If Spotify was paying artists $10 per stream, all artists would love it and endorse it. But if it was this way, their message to the fans would not be “Spotify compensates us really well, therefore go use it”.
It would sound more like “Spotify is awesome, convenient, and a great way to hear all of our music. Go get it.”
All artists would champion Spotify if it put a lot of money in their pockets, because no matter what the royalty rate is, it’s a great service for consumers. And aren’t artists all about the fans???
If you see an artist boohooing about only being paid $0.02840 for 100,000 streams, one of two things is true. Either they’re looking at the numbers wrong (an independent artist distributing music through TuneCore would net roughly $450-$550 in this scenario), or they signed a bad deal with a record label where the label is entitled to a large percentage of streaming.
So either way, I’m tired of the complaining. Do the research, know your rates. And don’t sign bad deals.
Years ago artists wouldn’t stop crying over Napster and the fall of the music business and artists are never going to get paid. Independent musicians are screwed. There’s no more money.
While that wasn’t true back then, it’s even less true today. Here you have a service that will compensate you for people streaming your music. You want the royalty rate to be higher, I know. But come on, everyone wants more money. Nothing new.
And the royalty rate will go up, not down, in the future.
Taylor Swift and the few others pulling their music from Spotify (you can listen on YouTube, which somehow hasn’t been under scrutiny for being a place to listen to music for free while being ad supported just like Spotify) aren’t doing it out of moral conviction or principle, or cause they’re music purists or cause they’re spear heading some other solution.
It’s all a game. She doesn’t care about you, the fan or the indie musician. Taylor will get at least two giant stories out of this move…one when she took her music down, and another when she puts it all back up. We’re the suckers.
What should artists do? Encourage everyone to join Spotify. Rave about how paying $10/month to carry millions of songs in your pocket is on target with the solution. Especially in the long term.
Artists can help increase the size of the pie, then they can make a play for higher royalty rates.
(Right now it’s between $0.006 and $0.0084 per stream, depending on ad revenue and number of plays. TuneCore distribution, for indie artists, takes 30% which leaves artists with $0.0042-$0.0058 per stream).
If you’re a big artist on a major label, 99% of you are never going to see any money from album sales or anything to do with your master recordings, so your career isn’t tied to this source of revenue anyway. Tell people to join Spotify. It’s good for everyone.
If you’re an indie artist scraping by on the road, don’t worry, people will still buy your album at your shows. But its a souvenir, not a means to listen. So that person not only bought your album for $10 but now they’re going to generate more money for you by actually listening to your music on Spotify. It’s a win win. Better yet, come up with another $20 item that your fans NEED to have. Get creative. That’s what you do, isn’t it?
Spotify is a fantastic service that is set up to satisfy both musician and listener. It might not be perfect yet, but artists need to embrace the fact that this (Spotify, streaming, etc) is the present and the future and figure out ways to use it to their advantage.
Let’s boil it down, what do you think the per stream royalty rate should be?
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Everyone, start using Spotify HERE
