this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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[–] nixcamic@lemmy.world 39 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Didn't they also slash how much they pay artists? What exactly is the point of Spotify?

[–] cosmicrookie@lemmy.world 60 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The point is to make as much profit as possible without losing too many subscribers. This includes cutting expenses both internally and externally

[–] Contend6248@feddit.de 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wow essentially like any other company

[–] cosmicrookie@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's not like they're firing 1500 to survive

[–] Contend6248@feddit.de 20 points 1 year ago

No it's min-maxing

[–] baked_tea@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Short term profit

[–] raptir@lemdro.id 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not really, they set a "minimum threshold" of unique annual listeners to get a payout. If a song has at least 1000 unique listeners per year it gets the same payout it did before. If it gets 999 it gets zero.

[–] GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

It's 1000 playbacks, not 1000 unique listeners.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The change exclude payouts that are under 1 cent or something like that. The news got hijacked by click and rage baiters like this title by the Guardian (which I won't link):

Spotify made £56m profit, but has decided not to pay smaller artists

The smaller artists would literally get single digit cents! The Spotify hate is getting astroturfed hard it almost seems.

[–] thenightisdark@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You say that like it's a defense though.

Yeah they're paying the people who make the product we sell so little that they don't even get enough money in a paycheck to have it be worth sending them a paycheck!!

[–] Zoot@reddthat.com 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Should spotify offer more money for less views? Maybe. But 1000 views being a threshold (and only valued at a few pennies with their current model) sounds to me like the paper they write the check on, cost more than the person may make.

[–] effward@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

1000 unique listeners.

If you had 500 die hard fans who stream your music every waking minute, you get $0.

Now, I imagine they did this to prevent people from trying to game the system (create a song and have all your devices stream it all the time, or something), but it's still shitty that if you have legitimate "listens" you can get nothing.

[–] raptir@lemdro.id 0 points 1 year ago

It makes it so that I know some of my listens are just going to line Spotify's coffers. I have a number of bands I listen to who are under even 500 monthly listeners. Even if they're only getting a couple cents, I know they're at least getting something from my listens on Tidal.

[–] raptir@lemdro.id 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, they spun it that way by deceptively going on a rant about how many "songs get fewer than 1000 plays ever" and doing the math based on that in the "article," but that's not what the change actually was. If you read the details of the change below that, it is that they will no longer pay out at all for songs that get fewer than 1000 unique listeners per year.

You still aren't talking a ton of money, but if each of 999 listeners streamed a song once per month, the artist could be losing close to $40 per song per year.

[–] RedAggroBest@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Playbacks, not listeners. It's not a high threshold and listeners would be a weird metric in the first place. Playbacks doesn't exclude niche content consumed often by fewer people and shows overall popularity.