[url=http://www.spotifyartists.com/][img]http://imgkk.com/i/-9im.jpg[/img][/url]
[url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25217353[/url]
[quote]Spotify has responded to critics by revealing how much acts can expect to earn from the music streaming site.
The company said it pays an average of $0.007 per play, according to figures on its new website [url=http://www.spotifyartists.com/]Spotify Artists[/url], aimed specifically at musicians.
Explaining its business model, Spotify said it had paid more than $1bn (£612m) in royalties since its 2008 launch.[/quote]
That's a surprisingly low number, considering I regularly listen to artists with less than 100,000 plays across all of their songs.
Also, record companies are shitty.
I always wondered how their business model worked since it costs as much as a single album a month to listen to most even vaguely popular music as much as you want, whenever you want.
So, taking for example the highest-grossing song from Capital Cities, they've earned ~$315000 from ~45 million listens, most of them from people who never gave spotify a cent, the equivalent of ~21000 sales of the single on iTunes (on that topic, why is a digital single 15 fucking dollars)
That's not that bad. Wonder how the money is divided when it comes to bandwidth and stuff.
If all 24 million active users listened to 1000 songs a month (which is highly unlikely) then they'd be paying around 16.8 million dollars in royalties.
If we assume that all 6 million active subscriptions are only the unlimited (4.99 per month), then they're almost doubling their money at 29.9 million per month.
If we were realistic about this, then it's like that their profit margins are far, far higher and they should be paying a little bit more. I mean, I'm sure salaries and server fees don't come cheap, but I find it very unlikely that they couldn't afford to pay the artists a bit more.
they could atleast give a penny.
[QUOTE=Mr. Bleak;43073738]If all 24 million active users listened to 1000 songs a month (which is highly unlikely) then they'd be paying around 16.8 million dollars in royalties.
If we assume that all 6 million active subscriptions are only the unlimited (4.99 per month), then they're almost doubling their money at 29.9 million per month.
If we were realistic about this, then it's like that their profit margins are far, far higher and they should be paying a little bit more. I mean, I'm sure salaries and server fees don't come cheap, but I find it very unlikely that they couldn't afford to pay the artists a bit more.[/QUOTE]
Spotify[URL="http://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-explained/"] claims[/URL] (so, take this with a grain of salt, I guess?) that 70% of their revenue goes to artist royalties. Also, those six million are $10 subscriptions.
I'd say it's more likely that it's that they don't need the kind of infrastructure that physical releases demand, but bandwidth still isn't cheap, specially when you're serving music to 20 million free users.
[editline]4th December 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=Psycho9182;43073780]they could atleast give a penny.[/QUOTE]
Would you pay a penny per listen on spotify? Would everyone? Assuming everyone with a premium subscription would, that penny would still also pay for a part of the free subscriptions' listens (the other part being advertisements) and still come down to less than a penny. A premium subscription is worth 1000 pennies, and most people who go and buy a premium subscription do so because they listen to a lot of music on spotify. 1000 listens is ~3700 minutes, or ~60 hours, which isn't a lot of music to spread over a month (~700 hours)
[QUOTE=Mr. Bleak;43073738]If all 24 million active users listened to 1000 songs a month (which is highly unlikely) then they'd be paying around 16.8 million dollars in royalties.
If we assume that all 6 million active subscriptions are only the unlimited (4.99 per month), then they're almost doubling their money at 29.9 million per month.
If we were realistic about this, then it's like that their profit margins are far, far higher and they should be paying a little bit more. I mean, I'm sure salaries and server fees don't come cheap, but I find it very unlikely that they couldn't afford to pay the artists a bit more.[/QUOTE]
Especially since they have 5 fucking advertisements after EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN SONG.
[QUOTE=Binladen34;43073843]Especially since they have 5 fucking advertisements after EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN SONG.[/QUOTE]
Those that pay a subscription don't get ads though.
.007 to divide among the artists and mixers and producers and everything else. Not a whole lot
That's .007 more than if people just pirate it. And don't forget the average person listens to a song multiple times. Some of my favourite tracks have play counts nearing 1000.
Don't musicians make most of their money with live concerts anyway? Some metal band once said that they don't care if people pirate their music, as they barely get any money from the sales.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;43073976]That's .007 more than if people just pirate it. And don't forget the average person listens to a song multiple times. Some of my favourite tracks have play counts nearing 1000.[/QUOTE]
I pretty much use spotify exclusively for my music. Songs I listen to I throw into playlists and download them onto my phone, I almost want to put all the songs I have on my computer onto blank discs and delete them all since I don't need them anymore. Would save me around 30 gigs of space.
I remember doing a research paper in college about the music industry and it's honestly one of the most broken, fucked up systems I've ever seen. A lot of times, the bands and musicians are treated like shit and end up in a lot of debt if their albums don't sell as well as expected by the label.
Admittedly, though, 15 pages of research basically culminated to, "Buy shit from Bandcamp because they actually give money to bands." Wouldn't call it my strongest research paper, lol
[QUOTE=Mr. Bleak;43073738]If all 24 million active users listened to 1000 songs a month (which is highly unlikely) then they'd be paying around 16.8 million dollars in royalties.
If we assume that all 6 million active subscriptions are only the unlimited (4.99 per month), then they're almost doubling their money at 29.9 million per month.
If we were realistic about this, then it's like that their profit margins are far, far higher and they should be paying a little bit more. I mean, I'm sure salaries and server fees don't come cheap, but I find it very unlikely that they couldn't afford to pay the artists a bit more.[/QUOTE]
Don't forget that they not only pay artists royalties but label royaltie as well, which might potentially be higher than the artist ones.
maybe spotify looses percentages to bigger artist.
