After announcing increased prices, Spotify to Pay Songwriters About $150 Million Less Next Year

Submitted ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨fpslem@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.billboard.com/business/streaming/spotify-songwriters-less-mechanical-royalties-audiobooks-bundle-1235673829/

When Bloomberg reported that Spotify would be upping the cost of its premium subscription from $9.99 to $10.99, and including 15 hours of audiobooks per month in the U.S., the change sounded like a win for songwriters and publishers. Higher subscription prices typically equate to a bump in U.S. mechanical royalties — but not this time.

By adding audiobooks into Spotify’s premium tier, the streaming service now claims it qualifies to pay a discounted “bundle” rate to songwriters for premium streams, given Spotify now has to pay licensing for both books and music from the same price tag — which will only be a dollar higher than when music was the only premium offering. Additionally, Spotify will reclassify its duo and family subscription plans as bundles as well.

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Comments

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andros_rex@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Spotify seems to be trying to transition to podcasts anyway - it’s harder to get it to recommend music. My guess is that eventually the Spotify and the record labels will have more disagreements about royalties, and that Spotify will pivot more towards podcasting - independent folks who have far less power in negotiations.

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Gluten6970@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
And this is why I refuse to listen to ads or pay for spotify.

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- BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  If I were an artist at this point I’d half rather the listener just steal the record. At least then you’re not giving the money to Spotify if you aren’t going to pay for it outright.
  
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nobleshift@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Abandon Spotify

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- reverendsteveii@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  www.xmanagerapp.com
  
  *Steal Spotify
  
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- EnderMB@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’d love to, but in terms of pure availability I can get almost everything I’ve ever wanted to listen to, aside from some weird geoblocking or removal of defunct band’s back catalogues.
  
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akilou@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
This is why I don’t feel bad about pirating

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- Steamymoomilk@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Fun fact of the day The orginal creator of spotify asked a bunch of artists to use there works for his business pitch. And they denied him, to which for his business pitch for investors pirated audio for the demo.
  
  So everything spotify says about piracy is ironic, because without piracy they wouldnt exist.
  
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- Speculater@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Pirating and collecting albums.
  
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sfunk1x@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Metallica, Dr Dre, et al were not wrong in suing Napster. We’re seeing the fruits of the evolution of that format. I guess at least people aren’t downloading “Get Back ft Stevie Wonder - Oasis.wma” anymore, and somebody is making money off of it. Just (mostly) not the artists that make the music.

Low cost, distributed digital distribution is absolutely a thing. Phones have enormous storage anymore, so much so most people could have their entire music collections available on their phones or tablets - not everyone - but most people.

A distributed streaming platform would really be the way to do this and make it cost effective for everybody. An app that could stream from a list of sources (remember playlists? M3U files that could play from multiple Internet locations - yeah, that already exists and has since before 2000) would enable people to stream the music they haven’t found yet or are searching for.

Seems like an interesting open source software project, to be honest. Funkwhale is probably a good basis for extension, and could be run by the artists (or provided to then via a simple click to setup platform) for low overhead.

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AshMan85@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Fuck stopify. If u have any respect/appreciation for music and who created it you should not be using spotify.

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- filcuk@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’ve tried all the popular alternatives, and not one was better.
  Theoretically, buying the songs without DRM felt best, but having enjoyed nearly 6,5K different artists on Spotify so far, that won’t really work.
  Unfortunately, as an average consumer, that means I’m sticking with Spotify for now.
  
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- NikkiDimes@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I hope their platform soon becomes over inundated with AI slop from Udio and Suno to the point it is unusable and collapses.
  
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noodlejetski@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’ve ditched Spotify last year when their app suddenly has started draining battery on my phone (and also because of them being so eager to give Rogan a platform). I’ve switched to Deezer, but I’ve ran into the same issue I’ve had with Spotify for a while - even if I download a playlist for offline usage, it’ll still try to connect to the internet, so if I was somewhere with poor reception, it’d get stuck on a spinning circle for a minute before giving up and showing me the songs I’ve wanted to play. I ended my Deezer subscription, rebuilt the library on my laptop, and just manually transfer files to my phone. I get instant access to my music with no delays, with music players that offer much better experience and aren’t a glorified Chrome tab on desktop, and if I really like an album, I’ll just straight up buy one. I listen to music a fucking lot (two years ago i was in top 0.2% of my country’s Spotify users), and according to some screenshots of my Spotify Wrapped, I’ve played my artists songs for 1200 minutes, which translates to 300-400 plays at best. given that, from what I’ve found online, 1000 plays gives artists 4 bucks, I could just buy two of their songs on Bandcamp and pirated the rest of their music, and they’ll still get more money in a year from me.

