 15.1% in 2023 and should reach 15.35% by 2027.
So that seems to be saying that the royalty rate for streaming is about 15% of subscription revenue. But then, they say
In 2023, the company paid record labels, artists, and other rights holders more than $9 billion from its $13.2 billion in revenue. This amounted to about 70% of its sales.
I would suspect, and I may be wrong here, but the two numbers are different. Royalties would be paid out on a per-play basis while Spotify also pays out large chunks of money to record labels,...
I would suspect, and I may be wrong here, but the two numbers are different. Royalties would be paid out on a per-play basis while Spotify also pays out large chunks of money to record labels, artists, and other rights holders for other reasons, such as having the library available on Spotify or potentially for certain special deals that Spotify makes with specific artists to pay out higher royalty rates. If you were The Beatles rightsholder you could probably get a better deal than 15% and if you were Warner Music, you can probably just ask for a billion up front.
How is listening to Spotify different than pirating music from non-popstar „grade” artist perspective? They get fractions of pennies for their music on Spotify anyways.
They got fractions of pennies for pre-streaming online sales and CD sales too. There has never been money in recorded music for all but a minuscule sub-1% of musicians. If you were so lucky as to be signed with a record label, giving you the rare opportunity of recording an distributing music...it would go down something like this:
You would get cents on the dollar for music sales, fractions of cents for radio
The cost of producing and distributing the music would be taken out of your royalties. You'd get an advance, and they'd give you a bill for the studio time, and your royalties would have to surpass that initial amount before you'd ever see another check...and most would not.
Before streaming, far fewer artists even had the opportunity to widely distribute music for people to listen to. Record labels were (and still are) highly selective at choosing acts, optimizing for the lowest common denominator. Now anyone can get on DistroKid/LANDR/Tunecore and put their music on every major streaming service, right in the same market as the 1% musicians, where everyone can potentially listen to it.
The corollary is simple supply and demand: music is worth even less because there's far more for it. This is a massive win for art, democratizing human expression, not so much for people who want to be bourgeoisie intellectual-capital holders.
Personally, I'd rather offer more people the opportunity to have their music heard than to fixate on how much money the most financially successful get out of it.
It’s interesting to consider that perspective from a broader historical lens. I remember a handful of times reading articles or watching videos about the rise of recording, where they would point out John Phillip Sousa’s claims of it ruining the music industry. But if we look at how it changed what it meant to musicians, it very much did. Live performances have become very scarce, and the number of people who would learn how to play an instrument has dwindled. The record companies grew huge profits on a tiny number of musicians and left the everyday performers out to dry.
Arts program are also cut in schools. When instruments are expensive and your most famous musicians don't actually play them, they become so much rarer overall. I don't know that recording is the key reason for that particular drop.
There were several major shifts over the past century, which radically changed the markets for professional musicians, and they each brought major new cultural additions with them.
Before recording, songwriters sold sheet music and rolls for player pianos. Then they started cutting records as phonographs spread.
Radio started out with massive AM stations that broadcast nationally. Eventually, the big three stations (NBC, CBS, ABC) pivoted to television...and the smaller local radio scene grew, bringing with it the rise of Rock and Roll, as the smaller operations and DJ culture were more willing to take risks and aim for the growing youth culture. (Now, of course, radio has reconsolidated and nicked back toward inoffensive mediocrity.)
In the 70s and 80s, Disco and House made club DJs a thing, which drove an increase in average song length and caused the rise of the 12" single, as DJs wanted longer dance tracks to work with and the larger format discs offered better sound quality. Hip hop also grew out of the dawn of the discotheque, as the two-turntables-and-mixer setup was popularized.
Even before streaming services were mainstream, iTunes selling tracks individually and the rise of YouTube heavily drove the shift to releasing singles more frequently instead of pop artists focusing on albums, as frequency increased audience engagement.
