A lot of people seem to compare the earnings from one listening on spotify to the sale of a single...

Thing is, you have no idea how often that single is played. If the customer are crazy about it the musician would most likely earn more if he listened through spotify rather than buying it. If on the other hand the customer gets bored of it quickly the musician would barely get anything through spotify.

Also, one listening doesn't equal to a lost sale. Especially considering how easy (and wonderful) it is to just be able try new stuff out when there is no barrier or cost associated with it.

Musicians get waay more money from me thanks to spotify than they ever would get otherwise. And I bet there is a whole generation where this is/will be quite common.

There are winners and loser though, those artists that make songs that only last two weeks probably loose on spotify. I see that as a bonus.

And that's the problem: You, as a listener, think you're doing the noble thing by using spotify instead of pirating, but it really doesn't matter if those two are the only options you'd consider.

Of course you're on the legal site of music consumption now, but don't fool yourself into thinking that artists should be well off thanks to you.

Well known by now, but have a look at this infographic again: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music...

I admit I'm a rdio subscriber and artist, but rdio, for me, just serves as a tastemaker, pre-listening source and mobile collection without limited space - everything I like, I buy elsewhere in lossless formats. Sadly, I guess that's a rather rare use of streaming services as people will often see them as a replacement to buying things they enjoy.

No, the problem is the record labels. They are the ones that hinder artist revenue from services such as spotify.

I don't consider pirating and yes, if spotify (and all similar services) were shut down and I were forced to buy albums on CDs the artists would get much less money from me.

Also remember that the day I end my spotify subscription I have nothing to show for it. I've spend many hundreds of dollars on spotify and the day I stop paying I will not have a single track to show for it.

How many people actually constantly buys music every month? A monthly spotify subscription isn't much per month but it adds up.

> If the customer are crazy about it the musician would most likely earn more if he listened through spotify rather than buying it.

Estimates vary, but $0.0033 is quoted as a possible pay per stream from Spotify. I had some plays on one invoice from a label but it was less than a penny. [for comparison: I've gotten $75 for a single play on BBC]

So for a 99 cent track you would get 300 plays for that price. That means 10 times a day for 30 days if you are really crazy about it (you are either a teenage girl or you are trying to piss off your neighbors). Or 3 times a day for 100 days. Or 10 times a year for 30 years (let's just guess that its highly unlikely that you are still on Spotify or that you are using the same mp3)

[edit: calculator fail]

For a 5 minute song that's 1500 minutes of stereophonic pleasure. 25 hours.

Let's assume you bought the entire album. 10 tracks. That's 250 hours total listening time.

This is what you'll have to do in order for the artist to earn the same amount as your $9.99 album purchase would have brought in.

> Musicians get waay more money from me thanks to spotify than they ever would get otherwise.

By which I'm guessing that you aren't a music collector and you didn't really buy music anyway.

Purchasing music, especially vinyl or nicely crafted packaged CDs is about building a collection that expresses who you are. People come over and you get out the records. They look through your CD or record shelf while they are at your place. This ritual is how people connect, find out about the other person and it opens up conversations. That era is gone.

Digital weakened that and selling digital is just a fake simulation of the era of buying physical recordings. We know its dead, it was transitory and the era of replication is over. Its not just the economics, its abundance.

Still, buying music (even if its a dead art form) is not to obtain a utility value. Its purchasing a signifier of self identity.

I've had Spotify beta since 2008 and I've loved going through the massive back catalogs and listening to stuff. It was insane how much music they loaded into the system back then. Once they opened it up to the public they had to axe most of it when they couldn't get deals with the labels.

You (and thirdsum), as well as most others, make the other big mistake and looks at what the artist makes. Which is kind of irrelevant. Look at what the record label is making from spotify streaming.

Also I don't get your BBC-comparison, did BBC broadcast it to one person?

Spotify can hardly be blamed for the artist having a crappy deal with his/her record label.

And the reason for why it is sooo bad is of course because it hasn't matured yet. But the only problem in the equation is the record labels.

The reason for why I didn't buy albums was because I didn't enjoy listening to albums. I enjoy listening to tracks and I don't feel like buying twenty when I only like two of them.

It doesn't help that buying an album and having it in my shelf "says something about who I am" when I really didn't want the album to begin with.

Not to mention how inconvenient a pressed CD is for someone like me.

> the other big mistake and looks at what the artist makes.

Actually I'm calculating only what the rights holder gets and doing the comparison between sales and streaming income.

Its completely irrelevant to the discussion what the artist/label deal is, only what the spotify|iTunes/payee deal is.

