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."

Comments

Your call

[oldhack]

Pull your tunes out of their service if you don't like it.

Re:Your call

[Entropy98]

It actually doesn't sound that bad, 400,000 web pageviews pays nowhere near $3,000.

Re:Your call

[DexterIsADog]

You're comparing a webview of a frivolous news story or blog post to a recorded song as if they were of equivalent value.

Seriously?

Re:Your call

[Z34107]

You're comparing three minutes of frivolous background noise to the written word as if they were of equivalent value?

Seriously?

Re: Your call

[supersat]

I believe Spotify operates under compulsory/statutory licenses, so you can't really pull your music from the service.

Re:Your call

[FatLittleMonkey]

And those whining about Spotify want to treat "plays" as if they were purchases.

Re:Your call

[Riceballsan]

Is a song any more significant than a blog or any other page? Either one, drawing 400,000 takes either luck, or to produce something so good or so bad that it gets shared/tweeted into active circles etc... in both cases the off the charts money makers, are the creations that seem to have taken the least effort.

Re:Your call

[slick7]

You're comparing three minutes of frivolous background noise to the written word as if they were of equivalent value?

Seriously?

Between the Patriot Act and the NDAA and listening to the Barney song, Barney has it!

Re:Your call

[fermion]

My understanding is that much of this is based on compulsory licensing. This means that if you record music, and sell music, then it fair game for broadcast. This has been the model for a long time. And it has worked. One wonders if the Beatles or Elvis would be successful if the radio did not pay to advertise their music. Yet much of the current issue we have from streaming is because many labels and artist think they left a lot of money on the table when the licensing for radio was established. Many labels and artist seem to believe that radio is stealing money from them, although one wonders how a hit can be generated more cheaply than through airplay. Airplay that depends on broadband owned by the public, BTW.

Here is why internet radio is not stealing money from artist. Because it pays more. My understanding is that it pays directly to artists, not through middlemen who manipulate the numbers to pay royalties to artists based on fictional 'credits'. So if an artist is to get $100 from spotify, that is $100 that they would have never gotten through radio, and part of the money is not being diverted to more 'popular' artists or just not paid at all because you do not meet the quarterly threshold.

I also think that the labels might be making a long term mistake by believing they need to maximize upfront profits in streaming instead of looking at the promotional possibilities. As an example I look at Eminem. He got really pissed off at Napster when his music was on the site back in 2000. However, his music was not playing on the major young peoples stations in 2000. He was playing on some stations I listened to, in particular a hybrid english/spanish/hip hop(ther is fair amount of really good spanish hip top) station, but was not at all what the 'in crowd' listened to. Suburban parents were not comfortable with rap. But kids were hearing the music, and I wonder where from. Could it be they were downloading it to the computers? From Napster. I recall when he broke through to mainstream stations. For instance I was in the gym and the DJ(they still existed back then) was pleading with listeners to stop calling requested 'Stan' as they were going to get it on the air as fast as they could. As I said, most stations were not playing it, it was listener demand.

This has all been rehashed millions of times. That the artists are being robbed by streaming. I don't know. In the US minimum wage is less than $8 and hour, so if you spend 40 hours on a song, and get $300 in royalties, I am not sure who you are behind. If I spend 40 hours coding, and someone uses it once, am I entitled to $300? The reality is that recording music, like coding or anything else, is a speculative enterprise. Unless you create some work for hire, where someone else is going to take the risk and gain the majority of the reward, there is no entitlement to pay.

Frankly, if all the big talent that wouldn't work for less than a million dollars a year, I am sure that we would be back to days where most work was done 'for hire' and the artists were paid the absolute minimum possible.

Re:Your call

[Opportunist]

What's the difference between obnoxious and obnoxious?

Re:Your call

[mjwx]

Pull your tunes out of their service if you don't like it.

You do know that most "artists" dont have that control.

The reason writers and singers are getting screwed has nothing to do with Spotify, rather it's the system set up by the music industry to ensure that most cant profit or control their own works.

Spotify is the player, however it is the game that's rigged.

Re:Your call

[sumdumass]

One has a ? At the and and the other has a space.

Something tells me that wasn't whAt you were after.

Anyways, i'm wondering how the payments compare to radio with say a single station snd 400,000 listeners. I know BMI collects and pays differently for college radion verses commercial radio.

Re:Your call

[Anonymous Coward]

My understanding is that much of this is based on compulsory licensing. This means that if you record music, and sell music, then it fair game for broadcast. This has been the model for a long time. And it has worked. One wonders if the Beatles or Elvis would be successful if the radio did not pay to advertise their music. Yet much of the current issue we have from streaming is because many labels and artist think they left a lot of money on the table when the licensing for radio was established. Many labels and artist seem to believe that radio is stealing money from them, although one wonders how a hit can be generated more cheaply than through airplay. Airplay that depends on broadband owned by the public, BTW.

The problem is that Elvis and the Beatles et. al. were successful because their music got played on radio which then contributed to sell their albums. The problem is that nowadays hardly anybody buys albums if they can avoid it, they just use Spotify instead or simply torrent the music and that trend will increase. If we are to regard Spotify as a modern equivalent of the radio stations of the 1960s (and some music industry person actually commented you should regard Spotify as a publicity mechanism, not as a way to make money off of music) then my local Pirate party is in trouble because they have been billing Spotify as an example of a __replacement__ for the old outmoded business model of selling records/CDs. I just witnessed a lengthy debate between a local Pirate party politician and a rather well known musician where the musician presented real world figures over the pitiful amounts of money he made off of his more popular songs on Spotify as opposed to CDs. He was trying to voice the exact opinion being voiced in this article, i.e. that musicians are getting hosed way worse by Spotify and similar services than they ever were by the old Studios (who are major shareholders in Spotify by the way). Meanwhile the Pirate just kept harping on about Spotify and others being the new business model and ignoring his argument and his experience completely. The whole debate reminded me of the total disconnect between Democrats and Republicans in the US. I don't really disagree with the Pirates on this particular issue, there is a pressing need for new business models that are fair to musicians and not just the gatekeepers of distribution services. Some of these Pirates genuinely seem to be trying to solve the quandary of creating a new business model to enable Musicians to earn a living in the internet age. Their problem is that they just keep coming across as arguing that (and I get this a lot when talking to people about political parties): 'we are entitled to pirate because we can and therefore we are entitled to get stuff for free'. This is probably not the impression Pirate parties want to project since it tends make them look like freeloaders and freeloading in my experience tends to piss off large portions of the electorate. Holding Spotify up as an example isn't helping either.

Re:Your call

[happy monday]

Re. promotion, I've bought 10 albums in the last month or so, after listening to them on Spotify and deciding I liked them. Without Spotify allowing me to listen to the albums, I wouldn't have bought them. So Spotify does generate sales. I guess the question is, what proportion of people do buy stuff after hearing it on Spotify?

Re:Your call

[gl4ss]

there's a difference in creating something and hoping to get paid than creating the work for hire(which is most work). if you're pouring your soul into something just for the monetary reward expectation.. what kind of soul is it?

fyi, practically all the composers prior to modern copyright lived off from doing works for hire. you wanted something cool for your 1700's wedding, you paid some dude to compose it.

just because you can create something doesn't mean that others are obligated to feel like paying for it... a lot of music people poured their hearts into is just pure shit. some of it is good. how would you know without hearing it though? pay upfront 20 cent per listen(stream)? ? fuck no.

let's say that some dude can create 20 soul crunching songs in a year, does he deserve to be paid for them just because he creates them? why? what about if he creates 200? is he going to go on a strike if we don't pay up despite us not even wanting to listen to his songs?

I think the people bitching the most are people who are not being listened on spotify at all - and wouldn't be getting any radio plays either in a demand driven radio culture(demand creating radio culture not counting).

Re:Your call

[Vitani]

I know what you're trying to say, but you're comparing a "public" performance (radio, streamed) to a person's copy (book, DVD). If you buy the CD then you do only pay once, or visa-versa if you go to a book reading or watch the film on TV then the author/actors & directors will be paid royalties for another showing (or at least the studio will).

I like the idea of being paid for the hours you put into a project; I get paid £16 an hour to write code, that code is used for more hours than it took me to write, but I only get paid once, I don't get paid for every "use" of the software. Why should it be any different for someone who writes music, movie or a book?

Re:Your call

[GrumpySteen]

The problem is that nowadays hardly anybody buys albums if they can avoid it

Your "hardly anybody" bought 204.8 million albums and 1.34 billion individual songs last year.

the musician presented real world figures over the pitiful amounts of money he made off of his more popular songs on Spotify as opposed to CD

Would you pay $20,000 to rent a car for one trip to the store?

No? Then why would you think that people should pay as much to listen to a song one time as they would to buy it on CD? Yet that seems to be the argument the musician was making.

Re:Your call

[peragrin]

you are missing the point. the recording studios killed the album for sales. they did this in the 80's and 90's. Sure a couple of groups put together actual albums but mainly they are just a group of randomly selected 3 minute clips like custom mix tapes only containing one artist.(sorry custom mix playlists containing one artist, for those born after 1990) People got used to buying singles, and albums for one track long before napster was ever dreamed up. So when mass distribution of music started happening singles was how it was done.

