[Ekaros]

I have understood that TikTok is per view generating less revenue than YouTube for example. As such they simply cannot pay as much. Which seems entirely reasonable. You cannot pay more out than you generate in income. At least not without someone keeping pouring money in...

[zcrar70]

Some counter-arguments:

- TikTok revenues were estimated at $9.4 billion in 2022, at a $75bn valuation. Add revenue is projected to rise to $22bn in 2024. ByteDance (parent company) profit estimated at $6bn in 2023. They seem to have enough money to pay for the content which enables this growth (this may not just apply to the music element).

- The fact that they don't generate as much revenue per stream as YouTube is of no use to the artists whose works they are using to generate that revenue. Their work is still being used; and they should be paid for that usage. If TikTok's business model doesn't support payments to the artists, then that is TikTok's problem to solve - not the artists'.

I think a good argument is the point above that as only a fragment of a song is typically used, the amount should perhaps not be as much as a full song stream e.g. on Spotify or YT Music. Though that does open the question as to whether a stream of a Pink Floyd song should be paid as much as a stream of a Ramones song - given the difference in length!

[fuzzfactor]

>TikTok is per view generating less revenue than YouTube

plus appartently there is not proper consideration for

>the difference in length!

Oh, well.

There's lots of unresolved fundamentals when revenue is not coming in per view or per length, but people are trying to use things like this as a KPI.

Misguideds gonna misguide.

For the vast majority of artists and music lovers, the ideal model so far is not a "business" model, more along the lines of the free sharing proven by the likes of Napster. Artists didn't make any money off of Napster, but most of them don't make any money from rights organizations either, or when they do it's closer to zero than it is significant.

The only way to surpress the free file sharing was to offer a paid service that was insignificant in cost to so many mainstream consumers that it was marginally viable, and go from there. Consumers paying for it in some way was the main consideration, not paying the artists very much. So this is all we got now and ever since.

Until the price rises enough to no longer be insignificant, and naturally triggers Napster-like procedures to trend back toward becoming undisrupted.

There's just not enough money for any significant middlemen between an artist and the lovers of their music.

With more than one rights brandisher "competing" by failing to lower consumer prices as the streaming services splinter, and trying to prolong a business model where the artist gets less than the majority of revenue generated, all that's got to lead to alternatives where once again the savvy consumers get everything free and the rightsholders and their artists get nothing directly.