Radiohead's Thom Yorke Pulls Albums From Spotify In Protest of Low Royalties

First time accepted submitter rpopescu writes "Thom Yorke of Radiohead fame has pulled his solo album 'Eraser' (as well as music made as Atoms for Peace) from the music streaming service Spotify, as a protest at how much it pays the artists. Quote: '"Make no mistake. These are all the same old industry bods trying to get a stranglehold on the delivery system."'"

Comments

Great graphic from Information is Beautiful

[blarkon]

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/

I believe since the graphic was made, there has been extensive lobbying for royalties per play to be reduced from the figures shown in this picture. There's something to the original musician's case if it takes more than 4 million plays per month to get to one individual's *minimum wage* of $1160 per month (and that's with the *generous* current pay per play rate).

Re:Great graphic from Information is Beautiful

[BenJury]

What's really impressive is how much more the label takes. For Spotify: 0.16c to the label, 0.029c for the artist. (~85%/15% split) That's a huge chunk for something that someone else is distributing etc.

Re:Nice graph

[Sockatume]

Spotify does not pay up. Labels an artists get about a 5:1 split of the payment from both iTunes and Spotify, but Spotify's payment per play is five hundred times smaller than iTunes payment per purchase. Unless each of your listeners hits that Spotify play button five hundred times, you don't make the same money by streaming.

Re:This is what you get when you mess with us

[jasenj1]

You mean like Bandcamp? - Jasen.

Re:Reward the artist

[omfgnosis]

Seems like as good a time as any to post Steve Albini's article on the topic: http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17