Spotify's relationship to artists can be kind of confusing. On the one hand, they pay a laughably low per-stream rate, as in homeopathic residues of a penny. On the other hand, the Big Three labels get a *fortune* from Spotify. And on the other other hand, it makes sense that rate for a stream heard by one person should be less than the rate for a song broadcast to thousands or millions of listeners.
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Cory Doctorow
•https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/21/off-the-menu/#universally-loathed
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Cory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/12/streaming-doesnt-pay/#stunt-publishing
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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The Big Three told Spotify that the price of licensing their catalogs would be high. First of all, Spotify had to give significant ownership stakes to all three labels. This put the labels in an unresolvable conflict of interest: as owners of Spotify, it was in their interests for licensing payments for music to be as low as possible.
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Cory Doctorow
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As it turns out, it wasn't hard to resolve that conflict after all. You see, the money the Big Three got in from dividends, stock sales, etc was theirs to spend as they saw fit. They could share some, all, or none of it with musicians. Big the Big Three's contracts with musicians gave those workers a guaranteed share of Spotify's licensing payments.
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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But there's still something awry: the Big Three take in *gigantic fortunes* from Spotify in licensing payments. How can the per-stream rate be so low but the licensing payments be so large? And why are artists seeing so little?
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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But these monthly minimums are just part of the goodies that the Big Three negotiated for themselves when they were designing Spotify. They also get free promo, advertising, and inclusion on Spotify's top playlists.
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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There are many lessons to take from this little scam, but for me, the top takeaway here is that artists are the class enemies of both Big Tech *and* Big Content.
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Cory Doctorow
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But for a creative worker, it doesn't matter who makes a meal out of you, tech or content - all that matters is that you're being devoured.
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Cory Doctorow
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https://bgr.com/tech/openai-cto-thinks-ai-will-kill-some-jobs-that-shouldnt-have-existed-in-the-first-place/
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OpenAI CTO thinks AI will kill some jobs that shouldn’t have existed in the first place
Andy Meek (BGR)Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand
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Cory Doctorow
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Here's the problem: establishing that AI training requires a copyright license *will not* stop AI from being used to erode the wages and working conditions of creative workers.
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/09/ai-monkeys-paw/#bullied-schoolkids
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Cory Doctorow
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https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/umg-startsai-voice-clone-partnership-with-soundlabs-1235041808/
This comes hot on the heels of a massive blow-up between Universal and Tiktok, in which Universal professed its outrage that Tiktok was going to train voice-clones with the music Universal licensed to it.
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UMG Offers Voice-Clone Tech to Artists With SoundLabs Partnership
Ethan Millman (Rolling Stone)Cory Doctorow
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I understand why Universal would like this idea. I just don't understand why any musician would root for Universal to defeat Tiktok, or Getty Images to trounce Stable Diffusion. Do you really think Getty *likes* paying photographers and wants to give them a single penny more than they absolutely have to?
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Cory Doctorow
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> The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Entertainment execs and tech execs alike are obsessed with AI because they view the future of "content" as fundamentally passive.
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Cory Doctorow
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> At a certain audience size, you just assume those people are locked in and will consume anything you throw at them. Then it just becomes a game of lowering your production costs and increasing your prices to increase your margins. This is why executives love AI and why the average American can’t afford to eat at McDonald’s anymore.
https://www.garbageday.email/p/ceo-passive-content-obsession
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The CEO Passive Content Obsession
Garbage DayCory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Telling creative workers that they can solve their declining wages with more copyright is a denial that creative workers are *workers* at all. It treats us as entrepreneurial small businesses, LLCs with MFAs negotiating B2B with other companies. That's how we lose.
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Cory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/01/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship/
Our path to better working conditions lies through organizing and striking, not through helping our bosses sue other giant mulitnational corporations for the right to bleed us out.
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mh8Z5pcJpg
Khan has already used these Section 5 powers to secure labor rights, for example, by banning noncompetes:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/25/capri-v-tapestry/#aiming-at-dollars-not-men
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FTC Chair Lina Khan on the Role of the Government, Trade and Antitrust | WSJ News
YouTubeCory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
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Tomorrow (June 22), I'll be in Oakland, CA for a panel and a keynote at the Locus Awards:
https://locusmag.com/2024-locus-awards-weekend/
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Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!
https://clarionwriteathon.com/members/profile.php?writerid=293388
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2024 Locus Awards Weekend, June 19-22
Locus OnlineCory Doctorow
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Cavyherd
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