Spotify's Own Math Suggests Musicians Are Still Getting Hosed 244
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."
Re:Are they really being hosed? (Score:4, Funny)
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:Your call (Score:4, Funny)
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 (Score:3, Funny)
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.