Comment by cthalupa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cthalupa | Hacker News Reader

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>It's a bit like saying we can't stop music piracy, now that Napster exists.

We effectively didn't, though, at least as far as artists are concerned. Streaming revenue is abysmal for artists. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2021-...

Piracy made music acquisition too convenient for the consumers, so an alternative had to be created - but this alternative really only helps the labels, and not the people actually making the music.

It's not clear to me that the streaming world is better for artists than the Napster one. At least anyone wanting to legally listen to music then would buy albums, rather than just having a spotify subscription. Not that royalties on physical CDs were great, but my understanding is they did work out better for most artists than we see with streaming royalties.

I don't know what a potential analogy would be here with stable diffusion or dall-e or whatever, but I don't know that people were able to immediately identify the potential downsides with "winning" against piracy, either.

> We effectively didn't, though, at least as far as artists are concerned. Streaming revenue is abysmal for artists.

But that's not Napster's fault. Spotify pays a lot of money for playing of a song, of that the artist only sees a tiny percentage due to music middlemen trying to relive the 90's.

Sure.

And that's why I buy music off Bandcamp whenever I can, and thankfully most of the music I listen to is on smaller labels, so usually even more money goes to artists.

I'm just saying that the solutions that pop up once you "win" are not necessarily ones that provide a win for the people you are trying to protect.

Spotify pays a lot of money for playing a song? Out of a $10/month fee, that clearly can't be true.

If P2P was somehow impossible, we would still be buying DRMd tracks for $1 each on iTunes. Spotify would at best, cost $80/month.

> Spotify pays a lot of money for playing a song? Out of a $10/month fee, that clearly can't be true.

Spotify take in €9.5 billion and pay out 70% of that as fees to record companies who take their slice before giving the artist nothing.

I would consider that a lot of money, even if you disagree.

I distribute my music through CDBaby, and looking at transaction history I've been getting $3.65 per thousand streams. That's not nothing, and is much higher than I'd get from radio.

Spotify is taking in a lot of money and paying 70% to labels, which adds up to a lot of money for artists depending on their agreement with their label/distributor. But the per stream rate is still very low because there are trillions of songs streamed annually.

I'm sorry, I don't want to sound dense but I'm not clear what your point is.

Are you saying that CD Baby is a better distribution technique than standard labels because you get good margins? I didn't know CD Baby until I just looked them up but they appear to be a distributor, so your $3.65 metric is still being paid by Spotify/Amazon/Apple. Please correct me if I'm wrong but that is much higher than the normal published numbers by 10-100x.

Is this an RIAA moment where labels are trying to make other people look like jerks rather than accepting what they do, or are people using the "per 1000 streams" poorly because they will always look worse on successful platforms?

The point is that 1/3 cents a play isn't a lot. Argue against that claim if you like, but engage with it instead of using weird rhetoric to avoid it.

I don't think that was the point that anyone was making.

In fact Jefftk has stated the exact opposite to your position.

> that is much higher than the normal published numbers by 10-100x.

$3.65 per thousand is at the low end of what I see elsewhere. For example https://twostorymelody.com/spotify-pay-per-stream/ has $3-$5 per thousand.

> I'm not clear what your point is.

I think the distribution of streaming revenues is generally reasonably fair, and people who say things like "Spotify pays artists nothing" are confused about either (a) how much money there is to divide up or (b) where it is going.

You are right on those numbers, I miscounted when I looked at those numbers.

I'm glad that there is someone creative on here that can educate and confirm.

Anything is a lot of money if you offer no basis for comparison. A million dollars seems like a lot until you say that it's what you paid to build a downtown skyscraper.

The math here makes a flawed presumption: that you play a song only once after buying it from iTunes.

I obviously don't know your listening habits, so for you that may be the case. But people will listen to a single song far more often than once. Or otherwise there'd had to be 77.946.027 new users on spotify[1] last month all playing Ed Sheeran once. Clearly nonsense.

If you play every $1 iTunes song eight times on spotify, the costs (and therefore fees) will be on par: $10/month.

[1] https://open.spotify.com/artist/6eUKZXaKkcviH0Ku9w2n3V

70% percent of Spotify revenue goes to the artists (content owners to be precise), I doubt that was the case when you bought a CD (I have found numbers closer to 40%). It is not abysmal, revenue never seemed to be better.

From the article I linked:

>The actual recording artists? “They’re keeping anywhere between 5% and a quarter.”

That is a far cry from 70%

That is not Spotify's fault. It is a deal made by artists that splits revenue between them and producer, record label etc.

70% of Spotify's revenue is to be split that way compared to ~40% of revenue of CD sales.

It doesn't matter if it's Spotify's fault - I'm not saying they are the evil empire. I am saying that streaming is how we "beat" piracy, and it was not a panacea for the people it was supposed to protect - unless we consider the labels the people it was supposed to protect.

You're also comparing apples to oranges on revenue. 40% of the revenue of a $10-$18 CD sale is a lot different than 70% of a $10/mo subscription being split out over however many artists someone might listen to on spotify.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/arts/music/streaming-musi...

Lots of artists talk about how they simply can't make a living off streaming royalties - artists that were able to do in the era of album sales. Obviously any sort of comfortable living requires merch sales and touring.

Comparing artists that could make record sales earlier to all current streaming artists is comparing apples to oranges.

I agree that Spotify's revenue split is not perfect (it is in fact worse than what you described), but it is still much more fair than record sales. I consider having tape/CD record sold in physical shops (i.e. not during concerts) would be a success on its own in the 90s.

Now every artist can publish their work on Spotify and start to earn money, possibly getting noticed through it. It is much feasible to not be a part of record label now.

>unless we consider the labels the people it was supposed to protect

You've hit the nail on the head there. The same record companies that got up to very dodgy copy protection schemes [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

But even taking those %s at face value: it's 40% of a much larger amount of money (a whole CD versus some streams).

When considering revenue of 1999 as 100% CD sale and 2021 as 100% streaming we got something like (in inflation adjusted $bn).

(1999) 40% of 23.7 = 9.48

(2021) 70% of 14.9 = 10.43

So while gaming got much more popular during that time, music still brings a lot of revenue to the artists thanks to the streaming.

(1) https://www.statista.com/chart/17244/us-music-revenue-by-for...

> 70% percent of Spotify revenue goes to the artists (content owners to be precise)

That's pretty important difference. If it is going to recording company that pays pittance to artists no wonder "streaming revenue is bad"

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