Given you have cited spotify repeatedly: amg prior mentioned Bill Maher a favorite liberal comedian of mine and im quoting this liberal comedian who discusses spotify at time stamp:
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"3 Billion Streams on spotify netting her
almost 11 cents."
There is a notion here that just because
you think someone was earning money (and btw amg's favorite director lost over a 100 million.
Did I mention that he thought that movie he spammed would one day become comparable to Apocalypse Now?
If a Jackie fan back then were to suggest The Company You Keep could one day become comparable to All the President's Men you would never cease to bring that up. TCYK is great and Jackie was great in it but Apocalypse Now and All the President's Men are among the greatest movies in cinema history.)
Artists tend to lose money before they make money, in other words they are in debt.
Sims has to win awards for beating long dead horses. Rather than actually citing real statistical info, he searches the internet in vain for any crumb to try to prove his point that someone other than his gal might be doing well financially.
For those who don't recall the breakdown so far, let's review:
His battles against streaming get increasingly desperate. First he cited T-Pain complaining he needed 315 streams to get paid $1. Which is quite true. What Sims didn't notice was that for someone like Grace getting 15-20 million streams a year just from Spotify, she is getting 60k+ yearly just from Spotify with probably double to triple that that from the combinations of Apple, Amazon, YouTube, Deezer, etc. just from songs from her back catalogue as she had not produced little in the way of new music in four years. Now that she's back recording again, the totals have increased markedly. Of course, T-Pain was angry because his music was primarily popular before streaming was a factor, was faddish, and aged like milk, so he wasn't benefiting since he wasn't popular. For someone like Billie Eilish or Olivia Rodrigo who routinely get billion streaming tracks, they are getting over 3 million for each of them and make many millions per year. All of this from his source. Oops.
Then he cited various artists not allowing Spotify to use their music. Of course, in most cases, it had to do with their hosting podcasts from people with political views said artist did not approve and not for anything financial. The one case left was Taylor Swift who was unsure how much money she would end up getting and quickly found out she would be making out like a bandit and reversed course to get the cash. Oops.
Then he turned to claiming that the artist didn't get all of that money which is false. I had to show him the evidence that Spotify pays out on average $0.02 cents per stream of which the artists got $0.0032 per stream. Oops again.
Then he turns to Greg Camp stating that artists only get $0.0032 cents per stream which, of course, I had to point out was correct and would mean that the artist would need ... how many streams to make a dollar? The answer is 315 - same as T-Pain said. Oops.
Next, he turned to an article stating that almost all of the songwriting and music publishing money for Luke Combs' recording of "Car" went to Tracy Chapman since she wrote it and published her own music. He them implied Luke Combs didn't get much money from it and cited the article. Of course, for the money the article was speaking about, Luke Combs actually received $0 as they were referring to the money that goes to songwriters and music publishers and not the money that goes to labels and artists. Oops.
Then there was the time that he cited a group that had been ripped off and never received proper payment. It turned out they were with some fly-by-night label that had ripped them off and they quite explicitly stated they did not have any issue with Spotify. Sleazy labels have always existed that rip artists off since the industry began. It usually occurs with two-bit labels who don't normally have any real success and so their artists don't have a platform to express their views. It had nothing to do with streaming or streaming services. Oops.
Sims also cited a few artists who apparently did not read things attached to money they received and did not get the idea that money given as an advance needed to be paid back. That is, if we front you $250k for expenses, you might want to use it on things like food and rent and not on jewelry and a Mercedes. In Sims world, the irresponsibility of an artist or of the label not making clear that the money would come out of their future earnings is the fault of streaming. Oops.
Now, Sims is back at it. So does he use some legitimate source or analysis? Of course not - this is Sims!!! Instead, he uses a joke by a comedian using a quip to play off the whining of certain artists that they don't make enough money. Besides the idiocy of someone using a satirist in place of factual information, Sims overlooks that the very same comedian (when he was actually being serious) pointed out that streaming broke the gatekeeping system and now only the musicians people want to listen to get paid. In other words, it is now a meritocracy.
