I don’t really see the problem. People like to listen to the stuff and Spotify provides it and pays the creator. Seems like everything is working as intended. Looks like it’s just greedy people getting annoyed that they can’t get even richer.
Yeah that is true from a monetary perspective. But even then, if people would rather listen to white noise then I guess that’s just how it is. Greedy people will be greedy tho.
I can understand, though, that someone who actually puts effort into producing music is kind of pissed if someone who simply uploads noise gets as much money per stream.
If someone is genuinely mad that people would rather listen to white noise than their music then they should start working on making something better than white noise
Exactly the point, any artist with actual talent wouldn’t and shouldn’t be concerned about someone making white noise. If they did, they are just pumping trash to make money and are not that different from what they hate.
You don’t seem to understand how Spotify works. There’s a fixed cake size that then gets shared between artists. If someone is just using Spotify as an overnight noise generator, the generator artist essentially siphons money away from actual artists.
It’s perfectly understandable that artists don’t like that. Especially given the already very low Spotify payouts.
I really don’t get this weirdly hostile stance here. Is gaming a system now somehow a noble act in itself? The same people who grin at the stoopid artist peoples here will become furious when Amazon uses perfectly legal tax evasion tactics. But that’s of course something completely different, because suddenly you are a victim.
I think it’s true that they’re taking advantage of the way the system works, but I think the reason people are hostile to the music labels is because the music labels are famously terrible to artists and consumers. Can’t really blame people for gaming a system that has been historically gamed by rich businesses to stack the deck in the favor anyway.
No? Ik limited customer base means their usage would be split but the people on white noise podcasts aren’t looking for music. If there weren’t any they would go to youtube not for other music. People listen to white noise because it’s white noise, not actual songs. And the examples you provide are completely missing the point. I am not saying it’s something to be proud but to cut them off cause you think they are making easy money is definitely not something to be proud of either. This sort of thinking is simply corporate greed, that’s why I am opposed to it. The only reason I can see someone would be mad about is jealousy.
I don’t. Art is subjective, YouTubers talk about this all the time where 2 YouTubers will do a video on the same topic and for what ever reason 1 will do way better despite being made worse than the other video. People watch what they want to watch
I can definitely understand that response, but people that feel that way are misconstruing the situation. Traditional podcasts and music are there for entertainment, and/or sometimes education for podcasts, and compete against each other for that. Most people listening to white noise are likely using it as a tool, not for entertainment, it isn’t beating out music as an option in most cases, they aren’t competing.
Yes, they are competing. Spotify only has a limited amount of money to distribute between artists and if “low effort” artists get more money, that means “regular” artists get less. It’s that simple.
Why complain that your song has to compete with white noise, podcasts, and other people’s music? It’s obvious that your entertainment has to compete with other entertainment. If you can’t compete, just move to a “low effort” market…
If Spotify would move out white noise to its own platform or Spotify removes white noise and a different platform picks it up; I would pay less for a Spotify subscription anyways.
My understanding was Spotify pays by the stream. Not out of some pool that is distributed based off a percentage of time spent listening compared to everything they have. Some quick Google searches show .003-.005 dollars per stream on average. Assuming Spotify will increase stream payouts if they don’t have to pay for “low quality” artists is like assuming a company will pay it’s employees more if they get a tax break. These streams are taking from Spotify, not other artists, because few people looking for white noise would choose these other artists if the white noise was unavailable. They would likely simply go to another app that does have white noise.
Spotify needs to get the money somehow first. They can’t increase prices indefinitely, and they can’t lower royalties indefinitely. That’s a rather simple calculation.
My understanding was Spotify pays by the stream. Not out of some pool that is distributed based off a percentage of time spent listening compared to everything they have.
From the article…
Universal Music Group’s CEO Lucian Grainge and Warner Music’s CEO Robert Kyncl have both voiced their displeasure at the fact that songs filled with noise are paid out of the same royalty pool shared by their superstars.
