Spotify - anyone heard of it?

I've never seen someone state what they think a streaming service should pay out for a single stream of a song. Maybe people have, I don't know. I tend to think Spotify's current pay structure is probably below where it needs to be, but I'm not sure by how much.

Was trying to figure out how much revenue has been generated from old catalogs on Spotify. You can see how many streams individual songs have now. Was looking at Motown hits the other day. "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" by itself has over six million plays. At the $0.007 rate, that's over $42,000 in revenue from just that one song.

And that's part of the thing with streaming. You get paid per play and not right up front. If you have a song people are still listening to fifty years later, that's fifty years of steady revenue.

Hopefully, at some point that revenue will be more than it is now. I'd imagine it will be. But I think there's a prevailing alarmist math going on along the lines of "This song has 10,000 plays and only generated $70 in revenue." 10,000 plays is the equivalent of 100 ten-track albums sold and played ten times each. There wasn't a lot of revenue generated previously by the sale of 100 albums.

If you have a song people are still listening to fifty years later, that's fifty years of steady revenue.

lolololol yeah spotify is going to be around for 50 years hahahahahaha

well the converse would be that if Spotify goes bust in two years' time people will need to "buy" the same music again somehow

Spotify can't even turn a profit, they have the same shitty "build a product, sell it, and then run away" business model as a million startups, they are not in the business of developing a sustainable model of generating income for musicians/performers, that is not their m.o.

xp

well the converse would be that if Spotify goes bust in two years' time people will need to "buy" the same music again somehow

presumably for even less money

their MO, i imagine, is to get lots of money from a IPO and/or from selling to a bigger company.

^^^

The survival of Spotify as a company is not relevant to the point. It's the survival of the streaming model.

well the model doesn't turn a profit

bodes well!

can't turn a profit & developers of product can't make a living, yup true recipe for success right there

the only thing they can deliver is user data, which will collapse as soon as something cheaper/better is available, rinse and repeat until everybody is poor except for asshole CEOs

you make music. you sign with a label to sell your music. unfortunately it's standard practice for them to only give you a small percent of the income, with the majority of expenses taken out of YOUR percent.

then that label decides to let a tech start-up rent your music to customers, in exchange for a small royalty themselves - you're now getting a percent of a percent. the label also gets equity in the start-up, in hopes of a windfall from an IPO/buyout, a circumstance you will not directly benefit from. the label may have also received an advance for their catalog - how much of that came back to you might not be so clear.

the question of "how big should the royalty your label receives be" is kind of beside the point.

There wasn't a lot of revenue generated previously by the sale of 100 albums.

To keep the math simple (and for some artists, it's probably a pretty accurate number), let's say a band's net profit per album is $7. $7 x 100 is $700 vs. $70 from spotify. But that's assuming you can actually sell 100 albums.

People like Taylor Swift are going to make lots of money no matter what, more obscure acts are probably gonna continue to be screwed financially either way (compared to "the way things used to be")

the question of "how big should the royalty your label receives be" is kind of beside the point.

It may be beside the point in terms of how labels are dealing with back catalogs and musician royalties. It's not beside the point in terms of where we go from here unless someone is interested in junking the whole thing and replacing it with ????

let's say a band's net profit per album is $7. $7 x 100 is $700 vs. $70 from spotify.

Maybe DIY. If I'm not mistaken, the average major label royalty rate on a $16.98 CD used to be something like a dollar.

It may be beside the point in terms of how labels are dealing with back catalogs and musician royalties. It's not beside the point in terms of where we go from here unless someone is interested in junking the whole thing and replacing it with ????

reading the thread, even just today's posts might wipe a way a few question marks

streaming will be around in 50 years, and its premium subscribers shall be as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore.

I'm sorry that you bought those mp3s y'all

never bought an mp3 in my life *flexes*

I think I bought a John Vanderslice album on amazon cloud once

man 2007 what a hoot

Maybe DIY. If I'm not mistaken, the average major label royalty rate on a $16.98 CD used to be something like a dollar.

