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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)

#71

Post by ascorbic »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #57
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.

They haven't recently changed the rules. The average for terrestrial radio in the US is around 12c/play. In the UK it can be up to £15/minute plus £35/play on a top radio station like Radio 1. Less mainstream stations pay less. The artist may see half of that depending on their publishing deal. So... Spotify's microcents per stream are a joke. Around 80% of Spotify revenue goes to rights holders - i.e. a handful of b…

You need to divide that £15/minute+£35 per play by the number of listeners for them to be comparable. Radio 1 breakfast show has about 9 million weekly listeners. I've no idea how many people are listening at any particular time, but you'd still be talking micropennies.

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

#72

Post by pixel_fcker »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #57
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.

They haven't recently changed the rules. The average for terrestrial radio in the US is around 12c/play. In the UK it can be up to £15/minute plus £35/play on a top radio station like Radio 1. Less mainstream stations pay less. The artist may see half of that depending on their publishing deal. So... Spotify's microcents per stream are a joke. Around 80% of Spotify revenue goes to rights holders - i.e. a handful of b…

1 play on radio 1 could easily be 1 million listeners for which they get 100 quid you say, whereas this band say they got $5000 for a million listens on Spotify.

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

#73

Post by zethraeus »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #66
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 choo…

> So Spotify must compensate for the los[s].

why?

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

#74

Post by zethraeus »

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 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.

this analogy doesn't even begin to approximate the real dynamics.

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

#75

Post by hndamien »

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.

This is the crux of the fairness debate here. The numbers don't seem absurdly bad, but if I was buying CD's - none of my dollars would go towards Rihanna and a good portion would go to obscure bands. Currently, this is the opposite of how my subscription dollars are divided.

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

#76

Post by Aeolun »

hndamien wrote: post #75
ianai wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is the crux of the fairness debate here. The numbers don't seem absurdly bad, but if I was buying CD's - none of my dollars would go towards Rihanna and a good portion would go to obscure bands. Currently, this is the opposite of how my subscription dollars are divided.

Aren’t your $10 divided amongst the songs you listen to?

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

#77

Post by qaminsod »

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…

Spotify is closer to CDs than radio because you can play any song you want whenever you want at a quality similar to CDs.

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

#78

Post by hndamien »

Aeolun wrote: post #76
hndamien wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the crux of the fairness debate here. The numbers don't seem absurdly bad, but if I was buying CD's - none of my dollars would go towards Rihanna and a good portion would go to obscure bands. Currently, this is the opposite of how my subscription dollars are divided.

Aren’t your $10 divided amongst the songs you listen to?

No, my $10 is divided across all plays. So big name artists with lots of streams get my money. Particularly badly in the months when I only listen to a few songs because I listen to podcasts.

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

#79

Post by dwd »

untog wrote: post #19
nkozyra wrote: post #8

People still seem to be stuck quantifying the value of music (sales, streams, etc) against a time when there was less saturation and the actual cost of producing, marketing and distributing music was much higher.

Well yes, because that was a time when musicians could earn a living. It's legitimate to question the current situation.

The number of musicians earning a living off recorded music sales has always been small.

Playing live and merchandise sales is still where the money is, whether you're just playing for drinks or doing stadium tours.

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

#80

Post by hoffs »

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 mean, it mostly works like that. You listen to someones music, you generate plays for them, `your` share gets paid to those artists you listened to. Sure it's not all of your monthly subscription, but you probably also fund other people who use free version. Like I understand the idea where one would have 5 plays (5 artists) entire month and those artists would receive almost 2$ each from him (if no fee is deducted for spotify infrastructure).
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