I kept reading all the way to the end, hoping that you would eventually make an argument That would tie all the points that I was disagreeing with together in a way that made me see it all in a different light. But it never happened.
Spotify had ~$12b in revenue last year, but paid artists $8b. So that's already 75% of their revenue. There were apparently another billion in operating costs, bringing gross profit to $3b. But gross profit doesn't tell you all that much, really. Gross profit is just how much you sold minus the cost of creating/buying it. What you want to look at is net revenue, which is the thing that people are thinking of when they say profit. The two terms always sounded backwards to me.
But when you look at their net income, Spotify has actually lost money 3 years in a row. Almost a billion dollars last year.
The reason streaming services pay so little for content is because people consume so much more on an all-you-can-eat model than ala carte. In 1999, I could get a CD a month, giving me 12 hours of music, for the price I can get hundreds of hours of music to listen to on Spotify. To keep the cost of a song what it was in 1999, Spotify would cost hundreds of dollars per month.
I apologize for not being clear! In short, my argument was not a hit piece on Spotify, it was about how the entire music industry model has been and currently is based on extracting as much profit out of artists as possible while reducing the costs as much as possible, and AI will absolutely be used against creators in exactly the same way. I could have used 'zon or netflix and made the same point.
Case in point is the claim they paid creators 75% of their revenue - did they? No they did not. They mostly paid record label companies, who in turn used their own arcane, opaque methods to pay out to the creators they manage. Everything is 100% above board, and by contract, and legal all the way down yet in the end it means that an immensely profitable industry pays pennies to actual musicians. That is not Spotify's fault, per se, but it is in lock step with the music industry as a whole and I used Spotify to represent that.
The claim that they lost money is...well, I've worked for large corporations. They employ an army of tax accountants to get out of paying taxes, and the best way to do that is to operate at a loss. To say I'm suspicious of such claims from something like Spotify is an understatement. These claims always come at the cost of the people doing the work, and not at the cost of the CEO's compensation - not to mention that such services are often willing to lowball into the red in order to undercut competitors until there are no competitors left (a well trod tactic by 'zon, for sure). Everything is squiffy and they like it that way in order to hoard/hide the money they do make.
Also, there are many, many people who pay for streaming services who barely use them, or don't use them at all. We know this, but we rarely get told the actual percentages b/c it behooves corporations like 'zon and netflix and spotify to say "oh people stream so much, we HAVE to pay artist slices of a penny per stream or we would go bankrupt!"
The fact is that we can't actually trust what they are saying, and I've been in the IT business since 1996 so I DEFINITELY don't trust what they are saying.
Which is to say: My whole point is that corporations like Google, if they are forced by law into paying creators "per scrape" or "per generation" (if it is even technically possible, which I doubt) will absolutely pull the same shit and dole out nearly worthless micropayments in the same way Hollywood pays stars of hit streaming shows $30.00 in residuals. And we won't even be able to strike over it.
We're all going to have to learn to sell direct. Maybe a car boot sale is in my future.
I'm very much in favor of not only owning the means of production but also the means of distribution! 🤣🤣🤣
I kept reading all the way to the end, hoping that you would eventually make an argument That would tie all the points that I was disagreeing with together in a way that made me see it all in a different light. But it never happened.
Spotify had ~$12b in revenue last year, but paid artists $8b. So that's already 75% of their revenue. There were apparently another billion in operating costs, bringing gross profit to $3b. But gross profit doesn't tell you all that much, really. Gross profit is just how much you sold minus the cost of creating/buying it. What you want to look at is net revenue, which is the thing that people are thinking of when they say profit. The two terms always sounded backwards to me.
But when you look at their net income, Spotify has actually lost money 3 years in a row. Almost a billion dollars last year.
The reason streaming services pay so little for content is because people consume so much more on an all-you-can-eat model than ala carte. In 1999, I could get a CD a month, giving me 12 hours of music, for the price I can get hundreds of hours of music to listen to on Spotify. To keep the cost of a song what it was in 1999, Spotify would cost hundreds of dollars per month.
I apologize for not being clear! In short, my argument was not a hit piece on Spotify, it was about how the entire music industry model has been and currently is based on extracting as much profit out of artists as possible while reducing the costs as much as possible, and AI will absolutely be used against creators in exactly the same way. I could have used 'zon or netflix and made the same point.
Case in point is the claim they paid creators 75% of their revenue - did they? No they did not. They mostly paid record label companies, who in turn used their own arcane, opaque methods to pay out to the creators they manage. Everything is 100% above board, and by contract, and legal all the way down yet in the end it means that an immensely profitable industry pays pennies to actual musicians. That is not Spotify's fault, per se, but it is in lock step with the music industry as a whole and I used Spotify to represent that.
The claim that they lost money is...well, I've worked for large corporations. They employ an army of tax accountants to get out of paying taxes, and the best way to do that is to operate at a loss. To say I'm suspicious of such claims from something like Spotify is an understatement. These claims always come at the cost of the people doing the work, and not at the cost of the CEO's compensation - not to mention that such services are often willing to lowball into the red in order to undercut competitors until there are no competitors left (a well trod tactic by 'zon, for sure). Everything is squiffy and they like it that way in order to hoard/hide the money they do make.
Also, there are many, many people who pay for streaming services who barely use them, or don't use them at all. We know this, but we rarely get told the actual percentages b/c it behooves corporations like 'zon and netflix and spotify to say "oh people stream so much, we HAVE to pay artist slices of a penny per stream or we would go bankrupt!"
The fact is that we can't actually trust what they are saying, and I've been in the IT business since 1996 so I DEFINITELY don't trust what they are saying.
Which is to say: My whole point is that corporations like Google, if they are forced by law into paying creators "per scrape" or "per generation" (if it is even technically possible, which I doubt) will absolutely pull the same shit and dole out nearly worthless micropayments in the same way Hollywood pays stars of hit streaming shows $30.00 in residuals. And we won't even be able to strike over it.