Can someone explain why the revenue sharing model is broken on Spotify? A lot of bluecheck indie bands complain about their meager $28 monthly checks. I even saw a performative tweet from a label the other day: https://twitter.com/DonGiovanniRecs/status/12865225202213847...
Let's say I run a bookstore. 70% of my revenue goes to pay workers. A works 32 hours, B works 5 hours, and C works 3 hours.
Is it not fair to give A 80% of the pay pool, since she worked 80% of the hours?
Finally, terrestrial pop radio, independent college radio, and ham radioesque bedroom experimentalists are all on the same platform, the swim lanes have been erased. Everything is flattened, everything is discoverable, yet the sobering truth that few people are streaming their work elicits attacks on Spotify from bands and marginal artists. How is their contempt justified?
If you're running a brick and mortar book store, payroll would unlikely be 70%. Payroll would be your highest cost but it should be 30% on the high end.
If we want to try and analyze this, we should analyze what music distribution was like prior to digital. My guess is that for most artist who went through traditional publishing and distribution, they only received 10-20% per album sale. That seems high too.
I should have been clearer, I used 70% of revenue because that is what Spotify gives to artists. Of course, software can do that as it scale infinitely, retail cannot. I can't tell if 70% is generous or not -- many independent artists think it isn't.
Let's say I run a bookstore. 70% of my revenue goes to pay workers. A works 32 hours, B works 5 hours, and C works 3 hours.
Is it not fair to give A 80% of the pay pool, since she worked 80% of the hours?
Finally, terrestrial pop radio, independent college radio, and ham radioesque bedroom experimentalists are all on the same platform, the swim lanes have been erased. Everything is flattened, everything is discoverable, yet the sobering truth that few people are streaming their work elicits attacks on Spotify from bands and marginal artists. How is their contempt justified?