Ethan Miller/Getty Images
Jimmy Buffet wants to know if artists will get paid in the digital music era.
At the Vanity Fair Summit conference Wednesday, Buffett asked Spotify CEO Daniel Ek what the streaming service is doing to make sure artists get their fair share of streaming music revenues.
"We're at the end of the pipeline," Buffett told Ek. "When money goes to the label in a stream, it trickles to the artist. Do you see anything in the future where we might get a raise from you instead of going through the bull - you have to with the labels these days?"
Ek said Spotify is trying. It has a special site artists can look at to see how many streams they're getting on Spotify. This, Ek said, is opening a dialogue between the artists and the labels that will hopefully result in the artists getting a larger cut.
Ek also said Spotify pays 70% of its revenue to the labels. That'll amount to a little over $1 billion this year.
But Buffett pointed out artists still aren't getting enough. $1 billion may sound impressive, but "that's lower than we used to get," Buffett said.