A sliding scale would be nice, but I think they should start by not counting streams in aggregate across the platform, and instead pay by subscriber. For instance, if a subscriber listens only to a single artist, then all of the monthly fee that doesn’t cover operational costs should go to that single artist.
EDIT: You can also calculate if your monthly fee is subsidizing other people’s music taste or not. For Spotify, you’d need to listen to roughly 2.2 hours of music per day for the artists to be paid out your monthly payment amount. (9.99 ($/mo) / 0.00735 ($/play) * 3 (min/play) / 60 (mins/hr) / (365.25/12) (days/mo))
It’s not just recording artists, but also songwriters, publishing companies, and so many more. I work at a music publisher writing software that calculates music royalties. They talk about this shit all day long every day.
That’s hella unfair because most people use massive playlists that span dozens of artists, and listen to several of those playlists. That 9.99 getting divided between 100 artists (a low estimate to say the least) winds up being 9 cents per artist, which Taylor Swift (to maintain my earlier example) is getting millions of while small artists get dozens.
If you’re writing your own material (virtually everyone is these days) you don’t have to worry about songwriter royalties. I’m sure publishers take a massive chunk, but I haven’t been in contract negotiations yet so I’m not factoring that in because I don’t know. Still, If Taylor gets a mere 17 percent of here Spotify royalties, she’s making a million dollars this year off her latest album alone, not including everything else. Meanwhile, Marina is independent so she gets 100% of royalties, which at even 25 cents a stream for 1000 streams makes sense to me.
I’m curious if there’s anyone else you know gets a cut, cause you must be more informed on this than I.
None. We don’t practice. We internalize all of the kinds of things we are going to say in a lecture or on a show. The slides are just prompts and visual aides. I could do the same talk without them and go anywhere between 20 and 120 minutes without breaking a sweat.
That’s the advantage of knowing a lot about something, coupled with doing a radio show live-to-tape 2-4 nights a week for 15 years.
Reminds me a lot of when I was helping Hannako out with Pin Hell - while obviously a different format, every question, it was just a big chunk of information completely extemporaneously. I could 100% give a 45-minute lecture on pins and merch right now - after we sorted out why you’re in my house at quarter to one in the morning wanting to know about pins and put a brew on because I’m a good host - straight off my head. Your Q’s for Q&A better be actual questions or I will be cross.
Edit - Also Buy Pin Hell and Pin Hell 2. Hannako drew me in the latter, It was the first time anyone drew me, it was very exciting. I helped out a little, but don’t get a kickback or owt, except for getting to see a good friend succeed.
I think it also helps to have someone you’re very familiar with in terms of attitude, cadence, and speach patterns. I could improvise a panel with Will in a way I very much couldn’t with say, Rym or Churba.
You want to talk about a ship in harbor? This is something I think about a lot, mostly in the context of war, history, and games.
First, I know I talk a lot randomly about the idea of a “fleet in being.” I mention it casually in wargames and such. It’s a naval concept with a rich and complex history.
A ship could, and in many cases was, built to remain safe in harbor. Its existence and the possibility of its use, without actually using it, was a valid military strategy.
It evolved to rely heavily on the concept of “defeat in detail,” which, abstracted heavily, basically means “hold your assets in safety and only engage under favorable conditions.” (Military planners talk more about it in terms of proximity, support, etc…, but in abstraction it’s a great general concept).
But the idea of a “ship built for harbor” was more or less valid depending on technological advances over the centuries.
Early ships were lost to the Ocean moreso than enemy ships, so any use of a ship was a risk, but having ships was a powerful deterrent.
Harbors became less safe when things like fire ships or sabotage were developed to remove or reduce that safety.
In the Napoleonic Wars the risk of a concentrated French force being able to strike forth required a massive English undertaking to be ready for such an event, causing a deep asymmetry in naval spending.
But, as the wars dragged on, the realities of disease and society overall meant that a fleet in harbor was not actually that safe. There was a natural attrition rate of just existing at all. This implied that being at sea or taking a risk could indeed have been more valuable later in the war than the maintenance of the threat to do so.
The concept probably should have ended with the Battle of Taranto, which spurred Italy to actually use its remaining fleet. Air power changed the dynamic.
But outside of naval aviation, there are still areas where something is built to never be used, and it makes sense to do so.
During WWII the British Navy was very cautious about deploying its battleships because if they couldn’t guarantee with a high degree of confidence they would win the engagement they were better to have as a deterrent to strategies of the German Navy and thus restrict their actions than if they went out, got surprised by a fog bank and were snuck up on and destroyed by enemy ships. The loss both in warfighting capability, cost and build time, and strategic deterrent value would be very high. So, the most powerful items in the British Navy saw very little action in WWII.