All of the money from subscriptions and advertisements is put into a big pool (minus a cut for Spotify), and every month it is divided up between each rightsholder based on the proportion of plays. So if you have a big chunk of track plays that are just generated noise playing over and over for hours, that’s a big chunk of that pool going to unoriginal/easily reproducible uploads instead of actual musicians. It’s basically a scam gaming the way the system works.
It’s also costly for Spotify. Even if the streams were in the form of, say, podcasts that were not allowed any sort of monetization, it’s still hours upon hours (per user) of data that has to be streamed…and it doesn’t compress efficiently. Compression algorithms seek to avoid noise, and deliberately generated noise will not compress well. So the amount of data being streamed is much higher per second than with music or speech.
Meanwhile, you can make an app that plays white/pink/whatever noise trivially. No waste of resources necessary.
Hard to tell if you meant it this way, but that’s a fault of the system and not of the creators and listeners using it.
If playing audio on a subscription service pays royalties, then creators who make that audio and listeners who pay for it should both be able to do so. It’s ridiculous to say that music is more valuable and deserves more of the money if people enjoy the “easy to make” white noise audio.
How easy something to make does not equate to its value. And many people would consider music easy to make also. It’s just silly for music labels to demand that their audio time be considered more valuable if people would rather listen to white noise.
That said, you’re right that there are more efficient and economical ways to provide that service. This is still a systems problem though. People view Spotify as a place to get audio, if streaming certain audio is wasteful, then Spotify should allow/require the app to cache that audio locally once the requisite length of audio has already been streamed. They can do this but for some reason aren’t.
This is actually a perfect example of “the customer is always right”. You can’t be mad that people want a certain product, instead you should start producing the product people want.
The most complicated factor here is Spotify’s algorithm producing certain outcomes. If people weren’t being suggested certain types of content, maybe they wouldn’t want it and would choose music instead of white noise. But again, that’s still not really any of the music label’s right to demand one way or another.
I don’t really see the problem. People like to listen to the stuff and Spotify provides it and pays the creator. Seems like everything is working as intended. Looks like it’s just greedy people getting annoyed that they can’t get even richer.
Yeah it’s only a problem because audio consumption is generally a zero-sum game.
Yeah that is true from a monetary perspective. But even then, if people would rather listen to white noise then I guess that’s just how it is. Greedy people will be greedy tho.
I can understand, though, that someone who actually puts effort into producing music is kind of pissed if someone who simply uploads noise gets as much money per stream.
If someone is genuinely mad that people would rather listen to white noise than their music then they should start working on making something better than white noise
It’s not a competition for airtime, but a competition for money.
Exactly the point, any artist with actual talent wouldn’t and shouldn’t be concerned about someone making white noise. If they did, they are just pumping trash to make money and are not that different from what they hate.
You don’t seem to understand how Spotify works. There’s a fixed cake size that then gets shared between artists. If someone is just using Spotify as an overnight noise generator, the generator artist essentially siphons money away from actual artists.
It’s perfectly understandable that artists don’t like that. Especially given the already very low Spotify payouts.
I really don’t get this weirdly hostile stance here. Is gaming a system now somehow a noble act in itself? The same people who grin at the stoopid artist peoples here will become furious when Amazon uses perfectly legal tax evasion tactics. But that’s of course something completely different, because suddenly you are a victim.
I think it’s true that they’re taking advantage of the way the system works, but I think the reason people are hostile to the music labels is because the music labels are famously terrible to artists and consumers. Can’t really blame people for gaming a system that has been historically gamed by rich businesses to stack the deck in the favor anyway.
No? Ik limited customer base means their usage would be split but the people on white noise podcasts aren’t looking for music. If there weren’t any they would go to youtube not for other music. People listen to white noise because it’s white noise, not actual songs. And the examples you provide are completely missing the point. I am not saying it’s something to be proud but to cut them off cause you think they are making easy money is definitely not something to be proud of either. This sort of thinking is simply corporate greed, that’s why I am opposed to it. The only reason I can see someone would be mad about is jealousy.
