Digital Music News reports “Spotify CEO Daniel Ek Is Richer Than Any Musician—Yes, Even Taylor Swift.” Did that just sneak up or is it really Groundhog Day? Maybe it’s groundhog day in Sweden.

Let’s try this again. Remember that artists and labels get paid a revenue share from Spotify. (So do songwriters, but that’s a whole other conversation.) Before you go any farther, getting a share of revenue is for chumps. But what does that mean, this “revenue”. Consider the definition of “gross revenue” that is common in the negotiated version of these deals:

“Gross Revenues” means, with respect to audio and video streams, all gross revenues directly related to the Services, including but not restricted to (i) all revenues attributable to text and/or graphic display, rich media and “in-stream” advertising revenues (i.e., audio, visual or audiovisual advertisements exhibited before, during or after a stream containing any Label Materials) generated from software client interfaces, widgets or properties through which the Services are made available; (ii) all revenues attributable to CPC-, CPM- and CPA-based advertising, e-commerce and “referral fees”/bounties (including non-refundable advances and guarantees, however characterized) generated via the Services, whether structured as a one-time payment or as a recurring revenue share, but specifically excluding e-commerce, “referral fees”/bounties and like revenue generated from sales of permanent audio and video downloads; (iii) all sponsorships sold by Company or its agents; (iv) solely with respect to the Subscription Services, all subscription income; and (v) any share of traffic or tariff charges for delivery of the Services that Company may be able to secure from telecommunications partners, and (vi) all revenues derived from the sale of data related to End Users and their use of the Services [then less a bunch of deductions]”

Now you can just tell that some smart lawyers somewhere sat down to try to think of all the ways that Spotify could earn revenue so they could include those sources in their deal. What did they miss out?

The stock.

In fairness, they didn’t miss out the stock entirely, they just missed it out from the deal that all the artists got paid on. The stock was dealt with in another contract not connected to the main sound recording license and never the twain shall meet.

But what this approach misses entirely is that once you have sold the stock in a stock grant, you’re done being a shareholder. Unless you get another stock grant, which we will assume hasn’t happened.

Leave aside the issue of trading stock for lower royalties, because it’s actually worse that that–it’s trading a one-time stock bump for a lower long term royalty rates set at a price point you have to keep digging out of.

I’m just a country lawyer from Texas and I’m not as smart as the city fellers, but it seems to me that if you knew going in that the big money was in the stock, why wouldn’t you get some measurement of the increase in the net worth of Daniel Ek or some comparable metric as a money factor in the revenue calculation? Getting a one time stock grant isn’t really the same thing. And I say using Ek’s net worth as a bogey only slightly facetiously. That is a little specific, but let’s be honest. It’s Ek’s net worth that really pisses people off, right? And if our Spotify earnings increased in some relationship to his increase in wealth, we’d all probably feel at least less screwed if not actually better about the whole thing.

But even if you didn’t use that metric but knew and acknowledged that the real value was in the stock and the increase in market capitalization due to artists and songwriters, why would you ever allow yourself to get snowed by Spotify’s poor mouthing about they can’t make a profit when it should have been obvious for the last 10-plus years that Spotify didn’t care about making a profit?

The saving grace is, of course, that it’s a damn good thing we’re never going to let another MTV build a business on our backs.