― timellison, Tuesday, November 11, 2014 5:03 PM (9 minutes ago)

That would be either DIY or once everything's recouped on an indie deal (maybe old school, idk).

I only used 50 years because I was talking about a 50 year old song.

Seriously, though, "I Fought the Law" by the Bobby Fuller Four - 1.7 million plays, about $12,000 in revenue. It would be interesting to see what kind of money that song generated through record and CD (as part of an album) and download sales in the decades previously.

Bobby fuller is dead

1.7 million 45s + radio royalties = way more than 12k

But go ahead and continue with your made up math thought experiment if it makes you feel better

Its sort of weird how people refuse to take musicians' statements about their declining income at face value

They must all be liars and frauds with crooked accountants, living it up w their ivory backscratchers

xp here? nobody is doing that.

"Prevailing alarmist math"

1.7 million 45s would not have been sold in the comparable time.

Move the markers wherever you want your math is still 100% made up

And radio royalties are still occurring in addition to Spotify revenue.

Like I wonder how many downloads of "Billie Jean" were sold (or would have been sold) in the comparable time it took to earn a half million dollars on Spotify.

(Given that it's a 30 year old song, etc.)

well the converse would be that if Spotify goes bust in two years' time people will need to "buy" the same music again somehow

― legit new threat wrt to a norman invasion (seandalai), Tuesday, November 11, 2014 7:41 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's also probably worth noting how many people won't in fact do this. Say a new album comes out, you listen to it on Spotify, a lot; if it leaves Spotify and reappears in some other format where the artist makes more money, you may or may not actually buy the thing. Maybe you got sick of it, maybe you decided you just need the one hit, maybe you just forget while you're picking out other music, it was a 'summer album' and the moment's passed, whatever. You've gotten most of the listening out of it you were gonna do, while it was virtually free. Whereas in the 90s, as we all know, you wanted the song, you bought the CD. Sometimes it was worth it, sometimes it was a ripoff (biggest reason reviews seemed more relevant then), but the money got made upfront. I realize I'm kinda rehashing obvious things here.

I never want to 'buy' or 'own' digital music again. I'd imagine that is a popular feeling these days.

and man, that pitchfork article by Galaxie 500 guy that amateurist linked is incredible, at least for someone like me that really only knows the barest bones of this whole situation.

yeah it's a good article, but soul-crushing

i def. feel like if i'm gonna pay money for something i want a physical copy of it so i can't lose it when my HD inevitably crashes (and i know, i have stuff backed up but still)

dumb of me not to do this until now but consider this a public service announcement:
http://www.worldstart.com/spotify-%E2%80%93-back-up-those-playlists/
unless anyone knows of an automated method of backup?

because when spotify DOES eventually ghost, I'd like a record of my playlists.

You know, I could use the same math to argue that Spotify payments are really problematic. If the average major label album earned artists around a dollar in royalties and you take that same average that I was suggesting - a ten track album played on the average of ten times total after the album is purchased - artists were making about a penny per song play. Now, there's about 7/10 of a penny being generated total, i.e., the total amount that's going to the label.

From this, I think there are two things that need to happen. Labels need to pay artists fairly out of that kitty (especially given that their overhead is much lower without manufacturing and distribution costs). And the amount paid in total by streaming services needs to go up. By how much, I don't know - that was the question I was interested in answering.

^^

The math is easy = if the 800 million people that are using itunes used spotify instead, spoitfy would be raking in $200 billion a year. That's about $199 billion more per year than they're getting now. That's MORE than PLENTY for even NICHE indie acts with like barely any plays to potentially make a living of spotify.

Spotify is the future, its not even a debate anymore. They will restructure their payments as more money comes in. I'm sure it will be a more dynamic system depending on your plays, rather than a flat rate for all as now. The format is fantastic for artists, in terms of open discovery and reaching fans reliably. Most premium Spotify users don't listen to music any other way.

hahahah

easy peasy

lol

http://bupner.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/things-to-do-with-raccoons.gif

http://www.thefunniestanimalscom.com/medias/album/vzcazrr.gif

http://www.raccoonforks.com/