But, unless they put some thresholds on minimum listens, isn't basically the same thing what they do and what you propose?

35% of 1 is the same as 0.000000035 of 10.000.000

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squeaky-clean 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If you and I both pay $10/mo to listen to Spotify, and we are the only subscribers. If I listen to 1 song by Sabrina Carpenter, and you listen to 99 songs by Taylor Swift. Then of our $20 (after Spotify's share) 1% of the money will go to Sabrina and 99% of the money will go to Taylor. Because Taylor was played 99x more than Sabrina. Even though for both of us as users, our respective artist was 100% of our listening.

It doesn't calculate your amount of listening and determine the payout based on that. All listens are pooled together and all subscription money is pooled together. And the payout is determined based on that.

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collabs 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No, because let's say OP pays USD 10 and listens to only one song one time -- obviously, Linkin Park In the end -- right now, the payout is almost nothing.

With OP proposal, they would get USD 7.

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PunchyHamster 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

no. if you listen only to niche musicians, all of the fee goes to most popular one regardless.

It also promotes botting, as spotify only counts listens, bot listening a ton to a fraudulent artist will siphon money away from essentially everyone.

"Money only goes to artists you listen" would be very good change

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mikepurvis 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Not all listens show the same intention. If I go to the barbershop and they're playing Spotify top-40 playlists running all day long, that is very different from me actively choosing what I want to listen to for a few hours a months while I'm listening in my car, or putting on Friends Per Second while doing the dishes.

My $7/mo should be going to the artists I actually chose to listen to, not the stuff that droned passively for hours in background environments. Particularly when I'm actually a high margin customer for Spotify; the cost to them of my subscription is low since I spend so little time on the service. That makes it all the more galling that my subscription cost is mostly going to Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran.

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darkwater 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I mean, I understand and agree, and I'm pretty sure that Spotify Premium users are very skewed towards less mainstream tastes, so I agree it would be better for smaller artists and would probably change the power balance (well, if we forget that music labels exist). But yeah, if as others pointed out you were to give 70% of your subscription cost to the artist that composed/performed the single track you listened this month, it would be very different.

	▲	mikepurvis 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		At the end of the day, indies need to be on Spotify much more than Spotify needs them there. But for mainstream artists, it's the opposite; so the representatives of top-40 artists are the ones dictating the terms of how the system works for everyone, and unsurprisingly the system they've settled on is one that seems fair enough as long as you don't think too deeply about it, but ensures that the biggest slice of the pie goes to themselves.