Become a Member
Remove ads, unlock a dark mode theme, and get other perks by upgrading your account. Experience the website the way it's meant to be.

Streaming Music Payouts

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Melody Bot, Apr 22, 2021.

  1. Melody Bot Apr 22, 2021
    Melody Bot

    Your friendly little forum bot. Staff Member

    This article has been imported from chorus.fm for discussion. All of the forum rules still apply.

    This breakdown from Nick Heer about music streaming payouts touched on a point I think about often:

    I get millions of songs for my $10 per month. In about the same timeframe in 2009, I also added Burial’s “Untrue” to my library. I have played the thirteen songs on that album 684 times in total, leading to an estimated payout of $6.84. My CD copy of that album probably cost $15, of which William Bevan probably earned just a few pennies. Apple Music obviously has not existed since 2009 but, if it had, I cannot work out how much less artists would have made if I had streamed all of my music instead of buying physical copies.

    Somehow, we are still paying just $10 per month for music in an era where streaming must be paired with live performance to have any hope of generating an income for an artist, all the while fighting the paradox of streaming music, and artists are still getting screwed in the middle of all of it. There would not be a music industry without music, but the industry gets all of the money while musicians still have to fight for scraps.

    more

    Not all embedded content is displayed here. You can view the original to see embedded videos, tweets, etc.
     
  2. ramomcferno Apr 22, 2021
    ramomcferno

    Mystery is the secret ingredient Prestigious

    I would pay an additional $5-10 per month if it was going directly to the artists.
     
    Brent likes this.
  3. Brent Apr 22, 2021
    Brent

    Trusted Prestigious

    Lemme tell you about this thing called Patreon...
     
    j0hnnyrt and sowrongitsryan like this.
  4. whyte39 Apr 23, 2021
    whyte39

    Regular

    i've been bouncing the idea of a bandcamp/rdio style service around in my head for years now. I've got the sketches/designs, just need a developer that wants to team up to build a prototype for something that potentially never goes anywhere.
     
  5. Remove
  6. orangehorizon Apr 23, 2021
    orangehorizon

    Trusted

    I am not the user you quoted but paying 5-10$ more a month to support all the artists you listen to in that month on Spotify (or whatever streaming service you use) is a little different than supporting the same number of artists via Patreon.
     
  7. ramomcferno Apr 23, 2021
    ramomcferno

    Mystery is the secret ingredient Prestigious

    I appreciate the suggestion but that is not really my thing.
    I was hoping to do something more like that. The $10 to go to licensing and the labels' costs and the additional $5-10 to go a pot for artists to get a portion based off of their plays.
     
  8. noisyneighbour Apr 24, 2021
    noisyneighbour

    Newbie

    This is the root of the problem; streaming services paying an astronomical amount to major labels just to license their catalogues, and then pay streaming rates after that. I don’t doubt that Spotify and Apple Music executives are making good money while paying terrible streaming rates, but IMO the problem is these dinosaur record labels charging millions just to have their albums on streaming services.
     
    orangehorizon and morken like this.