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Comment by microtonal | Hacker News Reader

I probably listened to 300 tracks of Emancipator a month on Spotify. At 0.00786 per play, that works out to 2.85. For the last 2 years: 2.85 24. That's $56.59.*

I don't think most people listen to 300 tracks of any artist per month consecutively. Say you are doing 30 tracks per month on average by an artist, that's $5.66, less than buying three 10 track albums.

I have hundreds of albums on CD (I'd guess ~500 or 600). There are many that I probably only listened to five times.

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I don't have to listen to it consecutively. But I listen while driving, while studying, while working. I certainly fall in the category of indie fan listening to a lot of music from catalog artists, not hit makers.

Another checking in. Guilty as charged.

My main gripe is that because of this stupid model, it pushes a lot of the artists I would listen to away from spotify because it doesn't connect them directly with the revenue stream they should be getting from their true fans. Artists have a hard time surviving without that.

That's because the indie artists aren't looking at the big picture. They would be getting less than they hoped for from the Spotify model, but now you will likely never even hear about them. They're significantly hindering their growth potential and ability to sell concert tickets.

This. I think one issue is that the music industry pegged the price of CDs at around $18. But that was for hit maker CDs sold to mass market listeners.

But there's a separate listener: the explorer. The value of any given track is exceedingly low, but these are the people you depend on for the discovery function. Personally, I prefer that role, but the cost before Spotify was exorbitant unless you were an industry insider.

It doesn't negate the validity of wanting compensation for Spotify plays. Not being on a music service is one way to let your listeners know that the system is fucked and maybe make it change.

The system isn't fucked. Those bands used to NEVER get radio play except from the occasional college radio station that almost nobody listened to. And many of those bands never even made it that big. Now they have listeners all over the world. And if there's a decent market for their music they will get concert ticket sales. Spotify has got to be the best marketing a small band can get, and Spotify pays you for the privilege of marketing for you.

Just because situation is better doesn't mean it can't be further improved. You're considering 'No Spotify' vs 'Spotify' instead of 'Spotify' vs 'A better Spotify'.

If you think on principles, Spotify should in the long term aim for maximum customer satisfaction. This means optimizing the satisfaction per customer instead of per music play, seems to be currently done. By concentrating money on bands each user listens to each of those bands (getting more money) should theoretically improve in quality (and give Spotify more attention), increasing overall user satisfaction. It's a simple reasoning.

Never mind the fact that it's just plain wrong to assume that "those bands NEVER used to get airplay". E.g. there are a number of significant artists on the label Drag City, such as Ty Segall and White, both of which get plenty of radio play, and most of the label's catalogue is not available to stream.

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