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Comment by ohitsdom | Hacker News Reader

"It would be really difficult to track down every single composer for every song that’s played on the radio—so onerous that it would be nearly impossible to run a radio station."

In 2015, this really shouldn't be too difficult to solve. Somehow, it isn't, so:

"So under copyright law, radio stations and other entities purchase blanket licenses from associations like BMI and ASCAP, which lets them off the hook for everything they play."

This would seem to screw smaller artists that aren't signed with big labels. Shouldn't this be easy to solve with software? Pay for what actually gets played. Blanket agreements only encourages stations to play composers covered by those agreements.

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This is exactly my problem with how Spotify works. If I pay my $120 for a year and listen exclusively to one obscure artist, that artist will get a tiny,tiny fraction of the $80 that is payed out. Most of it will go to an artist that I probably can't stand.

The explanations I've heard roughly equate to: it's too complicated. Oh really? If only there was a machine that could easily keep track of all that information, we'd be all set.

But wouldn't that obscure artist also get a tiny fraction of the money paid by the larger group of people who only listen to popular artists, so it balances out?

That works when more streams = more money. When users pay for premium, the revenue is capped. Artist payout depends on their 'market share' and it's a zero-sum game.

http://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-explained/#royalties-i...

Let's say that there are 40 million paying users, all streaming 500 songs a month...and then there's me, who only streams 5 songs a month (I'm busy, and I like throwing money away).

So, there's 20,000,000,005 total streams that month, and $400 million in revenue. Spotify takes their cut, which leaves $280 million. My artist's share, according to bc:

  echo '(5 / 20000000005) * 280000000' | bc -l
  .06999999998040000000

Seven cents.

ADDED: To clarify, seven cents for five plays isn't a bad rate at all. From the user's perspective, though, it can be offputting that I'm attracted to the platform because of a certain set of artists, and then my money goes elsewhere. I understand why they do it. Popular acts attract users, and users mean money. They gotta feed the monkey.

So if you subscribe to Spotify and then stream an extremely disproportionate amount of one artist in particular you can actually cause more money to flow to that artist than you are paying to Spotify?

Sounds like a broken model.

>Sounds like a broken model.

Basically. There was a band that had their fans plan silent tracks while they slept, and it earned them $20k:

http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/7/5690590/spotify-removes-sil...

Personally I think all the artist would be better off setting up donations via PayPal. "Did you steal our work? Throw us a few dollars."

Yes! Spotify's formula is a slap in the face to artists, and was clearly decided by big labels.

If you have a music budget of $120, and actually want to support the musicians you listen to, pay them directly. You can increase your music library by a dozen albums a year at that rate, and own them forever.

So go to see that artist performing live where they get a far more substantial chunk of money. Buy some merchandise direct from the band.

The antiquated idea is that an artist should be getting money for doing absolutely nothing because they once recorded song months or years ago. If they want to be paid they are perfectly capable of going out and working for it.

You need to look at it from a different angle.

The article starts by reporting on a $90 million dollar settlement and a "sea of lawsuits against both Pandora and Sirius XM".

The gist of these lawsuits is that one entity is collecting profits on intellectual property that they have not properly licensed nor made any effort in paying the rights-holders.

Copyright holders are winning these lawsuits because they are able to show a judge that someone else is refusing to acknowledge the commercial rights of the copyright holders and thus they are awarded damages.

Every time that someone is making money either directly or indirectly through copyrighted material they are consistently found liable for damages. There are common law precedents going back many hundreds of years and plenty of statue law that reflect this interpretation of copyright.

One of the roles of copyright systems and regulated public markets for copyright has been to reduce the number of unnecessary lawsuits. Instead of a world where people are using the justice system to properly route payments to authors and publishers, it was decided to introduce a concept of honorarium payments.

These lawsuits are not going to go away. Copyright is baked right in to the constitution of the United States and has been a part of Anglo-American government and legal systems for hundreds of years prior.

The only way to stop the lawsuits in the United States would be with a constitutional amendment that took away congress' right to establish, regulate and enforce a public copyright monopoly.

The current copyright monopoly is pretty far removed from the intentions laid out by the US Constitution, the Copyright Act of 1790 and the Statue of Anne, but the foundations, that authors have a right to a limited monopoly on authored works and thus a right to any of the profits had on putting that property to use, are quite robust from the standpoint of individual rights balance with those of the public good, and most importantly, at creating a functioning commercial marketplace for ideas.

What you don't get is that if a customer subscribes to Spotify, thinking its money is going to the artists he listens, well, it isn't the case, most of the money goes to Sony and co anyway, because they have a deal upfront with Spotify where they will get X hundreds of millions no matter what.

So the customer money goes directly into big label's pockets. How that "new model" is different from the old one? it's not it's exactly the same, aside from the fact that even big artists are getting ripped off.

It has nothing to do with your rant about how artists should sell t-shirts, posters, mugs because you know it's not tough enough to be musician, one must also produce all that shit ....

"doing absolutely nothing" isn't only wrong, it's deeply offensive.

Good recordings take an investment of time and money: time to develop the performance ability, time to develop the production skill, time to develop the composition behind the recording itself. By the time you hear it, there's already plenty of stuff that was far from "doing absolutely nothing" that's gone into it, and chances are that even successful recordings won't earn back the time involved in all of it at an above-average wage.

Sure, it's possible to make money off of performances, but touring is capital intensive (particularly for any kind of large band production), risky, and as we like to say here, doesn't scale well.

"Merchandising" is just another way of saying you think artists should have another job besides making music, because that's what it is.

Finally, would you say this?

"The antiquated idea is that an author should be getting money for doing absolutely nothing because they once wrote a book months or years ago...."

Because it's pretty much the same thing.

Though I'm actually waiting for people to suggest authors should make money off of merchandising and live appearances and "creative business models" and "innovation", given the way culture seems to be going.

Ujo solves this problem with software. You look up a song in a database, choose to purchase a streaming license, send money to the song's program, and the program distributes royalties to the individuals who are owed.

http://ujomusic.com/

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