http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-42541440

UK music fans streamed more music than ever before in 2017 – an astonishing total of 68.1 billion songs.

That’s the equivalent of everyone in the country playing 1,036 tracks, or almost three continuous days of music, on sites like Apple Music and Spotify.
So got me thinking about the claim that streaming gives less to the artist than CD sales etc.

CD sales down
However, vinyl only accounts for 3% of the overall music market, and its success is in stark contrast to the decline in CDs and downloads.

CD sales, which peaked at 162.4 million in 2004, now languish at 41.6 million.

Digital downloads are also on the way out, with just 13.8 million albums bought on stores like iTunes and Amazon last year, a drop of 23%.

Overall, music consumption was up by 8.7% – the biggest yearly increase since 1998.

Sales and streams contributed £1.2 billion to the UK economy, according to the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA).

So at a peak 162 million albums a year, is you take them all to be 12 track albums that is just shy of 2bn tracks paid for. (assuming I’m not getting caught in the US/UKbn here) which is 3% of the number of tracks streamed.

So if consumption is changing and volumes are well up is that because we take more as it’s cheaper, we are listening to streaming like a personal radio – as in we wouldn’t buy most of the tracks we stream – we just listen to more. Certainly I’ve left spotify on wandering for days at a time playing thousands of tracks that I’ve never owned and probably wouldn’t search out but artists have got paid for the play. In traditional methods they would get nothing and I’d never have heard of that song, the other case is where shops and café are running through spotify etc. rather than the radio artists are getting paid more – cafe/bar downstairs is playing spotify 14 hrs a day 360 days of the year.

but artists have got paid for the play

Spotify Pays 0.00429p Per Stream

I’m not sure whether I’ve totally missed your point Mike, but being paid 2/3 of bugger all per stream doesn’t really substitute for physical media sales in most cases.

Isn’t touring (or borrowing against the projected income from touring) the major source of income for artists now?

1,036 tracks per person in 2017
0.00429p per stream

That’s 4.44p per person per year. Much less than we spent on CDs and vinyl when they were the leading media, but I can’t remember how much the artists received – I don’t think it was much.

Chatting on Twitter to one of my favourite bands (PSB) and they get 0.00001p per streaming. Bigger bands get more but not hugely so.

Where’s all the money going? I spend about £100/year with Spotify.

I’d have to listen to about a billion tracks for the artists to get all of that.

0.00429p per stream > £0 – I believe this is Mike’s point, expressed quite clearly.

I think his post is aimed at those who don’t use the streaming apps in the belief that artistes don’t get paid as much as if they bought the media. But, indeed, there are loads of songs people want to hear but wouldn’t buy.
I use a complete mixture, I still like to own stuff, so buy loads on Bandcamp and junodownload, as well as streaming some stuff.
Great that streaming is making more people listen to music.
Shame Spotify pushes certain music on people – no idea how it works (some artists/labels pay to have their stuff prominent?), but it’s bloody annoying when you search for something and it lists a load of crap with similar names above the actual thing you’ve searched for – even if you enter the name exactly!

I wonder how the artist payment is calculated to, do they only get their payment if someone listens to all/a certain percentage of the song or any time it starts? A lot of streamed songs I only listen to short sections of (especially if digging around for something new I might like). I also wonder if there’s services out there boosting play time (e.g. an artist pays for a bot farm to stream their tracks millions of times), although at 0.00001p per play the rewards of this (vs bot detection and banning) might not be worth it.

Why do the artists agree to their content going on these streaming sites if they don’t get a good deal for it? Seems a bit bizarre that you’d give away your content for close to free.

Seems a bit bizarre that you’d give away your content for close to free.

Loads of artists give away stuff for free just to get heard. Loads of free dls available on bandcamp.

Personally I don’t see much wrong with the .004 per play rate.

.004 x 10,000,000 plays = 40k per year. Which is no bad.

Or equivalent to selling 1 million copies of album that people will play every track once.

Or equivalent to selling 100,000 albums that people will play 10 times.

Seems fair enough. It’s a changed landscape. Need to get out and promote yourself better and diversify in the music game.

But 100m plays gets you about 400k, no a bad return, just need to get yet arse out there and earn them. That the targets you are looking at

You look at the youtube channels and the likes these days. It’s similar levels. Seems the goals are 100k, 1m, 10m subscribers, hitting the upper levels gets you a decent return.

