Fake Songs Made Real Money
Zygotic Washstands, Polymarket derivatives, more Tesla/xAI conflicts and Esmark’s fake US Steel tender offer.
This is roughly how Spotify works1:
The important thing to notice about this model is that the users pay a flat fee, no matter how much music they listen to, while the artists get paid based entirely on how often people listen to them. If you listen to the average amount of music, then $9 of your $12 gets allocated to the artists you listen to. If you sign up for Spotify and never listen to it, then $9 of your $12 just gets thrown into the pot and allocated based on what everyone else listens to. If you sign up for Spotify and listen to exactly one song once, it’s not like your whole $9 goes to the musician who made that song: That artist just gets 0.9 cents for your listen. But if you sign up for Spotify and listen a lot, you can generate more revenue for artists than you pay for your subscription: You effectively get to allocate more than the $12 you pay to the musicians you listen to most often.