Spotify is the number-one streaming service by far! How much will they pay per stream? Here’s a quick breakdown and what we’re doing to change things.
Artists receive $.0033/play. $.0033 cents!
You’d need 303,030 streams to make $1000…
Most new artists get about 300 please per song on a new album, 1000 if they’re lucky, but what’s the point in uploading if after 10,000 please on a 10-track EP you only make $33?!
There are more than 78 million tracks on Spotify. You can check Loud & Clear for how many songs have been played more than 500 times – the number comes out to 38.69 million, which means more than half (51%) of the 78.4 million music tracks on Spotify have been played fewer than 500 times. Can you guess how many have fewer than 1000 plays? 60.8%. And fewer than 5,000? 79.1%. That’s over 62 million tracks. And these other streaming services are just as bad excluding Tidal, which is going in the right direction.
Spotify is currently valued at $17.17 billion. It has over 8 million artist accounts but last year only 52,000 made it over $10,000. That’s .2%. You have five times a better chance of making it into the NFL than making even a part-time salary from Spotify. All of this you can find on the analytic site that they released in an attempt to be transparent.
Artists put hours into some of these songs, ones that deserve to be heard. Imagine putting every bit of energy and passion you can into something, in hopes of not only helping people but helping yourself with some passive income, and after a couple of years and 300,000 please you make $1000. Simply put, that’s fucked up.
We want to make it simple for artists to succeed in the industry by creating a step-by-step guide for anyone to use. Keyword simple. Exploring monetary avenues outside of streaming, licensing, and traditional ways, while explaining all of that crap that they are putting you through. There are artists all over the world that have no idea what to do with their music.
This happens to far too many people. Now if you look up this information on how and what you need to do to actually make money streaming you’ll likely end up on copyright.gov with a not only make you really super artist-friendly 12-slide PowerPoint on the differences between sampling, remixing, and mash-ups, but they vaguely tell you how your passion-filled song is not one but two pieces of work they can screw you on.
Then they introduce you to laws you need to memorize that may end up changing anyway. I didn’t know I needed to triple major in law, accounting, and music business just to make money with my music. Think of how much more music people would hear if this information were more straightforward or if the process was easier overall.
It’s no secret that music saves lives. Some of you may have had similar experiences hearing a song that said exactly what you needed to hear. Listening to a track that makes you forget your problems or explain them perfectly in a way you can before. This is just one thing that makes music amazing and one thing it is capable of.
So here’s some logic. A simple guide for artists to get paid will lead to more artists joining the industry, which means more music and more opportunities to save lives.
Did you know in a 2021 survey conducted by VeryWellMind.com, a website run by certified physicians and other mental health professionals, reported that 97% said that they use music as a tool to help their mental health – either for relaxation, inspiration/spirituality, boost in mood, or as an outlet to express difficult emotions?
That number could go up.
After going through that I think it’s a little more clear that the system of the music industry doesn’t only need to be clarified, it needs to be changed.
