If this is not sustainable for the artists, how is this different than piracy? I'd say it is even worse, because people is paying but the money goes to a middleware company that is not paying the right price. It is like buying CDs from the street sellers.

"sustainable for the artists"

There seems to be some idea of what musicians "should" make that other professions don't benefit from. I would like to make the same money from making furniture as I do from writing code, but I can't. I could blame the furniture stores for not promoting me or taking too big a cut or any number of other factors, or I could accept the fact that I'm not an amazing woodworker. But I still make my art/craft because I enjoy it and it's important to me.

There are plenty of ways for musicians to make a living, but I don't see a problem with the fact that spending a month or two a year recording an album is a privilege available to only the most talented subset of them.

You touch a point that has been discussed ad-nauseam before (I saw it in /. a long time ago): Why should artists be perpetually paid for the 40 hours of work they made?

Any normal people, has a pay rate (minimum $0.77 USD/hr where I live). Someone goes to work, works for 8 hours, and gets their 8hr equivalent salary.

But then you have "artists" who work to produce their product for say 80 hours, and then they want to be perpetually paid... not only that, they want to be paid enough to live a lifestyle similar to the person that get's paid for 40 hours a week job, for 30 years.

Comments such as yours are why I will not let my music be on Spotify as an artist. It's no different than piracy, the user is just paying Spotify for convenience of not having to search stuff on Soulseek themselves...

The fact that slapping some ads on my music on youtube made me earn more than being on Spotify says everything about how bad that deal is for any artist...

> I could blame the furniture stores for not promoting me or taking too big a cut or any number of other factors

not only could you but you should. Of course workers over the last few decades have internalised the mindset that they cannot use their power to bargain and that whatever they get is fair and they should just shut up, which is why we tolerate corporate middlemen eating our lunch.

I don't know if a penny per song is realistic or whatever, but going up against Spotify and record labels and trying to negotiate as much compensation for artists as possible collectively is exactly what they ought to do. Also, on the other end, as consumers we need to stop whining when we have to pay twenty bucks instead of ten bucks per month to compensate artists who we spend listening hours to every single week.

My scenario is not one of power imbalance, it is that I simply cannot create enough economic value doing it to make a living, and I have no right to change anyone else's rules to accommodate for that fact. I cannot make you a bookshelf cheaper than you can buy one at IKEA. At my software developer rate a Billy Bookcase would cost you $1000. It's probably safe to say you aren't going to "stop whining" and pay that.

But you know what I did last week? I didn't mope around at some job I hate complaining about "Big Furniture". I made a bookcase. I also wrote a bunch of software. I can call myself a woodworker, I paid my mortgage, and IKEA sold thousands of Billy Bookcases. All is good.

Your example is a little specious in that a bookcase is very different from a song. The production of one has huge economies of scale, whereas a song doesn't. I agree that producing things competitively is important to improve overall efficiency, but with the music industry you really have a small cartel of massive labels dictating the terms for everyone else (ie. engaging in massively anti-competitive behavior). It seems weird to me that your pro-market ideology leads you to support what (to me) seems to be more or less wage-fixing for a labor supplier (musicians)

> small cartel of massive labels dictating the terms for everyone else

Only for those who sign with them. So this brings the question as what's stopping these musicians to make music independently and market using internet along the way avoiding these labels. It is not even the case that music can be listened only via monopolistic mobile app stores.

I have used small independent service providers for tax filing, lawn mowing, cleaning and myriad other services by finding at internet. They are not backed by big corporate chains. Why music has to come from big labels.

> Only for those who sign with them.

I think generally the point of cartelization is to make it very challenging NOT to sign with them. Clearly many independent labels can thrive, and I can't imagine that it's impossible for an artist to start their own label. Nevertheless, when eg. sound and recording engineers can be aggressively poached by a major studio it's got to be challenging to go it alone.

Price fixing? You can buy music directly from artists for any price you want. I do it all the time on Bandcamp and independent stores, for both digital and vinyl releases.

Piracy set the price at 0, Spotify pulled the price up from there, but there is literally nothing stopping consumers today from paying more for music except that they don't want to.

>Price fixing? You can buy music directly from artists for any price you want.

I think you're missing my point. The opportunity to market direct to consumer does not negate the massive wage-setting power of a cartel which can buy up rivals, production talent, leverage radio, venue, and streaming contracts, etc.

Ex: wired.com/story/opinion-big-music-needs-to-be-broken-up-to-save-the-industry/

Like I don't know how you can read something like this and just say "well have you tried selling on Bandcamp?"