I'm not defending Spotify at all but the way it was explained to me is that Spotify is a net good for smaller artists. Because of Spotify and music streaming in general, smaller bands now get way more exposure than they would have in the past. Even though there is less money to go around, in general, smaller bands these days are more capable of making music be their actual job than ever before. I'm sure they're making the bulk of their money from touring but the exposure they get via the algorithm gives them a reach that they never could have enjoyed in the past.
Being paid in exposure was a joke about people not paying artists fairly, it wasn't supposed to be the goal.
There has been increasing amount of alarms from recording artists that it's getting harder and harder to support oneself making music because of these royalty schemes. There is actually plenty of money to go around... it's just not going around. Spotify and the like are hording it.
I can't remember all the Fantano videos where he covers this but here's the one where he covers James Blake's comments on the matter. And I just pay attention to Fantano, this has been a heavily covered subject in music press for years now. It's consensus among artists, large and small, that streaming services are not paying a fair share and thus are especially limiting new and smaller artists.
Spotify is not hoarding it. They keep losing money. There has been a large reduction in the average person’s annual music expenditure.
If they're losing money, it's likely due to their questionable financial decisions, such as the massive amounts spent to get Joe Rogan exclusively on their podcast platform.
Do you happen to have numbers comparing the amount spent on Rogan (and other podcasts) to the amount going to musicians? Actually, a breakdown of money going to rights holders from Spotify compared to the amount that actually reaches the musicians would also be helpful.
Not the same guy, but Spotify is a public company and thus you could find this info on their investor relations page. You'll have to parse through a lot of data, but it's there.
The amount spent on the Rogan deal is certainly less than payouts to all musicians, but he might be paid more than even the highest paid musicians on the platform. Taylor Swift currently tops that list and is estimated to have earned just over $300M, which could be ultimately less than Rogan's deals.
The amount spent directly on Rogan doesn't capture the overall effect, though. Money spent on Rogan is basically marketing money to promote podcasts on Spotify, and the overall strategy for Spotify with podcasts is to increase subscribers with the Rogan exclusive, increase ad revenue on the platform from podcasts as well as pay out less to music artists by getting users to listen to podcasts instead of music. How good of a decision it is financially for Spotify depends on all of those things.
I'm sure there's a bell curve there, however that marketting niche also is often filled by pirates.
Last I checked, music pirates buy far more music than non-pirates, even in the pre-streaming days.
It turns out that having a music addiction means having free (or virtually free) access to the entirety of music just feeds into that addiction, making it even more likely you'll just buy some random indie artist's home-burned CD so you can upload it to the music sharing site or even just to own it.
I'd love to see something like Resonate (which is dying/dead for a lot of bureaucratic reasons) make it big. I feel that would fill both the "I want cheap access to discover music" and "pay artists a lot more."
I wonder if smaller bands would get way more exposure than earlier in the past if p2p music streaming was not illegal and there would be a legal p2p streaming service.
E.g. we have a band, they createe CC-licensed music and put all of their music to torrent website and/or Peertube instance. So the music is freely available to listen to and download. Besides, the band sells their CDs and plays concerts since I'm sure as you do, that the band is making the bulk of their money from touring. Wouldn't that be fantastic?
I've said this here before in a similar discussion: I honestly would rather you pirate my stuff than pay some tech bros for it while I get basically nothing. I have to pay for you to be able to listen to it, too.
I don't disagree with you that its a bad deal for artists.
For me, the value (I have a Youtube/YT Music) is in discovering new things. I could pirate all the things, but I wouldn't know what to pirate. I even tried budgeting the cost of a music service toward buying new albums (so that I would own them instead of just renting them), and I just ended up buying a lot of albums that didn't hold my interest long term.
I believe they were talking from the artists perspective.
I think they lost their point halfway through their comment, but I can see what they may have been trying to say.
Spotify is the "social mediaization" of music. Most people putting content on Spotify will never be noticed or even make money, but if you aren't on Spotify, it's unlikely that you will ever get famous. Even the big artists aren't getting rich of Spotify. The money is made on tour. Spotify is just another platform to get popular and build a fanbase.
