Some pretty interesting news:

A new ”Living wage for musicians act” could be passed in the US. It would force Spotify to add a 50% added fee that must go directly to musicians, with nothing of the added fee going to labels or Spotify.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/m...234982337/amp/

Royalties from the new fund would similarly be distributed proportionally to track streams, but with a few key distinctions: First, labels and other intermediaries would not take a cut before that money reaches artists.

Second, individual tracks would stop generating money from the royalty fund after hitting a cap (currently set at 1 million streams a month).

Excess royalties generated by tracks with over 1 million streams in a month would then be divided up among all recording musicians.

The fund itself would be paid for largely by listeners, with a “living wage royalty fee” tacked on to to streaming service subscription prices. The fee would amount to 50% of the subscription cost, but no less than $4 and no more than $10, according to the bill. It would also receive 10 percent from non-subscription revenues, like those from ads on Spotify or YouTube.

So, what are your thoughts on this?

The actual act/document:

https://d12t4t5x3vyizu.cloudfront.ne...Final-Text.pdf

Subscriptions services are going to rise?

If you add content to these services do you get free subscription?

Nice! Pretty soon, I will be able to quit my dayjob.

Living wage Lmao. What is a "living wage" exactly? So, $0.006 - $0.0012 per stream now? Yep, I'll be quitting my day job, too! YAY!!!!

Not with math like that! :-)

The excess royalties could be a large sum. Hard to tell how this will impact your average Spotify artist though. Would need to see some extrapolations.

You need to increase productivity. Instead of a few songs. Half ass 1000.

I think it’s a part of a paradigm shift that’s more significant than these numbers alone. As I see it, the purpose of the paradigm shift is precisely to give more full time working artists a chance to live off their income. Governments are doing some, musician’s unions etc are pushing for it and Spotify is finally giving in to this pressure.

The paradigm shift consists in:

- this new added fee as outlined above
- a squeeze on artists with very small numbers -
and/or artists putting out way too many songs (now there’s a mininum of 1000 streams per song in a year required to get any master royalties)
- an increased effort to minimize botted and fake streams
- the introduction of merch shops on/inside Spotify
- the introduction of music videos on Spotify

Combined, these will lead to a stratification of artists on Spotify into different levels. Artist that have music videos, merch for sale, and over 1000 streams per song will look like ”real” artists to everyone (listeners, curators, editors, other artists) and perhaps also be given more exposure/recommended plays because of these things.

On the other hand, uploading a beat per day via Distrokid, with nothing else going on, will be increasingly pointless and increasingly look like it’s not to be taken seriously.

Really big artists will still earn more than they proportionally should, because the pro rata royalty model remains. Labels want this, and they have a say since they own shares in Spotify.

All in all I think this is very good. Spotify will look less like Soundcloud and more like Bandcamp. Artists and bands who work hard and tick the boxes will have a bigger shot at more streams, and streams will also pay more for them since there’s more money going to songs streaming between a 1000 plays and a million. So the artists with miniscule stream numbers (who’d only get cents anyway) and huge stream numbers gets perhaps a little less, while the typical band releasing albums and going on small tours gets more in total.

If they also manage to screen out fake and bought streams/bots, that could increase payment per stream for non-fake streams by anywhere between 5-40 %. Without Spotify paying out a dollar more.

Its $2500 / million streams straight to the artist with no other hands in the pie, even if they're in a record deal. Not bad at all!

A question: does this mean podcasters get none of these extra money?

I really hope so!

Sounds great for the tier of artists who aren’t big names, but still working professionals. The cap is crucial, otherwise it’s simply making artists like Taylor Swift richer.

This would be good for the music scene in general, if it comes to fruition.

I just read the act. Goofiest idea since the rumor in the mid 20th century that one could make a living wage by joining bmi or ascap or the union.

BY THE WAY.......all you online-music-posters have to join the musician's union or SAG.....anyone read that part?

Artists on labels are already in the union. The rest of you will have to cough up the $ and join as well. I'm in SAG, but don't allow music online so whatever......I'm just an observer.

Between dues, fees, administration expenses, lawyers, class actions, and escalating subscriber fees to pass costs through.....this is simply silly...there will be no appreciable outflow to anyone.

Never gonna happen.

Smoke & Mirrors; platform shareholders lining up to fill their funnelpockets while music faeries fight for space to sleep in your underwear/sock drawer.

As an artist I’m thrilled. As a consumer of Spotify I’m cancelling my subscription when taxes take it up to $17/month

Streaming pricing walks the fine line of “convenience for cheap” vs “anyone can pirate anything they need in minutes.”

We've had the technology for a while to pay artists based on actual plays in licensed venues and actual stream numbers. However for the most part payments are still based on statistical measures which benefit the large artists at the expense of small and niche ones.

I would not support any extra mandatory royalty payments unless they are direct to the copyright holder based on actual plays with no unions and no nonsense statistical distribution.

Can they though?

20 years ago, everyone had a PC hooked up to speakers in their home. They had mp3 libraries, they burned CDs to play in the car. Most of them even knew how to get illegal downloads and 90% did it despite it being illegal.

