this argument is so tired.
most artists dont really care about streaming or selling their music. most of their real money comes from touring, merch, and people somehow interacting with them.
most musicians just want to make music, express themselves, and connect with folks who enjoy their stuff or want to make music with em.
Even some of the largest artists in the world only receive a few grand a year from streaming. Only the top 1% or so of artists get enough streams to even come close to living off it. It isn't that big of a deal. Music piracy isn't the theft people think it is, lars.
youtube is kind of the same way. the real money comes from sponsorships which come from engagement. nobody on youtube is upset that their video got stolen because that mentality was never sold to us to justify screwing us over. musicians, however, were used as pawns so music labels could get more money.
now folks will say stuff like "this is theft" which is just a roundabout way of supporting labels who steal from the artists. so, it's just a weird gaslighting. there's a reason folks turned on metallica over the napster stuff. metallica were being used to further the interests of labels over the interests of fans. and now you're doing the same thing :) It's a script we hear over and over again yet people keep falling for it.
> most artists dont really care about streaming or selling their music. most of their real money comes from touring, merch, and people somehow interacting with them.
I think you have it the wrong way round. I'm sure that musicians would love to make money from album / song sales. It's just that between piracy and companies like Spotify, artists make pennies on these activities, so their only choice is to make money on more labor-intensive stuff where they retain more control.
Note that Spotify, somehow, finds it profitable to be in the streaming business.
It takes time and effort to receive money, especially from consumers worldwide. Most hobbyists would not going to deal with all the complexity in it.
I think it was was Les Claypool (of the band Primus) who said on some podcast that recording a studio album with its attendant very non-trivial costs is really just creating a very expensive business card to hand out to prospective clients.
Back then, that is. It probably cost $250k in 1990 for them to record Frizzle Fry in a studio, handwave $500k in 2025 dollars. But Bandcamp on MacBook and some gear from GuitarStudio, round to $15k and your time. neither of which isn't trivial or cheap, but it's not 1990 no more.
> I'm sure that musicians would love to make money from album / song sales.
i think we're actually in agreement. I just don't see streaming as a "must". A lot of musicians I work with and follow also don't see streaming as a must. It's a necessary evil in today's convenience fixated life/culture.
Most musicians I ask about this absolutely fucking hate streaming and don't view it as a real revenue stream.
That's why nearly all merch tables still have CDs, bandcamp links or records for purchase. Artists make more money off a t-shirt sale than they do from 50,000 streams.
I think you slightly misinterpreted what I meant by "selling their music". Or I might have said it poorly.
also, piracy does not mean less money for small artists. evidence suggests the opposite, i think. I think piracy marginally harms record sales for the top 1% of artists while benefiting basically all other artists.
piracy = free exposure. more exposure means more ticket sales, more merch sales, etc. most musicians i know just want people to hear their stuff. piracy enables that for the majority of folks who can't afford to buy every album. i think artists care more about their art being used in commercial stuff without permission/payment, not everyday people checking their shit out.
Spotify paid out ten billion dollars to artists in 2024. This is not small potatoes - total 2024 music industry merchandise sales was around $14b.
Youtube also paid out literally 50x more to creators in 2024 than Patreon had total subscriptions on the platform.
These big platform payouts matter a lot.
> This is not small potatoes
Unless you're a small potato. Approximately 0% of what I pay for spotify goes to the artists I actually listen to. Fucking Taylor Swift and the Beatles estate don't need my money.
As a reasonably known but not super popular bluegrass artist, I agree: please steal my music instead of paying Spotify for it.
Hell, Weird Al himself only made $12 from Spotify views in 2023.
To rights owners, not to artists. It's not a trivial difference. Ask Taylor Swift.
Some quick Googling shows 1 million streams pays approx $2000.
You'd need 40,000,000 streams to earn $80,000.
be aware that payout rates change based on tiers and a bunch of other factors. So, it would likely take more than 40 million streams to earn $80k.
I believe Weird Al posted his streaming revenue a few years ago. He had something like 80 million streams and said he earned about $12. https://www.billboard.com/music/pop/weird-al-yankovic-wrappe...
There is a reason people like T Swift and whatnot tour constantly, it's how they make money. Weird Al is known for his amazing live shows, there's a reason for it: they make more money.
Ad supported streams in Spotify are counted in a separate pool, and only get paid out of the ad revenue pool.
