Spotify - anyone heard of it?

There's a very basic error early in that piece, in that Aloe Blacc's vaunted (anti-vaunted) $4000 was from Pandora, not Spotify. The Spotify royalties from that volume of streams would have been somewhere around $1,200,000. At this point "Wake Me Up" has generated 370m streams on Spotify, for over $2.5m in royalties. From just one streaming service. That's a pretty qualitative difference.

But the longer the piece goes on, the more balanced it becomes. Worth reading to the end.

you're right that the 4k number comes from pandora, but it was also aloe blacc's share of the songwriting royalties (split by three people) for "Wake Me Up." Your $2.5m number is based on the estimated mechanical royalty rate to performers. according to this: http://thetrichordist.com/2014/11/12/the-streaming-price-bible-spotify-youtube-and-what-1-million-plays-means-to-you/ the songwriting royalty rate is closer to 0.000521, but just as you're using .006 for the mechanical, we'll bump it up to .0006 for the songwriting.

370m streams = $222,000 in songwriting royalties
222,000/3 = $74,000

still a qualitative difference from the 4k but not nearly as extreme as 4k to 2.5m

xposts p sure ol' neil pulling streams had approx zero impact on gross plays per user (why because #whodafuqisneilyoung?)

Whoops, "mechanical" royalty is meant to describe the songwriting royalty not the performer. Not that it changes the issue (songwriters still get the smaller rate) but I didn't mean to confuse things further

Spotify's published .006-.0084 range (which I usually simplify to .007 for estimation purposes) is for total royalties, of which 21% goes to the songwriters (publishing) and 79% to the performers (mechanical), by US regulation. So that's $544,000 songwriting royalties and about $2m performer royalties for 370m streams. Blacc sang on "Wake Me Up", as well as co-writing it, so I would assume he gets some share of both parts, but that depends on his deal.

do you have a link to somewhere re the 21/79 split? i can't seem to find that number anywhere

ha, missed this - 19 Entertainment is suing spotify re: its alleged equity stake in spotify

http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6605841/sonys-spotify-equity-artist-royalties-lawsuit-breakage

part of why i find it so frustrating when the streaming side describes that lump perofmer royalty as going to the "rights holders" and then acting like it's up the label what happens next, is that they're ignoring the large advances (and alleged equity stakes) given to the major labels. while it's true spotify/apple/etc didn't invent the byzantine accounting that leads to major label artists seeing so little of that amount, they're not being transparent about how they've aided the major labels in making money artists can never hope to see a dime of.

gah typos. 19 Entertainment is suing SONY re equity. and spotify is acting like its up to the label what happens next

from the suit by 19 ent

"Each of the major record labels also own an interest in Spotify," states the amended complaint. "On information and belief, those other record labels have engaged in the same self-dealing as Sony with respect to the diversion of payments to them, and the below market streaming royalty rates to artists. Together, and individually, Sony and the other major record labels therefore have significant power to exert control over Spotify in order to not only dictate how revenue will be paid, but wrongfully and in bad faith divert money from royalties that must be shared to other forms of revenue that they can keep for themselves."

i definitely understand why spotify execs have gotten defensive about "middlemen" fucking up the relationship between them and artists - companies like sony extracted favored nation deals and just shrug innocently when its biggest artists complain or even back out - but it's still facetious to act like spotify is looking out FOR the artists when they give those deals

21% comes from http://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-explained/#royalties-in-detail

But I said it wrong. Correct is "In the United States, for example, statutes dictate that publishers receive ~21% the amount that master recording owners receive." Not 21% of the whole.

So 5:1, not 4:1, and $.007 would break down into about .0058 for performers and .0012 for writers. 370m streams produces about $2.1m for performers and $450k for writers. Still, that publishing rate is approximately 20x the rate Blacc attributes to Pandora.

so i've apparently "maxed out" the number of albums i can save to "my music". well it still allows me to save them but it doesn't retain them when i exit the program. *siiigghhhh*

i can make playlists of albums and put them in separate folders, i guess. should have done it that way all along. folders!

Folders are key. And in case it isn't obvious, you can put folders inside folders, too.

will you ever be able to "play" folders in the roku app? currently it only let's you play individual playlists

okay now there's Prince's newest single but nothing else!

v funky move he warned you he is funky

"treat streaming like a radio, and give them what you'd like to have on the radio," which could mean classic tracks as well new ones, does seem like the smartest play to me

seems like the most awful play to me. no disrespect to my beloved prince, but the thing that sucks most about commercial radio is its unwillingness to play anything except the individual tracks handed to them (and maybe paid for) by labels and promoters. they have the albums, presumably, but it's as if they literally can't see the other 10 or 12 tracks. why on earth would a streaming company, or an artist, want to emulate that?

because the idea is to promote something you're selling, not to let people rent everything you're selling it for pennies

that would maybe possibly make sense if people were ever going to buy cds, or mp3s, or whatever, again. but they aren't. (and why wouldn't an artist want radio to play lots of songs from an album instead of just one?)

that would maybe possibly make sense if people were ever going to buy cds, or mp3s, or whatever, again. but they aren't.

if you were correct that no one buys music, i'd agree with you

of course people buy music. but they're buying less and less of it and streaming more and more of it. and there's no reason to believe that trend is going to reverse.

seems like the most awful play to me. no disrespect to my beloved prince, but the thing that sucks most about commercial radio is its unwillingness to play anything except the individual tracks handed to them (and maybe paid for) by labels and promoters. they have the albums, presumably, but it's as if they literally can't see the other 10 or 12 tracks. why on earth would a streaming company, or an artist, want to emulate that?

