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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%.
mine, mine! ;)
It's the 'artist' that signed a contract with the company, so he/she knows what he/she gets or doesn't get..
An artist working for a record company is nothing more than a regular employee..
Music artists have often received little from broadcasting. Historically, they've received the bulk of their money from live performances and merchandise. Most of that broadcast money goes to the studios, the producers, the managers, the studio, the songwriter, agents and lawyers. Singers (if they're not also songwriters) usually come dead last.
My understanding is that many new artists have come to realize this scam and are starting to avoid the major labels, using alternate channels of distribution instead. It may not sell as much music, but they get a much larger slice of the pie
You wouldn't steal an an artist's royalties.
You wouldn't dodge taxes
You wouldn't install a rootkit on a customer's computerl
But the Record industry would.
And just to get the joke out of the way, "You wouldn't shoot a policeman. And then steal his helmet. You wouldn't go to the toilet in his helmet. And then send it to the policeman's grieving widow. And then steal it again!"
Spotify explain their revenue-model and payout-model here.
"Major labels keep hold of 73% of payouts from the likes of Spotify."
The 73/16/11 split is of what Spotify pays the label, not what Spotify charges the user.
The 11% is out of the amount that Spotify pays the label, not the 9.99 that Spotify charges the user.
I thought this story was interesting, especially in light of the story a day or two ago about how there weren't any torrents for newly released music on TPB (with all the caveats that came with TFA). The barrier to entry for music production, or really, any kind of entertainment media, has been steadily dropping, to where the reproduction of the created content is almost effortless. Anyone can have a band in their garage and produce halfway decent sounding music, if they're willing to put the time and effort in to create something. A person can write and publish a novel electronically and do fairly well with it. The barrier to game production, in terms of financial outlays, is essentially gone. It's the same use of technology as a multiplier which enabled the information revolution in the first place, with the creation of the printing press. However, what all of those efforts don't have is a solid and pervasive marketing campaign behind them, and that's what a major artist for a major label is "buying" when they get a pittance out of their music being played someplace, or what a game studio or author gets when they are able to sign a deal with a publisher. Let's face it -- production costs are largely nil, but it's the ability to get the word out about something, and like them or hate them, this is what marketers do, and they don't work for cheap. I don't really see the situation going away -- they are a lot of people creating niche media, but there is still money to be made in mass market production. (yes, there are some things I haven't covered, such as the staggering cost of creating a movie or AAA game, and a need to make a profit on them, but I can paint with as broad a brush as I want on a comment board)
Well, one can point out that the record companies have been pushing predatory contracts on artists for decades, and giving them little choice.
Seriously, if the *AAs are going to heavily run this "listening is theft" crap campaign and then keep all of the damned money .. then as much as it screws the artists even more, it's almost a moral imperative to rip off the record companies even more.
The theft is by major corporations who act like they've done something to earn this money and should be earning it in perpetuity.
And one of the problems with these contracts is at the time they were signed nobody had even THOUGHT of how the royalties for streaming would work -- or thought of streaming at all in many cases. The record companies defined that to be the one which gets the artists the least possible money.
Essentially the record companies have stacked the deck so badly that the game is unwinnable.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
NoFX said it best live even
I've always thought it was interesting the way music worked out. It seems like the boy-band model works to attract female listeners, but most guys I know really don't care what the artist looks like. Sure Katy Perry may turn a few heads at the SuperBowl, but I don't know any guys who would go to her concerts or buy her music. In the same way, I know many women who would watch a movie just because a particular good looking actor was in it, regardless of the content. But most guys I know wouldn't go see a movie just because a certain actress is in it. Sure it's nice that there's good looking girls in Transformers, but we went to see the transformers and would have gone to see it even if there was no women in the entire movie. We wouldn't go see a romantic comedy with the same actress in it.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.