Before today I did not realise you could charge less than a penny? Well, apparently you can.
Also, what does Apple mean by 'play'? Is this the complete song or the first thirty seconds?
Just my 0.2 cents, ;)
If I were an artist I would put my songs on autoplay, 24/7.
Are you kidding? Do you know how online advertising rates are described? Clicks per thousand (CPM). Fractions of a penny for music that will be heard potentially billions of times makes complete sense.
Hey, as a side note, I saw an ad at the bottom of this article... TODAY'S BEST ANDROID PHONE IS ON SALE Samsung Galaxy S6 & S6 Edge. Didn't these phones get released in April 2015? Yikes! :wow:
My buddy got one an S6 Edge free yesterday from Verizon for renewing his 2 year contract. His 9 month old S5 died and the plastic back kept popping off. The S6 has more bloat ware than I have ever seen before. He went back this morning and wanted to get an iPhone 6 plus like mine after I showed him mine. Verizon wouldn't do it. They heavily promote the Samsung and keep the iPhones in the back of the store. They make more money on Samsung since they add their own non removable bloat ware.
Steve Jobs knew what he was doing when he was negotiating with the carriers.
Are you kidding? Do you know how online advertising rates are described? Clicks per thousand (CPM). Fractions of a penny for ad views and fractions of a penny for music that will be heard potentially billions of times makes complete sense.
One click (online advertising) takes a fraction of a second. One song could last for several minutes. Which brings me to the second question:
Do you need to listen through the complete song or just the first thirty seconds?
If you do have to listen to the complete song, then this system would discriminate between songs: Sugar coated pop songs got an advantage as they only last 150 seconds on average. Classic music or alternative music (like Pink Floyd) could last 20+ minutes for a song and yet they got valued the same way as a pop song.
If true, then the pay/play Spotify business model seems fraud to me. Bring on Apple Music I'd say.
I'll be costing them $9.00 to $18.00 during the trial. Then I will happily subscribe for the convenience of having all my music and more within the Apple ecosphere.
One click (online advertising) takes a fraction of a second. One song could last for several minutes. Which brings me to the second question:
Do you need to listen through the complete song or just the first thirty seconds?
If you do have to listen to the complete song, then this system would discriminate between songs: <span style="line-height:1.4em;">Sugar coated pop songs got an advantage as they only last 150 seconds on average. Classic music or alternative music (like Pink Floyd) could last 20+ minutes for a song and yet they got valued the same way as a pop song.
</span>
So what. Movies vary in length too. You can rent a 90 min animated feature or a 2.5 hr epic LOTR movie for the same price.
I think everyone is calculating things wrong. Who cares about cost per song listened? That's just a way for artists to make it seem like they're not getting paid enough.
If a customer is paying $10 per month to stream music, then $7 of that (let's round all streaming to 70% for now and ignore the rumors of Apple paying 71, 72 or 73%) goes to artists/labels. There's no need to try and guess how many songs are being played or how much each song gets per play. This is actual money getting paid out as a percentage of the subscription cost. What determines who gets the money is how many times their songs are streamed. If there were 100 million streams, and Taylor Swift had 1 million of them, then she's going to get 1% of the subscription revenues for that time period.
Last year the music industry globally had sales of $15 billion. Or $1.25 billion per month. Divide that by $7 per month from a subscription and you only need a grand total of 176 million subscribers across Apple Music, Spotify, Google or anyone else in order for the music industry to make as much on streaming as they do on actual sales. And that was if music sales dropped down to zero.
176 million is a lot for Apple Music alone, but for all streaming services combined it's a very realistic number to achieve over the next couple of years. Spotify alone has 20 million paying customers which provides about $1.7 billion yearly revenue for the music industry (about 11% of the ENTIRE industry). This is why I think Taylor Swift was being a whiny bitch when she's complaining about not getting paid on Spotify. I call BS on that one. She's likely doing some very creative accounting to make those claims.
Bottom line, there's the potential for a LOT of money to be made from streaming if consumers can be convinced to switch from purchasing music to streaming. Don't listen to whiny artists complaining about fractions of a penny per song played. Collectively they'll be raking in billions from streaming and it will very soon be a major chunk of their total revenues. If they're not getting paid it's not because Spotify or Apple are ripping them off - it's because nobody is listening to their music.