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- mihies@kbin.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  ve ran into the same issue I’ve had with Spotify for a while - even if I download a playlist for offline usage, it’ll still try to connect to the internet, so if I was somewhere with poor reception, it’d get stuck on a spinning circle for a minute before giving up and showing me the songs I’ve wanted to play.
  
  That's by design and all streaming apps would do it like that to enforce abuse.
  
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  - noodlejetski@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    thing is, it didn’t do that in the past, or at least it wouldn’t be that noticeable to me. but some time ago Spotify introduced a feature that would automatically add “smart” suggestions to the playlist, and it makes sense it requires network access for that. what doesn’t make sense is that it still wants the connection even when I kept that feature disabled.
    
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CrowAirbrush@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I already canceled with the last price increase, because it went from €9,99 to €12,99 for me they don’t need to convince me that i made the right decision.

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ZeroTwo@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Thank God for a certain manager. Haven’t paid for Spotify in years. Fuck em.

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- barnaclebutt@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Ugh, that’s disgusting. Which manager so I know to stay away from it?
  
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  - ZeroTwo@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    X gon give it to ya! 😉
    
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  - lemmy_nightmare@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    😂
    
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reverendsteveii@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Alexa, play John Mellecamp - Ain’t That America

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UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Gotta fund Barcelona’s €240 million sponsor deal somehow

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BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The very great and very funny singer Neko Case made a playlist on Spotify and entitled it “PAY FOR IT YOU CHEAP PRICKS!!!” I howled.

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feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
dibbidens

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fukurthumz420@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
the music i get access to for the price i pay is worth far more than the money i don’t get for the music i wrote.

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Bluefalcon@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Capitalism!!! USA!! USA!! USA!! 🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲 You poor fucks don’t deserve music.

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- baseless_discourse@mander.xyz ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I think spotify is swedish. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify
  
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  - Bluefalcon@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Do you know how strong of a country you have to be to make another live to your standards?
    
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- timewarp@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  We don’t deserve music for other reasons too… like we don’t care what the lyrics are even about as long as it “sounds good.”
  
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  - Bluefalcon@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    What are you talking about?
    
    Thought of calling ya
    But you won’t pick up
    Another fortnight lost in America
    Move to Florida
    Buy the car you want
    But it won’t start up
    Til you touch, touch, touch me
    
    Those are lyrics written by an actual God.
    
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kn0wmad1c@programming.dev ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
15 hours hardly covers a single book

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ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Napster exists but people just ignore it

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SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’m just gonna keep exploiting the 3 month free trial with all my accounts. I still have my own local library as well.

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- fossilesque@mander.xyz ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Google Spotiflyer and Spotube at your convenience.
  
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oxlikesmath@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Just download music from 3rd party sites. Not that hard, don’t understand why you are complaining so much.

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arandomthought@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’ve heard good things about tidal in regards to paying artists (more) fairly. Does anyone know more about the alternatives or has experience with them? Also in terms of the library size I’m not sure how the services compare…

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- Shawdow194@kbin.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I love my Tidal subscription. Most everything that's on Spotify is on Tidal now unless it's an exclusive. Most annoying part will be tranferring your playlists
  
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- GeneralVincent@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I believe tidal actually has a larger library than Spotify, and offers a tier that lets you listen to higher quality of music. Similar pricing to Spotify I think. I had it for a while and really liked it, only stopped paying for it because I’m broke so I’m sailing the seas for now
  
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  - arandomthought@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Thank you for sharing your experience and may the winds blow ever in your favor! Ahoy!
    
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Etterra@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Sounds about right. I remember when it was the RIAA. This is just more proof that time is a hamster wheel.

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PiratePanPan@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Pssst…

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homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Never heard of it.

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