merlyn wrote: ↑Mon Dec 06, 2021 12:24 pmRichardT wrote: ↑Sun Dec 05, 2021 1:22 pm The second is giving different amounts to the artist per play depending on how much music a subscriber listens to in total, and how much they listen to a given artist in particular. I can see the good sides of that, but it’s also a little untransparent and unpredictable.
It's not completely transparent at the moment. The £0.0004 per stream is transparent in that it is out in the open and everyone knows that's what one stream gets. But the money from the £0.0004 is the smaller part. A Spotify subscription is £10. Let's say Spotify take half. To spend £5 at £0.0004 per pop would take 12,500 streams, or over 400 streams per day.
1,000 streams per month, or over 30 per day would be a lot for one Spotify user and that comes to 40p. So the bulk of the money is distributed in other ways that aren't made public -- e.g. deals between Universal Music and Spotify.
Spotify don't actually pay per stream though.
If I recall correctly, Spotify take 35% of income and distribute the rest to rights holders based on the proportion of plays. That means if you have two months with the same income, but more plays in the second month, it's a lower payment per play.
Also, your example above is about a factor of 10 out. Payments generally vary from between $0.003 and $0.008 from Spotify.