Related experience... Last year I started receiving circulars from the PRS - the UK Performing Rights Society, that presumed me guilty of public broadcast of music in my workshop, office and rest room, for the last 6 years. I never responded, but I did do some homework. Earlier this year I was contacted by phone with the same allegation and a demand for several thousand £s to cover arrears. I readily admitted that we used radio in the workshop. "Great" he said "How long per day?" "All day" I said "Six days a week" "How many employees?" - the lowest tariff is twenty employees so "Twenty" "I should remind you we are recording this conversation - OK?" "Fine" "Right, how would you like to pay?" "I'm not paying one penny" "Excuse me, you've just admitted you need a license and to get that license you have to pay fees and arrears to avoid legal action" "Have you ever been in an engineering workshop?...I'm guessing no. You can't hear a radio below ear busting volume. Health and safety regulations also state that I must supply adequate ear protection in the workplace, which I do. Every employee has Bluetooth noise-cancelling headphones and we stream music and radio programmes as required. The law states that using headphones is personal [I]not[/I] public broadcasting since it isn't shared, so we are exempt form the PRS license requirements...AmIright?" ".........." ".........." "......what about the reast room?" "That"s where we actually talk to one another" Heh heh He was left with the rather lame "Well you may be visited and inspected in the future!"
Good luck with that
Having said that, I do support fair pay for artists and will happily sign up when the service arrives in the UK.
I think everyone is calculating things wrong. Who cares about cost per song listened? That's just a way for artists to make it seem like they're not getting paid enough.
If a customer is paying $10 per month to stream music, then $7 of that (let's round all streaming to 70% for now and ignore the rumors of Apple paying 71, 72 or 73%) goes to artists/labels. There's no need to try and guess how many songs are being played or how much each song gets per play. This is actual money getting paid out as a percentage of the subscription cost. What determines who gets the money is how many times their songs are streamed. If there were 100 million streams, and Taylor Swift had 1 million of them, then she's going to get 1% of the subscription revenues for that time period.
Last year the music industry globally had sales of $15 billion. Or $1.25 billion per month. Divide that by $7 per month from a subscription and you only need a grand total of 176 million subscribers across Apple Music, Spotify, Google or anyone else in order for the music industry to make as much on streaming as they do on actual sales. And that was if music sales dropped down to zero.
176 million is a lot for Apple Music alone, but for all streaming services combined it's a very realistic number to achieve over the next couple of years. Spotify alone has 20 million paying customers which provides about $1.7 billion yearly revenue for the music industry (about 11% of the ENTIRE industry). This is why I think Taylor Swift was being a whiny bitch when she's complaining about not getting paid on Spotify. I call BS on that one. She's likely doing some very creative accounting to make those claims.
Bottom line, there's the potential for a LOT of money to be made from streaming if consumers can be convinced to switch from purchasing music to streaming. <span style="line-height:1.4em;">Don't listen to whiny artists complaining about fractions of a penny per song played. Collectively they'll be raking in billions from streaming and it will very soon be a major chunk of their total revenues. If they're not getting paid it's not because Spotify or Apple are ripping them off - it's because nobody is listening to their music.</span>
This I agree with 100% and is why I pay for a subscription to stream music because I hate advertising.
Pay per second? What next, pay per word in a book?
iTunes is $.99/$1.29 a song regardless of length and right holders get 70%. So why should rates change for streaming?
Paying per play favours the sugar coated 150 seconds pop song. Paying per second would counter that.
I wonder how the Apple Music subscription works out. I really hope they abandon this fraud pay/play business model of Spotify. You want to encourage diversity instead of a single music category.
Actually lawyers ask you to pay per word when they have to write a letter.
Back on topic: Paying per play favours the sugar coated 150 seconds pop song. Paying per second would counter that.
I wonder how the Apple Music subscription works out. I really hope they abandon this fraud pay/play business model of Spotify. You want to encourage diversity instead of a single music category.
1. Who cares how lawyers bill - this is about streaming. Stupid analogy.
2. Music has always favored the short pop song. Whether it's in actual sales or streaming. If they paid by the length of the song, then you'd have scammers increasing the lengths of songs just to get more money.
3. Apple Music and Spotify have the basic same model. You pay $10 per month and 70% of that subscription price gets paid back to artist. There's nothing fraudulent about the Spotify or Apple Music model for streaming.
1. Who cares how lawyers bill - this is about streaming. Stupid analogy.
2. Music has always favored the short pop song. Whether it's in actual sales or streaming. If they paid by the length of the song, then you'd have scammers increasing the lengths of songs just to get more money.
3. Apple Music and Spotify have the basic same model. You pay $10 per month and 70% of that subscription price gets paid back to artist. There's nothing fraudulent about the Spotify or Apple Music model for streaming.
