Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are completely independent the amount you get per play (before your distributor - e.g. CDBaby - takes a cut) is $0.006 - $0.008. If we say you get the max per play and you're a one person act (not a band) you need about 250,000 streams to make $2000 (just about enough money to live on). Obviously you have other ways to generate income (merch, touring) but even getting anywhere near that number of monthly strea…
If I understood it correctly about 50% (old and perhaps quite obsolete figure) of the monthly fee goes to labels and artists. That sounds reasonable to me, and given that that means roughly $5 goes directly to labels and artists from my subscription. A Spotify subscription is more than I have ever paid for music, even half of it is - and the moment I stop my subscription I loose access to all of it. To me it sounds l…
Yes, but which labels and artists? There is a notion that people have that when they listen to Spotify, Spotify takes their $10/mo and divides it up among the artists that they've listened to. That's not how it works. Spotify takes the money, puts it into a giant pool and divides it up globally based upon total number of plays.
So, for example, let's say I'm a huge fan of Portugal, The Man. I listen to them, and only them, all day, every day. That doesn't mean that they get my $10 a month. They get paid in proportion to what percentage they are of the total number of Spotify plays. If I'm the only one listening to Portugal, The Man, then they're not going to be a high percentage of total plays, and they're not going to get even $10 for the month.
Meanwhile, lets say that Kanye West drops a new album, and he skyrockets to 60% of all listens. He's going to get 60% of the money, even from people like me who haven't listened to any of his music during the month.
Now, you might argue that this is a fair solution. But it does explain why a lot of smaller artists (and big names too, like Taylor Swift as mentioned above) are very wary of Spotify.