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[-] FfaerieOxide@kbin.social 70 points 2 years ago

Do the people who wrote those lyrics get a cut of Spotify gatekeeping them?

[-] Hauskrampf@ttrpg.network 81 points 2 years ago

hahahahaha spotify and paying someone lol

[-] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 21 points 2 years ago

Spotify is not profitable right now; their current revenue doesn't come anywhere close to covering their costs. The only reason they're able to survive is investors holding on to the belief that, some day, it'll be possible to actually make the numbers work.

[-] lemann@lemmy.one 13 points 2 years ago

The majority of their investors are record labels now, so there's also an incentive to prevent competing streamers from taking Spotify's position

[-] sparky678348@lemm.ee 22 points 2 years ago

Spotify purchases their lyrics from Musixmatch

[-] FfaerieOxide@kbin.social 14 points 2 years ago

Musixmatch has a free, public database where lyrics are displayed. To contribute to the database, users can sign up and contribute lyrics, synchronizations, translations, and structuring to get points and move up levels. Musixmatch's points have no redeemable value, but are instead a marker of a particular user's contributions.

So no?

[-] sparky678348@lemm.ee 38 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

You as an individual can go access the public free database. Spotify as a corporation is a customer of musixmatch.

https://about.musixmatch.com/business/customer-stories/Spotify

I'm not sure what exactly you're trying to say?

[-] FfaerieOxide@kbin.social 13 points 2 years ago

Spotify is receiving money for something they did not create.

Neither the writers of the lyrics nor the fans who transcribed them get a cut.

That is fucked up.

[-] sparky678348@lemm.ee 19 points 2 years ago

It is fucked up that the fans who are transcribing do not get a cut, but it's not like they were misled to believe they would make a cut before they started doing it. The people doing that are doing it out of a passion for the music.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be paid of course they should, if it was up to me I'd say make them all rich. I just think it's a stretch to imply that Spotify is stealing anything here

[-] FfaerieOxide@kbin.social 10 points 2 years ago

I like stealing. According to my belief system theft is good.

It's the fact Spotify is charging users for something stolen is what I think is fucked.
Something stolen should be freely shared.

[-] princessnorah 1 points 2 years ago

Musixmatch does have a paid contributor system. A friend of mine actually just did the assessment for it this evening. I’ll report back what the rate is when she tells me.

[-] BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago

The writers almost certainly do get a cut. Musixmatch does not own the copyright to any of the lyrics, and as such, negotiated with the copyright holders in order to be allowed to store, display, and sell access to the lyrics. This almost certainly involved some amount of money changing hands.

Spotify is paying money for access to the lyrics and using that as a feature in their product. A chunk of that money is almost certainly going back to the actual writers.

this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
540 points (100.0% liked)

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