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Comment by paulgb | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone else find it counter-intuitive that indie labels would benefit here?

The way I'm thinking about it is, a band stands to gain if their listeners generally listen to less (total) songs than the average user, but stands to lose if their listeners listen to more songs than the average user. My thought is that listeners who listen to more music are more likely to develop a taste for the longer tail (desire for variety and possibility for exposure.) From the studies they cite, though, it sounds like the opposite happens.

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You might be right, but I think wrong. I would assume that people with non discerning tastes would be more prone to clicking whatever popular playlist is thrown at them while people with preferences would. People with specific tastes would probably fall into grooves of specific groups for distinct periods of time. I know most of my music streaming is playing specific groups. But that is of course just anecdata

In the more nice corners of the music world - especially dance, jazz, and classical - it is very common for music fans to describe their tastes by following a specific label. A good label head is a tastemaker and curator, and their label brand will all be a consistent kind of sound (or level of quality, for classical).

When you find a DJ you like, you figure out what label they're signed with, and if the label head has done their job right you've just discovered a whole family of related similar artists who produce music in the same style and often tour/perform together.

This doesn't really happen as much in other genres, where the goal is to be signed with a sub-imprint from Sony, Universal, etc... there isn't nearly as much curation going on.

Its too late for me to edit this comment but FWIW I intended to write about "niche corners", not "nice corners" - hopefully it seems a little less elitist with that context :)

You’re neglecting what fraction of users actually listen to indie artists’ music. It does hurt payoffs when listeners listen to more (diverse) music, but the payoffs are not diluted by the masses who individually listen to less, but cumulatively listen to much more music from mainstream artists. This combined meta-user is listening to a LOT of music, of which dilutes the number of plays of indie music. As long as there are users who listen to mainstream music but not indie music, indie artists will always be better of under the proposed scheme.

My intuition says that an example of Simpson’s paradox might be hiding here, in case someone is interested in constructing the mapping and making it explicit.

> As long as there are users who listen to mainstream music but not indie music, indie artists will always be better of under the proposed scheme.

I don't think that's right?

Let's say there are 99 users who listen to 10 mainstream tracks per month, and 1 user who listens to only to ABC band. As I understand it, ABC band gets 1% of the total share of the total pot under the user-centric model.

Under the current model, though, if the ABC band listener listens to 100 ABC band tracks per month, while the mainstream listeners listen to 50 mainstream tracks per month, ABC band makes up 100 of the 5050 total plays, almost 2% of total track plays. So under the current system, ABC band makes nearly twice as much under the current system than the user-centric system.

Suppose in addition to those 100 users you had 2 coffee shops that play the top 40 on repeat 18 hours a day. At least I think that is what was suggested.

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