It works both ways. I can see pop songs getting even shorter: Short pop songs = more plays/minute
Can anyone actually explain to me what Apple means with pay/play?: Do you have to play the complete song or just the first thirty seconds?
Comments
Am I reading that correctly? 2 tenths of a penny per play?
at 10$ a month, one would have to listen to roughly 5,000 songs per month to get their money's worth
Seems way low, when the idea is to pay artists
I believe i read before that 73% of the cost is going to the artists, so it must cost apple around 3 tenths of a cent per song
at 3 tenths of a cent, that comes out to 3,334 songs to get your monthly 10$ out of it
It is ridiculous, isn't it?
Before today I did not realise you could charge less than a penny? Well, apparently you can.
Also, what does Apple mean by 'play'? Is this the complete song or the first thirty seconds?
Just my 0.2 cents,
If I were an artist I would put my songs on autoplay, 24/7.
Are you kidding? Do you know how online advertising rates are described? Clicks per thousand (CPM). Fractions of a penny for music that will be heard potentially billions of times makes complete sense.
My buddy got one an S6 Edge free yesterday from Verizon for renewing his 2 year contract. His 9 month old S5 died and the plastic back kept popping off. The S6 has more bloat ware than I have ever seen before. He went back this morning and wanted to get an iPhone 6 plus like mine after I showed him mine. Verizon wouldn't do it. They heavily promote the Samsung and keep the iPhones in the back of the store. They make more money on Samsung since they add their own non removable bloat ware.
Steve Jobs knew what he was doing when he was negotiating with the carriers.
Are you kidding? Do you know how online advertising rates are described? Clicks per thousand (CPM). Fractions of a penny for ad views and fractions of a penny for music that will be heard potentially billions of times makes complete sense.
One click (online advertising) takes a fraction of a second. One song could last for several minutes. Which brings me to the second question:
Do you need to listen through the complete song or just the first thirty seconds?
If you do have to listen to the complete song, then this system would discriminate between songs: Sugar coated pop songs got an advantage as they only last 150 seconds on average. Classic music or alternative music (like Pink Floyd) could last 20+ minutes for a song and yet they got valued the same way as a pop song.

If true, then the pay/play Spotify business model seems fraud to me. Bring on Apple Music I'd say.
the pay/play Spotify business model seems fraud to me.
I agree with this, especially on classical music. Hope Apple could do something about it in the future.
I'll be costing them $9.00 to $18.00 during the trial. Then I will happily subscribe for the convenience of having all my music and more within the Apple ecosphere.
So what. Movies vary in length too. You can rent a 90 min animated feature or a 2.5 hr epic LOTR movie for the same price.
To be fair they should pay per second.
Here's an idea for Spotify: $0.0002/second
This way you don't discriminate between songs. It would actually even out to $0.007/play as a pop song lasts 150 seconds on average.
I think everyone is calculating things wrong. Who cares about cost per song listened? That's just a way for artists to make it seem like they're not getting paid enough.
If a customer is paying $10 per month to stream music, then $7 of that (let's round all streaming to 70% for now and ignore the rumors of Apple paying 71, 72 or 73%) goes to artists/labels. There's no need to try and guess how many songs are being played or how much each song gets per play. This is actual money getting paid out as a percentage of the subscription cost. What determines who gets the money is how many times their songs are streamed. If there were 100 million streams, and Taylor Swift had 1 million of them, then she's going to get 1% of the subscription revenues for that time period.
Last year the music industry globally had sales of $15 billion. Or $1.25 billion per month. Divide that by $7 per month from a subscription and you only need a grand total of 176 million subscribers across Apple Music, Spotify, Google or anyone else in order for the music industry to make as much on streaming as they do on actual sales. And that was if music sales dropped down to zero.
176 million is a lot for Apple Music alone, but for all streaming services combined it's a very realistic number to achieve over the next couple of years. Spotify alone has 20 million paying customers which provides about $1.7 billion yearly revenue for the music industry (about 11% of the ENTIRE industry). This is why I think Taylor Swift was being a whiny bitch when she's complaining about not getting paid on Spotify. I call BS on that one. She's likely doing some very creative accounting to make those claims.
Bottom line, there's the potential for a LOT of money to be made from streaming if consumers can be convinced to switch from purchasing music to streaming. Don't listen to whiny artists complaining about fractions of a penny per song played. Collectively they'll be raking in billions from streaming and it will very soon be a major chunk of their total revenues. If they're not getting paid it's not because Spotify or Apple are ripping them off - it's because nobody is listening to their music.
