It would help solve bots absolutely, but there are other ways to approach fraudulent activity. I don’t see a huge downside personally, but I’m not in the industry. Given it’s a large, competitive market and this change appears revenue neutral, I think there must be underlying reasons neither of us are aware of.
If the majority of artists and labels wanted this system I don’t see why they couldn’t lobby and negotiate for it?
Each listen have a variable payout already. If Spotify has EUR 100M in subscription and ad payments this month and 30B listens it will be a different amount paid per listen compared to a month where they had 110M in income and 24B listens.
> That seems overly complex and more volatile
How so? The current system incentives bot activity to game the system by paying for one account, using that to listen to one or two artists thousands of times, netting those artists more than what the account paid Spotify. With my requested system the payout from bots would never be profitable and therefore reduce volatility (and reduce overhead needed to analyse traffic for bot behaviour).
> If you only listened to 1 song, the rights holder would receive all of your monthly payment (sans Spotify’s cut)?
There is no downside at all here, but it seems you think so?