Right now the payment is easy to understand why you were paid as you were. Listens * payment * .7 = my check.

If the proposal were followed, all transparency is lost.

"Extremely long payment records" is quite an under-statement. Imagine sending a popular artist a 27-million line breakdown (you'd need a LINE PER LISTEN, and what % of a listeners listens that was). That's absurd, and STILL less transparent.

I understand the problem, but this is actually a pretty terrible solution. Future complexities build on existing complexity. I can't even imagine the monstrous data, business, and programming nightmares that would arise from breaking payment down in the proposed manner.

I am not sure which payment model I prefer, but I don't buy the technical reason against the OP's proposed solution.

I imagine Spotify already maintains a list of songs played by each user (to build their recommendation engine).

You could report to the artist using a histogram (bucket the listen by the percentage of user's listens they represent).

Also, Spotify could build a nice web interface that allows artists to understand their revenue stream, with various aggregated stats and graphs.

SO that's what, a few gigabytes? Takes 30 seconds to download? Then run some stats, get some totals and compare it to your check. What's the problem? Its the 3rd Millennium, get with it.

> "Its the 3rd Millennium, get with it."

No need to be condescending. People can disagree with you without being technically stupid.

> "SO that's what, a few gigabytes? Takes 30 seconds to download? Then run some stats, get some totals and compare it to your check. What's the problem?"

I think you underestimate the complexity of a database that grows by 20 million records per month, but let's say you solve the technical, computational, and programming issues. It's still a bad idea.

Most of Spotify's customers can open and understand their Spotify payment today. Your customers are not database experts. Most people have rudimentary Excel skills at best. Talk down to them all you want, but they won't know what to do.

So what, they should all hire data analysts? To understand their Spotify invoice?? You know you're using technology wrong when you take something your customers currently understand intuitively, and alter it in a way that requires technology. I understand that you're trying to fix a problem, but you're actually introducing new problems that are far more significant.

Don't let the love of nuance override your customer's experience. That's how you build "perfect" products no one wants.

> I think you underestimate the complexity of a database that grows by 20 million records per month

Why does it need to grow per month? Create a new database each month and archive.

> So what, they should all hire data analysts? To understand their Spotify invoice??

There must be some misunderstanding here. The customer's invoice is for $10 per month regardless of invoice complexity. The record of accounting that goes to the artists is what's being discussed.

It seems very simple to provide a database to artists, then also provide an open source database analyzer that will verify your pay check is accurate.

I want the broadband connection you've got.

No, but I believe humanity in general wants things to be beneficial to them AND simple. Hell most Americans (being one myself) don't just 'want' they feel entitled to. Because of that, I believe a huge number of artists would not bother to make sense of monthly records which could reach 1800 pages, and would complain even though they were presented with such records explaining why their 50000 plays this month were less valuable than their 3 plays the prior month.

I am not saying the Spotify method should not be changed just showing that the proposal at hand should not be called 'simple'.

> I believe a huge number of artists would not bother to make sense of monthly records which could reach 1800 pages

I don't understand this argument at all, which suggests that reviewing a monthly report is an O(n) task. Spotify, if they chose this route, trivially solves this with a simple open source app that analyzes your monthly report making it, basically, an O(1) task.

And gets every artist to happily learn how to use that app to examine 90000 entries in it? My whole argument is that his solution is not simple, while I agree designing, making, and getting artists to use this app which could be made, is indeed possible, would you not acknowledge it makes his solution just a tad more complicated than 'simple' to accomplish that design, creation, and acceptance?