Artists are hoping that the algorithm might bless them one day and make them millionaires, but I don't think they actually expect to make a living from streaming royalties.
I think it's important to note that in terms of music streaming, it is not just that it has replaced traditional music ownership for most people, but also radio. The "buy music you like" model does not encompass much of how people use music streaming. I listen to a lot of songs on Spotify or YTM that I wouldn't really buy, because I don't love them like that, but I like enough to listen to for variety's sake. So the "you should just buy music from artist" is not really a 1-1 mapping - most people just aren't going to. Exposure is important, in the end.
For the smaller artists, the only thing I'd like to see Spotify do is offer a way for customers to make direct payments - basically, patreon within Spotify (and the incentive for them is that they would get a cut, of course). I don't think small artist are ever going to make their fortune from casual listeners like I described - but it'd be nice if they had a way to more heavily monetize hardcore listeners.
So if I understand correctly, if you pay for the cheaper "basic" plan that doesn't include Spotify's god awful audiobook implementation, the artists still get the same amount? Why would anyone choose an audiobook plan at that point?
I'm assuming the basic plan still has ads?
The basic plan will not have audiobooks at all. The free account will still have ads.
Right but there's no way to have a Premium unbundled plan. It's with ads (which is why they're probably ok paying more), audiobook only, or no ads + audiobook.
Unless I'm missing a premium no ads, no audiobook option.
But if I'm correct that's why people will have the "bundle", because they don't want ads. And Spotify just found a way to make it they pay artists less then.
Edit: if I'm wrong and Basic doesn't have ads, if they don't offer a family plan or two (or more) basic plans cost more than a family that's the other reason people will maintain their "bundle"
From Variety, it looks like there'll be Free, Premium, and Premium + Audio Books, which will see the change.
The current model offers 15 hours of audio books per month, and extra money needed to go beyond, so it looks like they just want to shift to cash up front for people who want audiobooks.
The new tier is separate from the royalty change which is its own bad decision, for artists at least.
Got it, wonder if I can do the "Premium" w/o audio books but + family?
This is dumb and I don't like spotify this much so who knows, I may ditch it for a while.
Partner listens to a lot more music than me so he might keep it. (Unfortunately right now we can't put it on the Roku TV because between Roku and Spotify there is ZERO protection from jackass on a campus wifi network taking it over. It's really annoying. Anyway...)
Unless I misunderstood something, it actually sounds like the basic plan actually will be paying artists more than the premium plan. The article says that Spotify is able to pay less royalties on its premium plan by bundling audiobooks + music. And then at the bottom of the article, it says
which sounds like they would be paying the normal, non-bundled rate for customers on the basic plan? So that's even more reason to use the basic plan if you don't want audiobooks.
The rate is not per-stream. Streaming services put all of their revenue, from subscriptions and ads, into a pot. Spotify sets aside something like 70% of their revenue for paying royalties to rights holders (note that artists signed to labels are not rights holders). This is then divided into shares based on how many plays each rights holder received in a month. (So the easiest way to boost the payout most artists get would be to evict Taylor Swift.)
What's happening with the audiobook change is that, instead of an effective separate subscription for audiobooks, more plans are going to have audiobooks without a proportional price hike, which means the amount of money going into that pot for music royalties will be lower.
Much of that difference is going to audiobook rights holders, so this is kind of just a turf war between music and book people. And these articles singling out Spotify are more or less just industry propaganda, since minimum royalty rates are set by the federal government, through a panel of judges.
That being said, I'm not interested in listening to someone read a book that I can read many times faster myself, so I'll have to look and see how I can avoid paying extra for something I have no intention of using.
So if they put 70% of their revenue aside and then share it proportionally based on plays, what's with the 15% number?