> Spotify can hardly be blamed for the artist having a crappy deal with his/her record label.

No, the stated payout rates are what the rights holder receives. That is the publishing company or sound recording copyright holder which is usually but not always the label. In many cases indie labels are owned by the artists. I get 100%

I'm not fond of this demonization of the labels as though they were the whole problem. The music industry has gone through dramatic changes and its not really useful to try to identify a bad guy. The musicians certainly are getting fucked though, that's always how it goes.

> Also I don't get your BBC-comparison, did BBC broadcast it to one person?

But that's the thing: a Spotify streaming play requires a large number of people to actively select to listen to your track. Radio plays to a huge number of people who are mostly passive (after they've selected to listen to the radio or not). Its vastly more difficult to achieve that kind of focused high traffic streaming income in the super fragmented world of streaming.

So comparing the payout rate to broadcast royalty rates IS completely irrelevant, yet that is what everybody is doing and that's basically how the payouts are being calculated.

And yet its sales that they are replacing. For the user its play on demand. It looks like iTunes. I pulled up tracks the other night on Spotify while making dinner for my girlfriend. Its just like owning the tracks.

So for the rights holder its an awful disruption.

> And the reason for why it is sooo bad is of course because it hasn't matured yet. But the only problem in the equation is the record labels.

Because Spotify was designed as an alternative to P2P/piracy. So the price point is in comparison to that, not in competition with sales. Its accidental that its cannibalizing sales, and in fact Spotify would love to be resulting in large amounts of sales (with their buy buttons). The problem is that the music is available on demand, so the incentive to buy is very low.

> The reason for why I didn't buy albums was because I didn't enjoy listening to albums. I enjoy listening to tracks and I don't feel like buying twenty when I only like two of them.

iTunes disrupted that back in 2001, so I would say that's pretty irrelevant to the Spotify vs. digital sales discussion.

Numbers for an iTunes single: Best case is generally an indie artist who has a 50/50 split with their label. So for an iTunes single, the label gets at most $0.70 (and if they use an aggregator then say $0.63). Divide by two and you are at $0.32-0.35/track. So basically you need to divide all of your equivalence numbers by 3. Instead of 300 plays, it's one hundred plays. 3 times a day for ~30 days or once a day for one hundred days.

statements like this are exactly the reason why people have zero sympathy for the music (and movie) industries. In the real world, products are worth as much as people are willing to pay for them, not whatever the hell you want to charge. Spotify isn't cheating you out of anything. You are getting paid what the market has deemed your content is worth. If you don't like it, take your songs off spotify.

No, its not a price point that the market resolved.

Its not like a moving company that has a businesses with costs and then they compete with other identical businesses and test the customers and have a price discovery phase and then arrive at a price.

Spotify is a solution to the environment of widespread P2P/piracy.

The people were offered a price: $0 on Napster/Limewire/Oink. They accepted the offer. Great, the market has spoken; that's what the content is deemed to be worth. Its worthless. Its worthless because it is possible to obtain it without paying for it.

In any industry whatsoever if you offer a price of $0 then people will take it. Try offering beer for $0 — maybe you can support it with advertising ;)

The price point that Spotify is offering is in competion with piracy. That's why it is so low.

> If you don't like it, take your songs off spotify.

Why would I do that ? I love Spotify. There is no income in it for me as a rights holder, but there's no benefit for me to remove it. [I am far more likely to remove my music from iTunes actually. its just not a good look, there are better digital stores]

I think they have great intentions and want desperately to make this new economy work. They cannot just raise the price (they would love to) because they could kill the whole thing and sales would drop off. They are losing money in order to keep this thing going.

What I said was that its use for the user is to replace sales; but the payment and pricing (in and out) are like that of broadcast.

Its a very unfortunate disruption.

> Spotify isn't cheating you out of anything.

sigh. people are so binary when discussing this stuff. Its more complicated. It would be nice if people weren't so hostile and always trying to identify a bad guy to blame everything on.

^This a million times. I'm so sick of all the irrelevant arguments made by ALL the parties involved. There is only ONE product type that can hold an artificially high value for any extended period of time; a status symbol. By definition status symbols are impossible on any digital medium. THEREFORE, stay off the internet or follow economics. I will respect either choice. I will laugh at anyone that expects to get the benefit of both without the cost of the either.

I know the part about t-shirts is a joke, but you can print your own with stuff bought at Home Depot and in a DIY setup the cost is roughly 3$, being the most expensive stuff the t-shirt and the paint.