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Businesses Technology

Spotify Experiments With Musician NFT Galleries (theverge.com) 21

Spotify is testing a way for artists to display their non-fungible token (NFT) collections. From a report: The music streaming platform has rolled out the test for some users on Android in the US and currently includes NFT previews for artists like Steve Aoki and The Wombats. "Spotify is running a test in which it will help a small group of artists promote their existing third-party NFT offerings via their artist profiles," a Spotify spokesperson said in a statement to Music Ally. "We routinely conduct a number of tests in an effort to improve artist and fan experiences. Some of those tests end up paving the way for a broader experience and others serve only as an important learning." More companies are trying to catch the NFT wave, but it looks like that initial surge could be petering out (at least for the time being). According to The Wall Street Journal, daily NFT sales have dipped 92 percent from 225,000 in September of last year to just 19,000 as of May 3rd. The number of active NFT wallets is also on the decline, from about 119,000 in November to 14,000 toward the end of April.
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Spotify Experiments With Musician NFT Galleries

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  • dip (Score:5, Funny)

    by bugs2squash ( 1132591 ) on Monday May 16, 2022 @11:57AM (#62539546)
    I'm not sure I'd describe a 92% drop as a "dip". I suppose it's a dip in the sense that the titanic took a dip.
  • NFTs are dead. The first few to get in made their money and left the remaining suckers holding the bag.

    When companies such as Spotify jump on the bandwagon, you know the game is over.

  • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Monday May 16, 2022 @12:25PM (#62539630)

    Instead of throwing resources at building an NFT market place and blowing $200million on Joe Rogan, how about paying artists more than $0.0033, yeah less than a penny, for a stream. Also known as the second lowest rate in the industry in front of only Pandora

    • I don't know, not having looked into it, but is $0.0033 per stream... okay? Or even accurate? If it's accurate, I'm guessing it's an average across a really complicated landscape of deals...

      First, if an artist has a publisher in the way, Spotify doesn't pay the artist anything. Whatever they pay the rights holder is then carved up before the artist ever gets it... Business as usual in the music industry...

      Second, seems like Spotify is still in the red, losing money every year... or so sayeth their annual in

      • by vadim_t ( 324782 )

        Spotify charges $10/month.

        If somebody listens to music 8 hours a day (which may seem like a lot, but I was playing music during my commute and almost entire workday when I was at the office), that works out to 4 cents/hour or $0.00067/minute.

        That's not accounting for profit and whatever infrastructure, wages, lawyers and so on that Spotify has to pay for, so in practice there's even less that can be paid to the artist.

        So really it's just that streaming as a model can't possibly play very much per play. Musi

        • You are an extreme outlier but at the end of these calculations I do agree.

          The average active user is closer to 25 hours per month and the average in the US is 32 hours. Average song is 3.5 minutes long so you'd expect to have ~500 songs streamed per month per user.

          Family plans and other countries reduce the price to say an average of $5/month. This gives the total amount of ~1 cent per stream. Spotify reportedly pays artists between 0.3 and 0.5 per listen with a lot depending on the rights breakdown so cle
        • You calculation assumes no waste. My post is addressing waste exclusively which is why your calculation is incredibly off topic.

          But if you are addicted to calculations to prove a point, don't forget the cost of developing NFTs, the cost of paying Joe Rogan $200m regardless if one of your subscribers actually is interested in streaming his bullshit, etc. etc.

          And despite your calculation remember that Spotify isn't an outlier in subscription fee, only in how little they pay artists.

      • Is it accurate? Hard to say, there's varying numbers for how many streams artists need to make. For some platforms which divide revenue by artist streams it's variable. However all those analysing them all come to one conclusion: Spotify and Pandora are the worst in the industry for paying artists, in some cases by a long shot.

        Now whether people can survive on Apple's payout is a different question, but at least estimates put that between 3x and 5x higher than what Spotify pays per stream.

        if they're in the red so far, it doesn't seem unreasonable that they aren't shoveling money downstream.

        Except that's prec

    • by vux984 ( 928602 )

      Ok, but I'm not willing to pay 0.01 per stream.

      $10/mo for spotify, 100 hours of music/mo, average 15 tracks/hour is 1500 tracks/mo, add 0.0067 surcharge per track to bring it up to 1 penny, and that's $10.05 in increased fees to pay artists.

      That would double the the subscription cost of spotify to me at which point I wouldn't do it and they'd get ZERO.

      And you made it sound less than penny was woeful, and that they should get even more. So sure... they can double or triple the price... and see how that goes,

      • Ok, but I'm not willing to pay 0.01 per stream.

        Aren't you? Apple, Amazon, Napster, Tidal, and Youtube seem to have no problem paying artists that.

        That would double the the subscription cost of spotify to me

        Why do you think what you pay has any influence on what Spotify wastes? I have a better idea, instead of *you* paying $200m to Joe Rogan even though you may not listen to him, imagine paying the artists you do listen to instead.

        Stop thinking so one dimensionally.

        • by vux984 ( 928602 )

          Why do you think what you pay has any influence on what Spotify wastes?

          Stop thinking so one dimensionally.

          Do the math.

          Based on my streaming, they'd have to pass $10.05 to the artists per month. I only pay 9.99. Spotify could reduce its costs to zero, the employees could all work for free, and still there isn't enough money in my sub to pay artists 1 cent per stream.

          I have a better idea, instead of *you* paying $200m to Joe Rogan even though you may not listen to him, imagine paying the artists you do listen to instead.

          I can imagine it, but again, do the math: The joe rogan deal costs under 3 cents per month per subscriber. If they redirect all that "wasted" money to artists, that won't even get my next three songs this morning up to 1 cent. So, yeah... that's not

  • Announced February 2021.
    • To be fair I've yet to see people who clamour for lossless audio actually pass an ABX test between a lossless file and a 320kbps MP3, to say nothing of a 320kbps Vorbis stream which Spotify uses.

      They probably realised it's not worth the effort to appease people.

  • This, but they can't make the desktop Spotify app sort podcasts by release date. You have to go into each and every podcast producer to find new releases. Priorities, priorities.
  • Like every other streaming service.

  • It's for their hard work to be heard and enjoyed by just one person.

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