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Comment by joeblau | Hacker News Reader

I think the only people that are really angry about Spotify are the artists. It seems like the way their payments are calculated, they get the short end of the stick.

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Not that this excuses Spotify, but artists got the short end of the stick in the traditional system too.

Much more so on spotify (and streaming generally). In the traditional system an artist might have got 10% of retail price. That equates to much more than 10% of profit (could be around 40% of profit in some cases). While record companies do have various ways of chipping away at that, the fundamentals of a traditional points deal aren't actually as bad as usually presented and way better than in other retail industries (e.g. clothing).

that's not true , compared to Spotify, that's a total lie.

Artists don't get a 10% cut each time a song is played on Spotify. The only people getting rich with Spotify is Spotify and the label that grants the content rights. The artists do get almost nothing.

Spotify pays the labels who pay the artists. So shouldn't the artists work on negotiating better agreements with labels? That might compel labels to negotiate a better agreement with Spotify assuming that is possible. If any party overplays its card, it could all come tumbling down:

- if artists demand too much payment from labels, labels won't sign them

- if labels demand too much from spotify, spotify won't sign them

- if spotify doesn't sign enough labels or pays too much to them, it will die either due to not enough music or not enough revenue to find growth.

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