Re:Musicians Wage War Against Evil Robots
by Chinjut on Monday January 02, 2023 @05:25PM
(#34224530)
What's the difference between whether my money is individually given to the artists I personally listened to and similarly for all other subscribers, or whether all subscribers' money is pooled and then re-apportioned out based on the cumulative listening tallies of all subscribers? Aren't these the same results in the end?
Imagine we are the only two subscribers:
* You spend an hour a day listening to A during your commute
* I spend 9 hours a day, my whole workday, listening to B.
In the current system, B gets 90% and A gets 10%, but some people would prefer to see a system in which they each get 50%.
Additionally, I believe they use total streaming time and not total streaming time for paid subscribers. So an artist who is popular among paid subscribers doesn't earn any more than an artist who is popular only among free subscribers.
> The Pro Rata model, currently used by all major streaming platforms, means that monthly revenue from premium subscription costs and advertisement revenues is collected into one pool of money. Spotify takes 30% of that revenue and distributes the rest based on artist’s total listening numbers, rather than the listening times of individual users. Meaning that, even if a user never listens to the most streamed artists on the platform, a percentage of the money they pay will be given to the most streamed artists.
https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2019/10/a-breakdown-of-music...