41–50 of 70 posts
Just wanted to say thanks for this link - I'm not interested in her numbers, but to stumble across this on HN, and head off and listen to her music, awesome. I really love the sound of the cello, and discovered another cellist, Philip Sheppard, in a similar way. And her album is only 8 bucks! in FLAC format!
[1] http://blog.tunecore.com/2012/04/grooveshark-trolling-the-se...
This was linked from some Twitter posts from cellist Zoe Keating, who makes some interesting modern music. I'm impressed that she's making here numbers public. She gets more from Pandora than Spotify. https://twitter.com/zoecello/status/231126328924061696
Why are there different "unit" rates for the same song on the same day on Spotify? Weird.
32,000 plays and only $132. That seems really bad, if music does start to move more towards streaming than purchasing artists are screwed. It would take nearly 300,000 plays at this rate for someone living in an average city apartment to make rent. The internet and technology in general have done some great things for music but making money is harder than ever.
Think about that for a minute. How many people listen to a song, how often, and at what licensing rate? Clearchannel radio claims their network reaches 237 Million listeners a month [1]. If they managed to hit one play for every listener they reach at $132/32,000 that is $977,592 per month. Yes, its hard to get between 'starting' and 'living large.' And no, not everyone will go there, but the numbers here aren't "rea…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I garuntee more than 32,000 listeners heard her on NPR in any given city . So Spotify seems much better than radio, regardless of the consumer.
Yeah, that was my initial thought. A single play on radio in a big market could easily reach well over 32,000 people. The revenue model for streaming seems to be based on the payout systems that are used for radio. Unfortunately for artists, streaming services like Pandora and Spotify tend to compete against their iTunes and album sales, at least much more so than radio ever did. (in fact radio airtime was mostly con…
Pandora pays a compulsory streaming rate. Similar to radio they're allowed to play what they like as long as it's not on-demand. Hence you can only skip so many times, and you can't request a specific song. They pay both publishing and performance royalties so rightsholders for the publishing and recording get paid.
Spotify, as an on-demand streaming service, has to negotiate direct deals with rightsholders to use the music. So when you see them paying out a lower rate than Pandora it's because they've traded equity to major labels in exchange for better rates — a very clever way for majors to get money directly from subscribers without needing to distribute it to artists. Independent labels and musicians also need to authorize Spotify, but have less negotiating power so they don't get ownership stakes and have to choose to be completely absent from the system or take the rate offered them.
She's amazing live if you ever have the chance to see her. A 6-foot tall woman with red dreadlocks playing the cello beautifully.
All up, it looks like she made about $85,000 from October of 2011 to March of 2012. That's antihistamine money, especially for someone not making pop music. This appears to be unambiguously good news for independent artists.
People use these services the same they would as if they owned the music. It is possible that total lifetime revenue from these services could be higher, but I doubt it.
32,000 plays and only $132. That seems really bad, if music does start to move more towards streaming than purchasing artists are screwed. It would take nearly 300,000 plays at this rate for someone living in an average city apartment to make rent. The internet and technology in general have done some great things for music but making money is harder than ever.
Whatever deals they cut probably sap the lion's share of the profit, leaving a small pie for the indies to slice amongst themselves.
And of the share they get, I bet a large chunk stays with the label rather than passing through to Gaga and company.
I'd really like to see some numbers on that, but of course they'll never be made public. Which tells the tale on its own, really.
What is this thread without pics?