Streaming, royalties and the question of political intervention

[lomiller]

Originally Posted by theprestige

Exactly. The continuance of mutually profitable economy and commerce is probably the most important thing legislators should be thinking about.

The problem is music, and intellectual property in general is that it takes the form of a government granted monopoly. This isn't that much different from the Government grated monopoly that created the British East India Company. This is probabaly why authors of the US constitution though it deserved specific mention in the constitution. Such monopolies inherently violate the economic freedom that was being outlined in the rest of the constitution, so their existence would require a written exception.

Because they are a government created monopoly it's impossible to avoid some government involvement. Since the original goal with these monopolies was to promote science and the arts, they don't need to be a licence to print money. They don't need to make artists ultra-rich just provide rank and file artists the ability to make a living.

[lomiller]

Originally Posted by Lplus

I was thinking it sounded far more Socialist than Fascist. Note that Airfix snipped my comment about a Nationalised Streaming Service.

Socialism would be if the songs were directly produced\distributed by the government. Without a nationalized streaming service there is nothing particularly socialist about it.

While there is no specific fascist economic system there are some common characteristics. The main one would be preferential treatment to companies (and in this case artists) who helped back the governments political and economic goals while hindering those who refuse. This could be the case, but isn't necessarily so it's not explicitly fascist either.

It does have an element of a command economy, but this is to some degree inevitable because it's a government sponsored monopoly. Even doing nothing to limit the power of that monopoly is a direct government action governing how wealth gets distributed.

[zooterkin]

Originally Posted by Matthew Best

Spotify have tried to answer some of their critics, and reveal and explain some of their figures:

https://loudandclear.byspotify.com/

One interesting stat - if your song has 1 million streams, all that means is that it has made it into the top 550,000 songs on Spotify. So although 1 million streams sounds like a lot, it's really not. There may well be literally hundreds of thousands of songs with that many streams that you or I have never heard, or heard OF.

The figure I heard is that there are 60,000 songs added each day.

[Darat]

Originally Posted by Matthew Best

Since it's the real issue, perhaps you could expand?

Sorry missed this.

The way “disrupters” are funded should be illegal. Companies should not be able to run other companies into the ground by way of running at a loss of billions over years This covers the likes of Spotify, Amazon, Uber and so on.

[Matthew Best]

Originally Posted by zooterkin

The figure I heard is that there are 60,000 songs added each day.

That's probably true - but how many of them will ever get a million streams?

[lomiller]

Originally Posted by Darat

Sorry missed this.

The way “disrupters” are funded should be illegal. Companies should not be able to run other companies into the ground by way of running at a loss of billions over years This covers the likes of Spotify, Amazon, Uber and so on.

Rapidly growing companies frequently lose money due to the cost of building new infrastructure. This doesn't mean they were selling at a loss. If cash flows are positive and the value of their physical assets is going up a company can be prospering even if it needs to tap into capital markets to finance it's growth.