Members richardmac Posted November 23, 2009 Members Share Posted November 23, 2009 Well, rather, it apparently pays practically nothing. We've been hearing rumors about how true this is - here's a story on hypebot that basically says Lady Gaga got 1 million plays on Spotify and they paid her... $167. We were just talking about this in another thread. If she had those million people streaming the song from her own website, it would have been worth a hell of a lot more than $167. If this is true, Spotify will not fly here in the USA. Spotify sounds great on paper but if it can't pay artists, it's gonna fold. Unless they somehow find a way to pay artists more. Here's the link. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BlueStrat Posted November 23, 2009 Members Share Posted November 23, 2009 Yeah, but...think of the exposure she's getting! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Poker99 Posted November 23, 2009 Members Share Posted November 23, 2009 I hope Spotify dies quickly! Its funny to read comments on blogs about Spotify. Kids say "Well if artists complain Spotify doesn't pay enough, they just have to get better and get played more". 1 million play = 167$ Why do bands/labels get their music on this is beyond me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Li Shenron Posted November 24, 2009 Members Share Posted November 24, 2009 Music doesn't pay. I hope music dies quickly. Instead, I wish for Spotify to get better for the musicians too. For the customers' point of view, it's a great service. Clearly the Spotify company has big troubles in making it worth anything for the artists. It would be interesting to know how much do they charge for the commercials, and how much of this money goes to Spotify or how much goes to the music industry. The model is more or less the same as in commercial television and radio: the channel pays the industry for the shows/songs and gets money from commercials. What is the fundamental reason why this has been working for commercial radios for decades, and it cannot work for streaming on-demand? I doubt that the difference is in the transmission media (air vs internet). Is all the difference in the "on-demand" aspect of it, and why? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members richardmac Posted November 24, 2009 Author Members Share Posted November 24, 2009 Well, now Spotify is publicly denying that amount. They're not saying, though, how much they paid. So who knows... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BlueStrat Posted November 24, 2009 Members Share Posted November 24, 2009 Maybe it was really 1,670 dollars for a million plays! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members theboywho Posted November 26, 2009 Members Share Posted November 26, 2009 I've read on a site that you can use to put music onto spotify that it pays £.02 per stream, so that doesn't quite seem right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Li Shenron Posted November 27, 2009 Members Share Posted November 27, 2009 I've read on a site that you can use to put music onto spotify that it pays £.02 per stream, so that doesn't quite seem right. It seems too little to be worth it... But how much do you get from radio airplay if your song is played? This needs to be compared to the presumed amount of listeners. How much does the artist get per CD track, considering for example a CD with 10 songs priced at 15e (very roughly averaged)? That's 1.5e per song, how much of it really goes to the band, after removing retailer's profit, music industry profit, and VAT? To how many listenings would you equate a CD to compare it to streaming on demand? Look that I'm not trying to provoke or argue here, I'm just trying to understand. Because saying 2 cents per song does seem really too little, but the comparison with radio and CD is not that obvious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members richardmac Posted November 27, 2009 Author Members Share Posted November 27, 2009 It seems too little to be worth it... But how much do you get from radio airplay if your song is played? This needs to be compared to the presumed amount of listeners.How much does the artist get per CD track, considering for example a CD with 10 songs priced at 15e (very roughly averaged)? That's 1.5e per song, how much of it really goes to the band, after removing retailer's profit, music industry profit, and VAT? To how many listenings would you equate a CD to compare it to streaming on demand?Look that I'm not trying to provoke or argue here, I'm just trying to understand. Because saying 2 cents per song does seem really too little, but the comparison with radio and CD is not that obvious. It's an interesting topic. I REALLY wish we had the real numbers on this. I seriously doubt that they're paying 2 cents per play, but what currency are we talking? In the US, the major streamers pay roughly 1 cent per play. Let's assume that Spotify pays the same as Rhapsody and the others, roughly one American penny per play. If Lady FadOfTheMinute gets a million plays, that's... check my math, please... Ten Thousand Dollars. $10,000. Now, to me... that seems fair. That sounds about right. But here's the thing. Rhapsody, for example, charges customers $13 per month. So technically, if a person were to listen to 1,300 songs in a month, all of their monthly fee for that month would go to the artists. (I'm rounding - it's not an exact penny, but it's close.) If they listen to LESS than 1,300 songs in a month, the extra money goes to Rhapsody for expenses. I am not sure how the business is doing, but at least you can sorta see where the money comes from. Spotify is not charging their customers $13 per month - the vast majority of their customers are free. So unless they are going massively in debt, you have to believe they are paying artists far less than the penny that Rhapsody pays. Maybe they ARE going way in debt. I dunno. Radio and a dedicated streaming service are two totally different things. A much better comparison would be streaming radio and regular radio. An artist like John Mayer who writes all of his own music might get a buck per CD sold. So to make ten grand, he can either have a million people stream a track on Rhapsody, or sell ten thousand copies. He sold almost 300,000 in the first week his new CD came out. So CD's are still more profitable than streams. The real profit is probably in his tours, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Li Shenron Posted November 28, 2009 Members Share Posted November 28, 2009 So to make ten grand, he can either have a million people stream a track on Rhapsody, or sell ten thousand copies. Yes, but to say it like that it seems like an enourmous difference (a factor of 100), however if you assume that a CD has 10 songs, and that on average each buyer would listen to the CD 10 times, then the two numbers are actually the same: he would make just as much from selling 10.000 CDs than from streaming the whole CD (10 songs) to 10.000 people for 10 times each, 10 x 10 x 10.000 = 1.000.000 streamings. Unless of course the CD has only 2-3 tracks worth listening and the rest is filler... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members richardmac Posted November 28, 2009 Author Members Share Posted November 28, 2009 Unless? Ha ha ha ha! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members paulz Posted December 7, 2009 Members Share Posted December 7, 2009 I've heard a lot of people talk about spotify.I looked at their homepage and they have the subscription price in euros is this just because that's native or do they stream to US and Canada too? from all the buzz I couldn't tell if it's live product or still being rolled out Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Li Shenron Posted December 8, 2009 Members Share Posted December 8, 2009 UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Finland and Norway only. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ispytunes Posted December 17, 2009 Members Share Posted December 17, 2009 All right chaps, Spotify sold 5% bulk shares of their company to all the major labels. So Universal got 5%, Sony 5% etc. For the price of $10.000, before the service was launched. The market value of the spotify share has since then risen so much that the labels in sweden made more cash from this than from itunes! Now, that obviously means the artists don't get anything, since it's not related to plays... But the record companies think this is great :poke: Three types of lies: lies, damn lies and stats... the most funny side of this tale is perhaps that since the record companies won't sell their shares, they don't actually make anything, only the founding directors do Guess why they have the company off shore... they pulled the trick off of selling the entire back catalogue of major labels back to them, he he... At least we get free music at the end of it all, i use it everyday -guru Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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