Reply to post: Re: He did not break the rules

Re: He did not break the rules

Yes. My understanding is that the existing model is (in rough outline):

(1) Put all the money from all subscribers in a big skip every month

(2) Spotify takes 30% of the money in the skip

(3) The remaining 70% of the money in the skip is given to each artist (well, rights holder actually, not the same at all necessarily) in proportion to the number of plays that artist got from the platform total.

Bad points of this way of doing things include:

(a) Every month a large amount of my hard earned subscription cash goes to top 50 artists some of whom I never listen to and whose music I loathe with deep and abiding intensity.

(b) This model is susceptible to being gamed by the method described in the story.

Actually, another way of looking at this is that the major record companies are currently pulling a similar scam, but on a much larger scale, by mind-controlling impressionable young people with too much free time on the their hands to listen over and over again to a small number of artists almost all of whom are on major labels.

An alternative, which is often suggested when this comes up is:

(1) Put the money from my subscription in a little pot every month

(2) Spotify takes 30% of the money in the pot

(3) The remaining 70% of the money in the pot is given to each artist in proportion to the total number of tracks *I* play from those artists this month

(4) Repeat the above for each subscribing user

Then, if the only tracks I play this month are by The Delve (a hypothetical skint band of which I may hypothetically be a fan) then only The Delve gets my sub money this month – and no one else gets any of it.

I am led to believe that the major record companies are not keen on this model.