Besides 90% of the music today are 3 minute pieces that have no bearing on anything else produced but the teams of writers. Every once in a while you get an album thoughtfully put together, but mostly it is just random songs stuck together so they can sell another "album"

Re:Your call

[flyneye]

I'll say it again; if you are selling your songs and expecting a profit, you are WRONG!
Doing the same thing over and over and expecting some different outcome is well...you fill in the blank.
Forget the damn industry. If you operate within the bounds of the industry business model you are and will be f**ked.
Operate on a level playing field with the internet and replace the industry model.
1. Give your music away, it's the best way to stay in peoples minds and on their players. Obviously jingle writers can't but that's a direct market with fewer middlemen. Not music anyway, it's jingles.
2. Sell your performances. Book the hell out of yourself, play where it pays.
All this is very basic and I have a much more detailed outline on how to be a musician, make money, spread your fame and help kill the music industry.
We really DON'T need middlemen to choose the music we hear, promote random artists in spite of lack of talent, create a model that excludes non-signed artists, legislate our freedoms away, tie up our courts and attack people for sharing music which has no business being copyrighted to begin with.
Be your own "music industry", spread the work between band, friends and family.
Forget what you know, we make the future.

Re:Your call

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem comparing Spotify with radio is that radio listeners have no control over what gets played when. So the radio may play "Help" or "Stan" six times a day, but they don't play it when you want to hear it. This creates want: you want to be able to hear your favorite song at just the right time (or more often than every 2 hours), so you go buy a copy. Spotify lets you choose what you hear, when you hear it. It removes much of the purchase pressure.

So, radio pays the artist nothing but creates album sales; Spotify pays the artist something, but creates fewer album sales. This is the question they're trying to answer with this data. Basically, they're claiming that an "average" person spends $50/year on music, where Spotify subscribers spend (at least) $120. Spotify pays lower royalty rate than purchases, but the amount actually distributed to artists from spotify subscribers ($40) is more than from the average American ($25). It's definitely marketing-math, because they're including a lot (maybe the majority) of people who don't buy any music at all in their "average" population. There's nothing in there about whether spotify generates album/song sales, and sales generation is the whole reason for radio.

Re:Your call

[AndrewX]

If they really are "indie" artists, as claimed by most of the people bitching about Spotify not paying them "enough," then yes they do have that control.

Re:Your call

[Kelbear]

Albums haven't been making musicians rich from a long time. Having their songs played on the radio didn't make them rich either.

But having their songs heard got them fans which go out and see their live shows/tours, and that makes them quite a bit of money. Merchandising/Cross promotional deals can make them quite a lot more. (Dr. Dre's Beats brand headphones have totally eclipsed the amount he made in his entire career in the music industry).

The cold hard fact here is that the changes in the music industry are going to happen, no matter what. Spotify and Pandora at least get the artists some money in the meantime. Pirates are not entitled to free music...but they're going to do their thing anyway. Giving those listeners a free stream that at least makes some returns off them gives the artist something rather than nothing.

Even if one day it becomes impossible to make a living off music, I guarantee you, there will still be plenty of music because there are just too many people who want to make music (not all of it good). They'll do it in their spare time while still holding down a full-time job, they feel they need to make that music. Whether that's fair or not, it's still true. The supply of music is overwhelming compared to the demand.

Re:Your call

[Anonymous Coward]

"you wanted something cool for your 1700's wedding, you paid some dude to compose it."

Just fyi this is 100% false. Most of the famous "classical" composers from the ~1700's such as Beethoven or Mozart were just given free money by admirers from the nobility. The strings attached were: compose stuff. Beethoven even got away with openly insulting his benefactor. Others such as Haydn were employees of rich dudes, or wealthy institutions such as churches (Bach). In no case would the average person be able to afford even the paper to scribble notes upon, let alone hire an orchestra for a wedding.

I am not trying to troll, but just pointing out that things in music are sometimes very different than people realize. Modern music is a totally different beast compared to the 90's let alone the 1700's. We are looking at a new era where you don't need access to a million dollar studio to make quality music. The problem is that now we have an absolutely saturated market and this is why I believe artists have trouble making money. But make no mistake, its not for lack of talent. There are an awful lot of talented folks out there, whether or not they create in a style that is accessible to the main stream. That being said there are always those who rise above the rest, and a serious survey of ANY time period in music will reveal that there were always hacks and noobs working alongside the truly talented. Today we just have more of everything. Its a good thing, lots of great music for cheap (or even free!) out there. Enjoy it while you can because there could come a day when the riaa et. al. will get their wishes.

Oh, p.s. Salieri did NOT kill Mozart.

Re:Your call

[Dixie_Flatline]

This is really interesting stuff.

Can you tell me the name of your band? I'd like to hear your music!

Re:Your call

[MemoryAid]

Period. Anyone who says otherwise is either a fool, a greedy bastard, or both.

Nice use of ad hominum attack to pre-emptively silence dissent.

Re:Your call

[painandgreed]

But having their songs heard got them fans which go out and see their live shows/tours, and that makes them quite a bit of money.

I hear that a lot, but certainly not from the musicians I know. I've been a roadie and just finished a book on touring by Martin Atkins. Everything I've ever heard has been that touring is a necessary evil needed for promotion. Tours run on a shoestring budget that can turn from break even to hugely in debt in the blink of an eye. I'm sure that some people make money off of tours, but those people are also the very small sample that are making lots of money off of their album sales also. Most musicians on major labels are basically in the company store model. They get paid by the company to make their album. If their album sells past the amount needed to pay back what they were advanced, they start making money.

Merchandise is the wild card. Depending on how much sells, and what the terms are, tours can make money off of that, but certainly don't make it off of ticket sales. I knew lots of punk bands that would essentially pay for their tours by coming up with a cool t-shirt design, get them made as cheap as possible, and survive off the desire of kids wanting to wear a cool graphic or slogan on a shirt (an never really caring who the band was). Even then, it just barely kept them in gas money and ramen. Bands who expect for people to buy t-shirts because they like the band rather than the graphic on the shirt usually end up with a lot of extra stock at the end of the tour (again, unless they are the few big names in their genre).

I have sat in a table with mostly musicians and heard them talk about how licensing is pretty much the only serious way to make money in music and anybody who isn't admitting that to themselves is dreaming. Licensing for a TV show, movie, ad, or even muzak will end up making them more money than they ever made off of album sales because those are the industries where the money is. Spotify and other music services are part of that. Even then the musician has to be careful and manage his material in those venues because the money can apparently end up going to the labels or not being paid out to anyone quite legally.

Re:Your call

[slick7]

What's the difference between obnoxious and obnoxious?

One obnoxious goes away when you turn it off, the others don't.

Re:Your call

[flyneye]

DeCompilation
Try a G+ search, I think our keyplayer has some posted somewhere.
I'm pretty sure there's some text close-by about copyleft wherever he stuck it up.

Re:Your call

[Zaelath]

What you say about the talent may be true, but what I see is posters for One Direction everywhere.

Re:Your call

[highphilosopher]

As a musician and songwriter that three minutes of frivolous background noise cost me a lot of time and effort. Considering how most written words aren't even spelled right anymore, I seriously doubt that many web pages you will view cost more in time and effort than that three minute song. It's not like musicians sneeze and out pops music. There's more to it than that.

Re:Your call

[TranquilVoid]

This is not true, I'd guess that for most people the emotional experience from listening to recorded music is more valuable, especially when accounting for the effort to obtain.

It's akin to saying a novel is nothing more than an advertisement for a book reading, or a movie is simply an advertisement for a Broadway play.

Re:Your call

[Stuarticus]

When you look at the effort involved in creation the difference is pretty vast.

Money Paid != Artist Paid

[elmer at web-axis]

Lots of middle men still exist between a artist and the end listener. All with very sticky fingers handling the money.

Re:Money Paid != Artist Paid

[Anonymous Coward]

They're holding it wrong...

Are they really being hosed?

[Runaway1956]

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.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is there that dictates that an artist should be compensated every time a song is played?

Nothing at all, other than the fact that that's how you license their music. There's nothing stopping you from finding a musician you like and paying them as much money as they'll take to actually buy a song. Good luck with that.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[viperidaenz]

That's why artists tour. They make shit all on album sales. Especially if they didn't write all the songs they sing. They make lots more with ticket sales.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets just clarify something. What do artist get from a play of their music on Youtube when its distributed through someone elses pirated channel? Nothing. What does Youtube pay for 400,000 page views?

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[DexterIsADog]

Exactly. Just like people who create businesses. They're entitled to reasonable hourly pay, but once the company exists, if they're not still working, they shouldn't get anything more. The business would belong to... well, everyone, I guess, just as you believe songs and other creative content should be ownerless once created.

Right? Ownership is theft!

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[alen]

artists make about average profit margins for a business after expenses

the big pop artists spend a lot of money on advertising. you think its an accident how the photogs always catch lady gaga wearing weird clothes?

by the time you pay for recording, marketing, itunes/amazon and all the other expenses you get some for yourself and then you have to tour. just like every other business today. most products are loss leaders and you need a high margin product to make all the profits. in music its selling the recorded version of your music which is the loss leader. the profits are in the touring

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[kyma]

This is absurd. Do you not value music? Maybe you don't listen to music. How is an artist supposed to go on about creating music and making a living with no financial support. "Tour" says viperidaenz. Well, what happens when they can't tour? I guess that throws starting/having a family out of the picture. Consider a 5-member band, that money from all those gigs starts dwindling down pretty quickly when you start to consider all the associated costs of living on the road. Furthermore, with a career in another field they will have to do exactly as you say Runaway1956. Set the music aside. Then what? We collectively have no music to listen to because nobody can afford to spend time creating it. This thread isn't about album sales, its about a streaming service that makes its money off a few advertisements. There's no money coming out of your pocket here. Economics101. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[hlavac]

Well, what happens when they can't tour?

