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Comment by xavxav | Hacker News Reader

I'm not familiar with the structure of stream payouts on Spotify, but if 80 million streams gives 12 dollars, that means Taylor Swift's 26.1B streams give ~4k?

I knew the rates were bad but damn...

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From a different article:

Not 3 cents, a third of one penny per stream. By that metric, Weird Al would have earned a little more than $12, more like $350,000 but his point stands.

https://gizmodo.com/weird-al-spotify-wrapped-artist-pay-1851...

If that's how much he earns, I'm not sure his point does stand.

If he's making $350k from Spotify, I'm guessing he makes about that much from all the other streaming services combined. $700k in income from what is essentially an advertisement for your tours and merch feels like a pretty good deal.

$700k regardless is a good chunk of cash, but can you blame an artist for asking, "Whoa what the fuck?" if that's still a lot less than they would've made in a time before Spotify existed?

Is it though? Someone might listen to your tracks on Spotify because it’s included in the flat rate, but would have never bought a CD or record of you.

And then those records had production costs and needed to be put in stores etc.

Yes, at the peak of CDs, there was more money to be made. But I’m not sure if the difference is really that big.

>Is it though?

>But I’m not sure if the difference is really that big.

I'm struggling to understand why so many musicians - countless numbers, from nearly every genre, with all different sizes of fan bases - have been complaining about Spotify reducing their income if the difference wasn't "really that big".

I am a musician (ambitious amateur) with some tracks online and I also had a record contract in the 90s. I earn more today. Which is still very little, but it’s more than with CDs.

Would I like to earn more? Sure! But I can’t see that happening with all the competition in the entertainment space today. Mind you, people have many more places where they can spend their money now, so it’s not only music business today vs music business 30 years ago, but also music business vs gaming vs movie and tv show streaming etc.

>I am a musician (ambitious amateur) with some tracks online and I also had a record contract in the 90s. I earn more today. Which is still very little, but it’s more than with CDs.

Interesting! I'm also a musician, though mostly just for the fun of it (but I do love whenever I get the chance to play out!) and have been heavily active in my local scene for a few decades, and my anecdotal experience with other musicians who actually try and eke out some cash from it seems to differ from yours, and I've heard nothing but complaints. But that's anecdata for ya! Glad you're seeing the opposite effect!

>But I can’t see that happening with all the competition in the entertainment space today.

This has been a point I've been making with my music friends for some time now. A common argument you see is that, well, I put work into making this, it deserves to be listened to/looked at and I should be compensated for it. I just don't understand how people can take that perspective when you step back and realize that there is more art being made than there are eyes or ears for it all.

The only reason they would have made more is reduced competition. Streaming allows historical catalogs to be infinitely available, and vastly lowers the bar for smaller musicians to add their music to the catalog. There's also more foreign music available then ever before. The supply of music is vastly increased thanks to streaming, but demand really can't increase, so obviously the price is going to fall.

It's not income directly for him, it's paid to his label, and that label will take their own cut. My impression is that the label takes the largest cut of all the people involved, but I'm happy to be corrected on that.

Not to forget that Weird Al is doing a lot of covers - so he is not the original composer of the song. Performers usually get paid way less (everybody can perform a cover of any song out there), but the composers get paid the lion share. I also doubt he gets $12 but probably lot more, the video is just intended to draw attention to Spotify's payout schemes.

Weird Al does not do covers. His albums are a mixture of parodies and fully original pieces. The parodies often use the same melody as the source work, but with original lyrics. Sometimes the music is itself parodied, and performed using an accordian or some other unique instrument.

In terms of creativity, artistic vision, lyrical difficulty or any other metric, Weird Al should be understood as an incredibly talented musician.

Sometimes the music is itself parodied, and performed using an accordian or some other unique instrument.

For this conversation, that is completely irrelevant and he still has to pay royalties to the original composer. Furthermore, while Weird Al does have many completely original songs, looking at his streaming numbers that isn't what most people seem to listen to.

The fact that he is both very talented and very creative is both true and irrelevant.

Weird Al doesn't do covers, aside from a few exceptions. He does parodies. Parody falls under fair use, so legally I don't think he has to pay royalties, though he may anyway.

