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by kakarot 2783 days ago
They are getting ripped off.

Many record companies, in their own financial interest, reduced the royalty cost for streams with Spotify in exchange for revenue shares.

I would feel pretty ripped off if I made a big, delicious cake, and as a reward I get one tiny slice while I had to watch everyone else eat the rest. Maybe not if making cakes is just a small hobby for me, but definitely so if it's my career.
3 comments
Arqu 2783 days ago
I'm not arguing the case here that the whole scene is set up fair and square. Probably the complete opposite. However, expecting 1M views of random music play to be worth more than some $5k is a long stretch. On their own, sure 1M views would account for much more if it was a very focused platform, however, it caters to a huge palette of artists. The dispersion of risk/quality and focus targets makes it not really the prime money machines.

If you want to make money in this industry - keep to the old-fashioned methods. Concerts and live performances are what rake in the big money - CDs, Views or whatever useless metric people try to convert to $$ numbers only works in obscene numbers. All else is just trying to get there - and that is usually the dirty and hard part of the music industry.

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zethraeus 2783 days ago
> I would feel pretty ripped off if I made a big, delicious cake, and as a reward I get one tiny slice while I had to watch everyone else eat the rest. Maybe not if making cakes is just a small hobby for me, but definitely so if it's my career.

this analogy doesn't even begin to approximate the real dynamics.

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ajaimk 2783 days ago
Citation please
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kakarot 2783 days ago
It's common knowledge. I don't need to provide a citation every time I bring it up.

But here, since you're too lazy to look it up or write more than two words:

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/heres-exactly-how-man...

Interestingly, earlier this year several record companies either mostly or fully divested in Spotify, with some companies like Warner getting over half a billion dollars. Reasons are unclear even though they have made vague public statements.

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