They lobby with their friends at ministry of culture and get royalties on blank media from people that have never heard of them doing backups of their data! Yay! Never have to work again!

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[Sarten-X]

Copyright is only a recent phenomena.

That's because mass copying is a recent phenomenon. Before easy copying techniques, art was promoted by patronage, as the GP suggests. It's still the effective system in small theaters and galleries around the world, and of course all manner of "arts" online. Get rid of copyright, and the patronage would still exist... it'd just be much more difficult for an artist to rely on an income, because there'd be no middlemen absorbing the financial risk.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[MeNeXT]

On that note maybe the artist can license the public air waves or just distribute the songs door to door.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[unitron]

... Copyright is only a recent phenomena.

For a three hundred year definition of recent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[unitron]

Well, what happens when they can't tour?

They lobby with their friends at ministry of culture and get royalties on blank media from people that have never heard of them doing backups of their data!
Yay! Never have to work again!

I thought it was the record labels and/or publishing companies and/or ASCAP/BMI who got that money (on blank tapes to begin with, regardless of what was to be recorded on them).

At least under the version of the law they bribed into existence here in the U.S.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you put it that way. What is the difference between someone that works to create something, say software, and someone that has done nothing but owns said software? It is who has the legal right to make money off of it in perpetuity that is the owner, not the worker. So yes, in your logic, ownership is nothing more than modern day fiefdom, a system that was abandoned hundreds of years ago as being a barbaric form of slavery through risk of starvation instead of violence (and sometimes that too). Somehow, by fighting for the 'rights' of creative types to be rent seekers, you have managed to convince me that the concept of ownership separated from effort is flawed.

Maybe you are carrying around some as yet undiscovered cognitive dissonance.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[Anonymous Coward]

And since the context here is distributable recorded music - not just the existence of music or humanity in general - the idea that copyright is a relatively recent phenomenon is rubbish.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[russbutton]

Dude... To play as well as it takes for some no-talent schmuck to want to listen to something more than once takes a lifetime of very, very hard work. The problem is that people who aren't musicians have no appreciation for the work, heart and soul required for music to be good, let alone great.

Clearly you don't.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you fucking nailed it. Of course you won't be rewarded by the mods, but you just took their pet argument and buried it six feet deep.

Some day the mods will get real jobs and will get over their emotional need to hoard thousands of copyrighted files, most of which they never get around to consuming, but which has already helped put *all* of the major record chains in the USA out of business (seems they were all run by incompetents, after miraculously managing to thrive in the '80s and '90s in spite of that). And persuaded many young musicians to go into other fields instead.

How in FSM's name can you make an argument that someone hoarding something that they don't even 'consume' is somehow putting record labels in the USA out of business. It makes no sense that someone not buying something that they would never have bought in the first place can be a direct or indirect cause of a failed company. Really. It makes no sense.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[ApplePy]

This is absurd. Do you not value music? Maybe you don't listen to music. How is an artist supposed to go on about creating music and making a living with no financial support.

Try local music for a change. Really local. Like those guys you never heard of down at the corner pub on Friday night. They're not U2 or Garth Brooks, but hey, for a $5 cover charge and $3 beers, who's complaining?

Those guys aren't in it for the money. They have real day jobs (mostly) and play on weekends because they love music. They know they are never going to play to a stadium, and they don't care.

Do you get what you pay for? Maybe. Can you have a beer with the band after the gig? Yep! Try that with the stars.

Thing is, people who really love to play music don't care about money for it. Sure, it's nice to keep them in beer and guitar strings, and they get that. But I just don't go along with your premise that good music can only come from people who are *lucky* enough to make a living at it.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[G-forze]

at best 0.0084 oout[sic] of the 1.0000 pie

Who pays a dollar to listen to a single song on Spotify? I thought it was $10/month.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[jelizondo]

You mean like every other profession?

You don't get to be a great engineer, architect, doctor or dentist just by going to school. It takes talent, will, hard work, good luck and years of effort.

Now, how many engineers or architecs (doctors or dentists) have a change to become millionaires like an artist or sportsman?

Artists always think they are special and nobody else can even begin to understand how special they are... Well, try engineering for a while. You won't even make it past Calculus I, great special one!.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[MrKaos]

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?

Then why should authors or anyone else who gets paid royalties. The reason is because it takes a long time to create a piece of art that is worth listening to. "A performance" entails an enormous amount of upfront time and expense, all paid by the artist, in the same way a business is set up. It's not unreasonable for them to be paid royalties based on the perception of the value of the work.

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.

Thats true, the artist should get paid bigger than what they are now for enriching peoples lives and going through the crap that the music industry puts them through so that you can hear something that makes you feel, think or experience something you didn't before. What value is placed on the sacrifices a musician has to make when performing, like being on the road away from family and people they care about to bring you the experience of a live performance.

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.

Perhaps it's also about repaying all of the family and friends that supported them while they were establishing their careers. If you don't think you owe the artists that you listen to a living then stop listening to music that you love and enjoy. Your life has had something added to it, something you shared with loved ones, friends and even people you don't even know. You got in your car everyday and listened to that song over and over, your time commuting went faster and all the other benefits from an enhanced state of mind because someone took the time to create it in the first place.

Other people got something else from it, so yeah, musicians are owed a living just like anyone else is who goes through the shit they take for their career.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[jelizondo]

Recent compared to what?

Most civil laws (Ius Civile) were codified by the romans more than a thousand years ago and they did not have copyright or patents in the books.

The University of Bologna was founded almost a thousand years ago (1088).

The first hospital was founded about 1,300 years ago in Damascus.

Now, world agreement on copyrights date back to 1996. Wow!

300 years? Get off my lawn!

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[russbutton]

There are a lot of scientists and engineers who are also very fine musicians. The difference is that they are capable of doing something other than music. I'm one such person. I've been playing trumpet all my life. I've just never had any illusions about doing it for a living. I make my money as a Linux sysadmin. Been in the UNIX/Linux biz since '89.

People who make their living in music do so because they really aren't cut out to do anything else. I know. I'm married to one. She owns about $100,000 in instruments and makes about $45,000/year as a professional violinist.

I don't know ANY musicians who think they are due Great Wealth. They just want to make a living and pay the rent like the rest.

What's kind of funny in this discussion is that in the San Francisco area, the general population is complaining about all the techies at companies like Twitter, Zynga, etc who have taken over much of the city. Rents are going through the roof. $2500/month gets you a 2 bedroom 1 bath apartment these days. More in better neighborhoods. Folks here are talking about how the techies are all self-indulgent and act entitled. Pretty much the same way you talk about artists.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[cyberthanasis12]

On the contrary. 99 years copyright is a very recent phenomenon.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[N1AK]

Somehow, by fighting for the 'rights' of creative types to be rent seekers, you have managed to convince me that the concept of ownership separated from effort is flawed.

Then you're a fool who has to lurch to absurdly extreme fictional examples as justification for their position. Your stated position is that ownership should be defined by effort. So people can't own a house unless they build it themselves; but wait, it's even more stupid than that because I couldn't own the bricks for my house unless I baked them myself. So who owns the house I live in: Thousands of people from the guy who mined the metal used to make the nails, to the architect who designed it via the driver who delivered the lumber?

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can play trumpet all your life, but that doesn't mean you are a great musician. Or one with commercial potential.

I've been using Linux all my life, but that doesn't make me a sysadmin.

"People who make their living in music do so because they really aren't cut out to do anything else."
That is incredibly insulting, and entirely wrong. Making a living with music is a choice, and a difficult one. If you ever actually had to compete, rather than just being an amatuer, then you would appreciate it. Being able to blow your trumpet alone won't make you a living.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[rioki]

As a matter of fact copyright also covers performances. A large amount of the mechanical royalties are actually collected for cover performances. There is no debate that without any recorded music you would have a similar situation with infringement. And historically that was the case, musicians would play the music and plays that was performed at the kings court. They did definitely not pay anything to the original author of the works.

It is funny that for many Americans history begins around 400 years ago. Blame it on the history course in high school, that basically begins with the Mayflower. Not that I can apply UsCulturalAsumption to the P or GGP with certainty.

In general terms I think copyright is a step forward. Especially Spottify is going beyond and above, they could just shell out the mechanical royalties and be done with it. I doubt much comes around to the artist through mechanical royalties.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[rioki]

Be careful many jurisdictions have stringent laws on door to door sales.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[rioki]

How many independent artists have submitted their stuff for ContentID signatures?

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[TheRaven64]

On the other hand, crowdfunding things like kickstarter make patronage a lot easier. You don't need to be able to afford to hire an orchestra to play, you just need to find enough other people who are willing to do so. There was an article a few months ago about an effort to do this and produce high-quality public domain recordings of a large set of classical pieces.

We're in a world now where a band can produce an okay recording of a few songs in their living room, distribute it for free, and ask for funding for doing a studio recording of the whole album. They can then distribute the album for free and ask for funding for the next one (and bookings for gigs and so on). They're free to set the threshold cost for the next album to whatever they want, and if they have enough fans that think it's worth chipping in for, then it gets made and they get paid.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[gsslay]

You are placing all the value of music in its ability of being written by amateurs, performed by amateurs, played and enjoyed in a pub, with beer. That's a really narrow definition of music.

Not all music is like that. Not all music lovers are like that. Some music really does take full time professionals to compose and master. Some music you really don't want to listen to in a pub.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[gsslay]

What is so special about artists, that they should be paid in perpetuity for having done a performance?

