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My Band Has 1M Spotify Streams. Want to See Our Royalties? (2016)

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Re: My Band Has 1M Spotify Streams. Want to See Our Royalties? (2016)

#61

Post by nkozyra »

barry-cotter wrote: post #46
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was that? Since at least the 1960s, music has been a winner-take-all hit driven industry. You’re either The Rolling Stones, Motley Crue, Madonna, or at best a one-hit-wonder. The vast majority of bands are (and always have been) local groups who play their town bars, occasionally go on tour, and have day jobs. I’m not saying this is good, but it’s the way things have always been. There was never some “good, hone…

This is bullshit. It used to be possible to make a living off of selling recorded music, whether records or cds, and people cared about, and bought albums, in large numbers. Now the only way to make money if you’re not nationally famous is gigging. Gigging used to be something you did to get people to buy your singles and albums. That was where the money was and that was how mid-list artists made a living. Now that’s…

> This is bullshit. It used to be possible to make a living off of selling recorded music, whether records or cds, and people cared about, and bought albums, in large numbers.

It still is. But let's break down the "bullshit." It used to be possible to make a living driving a horse drawn buggy. Then things changed. Fewer people wanted or needed this, the value went down accordingly.

A different mechanism but the same principle. The cost to produce and distribute recorded music is plummeted. There is a saturated markets for artists and recorded music. Is it a surprise that the value of a play has dropped accordingly?

Re: My Band Has 1M Spotify Streams. Want to See Our Royalties? (2016)

#62

Post by petra »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #58
petra wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure. Why ? Well, one way to conceptualize human needs is maslow's hierarchy. the final, LOWEST priority need is self-fulfillment. so there are many more pressing problems before that to solve. but: It says nowhere that self-fulfillment must be in your job. Who says that being a successful musician is "the" useful trait to develop ? reading about successful musicians, and knowing one, they don't seem parti…

It's odd how this argument is applied to artists, but never to financiers, investors, and CEOs. What if being insanely rich isn't "the" trait to develop? Reading about successful CEOs, and knowing one very distantly, they don't seem particularly healthy. And who says creative expression is a thing to develop anyway? Why can't we just keep making already rich people even richer without complaining about it?

Did i say anywhere that being a CEO or insanely rich is the trait to be develop ?

But CEO's don't exist because of some goal of human development. They exist because they fulfill a needed role, same as with any other job.

Re: My Band Has 1M Spotify Streams. Want to See Our Royalties? (2016)

#63

Post by jsjohnst »

gxigzigxigxi wrote: post #26
jsjohnst wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I heard a number, bands got a single digit percentage of the sale of a CD. Edit: Quick web search shows I’m right. https://bandzoogle.com/blog/record-sales-where-does-the-mone...

Thanks. So if the artist is both the performer and the writer, they get about ten percent. So that’s one power of two accounted for. I think my assumption about the typical number of CD listens is also quite conservative.

I agree, I think it was conservative. So your root point appears valid.

Re: My Band Has 1M Spotify Streams. Want to See Our Royalties? (2016)

#64

Post by jtbayly »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #60
toofy wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While in my personal version of a just world all artists would make a livable salary and I think this is what you mean, however if what I’m hearing from music industry friends is accurate, there are far more artists now making a modest but still livable income off music than there was in the late and very early 20th century. Apparently almost no music artists could earn a living previously — the only musician who cou…

Average gross income for full-time musicians from a survey in 2011 was more than $50k. Average income in 2018 was just over $20k - which is over minimum wage, but not exactly comfortable. These are averages, not medians, so they're skewed by a relatively small number of professionals who do very well.

How many full time musicians in each of those years, though?

Re: My Band Has 1M Spotify Streams. Want to See Our Royalties? (2016)

#65

Post by ENTP »

nikanj wrote: post #54
bachmeier wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would be _extremely_ surprised if they would net much more than $5000 from these radio listens. Me too. Unless they've recently changed the rules, the artist gets nothing when a song is played on the radio.

This is..complicated. The performer doesn't get money, but the song writer does. These are often the same person, but not always. Must suck for bands whose biggest hits are cover songs.

Max Martin must love it.

