“User-centric” is rapidly becoming all the rage in the streaming royalty debate. To its credit, Deezer is the only streaming service that has announced it is working on trying to implement a user-centric model. The Ethical Pool model avoids the complexities with an opt-in approach for fans and artists.
[Editor Charlie sez: Rather than rearranging the deck chairs, we think there are two separate issues with streaming rates. First and most important services need to exercise pricing power to increase the revenue pie or stop asking artists and songwriters to fund and invest in their growth strategy without getting stock or upside. Second, the […]
Driving traffic to Spotify just doesn’t pay off for indie artists (or probably for smaller indie labels). See an explanation of the Ethical Pool method as a possible solution. Whatever we do, the status quo is not sustainable.
Hyper-efficient market share distributions are already causing some artists to like cutting the cord with big services–the only question is how to get their core fans to follow them.
Please spend a few minutes and take our “Artist Fans on Artist Royalties” survey!
An academic statistical analysis from Finland raises interesting questions about user-centric royalty systems. via Ethical Pool: More for few or fewer for more – The Results of a Comparative Study on Pro Rata and User Centric Distribution Models from Finland — Music Tech Solutions
Subscription services are one of the few secular trends in the current economy that is not yet reactive to trade wars or interest rates. Subscription services are found in many areas of the economy, but music drives some of the big ones like Spotify, Amazon and Apple.
But when fans find out that their money gets paid for music they never listen to performed by artists they would never listen to, it may give cord cutting a whole new meaning. The ethical pool solution could give services a chance to get ahead of yet more negative fan reaction.
Music Technology Policy 