Slashdot Mirror
Major Record Labels Keep 73% of Spotify Payouts
journovampire sends this report:
New record company figures out of France suggest that artists are being paid just 68 cents from every €9.99 monthly music streaming subscription – as major labels keep hold of 73% of payouts from the likes of Spotify. They’re followed by writers/publishers with a 16% share, and then artists – mostly paid by their labels – who get 11%.
It's written plain as day in the article, on the SNEP chart.
For every 9.99€ monthly subscription:
Spotify or other streaming platforms ("Plateformes") get 2.08€
Labels ("Producteurs") get 4.56€
Performers (or artists) ("Artistes interprètes") get 0.68€
Composers and writers ("Auteurs compositeurs éditeurs") get 1€
And VAT is 1.67€
Profit, pre-tax, is as follows:
Composers and writers ("Auteurs compositeurs éditeurs"): 0.6€
Performer (or artists) ("Artistes interprètes"): 0.68€
Labels ("Producteurs"): 0.26€*
Platforms: 0.1€*
*Net profit margin estimated at 5% of revenue.
But if you read the rest of the study, you'll see streaming represents 55% of digital music revenue in France in 2014 (16% total revenue for the industry).
The music industry market is tanking a bit says the study, but the royalty payouts are stable.
You'll find the full study here.
Spotify explain their revenue-model and payout-model here.
A cartel implies collusion - got any evidence of that going on?
At the end of the day, music is rarely something you can replace 1:1 with another, similar product. You either like song A or song B (or both), but you cant replace song A with song B if you don't like song B. Same goes for artists, TV series, movies etc etc etc.
So competition in these areas is very very difficult - a label either has the artist, or they don't. And the label has the artist by virtue of the contract that artist willingly signed.