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As Music Streaming Grows, Royalties Slow To a Trickle
concealment sends this excerpt from the NY Times:
"Late last year, Zoe Keating, an independent musician from Northern California, provided an unusually detailed case in point. In voluminous spreadsheets posted to her Tumblr blog, she revealed the royalties she gets from various services, down to the ten-thousandth of a cent. Even for an under-the-radar artist like Ms. Keating, who describes her style as “avant cello,” the numbers painted a stark picture of what it is like to be a working musician these days. After her songs had been played more than 1.5 million times on Pandora over six months, she earned $1,652.74. On Spotify, 131,000 plays last year netted just $547.71, or an average of 0.42 cent a play. 'In certain types of music, like classical or jazz, we are condemning them to poverty if this is going to be the only way people consume music,' Ms. Keating said. ... The question dogging the music industry is whether these micropayments can add up to anything substantial. 'No artist will be able to survive to be professionals except those who have a significant live business, and that’s very few,' said Hartwig Masuch, chief executive of BMG Rights Management."
0.42 cents - $0.0042.
Half a cent per play.
And the worms ate into his brain.
To be fair, Keating feels that the NY Times article was not very representative of her opinions; the article is a lot more down on the streaming income than she is.
Her statements on the income from online streaming are pretty neutral; she's not totally gung-ho about it (like, say, maybe Johnathan Coulton would be), but she's also not really putting it out there in a complaining, "wah wah Spotify should be giving me more money" sense.
...but would she be otherwise selling her music in concert, on CDs, etc.?
Yes. And Bandcamp. :-)
[Disclaimer: I am unaffiliated with Keating, but a large fan.]
There's only one problem I see with your blue-sky thinking: People will gladly accept music for free (have for decades and decades, it's call RADIO) especially if there's no risk to getting it, but under your model concerts would probably be even more expensive than they already are, and they're expensive right now. Most people will say "Ugh, that's too much money, I'll just listen to the free recording, it's almost as good" and leave it at that.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
As I've posted a couple times [I'm a fan so feel somewhat compelled to clarify that she's not really complaining (I have no further affiliation with her her)], Keating's views aren't well-reflected in the article and she's a lot less negative on the streaming model than the article seems to suggest. The vibe I've gotten is much more of a "here are numbers so you can have more intelligent conversations about things like changes in federal licensing regulations", and pick up basically no "wah wah wah Spotify should give me more money".
Me, I'm constantly improving what was done, producing more and supporting those consumers.
And the artists aren't?
IMHO, Zoe Keating and musicians with the same attitude are the patent trolls of the music industry.
"As the artist featured in this NYTimes article, I feel horribly misrepresented and I have to straighten out a few things. ... But I'm truthfully, extremely happy and thankful, exactly where I am right now. ... I'm not against streaming by any means. I've put my music wherever someone might hear it; including onto filesharing sites (gasp)."
The alternative is to switch to a job that actually pays money. Frankly, she should quit her whining. A cellist?
Sigh. For the nth time in this thread, the article was misrepresenting her opinion and she is not negative on streaming. Her data dump was much more in the style of "here's information so you can have a more intelligent conversation" than "wah wah Spotify should be giving me more money". At this point I think I'm too lazy to even go get the link again.
Nobody is going to pay money to listen to a cellist at a concert, or buy her CD.
The last laugh is on you apparently because she's doing pretty well for herself. Statistically speaking, she appears to almost certainly make more than you.
It was played 1.5 million times, but that isn't 1.5 million people who wanted to listen to her. That is 1.5 million plays because it matched a station. Consider that she is a cellist and a has a rather eclectic style, I would imagine that anyone who created an "Amanda Palmer" radio station heard her quite a bit.
This is the problem with using her Pandora plays as a "counter". How many of those were skips/ thumbs downs/ etc? Pandora frequently will loop a few select artists if they fit into a narrow bandwidth of music. That doesn't mean that people are demanding her music at that particular level. She may just show up a lot for anyone who creates a classical station and thumbs up more contemporary pieces.
Further, she has been #1 on the Itunes classical charts a number of times. I wonder if all of that Pandora exposure from her 1.5 million plays contributed to that success? Can't be, people were buying her tracks on iTunes for no reason. She is just that fucking popular.
You misunderstand what the rest of the world does.
You think programmers get to write fulfilling awesome pieces of code to stimulate their creativity? No... they write boring back-end database and financial software.
You think lawyers all get to smartly outwit each other in their cerebral battles in court? No... it's mostly drafting contracts from templates and doing boring papery things.
You think that doctor gets to save lives by cleverly doing differential diagnosis and finding the obscure diseases that no-one could? No... it's mostly the same snotty noses and strange genital rashes day in and day out.
I could go on, but I think the point here is that work is not glamorous for most people.
So if you have to play a pop cover in the bar to make ends meet - suck it up! Go experiment and be deep on your own time and dime. The rest of the world does too.
I read the blog of Zoe Keating[1], the artist whose quote was extracted in the new york times article.
You said: "Seriously though, this person is getting upset because they don't have a large volume of listeners, not because the songs are not paid enough for listening."
This is not what Zoe Keating is complaining about. She complains that the artist on streaming platforms are made per play. Though, depending on who you are, you don't get paid the same per play. She claims that this is unfair. Basically because she is independent she can not negogiate a higher rate.
As for live performance, it appears to only represent 25% of her income, while music sales represent about 45%.
[1] http://zoekeating.tumblr.com/