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Wow. This is certainly a take. Two things: 1. Spotify has had a policy for a couple years now of not paying artists who generate less than 1,000 streams per year PER song. So if I get 999 streams on each of my 50 songs every year, I get nothing from Spotify. 2. Major labels own major stakes in Spotify. They are one and the same.
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If you dont get 1000 streams per year your are not a professional musician
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There are 10s of thousands of pro musicians who don’t generate 1000 streams per year on many of the songs in their back catalog.

And the premise of your statement is that only pro musicians deserve to be compensated for their work. That’s a pretty messed up world view.

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> Not sure if you're aware, but it's the labels, not Spotify:

*not only Spotify

They had plenty of problems from people abusing their system to steal listens from actual artists.

Their system is basically "one big bucket of listens" - if your song gets listens, you get money. So if you pay your sub, and listen to say 5 niche musicians only, it still all goes mostly to the most popular songs.

Now you might already notice the flaw here - if you say, make a bunch of bots that just listen to songs to boost their revenue, not only your sub doesn't pay artists you listen, but also to fraudulent ones.

Then there was problems with using fake collaboration tags, AI music to hijack artist profiles, and few others.

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> Their system is basically "one big bucket of listens" - if your song gets listens, you get money. So if you pay your sub, and listen to say 5 niche musicians only, it still all goes mostly to the most popular songs.

That's basically how radio is accounted for in royalties, as well.

With Spotify knowing exactly who listened to what, it could be more precise (and arguably more susceptible to the fraud), but tbh what they do is standard (compulsory licensing) industry practice.

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With radio, everyone that listens to a particular station is listening to roughly the same mix of songs, and they're "paying" (by listening to ads) on a per-hour basis.

If either of those was true with spotify, the unfairness would go away.

But when different listeners are paying very different amounts per hour, any correlation between payment amount and preferred content causes problems.

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Spotify paid out ten billion dollars to artists in 2024. This is not small potatoes - total 2024 music industry merchandise sales was around $14b.

These big platform payouts matter a lot.

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Correction: to record labels.

When you read artists' blog posts you can see they get peanuts. Not due to Spotify - due to the recording deals.

If you want an exhaustive but eye-opening account of all of the details, I recommend "All you need to know about the music business" by Don Passman.

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This is the artists fault for signing with the labels. The labels own their music, of course they get the payment.
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Whenever an actual artist reveals their earnings, it’s absolutely pitiful.

A quick search suggests a very steep drop off from the top earners.

‘At 100 million streams, artists can earn approximately $300,000-$500,000 in gross royalties. However, the actual amount reaching the artist varies dramatically based on their contracts. Major label artists receive $90,000-$150,000 after the label’s cut, while independent artists could keep $255,000-$425,000 after distributor fees.’ https://rebelmusicz.com/how-much-do-artists-make-on-spotify/

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