Spotify pays 70% of their music revenue to publishers based on the total number of listens. All revenue is put together and split based on the global numbers. Which means that niche band I like will get next to nothing. Instead if they account for 50% of my listening time in one month, they should get 35% of what I paid to Spotify that month. Unfortunately big labels will never agree to that.
35% of 1 is the same as 0.000000035 of 10.000.000
With OP proposal, they would get USD 7.
My $7/mo should be going to the artists I actually chose to listen to, not the stuff that droned passively for hours in background environments. Particularly when I'm actually a high margin customer for Spotify; the cost to them of my subscription is low since I spend so little time on the service. That makes it all the more galling that my subscription cost is mostly going to Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran.
If my listening is to Ed Sheeran for 9 hours a day and I pay $10, spotify take $3 for a platform fee, and Ed should get 10% of the rest - $7
If your listening is to Dave Smith for 1 hour a day and you pay $10, spotify take $3 for a platform fee, and Dave should get 10% of the rest - $7
That would be a fair way of distributing the revenue
But it's not. Instead Ed Sheeran gets 90% of listens and Dave Smith 10%, the listen pot is $14, so Ed gets $12.60 and Dave gets $1.40
It also promotes botting, as spotify only counts listens, bot listening a ton to a fraudulent artist will siphon money away from essentially everyone.
"Money only goes to artists you listen" would be very good change
It doesn't calculate your amount of listening and determine the payout based on that. All listens are pooled together and all subscription money is pooled together. And the payout is determined based on that.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
100 people subscribe to spotify and listen for 100 hours a month each, for $10 a month. You listen to your favourite artist for 50 hours and other stuff for 50 hours. No-one else listens to your favourite artist.
I assume that if this is band is treated as the "average" Total listening hours = 100 * 100 = 10,00. Total money: 100 * 10 = $1,000. They get: 50 / 10,000 * $1,000 = $5
That seems fair? Obviously some bands won't have negotiating power when they first start and might get less, or some get more, but that feels like how the industry always worked, and not something to do with spotify?
Let’s say you listen 90h to another artist, and nothing else.
In the current model both artists are put together, 100h and let’s say $20 to split. Your artist gets 90% because they’ve been listened to for 90h, so they get $18 and my artist gets $2
In my model my artist gets $10 because they get 100% of what I pay and your artist gets $10 because they get 100% of what you pay.
The difference is 50/50 vs 90/10 split
Artists get big cuts when people buy their music, and if people decide to cancel their paid subscription, they still have the bought media available with no predatory gating like spotify uses to try to coerce people to resubscribing.
Digital music just becomes marketing for live performances.