I'm not a lawyer, and most of my knowledge of copyright law comes from Tom Scott's video on the subject [1], but it's worth noting that it's not universally agreed on that Weird Al's parodies fall under fair use. Again, I am not a lawyer, at best I'm a novice when it comes to copyright law, but what I do know, I agree with what Tom says: I wouldn't expect Weird Al to win if he was taken to court (if he didn't ask permission).

[1] https://youtu.be/1Jwo5qc78QU

IIRC Weird Al treats his parodies more like covers (even going so far as to get permission), and there are credits for the composers, etc. So I wouldn't be surprised if they pay out more like covers than parodies.

He likely doesn't want to be in front of the Supreme Court someday having to defend the parodic aspect like the famous Barbie Girl case, especially as it is not clear that all of his songs are parodies of the song and not some other aspect in the format of the song.

Not disagreeing, but you have to look beyond US copyright law. Fair use is less of a thing i.e. in Europe, and his streams clearly come from all over the world. I would just assume his label made deals with the respective copyright holders covering several jurisdictions and markets just to be on the safe side. That doesn't necessarily mean they had to do those deals.

The parody aspect is only relevant for the lyrics side of things, he still has to pay royalties to the composer for the melodies.

> Spotifies

Spotify's

Edited (not a native speaker).

> from what is essentially an advertisement for your tours and merch

Isn’t the whole point that this part is not the way it should be?

That 0.003/stream is paid to the label of the artists with the most advantageous contracts. The label will forward some part of that to the artist, and if the artist has an advantageous contract that may be a large part.

But if the label was good at negotiating with Spotify, maybe the label was also good at negotiating with the artists, and the artists's share is capped at $12?

Sure, but it's not all to keep. He is a business (or his label is). He has personnel expenses, production expenses, studio expenses, expenses, etc.. If he keeps 1/4 of that $350k, he's doing well. Multiply by a small number, maybe 3 or 4, to account for his other income streams.

He's a pretty well-known artist, one of the top X. He ought to be making a good living, and maybe he is - but I doubt he's getting rich.

Taylor Swift is also a fun example as she refused to be on Spotify for some time because of “artists get paid pennies” reason. But then she signed some deal eventually to increase payouts basically for everyone. Now it’s been a while, and Spotify is way more used nowadays, so I’m not sure where the power balance is anymore.

Artists of TS' popularity can cut side deals with Spotify, same way Spotify cuts deals with Google Play to play less than what other app developers pay. Also, I think TS owns her record label and the master tapes, so royalties would accrue directly to her company.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/20/23969690/google-spotify-...

Trying different calculators online, 80 million streams estimates to about $200k in royalties paid out. Probably wildly inaccurate based on different deals etc., but probably in that order of magnitude instead of nickels. How that is distributed to the artist I guess is up to the label.

it's not possible to calculate exact payout because the payout is 70% of every dollar spotify generates so that obviously fluctuates day to day, then you have ad tier vs premium tier and then i read that the payout goes through another calculation based on what total percentage of streams you have out of the total and then depending on the label how much they pass on

I'm pretty sure it was hyperbole.

Wait, hold on, you're telling me Weird Al was doing some sort of joke here?

Weird Al is something of a commedian, so when $12 was probably an exaggeration for commedic affect. Like a joke.

I'm a completely unknown artist with 4 songs on Spotify, mostly released during 2020. In total I'm at 54388 plays, which has earned $42.41. This is across all platforms, though Spotify is 95% of the plays.

I'm not sure if Spotify has dropped their payout per play since 2020 but I'm likely at the lowest payout rate and I'd say it's not terrible (although it's not great). You also get paid more for Spotify premium streams, which afaik was the majority of my streams.

An artist with clout no doubt negotiates a much higher rate.

I guess if spotify sues him for libel, then it will be documented the actual payout... which is probably higher than 12$ but lower than 80M$...

> I guess if spotify sues him for libel

Obviously this would be a terrible case against a known humorist making an obvious joke, but can you imagine how horribly that would backfire?

The numbers are obviously not accurate.

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