I think that the Silent September idea is good. I'd thought that the groups I streamed got a fair distribution of royalties. Now I see that I was completely mistaken on that count.
Perhaps it's better to download everything and send money directly to the groups :-)
Spotify currently has a database that tracks the number 'Plays' each artist gets. They then roll that up into a combined number that gives them their royalty payout for the year. Have lets say 100,000 artists, that is 100,000 records accessed when they run their end of year report. On the user level (lets say you have a million users) you now need to keep track of the number of clicks per artist per user. Most likely through having each user have its own click counter table that has a record for each artist they listened to (probably through a foreign key) and then the number of clicks for that artist. When the end of the year report rolls around instead of simply looking at 100,000 records. You are now accessing 1 million records times the average number of artists a user listens too and then running calculations to figure out how much each artist gets by the user. I'm sure there is better database design then the above mentioned but you still run into a more power intensive process to calculate it.
Not something I think will completely stop companies like spotify from switching to this model but something worth considering...
What would you prefer?
- A service where people are able to freely access a huge music library from all their devices for a minimal subscription fee.
- Having to buy albums one by one, where one album is more than a whole month of a streaming package.
Streaming stopped me pirating music. I have no reason to do so (other than the odd MP3 file for video editing/DJ practice etc.) any more.
Services like Spotify/Apple Music need to also take a cut for server management, developers and management staff etc.
Also the record industry takes massive cuts so the artist doesn't seem to see much of it at all, even with normal albums.
