People talk a lot about spotify not paying enough to artists. I read they paid something like $5BN last year. And I think it's always been something like 70% of the total revenue being paid out to rights holders. They have still never made a profit and continue to operate at a loss. I don't really want to be a huge spotify apologist, but I don't really know what more you could ask of them than to pay 70% of every dollar that comes in to rights holders. The top streamed artists on spotify make bank. In a way it's truly a more democratic system, just unfortunately people have shit taste. In the 90s if you bought a cd by some one hit wonder or even a mid sized band and only ever listened to the one radio track that pulled you in and then stuffed the cd in the drawer and never listened again, that was the same amount of money paid to the record company, rights holders, artist as if you bought the downward spiral and listened to it over and over all the way though for decades. An unfortunate side effect is smaller less popular artists don't get the big break as much, record cos don't take those chances like they once did. The model is different but there were plenty of problems with the old way too. I think the modern small and mid size artists are more able to reach a small audience that will come out to see them tour and earn a living. It's not a rock star living, it's just (hopefully) a living. Not that I don't consider pop music to be art, but but the big downside is that many artists who we would think of as more artistic don't get the same support they sometimes would have back then. I don't know if trent got a boatload of money to go make the fragile, but probably he did and that kind of thing only happens now for the very biggest artists. That's perhaps a downside to streaming, but it's always always been a miniscule amount of bands and artists who "make it," and I feel like there might be more today who get by making art and making a living than in the 70s or 90s, but that's just a feeling. I use spotify, but I also try to buy music and swag and concert tickets from artists I want to support. Go bandcamp Fridays. Anyway, this was a long way of saying I think if spotify increases their prices by 2 bucks, I'd hope it would still mean 70% gets paid out. Maybe not of course, they do seem to renegotiate their rates with specific labels fairly often.Originally Posted by cdm
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