this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2024
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I feel like people are starting themselves blind on per-stream revenue in a bad way - no one is actually paying per stream. Not the customers, not the streaming companies, not the labels. This is the deal when it comes to streaming platforms - you get to listen to as much as you want for a fixed amount of money per month.
It's a little bit like saying someone who bought a CD in the 90s for $10 and listened to every song 100 times is a 10 times worse customer than someone who bought the same CD and listened to every song just 10 times. Yes, the person who listened to the CD 100 times paid 10 times less on a per-song listen basis, but that's quite simply not relevant.
I think the latest issue now is how Spotify for example is changing their revenue sharing model in a way that big artists (i.e. Taylor Swift) get a bigger chunk from the pie and smaller artists get close to nothing in % from streaming income. So the value of a single stream for a song is different depending on who you're listening to.
What change is this in reference to? I'm not familiar with it.
This article can probably explain it better than I can: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2024/01/06/spotify-royalty-model-ramifications/
they're exactly the same customer, the difference between those two is actually negligible, ignoring the new middle man and VC funded tech company in the way.
Both someone who streams, and someone who buys the CD are paying the same amount of money, the difference is that the person streaming gets a MUCH broader wealth of music, and much more music to listen to, for the same amount of money. Which means, on average, you would expect someone who uses streaming to pay less than someone who buys physical media.
There is a finite amount of music that you can listen to in a month.