'''

Live Nation’s consolidation of the industry was rapid and aggressive, spending around $1 billion in just 18 months in the late 1990s buying independent concert promoters and venue owners. By 1999, when radio titan Clear Channel paid $4.4 billion for the company (then called SFX), it was the largest music venue owner and concert promoter. Antitrust enforcers took no action to stop the deal.

By 2005, Clear Channel had spun off its live music division into a new, standalone company: Live Nation, the country’s largest artists manager and concert promoter and second-largest venue owner. Today, Live Nation is once again part of a massive broadcasting and live music conglomerate that wields immense power.

Live Nation has since combined with the ticketing monopoly Ticketmaster, satellite radio monopolist SiriusXM, and online radio leader Pandora as part of media mega-conglomerate Liberty Media. Last year, Liberty Media was approved to take control of iHeartMedia, the largest radio station owner in the country; prior to 2014 iHeart was known as Clear Channel. The proverbial band was back together, antitrust concerns and all. Competition and consumer advocates stridently opposed every corporate tie-up along the way; my organization was part of a coalition that argued against the Liberty/iHeart deal last year. Antitrust enforcers permitted every one.

'''

Further down:

'''

The company’s power to steer business away from rivals is not theoretical. In late 2019 the Justice Department found that, for years, Live Nation had abused its monopoly by steering its artists and tours away from venues that refused to use Ticketmaster. The government could have sued for monopoly violations but instead simply amended the agreement it struck with the companies when they merged a decade ago.

'''

> The production of one has huge economies of scale, whereas a song doesn't.

Actually, now that we're digital, the economies of scale of music are similar to software, in that they are massive (and Spotify is a key enabler of that).

> It seems weird to me that your pro-market ideology leads you to support what (to me) seems to be more or less wage-fixing for a labor supplier (musicians)

Musicians have been largely entrepreneurial for centuries. The advent of physical media and distribution control enabled them to form these cartels, and extract rents to enable luxurious "rockstar" lifestyles for a select few. There is now far more opportunity for success and distribution without labels than there has been since they started.

>Actually, now that we're digital, the economies of scale of music are similar to software, in that they are massive

Is this the case? It seems that there's the fundamental limitation of 10 musicians not being able to record a song in 1/10th of the time. Certainly there are SOME economies of scale, but it seems a little incredible that music would be as "factory producible" as something like a bookshelf or a car.

> The advent of physical media and distribution control enabled them to form these cartels, and extract rents to enable luxurious "rockstar" lifestyles for a select few.

This seems incongruous with the rest of what you are saying. Yes clearly there is an entrepreneurial component of music, and absolutely eg. SoundCloud and BandCamp is enabling independent artists in new and important ways. That doesn't change the fact that massive financial institutions are rent-seeking the bejeezus out of the bulk of the industry in a way that (to me) would appear to hurt competition.

Spotify is not the corporate middle man. The big record companies are. Any musician is free to not put their music on spotify and to not sell the rights to a record company. They can then let you stream a song for $50 on their website.

It's also absolutely ridiculous that you champion those who want to make more money while also saying that everyone on the other end who wants to spend less should "stop whining".

I champion people who produce things, be that artists, software developers, woodworkers or anyone else who builds stuff. Spotify and labels are both distributors and middlemen who profit from the work of others, it's consumers and large platforms that squeeze creators with their greedy mindset of 'as much as possible, for as little money as possible'.

It's long overdue that we move away from this sleazy consumer mindset and start valuing creators.

Except almost everyone can produce things. You have to produce things people want. Not only that, you need to find the people who want your stuff, especially if its niche.

Yes, I'm a highly paid software engineer. The people who created the company I work for are, however, far better paid.

There's nothing stopping me from quitting and building my own business and selling the software I produce. I have the funds to seed my own startup, so that's not even an issue. That's a shitload of work though, even if I hire people to handle the individual parts. Very quickly I'll be spending more time running a business, finding customers, marketing, dealing with legal crap, etc, than I will producing software. I can also produce software, stick it on github and hope for the best, but there's countless people who do that for shits and giggles (and for free).

Distribution, logistic, and those "middlemen" actually do a lot of work to link the product with the customers. Sure, there's parasites in the middle, organizations that just take licenses and shifts them around without doing anything. You can absolutely make a case to cut those off. But the orgs/software that link products directly to customers who want said products generate tremendous value, and it's often a lot harder to do than produce the good in the first place.

