Artists don’t generally make money from music sales unless they self publish. Spotify gets the music out there and heard so people discover bands and go see them in concert and buy merch, which is where bands make their money.
It’s crazy that it’s 2023 and people still don’t understand this.
exactly. It is crazy that people still think that if you don’t pay spotify it is the artists that loose money. Most of the subscription value goes to spotify and record labels themselves
Well technically it is the record labels’ jobs. I think most big artists don’t interact directly with Spotify but through a label that signed them when they were small and takes 90% of the income from their songs.
Exactly. When you see someone whingeing about how little they earned from x amount of streams, go look up what spotify pays per stream, do the maths, it never adds up.
It’s because they signed a shitty publishing / label deal. I’ve got plenty of music on spotify and tbh have earned more in royalties from streams than I ever did via labels in this day and age (though there was a ‘golden age’ where digital downloads paid very well, assuming the label manager wasn’t on the fiddle). Spotify could prob pay a little more per stream at this point though.
Spotify pays like 0.003 per stream the fuck are you talking about? Either you are racking up millions of plays or you are straight talking out your ass. Granted taking a shitty label deal is not something to promote, but don’t act like Spotify actually pays shit, because it does not…
Selling 20 albums at $10 would net around $200, getting 20 people to listen to your album on Spotify nets maybe 80 cents…
You don’t own songs on spotify, you merely license the temporary right to listen to them. Therefore the proper comparison is not album sales, it’s radio plays.
Now I don’t know the average rate for radio licensing, but I’m willing to bet big money that it’s absolutely nowhere near $200 for 20 people listening.
Maybe radio is not as cheap as spotify, maybe not, but famously spotify is not profitable so the labels are still to blame regardless.
I worked at labels for years… that’s not the way it works
If an artist is enough of a dummy to blow their entire advance unwisely quitting their job, spend months in the studio, and get an elaborate tour bus: the label will pay for it but those expenditures are weighed against your royalties. Scummy labels exist, sure, but often the artist went on a spending spree with what anointed to a loan the label was paying them.
Spotify also pays absolute garbage and fucks bands harder than most labels were ever able to
They get fractions of a penny per play, you are better off streaming it once on SoundCloud for them then listening a hundred times on Spotify. All the dick riding here is from people who do not understand the business model of streaming services and how they steal all profit from those creators bringing content to their platform. Ad monetization does not fucking work it creates businesses with massive losses so data brokers can eventually scoop up the data from the ashes of the service and feed it to marketing departments at other companies for a fee, and no artists do not get a cent from those sales it’s a joke. Buy directly from the artist on band camp or donate via patreon if they have it.
I usually buy the records of the artists I like. I stopped using spotify for this exact reason, it preys on artists and fattens the rich bastards on top
This. This is why I am in the “I still buy CDs” camp. DL the album and if I’m still listening to it a couple days later I buy the CD, assuming the artist still even releases on CD…
Sure for major artists pulling in millions a year, but at that point fuck em. For indy and unsigned artists, directly buying their media goes basically straight to them and is usually the highest margin item they have. If they are a massive artist sure their merch has economy of scale setup and they rake in money through that but I don’t support massive wealth inequality so they can fuck right off.
Obviously it’s different for unsigned artists who have self published, thought that was pretty self explanatory since they don’t have a record label/publisher/etc that takes the bulk of the money.
Isnt that the Labels Job? Ive read that Spotify gets only around 30% and gives 70% to Labels. Which then pay artist pennys on the Dollar if even. 30% for All the backend Server stuff etc is fine. Same as gaming with steam as example
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Stealing from the artists? But that is already Spotifys job.
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Artists don’t generally make money from music sales unless they self publish. Spotify gets the music out there and heard so people discover bands and go see them in concert and buy merch, which is where bands make their money.
It’s crazy that it’s 2023 and people still don’t understand this.
exactly. It is crazy that people still think that if you don’t pay spotify it is the artists that loose money. Most of the subscription value goes to spotify and record labels themselves
Well technically it is the record labels’ jobs. I think most big artists don’t interact directly with Spotify but through a label that signed them when they were small and takes 90% of the income from their songs.
Exactly. When you see someone whingeing about how little they earned from x amount of streams, go look up what spotify pays per stream, do the maths, it never adds up.
It’s because they signed a shitty publishing / label deal. I’ve got plenty of music on spotify and tbh have earned more in royalties from streams than I ever did via labels in this day and age (though there was a ‘golden age’ where digital downloads paid very well, assuming the label manager wasn’t on the fiddle). Spotify could prob pay a little more per stream at this point though.
Spotify pays like 0.003 per stream the fuck are you talking about? Either you are racking up millions of plays or you are straight talking out your ass. Granted taking a shitty label deal is not something to promote, but don’t act like Spotify actually pays shit, because it does not…
Selling 20 albums at $10 would net around $200, getting 20 people to listen to your album on Spotify nets maybe 80 cents…
You don’t own songs on spotify, you merely license the temporary right to listen to them. Therefore the proper comparison is not album sales, it’s radio plays.
Now I don’t know the average rate for radio licensing, but I’m willing to bet big money that it’s absolutely nowhere near $200 for 20 people listening.
Maybe radio is not as cheap as spotify, maybe not, but famously spotify is not profitable so the labels are still to blame regardless.
I worked at labels for years… that’s not the way it works
If an artist is enough of a dummy to blow their entire advance unwisely quitting their job, spend months in the studio, and get an elaborate tour bus: the label will pay for it but those expenditures are weighed against your royalties. Scummy labels exist, sure, but often the artist went on a spending spree with what anointed to a loan the label was paying them.
Spotify also pays absolute garbage and fucks bands harder than most labels were ever able to
How about unsigned artists?
They get fractions of a penny per play, you are better off streaming it once on SoundCloud for them then listening a hundred times on Spotify. All the dick riding here is from people who do not understand the business model of streaming services and how they steal all profit from those creators bringing content to their platform. Ad monetization does not fucking work it creates businesses with massive losses so data brokers can eventually scoop up the data from the ashes of the service and feed it to marketing departments at other companies for a fee, and no artists do not get a cent from those sales it’s a joke. Buy directly from the artist on band camp or donate via patreon if they have it.
I usually buy the records of the artists I like. I stopped using spotify for this exact reason, it preys on artists and fattens the rich bastards on top
This. This is why I am in the “I still buy CDs” camp. DL the album and if I’m still listening to it a couple days later I buy the CD, assuming the artist still even releases on CD…
Even buying the cd only puts a few bucks at best in the artists pockets. 80%+ goes to the publisher/producer/marketing/etc.
If you want to support an artist go see them live and/or buy merch from them directly. Anything what is just supporting publishers.
And you can support wonderful, consumer-friendly businesses like TicketMaster at the same time!
So do you want to support the artist or not?
Sneak into the show but buy merch?
At that point, just mail them a fucking check.
Sure for major artists pulling in millions a year, but at that point fuck em. For indy and unsigned artists, directly buying their media goes basically straight to them and is usually the highest margin item they have. If they are a massive artist sure their merch has economy of scale setup and they rake in money through that but I don’t support massive wealth inequality so they can fuck right off.
Obviously it’s different for unsigned artists who have self published, thought that was pretty self explanatory since they don’t have a record label/publisher/etc that takes the bulk of the money.
Isnt that the Labels Job? Ive read that Spotify gets only around 30% and gives 70% to Labels. Which then pay artist pennys on the Dollar if even. 30% for All the backend Server stuff etc is fine. Same as gaming with steam as example