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275 points starkparker | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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cortesoft ◴[] No.45133347[source]
So the author talks about how little money per stream artists make... but how much SHOULD they be making? What is fair compensation for writing a song?

In the old days, artists would join a label and put out an album. The artist would earn about 10% of sales or so (varies of course, but on average). So a $15 CD would earn an artist $1.50.

The article lists the 'price per stream' as about $0.005. So it would take about 300 streams of a song to earn the same amount as selling a CD used to make.

I feel like that isn't categorically less money than artists used to make per song listen? There are many albums I own that I have listened to way more than 30 times, which is what it would take for a 10 song album to get 300 song 'streams'

Is that a fair compensation? Why or why not?

I think artists should be able to earn money from creating music, but I don't know how we decide how much they actually deserve if we aren't just going based on the price the market sets.

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newsclues ◴[] No.45133369[source]
Does the record company make more money than the artist? That’s unfair to me.

The people making the art, should be paid the most.

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1. cortesoft ◴[] No.45133484[source]
I don't know a ton of the specifics for music, but I am not sure if I agree your statement is always true. A lot can go into producing and distributing music, and I don't think it is fair to say the artist should always make more than all the other people who work on making the music happen combined. It isn't just a 'company' making that money, it is all the people working behind the scenes, all the investment in equipment and things, etc. I would need a lot more info on cost breakdown before I say the blanket statement of "the artist should make more"