So you are suggesting that musicians, rather than being on a commission based on sales, become employees of some music company, paid by the hour? Like, say, a programmer. It's an idea. But people tend to disparage treating music as a production line. They value the freedom given to an artist. That's what makes them special.

maybe you should lay your guitar aside, and learn how to make a living

Or are you saying that musicians become amateurs, and fit in their hobby around their real living? Again, an idea, as long as everyone is happy to accept that no-one really has the time to produce as much music, or devote a lifetime to mastering it.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[grahamm]

Yet many, if not most, of the all-time most sucessful artists started out playing local pubs and clubs before getting signing by a label.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[CastrTroy]

Not only that, but $0.0084 per play isn't all that bad. Let's say I buy a CD, and it costs me $15, and it has 15 tracks. It's a CD I like, so over the life of the CD I listen to it in it's entirety 100 times. That comes out to 1500 song plays. They're basically getting $0.01 cents per time I've heard each song. I wonder what the average plays per song ratio is on iTunes purchases? Do people buy a song and then only listen to it 5 times ever? Which gives the artist 20-25 cents a listen. Many people I know have hundreds if not thousands of listens on the same song. That works out to $0.001 cents per listen. Are the artists getting scammed by people who like to listen to a few songs over and over versus the people who like to have tons of different music and only listen to each song a few times? Sounds to me like the artists are making quite a decent amount, and the only problem is that some artists can't get enough people to listen to their music. But who's fault is that?

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[jedidiah]

In the 80s and 90s you had format churn. An album released in 1981 might have been bought in 4 different formats before the gravy train ended.

Although even in those days, you had used media cutting into the "god given rights of media moguls to make money". You could still build an absurd music collection even then without spending a ton of money.

You could also just record off of radio. Some stations even played entire albums all at once.

_...and "thousands" of files really isn't that much really. Any record album comes with a lot of individual tracks. So it's easy to inflate these numbers to the benefit of media shills.

Plus you have a lot more distractions now. There's the internet with silly websites and mobile devices with cheap or free games. The AOR dinosaurs have to deal with an entirely different world now.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[CastrTroy]

I think the real issue with doing music, or writing, or basketball (any sport) for a living is that there is a very small job market when you think about it. Sure everybody listens to music, but everyone tends to listen to the same 20 musicians. Same with basketball, there's only 30 teams, and 15 players per team, that's about 450 players. There's an extremely small number of people who make money in any of these professions, and the rest of the people make little to no money A "programmer" who can't even program fizz-buzz can easily make a decent salary but the equivalent of a musician or athlete with that level of talent is basically worthless. So sure, there's a lot of programmers (millions) who are making a lot of money, but that's because there's an actual demand for that many programmers. There isn't a demand for a million musicians, a million basketball players, or a million writers. There's a demand for millions of shelf stockers, but there's 10's of millions of people who are capable of doing the job. With programming, the demand for people outnumbers the number of people qualified to do the job. So of course they're going to get paid a lot.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[number17]

That's a really narrow definition of music.

And yet you did not specify your definition of "amateur" or "professional" other than the time it takes to compose and master. The Rolling Stones quite frequently play bars in Toronto. Not sure I'd call them amateur.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[edawstwin]

It's not a 1.0000 pie. It's more like TotalRevenueInDollars / NumberOfSongsStreamed. I don't know the exact numbers of course, but I'm pretty sure that Spotify is not earning $1.00 per song streamed.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[russbutton]

I stand by my statement about people who make their living in music. I know and play with many of them. There's nothing insulting about that statement. It's just a fact.

How many professional musicians do you know and play with?

Many professional musicians do work part-time at other jobs (day-jobs) to make ends meet. Many teach and do other things besides playing to make what money they can. Very few can actually make a living just performing, and it's only the very, very tiniest percentage to who get to fame and fortune.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[russbutton]

Q. What's the secret to becoming a millionaire jazz musician?

A. You start out with $2 million and then you start gigging.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[gsslay]

amateur = not full time job. Done in a minority of their time either unpaid, or for extra cash.

professional = a full time job. Majority of days spent doing this as a living.

It's not an evaluation of their talent, it's a simple matter of how much time they can devote to it, and how much they can invest in it.

The Rolling Stones are hardly a typical example, and I'm sure Toronto love it, but not exactly helpful for everyone else.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[Chuckles08]

There isn't a demand for a million musicians, a million basketball players, or a million writers. There's a demand for millions of shelf stockers, but there's 10's of millions of people who are capable of doing the job.

I wonder how much of that is true. It seems to me that there is plenty of demand -but- getting exposure is another story. It's similar to writing apps. Tons of developers write apps but only a few make it big. Some of that, of course, is due to those apps being really good. But it's also because large companies can get their brand out there and sell it. Notice how the app stores feature big brands like Disney. A better solution to music and almost every other industry would be adjusting the business environment to promote discoverability by "buyers". Social media helps with this, but we need more creative ways to find good new music, books, apps, etc.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[CastrTroy]

There isn't that much demand. Assuming everybody in the US buys 20 albums a year, that's a total of 6 billion albums sold. If you need to sell 1,000,000 albums to be a star, that leaves room for about 6000 musicians. In reality, the number of albums sold will be much less than 20 per person, actual numbers I've found show that it maxed out around 5 albums per person, so there's at most room for 1500 musicians all selling 1 million albums. And in reality, you're going to get some artists selling 20 million albums, and which takes up the sales for about 20 other artists.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[mcgrew]

You seem to think that amateurs are all talentless. Many of the guys playing in the pubs have been playing and singing since they were children, and taking lessons, and many majored (or at least minored) in music in college. I have some friends who are very talented, talented enough for the RIAA to want them to sign contracts. They laughed in the labels' faces. They're not making product, they're making art.

Art and commerce are usually at odds. Van Gogh sold only one painting in his life, to his brother, for a pittance, to pay a debt. Meanwhile, none of the paintings in the galleries then are in the museums today.

Look at the old Ska band Reel Big Fish. Their first several CDs kicked ass. They were signed by Britney Spears' label, and my daughter bought that CD. It really sucked donkey balls.

Look at Stephen King's remarks about James Patterson. "He's a terrible writer, but very successful." I've been reading Patterson's When the Wind Blows and... well, not terrible, not even too bad, but he's no Stephen King. The book I'm reading he keeps changing perspectives from first person to third person, which was bad enough when describing things the 1st person character didn't experience, but later in the book uses the third person when the 1st person narrator, who isn't narrating, is there. That was a big WTF? But almost every time I see a women with a book, it's one of his pulp fiction murder mysteries (which is why I'm reading it, I wanted to find the secret of his success. Too bad the secret is murder mysteries, I hate them usually).

Remember Milli Vanilli? Caught lip-syncing on stage and it turned out they didn't sing on the album. How about the Talking Heads? Terrible singing, uninspired musicianship, but they were new and different. The music industry isn't after quality, it's after "new and different" because that will garner them what they're in business for -- money.

What you hear in a good pub will very often be far superior to what you hear on the radio. The professionals are in it for the money, the "amateurs" (like the Jungle Dogs, who held masters degrees and taught music at SIU in Carbondale) are in it for the art.

Re:Are they really being hosed?

[painandgreed]

That's why artists tour. They make shit all on album sales. Especially if they didn't write all the songs they sing. They make lots more with ticket sales.

Never heard of a musician that made profits off of touring. It's always been a promotional tactic and lucky if a tour breaks even. Renting the bus, renting hotels, buying food to feed the band and roadies when they aren't happy with their cheese tray the venue produces in the green room, all add up. Merch might tip the equation sometimes, but any band that tours beyond a local circuit that is making money on tour is making money on records sales also and touring as a promotional tactic to boost those sales.

So what you gonna do?

[future assassin]

> (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?

So why don't you pull your songs from Spotify? Why not put them where you'll make bags of money? Wait you probably can't as you don't own the rights/distribution rights to your music?

Seriously you'd thin by now, and by that I mean ( its not 1997 and the technology has been there for years) the artists as a collective would have created their own distribution service and raked in the dough.

Re:So what you gonna do?

[UnknownSoldier]

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.

Re:So what you gonna do?

[BringsApples]

Seriously you'd think by now... the artists as a collective would have created their own distribution service and raked in the dough.

The band Tool does that for themselves, but to do it for other artists... dunno, that seems weird. I imagine that, like so many other groups of people, bands simply can't focus on 2 aspects of the industry. Making music as well as focusing on releasing that music on a scale that exceeds 1 band's tunes would eventually be to tiresome. I mean to say that at some point the sheer volume of music that had to be "delivered" to The People would require a full-time group of people that would have to get some cut of the cash. From there it's bound to evolve in the same manner that it's currently in, to some degree, where the artists feel that they're not getting a fair cut. After all, the more bands there were to contribute music, the more "cut" there is, and eventually, those spending time "delivering" music will be making more than the artists making the music.

Re:So what you gonna do?

[future assassin]

What I was trying to say that why can't the bands come together, create an association that creates a streaming/download service where they control it all. What would need to happen is popular bands would need to go in head first then use their power to promote other bands on this service along with promoting the serivce as artists for artists. As those new bands expand they would as port of the system use their fame/user base to promte other bands/the service.

For example say In Rainbows by Radiohead. I bought the album and paid $10 for it. I was more then happy to do it as all the money went to them and they didn't call me a thief. Now imagine if they took say 2 unknown bands and included them into their release. Those bands could have gotten some of the $$$$ from the sale and use it to start up their next album and the Radiohead fans would have gotten a serious bonus with a 3 albums for 1 purchase. This doesn't include the bonus of the fans of the unknows bands possibly buying the Radiohead album just to get the albums of the unknown bands.