― fact checking cuz, Friday, July 31, 2015 1:18 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is only part of the story. radio stations also rely on audience research, and audiences notoriously hate unfamiliar material

there's also no reason to deny yourself income just to be ahead of the times. look at the relative difference between the spins a single gets on spotify and a deep cut. it makes sense to put "when doves cry" on streaming because those fractions of pennies actually add up. but if someone wants a deep cut, it makes more sense to give them some impetus to actually purchase the album, rather than dramatically diminish it.

also prince fans may actually be more likely to check out his new song when it's placed next to "the best of prince" (if that) rather than 30+ full-lengths

radio stations also rely on audience research, and audiences notoriously hate unfamiliar material

yes, absolutely, of course. but radio stations have the power to make any track they want familiar to their audience, and that's a power that most stations rarely if ever exercise or experiment with.

i do think it's a mistake to ignore streaming entirely. but i think it makes far more sense financially for an artist to treat it as a promotional device - the latest and greatest evolution of radio/jukebox - then as a replacement for sales. which is what it becomes when you put everything you have to sell on it.

yes, absolutely, of course. but radio stations have the power to make any track they want familiar to their audience, and that's a power that most stations rarely if ever exercise or experiment with.

― fact checking cuz, Friday, July 31, 2015 1:29 PM (28 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

true; similarly, publications have the power to ignore pageviews and shares and make any artist they want the locus point of their coverage. but, uh, well, yeah

it's possible some day it will be impossible to even make your biggest fans buy music but there's no reason for musicians to pretend we've reached that commercial post-apocalypse

there's also no reason to deny yourself income just to be ahead of the times

i agree! i really do mean no disrespect to prince or any other artist that wants to pull some or all of his material off these services. an artist should figure out what makes the most sense for him and do it. power to the artists who do that.

i don't always love the results, and i'm not sure the model that artists would like to see in the long run is the model that's best for consumers in the long run. that's all.

well yeah obv itd be great for me if i could rent every song ever recorded for 10 bucks a month. but it's solipsistic-to-sociopathic to pretend that's a system that's going to allow artists to thrive.

true; similarly, publications have the power to ignore pageviews and shares and make any artist they want the locus point of their coverage. but, uh, well, yeah

i'm just suggesting there may be a balance to be struck somewhere in there between audience research, label payola, pageviews, shares, etc., and thinking about what music is worth playing and what stories are worth covering. of course you have to look at page views and shares. and if that's all you look at, well, then, buzzfeed, yay.

xpost
No it's not.

oh of course, I'm not disagreeing with you that ideally that'd be the case

No it's not.

good point

There have been tons of models showing (many detailed in this thread) that if streaming services can get a decent number of paying customers (at $10/month),l there will be plenty of money to go around. And, it's in perpetuity, not just at the time of sale.

prince likes to be on the charts and is happy to do whatever backflips necessary to get there
see also enclosing his new album in a newspaper or bundling it with concert ticket sales

There have been tons of models showing (many detailed in this thread) that if streaming services can get a decent number of paying customers (at $10/month),l there will be plenty of money to go around. And, it's in perpetuity, not just at the time of sale.

rather than debate the plausibility of those models, i'll concede that if and when those numbers are reached, it could create a more viable ecosystem of artists. but i don't think artists should give up the one they have until that happens. which is why i think artists should engage with streaming sites, but in the sense of providing the same songs they'd happily let radio blast out - which could be a few dozen depending on the artist!

if every artist put three-to-four songs from every album that would be a TON of music, totally worth 10 bucks a month to play with. But would still provide some motivation for consumers to spend MORE on the artists they truly love for more music.

every artist put on streaming three-to-four songs, i mean

I would argue that making money off the back catalog rather than having people just play MP3s/CDs they bought long ago makes more financial sense to the artists, right?

If all the albums Spotify became little samplers, I'd stop using it. I like albums.

again, people who wanna hear the hits would still be able to. you would just have two ways of making money off the back catalog - streaming for the hits, sales for the deep cuts, rather than one

I guess. Pretty customer-unfriendly, though.

and totally hypothetical

yeah see when people say getting four songs off every album ever for 10 bucks a month, where you'd only have to buy deep cuts, is "customer-unfriendly," that doesn't dissuade me from seeing the argument as "solipsistic-to-sociopathic"

I would cancel my subscription and click 'Forgot My Password' on What.CD

Happily paying 10 bucks a month forever for music doesn't seem sociopathic to me.

Are people who use the library sociopaths?

no, why would you think that