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Music Streaming: Proof that no one wants Equality of Outcome

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Greenman said:
The bold part makes perfect sense to me. TS had eight sales, gets paid 8 times. OMDTB had two sales gets paid twice. How is this not a completely fair and proper system?
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That part isn't the problem. The problem is that it is a zero sum game. If TS and OMDTB had eight and two million streams, they get paid exactly the same as having just eight and two. They get paid out of fixed pot regardless of total plays. With album sales, there is no zero sum game, more sales, more money.
 
IronWing said:
That part isn't the problem. The problem is that it is a zero sum game. If TS and OMDTB had eight and two million streams, they get paid exactly the same as having just eight and two. They get paid out of fixed pot regardless of total plays. With album sales, there is no zero sum game, more sales, more money.
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But if I listen to a physical album they only get paid once no matter how many times I listen or when I bought it.
 
Sometimes maher is dead on, and other times he is terrible. He is definitely turning into an annoying boomer though with constantly bitching about what younger people do. This week it was Twitch.
 
MrSquished said:
Sometimes maher is dead on, and other times he is terrible. He is definitely turning into an annoying boomer though with constantly bitching about what younger people do. This week it was Twitch.
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"I agree with him when his opinion jives with my partisan cognitive bias'. I disagree with him and think he's a dumbfuck when he's against my bias'"

 
WelshBloke said:
But if I listen to a physical album they only get paid once no matter how many times I listen or when I bought it.
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True, but they get more than they ever would from you streaming the music and your favorite artist doesn't lose money because someone bought an album by another artist.
 
s0me0nesmind1 said:
"I agree with him when his opinion jives with my partisan cognitive bias'. I disagree with him and think he's a dumbfuck when he's against my bias'"

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Or he could simply have a mixed track record with his stances. I find myself generally agreeing with him, but sometimes he's off the mark.

Maher definitely doesn't get Twitch. It's about more than gaming, and gaming streams are much like sports: you're either watching someone play at levels you can't hope to match, or you're there for the community. Watch a good Among Us stream and you won't care that you could be playing the game yourself.
 
IronWing said:
True, but they get more than they ever would from you streaming the music and your favorite artist doesn't lose money because someone bought an album by another artist.
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What's the breakdown of payments for an artist on a traditional contract? If I pay ten quid for an album how much does the artist get after all expenses and fees are taken out?
 
WelshBloke said:
What's the breakdown of payments for an artist on a traditional contract? If I pay ten quid for an album how much does the artist get after all expenses and fees are taken out?
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Entirely depends. A lot of folks are finding ways to create their own record label and somehow pass it through to another (e.g. look up Ed Sheeran as an example).

From what I remember hearing in the old-school world where everyone had to go through a big record label, it was basically chump change of either cents to a couple dollars for each record sold.
 
I see a lot of emotion right wing posters on the Internet lately building straw man and attacking it while saying words like leftists.

It's almost as if they aren't really genuine. Good for Future plc stock though. It's up today.
 
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s0me0nesmind1 said:
From what I remember hearing in the old-school world where everyone had to go through a big record label, it was basically chump change of either cents to a couple dollars for each record sold.
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This is what I figure. If you have an old school record deal you probably aren't going to get hold of much of "your" money whether your records are streaming or not, most of it is going to go to the record label.
If you are self publishing then modern media probably makes it a lot easier to have a global audience.
 
Greenman said:
The bold part makes perfect sense to me. TS had eight sales, gets paid 8 times. OMDTB had two sales gets paid twice. How is this not a completely fair and proper system?
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Depends how you define 'sales'.

If you define a sale as one play, then you are right, but that's a completely circular argument as whether the charge should be for a single play or if it should be for the right to play a given track when you want, is the very thing being debated.

s0me0nesmind1 said:
"I agree with him when his opinion jives with my partisan cognitive bias'. I disagree with him and think he's a dumbfuck when he's against my bias'"

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You are aware you yourself do that all the time, right?
(And, frankly, so does everyone - what do you think "agree" and "disagree" mean?)

I don't really know much about Bill Maher. I don't really know why I should regard him as any sort of authority on anything though.
 
WelshBloke said:
This is what I figure. If you have an old school record deal you probably aren't going to get hold of much of "your" money whether your records are streaming or not, most of it is going to go to the record label.
If you are self publishing then modern media probably makes it a lot easier to have a global audience.
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Surely every contract is different? I gather some mean you have to pay for your 'costs' like stuido time, out of your royalties, and that can mean it takes a lot of sales before you start seeing any profit. I don't know if it was a myth that the Stone Roses signed possibly the worst contract of all time - that only gave them royalties on vinyl, specifically excluding all sales on the (then new and growing) CD format.
 
I do feel weird about something like Pandora. Something about the automated "You like this so you'll also like this" thing really unnerves me. I much prefer an element of random chance in finding things I like - randomly reading a music review for something I already like that mentions some other artist I hadn't heard of, having a friend play something so frequently that eventually I start to like it...overhearing something on the radio, or just seeing something in a second-hand music shop and feeling drawn to the cover art etc.

I did try iTunes's recommendations once, but it seemed to have a very US bias, lumping artists together in a way that seemed to relate to how Americans percieve them, when in the UK they'd be seen as appealing to completely different demographics.
 
pmv said:
Depends how you define 'sales'.

If you define a sale as one play, then you are right, but that's a completely circular argument as whether the charge should be for a single play or if it should be for the right to play a given track when you want, is the very thing being debated.



You are aware you yourself do that all the time, right?
(And, frankly, so does everyone - what do you think "agree" and "disagree" mean?)

I don't really know much about Bill Maher. I don't really know why I should regard him as any sort of authority on anything though.
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I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying it's a streaming service where you pay a monthly fee and are free to listen as much or as little as you want?
 
Greenman said:
I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying it's a streaming service where you pay a monthly fee and are free to listen as much or as little as you want?
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You buy an album for unlimited plays and all that revenue goes to that artist. On streaming all revenue is pooled and apportioned by total plays. So effectively if I only play obscure artist 10x in a month then my subscription is subsidizing someone playing pop star 90x in a month--$2 to obscure and $18 to pop.

And yes I realize in no scenario does the artist get a significant portion of the revenue.
 
GoodRevrnd said:
You buy an album for unlimited plays and all that revenue goes to that artist. On streaming all revenue is pooled and apportioned by total plays. So effectively if I only play obscure artist 10x in a month then my subscription is subsidizing someone playing pop star 90x in a month--$2 to obscure and $18 to pop.

And yes I realize in no scenario does the artist get a significant portion of the revenue.
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Self publishing on Bandcamp gets the artist 85%. Of course, they have to cover all production costs out of that.
 
GoodRevrnd said:
You buy an album for unlimited plays and all that revenue goes to that artist. On streaming all revenue is pooled and apportioned by total plays. So effectively if I only play obscure artist 10x in a month then my subscription is subsidizing someone playing pop star 90x in a month--$2 to obscure and $18 to pop.

And yes I realize in no scenario does the artist get a significant portion of the revenue.
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Seems odd but not that unfair.
Obviously I don't use any music streaming service, so I'm way behind the curve here. Though I have heard at least one artist bitching about how little money is made from streaming.
 
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