Let's say Artist X has their music on Spotify but is currently making $0 a month. Now, for the sake of argument, let's say I spend an entire month listening to only Artist X a thousand times; I personally think it's fair in that case that whatever scraps of my Spotify fee are left for the artists should then go 100% to Artist X because they're the only ones I've listened to. So, in this utopian scenario, they might make $5.
With the current model, if I do that, Artist X gets paid near zero. So you can see how the models are indeed different.
Getting 100% of your subscription is the same thing as getting 1% from everyone out of 100 customers, where only one person (you) listen to that artist (and exclusively).
That 99% of "your" money went to an artist you dislike doesn't matter if 1% of everyone else's money went to the artist you do like. The money doesn't know where it came from, and the artist doesn't care. Only the aggregate distribution matters.
Now I don't know how they do their reward distribution, I'm merely pointing out the flaw in your reasoning.
But no one actually does that, and if you really did, you don't need Spotify, just buy their album directly.
Such a payout seems appealing in theory, but in practice will just give more money to the very popular bands since they dominate the market and leave a much smaller share for the others.
in practice will just give more money to the very popular bands since they dominate the market and leave a much smaller share for the others.
Which is exactly the current situation, by the way. Anyway, what I was doing was just demonstrating that the system is not the same.
Although I am admittedly bad at maths and statistics, it seems to me that the system I am proposing would be more likely to pay out at least coffee change to small-time artists. I might be wrong, though.
Basically I think it's unfair and unintuitive how everything I pay goes to artists I don't listen to. There has to be a better system.
No, I meant it would give more money than it does now. Smaller artists are REALLY small compared to any others.
The main problem that small artists have is exposure and bad contracts anyway, and none of those can be fixed by changing the payment system.
Made up example: $100000000 * 0.0000001 of all listening activity = $10
Or $10 * 1 of all my listening activity = $10
Or are you saying that Spotify cuts off at a certain point and doesn't pay anything out, or that they take a fixed cut after allocation?