If it bothers you, use a service that pays out more than Spotify. Like Tidal or Apple Music…

Personally, I use Apple Music as it integrates best with the music I already own (and not all available on any streaming platform)

Rachel

To spotify mainly I think (doubtless they have plenty of costs).

I know somebody selling music and he is busy marketing himself to get people to stream his music, but he gets paid a pittance from it.

Seems a bit bizarre that you’d give away your content for close to free

Because getting £10 from streaming is better than nothing and mostly people streaming wouldn’t buy your CD anyway, but more importantly it’s about exposure. It’s clearly a difficult game making money from music nowadays, but there are ways to do it and they involve getting yourself known.

edit: obligatory links, some on here might like Phil’s stuff
https://open.spotify.com/album/6qik782gKespWjaaXVa0XB
https://capas.bandcamp.com/album/undisclosed
https://www.facebook.com/Capasmusic/

oldnpastit – Member

Where’s all the money going? I spend about £100/year with Spotify.

I’d have to listen to about a billion tracks for the artists to get all of that. Streaming infrastructure, marketing and subsidising all the free accounts I suspect.

seosamh77 – Member

Personally I don’t see much wrong with the .004 per play rate.

.004 x 10,000,000 plays = 40k per year. Which is no bad. It’s next to useless. Wouldn’t even keep a band going if they took no pay from it at all. And yet their music is regarded well enough to have been listened to 10million times!
I would say the aim should be to get this up to about 3x this.

It’s next to useless. Wouldn’t even keep a band going if they took no pay from it at all. And yet their music is regarded well enough to have been listened to 10million times!

…if streaming on Spotify were their only income stream*. Surely they’d make money from gigs, CD sales, merchandise and other streaming services etc.

If a band wants to make proper money and a living from music they need to run it as a business, not sit in the pub moaning about the people who’ve invested hundreds of millions in IT systems and promotion.

*see what I did there! 😀

This thread is useless without pictures CountZero

I think part of the problem is the excesses of the 80s, write a one hit wonder and become a millionaire overnight. In the 60s, most of the big Motown hit musicians had a very basic lifestyle. Things have just reverted back to the long term mean, which is no bad thing IMO…

Yes, but they’ve got access to a globalised market these days in ways in which they didn’t have before. 195 countries in the world, say 50 of they are your targets, for your album you are looking at 100,000,000 plays to get you 400k.

So, that’s 2 million plays per country, seems a no bad target for world domination! 😆

10million times!

Regarding this, anyone know the average play rate of a traditional bought album? say 10,000 are sold, how many track plays are these albums getting?

Btw, I’m not against upping the rate, I just don’t think it’s utterly terrible, it’s not great, but if you’ve a strong following, you can make money. And if you are getting 1m plays on spotify, you’re probably getting plays on google, apple, youtube, people buying CDs, merchandise, going to concerts, licensing etc etc, it’s just one part of your revenue stream.

I doubt james brown would have been greeting about it! 😆

footflaps – Member
I think part of the problem is the excesses of the 80s, write a one hit wonder and become a millionaire overnight. In the 60s, most of the big Motown hit musicians had a very basic lifestyle. Things have just reverted back to the long term mean, which is no bad thing IMO…

This is sort of where I’m coming from tbh, I don;t think just cause someone wrote an album they should be pampered for the rest of their life. That’s not to say I think they should be ripped of by multinationals either. There should be a balance there.

But I do find it amusing when you hear stories of people saying they’ve 100k plays and they lament the fact they aren’t millionaires on the back of it. Aye no worries, try a bit harder.

DezB..
With regard to your point about Spotify pushing certain music on people ..this has always been so ..even before the advent of streaming .
Record companies used sweeteners to get their merchandise prominently displayed in “record stores”..even in non traditional outlets where counter boxes of a particular artists new release were displayed prominently at the till..
In a small way I have maybe influenced the way some of the population used to buy cassette & CD’s while on their travels as I used to work for one of the UK’s major distributors selling into non traditional outlets. The company bought product from every major label as well as budget ..think back to the 90’s and the amount of space given over to cassette / CD / video / DVD / video games product in motorway service areas / garage forecourt shops etc..it was huge and until things got a little more scientific the guy at the sharp end had complete autonomy to manage the space at each individual outlet to maximise sales ..which wasn’t always what was in the charts at the time ..
It would be naive to think that record companies dont offer better terms to Spotify to promote certain artists ..it certainly happened back then ..
God how I miss the good old days ! 😉

0.00429p

btw, I don’t think that is correct.

