[jamesear]

The post notes that Spotify pays $0.003-$0.005 per stream, and compares that to the average exec making $200k/year.

If Spotify diverted all that exec money to artists, I wonder whether the $0.003-$0.005 figure would change, or if that would be too only amount to <$0.0005 difference.

It might be fair to criticize Spotify's deal with rights holders of music, but the above line of critique doesn't hold so strong to me.

As it happens, $200k/year for an exec seems low?

Disclaimer: I don't use Spotify and instead manage my own collection.

[nicce]

It depends what is defined as exec. If there are hundreds in the company, that could make a difference.

In 17% layoff, the numbers was around 1500 employees fired. It means there are around 7300 employees left. So that includes some execs.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/04/tech/spotify-layoffs-thir...

[troupo]

Spotify doesn't pay the artists directly. Apple Music doesn't pay the artists directly. Youtube Musice doesn't.... You get my gist.

All those pay to the rights holders. Why does no one ever question the rights holders: EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group why the artists are paid pennies?

[threeseed]

It isn't just the big labels. Apple Music has a list of distributors they work with:

https://artists.apple.com/partners

CDBaby is popular where 91% of revenue from Apple, Spotify etc goes to the artist.

So then it seems that the price per stream does make a difference.

[troupo]

Spotify has the same distributors. But the absolute vast majority of money goes to the big labels.

[ViewTrick1002]

Spotify pays out ~70% of their revenue to the rights holder.