Why would a live version of a song pay less royalties than the studio version? Similarly for the instrumental version. The only one that seems like it would pay less royalties is maybe the cover, if the cover band has a weaker royalty rate with the provider.
I think the far more likely explanation is just that these home assistant products suck.
My assumption has always been that Alexa, Assistant etc. just have really naive sorting of results - if I search on Spotify, the song results for 'War Pigs' are returned with the album version second, but I know that's what I meant.
Because the studio version is a top 200 of all time album, and the live version from the 50th anniversary "Still Kickin'" Tour with 30% of the original lineup and 20% of the original vocal range?
YTM seems to prefer youtube over their music catalog. It's not hard to extrapolate from there. Wouldn't a live cover recorded and uploaded by some random person pay less than the official version from WB?
I think the far more likely explanation is just that these home assistant products suck.