"Music Artists" need to think out of the box and get the "Im gonna be rich" out of their head. No business makes for long without a proper business plan.

Re:So what you gonna do?

[Savage-Rabbit]

> (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?

So why don't you pull your songs from Spotify? Why not put them where you'll make bags of money? Wait you probably can't as you don't own the rights/distribution rights to your music?

Seriously you'd thin by now, and by that I mean ( its not 1997 and the technology has been there for years) the artists as a collective would have created their own distribution service and raked in the dough.

I'm no music industry insider but you have made me curious and since you dispense that advice so freely and with such unshakable authority you must know ... Where can people put their music and make bags of money without being ripped off by middle men and gate keepers like Spotify? I have a couple of indie musician friends who do own the distribution rights to their music and who'd be thrilled to know how to easily make bags of money without having to deal with parasites.

Re:So what you gonna do?

[JaredOfEuropa]

In the simplest form: set up a website, stick their music on it, and put out the word. Of course this probably means they'll have to pay parasi^H^H^H^H^H^H professionals to set up and manage the website, market the music, arrange plays on radio stations, do bookkeeping etc. Or try an Indie label. They'll take their cut, but at least you'll not be feeding a large bureaucracy, record label execs, or subsidizing less successful bands, and you'll be able to retain IP rights to your music. You'll most likely keep more of the gross revenue per album sold, but whether you'll sell as many albums as through an established publisher remains to be seen.

Re:So what you gonna do?

[N1AK]

Because clearly he has to have a fully worked out business model for his point to be valid :P

An application that serves adverts and/or allows a small subscription fee to access and play a music catalogue is hardly some mystical and hard to produce product. So here's what could happen: A group of 20 Indie bands and artists get together and form a partnership with a entrepreneur. The entrepreneur agrees to found a company owned by the bands, which will be obligated to give 10% of profits to the entrepreneur until it has paid him $1,000,000 (or some other agreed fee). The entrepreneur would get the app developed and released. The firm would cover all costs of operation and then profits would be shared to the groups based on how popular their content was (minus initial 10% cut until the fee is paid off). Chances are if the entrepreneur was doing a good job the 'board' (groups who own this company) would want to keep him on as the CEO and pay him properly or potentially make him a partial owner (that would be there choice).

If a new band wanted to join then it could by agreeing to pay 10% of it's first $50k profits *based on same amount as the initial bands were signed up for). Once the first $50k was paid they would become another 'owner' of the business with influence over how the business is run.

Re:So what you gonna do?

[stealth_finger]

I have a couple of indie musician friends who do own the distribution rights to their music and who'd be thrilled to know how to easily make bags of money without having to deal with parasites.

There is no way, in any industry to make easy bags of money without the parasites. If your indie mates are in it for the cash they're doing it wrong anyway.

Hosed compared to what?

[EvilSS]

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.

Re:Hosed compared to what?

[radarskiy]

a) Radio pays 0 performance royalties, only publishing royalties.

b) The publishing rights clearinghouses distribute royalties based on sampling, despite the fact that radio stations are required to submit their complete logs books. So if you're far enough down the long tail they may never recognize your play count.

Re:Hosed compared to what?

[unitron]

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.

Yeah, well either that or radio is giving that song free advertising by playing it in the first place.

There's a reason record companies send radio stations free promotional copies of records, even if they're in some form other than vinyl these days.

Useless without context

[Just Some Guy]

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.

Re:Useless without context

[Firethorn]

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.

That's the thing, I don't think the rates are based much on the estimated listener, plus as somebody else mentioned, most of the payment goes to the writer of the song, not the performer. Even then the sticky fingers of all the middlemen suck most of the money out.

On the other hand, I have to ask, should a 'nich indie performer' with a single album earn $3.3k/month from spotify alone? Maybe once he or she has ~5 albums out.

Re:Useless without context

[jones_supa]

Without knowing how Spotify's pay compares to radio

Well, lets throw some stats onto the table then. These are the Spotify artist compensation stats for the Finnish singer-songwriter Anssi Kela's hit song Levoton tyttö (original article):

March 2013: 186 317 plays, €458,70
April 2013: 415 353 plays, €878,60
May 2013: 300 524 plays, €618,30
June 2013: 156 119 plays, €381,30

Total:
1 058 313 plays
€2 336,90

In the same article, the artist comments: "2336,90 euros is better than nothing. At least there is something coming through Spotify. If making music was my hobby, that kind of income would be just fine. From the perspective of a professional though, I have to say that if more and more of album sales are replaced with these streaming compensations, it of course causes some wrinkles on my forehead. Currently the situation is that people have to listen one song for roughly two thousand times on Spotify for it to make me equal amount of profit that I get from one CD sold."

Re:Useless without context

[unitron]

... most of the payment goes to the writer of the song, not the performer...

Well, actually it goes to whoever owns the publishing rights, whether that's the composer or someone to whom they transferred those rights.

Re:Useless without context

[unitron]

... Currently the situation is that people have to listen one song for roughly two thousand times on Spotify for it to make me equal amount of profit that I get from one CD sold."

So, if the buyer of the cd doesn't listen to that same song at least 2,000 times, they overpaid, right?

Re:Useless without context

[AvitarX]

That's a silly sentiment.

If more and more album sales are replaced with the streaming, the royalties will go up.

2300/1000000 = .23 euro cents a play.

20% (high typical artist take of a 20 dollar, so I'll assume euro too, CD sale) * 20 euros (high CD price) =
4 euros per album sail.
4 euro / .0023 euros/track listen = 1800 track listens, or 150 album listens. I gather that it may take a little longer, but that spotify benefits the artist, not harms.

I wonder what the average use of a typical CD is, but I bet 150 hours is close, maybe a little high, but close.

Re:Useless without context

[Anonymous Coward]

150 listens for a CD is really high. I used to use a single iTunes database over a number of years (4-5 I think) and while I had one or two albums with hundreds of listens, vast majority never got over 50 and plenty got stuck around 20. Naturally this is a sample size of one, but I do listen to music that way on most days. Total number of songs was about 5000-6000, not sure how many albums. Personally I've found the streaming services to have cut my music bill to about 1/10th of what it used to be. I can understand why the artists might be slightly upset.

Re:Useless without context

[SydShamino]

$3800 for what amounts to a few weeks writing a song and coming up with accompanying music, recording it, and getting it post edited doesn't sound so bad, especially since they also made money from other streaming sites, CD sales, live performances of that song, T-shirts and posters sold because people like that song, etc.

What do they expect, to be able to retire off one "hit"? If they want to be a professional musician, they need to put in 40 hour weeks for 40 years and save for retirement, just like every other professional. If they're not able to be creative like that, maybe a creative profession isn't suited for them.

Re:Useless without context

[JaredOfEuropa]

How much? If 1% of those listeners decides to buy an album or single after hearing it, they'll make a fair bit even under extortionist record label contracts. Radio is a great way to advertise, and unlike Spotify (where I can sample and discover music on my own) they are also market makers: they have a sizeable influence in making songs popular. So it's not all that straightforward to compare radio and Spotify.

Re:Useless without context

[N1AK]

That's one way you could look at it, especially if you think that an artist should be paid the equivalent of maybe £0.25 for an album sale. At less than £0.002 per sing play on Spotify that's what the artist would get for my playing a typical album around 10 times start to finish.

It's a shame that the debate seems to be dominated by the two extremes. The artists and record companies who want, for obvious reasons, music to cost more so that they can earn lots of money vs people who think copyright should be abolished and artists should have to make money only by touring, finding a patron or donations.

What I'd be interested to know is, would Anssi Kela have earned more than 2.64 Euro-cents per play of a sold album? If we made a not unreasonable assumption that an album is the equivalent of 30 full play throughs (I buy some I play through less, some people would listen on spotify but wouldn't buy it) then that's the equivalent of 80 Euro-cents profit to the artist per album sale. That sounds like a low return, but not when compared to what I expect an artist would typically earn on an album sold by a record label. If the 30 playthroughs is equivalent to an album sale metric is remotely reasonable then it would imply this artist is getting plays equivalent to 735 sales per month and is earning £584 a month for them.

Re:Useless without context

[Alioth]

It's a lot better than nothing. Let's assume the artist spent 100 hours of work just on that specific song and recording. 2336 euro then works out at 23 euro per hour pay, which is actually not bad, and so far we're only listing four months. There will be plays in July, August, September, October and so on, so the final hourly rate for making that song is probably going to be 50 or 60 euro/hr. That's a pretty good hourly rate for doing something that is basically fun.

Re:Useless without context

[millwall]

As a hobby I write some music which I publish independently on Spotify and some other platforms such as iTunes.

I use a service called http://www.tunecore.com/ and apart from their charges I have no middle hands whatsoever.

My songs seem to average nearly 4 times as much revenue as Anssi Kela's. I get around $0.008 per Spotify stream (slightly different payments apply depending on in which country a Spotify user plays a song). Here are some stats for one of my songs:

Month Streams Total
Aug 2013 670 $5.41
Jul 2013 616 $4.92
Jun 2013 561 $4.51
May 2013 608 $4.38
Apr 2013 825 $6.16
Mar 2013 1,333 $9.46
Feb 2013 990 $7.46
Jan 2013 1,123 $8.51

My take on the process is that I see Spotify as a way for me to make music publicly available on the same terms as the major publishers. As an independent musician this is a god send.