And the actual artists behind the song gets 0.0007 cents per play
yeah the artist gets $0.007 per play if they actually owned the songs, which plenty of artists don't
radiohead doesn't even own any of their music before In Rainbows. they get money from publishing credit for being writers, but no money from plays because that goes to the copyright holder of the songs.
It does say an average $0.007, so that could mean that more popular bands could get more money and smaller ones less.
If I was an artist I would just get a few thousand phones playing all of my songs. I win.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/oPdscp8.png[/IMG]
seems about right
[QUOTE=Zeke129;43073976]That's .007 more than if people just pirate it. And don't forget the average person listens to a song multiple times. Some of my favourite tracks have play counts nearing 1000.[/QUOTE]
but there has been research that concluded that people who pirate music tend to be the people who actually spend [I]the most money[/I] on music
if you can be bothered to torrent music you are probably
a. interested in music
b. have an interest in the band you're going through the effort to pirate
c. will spend money going to a gig
itunes and spotify are so shit for artists these days that they make a fuck tonne of their money from gigs. your 1000x $0.007 is a whopping $7 split between a producer, the record company, the artist, a graphic design company, everyone who worked on the tour, the recording studio, the guy who mops the floor at the recording studio. it's nothing. you could argue that a single $0.90 payment for a song is worse than that but at least the split in the money is more representative and fair, especially if you buy from somewhere like bandcamp where 100% of the money goes to the people involved in making the music
purely out of principle i'd rather not give money to spotify. i'm really happy to spend money on itunes and i've bought physical albums just in support of artists i like, but fuck spotify. it's a joke
best model for up-and-coming artists is definitely bandcamp and beatport options though anyway
[QUOTE=Splash Attack;43073463]That's a surprisingly low number, considering I regularly listen to artists with less than 100,000 plays across all of their songs.
Also, record companies are shitty.[/QUOTE]
I can't know what their specific conditions and running costs are but I think that if it's a one-man low-tech kinda deal or generally a hobby musician, if you spent, say, week of worktime working on a song, $700 for a song isn't THAT bad.
The music industry is fucked up because record companies get all the profit while the band does all the effort, and a smash and grab at a record store is less severe than clicking 'download' on a shady website.
[QUOTE=latin_geek;43073736]So, taking for example the highest-grossing song from Capital Cities, they've earned ~$315000 from ~45 million listens, most of them from people who never gave spotify a cent, the equivalent of ~21000 sales of the single on iTunes (on that topic, why is a digital single 15 fucking dollars)
That's not that bad. Wonder how the money is divided when it comes to bandwidth and stuff.[/QUOTE]
Don't forget, that's probably $300k they would not have gotten. As I have said before, I (and I assume many others) no longer acquire music from alternative sources thanks to spotify. I assume this is even more true for people who aren't paying for spotify.
You are right, it really isn't as terrible has had been previously made out to be honest.
[editline]5th December 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=redBadger;43073909].007 to divide among the artists and mixers and producers and everything else. Not a whole lot[/QUOTE]
Welcome to the music industry! Where the talent gets screwed over by all involved and gets paid fuck all.
Unless they go it alone and release themselves.
The thing is though, I'd rather pay £5/£10 a MONTH than £10 for one freaking album.
I've got other ways of spending money, like collage and food which is more expensive. Not spending it on music which I can listen to cheap with Spotify and free online (YouTube, Grooveshark etc.).
I'm not surprised. Bands make their money on concerts and swag, not music sales. [QUOTE=Binladen34;43073843]Especially since they have 5 fucking advertisements after EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN SONG.[/QUOTE]
And this is why I don't use spotify. Youtube works just fine, is free, and ABP works a treat.
[QUOTE=TestECull;43077152]
And this is why I don't use spotify. Youtube works just fine, is free, and ABP works a treat.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, but having youtube open in a browser takes up considerably more resources than a spotify client does.
(Although the importance of that varies depending on what you're doing)
YouTube has inconsistent audio quality depending on the uploader and uses much more b/w (Video takes up more space than music). Spotify is much better.
Grooveshark is the YouTube version of Spotify. Most of it's badly tagged, albums are incomplete etc. Uses up less b/w.
Rd.io has too many copyright issues in the UK at least.
[QUOTE=ChestyMcGee;43076556]but there has been research that concluded that people who pirate music tend to be the people who actually spend [I]the most money[/I] on music
if you can be bothered to torrent music you are probably
a. interested in music
b. have an interest in the band you're going through the effort to pirate
c. will spend money going to a gig
itunes and spotify are so shit for artists these days that they make a fuck tonne of their money from gigs. your 1000x $0.007 is a whopping $7 split between a producer, the record company, the artist, a graphic design company, everyone who worked on the tour, the recording studio, the guy who mops the floor at the recording studio. it's nothing. you could argue that a single $0.90 payment for a song is worse than that but at least the split in the money is more representative and fair, especially if you buy from somewhere like bandcamp where 100% of the money goes to the people involved in making the music
purely out of principle i'd rather not give money to spotify. i'm really happy to spend money on itunes and i've bought physical albums just in support of artists i like, but fuck spotify. it's a joke
best model for up-and-coming artists is definitely bandcamp and beatport options though anyway[/QUOTE]
This is the internet age, bands can promote and publish their music on their own now. Unless you're a band that could really benefit from the fleet of marketing and PR guys, signing to a label is rather unnecessary. Bands these days can and should be telling the big labels "no thanks, I want to own my own music" because for really the first time in history, they can.
And the "pirates pay more in the end" doesn't really apply if you listen to a lot of music from smaller international bands that simply don't have the budget to tour or have a lot of merchandise.
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