Artists get big cuts when people buy their music, and if people decide to cancel their paid subscription, they still have the bought media available with no predatory gating like spotify uses to try to coerce people to resubscribing.
35% of 1 is the same as 0.000000035 of 10.000.000
It doesn't calculate your amount of listening and determine the payout based on that. All listens are pooled together and all subscription money is pooled together. And the payout is determined based on that.
With OP proposal, they would get USD 7.
It also promotes botting, as spotify only counts listens, bot listening a ton to a fraudulent artist will siphon money away from essentially everyone.
"Money only goes to artists you listen" would be very good change
My $7/mo should be going to the artists I actually chose to listen to, not the stuff that droned passively for hours in background environments. Particularly when I'm actually a high margin customer for Spotify; the cost to them of my subscription is low since I spend so little time on the service. That makes it all the more galling that my subscription cost is mostly going to Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran.
100 people subscribe to spotify and listen for 100 hours a month each, for $10 a month. You listen to your favourite artist for 50 hours and other stuff for 50 hours. No-one else listens to your favourite artist.
I assume that if this is band is treated as the "average" Total listening hours = 100 * 100 = 10,00. Total money: 100 * 10 = $1,000. They get: 50 / 10,000 * $1,000 = $5
That seems fair? Obviously some bands won't have negotiating power when they first start and might get less, or some get more, but that feels like how the industry always worked, and not something to do with spotify?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Digital music just becomes marketing for live performances.