It’s £0.00429

My Band Has 1,000,000 Spotify Streams. Want to See Our Royalties?

Total number of streams: 1,023,501

Total revenue: $4,955.90

Specific time period accounted: 10/15/2013 – 2/15/2013

rate seems to vary per country and at times too, looking at that, So I’d imagine there’s still growth potential in a lot of those markets to come in the next 10 years.

..this has always been so ..even before the advent of streaming .

I’m fully aware of record company pluggers and radio playlists that existed before streaming!
Point was I find it annoying on Spotify – Search for (this is a made-up example!) “Brian” and you get Brian Adams, Brian Eno, Brian Pern all before Brian (if there was a band called Brian). In the days of Google searching (yes, I know their searches can be biased too), you expect more precise results. Well, I do anyway 🙂

0.00429p
btw, I don’t think that is correct.

It’s £0.00429

I should bleedin hope so!

oldtennisshoes – Member
This thread is useless without pictures CountZero

Just don’t say his name 3 times 😆

http://hypebot.com/hypebot/2017/07/new-analysis-calculates-compares-per-stream-payouts-from-spotify-apple-music-pandora-youtube-and-mor.html

Trying to figure out exactly how much a streaming service pays per stream is a moving target, since there are so many variables involved. That said, an interesting chart from Information Is Beautiful tries to average it all out to come out up with the current royalty payouts from each. Keep in mind that this is only sound recording portion of the royalty and doesn’t include publishing (which is about 10x smaller).

From highest payout to lowest:

Napster logoNapster – $0.0167
Tidal – $0.0110
Apple Music – $0.0064
Google Play – $0.0059
Deezer – $0.0056
Spotify – $0.0038
Pandora – $0.0011
YouTube – $0.0006
That means Napster is paying out a bit more than a cent and a half per stream, Apple Music about 6/10th of a cent, Spotify around 4/10th of cent, and YouTube at 6/100th of a cent. These figures aren’t as cut and dried as they seem, however. Here are some of the variables that exist that make each streaming payout unique:

1. The subscriber tier. Any service with a free tier (Spotify) pays less than a service with a paid subscriber-only tier (Apple Music). In other words, if most of your streams are from the free tier, you make less money.

2. Interactive or non-interactive. A service that plays like a radio (Pandora) pays a lot less than an interactive service (Spotify).

3. The country the plays are in. If you get a lot of plays in a country were the subscriber rate is only $3.99 per month as opposed to the U.S. where it’s $9.99 per month, the payout will be less.

4. Market share. Many services pay not on a per stream basis but on market share (Spotify). That means that the more you get played, the higher per stream you get paid.

5. The advertiser rate. On platforms that gain much of their revenue from advertising (YouTube), the type of advertiser that you attract will make a difference. For instance, high-end brands like Mercedes pay a lot more for the ads than Pizza Hut. Also, the time of year can make a difference in how much the advertiser will pay as well (Holiday season versus the summer).

6. Label deal. If you’re an indie artist, you’re seeing the entire amounts quoted above. If you’re signed to a label, you’re probably only seeing about 25%, depending upon your deal.

These are just a few of the variables involved when it comes to determining the per stream average rate, so as you can see, the rates can vary wildly.

Although the figures above are a pretty good guideline, there still might be a lot of wiggle room involved as there was no references as to how the numbers were derived.

I realise I’m posting up different numbers, as mentioned above, obviously difficult to pin down.

Thought this one was intestesting, to show the comparison bewteen, paid for, and advertising backed streams.

So if consumption is changing and volumes are well up is that because we take more as it’s cheaper, we are listening to streaming like a personal radio – as in we wouldn’t buy most of the tracks we stream – we just listen to more.

The one thing not mentioned here is that (free) streaming has more or less eliminated piracy. From the age I started listening to music to the time I moved entirely to Spotify I was always copying more music than I paid for (and most of my money probably went on music when I was at school and through my 20’s and 30’s I was buying an album at least every couple of weeks). Even when i was buying a lot I was copying just as much.

