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Comment by joshryandavis | Hacker News Reader

They have to turn things around. I don't think I could go back to life without Spotify.

As long as Rdio isn't in the same boat, we'll be OK.

AFAIK all the streaming music services face this problem. The record companies demand so much off them that they barely break even.

'So much'? You honestly think an artist/label getting $0.003 per play is 'so much'? What world do you live on. At least with iTunes if say 1000 fans your track, you'll get at least $500 from the sales. But if those same 1000 just streamed the track from Spotify, they'd each have to play the track 166 times to get the same royalties.

Can you support the $0.003 figure? I've seen widely different figures in a few faces.

I've seen financial reports from an independent artist (distributing through CDBaby). Here's the figures:

Spotify: $0.0022 Deezer: $0.0022 LastFM: $0.0005 iTunesMatch: $0.003

These vary very slightly from time to time but iTunes Match has regularly been the highest.

It varies by month, by country, and by record label. So it's hard to give an exact figure for every artist. $0.003 is on the top end of the scale though.

Sorry, that's not what I meant. I meant that the record companies ask for enough money that the company can stay in business but so much that they make a big profit.

Personally I think the amount artists get paid by streaming services is wrong. $0.003 and even less per stream is what I've seen but we also must remember that artists signed to the major labels get paid a much higher cut due to deals they make with the streaming services. I think the services would work best if artists/labels could opt-in and the price per stream was fixed for all artists ($0.02 per play seems fair to me).

You honestly think an artist/label getting $0.003 per play is 'so much'?

Yes. And this sense of entitlement is getting on my nerves.

The cost of music distribution has gone from infinite to ZERO in just about 130 years. This is a great achievement for us as a species and we should adapt accordingly instead of bemourning expired business models.

The music industry was constructed around the bottleneck of physical media distribution. This bottleneck does not exist anymore.

Last I heard Rdio is in acquisition talks with Microsoft so it seems like they're absolutely in a similar boat. http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/10/03/rumor-microsoft-is-...

Same, been using Spotify daily since the invite only days in 2008. Don't know what I'd do if it would disappear, are there good alternatives?

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