Spotify will end service in Uruguay due to bill requiring fair pay for artists

We have been

The internet doesn't tend to like to pay the actual cost for things. You'll find very little sympathy for paid services, especially here on Lemmy.

Not really the same, this was more large Canadian companies trying to extort money from Google whilst google still gives them their traffic.

Not trying to defend gogle, that company can burn to the ground as far as I care, but it wasn't the same

All of these complaints are nearly identical to the complaints about major labels prior to streaming. It's almost like the core issue is still the same, but the scapegoat is changing.

The physical market was long gone before Spotify happened, don't make your legitimate complaints look silly by blaming Spotify for it. The music industry simply had no good answer to deal with digital media.

Spotify did seem to force their hand and some artists improved and adapted. And it's never had a true monopoly with many different services coexesting and competing with it.

I'm curious if you know how this works for other streaming services?

Presumably there's a market rate that users are currently willing to pay and as such an increase of pay from Spotify to artists would mean they need to increase the fee to their users. This would make them less competitive and possibly lose subscriptions.

I've already jumped ship from Spotify over to YouTube music for example because in my country it was a better deal.

what do you recommend a listener do to support the artists they love? I assume buying the music directly instead of streaming is the best, but I want to do what I can as a consumer

It’s clear that labels are acting as gatekeepers, but are they productive gatekeepers? Or just skimming off of the top — that is, rent seeking, profiting even when they provide little value themselves. It seems like there’s a lot of the latter going on.

Did you ever heard of Nic D? He did what you claim is impossible. He is also by far not the only one doing it.

Just to throw in a bit of math here. Assuming the 70% take of a lable. (numbers are fictional and just for the sake of the example)

Idependent Artist get 100%

Artist with lable get 30%

For the lable one to reach the same money as the Idependent one, the artist would need to generate at least 333,33% more revenue to get the same money as the Idependent one.

Lets do the same with 80% cut for the Labels. Now we are at 500%

And again with 90% and you need 1000% more

The point im trying to make is. As an Idependent Artist, you need way less output to generate the same amount of money for yourself.

And yes, the competition is still real and its still not easy.

they don’t. spotify says they’re paying 70%, but they don’t tell how they redistribute that revenue. they have under-the-table deals with the 3 majors who grabs most of that money, and leave the crumbs to everybody else.

70% of what?

If that's subscription revenue in Uruguay then the business model is just not feasible, unless they up the subscription fees to adequately cover costs.

This is the risk when the revenue model doesn't scale with th cost model.

Doubling means rising the price and not shutting down or giving less to some and more to others. The new price may be too expensive for the customer. In this case, the service or the business model is the issue.

An other regulation may be to pay egally all artists per listen with this point regulated as well.

Spotify didn't turn a profit yet. I would be pessimistic on the business model knowing the Majors take the majority of the 70%. Spotify is de facto a monopoly and so the Majors. With a fair price, the issue is to see the Majors quit the service and launch their own service. Spotify would be useless with only the indep (this is sad). They are protecting their money and the Majors. They don't care about the smaller artists.

Thanks! Gotta love autocucumber!

No, no, let him cook, the water is money and Spotify holding it back.

Well I'll be dammed!

I would love to go back to an artist release model and purchase model where non superstars (with big label circulation) can be successful again.

As is, the same corps own the radio and the venues and the ads. Spotify harms Mariah Carey for example by undervaluing her songs on streaming, but at a fraction of the harm it inflicts to smaller artists.

Oh I'm sure no one on the multi billion dollar a week music industry would get anything

I hope you'll check it out. I have an account on funkwhale.it as it allows up to 5GB of storage free of charge, which is the best I've seen for open registration instances (it also happens to be the first I learned of as I use several of the other features of the devol.it who operates that instance, simply because their cryptpad instance was the fisrt thing that showed up when I did a DDG search for Free and Federated Online Documents).

Not sure how that solves paying the artists a fair share.

Broadly speaking, people aged 40+ still sometimes buy albums, but most young people mostly just stream.

and capitalism killed bandcamp too now…

literally