Re: My Band Has 1M Spotify Streams. Want to See Our Royalties? (2016)

#66

Post by PurpleRamen »

nikanj wrote: post #20

I feel like it's a false analogy to compare Spotify Streams to CD sales. For a fairer comparison, you should measure against something more ephemeral. The biggest radio channels in the US have a few million listeners each. Let's say your record does ok, and gets airtime on a few second-tier radio stations. For easy math, let's do 20 plays * 50,000 listeners per play. This also gives you a total of one million listens…

I thing the general Idea is, with spotify, people are not buying CDs (or digital files) anymore, because they have the liberty to choose all the time what they wanna hear. So Spotify must compensate for the lose. At the end Spotify is a mix between radio and CDs, but more on the CD-Side, because with Radio you usually can't choose what you hear.

I wonder if Spotify also pays different depending on whether people choose a song or whether it was autplayed because of some public playlist or radio-feed (does spootify have something like that?).

Re: My Band Has 1M Spotify Streams. Want to See Our Royalties? (2016)

#67

Post by toofy »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #60
toofy wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While in my personal version of a just world all artists would make a livable salary and I think this is what you mean, however if what I’m hearing from music industry friends is accurate, there are far more artists now making a modest but still livable income off music than there was in the late and very early 20th century. Apparently almost no music artists could earn a living previously — the only musician who cou…

Average gross income for full-time musicians from a survey in 2011 was more than $50k. Average income in 2018 was just over $20k - which is over minimum wage, but not exactly comfortable. These are averages, not medians, so they're skewed by a relatively small number of professionals who do very well.

Do they control for economy? Is the definition of “fill time musician” the same?

I imagine full time musicians would be impacted by a faltering economy at least somewhat more than most careers and probably one of the last careers to bounce back.

Not doubting you as everything I mentioned was based on second hand information with no science other than “as a person in the industry, X seems to be true.”

As I said, I would love to see a world where even mediocre artists can make a livable wage.

Re: My Band Has 1M Spotify Streams. Want to See Our Royalties? (2016)

#68

Post by Arqu »

kakarot wrote: post #39
Arqu wrote: post #30

I somehow keep being fascinated by people think they're ripped off. I mean sure, Spotify is making a decent buck out of it, but it's not like the artists are doing it for free. There's much more to the whole process. Firs to earn something per play there need to be ads that finance it. Then imagine the technical hurdle and cost to host such a platform (ie Spotify cut) and then you actually being worth a damn as an ar…

They are getting ripped off. Many record companies, in their own financial interest, reduced the royalty cost for streams with Spotify in exchange for revenue shares. I would feel pretty ripped off if I made a big, delicious cake, and as a reward I get one tiny slice while I had to watch everyone else eat the rest. Maybe not if making cakes is just a small hobby for me, but definitely so if it's my career .

I'm not arguing the case here that the whole scene is set up fair and square. Probably the complete opposite. However, expecting 1M views of random music play to be worth more than some $5k is a long stretch. On their own, sure 1M views would account for much more if it was a very focused platform, however, it caters to a huge palette of artists. The dispersion of risk/quality and focus targets makes it not really the prime money machines.

If you want to make money in this industry - keep to the old-fashioned methods. Concerts and live performances are what rake in the big money - CDs, Views or whatever useless metric people try to convert to $$ numbers only works in obscene numbers. All else is just trying to get there - and that is usually the dirty and hard part of the music industry.

Re: My Band Has 1M Spotify Streams. Want to See Our Royalties? (2016)

#69

Post by IshKebab »

I'm going to guess what they are before looking:

People that would have bought an album probably would have listened to each track ~5 times, say an album has 10 tracks, this is equivalent to 20k album sales. Apparently typical royalty on an album is ~$0.50 so I'm going to say $10k.

...checks...

$5k. Ok fairly low but I think that was a pretty good guess!

Re: My Band Has 1M Spotify Streams. Want to See Our Royalties? (2016)

#70

Post by lowercased »

ianai wrote: post #40
mrweasel wrote: post #36

Arguably $5000 isn't much for three years and 1 million plays, but I'm also not sure what they where expecting. I believe the issue is that Spotify charges customers per month, while artists are paid by play, so the more Spotifys customers use the service, the less they can afford to pay for each play. Assuming that a consumer spent the money from a Spotify subscription on CDs instead that would, in Denmark, be aroun…

I’d rather my monthly fee go to only the artists I play. Say, for some percentage of my fee minus operating costs. That would reward artists according to their draw.

i couldn't imagine it being any other way really. co-mingling paid listens with 'ad' listens would just be weird.
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