Today, people are on phones, ipads and laptops that monitor every little thing you do, and it’s connected to them personally via face recognition and tons of other stuff. I think a lot of people are far more reluctant to do anything illegal, even if they knew how to.

Which they don’t. And there’s no straighforward ecosystem and player for mp3s or flacs that come with the devices and people are familiar with. It’s all geared toward using apps like Spotify and Apple music. Which are exponentially more convenient to use.

Add to that that 20 years ago these apps did not exist the way they do today. It’s way more unlikely that mp3 downloading will re-emerge today than it was for it to emerge in the 2000’s.

Because then, getting mp3’s was more convenient than going to the record store to listen to records and/or buy them. Now, getting mp3’s is way way less convenient than going on Spotify.

Lots of people today barely use home computers. And young people (under 30) are not familiar with anything having to do with mp3 downloading, they don’t use PCs, mp3 players, burned CDs, file managers. I don’t see it coming back in any impactful way.

I think most just listen to YouTube or use Spotify with ads.

Its very easy and common to pirate music, movies, and shows, yes. Everyone's phone can play mp3s. High quality FLAK files of almost everything are out there up for free grabs, with free convertor software easily accessible.

Streaming pricing definitely straddles a line that could drive plenty of people back to piracy. If it crosses a line, subscriptions will definitely fall off.

That's the check/balance of streaming pricing: how to maximize the number of subscribers (which make everyone more money than ads.) If a new tax is dropped on streamers taking pricing up several dollars each month, people will definitely bail on streaming, its just a question of how many.

So we'll see. I'm down to give it a try. As an artist I'd definitely like that extra money funneled directly to me.

This whole thread is political, but they delete my post??? This is the straw that broke the Pangolin's back.

I don't agree with this either. The video streaming platforms have been regularly cranking up their fees and kicking off shared accounts and Netflix's stock is approaching its all time high again. Are they losing subs over increases? Sure, but they're also gaining more marketshare. And what are your options really in music streaming? Apple and Spotify for most people, because it's super easy and super integrated.

People are used to paying for subs now. While some of the tech savvy people can still pirate it takes a lot of effort, and this is exactly why the labels screwed us all by sleeping on what Napster did first for free. It's about convenience more than price.

Yes, people will definitely complain, but the gyms figured this out decades ago - put people on autopilot and they can't be arsed to cancel their memberships even when they're not using them for long stretches.

I don't know if this new plan will work, but this race to the bottom on music has to be mitigated somehow. I don't stream enough music to make money on, but that's also not why I do it. I just enjoy it. But I know people who stream a lot of music and make absolutely nothing on it. Clearly Spotify is making a lot of money, so something needs to give. And the services will definitely pass as much of this on to the user as they can. I'm sure it will be incremental and soon enough the $10 tiers will be $20 tiers and membership will continue to increase.

That's my take on it at least.

Well, for starters, downloading and storing an entire TV series could take well up to a TB of storage. Audio files are tiny in comparison.

As sad as it is, if you asked the average Joe if they had to pick Spotify Premium or Netflix, I'm guessing they go with Netflix 8 out of 10 times. The average person cares more about watching shows and movies than they do about listening to music.

Yep. Guys on other forums shoot me illegal streaming links for sports streaming that is far better with less latency than what I'm actually paying for with my Internet TV via my ISP.

It's a sad state of affairs. It's back to cable TV, but every channel costs > $10 a month.

I thought about this today and this could be a good thing.

In short: Smaller pie, but more food for the starving once the kings are off the table.

Spotify paid/premium royalties are worth a lot more per stream than free/ad royalties. I think 90% or so of streaming income for most artists is from paid subs.

Now, if Spotify premium goes up to 15-16 bucks a month, who will jump ship? People who care less about music than Netflix. People who barely listen. People who listen to background music for gaming/exercise/ambient that they can replace by AI generated stuff. People who might just as well listen to radio. People who care more about celebrity culture than music (and they can follow their idols on other platforms). People who only ever put on ready-made playlists.

Who will remain? People who actually care about music. People who listen intentionally. People willing to seek out new music. People actively putting together their own playlists and and share them with each other.

Which means… that muzak, radio music, background music, gaming music will have to split the ad tier pie (to a greater extent), instead of taking nearly all of the premium pie, as they’re doing today, because of how pro rata works…

Which means: if only music fans pay for Spotify, more streaming revenue will go to actual artists/bands who record quality music, release albums, gig, tour etc.

Even if way less total money is paid out!!!

I’m being a bit hyperbole, but any shift in that direction could be as good news as the bigger royalty payout is.

Because as long as the pro rata system remains, a generic low effort song streamed 99 times as background music will receive 99 times more money than that 1 timeless fav song someone listens to on special occasions.

Also, fewer paid subs for a higher price is better, because it means it’s easier to monitor hacked/fake accounts using for botting. And botting will be less of a business if each account costs more per stream.

I guess 9.3 out of 10, one was a midget.