Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by zshrc | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

zshrc

Spotify has no room to speak. Pay your artist, just as greedy.

View on HN

Spotify doesn't have a monopoly on music streaming.

Apple doesn't have a monopoly on smartphones.

If a developer wants to release an app for iOS, what company do they have to go through and are there any alternatives?

Sure apple is prepping to allow 3rd party app stores but they'll likely go about it in a very Apple fashion and have some sort of catch.

Spotify gives 70% to rightsholders, yes?

Rightsholders yes, not artists. But that's not an issue Spotify is out to tackle

For a bit of perspective, look at how much the various streaming services pay to artists per stream:

Tidal 1.3 cents

Apple Music 1 cent

Youtube .8 cents

Amazon .4 cents

Spotify .33 cents

https://cloudcovermusic.com/blog/how-much-artists-make-strea...

True, but percentage terms would also be interesting. If they all pay around 60-70% of their revenue to rights-holders, which seems like the case, the question of which of these services pays best or is most ethical or whatever becomes more nuanced.

Artists seem to agree that Spotify's rates are particularly bad.

> Spotify faced the music on Monday (March 15) as creators around the globe gathered to protest the streaming giant’s royalties model.

On Monday, the U.S.-based Union of Musicians and Allied Workers took a more hands-on approach when it led a worldwide demonstration on the doorsteps of Spotify offices.

https://www.billboard.com/pro/international-creators-gather-...

Well sure, but they could be wrong.

Wouldn't the artists have first hand information on how much money they get paid from each service? The artist's union could get access to that information from their members, so would have a lot more data than most.

Notice that they didn't hold global protests at Tidal's offices.

What if it's a situation where all the music streaming services pay 70% and Spotify has the most streams and therefore the highest total dollar amount, but the lowest per-stream payment. It would be highly arguable whether Spotify is being greedy in that case. This might be what's happening!

I don't think the difference between the total amount paid by each music streaming service and the amount paid per stream by the various music services is too complex a topic for a musician's union to understand.

The statements released to artists with their royalty amount includes the number of streams played of each of their works on the service.

I am aware of that, but the metric I have been talking about this the entire time is neither of those.

What matters to artists is how much the artist is paid per stream.

Spotify pays artists the least per stream.

I am disagreeing with you about whether that is an important metric.

It may not be important to you, however you do not speak for the artists.

> Among its demands, the Union is calling for a 1 cent per stream royalty rate

https://www.billboard.com/pro/international-creators-gather-...

To artists it definitely is an important metric, and Spotify screws artists over on that metric worse than any other streaming service.

I am talking about a different metric.

Per-stream count lacks relevance on the count of the model of paying X% of revenues to the rights holders.

I heard Cory Doctorrow speak on the Pivot podcast about that!

Labels were investors in Spotify…..

So to boost profits for IPO they had incentives to reduce payouts to artists…

Or something like that. It all sounded very corrupt!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com