New methods to compensate artists in music streaming platforms

TL;DR

This paper explores new methods for measuring artist popularity in music streaming platforms, aiming to improve artist compensation by analyzing various indices and their theoretical foundations, including connections to cooperative game theory.

Contribution

It characterizes several families of popularity indices based on normative axioms and links them to recent royalty models used by Spotify and Deezer.

Findings

Identifies multiple popularity indices satisfying normative principles

Connects popularity indices to the Shapley value from game theory

Provides insights for fairer artist compensation methods

Abstract

We study the problem of measuring the popularity of artists in music streaming platforms and the ensuing methods to compensate them (from the revenues platforms raise by charging users). We uncover the space of popularity indices upon exploring the implications of several axioms capturing principles with normative appeal. As a result, we characterize several families of indices. Some of them are intimately connected to the Shapley value, the central tool in cooperative game theory. Our characterizations might help to address the rising concern in the music industry to explore new methods that reward artists more appropriately. We actually connect our families to the new royalties models, recently launched by Spotify and Deezer.