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Spotify's Own Math Suggests Musicians Are Still Getting Hosed
Nerval's Lobster writes "Spotify wants to change the perception that it's killing artists' ability to make a living off music. In a new posting on its Website, the streaming-music hub suggests that songs' rights-holders earn between $0.006 and $0.0084 per stream, on average, and that a niche indie album on the service could earn an artist roughly $3,300 per month (a global hit album, on the other hand, would rack up $425,000 per month). 'We have succeeded in growing revenues for artists and labels in every country where we operate, and have now paid out over $1 billion USD in royalties to-date ($500 million of which we paid in 2013 alone),' the company wrote. 'We have proudly achieved these payouts despite having relatively few users compared to radio, iTunes or Pandora, and as we continue to grow we expect that we will generate many billions more in royalties.' But does that really counter all those artists (including Grizzly Bear and Damon Krukowski of Galaxie 500) who are on the record as saying that Spotify streaming only earns them a handful of dollars for tens of thousands of streaming plays? Let's say an artist earns $0.0084 per stream; it would still take 400,000 'plays' per month in order to reach that indie-album threshold of approximately $3,300. (At $0.006 per stream, it would take 550,000 streams to reach that baseline.) If Spotify's 'specific payment figures' with regard to albums are correct, that means its subscribers are listening to a lot of music on repeat. And granted, those calculations are rough, but even if they're relatively ballpark, they end up supporting artists' grousing that streaming music doesn't pay them nearly enough. But squeezed between labels and publishers that demand lots of money for licensing rights, and in-house expenses such as salaries and infrastructure, companies such as Spotify may have little choice but to keep the current payment model for the time being."
Pull your tunes out of their service if you don't like it.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
you music hippies
Lots of middle men still exist between a artist and the end listener. All with very sticky fingers handling the money.
What is there that dictates that an artist should be compensated every time a song is played? The rest of us are paid by the hour, by the job, under contract, or whatever. What is so special about artists, that they should be paid in perpetuity for having done a performance?
The REAL problem is, the artists get such a small piece of the pie, in comparison to the major labels. When a song becomes a global hit, the label makes billions, the artist gets a few million as a reward for enriching the label. And, all the REST of the artists are left believing that entertainment should pay big.
Dude - if you love music, play your music. If you love money more than you love music, maybe you should lay your guitar aside, and learn how to make a living. Musicians are cool and all, but FFS, we don't owe you a living for singing and playing.
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One of the articles today covering this compared the royalty rates to those paid by radio, which were about 10x what spotify pays. The problem is a) how many indie artists get ANY radio play and b) Radio royalties are per play, spotify royalties are per play per user. Sounds to me like radio stations are the ones giving them the shaft.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
So, how much does an artist make per single over-the-air play on a station with 550,000 listeners? If as many people listened to Spotify as to broadcast radio, half a million plays per month seems absolutely trivial.
Without knowing how Spotify's pay compares to radio, this sounds like little more than an emotional rant from Clear Channel.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Ben Folds, one of my favorite artists, spoke on the issue and said essentially... "I think people are going to look back on this time 50 years from now and say, wow, people could become millionaires just by playing music".
It is really only the last 50 years or so that groups became enormously wealthy based on the music they perform, and now things are returning back to normal.
Concur 100%.
The artist don't want to admit that they need to pay for popularity which is no different from the existing system.
Real bands just work hard their entire life to expand their fanbase instead of whining about it.
What does Youtube pay for 400,000 page views?
I was under the impression that revenue from YouTube's Content ID program was under nondisclosure agreement.
Supply and demand aren't exactly on their side either, as there are a lot of people making music out there.
It's tough to fight supply and demand for pricing.
On top of that, a lot of guys in bands get groupies, which probably motivates many of them. Throw in free beer and free admission to the clubs they play in and you're going to have a hard time decreasing the supply of music.
The summary states how much artists are payed and the claim that the artists think that because the payout is not a billion dollars, they are payed to little and spotify is in the wrong.
I am sure many a person cleaning toilets is ALSO not happy with the payout. But the market value of cleaning toilets is low and so apparently is the market value of music by most artists.
Is spotify paying to little or is "indie" (read non-popular) music simply not a viable product in todays entertainment market.
THINK OF THIS: I see NOTHING in the article that could not lead to the conclusion: For barely any plays at all, unknown artists earn more per month then the majority of Americans. 3300 bucks? Isn't that in fact several times minimum wage in the US?
So what are they bitching about? Can I bitch that I am not payed enough for having sex with women? I only make 3300 dollars a month for shagging 400.000 women and I just don't think that is enough...
How much do these artists they should be payed FOR A SINGLE song that, statistically speaking, nobody wants to hear?
Life is hard, many people have to do back breaking work and still don't earn 3300 a month. And they certainly don't get payed for work they did last month, last year or even a decade ago.
How much do these "artists" expect to be payed anyway for a SINGLE listen to a SINGLE song by a SINGLE person?
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