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Comment by stdbrouw | Hacker News Reader

This has always seemed like fear-mongering to me, because for the pooled proportion of plays to be completely different from the mean of the per-user proportion, there would need to be an extreme discrepancy in amount of songs listened to per month and/or in the kinds of songs played by those who pay for premium vs. those who opt for ad-supported. No, if I only play the same artist for an entire month, they likely won't get $10 (-$2 in expenses), maybe it's $7 or maybe it's $12, but I don't see how you can go from there to "Beyoncé is getting all your money!?!?!" Are there any specific examples of artists that get much more or much less than you'd expect, or is this all just a thought experiment?

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It's pretty easy to do some math on this.

There are pseudonymous background music artists who have just released one or two tracks, and who have more listens than famous bands with a 30-year history, because they were featured in one of Spotify's background music playlists. It is of course rumours that this music is commissioned by Spotify (which they deny) or that they get kickbacks in some other form.

You don't get exact numbers (because Spotify won't share them!) but there's no question background music is vastly more profitable on Spotify than the kind of music people go to concerts for, and it's at the latter's expense.

That's a good point and a legitimate reason to get rid of the pool, but I guess I was talking more about often-voiced worries that big artists are getting richer and indie artists are getting poorer due to Spotify's algorithm -- and those worries long predate the weird ambient stuff.

If background music is the reason people are paying for Spotify then what would you expect Spotify to do?

The share is determined by contract, not by some fair-minded algorithm. You would have to listen to that artist over 3000 times in a month for them to get $10 at the normal artist's $0.0032/play. Big artists don't see such low figures, though more obviously goes to the system that pays the salaries of the people who get those deals for them.

Well, sure, but whether an artist gets the full amount or a pittance from their label is not relevant to the question of whether Spotify's pooled numbers are unfair to some artists. The ultimate payout is not something Spotify has a say in.

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