Looks like Sims has as many oopsies as cats anecdotally have lives.
So now let's turn to Megalopolis. First off, I never said it would one day be in the same class as Apocalypse Now!. I couldn't have said that since I hadn't seen the film yet (I have since then). What I pointed out is that many of his films are reappraised and appreciated as the decades have passed and that Apocalypse Now! was not as universally praised as it is today. In particular, i stated that most of his films take a decade or more to figure out if they were any good or not.
Since you mentioned Apocalypse Now!, I should point out that movie nearly bankrupted Coppola's film company. At it's initial release, it was a box office disaster, there were all kinds of bad advanced PR, it received a mixed reception. and wouldn't be in the black until decades later. Now, in retrospect, it is considered one of the great movies of all time but it was very divisive and many were angry at it winning the Oscar. Later, Coppola made a musical One From the Heart that was universally panned and again bombed. That film bankrupted him and forced him to direct some movies from big studios strictly for the cash. He eventually started a winery and is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars. At 80+ years old, he is allowed to blow whatever money he wants to make the movie he wanted. He made it the way he wanted and stated quite clearly that he didn't expect to make money but wanted to make a statement.
I mentioned One From the Heart for a reason: Now, many decades later, the film has grown in popularity and is starting to have a cult following and is being reappraised. Could that happen with Megalopoiis? Possibly. If so, not likely to be in my lifetime and certainly not in Coppola's but he doesn't seem to care. When you deal with someone like Coppola or other directors who fall into his category, there is the real danger of making a point the audience won't get for years. It all comes down to whether you can wrap the point in a story the audience can get invested in for the short term. It's a lot easier to do that with a Vietnam War film released less than a decade after the war than it could ever be with an alternate reality ancient Rome set in America's future that expected the audience to already understand the history of the Roman Republic and the Catalinarian conspiracy to get many of the references.
I happened to see Megalopolis and it was, as many have said, a wild ride. Would i put it in the same class as Apocalypse Now! Of course not. I think the biggest problem is that Coppola is too old to put in the same level of detail as he did in the past. You could tell he had rewritten the script over decades as there were allusions to "now" that were written in the 80s or 90s or ... or post-pandemic. The effect could be jarring as the motivations of the main characters could become very disjointed. If you knew the history of the struggle between Cicero and Cateline, you would get the motivation for certain elements of the film, but most people don't. At the moment, I consider it to be a commendable but flawed film. Even with its flaws, I would rather watch it than most of what is released by the major studios.
I had three reasons for being interested in Megalopolis. The first was that I always find most of his films to be interesting even when they miss the mark. The second was an all-star cast including excellent actors from almost every living generation. The third was the out of place inclusion of Grace. I was very surprised Coppola had picked her - even for a supporting role in one section of the film - and also trusted her to write two songs for the film. No matter what happened at that point, being picked by Francis Ford Coppola as an actor and songwriter is a once in a lifetime opportunity. It gave her a platform to walk the red carpet, do interviews, get magazine covers, and generally get free publicity for any project she wanted to do. If a legendary director came to Jackie and said I want you in my film, you get to sing a few songs, and I want you to write those songs, do you seriously think Jackie (or any other young singer/actress) would think twice about it? This was a no-brainer positive for Grace's career and put further distance between her and her past child star status.
Finally, there is no comparison between the combo Apocalypse Now!/Megalopolis and All the President's Men/The Company You Keep. Coppola had creative control over both of the first pair. Redford only did for The Company You Keep. All the President's Men was directed by Alan Kapula and written by William Goldman. Redford was a starring actor along with Dustin Hoffman. He was great in the film but he did not exert creative control. The most acclaimed film for which Redford was the creative visionary was Ordinary People.
Updated: and of course you inferred that I was implying Maher was being factual in your salad. You just can't help but tell lies, thats why it has to be repeated to you.