As for compensation, in the digital era where no one (this includes publishers and independent musicians) can expect big money per song sale or stream, I think what I earn from streams is very reasonable. It should be noted of course that the revenue for the example listed above are peanuts, but should I now publish as song which will become a hit, I have a viable method of reaching my audience and still earn some money from what is essentially just marketing of my music.

Re:Useless without context

[grahamm]

But that is just one song. Assuming that the other tracks will not get as much play as the 'hit' song an album of 10 tracks might generate, say, five times that - approximately €30 000 per year.

Re:Useless without context

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude if you think you can be a succesful musician on 40 hours a week you are crazy.

If you want 40 hours a week of stability then get an office or computer job.

Real musicians work hundreds of hours a week, driving, promoting, selling, playing, fixing, waiting, struggling, failing, not getting paid, getting guns pulled on them, getting denigrated, weird stares, doors closed on their faces, sometimes year after year.

You sound like you have no idea how much work goes into an actual pro-level music career. It takes much capital and much patience and you generally are burning your own hard earned cash all over the place for little gain other than a few more names on your mailing list. You miss your family, you miss your friends, you miss alot. And it's totally chance on whether your song cuts through and makes a "hit", and then you probably had to sell most ownership in it to get funding to get that far.

$3300/month income doesn't sound bad for me, because I own almost all of my publishing and I 'invest' less than $500/month in my music career. If I pulled $3k month on spotify there would be some profit. But if I had to spend 20 days on the road (on my buck) promoting that month, and if my stuff was produced in $1k/day studios, then $3300 is going into the gas tank and hotels and not even touching the profit end of things.

Cars break, gear breaks, instruments break, people break, checks bounce, and it ain't easy.

Each time you play a song you love, that picks you up or motivates you, you should give a penny or more to that artist. Think about what they just did for you.

Music is golden. Don't tell me that because bad music exists all music is worthless. Good music is priceless and the person creating it should be fully compensated for keeping us all alive.

Programmers and mechanics and other worker people are not more important than artists. It's the artists that help us all move forward and get to the next day.

ezraz of wfnk.com
http://wfnk.com

Re:Useless without context

[MooseTick]

"Real musicians work hundreds of hours a week"

Last time I checked, there were only 176 hours in a week, and most people sleep 50-60 of them.

Re:Useless without context

[MooseTick]

"Each time you play a song you love, that picks you up or motivates you, you should give a penny or more to that artist. Think about what they just did for you."

Everytime you are tired and sit down in that comfortable Lazy Boy chair, you should give a penny or more to the craftsman who designed it. Think about what they just did for you.

Re:Useless without context

[mythosaz]

Like your average NFL player. Play for 6.9 years, earn $1.9M/year. Or maybe baseball - 5.6 years at $3.2M. Basketball: 4.8 years, $5.2M

FWIW, the NFL's counter-offer to the 3.5 year number the NFLPA suggests is 6.0, for a player who actually made his opening day roster, and didn't end up on a practice squad or was signed and then cut before rosters were finalized. Quibbles. Meh.

Regardless, you're comparing the 1500 best football players in the world with the 1500 best performing artists, or all football players against all performing artists? Also...so what. The market bears what the market will bear. The best doctor makes good money too. Crappy doctors just pay their student debt forever and then quit.

Outside of extremes, musical entertainment is generally worth between a beer and a couple hundred bucks per year per person. Sure, there's guys going to 20 mega-star concerts a year, paying $500+ for tickets, but most people see a show or two at the state fair, catch their favorite act once a year, and maybe pay for premium Pandora or Spotify or XM. NFL fans range from watching a game or two at the bar, buying a nice jersey at Christmas time to the guy with season tickets and a tailgating spot at the stadium. Guess how much he spends a year? ...more than concert guy -- because he wants to.

The market will bear what the market will bear.

Re:Useless without context

[mythosaz]

You're obviously not a real musician then. The make time! for their craft.

Re:Useless without context

[SydShamino]

I don't know what it's like to work for an ad agency, and have to come up with new campaigns or slogans all the time. Nor do I know what it's like to be a comedy writer and work in a script-writing room year after year. And yet there are people who do those things, and do them well, for years and years. Maybe they burn out eventually? Maybe, and when they do they find another job, they don't expect the government to hand them profit for the rest of their lives, no matter how popular that car insurance jingle used to be.

Re:Useless without context

[SydShamino]

Oh, of course, some people will come up with something that will sell worldwide, be crazy successful, and can retire off of one thing. But those are outliers, even in today's market more the exception than the norm, and they aren't really the top of this conversation.

30/70 split spotify/rights holders

[Anonymous Coward]

Summary fails to mention that the payout is 70% of Spotify's monthly revenue divided by number of tracks played in that time period, distributed to the rights holders (BMG/EMI/Warner/maybe even you, puny indy guy) based on play count. If you're under a label, you then apply your contract rate and finally get your cut of the proceeds, which is probably not a lot.

Ben Folds on the issue...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Ben Folds on the issue...

[gl4ss]

people can still and will become millionaires by performing.

just don't expect to make millions by selling dvd's of your old home runs...

Goldmine compared to radio

[EmperorOfCanada]

I am not saying that spotify money is enough. If anything it sounds like they are just another group exploiting artists but if I understand they are still a goldmine compared to radio. These artists are saying that they got some crappy little payment for 1 MILLION listens making it seem like they were ripped off and that 1 million is a huge number. But 1 million would be a normal number listening to a NY radio station at primetime and the same artist would be all chuffed that they are in a NY radio station's prime time rotation. But that radio station would be paying peanuts for that.

I suspect that this is why some of the more "successful" (I'm not saying good) artists just tour tour tour and can barely be bothered to politic their way in to the top 10 charts. This way they have much more control over the money. If some promoter tries to set up a concert where the artist is getting shafted then they just won't show up. Worst case contractually they will just get "laryngitis".

I have read an interesting thing about iTunes though. Many dead music libraries from decades ago suddenly became viable with iTunes. Some artists who charted in the 60's and 70's said, "I haven't had a royalty check in 15 years even though I hear my stuff on radio every now and then. But after I put my stuff on iTunes I'm now getting around $30,000 a year."

So one of the things with Spotify being ragged on by the artists might come from the fact that the numbers are presented to the artist making it clear that they aren't getting much money. Whereas their other distribution channels are much cloudier so they don't know how badly they are being screwed.

Re:Goldmine compared to radio

[AvitarX]

Just like when CDs came out, and Tapes, people replace the old media with the new, and people get a boost.

I suspect spotify will drag out the curve some, because the radio play side will pay more.

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

How do Spotify royalties compare to broadcast royalties? Which at least in the U.S. apparently amount to 18 cents per 1000 listeners (or $0.00018/listener, or if my napkin math is right... 1/33 of what Spotify pays per listener?)

Doesn't seem like new media's getting rich, either. Do any of these services turn a profit?

What's a stream?

[Solandri]

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.

If a "stream" is a single person who listens to the artist in a month, then yeah 400,000 'plays' is a bit onerous.

If a "stream" is a single song listened to once, and the artist has (say) 10 reasonably popular songs, then only 4,000 fans worldwide listening to each of those songs once every 3 days would be enough for the artist to live comfortably. That doesn't sound too bad.

Re:What's a stream?

[Firethorn]

If a "stream" is a single song listened to once, and the artist has (say) 10 reasonably popular songs, then only 4,000 fans worldwide listening to each of those songs once every 3 days would be enough for the artist to live comfortably. That doesn't sound too bad.

I figured that $3.3k/month for 1 album(~10 songs?) per the article was a touch high, but you mention 10 'reasonably popular' songs, and there's usually only one of those per album. So ~100 songs, 10 good enough to listen to fairly frequently, that's about right for a reasonable living, especially if you figure that other revenue streams(live performances, merchandise, other services) pay for the business expenses(studio*, editing, instruments, etc...)

*It's easier than ever to set up a home studio, but setting up one good enough for broadcast quality still costs money. Renting is still an option, but again expensive unless you get lucky.

Re:What's a stream?

[SydShamino]

Well, one reasonably popular song per album (instead of ten) is the fault of the artist, not the fans. A professional musician needs to be able to work 40 hour weeks for 40 years, just like other professionals, and save for retirement, all while producing work that people want to buy. If they can't do that in their chosen profession, they need to find another profession, and give up music or treat it as a hobby.

(Yes, this is true for plenty of creativity-based professions too.)

Re:What's a stream?

[Firethorn]

I'm not going to go so far as to say they need to work 40-50-40(hours/weeks/years), it's more a contract job. There's plenty of non-standards out there - military, police, and fire fighter careers are often 20 years, and the average NFL career is a mere seven years, and it is indeed possible to save enough to retire in that period if you receive median pay. You just can't live like a NFL star... ;)

Still, I view it a bit like writing - should the average writer be 'set for life' after writing only one book? Most of the authors I follow are far more prolific than that. If you only produce 5 books in your life you're not much of a writer, sad to say. Even Tolkien wrote at least a dozen in his life, and he was a notoriously slow writer.

If you're simply a 'one hit wonder' you should probably get enough money to cover production costs the first couple months, then it dwindles to maybe a couple hundred a month. If you're a consistent performer, a serious of hits, even just modest ones, should eventually provide enough residuals to support you in your retirement. If you're a superstar you get to live like a king, of course.

more plays = more $$$

[alen]

how are they getting hosed if no one listens to your music? if lady gaga gets more listeners than an indie band why should they get paid the same?

Content ID

[tepples]

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.

