meltyourtv t1_it56y31 wrote on October 21, 2022 at 12:41 AM

Reply to comment by RevengencerAlf in Crossing guard disturbed by Halloween decoration at his post in Marblehead. by bluesmom913

How do you think Spotify streams compare vs buying CDs?

RevengencerAlf t1_it57ck5 wrote on October 21, 2022 at 12:44 AM

They're not measured by gross sales that's for sure.

Words mean things. "highest grossing" literally means it had the highest gross sales over a given period.

meltyourtv t1_it57fjq wrote on October 21, 2022 at 12:45 AM

Sorry I work in the music industry not movies I assumed it worked the same. Can you explain how it’s different to me?

RevengencerAlf t1_it57xdq wrote on October 21, 2022 at 12:48 AM

For starters Netflix doesn't have ads and Spotify does. Spotify also does not generally make or license their own content. So even though it is technically not accurate to say grossing when you are including streaming plays of songs you can kind of get maybe close enough by drawing a direct comparison to the compensation agreements and the payment that goes to artists and record labels when Spotify plays their song. But it's still really not right.

ChefBoyAreWeFucked t1_it5d3cr wrote on October 21, 2022 at 1:27 AM

Record companies are selling rights to the songs to streaming companies, and getting paid based on traffic. There are definitely people in that transaction for whom "gross sales" makes sense.

RevengencerAlf t1_it5dr57 wrote on October 21, 2022 at 1:32 AM

Those are by definition not gross sales. It makes sense to combine them with the actual sales from CD as well as other sources of royalty for an overall metric of apparent success, and that's exactly what they do now when they chart songs and albums, but it's not "gross" anything.

When a movie "grosses" $100M in a weekend, it literally means people went and spent $100M on tickets to see that movie. Straight up. It's unfortunately just a term people repeat where it applies because they've heard it used in a close context but don't understands why it doesn't apply. Pedantic I know but I lack the self control to ignore it.

ChefBoyAreWeFucked t1_it5k7bs wrote on October 21, 2022 at 2:18 AM

What would you call the amount of money a company is paid by another entity for their product?

RevengencerAlf t1_it5m7yt wrote on October 21, 2022 at 2:34 AM

Revenue.

The word you're actually looking for is revenue.

Money that comes from things like royalties and usage agreements are generally not sales and certainly not gross sales.

Of course all this is an irrelevant digression from the fact that "stranger things" doesn't "gross" anything because it is streamed, universally, because a view of it generates no discrete payment or revenue of any kind. The best you can do is look at its share of viewing hours which is not "grossing" anything and estimate how much it plays a role in the overall value proposition for the average netflix subscriber.