And I value the creators of Spotify who create good software and a great infrastructure for the service they're offering. I think we should move away from this sleazy consumer mindset that the creators of Spotify should not be rewarded for the service they're offering.

are you under the impression that engineers at spotify are currently going hungry and working minimum wages? As developers we are already ridiculously overpaid compared to artists. We are the ones who benefit from the shit salaries that musicians make, which is of course why people on this website don't want to hear anything about creators bargaining. It's the people here who benefit from the status quo.

> We are the ones who benefit from the shit salaries that musicians make

Not really. We are just being paid enough so that we do not leave for somewhere else.

The ones who really benefit are the shareholders.

Coincidentally, the same people who didn't do any of the work.

>The ones who really benefit are the shareholders. Coincidentally, the same people who didn't do any of the work.

This is how capitalism works though. There's no way Spotify can be expected to fundamentally change the economic system they exist in. Reversing that is heading into the realm of revolution.

I mean....radio was never a money maker for acts. It was to get their name out their to make money elsewhere.

Just kinda how the market is setup. I don't think it is unsustainable for artists.

I fucking hate "exposure", but that is literally what radio/streaming is is.

It is never a substantial revenue stream until you hit big.

And with today's tech, radio had to become streaming.

Paying a penny per stream is highly unsustainable for everyone.

What would you suggest to fix it?

I think the system is pretty decent all things considered. Now, Spotify could definitely be better at hyping and pushing new music/low creators....but other than that I don't think they're the enemy here.

Streaming isn't comparable to radio. If a penny per stream is unsustainable, perhaps we better go back to just radio. Hyping new music isn't going to do shit about revenue.

Right, but the money has always gone to a middleman, be it record companies or Spotify. If Spotify gets any more expensive I can guarantee people will go back to privacy, music will become less accessible and those niche bands that Spotify knows I may like will never get found.

I understand the need to get paid more, but I am not sure killing Spotify is the solution.

Those niche bands will put their music for free online until they are well known to get their fans pay for the music, as they did in the 90s and 00s.

Its not about it being free online, its about discovery. Spotify is currently excellent for discovering new bands. TPB? Not so much.

> I understand the need to get paid more, but I am not sure killing Spotify is the solution.

If Spotify doesn't compromise, killing it would be the only solution, but this union doesn't have the power to do that initially. But this will never work because you have a infinite stream of new musicians wanting to be listen without receiving money for that.

Killing Spotify would be terrible.

New musicians want their work out there....without Spotify(or similar) it will be back to just blasting out your music for free online everywhere so you can get bug.

Spotify at least gives them some revenue while they increase their fandom.

And what do you expect to happen to Spotify when the musicians leave for someplace that pays them appropriately?

The answer is piracy again.

For a moment in time, piracy of movies and series was at a low point. Recently, with the fragmentation of all the different streaming services it's rising again.

The real answer is that Spotify will melt under its own inadequacy and the new platform will thrive. You adapt or you die, and I would have no sympathy for Spotify if they couldn't adapt.

Presumably these new brands have to charge their customers more in order to pay the artists more, right? I’m about at the max of what I’m willing to pay for music per month...

I don't care if its Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music or some new competitor. But if they get more expensive they will not win people over.

Aren't Spotify deals typically coming from the record companies themselves, not the musicians? Unless artists reject the current record company model, Spotify isn't going to be able to fix this problem for them.

Musicians have complained in the past and threatened to leave and some have left... just to then come back.

I'm trying to come up with a word for that.. I think it starts with a M and ends with a Y and has a onopol in the middle somewhere.

It's hard to argue that Spotify is a monopoly when Apple Music, whatever Google's service is called now and Tidal have pretty much the same selection. And you can buy DRM free music still on iTunes and Qobuz. And even physical media. Oligopoly at worst.

> I'd say it is even worse, because people is paying but the money goes to a middleware company that is not paying the right price

Because of contracts the _artists_ signed, not the consumer.

> If this is not sustainable for the artists, how is this different than piracy?

The difference is that every artist has a choice if his music lands on Spotify or not - and if he accepts the conditions offered. The main problem of many of these artists is that they signed bad distribution deals with their labels and are giving away a big chunk % of streaming revenues. That isn't Spotifys fault.

Also, according to Spotifys latest financial statement, they are expecting a $200-300m operating loss for 2021, so i find it hard to argue that Spotify is being "too greedy" when they aren't even profitable.

Clearly it is as artists are not starving and can pay for their rent, lifestyle etc.

They just simply ”want more”, and who wouldn’t, but free market and supply/demand disagrees with them. If artists don’t like Spotify’s offering they can pull their music out of the service.

Taking a look at their most recent financial statement we can do some quick calculations.

