Can we afford free music and still pay creators fairly? | Hacker News Reader

Can we afford free music and still pay creators fairly?

4 pointsskyhitz10 comments

We are releasing the alpha version of an ad free music player (Skyhitz - https://skyhitz.io). Our vision is to make music available worldwide at the lowest cost possible, if the community builds itself strongly enough we might be able to enjoy great music for free and without ads. Creators will also be rewarded fairly by building a direct bridge between artists and fans. BTW we also plan to use blockchain technologies to enable payments between the community at a very low cost. What are your thoughts? We are open to hear some innovative ideas to work on.

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"fairly" is hard to achieve. 500k per year for a good singer might seem fair from my perspective. But the singer who makes millions per year traditionally will not think it is fair for him or her.

It's true, by fair I mean being able to match minimum wage income for a small size fan base (10k fans approximately). This also depends where they are located at.

>Can we afford free music and still pay creators fairly?

No. What's going to make you different from literally every other company that has tried this and failed in the past 20+ years?

Why failed? Aren't those companies still thriving well?

Music tech companies do very well, but they fail at compensating creators fairly. Spotify's valuation at IPO will be about $20bn, but they completely fail at paying back music creators. They take more than what they give. https://www.theverge.com/2015/12/7/9861372/spotify-year-in-r...

I see. What about don't being greedy, taking less profit and paying more to creators? Won't it be a sustainable business?

That would be ideal, and it can be turned into a sustainable business. This won't happen at big companies though, it would have to emerge from new startups.

The big difference relies on the fan, he will be able to pick which artist they give their monetary contribution to. Think about it like a big music festival in which at the entrance you receive an electronic wristband with some currency you have to spend. You go around checking out different shows, then you tap your wristband and decide how much you will give to each artist. It is a small difference but this will foster the creation of better music.

This won’t go the way you think!

It probably won't, but it's interesting to try.

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