Never ever in all these accusations do people mention The Big Four [1]. It's always Apple to blame. And Spotify. And Deezer. And Pandora. And...
Even though music distributors control all f the market, collect all the royalties, and pay artists peanuts. Does Spotify pay artists directly? No, it can't do that. It pays the license holders which are, in 99% of the cases [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry#Consolidation
Edit: it's worse now, it's Big Three. They control 88.5% of the market, but by popularity of music that is listened to on streaming platforms, it's likely closer to 100%.
It can be that Apple, Spotify, and Google can all be screwing over creators in conjunction with their publishers.
That said, not all musicians on Spotify go through publishers.
I've yet to see any of these discussions to blame both. And your own comment literally never mentions the Big Three.
> can all be screwing over creators in conjunction with their publishers.
I prefer not to wade in to conspiracy territory. Apple may have power over the industry, but they are an outlier. The rest do whatever the industry tels them to.
Quote, [1]. Emphasis mine
--- start quote ---
Spotify primarily makes money for music from two sources — from Spotify Premium subscribers as well as from advertisers on Spotify’s free tier. Roughly ⅔ of this money is paid out to music rights holders.
--- end quote ---
Guess who are the rights holders. They get 60-65% percent of Spotify's revenue (not profit). Care to ask them where this money goes? No one ever dares to.
> That said, not all musicians on Spotify go through publishers.
It's either publishers or indie aggregators (two or three of them). Spotify doesn't pay artists directly. If it tried to do that, the big publishers would immediately pull their catalogs. And the vast majority of popular music on the platform is likely to come from big publishers, not from indie aggregators.
[1] https://loudandclear.byspotify.com/?question=how-do-artists-...
Perhaps because they are outside the context of this discussion? For the purposes of this discussion, they are a constant, no matter what Spotify or Google does.
> And your own comment literally never mentions the Big Three.
I added a caveat to my "buying from the musicians directly" exactly because of publishers.
> Apple may have power over the industry, but they are an outlier.
Not exactly - they charge the same percentage as the other players in this space that I mentioned. No conspiracy theories required to point this out.
> Care to ask them where this money goes? No one ever dares to.
Sure, in articles about music producers (I recall more than a few hitting HN over the years, especially when Taylor Swift was raising a ruckus about them and Spotify).
> And the vast majority of popular music on the platform is likely to come from big publishers, not from indie aggregators.
I don't believe anybody is disputing that.
That "constant" is the main reason artists don't get paid. And yet, only streaming services are blamed.
> added a caveat to my "buying from the musicians directly" exactly because of publishers
That's not a caveat. That is wishful thinking. How do you propose streaming services do that?
> they charge the same percentage as the other players in this space that I mentioned. No conspiracy theories required to point this out
Yes, they do charge the same. So it means that 60-65% of their revenue goes to rights holders.
But sure. "They are in on it with rights holders to rip artists off".
> Sure, in articles about music producers
There are very few such articles and most, like your comment, blame streaming services for paying artists too little even though streaming services have nothing to do with paying artists. It's the publishers/rights holders who do that.
It works on the web but it is still a hassle to use on mobile. I imagine Apple can potentially do this using Apple Card, but I don't think this is going to happen any time soon.
That's an unlikely combination. So the viable alternative is a middle ground. A central app store and subscription management takes a cut/adds a tax. I'm ready to pay say 1% or 2% for that service.