[JazCE]

The Author doesn't understand how the streaming business works, and as far as I can tell, no one in the comments here has shone a better light on it.

There is and there isn't just a pool of money that goes to beyonce, the weeknd and taylor swift... i say there is because what actually happens is, the collecting societies will collect the money, then distribute it based on streams correctly to the artists/writers/producers etc that are registered. now if it so happens that a collecting society can't find the correct person to distribute to, the money might sit for a while before it is divvied up between the biggest players, so that would mean taylor swift, elton john etc might get a share of any unclaimed royalties.

When i worked in the business, we would often have many a drunken night talking about how we should just record the rain on the roof, upload it and use the "royalties" as beer money.

for the most part, being on spotify does pay, but i think people don't really understand how the pie is cut and when the artist actually gets a slice. there are many routes to being on spotify (or any streaming service), the router for taylor swift will be different to the route for your dad's garage band, as will the payout.

[koonsolo]

Since you seem to understand how it works, can you explain the following to me:

Let's say I pay $10 to listen to my favorite indie band, for 1 hour each week.

Let's say another user listens to Taylor Swift 24/7.

Does my favorite band get my $10, or do they get $0.12? You see, when I pay $10, I don't expect $9.88 to go to Taylor Swift.

Or does my favorite band actually gets my $10, like it used to be when I bought CD's?

[alberto_balsam]

Spotify uses a pro-rata model, so your favourite indie band would only get $0.12 in your example.

This effect does not drown out once you scale up to a full user base either - it appears that the most popular artists benefit disproportionately. Other music streaming companies like Deezer apparently are pushing for a fairer model. See here for example: https://musically.com/2018/03/02/user-centric-licensing-real...

[JazCE]

people seem to be confusing the $10 spotify premium sub with actually giving money to music.

i think there's an over-simplification of how this works going on. When you buy a $10 cd from let's say your dad's friends garage band, that $10 is going to your dads friend, and obviously they might have expenses before they really see that $10 (buying CD-R's, printing, etc etc).

you spend $10 on spotify premium, and exclusively listen to your dads friends garage band, that $10 is not going to your dads friend, it's going to spotifys bank account which will then be used to pay for execs, macbooks, operating costs etc, but also be used to fund the artist pool. so your $10 and some other persons $10 that they use for elton john records, all sit in the same account. Elton John via EMI or whoever, might have negotiated a 0.000005c per stream deal and so gets that. your dads friend might be on a very basic rate of 0.000002c per stream (numbers made up), and will receive that. so yeah elton or taylor or other big names will get a better deal.

[knutzui]

If you listen to a single band for 1 hour a week, then you should not be paying for a Spotify subscription, but rather buy the music of that band.

This situation is obviously constructed, but if you were in it and unhappy about it, it would be your own fault for misunderstanding what you're paying Spotify for.

[parpfish]

complaints about spotify payment will almost always have a critique along the lines of

"i pay $10/month to listen to {obscure band}, but only $1/month is going to that band and the rest is going to {popular band}!"

this is a technically true statement that seems to fuel a lot of anti-rich-getting-richer / popular-thing-is-bad-but-my-taste-is-good backlash. but the fact that is always overlooked is that while you are only sending $1/month to the obscure band you love, the millions of listeners that are into {popular band} will also be sending a tiny fraction of their monthly payment to your artist as well.

determining whether pro-rata payments or user-centric payment systems are more equitable is complex and is studied in the academic literature (e.g., [0]) but ALSO internally by streaming providers (i know from firsthand experience[1]).

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016517652...

[1] it's interesting to note that the difference between the payment systems affects how payments are distributed to artists but not the total amount, so theoretically the streaming provider isn't biased toward one system over another for business reasons. the streaming platfroms don't really care one way or another and it's 100% driven by what the labels dictate during licensing negotiations.

[Workaccount2]

Spotify should add an option to pay an additional $3/mo that is in fact distributed to the artists you listen to.

However based on my past experience with general public users, it will be a rounding error number of people who will opt into it.

[rchaud]

Swift owns her master recordings. So her bottom line on every listen is MUCH more than artists stuck with a label.