Spotify Will Boost Music In Exchange For Cut of Royalties

On Monday, Spotify announced a new initiative that offers artists the chance to pay their way into automated recommendations. Gizmodo reports: In a carefully worded blog post, Spotify is framing its latest move as a test that will give artists more "input" into the recommendation algorithms that populate personalized playlists with fresh tracks. The company writes that its algorithms take "into account thousands of types of signals: what you're listening to and when, which songs you're adding to your playlists, the listening habits of people who have similar tastes, and much more." Today, Spotify is adding a new signal to the mix: $$$.

Artists uploading new tracks to Spotify will be able to choose "music that's a priority for them" and in exchange for accepting a "promotional recording royalty rate," Spotify's algorithms might just bless them with exposure. The company isn't making promises, it's only offering an opportunity. There's no guarantee of placement in playlists and the reduced royalty rate is only applied to songs that end up being served through the new recommendation system. What is a "promotional recording royalty rate," exactly? [A] spokesperson for the service told the Verge that they aren't making the rate public while it's in testing and Spotify will "calibrate to make sure that the widest group of artists and labels can find success."

Business...

[fbobraga]

...as usual

Re:

[cayenne8]

In the old days...wasn't something similar to this known as "Payola"?

Are those old laws from the early radio / rock and roll days not applicable to this?

Perhaps just a little massaging of those laws to update them today might be something to look into?

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[fbobraga]

if I undestood correctly, here in Brazil this is called "jabÃ"

Re:

[fbobraga]

damn utf8 support here on /. :/

Re: pray all you like

[dynamic_cast]

Prove on exists.

Re:

[stealth_finger]

Embrace tyranny, fuck your fellow man. Land of the one, home of the selfish.

user choice

[jemmyw]

Can I disable it as a user? I don't want the artist to choose which songs to push on me, I want the algorithm to choose based on what I've chosen in the past.

Re:user choice

[stephanruby]

The only choice is to leave Spotify.

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[rtb61]

You can bet what they want to push as number one on the hit parade, advertising jingles, they will claim are music ;/. Corporations will pay to have their products mentioned in music and then push that advertising as music.

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[kemosabi]

You're probably right.

It was already done with radio back in the 70s. Simon and Garfunkel had an accidental hit that way:

Kodachrooo-oooo-ome. Gives us the nice bright colors; gives us the dree-ee-eeams of summer; makes you think all the world's a sunny day.

Re:

[hiroshimarrow]

Their payment to Spotify is the algorithm.

Radio is dead

[Vrallis]

Congrats, Spotify, you just found out how to become like that radio thing that nobody listens to anymore! More mass-market cookie-cutter garbage incoming!

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[CaptainLugnuts]

It's the payola scandal all over again!

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[MDMurphy]

My thought exactly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

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[lessSockMorePuppet]

Came here for this, was not disappoint.

Welcome to the future

[martynhare]

Good quality music is so abundant and inexpensive that there is no going back now. There is no business model predicated upon scarcity here and any artist or record label which opts not to allow their music on streaming services like Spotify has automatically lost the battle for attention. Any attempt to artificially introduce scarcity at this point will usher in a new age of copyright infringement that will be the permanent undoing of the whole industry, for real. People are now psychologically primed to expect unlimited access to all music for a price that is cheaper per-stream on average than what a library pays an author to lend a book. That genie is not going back in the bottle and the margins are razor thin.

Next will be the movie/TV studios, who will have to compete with all-you-can-eat. Except, unlike with music, they won't get royalties but instead ever cheaper fixed sums of money, as their greed backs them into a corner. With COVID killing cinema, Netflix only needs to woo enough desperate studios into signing cheap deals that they will reach a critical mass, at which point, they will be able to begin dictating prices. Of course, once that has happened there will be no going back as folks will inevitably pirate what does not show on the only services they are willing to pay for.

When will this happen for books? I would love it for almost all e-books to be available under one subscription. Amazon has something but it is nowhere near close to full coverage.

Re:

[nagora]

Yes. People are lazy parasites who expect other people to entertain them for free.

Meet the new boss

[hondo77]

Same as the old boss

so...

[desdinova 216]

is that money that's actually going to go to the actual artists, or is it going to the rent seekers at the RIAA

Where the money is going to

[zuki]

All three of the major labels own a significant, non-trivial stake in Spotify. The less is paid out in royalties, the more potential profit in quarterly earnings (when they materialize, at this moment the company isn't profitable yet).
But the obvious difference is that these labels will be able to pocket more profits which were realized by shaving the razor-thin margins because they'll get stock dividends from Spotify, whereas if they had been collecting royalties from number of plays they're contractuall

Re:

[SkonkersBeDonkers]

rent seekers, it's just like "hollywood accounting" where all the powerful people get rich but somehow when it comes time to pay the artists and working crew and taxes, the blockbuster that broke all sales records somehow lost money on paper.

It was only a matter of time

[uncoveror]

Payola has made it to streaming music. Now, the recommendation system that used to be helpful will be completely useless.

Someone should cal the RIAA

[bobstreo]

/s

Good luck...

[gosso920]

... in paying your rent with "exposure"

But the artists are all gone

[Provocateur]

The ones that mattered: Cobain, Cornell, Staley, RIP, and say hello to heaven

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[sabbede]

Thanks for reminding me how old we are. Cobain died almost 30 years ago.

It's kind of creepy when the music you listened to as a teenager becomes "Classic Rock".

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[CrazyBusError]

If you like that kind of music, search for "Battalion Of Flies" on spotify.

Added bonus - there's new music coming out in the next month or so and our lead singer isn't dead yet...

Hey Mr. DJ, I thought you said we had a deal.

[sabbede]

This sounds like payola. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

Should do the opposite

[TomClancy_Jack]

Spotify relies on the work of a couple million music artists in order to exist. If they added 1-$2 per month per-paying user sub and under contract touched NONE of that money and put it towards royalties per-play, it would dramatically boost how much a non-famous, but working musician could make in a year. There are 130 million paid subscriptions (at at least $10 per month) and 3m artists. $2 per subscription would be almost no pain to subscribers and a whole lot of money to distribute to what makes the mu

Re:

[stoborrobots]

There are 130 million paid subscriptions (at at least $10 per month) and 3m artists. $2 per subscription would be almost....

almost $87 per month per artist?

Doesn't seem like much.

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[TomClancy_Jack]

Well, you're not wrong about the amount. Although I suspect that if it was distributed by play and not divided evenly it may be more, and that would weed out some of the bot accounts. But then again that is going to be tough on new bands with less audience. But I suspect that a struggling artist wouldn't turn down $1k a year even if that won't help much towards a living wage.

Maybe a tipping system? You direct the $2 to artists you pick every month. If no artist picked it could go to the distribution pot.