Are you saying big acts get more per stream?
Also, I'd love to hear what you think about how the incentives from Spotify et al are changing music itself. From what I understand, a play isn't registered until a certain portion of the song has been played. This hurts songs that have a slow build and so hooks are being pushed right up front. Do you think it's homogenizing music to any degree?
But.... what has changed is the frequency in which artists need to release content in order to compete in the algorithm arena. Some artists understand this, and more singles, EPs and early album previews allow for more "touch points" with their audiences throughout the year.
So, the album is dying? Could something like Pink Floyd's The Wall be released today? It's a two CD package with gapless songs.
But yea, you can still do a concept album like The Wall or Sgt. Pepper's. Kids doing drugs and laying around listing to weird noises for an hour+ is still a thing these days.
It's not about the physical delivery format, but about the social rituals around it and the impact they make.
Streaming cheapens and commodifies music and turns culture into wallpaper. Likewise subscription video on Netflix, etc, which seems to have become a home for trashy potboilers about zombies, vampires, superheroes, and soapy post-apocalyptic dramas. Likewise Amazon's all-you-can-binge-on KDP for fiction readers.
Culture has always had the potential to be an event. In the past, the arrival of a stand-out movie, album, or novel literally left a generational imprint.
It's hard to imagine Spotify, Netflix, Apple, or Amazon, creating an environment in which that's possible. There will be products that have millions, maybe billions of fans, but there won't be many creative projects that keep the interest of those fans for more than a month or so, and even fewer - probably none at all, in fact - that will continue to have cultural power decades after their release.
Compared to the 50ies, 70ies or even the 90ies, several things have changed significantly: How many hours of the week that people listen to their own music has increased tremendously. The number of artists and genres that people listen to over a year increased massively. How long an average song is in "the rotation" has decreased massively.
The big acts may get more per stream because of 2 factors:
1) the Spotify allocation algorithm of subscription payments works top-down from the most popular artists' percentage of total streams instead of bottom-up from individuals' play logs. (The top comment of a previous HN thread discusses this.[1])
2) Some record labels have (had?) negotiated sweetheart deals with Spotify for different revenue share and stream payouts. So a Universal/Sony/Warner major label with a roster of desirable artists that Spotify wanted may get slightly more per stream than an unknown indie label with no leverage.
That reminds me of something else I've been thinking about. The labels all have substantial equity stakes in Spotify. It feels like that could be a massive conflict of interest or maybe a collusion problem. Why should the labels push for higher streaming fees when that could hurt Spotify's stock price which would hurt the label's own balance sheets?