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this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
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But according to the article 70% of the money they make from music is already going to record labels and publishers, so what exactly is Spotify supposed to do here to give more money to the artists?
Exactly... The issue isn't spotify taking a very normal cut, it's the record labels taking a majority cut and it seems this bill misses that entirely
That's definitely the case, and that's not the only country with laws that protect artists this way, for example Brazil right next to it also have it's own set of laws, had then even before Spotify was a thing, but Spotify is happily in Brazil since 2014.
The Uruguayan law is just not well though, and that's what happens when you put incompetent people in charge of making laws for things they don't have the slightest clue of how they work. They kill an entire industry.
I feel like this whole bill is kind of a government sized "thanks Obama".
Spotify is still signing unfair contracts with those labels though. They could throw their weight around and demand higher cuts for artists but they aren't. No need to let them off the hook when they're choosing to participate and profit in a corrupt industry, IMO.
Is it Spotify that arrange the cut for artists or the label though?
I don't know but I'd think it's the labels as it's too much for Spotify to negotiate per-artist?
When food companies use slave labour or cut down old growth forest for intensive farms do we get mad at Walmart/Tesco/Carrefour for having a normal margin on what they buy from the food companies (which may or may not leave enough for the products to be sourced sustainably, but that's a separate argument as the food companies would likely take a higher margin over keeping the same one and making their food more sustainable if paid more) or do we blame the food companies/their suppliers?
I mean, yes, but at the same time, the grocery stores can exert pressure on the food suppliers by saying "we aren't going to buy food that isn't sourced sustainably and responsibly," the same way Spotify can exert pressure on labels with unfair contracts by saying "we want to make sure everyone gets paid fairly for their music getting paid"
idk if I found out a store I frequent was knowingly selling food grown with slave labor yes I would have a big issue with them!
I have bad news for you unless you're buying direct from local farms I guess
iirc spotify has some weird revenue sharing thing where that 70% is split between all artists in a very non-linear way. You don't get money based on how many of your songs get sold you get a slice of the total pie based on some weird formula. The result is that top artists get paid for more than their own songs sales and everyone elses gets less than their own songs sales to provide that extra cut to the top performers.
That's not just Spotify though. Everyone uses a similar algorithm. Deezer and Tidal have talked about implementing user-centric payments but have not done so.
IIRC Tidal gives 10% of the subscription to the most listened-to artist. Not a lot exactly, but still miles ahead of Spotify who gives functionally zero.
That was part of their "direct artist payouts" that they discontinued earlier this year.
Ah thanks for clarifying. What a bummer!
Yeah, it's really unfortunate. Their argument was that it took too many resources to implement for the little it was giving to the artists. They replaced it with "Tidal Rising" but it really doesn't fix the problem. When I look up the artists featured on RISING and I see that they have 1 million+ Spotify listeners while the average band I listen to is closer to 50k with some under 100 listeners I feel like they missed the mark.
I love Tidal + Plex as a solution for supplementing my music library so I'm not going to cancel it, but I try to buy an album per month from a band I listen to in addition to my subscription to tidal.
I like the idea of buying an album/month in lieu of a subscription service. Putting it that way makes be realize I'd have ~50 albums or so by now!
Yeah I listen to too much music to have it replace Tidal completely, but it's more that the $10 is my "convenience fee" for easily accessing albums and my album purchases are for actually supporting the artists.
I think the law has more to do with indie artists not getting paid shit. People who want to self publish and cut out the middle man ( record labels )
"According to the article"....