Can payment agreements like this be used in court during filesharing lawsuits to show that if RIAA members are willing to value music at $167 per million plays there's no reasonable way they can argue that each mp3 someone shares is worth the thousands of dollars they sue people for?
I recognize that these are apples to oranges, but there must be some reasonable conversion. Artist gets X amount per Y plays, and given standard artist % breakdowns that suggests a song has Z value. if Z < W, where W is how much one gets sued for sharing one mp3, then either the RIAA should pay their artists fair value, which would drive more users to pay for music, or they can't sue people for so much per song.
Comparatively, if the same song were to be played in a radio show with a million listeners, she'd have earned not even half of what she got from Spotify.
Comparisons with the CD model are misguided, because the CD business model was an exception, made possible only because of technical limitations.
Typically, payment agreements such as this are blanket agreements. Spofiy agrees to give X% of its revenues to the musicians (indirectly) and in exchange it can use their music. This is not a fixed fee as it varies with Spotify's revenues. If Spotify can't get any revenue for a year, the musicians won't get paid at all for that year. RIAA is a recording industry association (dealing with mechanical rights) while the article is about paying composers (which is performing rights) so it's not like "RIAA members" valued these tracks to anything. Also RIAA is American where Spotify is not present at the moment.
> then either the RIAA should pay their artists fair value, which would drive more users to pay for music, or they can't sue people for so much per song.
I recognize that these are apples to oranges, but there must be some reasonable conversion. Artist gets X amount per Y plays, and given standard artist % breakdowns that suggests a song has Z value. if Z < W, where W is how much one gets sued for sharing one mp3, then either the RIAA should pay their artists fair value, which would drive more users to pay for music, or they can't sue people for so much per song.