 It's the Metwork! And the final thing from Spotify is not anymore, we've gone through the news and the features they're implementing but I actually was reading an interesting opinion piece by a guy called Michael Donaldson who's the founder of H-Dimension Records and he has said is that the title of the headline is Why a Tip Jar on Spotify is a Bad Idea. So this caught my interest because we've been talking about tipping a lot and how it's working well on Loom and why Spotify should potentially do it to help our eyes but he makes a very strong argument for why this wouldn't work. Have you got any have you got any thoughts before we go into it? Like immediately do you think it's a bad idea on the face of it? Yeah I mean a lot of my thoughts honestly were around his but yeah tip tip like you know you think that tip jars at first it sounds good oh more revenue for money but it just doesn't work like that when it comes to the way it's set up for most artists right there there's the good and the bad for the independent artists yes it could be a very good thing but for the signed artists there's a little bit of good mirrors because you're not tipping the artists themselves right like this is you're tipping and that artist won't see the tip for probably like two quarters from when you actually give them that 50 cents or five dollars and in that five dollars is actually going to be what is the 30 percent that Spotify was going to take which is cool right take your transaction fee or maybe oh well that's it was 36 percent that's way more than a regular transaction fee I know yeah yeah it's not confirmed I don't think the fees confirmed but it probably will be around that ballpark yeah that's actually ridiculous now I think about it that is that much particularly when they're already doing what they're doing YouTube is worse we're gonna come on to that layer but YouTube is a lot worse yeah this new this new feature yeah YouTube's payouts have never been as good as anybody else's so we'll get to that we'll get to that yeah but um so you one yeah you're gonna split with Spotify it's just like how it's going now right you take a stream yep and who does that money go to goes towards some towards Spotify run in some form of fashion but then even more importantly the breakdown of the major label indie label manager like all those relationships the artists only receive a percent of a percent so in terms of if I'm a fan I want to tip an artist and the reason I'm an intent I have by tipping that artist is far better for me to do either on a better platform like your TikTok page Patreon or loom or patreon right with um just patient TikTok takes what's 50% so like that or just some other individual platform or maybe just buy some that will merge or something but yeah that doesn't it's it's it sounds good because everybody's moving towards it but it just doesn't have the same need that gets met when it comes to Spotify I think they're better off not I want to say they're better off not doing it because they are good they are looking at doing it down you like you said they are interested there's still an indie artist that can benefit from it though right there yeah so it'll be beneficial from the indie artist standpoint I think because yeah you're paying Spotify 30 percent cut yeah you could say it's better to do on other on other platforms but it's still using behavior if I'm on spy might like a loom I might not like TikTok I might not want to go to your Patreon right so I'm already here and even though it's seven dollars instead of ten dollars or seven dollars versus nine dollars it's still seven dollars that you might not have captured so I think they should have it but there's going to have to be some kind of fan education piece that happens or maybe they I was good I was actually going to say maybe they provide a breakdown of where the splits go for the artists right but then that would be revealing some stuff about artist deals that a lot of people wouldn't went out there like oh you're I don't know said artists all he gets two percent of the money you sent so I don't you serve the indie well and the major artists well depending or well signed artists well and navigate all that at once that's it's a tricky it's a tricky one well I'll go through his arguments and make a few comments so the first one is that the only way it would work if it's the payment goes directly to the artist which we already mentioned because the label just be it could be like a conduit but that won't eliminate the go between you want to cut out the middle man in a way so but who's going to be accountable with it is just going to be the artist because a lot of you know artists you know they don't they're not responsible for running their own Spotify account obviously for the indie artists it works really well but obviously the labels are going to want to get a piece of the pie and these royalties so therefore that doesn't seem like a broken system already for what's even begun he said the concept wouldn't work unless Spotify came on board and what's their incentive what's their motive for doing it because he takes money away from them they can take a cut of it but is there really the amount of money it would cost to put the infrastructure in place and the time for testing it and stuff would it really be worth it I wouldn't think yeah I think that um spot I don't I don't think it'll be that well okay through the labels and even the idea of streaming right Spotify shouldn't be using this as a substitute for their streaming all right we shouldn't say hey well we're we're we're lowering our streaming fees at some point I mean streaming payouts at some point but hey look we are allowing you to do this direct direct um relationship especially when we're getting 30% of that right off the top right so these things should continue to be separate for one and then I don't understand how you keep the labels out of it in certain artist situations because the way some of these contracts are set up whether it's the label or the manager or whoever yeah it's hard to cut out the middleman that's that's just the reality of a lot contracts I mean again when we're talking about a signed artist situation you could call it a patreon if you want to the way some of these contracts are set up they can take some of the money out of that patreon as well yeah is that a situation is fishy so judge to completely off of that scenario I can only say it would be a positive for independent artists so more than anything hey artists who are independent all right consider being independent or consider staying independent because a lot of the benefits that are coming through these technologies are building a better world tomorrow for independent artists and there's so many of those technologies and opportunities I mean you just have to be positioned to succeed as an independent artist in that that climate right now a lot of artists either they aren't positioned because they're not handling themselves you know understanding the marketing all those types of situations or there's other people who you know they have the fan base and they have everything except for freedom all right and they also won't be able to benefit as well a little bit like that kid who's watching all the other kids play outside but they're in time the other thing it says on here it's another very fair arguments and the point you makes is about by claiming that in a way it sort of indicates that because Spotify for all these are so low it can't suggest that you know artists should live off tips which is also a big problem in the states particularly the ethical problems with that like should they really be you know having to rely on that for income especially at independent level except a bad precedent artists should live off of tips so not at all exactly that's what it's encouraging you reckons in a way that's that's why I said those have to stay completely separate those are two completely things because there's a lot of artists that don't have the fan base psychograph right so you their money they're better off getting strings than any kind of tip from their fans because they're saying is this aren't going to give that kind of money or they don't have that kind of money most of my fans are you know maybe the feroes in a underserved environment right it doesn't make sense for most people so we're not most people it doesn't make sense for a lot of people and we can't put the blanket over every artist situation there's too many different types of fan bases styles of music and things of that nature something like well there's a few genres of better that could perform well and artists that I definitely think can perform well but that's a whole another conversation this is this is the danger we've been talking about before like why is the tipping culture in the west not been so prominent on you know on social media and on these music stream platform that's where it is and where but the problem is that well if we start going down that rabbit hole of you know increasing these tips the companies are going to start thinking well actually they're making a lot of us are making money from this therefore we should you know let's save some money here and not pay out as much because they make money this is exactly how people like this already exist I know a lot of cultures don't necessarily have like the tipping culture right but in america right where the tipping culture is it's a real thing there's the waiters who get paid off of tips they get paid pretty much no money all right it's like hey we're not really paying you that much hourly we might pay you two dollars and seven cents an hour because you should be getting a lot of money off of tips and you got to make all that up there and then obviously there's other jobs that hey it's not tips so we'll pay you more and you have this consistent thing you don't have to worry about these ebbs and flows of business and the timing it that's definitely going to be the thought process of a lot of people yeah sad or unsaid it's going to happen there's a classic case where you know the top 1% or 10% is making a lot of money so they're thinking oh these guys are making loads everyone's making loads that's not the reality and that's the way I think yeah it's like the point is like this tip is for me to get more of what I deserve not to replace the little of what I deserve that you're already giving right oh yeah okay I'm like if I'm not if I'm barely getting what I deserve here this is another stream of income to help me as an artist be able to live get the value from my fan base that's already being messed with in so many ways and this is difficult to connect with I built this this is more this is not supposed to be a replacement for the issues that you already had and now hey