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mkolodny

Complex accounting isn't a good reason to pay artists unfairly.

Having said that, the accounting doesn't have to be that complex:

1. When paying out an artist, list out the (anonymous) users who listened to their music on Spotify.

2. For each user:

a) Show the what percent of the user's total listening was spent listening to that artist. (e.g. 40%)

b) Multiply the amount the user paid by the percentage from (a). (e.g. $10/month * 40% = $4)

3. Sum all of the amounts from #2. (e.g. $4 + $3 + ... = $total)

Also, accounting would only be a problem for Spotify. 99% of artists would prefer this model, even if it meant more complex accounting.

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It might not be complicated, but it's cumbersome as hell: "Hey, Rhianna, here's your 65-million line payment breakdown for the week! I know it used to just be one simple intuitive calculation, but isn't this great!?"

> 99% of artists would prefer this model, even if it meant more complex accounting.

What are you basing that on?

Artists paid more might not complain, and those paid less (likely the more popular artists) would complain. Then there are new artists, growing artists, and people who would just be annoyed by the complexity.

The theory is simple, but the implementation is a complete nightmare.

If only we had some kind of machine that was capable of computing these complex models for us...

EDIT: my point being, if the model is fairer, we can deal with a little extra complexity.

It's a zero sum game. Spotify isn't going to pay any more in total, no matter how the rules change. That means for every winner under a new scheme, there will be a loser. If those losers are the popular artists that the service can't exist without, you have a non-starter.

Wow great catch on the the fact that any system that results in necessary artists being payed less, simply won't happen if Spotify wants to continue existing. Really applies to the entire scope of the article and not just the comment you replied to.

That assumes that those artists are already on the verge of quitting spotify, which is a bad omen for the continued existence no matter what.

It would be up to the smaller artists and their fans to pressure this change, and I'd bet there are some popular artists willing to join the cause at a small personal loss. It's good to consider the incentives, but people are invested in having an equitable society as well.

> That means for every winner under a new scheme, there will be a loser.

No, that doesn't follow. Imagine one artist is receiving all the money, and the other 10,000 artists are receiving none. Spotify could move to another payment model that would result in 10,000 winners and one loser.

Not really. Right now streaming services barely manage to pay even the top artists anything meaningful. This scheme would mean everyone gets paid barely anything, and the bigger artists may leave, which is an existential threat to the business.

>> 99% of artists would prefer this model, even if it meant more complex accounting. > What are you basing that on?

Simple, artists who are paid penauts would prefer getting paid more. We just released an album but we are not putting it on Spotify. Why bother.

i treat rdio like a collection of full length previews that allow me to discover a lot of new music. stuff i like gets my money for tickets, merch and vinyl. i do not understand why anyone would pay $10 a month to listen to the same shit they have on their ipod.

Same here, rdio is a giant preview platform for me, and it's a surprisingly great experience when you follow a bunch of people with good taste (heavy rotation section, collaborative playlists, etc.) - however everything I like gets bought since I want to own my music and prefer to keep it even if the licensing deals or the service itself changes. However, that means that there's actually a lot of overlap between my own personal (digital, lossless) collection and the one I have on rdio.

> 99% of artists would prefer this model

I mean that objectively, based on how much money they would make.

99% of artists would make more money in this model.

And, again, cumbersome accounting is a bad excuse for unfair pay.

> 99% of artists would make more money in this model.

You just shifted which number you pulled out of thin air, not the fact that you did so. Do you secretly have Spotify's streams database?

I never said it was a reason to. I simply said this method is anything but simple, as the author called it. Your method would require even more potential lines on the monthly report than the nearly identical method I described above. As yours would require a per user line, even though many of them would have duplicate rates.

Keep in mind things would still need to be split per song also, as rights holders vary per song.

Do you really think giving every artist that many potential lines of accounting every month can be called simple?

Exactly. Based on data from Spotify[1] and taking an average payment[2] of $.0052, I calculated Spotify would be storing about 20 BILLION accounting records PER MONTH.

Showing my work: 15m paying subscribers = ~150m per month, ~105m paid to artists @ .0052 per song = 20.154 million songs in a month.

[1]https://press.spotify.com/us/information/ [2]http://thetrichordist.com/2014/11/12/the-streaming-price-bib...

20 billion records per month is still reasonable, there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of businesses storing a multiple of that amount of data daily.

So your argument is that it's unreasonable to store a list of every song play, even though they already do so?

Or that it's unreasonable to make them "accounting records"? Not a problem. They aggregate using the current method to limit the number of "accounting records", they can aggregate just fine using the new method. Have "accounting" start with revenue per song the same way it used to start with listens per song, after asking the database to process its 20 BILLION records.

The model is extremely simple. The number of formulaic, near-identical lines on an arbitrary report has nothing to do with complexity.

Splitting per song already has to be done. This just gives you a different amount of money to split per song with the existing mechanisms.

Implementation and adoption are part of the complexity of a solution, in my book at least. I assume those who do not consider implementation and adoption part of the complexity have either come up with genuinely simple solutions to problems or never had to complete those portions of the task when they were not simple.

Implementation is one paragraph of SQL or statistical code, given access to the data set and a few minutes to execute.

This change in how revenue per song is calculated is truly simple.

The only hard part is convincing people it's better.

Adoption has nothing at all to do with complexity. Be careful you're not moving the goalposts.

Bill gates giving me a billion dollars to screw around with is extremely simple, and also will never be adopted.

Adoption is directly effected by the implementation and design you choose. If your app is nothing more than a table and some aggregate statistics, because you just made the simple implementation with absolutely no design, then good luck getting musicians especially older ones who probably still rely on paper copies of their monthly records being gasp mailed to them to adopt the app.

It is not moving goal posts its considering whether the 'solution' will actually work given circumstances outside the technical feasibility.

The old method mailed them revenue taken in per song. The new method will do the same. You mail them the same sheet as before, but it's probably more fair.

The old method mailed them how many times a song was played and total revenue for that song. Therefore it was easy to see the rates. With what you are describing they would only see average rate if you mail them the same sheet. It is not the same.

> Complex accounting isn't a good reason to pay artists unfairly.

But is it Spotify that pays the artists unfairly? AFAIK, Spotify pays to the record labels, and then it is up to the record label, how they distribute the money to the artists? (Also some of the money, the labels keep them selves, and do not distribute to artists.)

>Complex accounting isn't a good reason to pay artists unfairly.

That wasn't ever mentioned or implied. The point was, the author doesn't understand how complex his simple solution is.

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