I don’t. Art is subjective, YouTubers talk about this all the time where 2 YouTubers will do a video on the same topic and for what ever reason 1 will do way better despite being made worse than the other video. People watch what they want to watch
I can definitely understand that response, but people that feel that way are misconstruing the situation. Traditional podcasts and music are there for entertainment, and/or sometimes education for podcasts, and compete against each other for that. Most people listening to white noise are likely using it as a tool, not for entertainment, it isn’t beating out music as an option in most cases, they aren’t competing.
Yes, they are competing. Spotify only has a limited amount of money to distribute between artists and if “low effort” artists get more money, that means “regular” artists get less. It’s that simple.
Why complain that your song has to compete with white noise, podcasts, and other people’s music? It’s obvious that your entertainment has to compete with other entertainment. If you can’t compete, just move to a “low effort” market…
If Spotify would move out white noise to its own platform or Spotify removes white noise and a different platform picks it up; I would pay less for a Spotify subscription anyways.
My understanding was Spotify pays by the stream. Not out of some pool that is distributed based off a percentage of time spent listening compared to everything they have. Some quick Google searches show .003-.005 dollars per stream on average. Assuming Spotify will increase stream payouts if they don’t have to pay for “low quality” artists is like assuming a company will pay it’s employees more if they get a tax break. These streams are taking from Spotify, not other artists, because few people looking for white noise would choose these other artists if the white noise was unavailable. They would likely simply go to another app that does have white noise.
Spotify needs to get the money somehow first. They can’t increase prices indefinitely, and they can’t lower royalties indefinitely. That’s a rather simple calculation.
From the article…
I wanna ask Spotify the same question i wanna ask media companies about region locking because of copyright shenanigans:
Why do you make your system to my problem?
I put great effort into masturbation yet receive no compensation either. What’s your point?
What do you mean by this? How is audio consumption a zero-sum game?
All of the money from subscriptions and advertisements is put into a big pool (minus a cut for Spotify), and every month it is divided up between each rightsholder based on the proportion of plays. So if you have a big chunk of track plays that are just generated noise playing over and over for hours, that’s a big chunk of that pool going to unoriginal/easily reproducible uploads instead of actual musicians. It’s basically a scam gaming the way the system works.
It’s also costly for Spotify. Even if the streams were in the form of, say, podcasts that were not allowed any sort of monetization, it’s still hours upon hours (per user) of data that has to be streamed…and it doesn’t compress efficiently. Compression algorithms seek to avoid noise, and deliberately generated noise will not compress well. So the amount of data being streamed is much higher per second than with music or speech.
Meanwhile, you can make an app that plays white/pink/whatever noise trivially. No waste of resources necessary.
Hard to tell if you meant it this way, but that’s a fault of the system and not of the creators and listeners using it.
If playing audio on a subscription service pays royalties, then creators who make that audio and listeners who pay for it should both be able to do so. It’s ridiculous to say that music is more valuable and deserves more of the money if people enjoy the “easy to make” white noise audio.
How easy something to make does not equate to its value. And many people would consider music easy to make also. It’s just silly for music labels to demand that their audio time be considered more valuable if people would rather listen to white noise.
That said, you’re right that there are more efficient and economical ways to provide that service. This is still a systems problem though. People view Spotify as a place to get audio, if streaming certain audio is wasteful, then Spotify should allow/require the app to cache that audio locally once the requisite length of audio has already been streamed. They can do this but for some reason aren’t.
This is actually a perfect example of “the customer is always right”. You can’t be mad that people want a certain product, instead you should start producing the product people want.
The most complicated factor here is Spotify’s algorithm producing certain outcomes. If people weren’t being suggested certain types of content, maybe they wouldn’t want it and would choose music instead of white noise. But again, that’s still not really any of the music label’s right to demand one way or another.
Then perhaps it is the system that is broken?
A very good explanation. Thanks!
“greedy people”
such as
Daniel Ek.