Radio pays singer-songwriters

[tepples]

Artists aren't paid by radio stations.

They are if they write their own songs. The station pays BMI, which pays the music publisher, which pays the songwriter.

Why should an Internet equivalent pay?

Because it's a digital transmission. There's allegedly more of a risk of a home audio recording substituting for a purchase if it came from a digital transmission than if it came from FM radio.

The Alternatives?

[enter to exit]

So what are the alternatives? They can pull their music out of these services and get $0. If Spotify (and the like) give them more, we pay more. I don't think people are willing to pay more than roughly $10.00 a month for these things.

Artists will never say they have enough money, and people will never say they want to support artists - that is until they have to put their money where their mouth is. If spotify doubles their fees how many people will stop subscribing? Spotify already pays 70% to artists/their Representatives.

Content producers don't control their distribution medium anymore and people are used to free (or cheap) content. How much is Art worth? Should a good album make musicians millions? Why? The days of $20.00 albums are over - were they ever justifiable?

Perhaps Artists should lower their expectations - Artists should be grateful to services like Pandora/Spotify the alternatives aren't great.

Re:The Alternatives?

[enter to exit]

Correction: ...Artists will never say they have enough money, and people will never stop saying they want to support artists...

are you kidding?

[Rutulian]

400,000 plays?

Ok, let's stop and think about that for a moment. If you are a serious enough musician that you intend to do this professionally, let's assume you have put up at least 1 album, which for the sake of argument is about 10 songs. Spotify has 24 million active users, http://press.spotify.com/us/information/. So to make the 400,000 play cut, about 2% of Spotify's user base has to listen to at least one of your ten songs per month. That does not seem unreasonable to me. If you can't make that cut, the professional music gig probably isn't going to work out for you, sorry.

Am I missing something here?

Re:are you kidding?

[John Bodin]

My question is how much of a song needs to be listened to for it to be counted as a play, there are at times when I put on Spotify Radio that I skip ahead on a song after maybe 5 to 10 seconds of it being played. Does that get the same amount of payment as if I had listened to the entire song?

Re:are you kidding?

[Anonymous Coward]

So to make the 400,000 play cut, about 2% of Spotify's user base has to listen to at least one of your ten songs per month. That does not seem unreasonable to me.

Are you kidding? 2 percent of Spotify's entire user base has to listen to one of your songs every month? Dude, that means you're got a star act.

Re:are you kidding?

[SydShamino]

My understanding is that yes, they get paid for it, which is why (on Pandora at least) you can't skip more than X songs per hour. (Or at least you couldn't in 2008, back when I was training my station. I rarely skip anything now since it plays exactly what I want to hear at work barring the occasional new song that doesn't quite fit.)

Re:are you kidding?

[Anonymous Coward]

some quick math.....
Numbers pulled from the web, SEC etc.

24million active users
Assume advertising covers itself for free users.

6,000,000 active monthly pay users

$15,000,000 @ $5 a month (assuming 3,000,000)
$30,000,000 @ $10 a month (assuming 3,000,000)
$45,000,000 / month in cash

20,000,000 song database

$2.25 per song per month to split up

Figure a bell curve distribution of popularity and its easy to see that the vast majority of songs in their library aren't getting much at all.

48 songs per day (assuming 4 hours of listening)

Please check out the still relevant info graphic from InformationIsBeautiful.
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/

Anecdotes.
My friends have a fairly successful religious music group that is not signed to a label. They make enough to have 4 members happily employed and have houses paid off etc. in their first 4 years.
They say that in the last year, there has been a sharp down turn in digital purchases through iTunes amazon etc.
Most of their money comes through song licensing these days instead of sales and they are having to rethink their whole business model to keep it going.
they have always made a laughable amount of money through streaming. Last year was $28 for spotify.

People pay for a streaming service and then they reach a content saturation point.
They also consume their content differently, nobody i know uses spotify/pandora and then switches to play an mp3 on their device for 1 song and then back, they are locked in, they just press "next" until something comes up.

It is obvious that it is hurting artists bottom line.

Some may say "Who do these bastards think they are to earn so much for so little?" let me tell you, for an indy band it is years of work to finally make it. so you have to aggregate the cost over the time it took to master your songwriting and musicianship at high financial risk. working at a factory for years to pay the bills so you can come home and write. If you spread the money they've made over the past 4 years over the 11 that they have put in to "Get there", it's more of a median wage with a high faillue risk.

That said, there are a lot of undeserving whiny jackoffs out there regardless of profession.
-S

Re:are you kidding?

[LiamKelly]

If you're getting 2% of Spotify users to listen to your song once every month you're really, really fucking well. As in, you've been on Letterman at least once and you've probably toured multiple continents and I would have heard of you.

Re:are you kidding?

[gjscott33]

>It is obvious that it is hurting artists bottom line. No it's not. Working out how much money gets split between people doesn't tell you if it's hurting the artists bottom line - it tells you how much money on average a song on spotify gets. To work out if it's hitting artists bottom line you need to know if use of spotify reduces the amount of cash flow from consumers to the artists. My spotify subscription is around the amount I was spending on CD's beforehand. I suspect the 30/70 split mentioned above in the comments is a similar or lower cut to that taken by the record shop or ITunes. Thus, for me personally spofity is revenue neutral for artists/music industry. Do similar math for population as a whole THEN you can draw your conclusion.

Re:are you kidding?

[Rutulian]

a) This isn't radio. Spotify's user base isn't that large, so 2% isn't as much as it sounds.
b) The more songs you have, the better chance you have of somebody listening to it. So if you have only one song, yeah that might be hard to hit. But if you have 40, it is easier.
c) Big caveat to my calculation: I don't know what Spotify's sliding scale is. For 2% of the user base, the payout may be significantly larger and thus the required number of plays to make a reasonable income smaller.
d) Spotify's revenue comes from ads, so it makes sense to split it up based on how popular a song/group is. If only 0.01% of the user base is listening to your music, you can't expect Spotify to give you a large piece of the ad revenue generated by their service.

The entertainment industry, whether it be music, tv/movies, or sports, is about popularity. If you can't boost your popularity, it just isn't going to work out, regardless of Spotify's business model. That is the reality.

Supply and demand

[Subm]

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.

Re:Supply and demand

[jsepeta]

As Johnny Rotten sang, it's an unlimited supply, an unlimited amount.

Re:They're promoting you; artists should pay Spoti

[gl4ss]

what the fuck you're talking about?

radio plays are for example finnish artists the main source of income(for those lucky enough to be popular enough to get played).

that's how the copyright mafia operates. you play something outside of your private space you're going to pay to the copyright mafia and they then pay some amount of it to artists based on a formula they came up(mainly the formula goes so that the top radio played artists get the most). heck, even if you play your own songs you have to pay!(if you signed up to the system - and no, leaving the system isn't simple) and then get paid back, maybe, by the copyright mafia.

Musicians are meant make a living from conerts

[jschledermann]

Music videos and cd's are meant to be promotional tools to get people to go to concerts. The entire music business has spun totally out of control. First of all its not meant to be a business in the first place. You are not supposed to get rich from playing music. You are supposed to be gratefull if you can get by by playing music. If your sole purpose of being a musician is to get stinking rich, then quit and become an investment banker. There is a reason why its called music: thats because you are playing and not working. The folks complaining about Spotify should be happy that there is a mefium available which allows them to reach millions of people for free

rack of VM's for making $

[jsepeta]

I should build a rack of VM's and configure them to play my songs over and over and over. that way i could actually make some money on spotify.

Re:And radio pays how much?

[jsepeta]

I thought BMI & ASCAAP helped artists recoup costs by billing radio stations.

Re:$3,300 per month divided how many times?

[SydShamino]

If five people are only able to produce one "hit" in a given year, and the hit fades so fast that it doesn't earn residual income in future years, then maybe they're in the wrong profession? Maybe fire the three that don't write music or lyrics and bring in three more creative types who can both write and play? That would result in more overall hits and more money for all of them. Or maybe the one creative guy should hire studio musicians for the other four spots, only have to pay them $1000 each once to make the recording, and then pocket the other $36,000 for himself.

Voluntary payments!

[Engeekneer]

I'd really want to see some Spotify - Flattr integration (and in that case, better Flattr adoption), so that you could voluntarily and automatically pay more to the artists you listen to. You can replace Flattr here with any "Automatically-share-a-monthly-fee-between-the-artists-you-listen-to System"

What's does basic Spotify cost? 5€ a month? Out of which maybe 1-2€ go to the artist? If I could direclty add 10€ per month to be spread directly to the artists I listen to as voluntary donations, I'd gladly do that. That would be 15€ a month for me, which I think is reasonable (~price of an album per month). If even 10% of spotify users would do this, it would roughly double the artist income. Even making small donations easy {~2€/month) could have a huge impact.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who would gladly pay a bit more.

Re:Voluntary payments!

[grahamm]

That has been suggested in Spotify 'ideas' forum a number of time and each time Spotify respond with 'we will not implement that'.

Re:Voluntary payments!

[Engeekneer]

The thing is, if you could just harvest your play histroy, you really would not neet Spotify as a middle man. Of course, it would be simpler if they were involved, but them not being involved could make this a generic service which would work with Spotify, RDIO, Grooveshark (actually, I think they already have some integration), etc..

Then again there are tons of practical issues with this, but I'm sure they could be solved.

Re:$3,300 per month divided how many times?

[Opportunist]

Erh... don't get me wrong, but I happen to have a little insight in various indie music productions. If you only squeeze out a song per year, "slacking" would be a term that you don't deserve without offending slackers. Also, don't expect to be paid practicing. I didn't get paid learning to program, and I doubt a lot of people got paid while learning what they are doing.

