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0 pointsscarface745y ago0 comments

Yes, there’s no god given right to be paid for your art. Just because I put some tones together and throw it on the Internet doesn’t mean I deserve to paid significant amounts of money. Or indeed any money at all.

But there is a God given right for software developers to get more than 70%?

Not only that but Apple Music may soon be the dominant streaming platform, and if they can do that would resorting to anti-competitive behaviour then is show that artists can make a living, and consumers can continue paying ~$7/month for music.

How do you propose that Apple becomes more dominant than Spotify worldwide when Apple only has a 15% market share? Are people really signing up for Apple Music on Android or are the few Android users who use Apple Music doing so only as part of a Family Plan where the other member of the household is an iOS user?

That only proves my point, competition is driving up payments to artists, the system works.

It’s only “working” because Apple, Amazon, and Google don’t need for music streaming to be profitable - unlike Spotify. They can operate at break even. Artists aren’t choosing one over the other.

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avianlyric5y ago· 2 in thread

> But there is a God given right for software developers to get more than 70%?

No, but the market clearly values developer time significantly more than artist time.

If you wanna have a debate about the relative worth of people professions to society vs their pay. Then talking about the difference between a sports persons pay and doctors pay tends to make for a better argument.

> How do you propose that Apple becomes more dominant than Spotify worldwide when Apple only has a 15% market share? Are people really signing up for Apple Music on Android or are the few Android users who use Apple Music doing so only as part of a Family Plan where the other member of the household is an iOS user?

Apple own almost 20% of the streaming market to Spotify’s 35% and show no signs of slowing down. Apples hardware market clearly hasn’t been a limitation so far. But again that isn’t a surprise when you consider that core markets for streaming are mostly western. And Apple have very high HW market share there, such as almost 50% of the US mobile market.

> It’s only “working” because Apple, Amazon, and Google don’t need for music streaming to be profitable - unlike Spotify. They can operate at break even. Artists aren’t choosing one over the other.

That just shows that Spotify’s cut isn’t unreasonable, they’re barely making a profit.

Ultimately artists choose to make art, they aren’t forced into. They, like any small business owner, takes a gamble. They trade a stable income for the opportunity to do some they love, and do something that has unbounded upside. If they strike a cord with popular society then they stand to make millions, an opportunity that a software developer earning a salary doesn’t have.

If they don’t like that deal, they get a salaried or wage job like the rest of us.

I started my own business for the reasons above, it didn’t pan out, and now I have a salaried job. But you don’t see me gripping about how someone else should have paid me more to run my business.

Simple fact of the matter is that society just doesn’t value artists that much. Neither Spotify or Apple is gonna change that.

scarface74OP5y ago

Ultimately artists choose to make art, they aren’t forced into. They, like any small business owner, takes a gamble.

You could say the same about app makers. In fact, I am sure that I made more as “mobile developer” in 2008 working for a company that developed Windows CE apps for field services than most indy app makers make in 2020.

avianlyric5y ago

Yes you can. It what happens when the barrier to entry for an industry collapses, costs of goods also collapses.

But the positive impact of the pie growing, more people being employed, and cheaper goods is hard to argue with.

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