Why is it that a “play” is defined by a discrete threshold line 30 seconds? Isn’t it way more logical to define some continuous relationship between amount of time played and amount of money generated like it’s done on YouTube?
Most people would think not. So you should pay by play, rather than per minute.
YouTube is different because number of ads shown is roughly proportional to video length. Variance in video durations is much, much higher than variance in song durations.
And 30 seconds is much longer than most people skipping through songs, and much shorter than most songs, and a nice round number.
But more importantly, for popular music, song length doesn't correlate to work or effort, generally speaking. A 6 minute song doesn't take 50% more effort than a 4 minute one.
(Other genres like classical are different though -- a 25-minute long symphonic movement obviously takes ~5x as much work to both write and record than a 5-minute one.)
Pink Floyd just read your comment and it looks like they’re headed back to the studio! Fingers crossed…
This makes sense. Every time I listen to 4’33” I am moved to tears and the thought of losing even a few seconds of that composition is abhorrent.
The goal was never to pay commensurate to the effort that was put in.
The company became Apple Music Classical, so I guess it worked well?