Unlike me, they also don't have to maintain their music to adjust and mend problems. If anything, they re-release the same crap a few years later redressed in the hope that they get to sell the same junk once more. Try that in programming, people will (rightfully) complain that they already paid for the program and now should pay for the update.

If anything, this whole story shows the feeling of entitlement content makers display. Milking something done once forever isn't good enough if you just got 3k a month out of it, it seems.

Business != art

[Anonymous Coward]

This is stupid. A business continuously brings services or products to market, otherwise it goes "out of business".

A work of art does nothing. For perpetuity. A song may not even become well known until long after it is forgotten.

If a business is forgotten, it will go "out of business". No keeper of an archive will dust it off years later, upload it to FutureTube and watch it surge to one hundred million "customers".

They aren't the same thing.

It's Iron Maiden all again

[Arrepiadd]

Two days ago we had a story about how Iron Maiden is making big bucks by touring and not by selling CDs or whatever. Everyone agreed, back then, that this is the way to make money in the music industry.

Are we now surprised that no one gets to be a millionaire just out of Spotify?

Re:It's Iron Maiden all again

[painandgreed]

Two days ago we had a story about how Iron Maiden is making big bucks by touring and not by selling CDs or whatever. Everyone agreed, back then, that this is the way to make money in the music industry.

Saying that there is money in touring because Iron Maiden is doing it is like saying there is money in throwing the winning touchdown pass in the superbowl. To get to the point where that sort of money is even an option for that work means years of working up from the bottom and paying dues.

Re:It's Iron Maiden all again

[Arrepiadd]

But even the Iron Maiden story suggested no one makes money off of selling CDs. Sure, to make millions like Iron Maiden does, it's hard, no doubt about that. But if even them don't make any serious money out of selling CDs, why do we expect anyone else to do? How much money do Iron Maiden make out of Spotify? Is an indie artist seriously going to expect more?

cassettte cannibalism

[globaljustin]

indie bands are getting hosed from all corners these days...

All with very sticky fingers handling the money.

It's true even in weird situations, like a local punk band in my West Coast city that released a *cassette tape* album that had a free download card

Essentially, all they needed was someone to print the cassette for them, b/c the download was through Bandcamp.

A local indie label with several good releases and some credibility agreed to release the tape, but did not tell the band until after the tape was ordered from teh factory and packaging pressed that they don't get paid until large chunks of the inventory are sold.

Essentially, the "label" was just selling the tapes on consignment in local shops and on its website, which means the "label" has to follow up with all that, going and bugging each dirtball indie shop about their consignment tapes each week (if they're lucky), then contact the artist before they see any money from the tape release.

I'm not saying major labels aren't way worse, I hate them all, just saying local scenes have started to really cannibalize themselves...

I"m glad Spotify is paying artists some money. Are they getting "hosed" as TFA suggests? If competition can pay more, then maybe...

But this isn't only about competition...the RIAA and copyright holders make much of the publishing choices for the artists...we can't really discuss this in the context of the current music industry. Just the damage Clear Channel alone has done....

So, if we imagine a music industry w/ perfect competition, then the free market concept says that if no company rises to challenge Spotify's price structure then **NO** the artists arent' getting hosed.

lol

[Charliemopps]

This compared to how most musicians end up owing their traditional record label money by the end of their tour. I think spottify (a service I don't use) sounds like a good deal to me.

Publishing rights

[Firethorn]

Actually, music writers have a very good guild and have managed a much better job at maintaining publication rights than the artists that perform the songs.

Re:Publishing rights

[CastrTroy]

That's because the writer effectively owns the song, while the artists only owns the single performance of the song which was recorded. It's completely legal for the writer of the song to allow Band A to play a song and sell copies (with a percentage going to the writer), and allow Band B to record the same song and also sell copies (again with a percentage going to the writer). Unless the writer signed some kind of exclusivity agreement with the first band, he's perfectly within his rights to let another artist record the song and reap more royalties. The 10th most money-making song of all time is "The Christmas Song" AKA "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire", made so much money because of the sheer number of artists who have included it on their Christmas albums, and the sheer number of radio plays it gets every December.

Compulsory license means pre-neg

[Anonymous Coward]

Compulsory license means pre-negotiated pay rates. Compulsory license is how the radio get the license to their airplay works. Neither get the right to put anything they want on air, they still have to ask. However, the rates are as defined by law. The payment required is the only compulsory part of the license.

Doing it for the money

[John Allsup]

Arts should never be done for the money.  The music industry, especially modern pop, is surely proof if it were needed.  Once making money becomes the priority, music is produced according to patterns of what makes money, and this destroys genuine artistic expression.  Too many genres with potential are laid waste to once they become popular and big money gets involved.  I'd be happy to see the music industry move away from 'record selling' as its primary product to being a distribution system (like Spotify) and creating alternative means to funnel money to artists to support them, and perhaps so that fewer artists get rich but more can make a living.  Greed for money created the music industry boom, greed for free or cheap music is what will bring it down.  Having greed in charge is, in general, the biggest failing of the modern western world.

Even the summary shows the naivety

[SmallFurryCreature]

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?

Our Spotify Experience

[dizzywiggle]

Spotify has been an interesting experiment for my band, The Wee Lollies (shameless plug - www.theweelollies.com). A single stream garners us a mere $0.0046. Three streams pays out $0.0199. I don't really understand that math, but it is what it is I guess.

All told for 2013, we've earned about 28 cents from Spotify. Granted, we're not a national band, we're not on a label, and we're probably mediocre by most folks' standards. So people aren't rushing to add us to their playlists.

So the takeaway for us is that Spotify isn't really an income tool for new bands. You already have to be quite successful for Spotify to give you enough plays to earn enough to pay for, say, lunch at Taco Bell. It's not even a decent exposure tool as our stream count is way low. We really expected more organic plays. We're kind of surprised that that didn't happen.

At this point we're still on Spotify because, well, why not? As an artist, you want to make it easy for folks to hear your material. But the reality is from a business perspective, it doesn't make sense. After you account for your own time and energy keeping track of everything, it's really a negative return.

Re:Our Spotify Experience

[gjscott33]

There, i've just increased your spotify revenue by around half a cent, try not to spend it all at once.

Consider the source

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Let me be blunt here. So an indie band that nobody has heard of (Grizzly Bear) and a different indie band that nobody has heard of and which broke up over 20 years ago (Galaxie 500) are complaining that they aren't getting enough money via Spotify. Gee, I don't know, is there any chance that maybe not enough people give a crap about their music to actually listen to it? Grizzly Bear and Galaxie 500 have their supporters, but the truth is that they just aren't all that big. They were mentioned earlier, so I'll use them as an example. If Iron Maiden wants to complain about what Spotify pays them, I'll listen, but if two no name indie bands, one of whom has been disbanded for over 20 years, want to cry about their payments, well, I'm not so interested. Groups like Grizzly Bear and Galaxie 500 are going to starve if they have only royalties to survive on. It's harsh but true.

Re:Consider the source

[hguorbray]

You may not have heard of Grizzly Bear, but they have been a national touring act for several years.

Their 2009 album, "Veckatimest," reached #8 on the US Billboard 200 chart and was met with widespread critical acclaim.

I saw them a few years ago at the Fox Oakland (2800 capacity) to a fairly full crowd, so they are a little bit higher up than 'nobody has heard of them'

One problem with most of the indie groups is that there is no radio or television platform to promote them the way that radio and mtv promoted iron maiden et al 30 years ago. Groups like Arcade Fire. Modest Mouse and Vampire Weekend that have managed to breakthrough to the mainstream have been the exception.

I probably buy about 200 indie recordings a year because I do believe in supporting up and coming artists, but I realize I am in the minority and it remains to be seen whether the Spotifys of the world will actually help provide enough exposure and some income to most artists, even the nominally 'successful' ones.

-I'm just sayin'

Another lying artist

[SmallFurryCreature]

If it was a hit song, then why is there no income in July? And August? Oh wait, there is, he might still be collecting money for work done years for DECADES to come.

Who else gets payed for work they did once? Let him add the total, over his lifetime AND his childrens lifetime, and divide it by the number of hours he spend on it. Wanna bet it comes to far more then minimum wage? And this is ONE source of payment? You ever did work and get payed by multiple people for decades to come? No, me neither.

This artist purposely uses misleading data. That means he is a lying piece of scum.

Everyone always seems to forget...

[suprcvic]

Middlemen aside, everyone always seems to forget that you have to price a product at what the customers are willing to pay for it while still making a profit for yourself after paying royalties, salaries, etc.... If the artists feel they aren't getting paid enough through this medium, they need to branch out to other mediums and find other ways to make money on their product. They can't just say "I want X amount of dollars each month or X amount for each play" and expect any sane businessperson to take them seriously without factoring in the costs associated with offering the service.

The cloud is someone else's computer

[tepples]

Some artists who charted in the 60's and 70's said, "I haven't had a royalty check in 15 years even though I hear my stuff on radio every now and then."

Let me guess: "Some artists" didn't write their own songs.

Whereas their other distribution channels are much cloudier

The cloud is someone else's computer. iTunes Radio is streamed from someone else's computer. Pandora is streamed from someone else's computer. Spotify is streamed from someone else's computer. All are thus equally cloudy.

Well...

[WillyWanker]

Do you want $3,300 or nothing? Because if Spotify has to pay more they'll go under, which means you'll get NOTHING.

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