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Comment by Y-bar | Hacker News Reader

I think Spotify's payment model is flawed, not the large number they pay out, but how they distribute it.

If I pay them EUR 10 per month and listen to 200 songs by seven artists/bands, I would like Spotify to first take what they need to run the service (and make a profit) from the money. Then I would like the rest of my payment to be divided among the artists of the songs I listened to.

Because Spotify seems to pool all payments into one large sum, if an artist has some fans who listens 500x each to their songs then those fans will "siphon off" my payment to their favourite artist.

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Do they pay podcast creators from the same pool?

It really sucks if my subscription money goes to Joe Rogan because some dummy listened to him 10x more than I listened to music.

Companies may pretend they have buckets of money but, at the end of the day, it all comes down to the same bottom line. So, effectively yes, the same pool.

Joe Rogan and the people Spotify have a contract with sign a contract for a fixed amount.

So each listen would have a variable payout depending on how much else you listened to that month? If you only listened to 1 song, the rights holder would receive all of your monthly payment (sans Spotify’s cut)?

That seems overly complex and more volatile. My guess is that there is no pressure from the artists or rights holders to do this. It’s revenue neutral for Spotify after all. Tidal is the most “artist-friendly” service and they don’t work like that.

> So each listen would have a variable payout

Each listen have a variable payout already. If Spotify has EUR 100M in subscription and ad payments this month and 30B listens it will be a different amount paid per listen compared to a month where they had 110M in income and 24B listens.

> That seems overly complex and more volatile

How so? The current system incentives bot activity to game the system by paying for one account, using that to listen to one or two artists thousands of times, netting those artists more than what the account paid Spotify. With my requested system the payout from bots would never be profitable and therefore reduce volatility (and reduce overhead needed to analyse traffic for bot behaviour).

> If you only listened to 1 song, the rights holder would receive all of your monthly payment (sans Spotify’s cut)?

There is no downside at all here, but it seems you think so?

It would help solve bots absolutely, but there are other ways to approach fraudulent activity. I don’t see a huge downside personally, but I’m not in the industry. Given it’s a large, competitive market and this change appears revenue neutral, I think there must be underlying reasons neither of us are aware of.

If the majority of artists and labels wanted this system I don’t see why they couldn’t lobby and negotiate for it?

Wait what? So people that use the service more support their artists more? That's unfair. I pay the same 10 euro's per month as they do. My use should have nothing to do with it.

If I decide to only listen to one song, then the proceeds of my 10 euro's should go to that artists. At least, I'd find that logical.

I wish I didn't know what you just wrote, but thanks for mentioning it anyway.

Yup, there are a few more variables[1] going into it, but that is the cliffs notes.

1. https://releese.io/article/how-are-royalties-calculated-on-s...

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