The issue for the industry is that Spotify is only charging £10 a month. 30 years ago a CD was £15 and even as a schoolkid i was buying more than one a month.

The whole landscape has changed, not just the sales. Back in the 60s in order to make a record you would have to pay for studio time, make a demo, get signed to a label, get an advance then go into a studio where the producer would have booked the session musicians (including the orchestra – loads of pop singles had strings and horns). Then the promoters would start work. The result was that far fewer musicians would get a sniff at the business beyond playing the local dance hall. Most of the earnings would have gone to the person with the writing and publishing credits, most likely a professional writer not in the band.

By the 70s the orchestra would have gone and the band/artist might well be writing their own stuff, but recording costs would have escalated as people took months to record an album, writing the material while paying for studio time!

Even when EDM and the like came along it still had to be recorded. Now that producing the music ready for consumption is so much cheaper the market is open to so many more musicians (who all strive to sound the same) so the money and sales are spread more thinly.

I’d be interested to know how the world of classical music has changed, given that playing and (I assume) recording has changed much less than popular music. I guess performances were always more important whereas in the past records were where the money was in pop, going back a few decades.

30 years ago a CD was £15 and even as a schoolkid i was buying more than one a month.

Couple of quid doon the barras though! 😆

tbh, I think in my case, I stopped buying CD’s when napster was in full flow and for years after, I now pay a google music sub, so, I guess swings and roundabouts.

I think there’s probably growth on the horizon, don’t know recent numbers, but till 2015 looks like revenue has stopped it’s decline. (from a much bigger high in aroun 1998)

be interested to see if 16 & 17 saw an increase in total revenue.

Tell me about it – horns are good, but it’s tricky doing a cover when there’s a full orchestra to rearrange, or even just more than a couple of horns when we’ve only got two of us (sax and trumpet or trombone). Fun though, and we should probably start trying to reinterpret tracks a bit. Nominally I suppose I’m a professional musician as I’ve been paid to play, though with a 7 piece band you don’t get much more than minimum wage at typical local club/pub rates even just including the time spent on the day. If you’re selling out proper venues then you should make decent money gigging though.

from memory, bands used to get about a dollar per album sold in revenue (physical cd sales). if you assume 13 tracks per album, they get approx $0.1 per album play. I recon that I’ve listened to most albums I bought more than 10 times, so with streaming they’re actually earning more per play from me than they were before (not to mention all the money that bands I didn’t like enough to buy music from are now getting).

be interested to see if 16 & 17 saw an increase in total revenue.

I’d think so, what with 4.1 million vinyl albums sold in 2017 and 14.3 million in the US.

DezB – Member

be interested to see if 16 & 17 saw an increase in total revenue.

I’d think so, what with 4.1 million vinyl albums sold in 2017 and 14.3 million in the US.
The people who bought this:
19. Guardians Of The Galaxy – Awesome Mix 2 Original Soundtrack
Mistakenly thought they were buying a LaserDisc

and the people who bought this:
2. Liam Gallagher – As You Where
Mistakenly thought they were buying music

Well, yeah, I didn’t see fit to comment on the shite people are actually buying! Bit of an insight into the age-range of the majority of vinyl purchasers. Well, and the poor taste.

Yet again control is being handed over to a few corporate middlemen, who’s short, medium and long term goals will be to increase profits.

Same old really isn’t it, we are just in the early stages of the cycle.

Some of the streaming money goes to the content delivery networks that are used to deliver the streams, a lot of the time that is a licensed cost that the provider has to pay to ensure that the customer gets the stream without buffering etc as customer experience is important to them.

That’s not a cheap cost either.

An interesting blog about a user of bandcamp & the revenue they’ve received over the past year.

2. Liam Gallagher – As You Where
Mistakenly thought they were buying music

Indeed 🙂

Streaming is crap for artists especially smaller / newer ones. Sadly most consumers just want free/cheap.

James Blunt (a million streams to make a 4 grand as per above)

[video]https://youtu.be/5bgZvAI68WE[/video]

PrinceJohn –
An interesting blog about a user of bandcamp & the revenue they’ve received over the past year.

Thanks for that – really interesting.