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Comment by kkukshtel | Hacker News Reader

30 years on and surprising how nothing has really changed from the model outlined here: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music

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Are you complaining that DJs can earn money by playing other people’s music on a stream, or that they don’t earn enough playing other people’s music on a stream?

I would complain that the DJ is making too small of a piece of the pie in this situation, given that their performance matters significantly. People can hear music anywhere nowadays. All these players should get paid but the record company taking that big of a chunk is overstating the impact of the music in these streams.

DJing is bog easy and commoditised to the point where anyone can pick it up and sound believable by pushing a few buttons that literally do the mechanical work for you. This is coming from someone who's DJ'd for twenty years in all sorts of establishments. These Twitch DJs have donation buttons and merch that they get the majority of their income through anyway, if they even are monetised (many aren't). Personally I wouldn't mind if 100% of the revenue from my Twitch DJ streams went to the artists.

It would be surprising if the artists made close to 25% after all the record company execs and middle-men have taken their cut. Speaking of bog easy

You're right, this stuff really doesn't help the indie people who would need the most support as nearly all of the long tail falls outside of the program.

You'd be surprised how many artists own 100% of their rights these days though- people have gotten way more aware of the business side of things in the past 20 years, and there are things like label deals where the rights roll back to the artist after x years.

DJing has a quite smooth learning curve, with easy entry point, and one can quickly become passable. However to build an active following on Twitch is still quite hard work. Maybe not difficult, but certainly seems like it requires persistence and constantly being in entertainment mode. Many put in considerable effort in the "show" aspect of it - on top of the music. Both in terms of visuals and of crowd interaction. I believe that may of those that are successful in the "DJ" format on Twitch would also be successful another formats (like gaming). There are reasons why people choose Twitch DJ over a pre recorded mix on YouTube/Mixcloud/Spotify etc. All this to say that the streamer does bring something. I don't really know how that should be represented financially though...

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