• jet@hackertalks.com
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    11 months ago

    Yes but no? A subscriber pays a set amount per month. No matter how much that subscriber listens to music, it’s paid from their monthly subscription fee, right?

    So if a subscriber listens to one hour of music versus 10 hours of music, does Spotify pay less royalties for the 1 hour?

    Even if they do pay royalties based on listen time, if somebody’s listening to white noise for 24 hours a day, there should be an upper limit to the royalties paid to the monthly subscription right?

    I just don’t understand how somebody listens to 10 hours of K-pop every day versus 10 hours of white noise how Spotify is saving money in the second but not the first example

    • PeleSpirit@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      But then the word “costs” is not correct. It doesn’t cost them that money, they just aren’t making money on that time which they might not have anyway.

    • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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      11 months ago

      Don’t they pay music producers/artists/podcasts based on how much people listen to their content? I’m guessing they object because people consume way more white noise due to being asleep. So there aren’t many people who listen to K-pop for 8 hours but lots who do that with white noise. Not to mention if there are any ads you would sleep through them.

    • JimmyMcGill@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      You pay a certain amount a month to Spotify.

      A percentage of that goes straight to Spotify’s pockets and the rest goes to what you listen to.

      If you listen to music all day, and then have a white noise playlist at night, then half of that amount goes to just the one stream and the other half is split between all the others labels of the music you listen to. Without that white noise playlist the music labels would make twice as much money from you.

        • JimmyMcGill@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Because big labels have power. As Spotify you want to keep them happy more than the little guys. Otherwise they can lobby against you.

        • ScreaminOctopus@sh.itjust.works
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          11 months ago

          Because their platform becomes more desirable for creators. They’ve had issues with this in the past, Taylor Swift pulled all her music from spotify at one point due to the lower than average royalties. That’s a situation they’d like to avoid in the future because it’ll cause people to drop their subscription.