I get the audiobook vs music thing, that part makes sense.
https://www.billboard.com/business/streaming/spotify-2023-royalties-payouts-9-billion-labels-publishers-1235603302/
The 15% is the federal CRB's legally-set "headline mechanical royalty" rate, which is set to 15% of gross revenue. Music royalties are very complicated and there are different royalty types related to performance (including recording distribution) and use of a composition (mechanical royalties for songwriters). The 70% is a negotiated deal between record labels (and independent distribution services) that is agreed to encompass everything, and then the labels/distributors determine what they pay to the artists, proportional to any royalties they owe.
Here's a lengthy introduction to the complexities of music licensing, including some portions that cover the 15% part: https://www.indiemusicacademy.com/blog/music-royalties-explained
Spotify actually swings between being losing money and barely turning a profit, since that remaining 30% mostly gets eaten by their own expenses (engineers, server costs, credit card fees, etc)..
Ah ok, that was helpful.
So that 15% is only one of three royalty categories. Overall, Spotify is paying 70% of their revenue to the music industry. That's a lot. If anything, we should be angry at record labels instead of Spotify.
Yep. They're cutting their way into live performances lately too, which is where artists have historically made most of their money. That's part of what's going on with the TicketMaster mafia: big venues have exclusivity contracts with ticketing agencies, so you need to work with them to be able to perform, and now labels are asking for the right to manage tours and take a cut. Not sure of the details, since that's all down to individuals' private contracts. Ticketmaster helps maximize the price of tickets (with fees and pre fixed like surge pricing), thus maximizing the labels' take.
It's because the ads are counterbalancing the cost I think (or they can't find a way to claim it's a bundle)
Their "basic" non-free plan (that doesn't exist yet) would not have ads, though. The ads are only for their free plans. I'd imagine that they have to count ads in a similar way to subscription revenue from a royalty perspective since that's the only revenue they're getting for those users.
I wasn't actually sure that would be the case with the addition of new cheaper "paid+ads" tiers on other streaming services. Sounds like it's correct. I don't need audiobooks, but I do need a family plan so we'll see what the tiers end up being.
People that care about artists would buy physical or direct from artist, then host on a media server.
NIN, for example, have offered for you to be able to buy albums direct from their website previously. They get the money, not a whole host of in-between companies.
I wonder if there is a way to transfer my family's premium bundle to the basic tier. We have zero desire or use for audiobooks and I don't want to be paying for them or giving less royalties to the music artists.
I'm going to try and remember to look into it this afternoon, but if you find out if it's possible, let me know.
I'd personally love a subscription tier that is just music and the app never tells me about audiobooks or podcasts.
I just looked on the site and I don't see the new plan yet nor do I see the price hike. I think it may not be available yet. If I find out more I'll report back here.
I think you might have to consider a different streaming service in such a case, like Tidal. Or pirate and occasionally donate/attend live shows.
Is it better for artists if I buy their CD instead of listening to them (ocassionally) on Spotify? This is genuine question, as it is how I do it.
Problem is, how many artists are you willing to buy their albums and the availability factor?
Well, I don't use Spotify or similar, so listening to artist means either stumbling across video on some music TV channel or specifically looking for it on Youtube or buying the CD.
If CD is not available anymore (sold out), then maybe second hand if I really want to (no money for artist) or nothing (again, no money for artist). If the CD is not available at all and also no FLAC online buy option available, then once more - no money for artist.
If you meant availability as regional lock in Spotify, I can't run into one, but I can see CD available and streaming not... However stupid that is.
There's something about this I'm not understanding.
So that seems to be saying that the royalty rate for streaming is about 15% of subscription revenue. But then, they say
So which is it? 15% or 70%?
I would suspect, and I may be wrong here, but the two numbers are different. Royalties would be paid out on a per-play basis while Spotify also pays out large chunks of money to record labels, artists, and other rights holders for other reasons, such as having the library available on Spotify or potentially for certain special deals that Spotify makes with specific artists to pay out higher royalty rates. If you were The Beatles rightsholder you could probably get a better deal than 15% and if you were Warner Music, you can probably just ask for a billion up front.
But... but... but... Daniel Ek's compensation package needs to be preserved to motivate him to navigate Spotify out of this tough situation! /s