Artists can of course complain that "they're selling our music for cheap!", especially in the ad pool. But what's worth remembering is that when it comes to setting optimal price points, Spotify's interest is almost perfectly aligned with the artists. And Spotify has a hell of a lot more data than artists (not to mention financial sense, which you probably didn't become an artist if you had a lot of).
> Ad supported streams in Spotify are counted in a separate pool, and only get paid out of the ad revenue pool.
What are the rough rates for each pool? That's the important part here. And how many artists are far enough from the average ratio that the detail of two pools matters.
https://soundcamps.com/spotify-royalties-calculator/ This site says $0.00238 is typical for "worldwide" and a lot more than that for US and Europe specifically.
I'd be interested in knowing that too, as far as I know Spotify doesn't publish details to the public at least.
But I have no trouble believing some artists will be vastly overrepresented in the ad financed pool. Also, there are separate pools by country, and countries have different subscription prices - being big in Japan will be more profitable than being big in India.
Payout per stream is a terrible metric. It's almost like if you ranked grocery stores by payment per gram.
> Payout per stream is a terrible metric. It's almost like if you ranked grocery stores by payment per gram.
CDs are usually similar prices. Per-stream isn't nearly as bad as wildly different products sharing prices.
We could debate per stream versus per minute but I don't know if that's a particularly big effect. It causes some annoyance but it's mostly compensated for already.
Anything that gives different value to different artists is probably going to favor the big ones and just make things worse.
CDs get wildly different number of plays. But the number of plays, whether from a record or from a streaming service, isn't proportional to how glad you are that this music exists and you can listen to it.
The present system favors big artist rights owners a lot, but most of all it rewards owners of music played on repeat, i.e. background music.
I do think allocating money per-account or something should be better. Don't let a constant listener allocate the royalties from ten other people.
Trying to measure importance feels like a lost cause.
The Pudding had a nice article explaining how streaming revenue is distributed: https://pudding.cool/2022/06/streaming/
When he says "so if I'm doing the math right that means I earned $12" I interpret that as him exaggerating for effect. It's definitely not him citing the pay slip.
"$2 or more per thousand streams, split across rightsholders" seems like an accurate estimate.
That seems reasonable?
Assume an artist (either directly or through a rights holder) makes 1/3 income from streaming, 1/3 from merch and physical albums, and 1/3 from live events.
40m streams per year would be 800k per week. 200k fans worldwide playing 4 times per week on average could get you there. Thats like a decent sized but not enormous youtube channel.
200k fans worldwide would also support the ticket sales and merchandise sales aspects.
You only need 5000 fans to buy your CD/album/w.e at $15 to make 80k
Per year, which is a big lift compared to them pressing play on Spotify
Yeah but you need a quarter million people every week according to that guy. That will drop off over time.
But you only need to record your song once and get money forever. Nobody pays me per function invocation in production, that would be very nice
99% of that 10 billion went to a handful of artists. Actually, I'd wager nearly half of it went to labels and other middlemen, but that's beside the point. The vast majority of money in the music industry never trickles down, ever.
edit: I looked it up, 70% of spotify's payouts go directly to labels, not artists. So...that $10 bil is nothing.
This is by design and it's the same broken system that metallica defended in the 90s/00s because it benefits large artists while fucking over the other 99%.
We keep repeating the same script using the same busted short term logic.
Labels suck but when we're considering the merits of Spotify it's not their fault and artists can put music on the service without an abusive label.
Weird Al pointed out in 2023 that his 80 million Spotify views that year netted him $12 - enough for a nice sandwich.
Ah so you're only stealing a bit of money from the artists. That's ok then.
Touring makes almost no money. Only concerts with >1000ppl make money. Below that you can assume not even the sound engineer gets paid.
Not true at all. I support small artists and it's the only way they make money. Ticket sales and merch make up the vast majority of artist revenue for artists who arent in the top 1%. Most musicians don't make money if they aren't touring or selling merch somehow.
there's also the invaluable aspect of networking that touring allows. bit of a tangent, but it's very important for musicians to network.
The exception are musicians who do production stuff. Think movie/tv scores, commercials, etc. I actually know a handful of artists who used to tour quite a lot but eventually settled down to do production stuff. So they transitioned from touring to make money to production. Touring all year with no healthcare catches up to people.
I know a number of musicians that tour nightclubs, small venues, and festivals.
They make a living; not a luxurious one, but they do OK. They just enjoy making music, and feel that it's worth it. Many of them never even record their music.