Last year I started receiving circulars from the PRS - the UK Performing Rights Society, that presumed me guilty of public broadcast of music in my workshop, office and rest room, for the last 6 years. I never responded, but I did do some homework. Earlier this year I was contacted by phone with the same allegation and a demand for several thousand £s to cover arrears.
I readily admitted that we used radio in the workshop. "Great" he said "How long per day?"
"All day" I said "Six days a week"
"How many employees?" - the lowest tariff is twenty employees so "Twenty"
"I should remind you we are recording this conversation - OK?"
"Fine"
"Right, how would you like to pay?"
"I'm not paying one penny"
"Excuse me, you've just admitted you need a license and to get that license you have to pay fees and arrears to avoid legal action"
"Have you ever been in an engineering workshop?...I'm guessing no. You can't hear a radio below ear busting volume. Health and safety regulations also state that I must supply adequate ear protection in the workplace, which I do. Every employee has Bluetooth noise-cancelling headphones and we stream music and radio programmes as required. The law states that using headphones is personal [I]not[/I] public broadcasting since it isn't shared, so we are exempt form the PRS license requirements...AmIright?"
".........."
".........."
"......what about the reast room?"
"That"s where we actually talk to one another" Heh heh
He was left with the rather lame "Well you may be visited and inspected in the future!"
Good luck with that
Having said that, I do support fair pay for artists and will happily sign up when the service arrives in the UK.
Apple has the same business model. You play they pay. No difference at all.
This I agree with 100% and is why I pay for a subscription to stream music because I hate advertising.
So...is it...
$0.02 or $0.002
"0.2 cents" is a percentage of a penny.
So...is it...
$0.02 or $0.002
"0.2 cents" is a percentage of a penny.
You're not alone. I got my numbers tangled up as well.
$1,00 = 1 Dollar
$0,10 = 10 Cent = One tenth of a Dollar
$0,01 = 1 Cent = One hundreth of a Dollar
Apparently you could take this one level further:
c1,00 = 1 Cent
c0,10 = 10 microCent? = One tenth of a cent
c0,01 = 1 microCent? = One hundreth of a cent
You could push this system even further:
mc1,00 = 1 microCent
mc0,10 = 10 nanoCent? = One tenth of a microCent
mc0,01 = 1 nanoCent? = One hundreth of a microCent
Pay per second? What next, pay per word in a book?
iTunes is $.99/$1.29 a song regardless of length and right holders get 70%. So why should rates change for streaming?
.
Pay per second? What next, pay per word in a book?
iTunes is $.99/$1.29 a song regardless of length and right holders get 70%. So why should rates change for streaming?
Paying per play favours the sugar coated 150 seconds pop song. Paying per second would counter that.
I wonder how the Apple Music subscription works out. I really hope they abandon this fraud pay/play business model of Spotify. You want to encourage diversity instead of a single music category.
Actually lawyers ask you to pay per word when they have to write a letter.
Back on topic: Paying per play favours the sugar coated 150 seconds pop song. Paying per second would counter that.
I wonder how the Apple Music subscription works out. I really hope they abandon this fraud pay/play business model of Spotify. You want to encourage diversity instead of a single music category.
1. Who cares how lawyers bill - this is about streaming. Stupid analogy.
2. Music has always favored the short pop song. Whether it's in actual sales or streaming. If they paid by the length of the song, then you'd have scammers increasing the lengths of songs just to get more money.
3. Apple Music and Spotify have the basic same model. You pay $10 per month and 70% of that subscription price gets paid back to artist. There's nothing fraudulent about the Spotify or Apple Music model for streaming.
1. Who cares how lawyers bill - this is about streaming. Stupid analogy.
2. Music has always favored the short pop song. Whether it's in actual sales or streaming. If they paid by the length of the song, then you'd have scammers increasing the lengths of songs just to get more money.
3. Apple Music and Spotify have the basic same model. You pay $10 per month and 70% of that subscription price gets paid back to artist. There's nothing fraudulent about the Spotify or Apple Music model for streaming.
It works both ways. I can see pop songs getting even shorter: Short pop songs = more plays/minute
Can anyone actually explain to me what Apple means with pay/play?: Do you have to play the complete song or just the first thirty seconds?
Are you still serious? People don't play songs because they're shorter. The play them because they like them or the artists.
Are you still serious? People don't play songs because they're shorter. The play them because they like them or the artists.
I am not talking about us, mere mortals. I am talking about the music industry finding loopholes to get more pay/plays.