Comment on Spotify doesn't make profit from music streaming, despite having over 400M monthly active users, because it pays two-thirds of all its revenue to the rights holders.

pacology@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• echo64@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  33% is a massive amount for effectively just being a download service. massive

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  • wolfshadowheart@slrpnk.net ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    For reference, the Steam store of the gaming distributor Valve charges 30% of each sale, however the Steam service provides quite a bit of incentive. Having community and discussions easily accessible, cloud storage that links to screenshots and saves, branches, I’m sure there’s more.

    Meanwhile Spotify gives you, what, playlist creations?

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    • Rendh@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Because servers and traffic are free. Totally forgot how you don’t have to pay the people keeping the service alive either. A steam game you download once? Maybe once a year? Music gets streamed (downloaded) every single time unless you decide to download it. Can we maybe not pretend like Spotify does fucking nothing?

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      • wolfshadowheart@slrpnk.net ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I didn’t mention servers because that is their only cost next to employees.

        If they aren’t paying artists well, well what’s the point of having servers.

        Maybe can we not pretend like Spotify is some up and coming startup that barely breaks even because of their benevolence?

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      • echo64@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        servers and traffic are basically free, it’s very low cost - their expenses are salaries not servers.

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    • abhibeckert@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Meanwhile Spotify gives you, what, playlist creations?

      They give you an international audience without having to hire a marketing and distribution and legal team and accountants (to pay tax) in hundreds of countries.

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    • GenEcon@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Spotify takes 30 %, too. The ‘one third’ in the headline is just rounding.

      And the question should be if digital markets and platforms should take 30 % or not. Because every platform does so from Steam to Apple App Store to Spotify.

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      • echo64@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        the actual article we are commenting under thinks its outrageous that Spotify only gets 30% and things artists should get less. so it’s not “should they take 30% or not”, the question posed is “why are the greedy labels not letting spotify take even more” for some reason, madness

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• abhibeckert@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Distributing the music is basically free these days. Artists can pay about ten bucks (per album) to various cloud services which will handle distribution - and that includes physical CDs, which can be produced and shipped on demand for far less than the sale price.

  Recording an album and music video can cost a fortune, and marketing the album can cost an infinite amount of money. That’s where most of the record label spends their money and it’s not a fixed figure.

  The reality is record labels lose money on a lot of artists.

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