  (All figures in million euros)
               Revenue        Cost of Revenue     Profit
  Premium   :  7135           5126                2009
  Free (ads):  745            739                 6
  
  Overall   :  7880           5865                2015

Now currently the claim is that they are paying out $0.0038 per stream and we want to raise that to $0.01 which would be a 2.63 multiple.

For spotify free that would mean that they just have to include 2.63x more ads, this is doable but I'm sure it would hurt adoption and maybe people would move from the platform.

For spotify paid they could cut down their profit margin and pay 39% more per stream than they currently do (ignoring that they have more than 2B eur in other business expenses currently). But even after that they would still have to raise their prices by a multiple of 1.91.

This would mean they would have to charge about $19.10 a month to not loose money on licencing in the US market.

This is good analysis. Small quibble with the last part - we don't know how much the price charged to consumers needs to increase to be able to afford $0.01 a stream. Any increase in price will see a drop in subscribers, dropping revenue. An increase in price could reduce revenue, making it harder to afford the increased payout.

On the other hand, when you think about take-home pay for the artists, more people listening, even if paying less for individual streams, can mean more money.

Isn't one of the strengths of the internet the fact that it's easier to scale and reach a wider audience, thus having more money in the end?

Since the cost is linear to number of streams, it only matters if the premium subscribers that drop have a lower average streams/month rate than the average premium subscribers.

This assumes, like the post two levels above me, that Spotify don't need the profits for anything and just need to break even.

Let's do some back-of-the-envelop calculations:

Let's say people stream for 4 hours a day on average.

4 * 60 = 240 minutes

Let's say a song is 3 minutes.

240 / 3 = 80 streams == 80p/day

80p * 30 days per month = 2400p

2400p == £24

So that would be ~2.4x increase in price for end users without including Spotify cut or taxes.

Doesn't seem possible to me.

Also, consider the free account. Presumably, the artist still wants to get paid. So now Spotify somehow needs to be able to make back those 2,400 pennies per user from advertisement.

It seems extremely unlikely to me that Spotify users stream 4 hours per day on average. I suspect it's less than one hour.

It's a fairly arbitrarily number sure, but I think it could be representative. During the working week I listen to music almost all the working day, when I as commuting that adds on another couple of hours.

Even if it's 2 hours a day it would still represent an increase in costs.

Another poster put it better: for $9.99 per month you would be able to pay for 999 streams, I am sure a typical user can easily exceed 999 streams in a month.

Well for instance, I'm on a family plan (6 people total for $15) and I stream a full workday+ daily. I know lots of people who do the same, where they have a lot of "background music" time and then a little active listening.

It's also still remarkably cheap for unlimited access to all the music ever recorded.

That ship sailed in the 90s with widespread music piracy. The market simply doesn't value digital copies of recorded music that much anymore.

Spotify was an increase in artist revenues as prior to that most people were paying nothing for their music, be it bittorrent in the 00s, cd copying in the 90s, or recording radio to tape in the 80s.

Nit: It's nowhere close to all the music ever recorded. It's barely most of the mainstream artists.

The problem is that people don't care about "all the music ever recorded". They mostly care about a very limited selection of music. And if Spotify starts costing like $45 a month, how many people still think it's worth it? You can buy like four albums off of iTunes for that and then listen to them as much as you want.

I'd just go back to torrenting at that price.

Will consumers pay that price is the question?

For all music ever recorded, maybe. But Spotify doesn't even have half of what I'm regularly listening to - a regular annoyance - let alone half of all music ever recorded.

There is also the issue of fraud. Click/Stream farms are already soaking up the artists pool of revenue, and this change would incentivize it more. Justin Bieber recently asked his fans to go to sleep with his new song on repeat, and I'm sure other artists/labels are looking at ways to game the system as well. In my opinion there needs to be a way to pay artists based on first time streams from new accounts.

I listen to far more than 1000 tracks a month, but quite a few of those are duplicates; though the music changes every month. With that listening pattern, it wouldn't make sense for me to pay for 1p/stream.

If the prices increased enough to offset a 1p/stream, I'd jump ship and buy used CDs again, since that would become more cost effective, even with buying a CD a month or so. There are cheaper substitutes to music listening, even if it would be less convenient to discover new music.

Imagine if Youtube creators started trying to get $0.01 per play. This is just a little crazy. Spotify and competitors successfully captured a LARGE number of people who were not paying anyone at all. There has already been a large increase in friction on streaming music the past few years, this will just be a nail in the coffin pushing everyone to go back to pirating.