A better approach is one I think Tidal suggested some years ago - instead of pooling all the money paid by customers, dividing it by tracks played by everyone, and then compensating artists based on their number of plays: Do the same, but per subscriber. This would give more money to smaller artists with fans, and less to the artists in heavy rotation on people who play music constantly in the background.
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Spotify Raising Prices in Multiple Countries
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A better approach is one I think Tidal suggested some years ago - instead of pooling all the money paid by customers, dividing it by tracks played by everyone, and then compensating artists based on their number of plays: Do the same, but per subscriber. This would give more money to smaller artists with fans, and less to the artists in heavy rotation on people who play music constantly in the background.
A third reason: a larger percentage of their customers are in countries with lower subscription costs. Apple users tend to be in more affluent countries.
I was told the DMA was going to lower prices for consumers because Spotify wouldn't be required to pay for use of Apple's property. As you can imagine, I am shocked, absolutely shocked, that it turns out that the EU and its defenders had no idea what they were talking about.
Let's say a music service has one subscriber who pays $10 a month and listens to 100 song streams a month. The streaming service pays 70% of their subscription revenue to the owners of the music. That means the owners of the music get paid 7 cents per stream in this situation.
If that music service then adds another subscriber, who doesn't stream any music, the owners of the music rights are paid 14 cents per stream.
Can you explain where my math is wrong?
How much would it cost you to own all the music you have access to by streaming? The charity shops around me are full of CDs and DVDs of music and films people used to want to own and they themselves are struggling to get rid of. People are minimalist these days, I suppose.
Not sure who you were listening to. Literally doesn't mention lower pricing anywhere
About the Digital Markets Act
The DMA is one of the first regulatory tools to comprehensively regulate the gatekeeper power of the largest digital companies. The DMA complements, but does not change EU competition rules, which continue to apply fully.
The same reason people pay monthly for a gym membership for machines they will never own, for example. I see quite reasonable to pay like 10€ for thousands of songs, I would need to spend more than 300€ to listen the music I often listen and then 1,99€ for every new song…
That's great, but I can't see the music labels going for that. They really want to make money based on plays, as that's been the business model since radio was the only "streaming" tech we had.
Such as investments into AI drones..
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek leads $690m+ funding round for AI drone maker Helsing - Music Business Worldwide
‘As Europe rapidly strengthens its defence capabilities in response to evolving geopolitical challenges, there is an urgent need for investments in advanced technologies that ensure its strategic…
www.musicbusinessworldwide.com
Use whatever you want instead of getting your high horse. Don't like Spotify? Don't use it. It's simple. In my view, Apple Music will never surpass the experience that Spotify offers. I know many who 'swear' by Apple Music but use a tool to convert playlists from Spotify to Apple Music because it can't match Spotify. Fine, do whatever works for you.
Artists, small and large, are quite capable of getting together to fight for themselves when it comes to how much they get paid. Except that the more popular artists are as cutthroat as anyone else when it comes to protecting their larger share.
Artists, small and large, are quite capable of getting together to fight for themselves when it comes to how much they get paid. Except that the more popular artists are as cutthroat as anyone else when it comes to protecting their larger share.
In the US, clicking the Premium link in the app takes you to the Spotify website where you can purchase the subscription for $11.99. When you could last purchase a subscription directly from the app, a decade ago, it was $12.99. So despite a decade of inflation, it's still cheaper to go through Spotify than Apple.
Not sure what the price was 10 years ago in the EU, but it's probably a similar situation.
Not sure who you were listening to. Literally doesn't mention lower pricing anywhere
About the Digital Markets Act
The DMA is one of the first regulatory tools to comprehensively regulate the gatekeeper power of the largest digital companies. The DMA complements, but does not change EU competition rules, which continue to apply fully.digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu
I've been told by numerous posters on here, repeatedly over the past year, that the DMA would lower prices for consumers by increasing competition. If it’s not going to lower costs, what’s the point of outlawing closed ecosystems? Government meddling in the private sector just because they can? Because EU regulators are Ideologically opposed to closed ecosystems? They don’t understand that many consumers prefer Apple’s model? They have no understanding of the safety, security, and user benefits a closed ecosystem brings? They haven’t learned their lesson from Crowdstrike? All of the above?
Dump them. They leech off artists anyway.
Spotify today said that it is raising prices for Premium subscriptions in multiple countries across South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific region.
Spotify is sending out emails to customers who will see their subscription prices go up.
A sample email suggests that prices in an unnamed European country are increasing by a euro, from €10.99 to €11.99. Price hikes will vary by location, and Spotify users can see the new pricing for their country by visiting the Spotify website.
Prices are not going up in all markets at this time including the United States. In the U.S., a Premium individual subscription continues to be priced at $11.99 per month.
Spotify says prices are increasing so that it can "continue to innovate" on product offerings and features and "bring users the best experience."
Article Link: Spotify Raising Prices in Multiple Countries
I don't know if this is where Steve's critique comes from... but it seems to me, your hypothetical scenario is missing a few zeros in important places, rendering your results completely unrealistic.
Spotify has tracks from 11 million artists, with 100 million tracks between them. One additional subscriber who never streams would result in a rounding error of increases across those artists, where only the very tippy top artists could get even a single penny each on the deal. Which means that for all but about 840 of those artists... nothing would change at all. And I'm fairly certain that those few artists at the top of the list aren't going to be all that impressed by that extra penny; they'd much prefer to have you show up at their concert and maybe buy one of their t-shirts.
The arguments made by Spotify for keeping the extra 30% doesn't seem to justify the outrage.
A someone who used to buy 2-3 CDs a month, I subscribe to Apple Music because I get value out of it and save on not buying albums. It's that simple, same with any other service.
They did when the app launched for a while.
It's very simple. their argument was that Spotify was unable to compete by showing the true prices and therefore Apple was gaining traction based on the cheaper prices. Now that they have shown the true prices, it didn't seem to move the needle at all the point where Spotify still needs to raise prices.
Because it's not misinformation. You accusing me of spreading misinformation is misinformation itself.
Yes, the increase is negligible. But if millions of subscribers of one service listen to 20% more songs each month on average, the per-song revenue will be lower on that service (if the service you are comparing to has an equal monthly cost).
I'm criticizing the use of revenue per stream as a metric for comparing services.
A better method is to compare what percentage of subscription revenue goes to the rights holders. If you compare that way, all the services are much closer than if you compare per-stream revenue.
Unless users are paying per stream, it doesn't make sense to compare per-stream.
Otherwise known as: „Selling a service directly to customers - and keeping 100% the revenue for the service they provide“.
Well, less card processing fees of course. They provide a service, too.
👉 Is Apple Music profitable or breaking even and showing the „true price“?
Or are they just undercutting Spotify and taking losses to gain market share?