Slashdot Mirror
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.]
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.